Chapter 225: Uneasy Speculation

Tonbo landed on Sakura and Ino's training ground.

Both girls were working hard. Their talent for chakra control was exceptional, though Sakura possessed a natural advantage over Ino even after years of Yamanaka instruction.

Tonbo considered their rivalry necessary. In his view, kunoichi often allowed marriage, family, or ordinary work to reduce their commitment to the profession. Without another girl competing for the same boy, Sakura and Ino might have trained for three days and rested for two.

Ino's clan had given her a stronger foundation, yet Sakura had overtaken her in the most demanding control exercise. Tonbo judged that difference a matter of exceptional talent rather than access. Rivalry forced Ino to answer it with effort instead of accepting the gap.

Then he laughed at himself. Tonbo also refused to spend every moment on research or duty. A person who sacrificed all of life to work was not admirable; he was Orochimaru.

"Tonbo-sensei," the girls said when they saw him.

Their opinion of him had changed during the month. The musical spheres revealed weaknesses they had never noticed. Elastic Chakra Weave proved that chakra control could become a seal-less technique for movement, defense, capture, and ordinary tasks.

What first looked like repetitive precision now altered every familiar technique. Sakura used less chakra to maintain a genjutsu release. Ino formed the Yamanaka hand sequence with greater stability and recovered from failed transitions more quickly.

"Your control is nearly complete for this stage," Tonbo said. "Continue practicing every day. Now I will add genjutsu, genjutsu release, and taijutsu."

Both possessed talent for illusions. Sakura would learn proper genjutsu integrated with close combat. Ino would learn the Eye-Opening Hand, combining a shaped construct with Mind Body Switch so she possessed an independent fighting sequence when teammates could not protect her body.

The Eye-Opening Hand created a shaped combat body through chakra control, giving Ino something that could move and defend while her mind technique changed the usual arrangement of bodies. Tonbo intended the two methods to reinforce one another rather than leave her helpless whenever a formation broke.

"Listen carefully. Genjutsu begins by disturbing the chakra connected to an enemy's senses."

The lesson continued while part of Tonbo's attention remained upon adult Sasuke and Boruto.

His nerves inside both travelers gathered unfamiliar biological information. Tonbo did not immediately force changes from structures he had never studied. He concentrated upon one area he understood: the mechanisms that increased bodily vitality and physical energy, the sources from which chakra grew.

Adult Sasuke carried decades of adaptation, dōjutsu changes, and damage layered over the chakra Tonbo knew from the boy. Boruto combined Uzumaki vitality, Hyūga inheritance, and future development. Each body contained possibilities too complex to reproduce safely from a first reading.

That work overlapped research he had pursued for years, allowing careful experimentation within himself even while the rest remained stored for later.

Urashiki still did not appear.

Jiraiya interacted with Sasuke and Boruto and later accepted the sealing of memories concerning their identities. Naruto grew through repeated battles with Boruto, though the future boy continued beating him black and blue. As Konoha's most unpredictable shinobi, Naruto found surprising methods; none overcame the gulf in experience.

Tonbo watched enough to see Naruto improve. Each loss added one more adjustment, and Boruto had to work harder to avoid familiar tricks. The outcome did not change. Future Academy methods and later wars had given the son years of borrowed advantage over his father.

Tonbo wondered what resentment made Boruto strike his own father so enthusiastically.

Then the travelers felt Karasuki's pull returning.

Sasuke took Boruto away from Naruto.

"Urashiki never came," Boruto said. "What do we do?"

The responsibility for the world's safety felt too large for his age. The days in the past had given him meetings with his father, aunt, uncle, and teacher as children, but enjoyment could not resolve the missing enemy.

"He did not enter the same time period," Sasuke said. "That places the future in danger."

"But no one in our future remembers fighting him in the past. Does that mean our actions here cannot change it?"

"We may see the effects only after returning."

Boruto tried to organize the possibilities. Time might not be linear. It could intersect at some points without forming a repeated cycle. This Konoha could exist in a parallel world. The past and future might also form a closed loop containing events they had never recognized.

Sasuke added another uncertainty. Human knowledge of time travel remained too shallow to distinguish the models from one journey.

"I hope we do not return and discover a history book describing an unknown enemy's attack on Konoha," Boruto said.

Such a record would mean Urashiki reached the past after them, or that their own presence changed which history the future preserved. Worse, the absence of a record might mean the attack erased the people capable of writing it.

The best outcome would be a future unchanged, with Karasuki forcing Urashiki back to an era better prepared to fight him. Future Konoha held Naruto, Sasuke, Kakashi, Tsunade, Konohamaru, powerful new rivals, and scientific ninja tools far beyond the technology of this period.

The Technology Development Bureau also housed two legendary shinobi whose strength and research could support the response. Boruto trusted those names because they belonged to the protected world in which he grew up.

Sasuke praised Boruto's reasoning. He found himself wishing Sarada showed the same talent for thinking through uncertainty.

"When we return, why not ask the Director of the Technology Development Bureau to study time?" Boruto asked. "He may find the answer."

"No. Tonbo is too dangerous. Even after all these years, I have not seen through him."

Boruto did not understand. "The Deputy Director watches him. You and Dad can restrain him. It would only begin as a research project."

"He is not as simple as you believe."

Adult Sasuke had reconsidered his own victory over Orochimaru many times. At the time, he attributed it to Orochimaru's ruined arms, failing body, and the Sharingan. With maturity, the encounter felt almost too convenient, as if the Sannin had accepted the defeat as part of another plan.

That doubt taught him how little apparent supervision proved. A brilliant prisoner could arrange incentives around his jailers, allow a defeat that served a later body, or make restraint itself part of the experiment. Tonbo possessed the same patience without revealing the same crimes.

Tonbo inspired a related unease. The older director contributed to Konoha, protected the village, and rarely revealed the full depth of any method. Supervision did not guarantee control over a man who planned around the people assigned to watch him.

Boruto looked back toward old Konoha.

Whatever model of time proved true, they would very soon leave it without ever finding the enemy they came to stop.