"I was wondering if there had been any experiments done on quantifying chakra."
Dr Yakushi's eyes narrowed slightly. "Pray elaborate."
Hazō's heart beat a little faster. Dr Yakushi wasn't dismissing the idea the way Jiraiya did virtually everything Hazō ever suggested. Was he... being taken seriously? By a professional?
"I've been thinking how there seems to be a lot of consistency to how much chakra it takes to use a given ninjutsu between people with similar skill and reserves. Suppose that in reality, it always takes the same amount of chakra to achieve the same effect, and that it costs one arbitrary unit of chakra to use the Water Whip Technique. If Noburi can use ten Water Whips before he gets exhausted… actually, Noburi's the worst possible example, but never mind. Anyway, in that case, we can say that his chakra reserves are ten units large. If we then teach him, say, the Water Bullet Technique, and he can use it five times before getting exhausted, then we know it costs two units of chakra. By accumulating a catalogue of ninjutsu costs for common techniques, we can eventually deduce any given ninja's reserve size. We might even be able to monitor how those reserves grow, and develop scientifically-proven optimal training methods."
Hazō could feel himself getting more animated as he recalled more possibilities.
"We could identify the most efficient techniques for a given task and discard the rest, and make sure new techniques we developed were as efficient as possible. We could find patterns between the costs needed to create different effects, and draw conclusions about the fundamental workings of chakra. We could find the exact threshold between ninja and civilian, and see what can be done to cross it."
"Magnificent," Dr Yakushi said. "This is the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that our discipline needs in order to advance. Not merely new objects of study, but new approaches to the structure of scientific study itself. Subjectivity, Gōketsu, is the bane of our work. 'How much chakra does it cost to activate your Bloodline Limit?' 'Oh, a fair bit.' 'How much do these Akimichi pills accelerate your chakra regeneration?' 'Uh, quite a lot?' 'Do you have enough chakra to complete this extremely sensitive experiment?' 'Durr, probably?'"
The gormless idiocy Dr Yakushi put into the answering voices—with remarkable acting skill—convinced Hazō of the strength of his feelings better than any amount of descriptive language.
"To the best of my knowledge, there are no hidden village researchers who have accomplished the task you describe. The difficulties, which I suspect you underestimate, are great, while the rewards are not intuitively obvious to the laypeople on whom we rely for funding. And of course, it takes an exceptional individual to so much as imagine imposing a coherent cognitive structure on the apparent chaos of the physical world, never mind apply the rigor and dedication necessary to force that mental map to accurately correspond to an uncooperative territory."
"If you wish to take on this herculean task, Gōketsu, I will happily support it. Provide me with a research proposal, offer a course of experimentation, and I shall ensure that it reaches the right eyes with my endorsement."
"Thank you, sir!" Hazō exclaimed. "That's great.
