“Boruto. Being hated is part of my job. It’s nothing for you to be upset about.”
“Don’t you hate it, though? You’re working missions to protect the village and then… those people just say whatever they want about you.”
“I understand how you feel. A relative of mine was unjustly smeared once, and I was furious about it. But when it came my turn, I suddenly didn’t care either way. It’s a strange thing. And…I don’t really feel like I’m working to protect the village. If I had to say what my purpose is, it’s helping your father.” Sasuke tousled Boruto’s blond hair. “So don’t worry about it.”
You say that, but… Boruto stared up at his teacher with a complicated mix of emotion. Sasuke’s handsome countenance was as expressionless as ever. “Fine.”
It wasn’t as though he was actually persuaded by Sasuke’s words, but he accepted the situation for the time being. After all, it was weird for him to be so worried when the man in question apparently couldn’t have cared less.
Sasuke leaped up onto the roof of a house. He planned to take the rooftop route, taking advantage of the fact that there was no one around to see them. Boruto and his teammates followed suit, and the four of them jumped from house to house in a direct line for the port.
“Boruto, something is bothering me,” Sasuke said. “You were attacked by the enemy on stage.”
“Huh?”
“When I surrounded you in the Water Style wall.”
Oh, right. So much had happened after the initial commotion that he’d forgotten, but it was true that immediately before Sasuke had shown up, he’d suddenly lost control of his body. His hands had moved on their own and for some reason released the transformation jutsu.
Boruto explained what happened, and Sasuke muttered, “The power to rob a target of free movement… It has to be Lightning Style.”
“How do you know?” Mitsuki looked back curiously.
“You do know that when a person moves their body, orders from the brain become electrical signals and cause the muscles to move, yes?” Sasuke asked.
Sarada, Mitsuki, and Boruto assented in turn.
“It’s just a hypothesis,” their teacher continued. “But the enemy is most likely able to create a current that resembles the electrical signal from the brain. By sending that current into a target’s body, they can feign an order from the brain and take over. Move your arms, undo the transformation jutsu, things like that.”
“You mean they can produce a bioelectric current? Is that possible?” Sarada asked, looking as though she couldn’t believe it.
“Mm.” Sasuke nodded. “It would take incredibly fine control, but in theory, it’s possible.”
“So then…” Boruto looked at his own body, slightly creeped out. “The current the enemy created was flowing through me?”
“The fact that control was released the instant you were surrounded by the Water Style wall is proof. The enemy was sending electrical signals and controlling you from somewhere in the venue. The signal was interrupted when the wall of water encircled you completely.”
Boruto cocked his head to one side. “Doesn’t water conduct electricity really well, though?”
“Normally, water contains a lot of impurities,” Sasuke told him. “Water conducts electricity well because those impurities act as bridges. But my Water Style contains zero impurities. It’s pure water, composed only of oxygen and hydrogen.”
Right. Water’s made up of oxygen and hydrogen. Boruto remembered this from one of Shino’s lessons at the academy.
“There’s no impurities, so your water doesn’t conduct electricity,” Mitsuki said, as if all the pieces were falling into place.
“But being able to produce Lightning Style that mimics a bioelectric current,” Sarada muttered, looking troubled. “That’s a real threat.”
“That’s exactly right,” Sasuke agreed. “You’d need to generate an electrical current so weak the target can’t feel it when it enters the body. It’s probably harder to maintain this kind of fine control with Lightning Style than it is to generate bolts of lightning.”
Fine power control. Boruto had come face-to-face with that difficult task when they’d trained to roll doubles with their sugar-cube dice.
Sarada added another question to the pile. “Does the fact that they’re using Lightning Style mean the enemies are ninja? The guys at the concert had guns.”
“A limited number of them appear to use ninjutsu. The other fighters aren’t shinobi, strictly speaking,” Sasuke replied. “Shigetsukyodan is said to have originated when a faction of ninjas came to live in that remote area. Shigetsukyodan combatants likely have physical abilities on par with genin up to chunin. They differ from ninjas in that the majority of them rely on technology rather than chakra.”
The party slipped out of the urban area and into the outskirts of the village. The scattered houses became fewer and farther in between, and their footholds changed from roof tiles to tree branches. Birds flew from the trees off into the sky, surprised by the force of their approach.
“Just as ninja use chakra and the power of the natural world, they observe nature and learn its truth in order to obtain its strength. That’s science. Their high-performance explosives and guns are also byproducts of technological development. Science, ninjutsu, Shigetsukyodan—rather than running counter to each other, you could say that these three actually have the same roots.”
Science and ninjutsu have the same roots? Boruto clenched his hands as he ran. He dropped his gaze to his feet. He’d thought science was in opposition to ninjutsu, that it was uncool and unfair. He still thought that to some degree even now. But he knew that Sasuke had expanded the scope of his ninja abilities by incorporating into his ninjutsu the truths of this world laid bare by science. He wanted to do that, too. He wanted to be a strong ninja like Sasuke.
“I can see it.” Sasuke running in the lead said. “There’s the boat.”
The forest opened up to reveal the inky void of the ocean spread out before them. The boat docked in the tiny harbor was so massive it dwarfed the port. Painted navy and brown, it floated there, a dirty shadow against the moonlight. Boruto strained his ears. Above their footfalls, he heard the faint sound of the waves scratching against the surface. The enemy was in the belly of that ship.
They ran faster.