A Hole in One's Village [Kakashi Hatake]

Chapter 7: How It Works

I recognize that I am posting this two days early, but I don't care. I couldn't wait any longer.

Hello from college! I have survived my first two weeks of classes now, and I'm loving it! I love my dorm room, I love all of the new and equally nerdy friends I've made, I love living not at home (and I love my family too, but I was just ready to move out, you know), and I'm just really happy right now, if you can't tell. Well then, I have a ton of stuff to say, but I'm leaving it for the A/N at the end of the chapter. Until then, enjoy!

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    I slid another slide under the microscope, refocusing the lens slightly. The dried blood was so distorted looking that it was hard to see where one cell membrane stopped and the other started. It was like a jumbled soup of partially dissolved cell-bits. I zoomed in. Half a mitochondrion there, a denatured golgi body here, the remnants of a white blood cell beside it. It was more like the blood sample had been ripped a part at a cellular and molecular level than damaged by a poison or even an acid for that matter.

     Sakura came by to make me eat lunch as I started the second titration of the day to try and figure out the contents of a sample of the toxin that I had separated out of the blood.

     "If only you had spectrophotometry in this world..."

     "Yes, Ana, that would be wonderful." Sakura said robotically while pushing me down into a chair in the break-room.

     "Or if you had all of the recorded data values of my old world as well. The number of conclusive tests that I can run has been decreased to almost nothing."

     "That's unfortunate. Now eat your sandwich."

     "Then throw the chakra component in and all of the kinetics laws from my old world are practically null and void as well!"

     I took a grumpy of bite of the food that Sakura was practically force-feeding me. I didn't even taste it.

     She sighed, "Well, maybe you have to stop looking at this problem from the prospective of your old world. Perhaps if you can find out how the toxin interacts with chakra, you'll have better luck."

     I froze mid bite as jumbled bits of information began slamming together in my brain. I needed some litmus paper and hydrofluoric acid and I needed them immediately. I had a theory to test.

     Swallowing so quickly that I nearly choked to death, I stood up from the table and bolted down the hallway.

     "Ana! Come back here! You never finished your lunch, cha!"

     My brain was already going a million miles an hour.

     What if you did use chakra to bypass the usual physical limitations of chemistry? The possibilities really could be endless. For instance, you could make an acid hundreds, possibly thousands, of times more powerful than otherwise could be obtained. An acid like the one my unfortunate ANBU patient had come across, an acid that could cause your own cells to dissolves themselves.

     Glass test tubes clinked as I pulled them out of drawers far too quickly. I had some chemistry to do.

     Hours upon hours later, I threw open the door to Tsunade's office in the hospital.

     "It's brilliant! Without a doubt, this might be the most awesome, evil and warped yes, but absolutely awesome acid that I've ever seen! Oh, it just all makes so much sense!"

     "Ana, you're talking too quickly and loudly again. What's this you're going on about?"

     I breathed in deeply and took myself down a few notches.