"Are you sure that she was changed?" asked Kakashi. In fact, she looked very vulnerable and small with only the hospital gown covering her unconscious body.
"Oh yes," said Madeline. "Tendons and connective tissues, flexible bone structure - she'll be an absolute fiend when it comes to grappling. Structures we've never seen before in the body but we were able to determine that their function is to analyze and filter toxins in the bloodstream! She also has extendable fangs with poison sacs. Looks like a soporific venom from initial tests."
"Anything else?" asked Kakashi. She looked so normal but had hidden surprises like a venomous bite? Actually that was pretty much 'ninja' in a way.
"Doubtful," said Madeline. "We wanted her to be able to blend in with normal society if she went on infiltration or assassination missions after all. Still, it was an experiment so something may happen down the road a bit. Oh, and her strength should be at least doubled if we're interpreting the muscle tissue examination correctly. All in all, a very good result wouldn't you say?"
"You okay now?" asked Igor.
Sakura drew a shuddering breath and nodded. When she'd woken up she'd been okay up until she'd reached out and her bones had seemed to liquify briefly and her arms and legs had wrapped around the hospital bed's rails.
Igor had been quietly talking to her, relating his own experiences as an experimental subject until he'd worked his way to the position of lab assistant.
Igor knew what he looked like, and he'd come to terms with it for the most part. He usually volunteered for the part of talking with those whose experiments had not gone well but they'd survived.
He had been born with one leg withered and without much of the muscle that should have been there. It had cut his career options down considerably. He wasn't particularly brilliant or gifted in anything that he'd tried his hands at. He couldn't mould chakra to save his life. Experimental subject had at least offered a way to honorably serve the village and possibly fix that leg.
One of the experiments had sort of melted one side of his face. One eye was visibly larger than the other. He was hunchbacked and had one leg with 150% of the muscle mass of the other. Both of which had been results of the attempt to fix that withered leg. He wore turtleneck sweaters since making it to Lab Assistant, it covered a lot of the scars and the patch of scales and such. Lab coat, specially made for him, was a sign of status.
He frequently visited the failures, some of whom had lost an eye or limb or such, they were comforted by the signs of how things could have been much worse. As for himself, all he had to do was look at the failures who had not survived - or the pictures of the even worse failures that Orochimaru had done. Yes, it could have worked out worse for him - and they HAD learned various safety protocols after the experiments that he'd gone through.
"Well, then, that's good," said Igor, ignoring the girl's flinch as he managed a sort-of smile. "We all have our burdens, and at least you had a success. I'm told you'll have an extraordinary resistance to poisons and will be reinstated as a kunoichi. I'd imagine some poison-resistance will be awfully handy in that line of work."
"I suppose," said Sakura. "What about these?"
Igor watched as Sakura extended her canine teeth, looking positively vampire-ish. "You don't actually HAVE to bite anyone you know. You should be able to run your tongue across those teeth and then lick a kunai if you want to poison someone."
Sakura blinked. "Hadn't thought of that."
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(Posted Mon, 19 Jan 2015 15:58)
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