"Semi-sapient growths on the face, huh?" Jiraiya said. "Yeah, that's bad. Could be worse, though.
"I remember when Murabe, one of the other guys in my division, called me over to help him set up for a trial. Luckily for me, I was late because I got stuck in an argument between Yuri and Mikako over who got to jump my bones—this was while I was still young and stupid, you understand, and didn't realise it was a false dilemma. By the time I got to Murabe, it was all over.
"The best way to describe what happened to Murabe was... 'out of phase'. He wasn't all there—not mentally, but physically. You could sort of see through him if you squinted hard enough, and while he was all right while he was concentrating, the second he got distracted he started moving through things. Trouble was, things started moving through him too. He got real sick real fast, and it took us time to figure out that this was because the air was getting past his skin and rubbing against his insides. He wasn't completely out of phase, you see, just a bit. He got prescribed complete bed rest, because he was mostly fine as long as he didn't move at all and was indoors where there was no wind.
"But what happened to him was nothing. Here's the really weird thing. He hadn't been testing a seal.
"Murabe was a smart guy, one of the best I'd ever worked with, and he knew better than to forge ahead with a risky experiment just because his helper wasn't there. He was still in the process of double-checking his calculations when whatever happened... happened.
"Now the idea of getting hit by somebody else's sealing failure out of nowhere is scary enough. But it gets worse. Murabe was an early riser, and he was the first to set up for an experiment that day. There was nothing in the facility that could have triggered at that time. In other words, he got messed up by a sealing failure when no seal had failed.
"And then it's a month later. To the day, actually. I remember because Yuri made a big deal out of the anniversary. Mensiversary. Whatever. There I am, in the testing area where Murabe had his accident, minding my own business with a Banshee Slayer prototype, when suddenly the man himself staggers in. Bear in mind, he's not suicidal. He's been starting to fade back into phase, meaning there's hope for a complete recovery—as long as he doesn't do what he's doing right now.
He looks terrible. He's panting, and his eyes are bloodshot. You can sort of see inside him, only instead of organs or what have you, it's all red with blood, like he was tearing himself apart against the air in order to get here.
"He walks up to me, grunting with every step. 'Jiraiya,' he says, 'where's my prototype sonic catalyser seal?"
"I tell him I'm damned if I know. It's the early hours of the morning and I'm barely awake. I'm not going to remember where his stuff from a month ago got stowed after the medic-nin were done with him.
"He looks me in the eye, and he's got the look of a desperate man. 'Jiraiya, if you don't get that seal here in one hour, I think the world will end.' And then he falls to his knees, struggling to breathe.
"Well, what was I going to do? Murabe wasn't one for drama, and he was wrangling seals while I was still beating up bullies at the Academy. I run for the storerooms like all our lives depend on it.
"Fifteen minutes later, I get back with the seal, and he's in bad shape. Coming out here cost him big-time. He's leaning against the wall like it's the only thing keeping him up, and I wouldn't be surprised if he keeled over any minute. So I hand him the seal that he never got to infuse the first time round. 'What's the deal, Murabe?' I finally ask.
"'I have to make sure this seal fails,' Murabe wheezes. 'By the Sage of Six Paths and all his disciples, it has to fail.'
"And before I can lift a hand to stop him, he infuses the seal. I dive for cover—
"And nothing happens, except he collapses to the ground again. It didn't take a medic-nin to tell that the stress had been too much for him. He'd given his life to fail an infusion, but the failure didn't do anything."
"Bird poop!" Kagome said. "No such thing as a sealing failure that doesn't eat your face in horrible, horrible ways. Or make broccoli grow out of it."
"I was confused too. At first, I thought he must have infused the seal successfully after all. Which is crazy. How do you fail to fail an infusion? And then I realised... it had done something after all. It just hadn't done it now."
