Gen Takuya arrived at the scene not long after.
The moment he stepped into the clearing, his gaze hardened.
The aftermath was brutal—those Mist ninja hadn't left behind a single intact corpse. Bodies lay shredded and broken in pools of blood that still hadn't dried, the air thick with iron and death.
If he'd come just a little earlier, he might've witnessed the "spectacle" himself.
Wood Release.
But whoever had done it clearly had no intention of exposing that power. Once the killing ended, the Wood Release had been withdrawn, leaving only the result.
Gen Takuya didn't waste time pondering it. He moved straight to Nohara Rin.
Her chest had been torn open—an ugly hole punched clean through the heart.
Gen Takuya launched a signal flare first, then crouched and began "checking" her condition. Green light bloomed in his palm—Healing Palm Technique—like he was desperately trying to extend her life.
In truth, it was theater.
A performance for the eyes that might still be watching from the shadows—White Zetsu's eyes.
No one could see it, but Gen Takuya's brows furrowed as he leaned closer.
He'd misjudged the timing.
He'd assumed Rin wouldn't die so quickly.
But she was already gone.
There was no warmth left. No pulse. No breath.
Only then did Gen Takuya shift his attention to what mattered.
The seal inside her… was breaking apart.
A temporary seal.
Even if no one interfered, it would unravel on its own soon enough.
That was Kirigakure's plan—drag Rin back to Konoha, let the seal fail, and turn her into a Three-Tails disaster inside the village.
But from the start, this plan had never been meant to succeed.
It was being guided—steered.
Even if Minato wasn't in the village, the Third Hokage at his current age wasn't helpless. Maybe he couldn't suppress the Nine-Tails alone, but the Three-Tails?
He could at least hold it off. He could keep the damage within acceptable limits.
Gen Takuya didn't care about Konoha's "acceptable losses."
He cared about the chakra fading within the shattered seal.
The tailed beast was dispersing.
Everyone knew: when a jinchūriki died, the tailed beast died with them. Rin was dead—so the Three-Tails couldn't escape its own end.
But Gen Takuya's lips curved faintly.
Because it hadn't dispersed completely yet.
When any living thing died, its chakra—no longer anchored by consciousness—naturally scattered.
Rin's chakra had only begun to dissipate.
And the Three-Tails' chakra… was vast enough to linger longer.
Not for long, though.
The decay was fast.
That was why Gen Takuya had come even knowing he might alert White Zetsu.
He couldn't afford to delay.
His expression didn't change.
He made his decision instantly.
Sealing script flowed from his fingertips—thread after thread—sinking into Rin's body.
When the arrangement was complete, Gen Takuya formed seals subtly.
"Sealing Technique—Chakra Severing!"
In an instant—
The remaining Three-Tails chakra was split apart as if cleaved by an impossibly sharp blade.
A large portion of that chakra was pulled into Gen Takuya's body, forming a sealing array within him.
The remainder—what he couldn't capture in time—scattered into nothing.
This was the technique he had built his life around.
In the original history, only two sealing arts were known to accomplish something like this.
One: the Akatsuki's Gedo: Phantom Dragon Nine Seals.
It could extract a tailed beast's chakra directly from a jinchūriki.
But Gen Takuya had no way to obtain it—and even if he did, the requirements were absurd. Jōnin and Kage-level numbers he could never assemble. One person might replicate it, but the time cost would be monstrous.
The other…
The Dead Demon Consuming Seal.
The technique that split the Nine-Tails and Orochimaru into portions.
That one needed no explanation.
At present, only Namikaze Minato should even know it—and whether it was recorded in the Sealing Scroll was still uncertain.
Worse, the Dead Demon Consuming Seal was a death sentence.
Even with the Uzumaki Shinigami mask, it required Orochimaru-level methods to escape the price, and the danger was still extreme.
So Gen Takuya created a third path.
A sealing technique that could sever chakra.
A sealing technique that could sever a tailed beast's chakra.
Feeling the Three-Tails chakra temporarily sealed within himself, Gen Takuya licked his lips unconsciously.
It worked.
The process had met almost no resistance—likely because the Three-Tails' consciousness had already collapsed, leaving nothing to fight back.
But the fact remained:
His sealing art could split and capture tailed beast chakra.
Splitting chakra wasn't the hard part.
Splitting tailed beast chakra was.
And that was why he had refined his formula until it could go no further.
Once the severing was complete, Gen Takuya shook his head "helplessly," dismissed the Healing Palm, then moved to Hatake Kakashi and began treating him instead.
Kakashi's injuries weren't severe.
He'd simply burned too much chakra—and the birth of the Mangekyō Sharingan had ripped through his mind, draining his spirit until he blacked out.
It didn't take long.
When Gen Takuya finished, ANBU arrived in force—drawn by the signal flare.
The captain stood out immediately: white attire, stark against the black uniforms around him.
As the ANBU stepped into the clearing, even hardened killers flinched.
It looked like hell.
Blood everywhere.
Bodies ruined beyond recognition.
"This is…" The ANBU captain's voice carried rare shock.
"It was like this when I arrived," Gen Takuya said evenly. "Hatake Kakashi is fine. But Nohara Rin…"
He didn't finish.
He didn't need to.
The ANBU deputy glanced at Rin's chest—still bleeding from the gaping wound.
"I see," the captain said, tone returning to calm. "Then there's nothing to be done."
As long as Kakashi was alive, that was what mattered.
Gen Takuya wasn't surprised by the attitude.
Rin had never been the important one.
As the ANBU deputy lifted Kakashi onto his back, Gen Takuya exhaled softly.
What a tragedy.
Kakashi's life was tragedy stacked on tragedy.
His mother died early.
Then the Second Shinobi World War broke out, forcing him into the system too soon.
Graduated at five. Became chūnin at six.
Then his father—the White Fang—took his own life.
And Kakashi had been old enough to understand what it meant.
The wound that left in his heart never healed.
It warped him.
Made him rigid, difficult, distant. Cooperation became friction.
Then he finally joined Namikaze Minato's team and found two precious companions—Uchiha Obito and Nohara Rin.
For the first time, it looked like the cracks might mend.
Then Obito "died."
And now Rin had been killed by Kakashi's own hand.
After something like that, recovery was a fantasy.
He'd be lucky if his trauma didn't deepen into something far worse.
And Kakashi's tragedy didn't end here.
Right now, he still had a teacher and a teacher's wife who cared about him.
And then…
Gen Takuya's thoughts turned colder.
He understood what came next.
The final blow that would shape Kakashi for years.
It hadn't happened yet, but Gen Takuya was already weighing whether he should interfere.
It wasn't dangerous—just an information gap.
All he'd have to do was tell Minato to reseal the tailed beast.
Then Uzumaki Kushina wouldn't die.
Minato wouldn't die in grief.
And in return…
Gen Takuya could obtain something he wanted.
Nine-Tails chakra.
But letting that couple live would change everything.
It would bend the entire future of the shinobi world.
Gen Takuya had no system.
If the timeline warped too much, his one advantage—knowledge—would shrink dangerously.
His eyes darkened, unreadable.
That day wasn't far away.
So what would he do?
What should he do?
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