Iwamine was the first to arrive at the battlefield.
She took out a bottle of healing potion from the side pocket at her waist and fed it into Rasa's mouth. Then she switched the combat disc to the healing one, and placed both hands glowing with gentle green light on Rasa's chest.
Gaara tightly clenched his fists, stopped crying, and waited by the side.
A few seconds later, under Gaara's despairing gaze, Iwamine slowly withdrew her hands, her eyes lowered,
"I'm sorry."
Gaara hugged his father's body, tears streaming down nonstop. His mouth opened wide, yet he couldn't make a sound.
BOOM!
Ryosuke descended straight down, knees slightly bent to neutralize the impact.
Without needing to touch, being a master of Ripple and extremely sensitive to life energy, Ryosuke confirmed it the moment he saw Rasa.
Rasa had long been dead.
Not only because of the penetrating wound in his chest.
But also the severe exhaustion of chakra.
The previous sand-gold storm wasn't even ninjutsu. It was the result of Rasa's manipulation of gold dust built up over years, burning chakra without regard for cost to create that effect.
There is a limit to chakra depletion from ninjutsu, because once below a certain level, ninjutsu cannot be activated or performed.
But this pure manipulation of a Kekkei Genkai was different.
It first overdrew chakra, then it used up life energy.
Rasa's life energy was exhausted when he cut the Totsuka Blade and saved Gaara. The reason he was still able to stand in front of Uchiha Itachi without collapsing was because he was holding on with his last remaining will to protect his child.
Ryosuke closed his eyes.
He heard the breath of the world, and he heard the final thoughts of the deceased.
Rasa…
Had no regrets in death.
He was a real man.
Ryosuke walked to Gaara's side, squatted down, and gently laid his palm on his shoulder.
He did not say things like "Sorry, I came late," or "My condolences," or anything like that.
Because everyone knew, there could not have been a faster response in this world.
When Lord Shirakawa saw Susanoo and Shukaku fighting in the city center, he immediately ordered his subordinate to request aid.
The subordinate took twenty seconds to run to the office.
Two minutes later, the call reached the research institute.
Eight seconds after that, Samui's communicator received the notification, informing Ryosuke, who had just finished talking with Nakajima Taishi, and requesting the teleportation unit that must remain staffed 24 hours a day to activate the Heavenly Transmission Technique.
The members of the teleportation unit performed hand seals, activated, and transmitted, taking fourteen seconds.
After that, Ryosuke endured extreme pain and crossed more than half the ninja world, descending above Gorin City.
The total time spent, 2 minutes and 42 seconds.
It could not have been any faster. Faster than this, only Fourth Hokage Namikaze Minato's time-space ninjutsu.
But that sort of thing, like Fourier analysis, topology, Morse theory, quantum coherence theory… when put in front of most people, they just can't learn it.
Back then, Nagato even considered capturing fifty or sixty ninjas from the Feudal Lord and having them learn Reaper Death Seal to use against Ryosuke in the final battle.
But in the end, they realized, they obtained the technique, yet not a single person could master it. All the training ninjas had their souls taken by the Shinigami in the middle of the night.
From then on, Nagato never brought it up again.
Gaara was no longer the withdrawn boy of the past. He had seen much and heard much, so of course he understood this.
He could not hide behind Ryosuke forever.
It was impossible, and unreasonable.
Too many people were important, the Jinchuriki was important, Oda Ieyasu was important, Sasuke and Amber were important.
If they were all like babies tucked into Ryosuke's pocket, then no one would be left to handle things.
Gaara was not blaming Ryosuke.
He was simply grieving.
Gaara tightly hugged his father's corpse, tears falling endlessly as if they would never stop. He wanted to say something to Ryosuke, but didn't know what to say.
So, there was only crying.
Until he heard Ryosuke speak, "I will go and kill him."
Gaara suddenly looked up at Ryosuke.
Ryosuke nodded seriously and repeated, "I will go and kill him."
"Not in the future, in this very moment, I will kill him."
Ryosuke and Uchiha Itachi.
Too much karma entangled between the two of them.
It was even hard to say clearly whether Ryosuke's arrival in the Naruto world had anything to do with Itachi's massacre of his entire clan.
If Itachi hadn't killed them… would Ryosuke have gone to another world instead?
Even to this day, years later, Ryosuke still remembered, the first night he arrived in this world.
The panic when he held the gravely injured little girl and ran out to find a doctor, and the sorrow of witnessing death for the first time.
All of this, should come to an end.
Ryosuke did not waste any more time. He gently patted Gaara's shoulder again, then rose into the air, chasing in the direction Uchiha Itachi had escaped.
Watching Ryosuke's back going farther away, Gaara wiped his tears hard, carried Rasa's corpse on his own back, and said to Iwamine, who stood guard by his side,
"Sister Iwamine, let's go back."
"Go back?"
Gaara sniffed, pointed toward Gorin City, and said with a slight choke in his voice, "Brother Ryosuke is going to kill Uchiha Itachi. We also have our work to do."
"Dad said that I have already become a dependable ninja."
"I can't let him down."
Iwamine understood, Gaara meant the rescue efforts in Gorin City.
A child who just lost his father was able to do this…
Iwamine gave a firm nod.
"We will go back together."
———
Uchiha Itachi, on the run, was recalling.
When he lay on the operating table, the White Snake Sage asked him, "How far do you want your transformation to go?"
"As strong as possible."
The White Snake Sage lifted a jar of White Zetsu cells with his tail and shook it in front of Itachi, "If you really have no limits, I could use as much as I want… but if so, in the end, you might not even still be a 'human.'"
"It doesn't matter."
Itachi said in a low voice, "In many people's eyes, I've long since stopped belonging to the category of 'human,' right?"
The White Snake Sage raised a brow, "You're quite self-aware. But I'm a snake, not a human. What I'm talking about isn't philosophy, I'm talking biology."
"What is called a human, what is called emotion, it's just brain waves controlled by hormones. The White Zetsu cells will greatly modify your body. You will lose human properties."
"Losing those properties, you will gradually lose emotions that belong to humans, and eventually become…"
Uchiha Itachi asked, "A monster?"
The White Snake Sage put down the White Zetsu cells, picked up a smoking pipe, and blew a smoke ring, "I was actually going to say 'a beast.'"
Itachi, "…"
He looked at the smoke rings from the White Snake Sage's mouth, then at the falling ashes from the smoking pipe.
'Wait, should such a thing even appear in an operating room?'
Itachi closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and after inhaling a noseful of second-hand smoke, he instead felt calm inside, "Begin. Whatever happens doesn't matter, because anyway..."
"I will be reborn in the 'past.'"