The Perfect Combat Frame Project.
Konome's plan was simple in shape and ruthless in aim. She would fuse Byakugan and Shikotsumyaku into a single discipline she called flesh command, a way of moving the body that ignored the usual interlocks of human anatomy. With scraps of sports science from her previous life, she would build a body that could survive and thrive in high-intensity combat.
In this world shinobi tended to fall into three broad types: taijutsu, ninjutsu, and genjutsu. None was inherently superior. Each rose or fell on the user's craft.
The Taketori and Hyuga clans rarely relied on ninjutsu. Konome could count her non-bloodline techniques on one hand, and aside from Shikotsumyaku variants, they were the kiddie trio every academy student learned. In pure ninjutsu she was only a hair better than Rock Lee. Genjutsu, she did not touch at all.
Taijutsu was different. With both Hyuga and Taketori blood, she had been given a mountain to climb and the legs to climb it.
Taijutsu channels chakra into the musculature, then marries that charge to movement. The muscles swell, strike, absorb, and return force. Chakra-hardened tissue shrugs off blunt shock in ways ordinary flesh cannot.
Which means one thing. The stronger the body, the more chakra you can pour into it, the more your power does not add so much as multiply.
If she could shape a frame specialized for fighting, then even with limited reserves she could push her taijutsu to its limit.
Back in Kirigakure she had shelved the idea for fear ANBU would notice something off. Now that she was out, and Mari Kurio no longer doubted her, the plan could breathe again.
Perfect, of course, is a word for poets. What Konome meant was a body that balanced the main demands of a fight.
The work had already begun in the Mist. To keep her Byakugan from being coveted or damaged, she had grown a hard bony film in front of each eye. That same film had let her pass the ANBU inspection and walk out beside Mari's team.
If bone could sheathe the eyes, it could sheath anything.
Soft skin could lie. Under the subcutaneous fat of that soft skin, a thin armor of bone lay over everything. Across the abdomen, where killing blows love to land, interlaced ribs closed to form a carapace.
A normal person wrapped like that would be a statue, a vegetable who could not twitch. Bloodline limits do not ask permission. She did not know how Shikotsumyaku worked. She only knew that under chakra the bone film could be iron-hard when she needed it and fold away when she did not. The frame did not hinder motion. If anything it let her muscles express more strength.
That faith in her unnatural flesh made her bold. With a child's patience and a gamer's spreadsheet brain, she would tune this body toward the thing she wanted.
"Konome, your tent and sleeping bag are ready."
"Thanks."
Karin Kozan zipped the tent and, with the gentle fussiness of a nurse, helped Konome inside. Lying back, Konome watched the girl smooth the bag and tuck the edges. It felt, absurdly, like being a long-term patient in a ward.
Zzzip.
Orange firelight flickered through the canvas. In Byakugan sight, Mari walked a slow circle around their camp, laying traps. Arata Okamura had stretched out on a high bough to nap before his watch. Karin sat with her back to Konome's tent, eyes closed. Sena Yamato perched in the tallest fork, facing outward, still as a hawk.
A team you could rest inside. The escort fee was already earning its keep.
Konome shut her eyes and went back to the blueprint.
Think fight first.
She was not a scientist, so she translated the factors into the stats she knew from games: attack, defense, speed, reach.
Defense and reach she could largely outsource to Shikotsumyaku. Attack and speed needed her hands.
Attack breaks further into power, rate, and weapon. No forged tool would ever match bone for her. That left power as the main dial.
People misunderstand power. They think bigger muscles mean more force. Not wrong, just shallow.
A few levers matter most.
First, the total cross-section of muscle fibers the nervous system can recruit. Thicker fibers mean bigger cross-sections and more force. That is where the big-muscle equals big-power myth comes from. It skips the fact that muscle also carries sarcoplasm, cellular broth that mostly services the fibers rather than contracting itself.
Second, starting length. A fiber is a rubber band with an ideal stretch. Too short or too long and you bleed output.
Third, angles and moment arms. Levers rule. A small change in where and how you pull can turn a slog into a snap.
Fourth, fiber makeup. Fast-twitch for force, slow-twitch for endurance, and a blend to suit the job.
…
Grrr…
She thought and she tried.
Under calm skin, muscle stirred. Byakugan's gaze and her flesh command reached in like deft hands. Chakra welled out of her heart and wrapped the fibers of her right arm.
Twang, twang.
In her mind it sounded like rubber bands snapping. Fibers lengthened, tore, then drew chakra in and healed thicker and tougher. Through the Byakugan she watched them regrow, more cable than thread, with cleaner alignment. Whenever sarcoplasm tried to bloat, she choked it off.
Sarcoplasm feeds the system. It does not pull. Shinobi have chakra for fuel. She could let the soup go.
Cut the bloat and you get something frightening. Two fibers the same size by eye, hers would out-pull yours.
She slid her arm free of the bag, rolled the shoulder, and played with lever feel while nudging the red to white fiber ratio.
Thicken, taper, thicken again. Extend, shorten, tune.
Little by little the muscle in her right arm found a shape she liked.
A long while later, inside the dim tent, she raised the limb and examined it. The Byakugan showed the truth. From the outside, not much to see. The arm had swelled a touch, but without sarcoplasm bloat it did not look bodybuilder big. It looked right. Healthy. Natural.
The bone-film armor and a veil of fat smoothed the surface. The braided cords beneath did not show.
Side by side, the right was clearly a size up from the left, yet it did not read as bulky. It read as heavy, inevitable, almost sculptural. Less a human arm than a carver's piece in white jade.
She swept it through the air.
Whoosh, whoosh.
A breeze curled in the tent, as if a halberd were cutting drills inches from the canvas.
Maybe a bit too heavy.
She judged herself without mercy. It felt like a young girl's arm to the touch, but the composition was nothing soft. A whisper of fat, then the bone film, a thick pad of muscle wound like rebar, and deep inside two ulna and radius dense as steel.
Skin to mislead the enemy.
Bone film to blunt the blade.
Muscle to cushion the club.
And at the core the bones to keep the whole from folding.
Huh.
She had meant to build for offense and somehow had maxed defense. So that is what people mean when they say the best defense is a good offense.
She smiled to herself.
High mass resists incoming force and delivers more on impact, but too much mass steals the start, drags the turn, and dulls agility. If she tuned the whole body this way she would end up an armored ram, strong in the line and clumsy in the weave. That is not perfect. That is a corner case.
Stack the thickest plate and eat the heaviest blows if you must, but a real body needs a golden ratio of speed, strength, and mass for this size.
She stared at one sleek forearm and one that looked like art pretending to be flesh, then went back to thinking where to trim and where to add.
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