Chapter 224: Work Without Certainty

Time passed beside a waterfall.

Naruto summoned another toad with two legs and stared at it.

"Perverted Hermit, have you ever met a genius?"

Jiraiya crouched behind the bushes above the bathing pool, watching the women below. He did not answer.

Naruto planted both hands on his hips. "If you ignore me, I will shout."

"Geniuses? I have met many," Jiraiya whispered. "A woman that perfect is far rarer."

Naruto's fists tightened.

"There is a pervert here!"

The shout erupted over the water.

Women screamed below. They rushed from the pool, dragged on their clothes while still wet, and fled from the hidden watcher.

One demanded to know where her robe had gone; another threatened to kill the pervert if she found him. Their voices faded down the path while water still ran from their hair and sleeves.

Jiraiya watched his research subjects disappear.

"Naruto, you idiot. What have you done?"

The damage could not be repaired, so he finally asked why Naruto wanted to know about geniuses. Sasuke's talent might have pressured him, especially with the finals approaching.

"I met someone my age," Naruto said. "His strength is terrifying."

"Sasuke?"

"No. A visitor. He calls himself a scenery shinobi who travels around collecting views."

Jiraiya's irritation disappeared. An unknown shinobi of unusual strength had approached the Nine-Tails' jinchūriki while claiming to be a tourist. The question now concerned far more than Naruto's pride.

He asked when they met, what techniques Boruto used, whether the older companion joined, and what either traveler wanted to know. Naruto's answers mixed useful facts with complaints about losing every spar, but the pattern was clear enough to concern a spy.

Naruto began describing Boruto.

Elsewhere, Tonbo recovered from several days of worrying about the future.

"Present and future have blended comfortably enough," he told himself.

Fear could not solve the uncertainty. He would become stronger and continue with his plans. If the worst end was death, Tonbo had faced the possibility before.

The nerves he had placed inside Boruto continued gathering information. Future tissue, chakra pathways, and changes Tonbo had never encountered entered Inner Archive in a steady stream.

Then a deliberate pattern traveled back through them.

*Proceed according to the original plan.*

Tonbo recognized the sentence as a message from his future self. The nerves could not carry a long explanation, but someone who understood his present collection method had encoded a short instruction through Boruto's body.

The original plan was simple: work, allow Naruto and Sasuke to become the principal saviors, support them when necessary, save a few people, and preserve his own life with his family. His future self knew those priorities better than anyone.

Tonbo did not need a complete sentence about every choice. The short instruction meant that anxiety over time travel should not drive him into replacing the roles already meant for Naruto and Sasuke. His task remained support, preparation, and survival rather than becoming the visible answer to every enemy.

The message relieved him. It implied Tonbo remained alive at least beyond Boruto's battle with Momoshiki and wanted his younger self to avoid forcing a different path.

It also proved that Forced Execution would be completed. Only the third stage of Contact Evolution could place and use the nerves in the future with such control.

That success pleased him almost as much as the assurance of survival. The technique now existed only as a difficult design and unstable experiments. A message transmitted backward through another person's body showed that future Tonbo solved both range and information control.

On the training ground, Boruto parried Naruto's kunai and placed his own against the boy's neck.

"You lost again."

Worry remained behind Boruto's smile. Several days had passed without Urashiki. Meeting young relatives and sparring with his father had been exciting, but Sasuke grew more solemn each day. Boruto had begun to fear a future in which he was never born.

Naruto lowered his head. "You're incredible. How strong is your teacher?"

Another red mark darkened his cheek where Boruto had struck him earlier. Naruto had tried clones, substitutions, feints, and the unexpected transformations that usually rescued him. Boruto read every one before it became decisive.

He had lost in taijutsu and ninjutsu every day. Boruto's combat experience felt as deep as Kakashi's, and every unexpected tactic Naruto tried received an answer.

"Neither of us specializes in combat," Boruto said. "The truly powerful people remain hidden."

He thought of Sasuke and of the Ōtsutsuki whom even Sasuke treated seriously.

Jiraiya observed from behind the trees. Boruto moved with experience no child should possess. Even Orochimaru at the same age had not shown that depth.

The older companion interested him as much. Sasuke rarely moved, but his gaze tracked every approach and every shift in Boruto's balance. The teacher did not intervene because the child never came close to losing control.

The sight revived a dangerous question.

Could this boy be the Child of Prophecy Jiraiya sought?

Nagato's Rinnegan had once inspired the same thought. Yet even Nagato had not fought at Boruto's level as a child.

Jiraiya knew prophecy invited people to mistake every unusual talent for the answer they wanted. He still could not prevent the thought from returning while Boruto dismantled another shadow-clone formation.

At another training ground, a thin chakra line shot from Ino's hand and anchored to a large tree. She shortened it and pulled herself away just before a shuriken crossed her former position.

Ino planted both feet against the trunk and counterattacked.

Her thread had no solid substance, yet controlled tension carried her weight and changed her direction in midair. Weeks earlier she needed hand signs for every serious technique. Now chakra shape alone created a route through the field.

Sakura formed no hand seals.

"Elastic Chakra Weave."

Dense chakra spread like a flexible net and caught the shuriken. Sakura stepped forward, contracted the surface, and threw the weapons back with greater speed. They pierced two trees before stopping in the third.

The return proved how much power the elastic form stored. Sakura had not merely blocked the steel. She absorbed its motion, held it for an instant, and released both the original force and the contraction of her own chakra.

Ino landed and stared. "You can already use it in combat?"

Her own threads could move her like a spider between anchors, but Sakura had reached defensive redirection first.

Sakura grinned. "Now you understand which of us is better."

"Tonbo-sensei developed a seal-less technique useful for movement, defense, and daily tasks. He is the genius. You copied him."

Both girls had come to admire the method. The same control made Ino's Mind Body Switch easier to shape and gave Sakura a technique that could answer physical attacks without seals.

Its strange original name had been discarded because it belonged to another world's fiction, but the useful function remained: chakra behaving as both flexible line and adhesive surface. Tonbo's adaptation fit their world without carrying the foreign reference.

Sakura's satisfaction remained undiminished.

"Where has Tonbo-sensei been?" she asked after the next exchange. "He promised to train us. If I have nearly completed this technique, he should teach the next one."

Ino looked toward the empty edge of the ground. "He is a jōnin. He must be busier than genin."

Neither knew that their teacher was dividing his attention between future bodies, an absent Ōtsutsuki, and a message sent backward through living nerves.