***
Uchiha Gen spent the entire afternoon at the Senju residence, turning that poor rabbit over and over until even he began to feel a trace of sympathy for it.
The practice session did not end until evening was almost gone and the sky outside had deepened into the color of cooling iron. By then, he was not yet truly skilled in the Hemostasis Technique, but under Tsunade's guidance, he had at least grasped the fundamentals. In a calm, undisturbed environment, he could now complete a basic stop-bleeding procedure in one or two minutes.
"All right. From here on out, what you need is repetition. You need to master actual application."
Tsunade set down the small notebook in her hand and looked at him with unusual seriousness. "If you can stop bleeding quickly in a battlefield environment, you'll basically count as qualified. After that, the next step is learning healing techniques that stimulate cells to speed wound recovery, and techniques for reconnecting severed nerves in living fish. Only when you reach that stage will you be qualified to learn the Mystical Palm Technique. That is the foundation of advanced medical ninjutsu."
As she spoke, she lightly tapped the notebook against her palm. It recorded Gen's learning progress throughout the afternoon, down to the smallest details.
To Tsunade, those notes were valuable.
She had already, more or less, finished piecing together the framework of a complete medical ninjutsu system. What she needed now was proof. She needed actual trainees, actual trial runs, actual results. Someone had to walk the path she had designed and show her where it held firm and where it broke.
In that sense, Uchiha Gen was less a student than a necessary test case.
And from Tsunade's point of view, he was a pretty good one.
His learning speed was acceptable. Not astonishing, but not slow either. More importantly, he was steady. He did not panic easily, and he was willing to repeat the same thing over and over without losing patience. For medical ninjutsu, that kind of temperament mattered far more than flashy talent.
If this system could truly be proven viable, then Konoha would be able to train medical-nin in large numbers.
Once there were enough of them, high-level healers would inevitably emerge.
And once medical-nin became a formal force on the battlefield, they would change the nature of war itself. Casualties would fall. Survivability would rise. The endurance of an entire ninja village would be transformed.
If that day came, Tsunade would not merely be another powerful ninja of Konoha. She would become the founder of an entire profession, a legend in her own right, someone who had expanded the very definition of what a ninja could be.
That was why the better Uchiha Gen performed, the better this looked to the Third Hokage and the rest of Konoha's leadership in the future.
"Thank you for your instruction, Lady Tsunade," Gen said, carefully putting away the tools he had been using.
He meant it.
Unlike many older members of the Senju line, Tsunade had not grown up in the age of clan blood feuds. She was born after Konoha had already been founded, and she had inherited far more of Hashirama Senju's magnanimity than Tobirama's suspicion. She did not treat the Uchiha with hostility, nor did she carry that old, poisonous instinct of factional mistrust.
If anything, she was straightforward to a fault.
"You're Orochimaru's student," she said with a careless wave of her hand. "That already means you're not some outsider. There's no need to be so formal."
Just then, the door opened.
An old woman entered, leaning lightly on a cane. Her hair had already turned mostly white, but a few strands still held their original red, like embers buried beneath ash.
"Grandma?" Tsunade stepped forward at once. "Why are you here?"
"It's nearly dinner time, so of course I came to call you," Mito Uzumaki said with a smile. Then she turned to Gen. "And what about you, young man of the Uchiha clan? Would you like to come along? This rabbit should be just right as a snack to go with drinks. Even at my age, my cooking is still first-rate. Your First Hokage praised it himself, you know."
Gen glanced at the rabbit on the table, which had suffered for medical science all afternoon and now looked like it had narrowly escaped a much crueler fate.
"Wouldn't that trouble you too much, Lady Mito?" he said. "If needed, I can handle it myself. I'm fairly confident when it comes to spicy rabbit meat."
"Then it's settled," Tsunade declared before anyone else could object.
Her decisiveness was as fierce in daily life as it was in battle.
At that moment, there was another knock at the door.
A voice sounded from outside. "Lady Mito. Lady Tsunade. The Third Hokage requests your presence."
Mito and Tsunade exchanged a look.
Mito's smile faded first. "Do we know what it is?"
The ANBU outside answered at once. "The peace delegation from Kumogakure brought certain items. Lord Third believes they may be connected to the seals on the legendary Sage's tools. If the seals can be undone, it may be possible to recover the body of the Second Hokage."
Tobirama Senju's corpse.
Gen's eyes shifted slightly.
Back then, during the First Shinobi World War, Tobirama Senju had led his escort unit to negotiate a treaty with Kumogakure. Instead, both sides had been thrown into chaos by the rebellion of Kinkaku and Ginkaku. The Second Raikage had died. Tobirama, in turn, had stayed behind to cover the retreat of his disciples.
As one of those disciples, Hiruzen Sarutobi knew the details better than anyone.
And because he knew, he had never been able to completely let it go.
Tobirama Senju had possessed the Flying Thunder God Technique. In terms of escape and maneuverability, he had been one of the hardest men in the world to kill. Under ordinary circumstances, there was almost nothing that could have finished him.
Unless something abnormal had been involved.
Something like the Sage's treasured ninja tools, whose abilities bordered on rule-based effects.
For Hiruzen, any chance of retrieving Tobirama's remains was not a matter he could ignore.
Tobirama had trained him.
Tobirama had named him Hokage.
And Tobirama's old disciples, as well as the remaining Senju elders in Konoha, would never accept a casual effort. If Hiruzen showed even the slightest indifference, that would not merely invite criticism. It would shake his standing.
Danzo, of course, would be more than happy to exploit such a crack.
"Looks like there'll be no spicy rabbit tonight," Mito said with a shake of her head. "You should head home, child. Tsunade and I will probably be staying in the Hokage Building until late."
Tsunade moved to support her grandmother. "Kushina should be back from the academy soon, so we won't shut the front entrance."
"Then this junior will take his leave as well, Lady Tsunade. Lady Mito."
Gen bowed and stepped out after them.
Once outside, he headed toward the Uchiha district, but his mind was still sorting through everything that had happened today.
By any measure, the day had been fruitful.
Under Jiraiya's guidance, he had taken another solid step in compounded ninjutsu. Under Tsunade's instruction, he had finally gotten his foot in the door of medical ninjutsu. Those were both major gains.
By now, if he counted carefully, he had essentially received personal instruction from all three of the future Legendary Sannin.
That was not something an ordinary genin could even dream of.
So the tasks for the next few days were clear.
First, improve his Wind Release further and stabilize the use of composite ninjutsu.
Second, practice the Hemostasis Technique until he could perform it instinctively.
Third...
His thoughts broke off.
Gen came to a sudden halt in the street.
Ahead of him, a few Ninja Academy students were walking home together.
At first glance, there was nothing unusual about them. Their chatter was lively, their steps casual, their postures relaxed in the way of children returning after a long day of lessons.
But Gen's gaze narrowed slightly.
Something felt off.
Not with the children themselves. With the atmosphere around them.
A subtle tension hung in the air, so faint that an ordinary person might not have noticed it at all. But with his current perception, and with the Sharingan at his disposal when needed, he had grown far more sensitive to abnormal details.
The street was too quiet in one particular section.
A shopkeeper who should have been outside sweeping his storefront had disappeared. A woman who had just been hanging laundry a moment ago had stepped indoors and closed her shutters. Even the stray cat crouched near a wall had stiffened and slunk under a cart.
The movement was tiny.
But when too many tiny movements lined up at once, they stopped being coincidence.
Gen's expression tightened.
He did not activate the Sharingan immediately. Instead, he allowed his gaze to sweep forward naturally, as if he were only another passerby. His body remained loose, but a thread of chakra had already begun to gather silently in his legs.
Among the group of academy students was a familiar head of red hair.
Beside her walked a blond boy whose posture was straight and open, the sort that always made him stand out in a crowd no matter how plain his clothes were.
Kushina Uzumaki.
Minato Namikaze.
Gen's eyelids twitched.
So it really was this.
He had hoped the situation might not align so neatly with the original timeline. He had hoped the so-called peace delegation from Kumogakure might choose a different target, a different opportunity, a different method.
Apparently not.
Or perhaps the butterfly effect of his arrival had changed some things and left others completely untouched.
His mind began calculating instantly.
The Cloud delegation had only just arrived. If they were acting already, then either they were far bolder than Konoha expected, or they had been waiting for this exact kind of opening the entire time. Kushina, as an Uzumaki and as the jinchuriki candidate Konoha guarded so closely, was an irresistible target.
And if it wasn't Kushina...
Then the only other target on this street worth such risk was Minato.
Either answer was bad.
Gen's fingers twitched once at his side.
He was not strong enough to casually intervene in matters involving an international delegation and a probable kidnapping attempt. Not yet. If he charged in blindly, he might die before he even understood what was happening.
But if he turned around and walked away, and something happened here because he had noticed it and done nothing...
That thought sat badly with him.
Very badly.
The old logic rose in his mind first.
Protect yourself.
Survive.
Do not stick your hand into a furnace unless you know exactly how far the flames can reach.
Then another thought followed close behind.
If he could not stop the fire, could he at least sound the alarm?
Could he intervene just enough to disrupt the timing?
Just enough to force the enemy into the light?
His body shifted half an inch.
Now that he knew what to look for, he could feel it more clearly. There was chakra nearby, hidden, restrained, and carefully suppressed. Skilled, but not flawless. Whoever had set this up clearly believed children leaving the academy would not notice.
That part, at least, was true.
But Uchiha Gen was not just a child from the academy anymore.
He let his breathing slow.
If he moved now, he would need to be precise.
No hesitation.
No wasted motion.
No grandstanding.
Just enough.
Only just enough.
The fingers of his right hand brushed the hilt of the ninja sword at his waist.
And for the first time since leaving the Senju estate, the full weight of the day vanished from his mind.
His body lightened.
His thoughts sharpened.
The street ahead, the children in the middle distance, the shuttered windows, the strange silence, the faint traces of hostile intent buried beneath a civilian evening scene - all of it locked into place at once.
Something was about to happen.
And Uchiha Gen, standing half in shadow at the edge of the street, had already decided he would not simply watch it happen.