Yeah pretty much this. It's been said in another story that a fully-realized Shikotsumyaku wielder is closer to a Tailed Beast than a human, at least in terms of the structure of their chakra, and Tsubaki is well on her way. So what she did was really similar to what Naruto did in the Chunin Exams, yeah.
The thing I like the most about this quest I do think is how
inhuman on a biological level Tsubaki is. Mentally she's detached and bloodthirsty/adrenaline-addicted but still very
human.
However it's that
unnatural perspective regarding the body, both her own and others, that I think Bone & Blood really captures that I like. 'Cause for Tsubaki it's all
meat that she can move using purely her own chakra. She feels her body with her chakra, she can move via purely her own chakra if needed, and the only two things that matter for Tsubaki when it comes to her body is her mind and her chakra.
Saying a fully-realized Shikotsumyaku user is closer to a Tailed Beast is a good way to put it, because with full control and sensation the user would be able to basically turn their body into a living Susanoo.
Like the quotes below all show Tsubaki's
othering of pain and the physical body of both herself and others
You could have forcibly moved the limb at any time, controlling your movement with Shikotsumyaku, but momentary pain was better than dealing with the bruising and healing which that would involve.
This is a solid and the earliest example of Tsubaki just outright equating pain as an inconvenient feeling rather than something stressfull. There's not "powering through" or "exerting" there's simply an outright "Bruising and healing is annoying, pain is merely temporary."
The unpleasant taste turning to burning on your sensitive tongue informs you that the mixture is ready.
Consciously enabling your pain response is easy enough, and you know what to expect, but it doesn't mean that your eyes don't water when the virulent mixture hits the back of your throat.
Tsubaki is using the natural gag-reflex purely as a mechanism for a technique delivery, it's not a "return" to a normal state but rather having that sensation is specifically something
aberrant to her natural state of being.
It's the perceptive senses, like taste and sight and hearing that text regarding Tsubaki considers normal and inherently values. In particular Tsubaki values the ways she can enjoy things, the text make specific note regarding taste many times and it is a specific character trait as well.
Your head snaps out of the way an instant late, the sword not burying itself deep in your eyeball, but still gouging a bloody channel through your temple. In your attempt to disengage, he strikes out with his remaining sword, both hands on the hilt. The upward slash catches you in what would almost certainly be horrifically painful even for most shinobi, cutting through the entire sole of your foot from ball to heel. You even stumble when you land.
Yes. He has certainly made today interesting.
This is just an outright mauling and it is left only with the implication that Tsubaki isn't in
pain despite being
harmed. Her internal narrative in this kind of situation doesn't even comment on anything beyond someone able to do this kind of damage making things
interesting.
Many would collapse or land roughly, the only consequence for Tsubaki is she
stumbles. The flesh is damaged and being able to damage it makes things interesting.
No, you just stab out your eardrums with a quick prick of your fingers.
The sharp feeling of vertigo and overpowering ringing are more disorienting and disturbing than the brief burst of pain was.
Another comment that it is her senses, her ability to interact with the world, that Tsubaki cares about more than her body. I'm honestly of the opinion that for Tsubaki being hit with a blindness & deafness effect that Willful Cactus wouldn't immediately break would be especially effective at causing her to resort to panicking and going for more wide-range attacks or focus specifically on undoing the effect.
You catch the next one of her stabs in the middle of your hand, and some of the tension in the Uchiha group's body language deflates. Until she's unable to pull the sword free from your palm.
Not only are your metacarpals squeezing the blade like the jaws of a bear trap, the flesh surrounding it has ossified as well. Your first field test of the Cedar Dance!
As much as sci-fi tells us to always do it, treating your own body as a science experiment in dangerous situations and not getting worried about the "just stabbed through the hand" but rather being excited about the "Hey this worked!" is not a
good thing mentally speaking.
You do your best to mitigate the damage, even if that means moving back in to re-engage with the Kiri up-and-comer. The force of the pressurized water punches holes in your Cedar Dance-hardened skin, snaps off the edges of the Larch Dance spines, rips off a fingernail, and carves a few divots through the skin of your face. The bone membrane beneath your skin is able to save you from lasting damage, but even with Cedar Dance and Willow Dance keeping your blood from spilling, you can tell things aren't quite going your way.
This very much speaks for itself, Tsubaki doesn't panic or even really get too worried beyond tactically reassessing the situation as she is functionally riddled with holes and bullets like she's charging across no-man's land in World War 1.
Just a mere, "Things are going my way."
The body is a tool of the mind and the Chakra that fuels it.
The sound you hear on impact makes you fairly certain that you separated her shoulder, though she doesn't react to any pain she's feeling as she simply flips to another tree. In an impressive display of dexterity, your opponent unscrews a flask with a flick and blazes through six hand signs before you can reach her again.
Tsubaki also doesn't really acknowledge when other people do power through pain beyond not reacting to it when she expects them to be experiencing it. This does come from something of only an academic point of view as to
what causes pain, but at the same time it also is a decent show about how Tsubaki doesn't really see overcoming pain as anything special. Failure to power through pain is something to be exploited, not acknowledging pain is merely expected. Tsubaki's focus immediately goes to the dexterity of the other person's follow up strike.
All told, I do think this goes a decent way to why Tsubaki is such an effective shinobi because she always maintains contact with an enemy until they're dying from bloodloss or presumed dead. She never expects someone to "stay down" from pain or pull away, she'll use it as part of a battle to let her maintain an even focus and front against her foes but Tsubaki keeps coming across as merciless because to her it just seems that Suffering isn't something she thinks about outside of an interrogative situation. She isn't someone who uses nerve strikes, she uses joint-locks and bonebreakers because those are the things
she understands their effectiveness of viscerally.
Loving everything about how well the writing has been communicating how much Tsubaki's POV isn't normal which does make the sidestories all the more fun to read!
