Grass Wave Coast, abandoned laboratory.
"You finally came."
"Mm."
"Are you ready?"
Hyuga Yu raised his head slightly and glanced at Shigaraki Tanuki before him. The man had dark circles under his eyes, bloodshot whites, unshaven stubble, and the look of a mad scientist. Yu had the vague feeling that this exchange had already happened once before.
He neither confirmed nor denied it, merely asking calmly, "Have the instruments been calibrated?"
"They're ready."
"Come to think of it, can't your Byakugan see things? Why do you need an optical microscope?"
Hyuga Yu shook his head. "The Byakugan can't see that."
The next surgery would involve splicing together the genetic molecules of two experimental subjects: Zero-Tails and Hashirama Cells. It was a procedure on the atomic level.
The Byakugan could magnify and shrink one's view, but at its limit, it could only see things on the level of acupoints, meridians, and bodily tissue. The metabolic cycle Hyuga Yu had constructed inside a patient with Wind Release: Chakra Scalpel not long ago had likewise only been a rough version based on the body's 361 acupoints and the flow of its meridians.
For anything more detailed—such as manually restructuring a DNA model—he still needed instruments.
"Over here."
At this moment, Shigaraki Tanuki was in a dazed state. His steps were unsteady, and his whole body seemed ready to float away. Who knew how many nights he had stayed awake? Now, he tried to use as few words as possible, keeping his instructions clear.
Before long, he led Hyuga Yu to a workbench deep within the abandoned laboratory.
This was one of the newer areas in the entire laboratory.
Nucleic acid extraction and purification machines, PCR machines, electrophoresis equipment, ultraviolet transilluminators, gene transfer devices, spectrophotometers, pipettes...
The laboratory equipment was fairly complete, with both