Chapter 226: The Meeting Before Departure

Sasuke stopped without warning on the forest path. Boruto took one more step before noticing and turned back to him.

"Sasuke. And the little visitor from the future."

Tonbo appeared in front of them as if he had stepped out of empty air. He smiled while both travelers froze.

His arrival was not what startled them. His words were.

"You're Director Tonbo—mmph!"

Sasuke covered Boruto's mouth before he could say more.

He studied Tonbo. "You noticed us long ago, didn't you?"

The greeting made the conclusion unavoidable. Tonbo had not guessed their origin in that instant. He had observed them, assembled the evidence, and waited until he was certain. Time travel was too absurd for anyone to infer without a long trail of clues.

Was Tonbo already this capable in the present? Sasuke had not sensed him until he stood almost within reach.

That absence disturbed him more than an ordinary ambush would have. The Tonbo of Sasuke's era possessed decades of additional work, influence, and accumulated techniques. The younger man should have been easier to read. Instead he had crossed the sensor's attention without announcing either hostile intent or a familiar chakra rhythm. Sasuke could not assume that reputation from the future measured the limits of the man before him.

"Yes. His name is Boruto, isn't it?" Tonbo looked at the boy, whose eyes had widened. "An exceptional child. I imagine he will be considered a genius in the future."

Sasuke did not relax. "If you know where we came from, then you understand why people in this era must not learn too much about the future. Revealing it could change what happens. So why confront us now?"

The pattern in his visible eye changed. The Mangekyō Sharingan turned on Tonbo, carrying a genjutsu meant to seal the memories he had gathered.

Boruto watched in tense silence. Uncle Sasuke had acted; the problem would end here.

Tonbo's gaze went vacant.

Less than a second later, awareness returned to it.

"Do not waste your chakra," he said, still smiling. "You are very strong, but if you intend to force a genjutsu on me, you will need at least two eyes. Trying it with one is rather insulting."

Sasuke dismissed the Sharingan and exhaled. "As expected of Captain Tonbo. Why did you appear?"

He had no useful second attempt. What he could not understand was how Tonbo had broken the first.

"I know you want to reveal as little as possible—preferably nothing." Tonbo spoke without haste. "I am interested in the reason you came here. A powerful enemy tried to return to the past and perform some action in the Konoha of this era. You followed to stop him."

Boruto stared at him. Was this the same Director Tonbo who sometimes visited the Academy to teach ethics? He had uncovered their identities, reconstructed their mission, and shrugged off the genjutsu of the man who had helped defeat Kaguya.

"I have followed you long enough to confirm that you are from the future," Tonbo continued, "but I have not sensed a second powerful and unfamiliar chakra. Your enemy has not appeared here. That does not mean he cannot. Perhaps he landed at a different point in time—a few days from now, or several years. I need his intelligence."

The remembered account had led Tonbo to expect Sasuke and Boruto to defeat the Ōtsutsuki during this visit. Their failure even to encounter him meant events had already exceeded the pattern Tonbo knew. If the enemy arrived after the travelers departed, Tonbo would have to face an Ōtsutsuki without preparation.

Even one who had never absorbed the Ten-Tails stood far beyond an ordinary shinobi. Learning his capabilities only after battle began would be a deadly waste.

The short instruction sent by Tonbo's future self now made more sense. That man would understand how his younger self thought. By telling him to proceed according to the original plan, he must have anticipated that Tonbo would seek out Sasuke and accept the risk of changing the future.

Sasuke and Boruto fell silent.

Tonbo had named the same dilemma that troubled them. Information from the future could alter history. Refusing to speak could leave the village helpless if Urashiki appeared after their departure, which would alter history just as surely.

They did not believe he had arrived in an earlier period. Konoha and the events they remembered had shown no corresponding change. That suggested Urashiki had either fallen somewhere ahead of the present or become lost in another temporal branch. Yet an inference was not a guarantee.

If they told Tonbo nothing and Urashiki arrived after the gate closed, the village would learn the price of their caution through casualties. If they told him everything, a single unnecessary detail might redirect choices that had once led to Boruto's birth and Sasuke's own survival. Neither silence nor disclosure was harmless. They could only decide which person was most likely to use a narrow truth without pursuing every secret attached to it.

For now, only two factors seemed capable of disturbing the future: Urashiki, wherever he was, and Tonbo, who had discovered the travelers.

Which risk should they choose?

They could trust the man before them. In their era, Tonbo had helped found the Technology Development Bureau and become one of its leaders. Even after leaving Konoha's front lines, his work continued to shape the village. Through every position he held, he remained someone Sasuke considered dependable.

Tonbo read their hesitation before either answered.

"You need not fear that I will casually interfere with the future. I will retain only the fact that this enemy may appear and the intelligence required to fight him. Then I will place the memory under a seal with an activation condition. If my future self is some kind of director, my life must turn out reasonably well. I have no desire to destroy that future."

Director. The word sounded powerful, perhaps even more impressive than Hokage.

It also allowed Tonbo to infer far too much. If he survived into the era Boruto knew, then his preparations for the Fourth Shinobi World War and the later Ōtsutsuki threats must have succeeded. One person could not face enemies stronger than Kaguya indefinitely. Without some miraculous system granting him power, he would have to gather specialists and resources instead.

The title also implied that he had left ordinary field command without disappearing from the village's affairs. A bureau would give his research a permanent structure and let many people contribute what a solitary shinobi could never master. Tonbo had no proof of its name, only a direction revealed by Boruto's mistake, but the direction fit every problem already waiting in his future.

What sort of institution would that require?

An organization built to study the Ōtsutsuki, the Ten-Tails, Zetsu cells, Sage Mode, and every other path by which shinobi might increase their strength. If Tonbo participated in the future war, he would seek biological information from Kaguya, Zetsu, and the Ten-Tails itself. The work demanded laboratories, researchers, security, and authority.

"Perhaps I create something like a Technology Development Bureau," Tonbo murmured.

Sasuke's eye narrowed. Tonbo had begun with one accidental title and reasoned his way toward the institution Boruto knew.

At last Sasuke yielded.

"The enemy belongs to the Ōtsutsuki clan," he said. "His name is Ōtsutsuki Urashiki."

There was no safer person available. Sasuke could not seal Tonbo's memory, and killing him would change the future more violently than any disclosure.

Boruto could only watch. Tonbo had anticipated every objection and left them nowhere else to turn.