[He glances back down at his watch. It seemed like Aku was pretty resilient, even as an apparition.]

Indeed. There's still an experiment or two that we expect every year, but they have tapered off with the increased focus on the war effort.

[A brief pause.]

But the sheer frequency of these people showing up seems more like an experiment than a simple natural shift.

[It would explain Shikamaru's earlier comment about how bad the natural shifts must be affecting people outside, but surely the researchers would say something about what they had to be seeing.

Unless the only researcher who was even observing them anymore was that one intern he'd dryly called Jingleheimer.]