"Miss Konome, your dinner has arrived."
A handsome waiter stood at the door, pushing a cart piled high with meat dishes. He rang the bell politely.
"Come in."
The door wasn't locked.
As he entered, the sound of crunching filled the air sharp, bone-grinding noises that made the waiter's teeth ache in sympathy.
Inside, the spacious suite stretched out before him. At the long redwood dining table, the silver-haired girl sat chewing on a roasted beef shank larger than her head. Her cheeks bulged round as she bit straight into the bone.
Crack.
The hard bone snapped like a watermelon rind, crunched down between her teeth. The waiter lowered his gaze quickly, terrified of what he was seeing.
"Miss Konome, the Hope will depart in two days. This is your ticket. It lists your seat and departure time. Please keep it safe."
"Mmm…"
She waved him off absently, her Byakugan flicking over the ticket placed neatly on the bedside table. Haikawa Dock. Departure: the day after tomorrow, 1:00 PM. VIP private cabin. Travel time: fifteen days.
At last, she would leave the Land of Water.
Her heart swelled with emotion she couldn't quite name.
From the moment her past-life memories awakened to now, barely a week had passed. Yet it felt longer than an entire year of her previous life.
Takatori clan shinobi with crippled legs, Dark Fox, Naoko Amaska, Mari Kurusu, Shin Okamura, Karin Kanayama, Masaru Osada, Crow, Bloodhound… slaughter, ambushes, deception, life-and-death gambits.
Her memories of her past life grew hazy, like mist. Sometimes she couldn't even tell if she was Taketori Konome, or that middle-aged woman who lost her family in an earthquake.
It no longer mattered.
Whoever she was, the goal was the same.
To seize power. To master her fate.
Konoha.
Her covered eyes turned toward the distant sunset.
The Sharingan, Hashirama's cells, the Flying Thunder God, Shadow Clone Technique, Impure World Reincarnation, Dead Demon Consuming Seal, the secret Eight Trigrams techniques… all of them waited there.
Konome tore into the beef shank, fangs grinding down the tendons and fibers until they softened.
Her stomach rumbled, digesting the meat. The nutrients transmuted into chakra, excess stored away as fat, ready to be converted back into chakra for battle.
The Akimichi clan of Konoha had developed secret techniques for this, but for Konome who could control every fiber of her body it was instinct.
The Shikotsumyaku and Byakugan together were terrifying. The more she used them, the more she realized how overpowered her bloodline truly was. She had even begun piecing together the root cause of the Taketori clan's bloodline sickness.
Kaguya Ōtsutsuki's powers: the Byakugan, the Divine Tree's chakra fruit-enhanced body, the All-Killing Ash Bones, and the massive chakra of the Ten-Tails.
Imagine her body as a tank.
Set aside the Ten-Tails for now.
The four powers were like: the cannon, the ammunition and fuel, the tank's chassis, and its targeting system.
The Senju and Uzumaki inherited the chakra-rich body, the fuel and ammo. No cannon, but with enough gasoline to drown their enemies.
The Uchiha inherited the cannon.
Without fuel, their Sharingan burned their own life force, their Mangekyō's power tearing their bodies apart.
The Hyūga took the radar and targeting system.
With no hardware, the system was crippled. Only their chakra control remained, so they turned their vision into their weapon instead.
And the Taketori?
They got the empty shell.
With nothing left, they had only a body that could bash itself against others. Without a chakra-rich body to sustain them, every injury healed with Shikotsumyaku ate away at their lifespan.
In the end, they burned out.
Kimimaro's bloodline disease was no mystery it was his life force being exhausted. Even Kabuto and Orochimaru couldn't heal him.
This was why Konome always stockpiled energy before battle. The more she ate, the less risk she ran of her kekkei genkai devouring her lifespan.
Still, it was not a true solution.
She swallowed another mouthful of greasy beef, her face tightening with distaste.
The All-Killing Ash Bones of Kaguya terrified her. One touch, and death was absolute. If her Shikotsumyaku evolved in that direction, she feared the backlash would destroy her without an immortal body to support it.
Perhaps that, too, was part of the bloodline sickness.
She had thought of three possible ways to solve it.
One: graft Hashirama's cells to gain Wood Release and his body of a Sage.
Two: master Tsunade's Yin Seal, storing unused chakra for release in battle. A patchwork solution, but workable.
Three: become a Jinchūriki, harnessing a new source of chakra.
The first two were out of her reach for now. The third… maybe.
She set aside her empty dishes, rang the bell. A servant came, cleared everything, and left.
Click.
The door locked.
Her Byakugan swept the room. Empty.
Konome pulled a white porcelain vial from her robes. The Taketori clan crest gleamed on its surface. The same vial she'd taken from the battlefield, once filled with soldier pills.
She uncorked it.
Blue chakra seeped out like a misty stream.
A bony sheath grew around her hand as she tipped the vial.
A lump of flesh, black and jellylike, plopped into her palm. It writhed obscenely, twisting as if trying to burrow into her.
Her Byakugan flared.
The thing was leech-sized, but the chakra inside it rivaled that of a Chūnin.
She had taken it from Bloodhound's corpse.
When Crow died, Bloodhound's lower abdomen had suddenly erupted with chakra, his power surging. He had snapped her neck with brute force.
Later, as she tried to burn the body, this wriggling mass had crawled free.
Now, after days of thought, she knew the truth.
In the Land of Water, the only creature with this much water-nature chakra was the Sanbi, the Three-Tails.
This was its flesh.
One of the six greatest cheat codes in the shinobi world: the Sharingan, Wood Release, Sage Mode, Shadow Clones, Tailed Beast chakra, and space-time ninjutsu.
Now she held the chance to become a Jinchūriki herself.
The mass writhed in her palm, sanity-sapping to behold.
How was she supposed to use it?
She knew no sealing jutsu.
Eat it?
She grimaced.
The Kinkaku and Ginkaku brothers had eaten the Nine-Tails' flesh and become pseudo-Jinchūriki. That precedent made the thought less insane.
And her bloodline… she had inherited two of Kaguya's powers. In terms of pedigree, she was no less than the Sage's descendants.
She licked her lips, tongue brushing away the grease of beef. She had already stocked up on energy. Worst case, she could cut out her own stomach and regenerate it with Shikotsumyaku.
But if it worked…
She would be a pseudo-Sanbi Jinchūriki.
The possibilities lit her eyes with greed and determination.
"Do it," she whispered to herself.
And she made her choice.