The Thunder Rail train chugged along, its squat smokestack spitting out a trail of white. Sarutobi Konohamaru leaned back in his seat and stared absently at the world of green and brown sliding past outside. The tracks seemed endless, meandering this way and that, stitching the valley together. The scene outside the window—an expanse of lush, green trees, occasionally broken by the white and pink of dogwoods in bloom—showed no sign of changing any time soon.
Konohamaru let his mind wander. He thought about what he’d have for supper. I gotta grab something to eat when I get back. Maybe Ichiraku Ramen? Although I should actually whip something up myself and save money for once... Although he was always hammering into Boruto and the other genin the importance of never letting one’s guard down no matter what the mission, he was not particularly concerned with watching his back when he was on the road home from a solo errand-boy mission with essentially zero chance of battle.
Wish this thing would hurry up…
Yawning, Konohamaru stretched his arms out. He noticed a certain person sitting up ahead, and he froze in place. A man with hair hanging across half of his face and his black cloak hiding the rest—Uchiha Sasuke. He appeared to be sleeping.
Weird that Sasuke’s here. I guess he’s making a report.
Konohamaru stared with great interest at the sleeping Sasuke. Famously handsome since boyhood, his face showed no sign of decline even now. His faintly visible crow’s feet only added an air of sophistication to his sharp features. A pair of special eyes hid behind those closed lids—the Sharingan and Rinnegan.
One of the most powerful ninja in the world, not to mention extremely cool and unbelievably handsome to boot, he had made any number of women swoon when he was single. Whether or not he himself had been the slightest bit interested in any of that was another matter, however.
Can’t believe I’d run into Sasuke here.
Konohamaru looked around the carriage once more. An infant fast asleep on its mother’s lap, an elderly couple splitting a dorayaki cake, a younger man and woman on their way home from a trip. The people who shared this car with him were villagers who rejoiced in the current peace, entirely removed from the bloody world of the shinobi. Konohamaru had to admit that Sasuke’s ability to fall asleep in the midst of such a group was an impressive feat.
It was hard to get a handle on what exactly Sasuke’s position was in the village of Konohagakure. He was so famous that he was a super-rare card in the Extreme Ninja game, but he also rarely showed his face in the village, and officially, he was a criminal on probation. He had just as many enemies as allies. If the other passengers were to realize they were sharing a car with the Uchiha Sasuke, there would inevitably be a commotion, but not a soul noticed him.
Konohamaru closed his eyes, thinking about napping himself. He pressed his head up against the window and got comfortable in his seat.
Boom!
An explosion rocked the carriage. His eyes flew open in surprise. Konohamaru looked out the window to see flames and black smoke pouring from the caboose.
“An explosion!” shrieked a passenger. “Smoke!”
Instantly, panic enveloped the carriage.
“No! I don’t want to die!”
“Stop! Don’t push!”
“Run! To the front of the train! Hurry!”
Jostling up against one another, the passengers flooded the narrow aisle.
“Please, calm down!” Konohamaru called out, stepping into the fray. The mass hysteria could cause more damage than the explosion itself. “I’m a ninja from the Land of Fire! The explosion was in the last car! Very far from us! Everyone, please calm down and…stay in your own seat for now! Quietly!”
Silence immediately fell over the carriage. Some measure of order had been restored thanks to Konohamaru’s direction. He hesitated over whether or not to lead them to the front of the train. If the explosion was the doing of some villain, then the lead carriage would be a definite target, given that that was where all the controls were.
“I’m going to go take a look at the situation. I’m sure the train will stop soon. Once it does, please exit the carriage, taking the bare minimum of luggage with you. And whatever you do, don’t panic, please!”
Where’s Sasuke? He looked around, but the other ninja was gone, presumably having already headed out to the site of the explosion. It seemed he had prioritized putting out the fire over calming the passengers.
Konohamaru hurried to open the window and climbed up to the roof of the car before racing to the caboose, ground zero for the explosion.
Arriving at the twelfth car, the tail of the train, Konohamaru stopped dead in his tracks, stunned. The car should have been entirely ablaze, and yet for some reason it and the bright flames enveloping it were frozen solid. He kicked in one of the icy windows and climbed inside. A biting wind blasted past, almost sharp enough to cut his cheek.
Uchiha Sasuke stood in the center of a vortex of cold air. The red fire that burned up the wooden seat frame before his brandished hand was suddenly encased in ice. An instant later, it disappeared.
“Sasuke? What on earth…?”
“Konohamaru?” Sasuke turned and flicked his eyes around the frozen carriage. “As you can see, I extinguished the fire.”
“E-extinguished… Well, it’s true the fire’s out, but…”
The last car was for first-class passengers, so the design was different from the other carriages. Pairs of luxuriously large sofas faced each other, and thick oak walls separated the compartments. The explosion had devastated the ceiling, but it didn’t take an expert to see that the light fixtures and ceiling fans were quite sumptuous, even if the intricate sculptures that had adorned them were now in pieces on the floor. The blast had also warped all the furniture in the car. Now the seats were frozen as well as charred, a sad shadow of their former glory.
“Putting out fires with Water Style generates high-temperature steam,” Sasuke told an overwhelmed Konohamaru. “So just combine Water with Wind Style and freeze everything, including the steam you generate.”
“A sort of Ice Style that’s not Water, hm?”
“Close, but not exactly.” Sasuke shook his head. “A long time ago, I fought someone who used this technique. I copied it, but my approximation doesn’t begin to compare with the power of his original.”