"Kenichi, you're kinda out of it today."
Kakashi gave him a puzzled look.
They were sitting on the floor in Kenichi's small living room, the board game halfway set up between them.
Yesterday, Kenichi had been sharp, competitive, almost annoyingly focused.
Tonight, though?
He kept spacing out.
"Ah—sorry, sorry, Kakashi. I was just… thinking about something."
Kenichi shook his head, forcing a sheepish smile onto his face.
The apology was genuine.
So was the guilt.
Which only made Kakashi feel a little bad for snapping in the first place.
Kenichi looked at him, eyes still full of that quiet apology.
The reason he kept drifting off was simple:
Today was not an ordinary day.
Peaceful days had passed one after another, like lazy clouds over Konoha.
And now, the sky was about to rip open.
Today was Uzumaki Kushina's due date—
The day Naruto would be born.
Uzumaki Naruto.
Future Jinchūriki.
The destined "Child of Prophecy."
The absolute main character of the story Kenichi remembered.
From this point on, the plot he knew would finally begin to move for real.
But that was all later.
Right now, he had something much more immediate to deal with.
"Kakashi, here—have a drink."
Kenichi got up, walked to the side table, and took out a bottle.
He made sure Kakashi could clearly see him twist the cap open.
Kakashi accepted it without suspicion.
He'd noticed long ago that Kenichi liked soft drinks. One bottle every evening seemed to be his habit.
To him, this was just… normal.
He glanced toward the window.
The sky outside was darkening, but not completely black yet.
Soon, he'd have to leave.
If not for Minato-sensei, he wouldn't even have this half-day off.
Knowing Kakashi had been spending time with Kenichi lately, Minato had allowed it, but the unspoken expectation was clear:
When the time came, Kakashi had to be ready to move.
"Kenichi, sorry—I'll have to head out in a bit."
Kakashi managed to pull a smile onto his face as he spoke.
He rarely took the initiative to explain himself like this.
But this was a friend.
"It's fine, it's fine. I figured." Kenichi waved it off, his expression open and relaxed. "At least finish your drink before you go."
There was no reason to refuse that.
Kakashi lifted the bottle and downed it in one go.
Same familiar taste as always.
He set it down, stood up, and lightly adjusted his forehead protector.
"Then I'll—"
"See you tomorrow," Kenichi said, still smiling.
Kakashi turned around and stepped toward the door.
The moment his back fully faced him—
Kenichi moved.
There was no hand seal.
No warning.
Just one clean, heavy palm strike between Kakashi's shoulder blades—
accompanied by a surging flood of refined Yang chakra.
Kenichi's control was razor-sharp.
He pushed his medical-style chakra output to its absolute limit in that instant.
Kakashi's body jolted violently.
He felt a sharp impact on his back, then a massive wave of chakra forcing its way into him.
At the same time, a heavy drowsiness surged up from deep within his body.
Two forces hit him at once:
The physical blow.
And the anesthetic effect of overloaded Yang chakra.
He didn't even have time to turn around.
Kakashi collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, unconscious right on Kenichi's doorstep.
"Sorry, Kakashi."
Kenichi exhaled slowly, looking down at his fallen friend with a wry smile.
Mystical Palm Technique was a delicate medical ninjutsu.
To use it properly, you needed precise control over output—too little and it did nothing, too much and you'd fry the patient's chakra flow and knock them out.
And ever since inheriting the First Hokage's Sage Physique, Kenichi's Yang chakra reserves were… excessive, to say the least.
Add to that the anesthetic he'd smeared on the bottom of the bottle earlier—
and even someone as sharp as Kakashi never stood a chance.
Double insurance.
Zero risk.
"Really troublesome… If my research were finished already, I wouldn't even need to borrow this eye from Sensei."
Kenichi muttered, rubbing his brow as he walked back inside.
He picked up a small glass vial from the table, liquid sloshing inside.
Suspended within was a single, preserved eye.
One that had belonged to a dead Uchiha shinobi—
a fully matured three-tomoe Sharingan.
Orochimaru's private collection from the Second Ninja War.
He had two of these eye specimens.
Kenichi had spent a long time pestering him for just one.
"Even like this… it's probably impossible to keep Obito from noticing completely," Kenichi murmured. "But oh well."
Time was short.
There was no room for perfectionism.
He dragged Kakashi back inside, hoisted him up onto the table, and laid him flat.
From here on, it was all technique.
The operation itself wasn't complicated.
Careful incision around the eye.
Sever the necessary connections.
Extract the eyeball.
Insert the replacement.
Reconnect.
Check chakra flow.
Close.
If you had basic medical training and steady hands, it was genuinely not that hard.
Kenichi did have both.
Working with Danzō and Root had required him to learn medical ninjutsu.
You didn't play with Hashirama cells and Sharingan without at least knowing how to sew people back together.
He just happened to prefer using a scalpel instead of chakra for the fine cuts.
Less messy.
More precise.
Within a very short span of time, the job was done.
The Mangekyō Sharingan that had rested in Kakashi's left eye socket for years…
was now peacefully floating in Kenichi's vial.
"A Mangekyō Sharingan… What a miraculous thing."
Kenichi stared at the eye, fascination reflected in his own.
"So, can you be studied… or not?"
He dropped the eye into a specially prepared glass container, sealing it carefully for later research.
After wiping away traces of blood, he lifted Kakashi and carried him into the bedroom, laying him on the bed in a natural sleeping position.
Kakashi would stay unconscious for a while.
But not too long.
By the time he woke up, the world outside would already be on fire.
Not long after—
A frenzied, furious roar split the night.
The ground trembled.
Kenichi turned toward the window.
A colossal, flaming silhouette loomed over the village, tails lashing, chakra erupting like a storm.
The Nine-Tails had appeared.
Kenichi's lips curled upward.
"So in the end, you still broke out, huh…"
The Second and Third Great Ninja Wars.
Jinchūriki.
Masked men.
All those hidden lines and buried seeds had finally converged into this moment.
With the Nine-Tails free, the fate of the Fourth Hokage and his wife was nearly sealed.
Unless Hiruzen Sarutobi suddenly charged out to fight to the death, things would play out exactly as Kenichi remembered.
And the odds of that happening were about the same as Kenichi suddenly clapping his hands and producing a functioning nuke out of thin air.
He slung Kakashi's arm over his shoulder and helped him stagger outside.
The streets were already chaos.
People screamed and ran.
Children cried.
Shinobi dashed past in full gear.
Nobody spared them a second glance.
That was exactly what Kenichi needed.
He slipped into a side alley and gently dropped Kakashi in a shadowed corner, half-sitting, half-slumped.
Someone would find him later.
"Streets are a mess already…"
Kenichi muttered.
He reached over to a nearby abandoned stall, picked up a cheap festival mask and tied it over his face.
Tonight, he had more to do.
He remembered something from the "original story":
On the night of the Nine-Tails' attack, someone had managed to secretly gather a portion of its chakra.
That chakra had been enough to later form a coat—an incomplete but genuine Nine-Tails cloak.
If that guy could do it…
why couldn't he?
"I should at least try to collect a sample…"
Even a fragment of that chakra would be invaluable research material.
Just as he was preparing to slip deeper into the shadows—
"Kenichi. Where are you going?"
A calm, familiar voice drifted over from behind him.
Kenichi's entire body went rigid.
He turned around.
Standing there, draped in his long robe, golden eyes narrowed in a mild smile—
Was Orochimaru.
His teacher.