Konome wasted no time.
She locked the door and windows, drew the curtains, then sat cross-legged on the bed. Closing her eyes, she shoved the writhing lump of flesh into her mouth in one bite.
Surprisingly, it had no foul odor. Its texture, somewhere between chicken and fish, was almost novel. But as it squirmed and rolled across her tongue, the strange, wriggling sensation made her frown in disgust.
Gulp.
After a few perfunctory chews, she forced it down.
At first, nothing happened.
But Konome did not relax. Her Byakugan stayed fixed inward, tracking the lump as stomach acid broke it down piece by piece.
The instant it dissolved completely
Whoosh!
She thought she heard the rush of waves.
The Sanbi's flesh, liquefied and digested, transformed into a surging tide of chakra. It poured out of her stomach, flooding into her body's channels, icy and invasive.
Konome shivered.
The alien chakra invaded her network of meridians, charging through uncontrollably. In moments, her normally steady chakra pathways had been torn into chaos.
If this continued, her meridians would rupture.
Forming the Rat hand seal, she summoned her own chakra.
A surge of bright blue chakra burst from her heart, racing through her channels, surrounding the torrent of the Sanbi's power.
But the volume was not the problem.
Her chakra matched the Sanbi's in sheer quantity, yet the difference in quality was nightmarish. The beast's chakra smashed through her defenses in an instant, scattering her energy like driftwood in a flood.
Her heart clenched.
The Sanbi's chakra was rushing straight for her chakra seed the core of her being.
If it was destroyed, her life as a shinobi would end before it even began.
Abandoning all thoughts of becoming a Jinchūriki, she desperately gathered her chakra at her heart, colliding head-on with the beast's torrent.
The clash rattled her entire body.
Konome coughed blood, the copper taste flooding her mouth. The pressure ruptured every capillary along the way, and still, the Sanbi's chakra overwhelmed hers, battering her heart.
So this is the difference?
Her chakra was as vast as a sea. But the Sanbi's was an ocean, deeper and sharper.
This was the power of a Tailed Beast.
Her fear burned into hunger.
If she could tame this power, her strength would double. At least.
Her eyes dimmed to ashen gray, pupils contracting as her Byakugan's latent might awakened. Her flesh, blood, and meridians surged as her body, ocular power, and chakra united.
Together, they struck at the rampaging Sanbi chakra.
Sensing danger, the alien chakra convulsed violently.
Its watery flow hardened into jagged ice, stabbing forward through her meridians. Wherever it passed, flesh blanched pale, veins crystallized, blood shattered into crimson shards.
Ice Release?
Her Byakugan narrowed. She didn't recall the Sanbi ever wielding such a power.
Instinct took over. Her meridians severed and reconnected, diverting the icy torrent away from her heart, forcing it into a newly formed loop.
Her blood vessels writhed, extending into new channels. They wove into a fresh circuit that elongated and weakened the Sanbi's chakra flow.
Now.
Buzz.
Konome's chakra flared, cutting off a fragment of the beast's energy.
Crack.
The frozen channels splintered as her chakra wrapped the fragment, imprisoning it. No matter how it thrashed, it could not break free.
She pressed harder. Her chakra, guided by her Byakugan's ocular power, shattered the alien fragment. Piece by piece, it disintegrated, until her chakra overwhelmed it entirely.
Slowly, the beast's fragment fused into her.
Her blue chakra deepened to a darker hue, tinged with a wild, unfamiliar quality.
No time to linger.
Half the Sanbi's chakra still rampaged through her body, threatening to turn her into an ice statue.
Guiding her newly transformed chakra, she pressed on. Little by little, she devoured the torrent.
The more she absorbed, the stronger she became. And the stronger she became, the faster the beast's chakra yielded.
In the end, it stopped resisting altogether.
…
The hotel room was silent, curtains swaying though no wind blew.
On the bed, the silver-haired girl sat motionless, like a statue of ice. Her delicate features seemed carved of clay, void of life.
Then
Bubbling sounds gurgled through the air.
Glop. Glop.
Red bubbles seeped from her skin, semi-transparent. Dark blue chakra wrapped her frame.
Her silver hair lifted, flowing in an unseen current. A translucent red cloak flickered across her pale skin.
Her eyes snapped open.
Silver hair, red cloak, Byakugan glowing with gray shadows. Behind her, a single crimson tail shimmered in and out of form.
She looked like a fox spirit from legend.
Withdraw.
With a thought, the cloak receded. The tail vanished. The deepened chakra ebbed back into her heart's core.
A strange fullness washed over her, a bizarre sense of being fed to overflowing.
Her chakra had changed.
The blue energy split again into its two roots: physical and spiritual. Yet each strand now carried specks of deep blue an impurity, or perhaps an enhancement.
The beast's energy threaded through her cells, her soul.
Buzz.
A shiver rippled through the depths of her being.
Her bones tingled. Her flesh quivered. Even her spirit seemed to tremble in joy.
For an instant, it felt like she was on the brink of evolution.
But the ecstasy faded quickly, leaving only emptiness.
Konome exhaled slowly.
Greed leads only to ruin. She had gained enough today. Any more, and she would have been crushed, frozen from within. She had underestimated the Sanbi it carried traces of Ice Release.
She stretched, rolling her shoulders, then closed her eyes, probing her body's changes.
The ice nature had not taken root. Her body felt stronger, but the difference was subtle. The tiny piece of flesh she had devoured wasn't nearly enough to transform her body.
Yet her chakra…
That had transformed utterly.
Her reserves had doubled. She now rivaled an elite Jōnin in sheer volume.
But more than that, the quality of her chakra had sharpened, grown denser, heavier. She had yet to test it, but she knew every jutsu she unleashed would carry devastating weight.
And there was more.
She raised her hand, focusing.
Her chakra shifted, dark blue turning translucent red. It stretched into tendrils, coiling outward.
With a thought, the tendrils snapped forward, wrapping around the water cup on the table.
The cup lifted smoothly.
Her chakra had gained a beastlike property. It could stretch, reshape, mimic. With her Byakugan's precision, she could wield it like a sculptor's tool.
With enough chakra, she could even simulate something as overwhelming as Wood Release: True Several Thousand Hands.
Her heart thundered, pumping deep blue energy through her.
The Sanbi's flesh had not made her a Jinchūriki.
Instead, it had rewritten her from the inside out. Her chakra was no longer entirely human. Every drop she produced from now on would carry the Sanbi's imprint.
Not borrowed. Not sealed.
Hers.
More natural, more fluid, more alive.
She lifted her hand. The air around her dried as water molecules bent obediently, gathering into her palm, twisting into a serpent of liquid.
Shikotsumyaku activated.
A slit opened in her palm. Blood dripped, then surged back into the wound, revitalized by alien chakra, vanishing without trace.
Her palm sealed shut.
All was normal again.
Or so it seemed.
Konome lowered her hand.
Somewhere deep within, she realized
She was walking farther and farther away from the word "human."
And she was not coming back.