Ah, crap! Boruto raced over to the man splayed out on the floor and pushed the pieces of debris aside. He ripped off the purple fabric that covered the lower half of the man’s face and brought his ear in close. He heaved a true sigh of relief when he could hear the regular in-out of the man’s breath. “Great!”
“Tell me what exactly is great about this!” Sarada popped her head through a large hole in the ceiling.
“Sorry, my bad. My Rasengan was a little too strong.” He kicked at the floor and jumped up through the hole to the second level.
“‘My bad’?!” she snarled. “Your explosion helped my enemy get away!!”
“Look, I didn’t mean to. How was I supposed to know the containers were empty?”
“That’s because you’re never think—”
Crackle crackle!
Lightning shot through the air between them, and the two ninja leapt for cover behind the containers.
“How many are there?” Boruto asked.
“Four!” Sarada snapped. “The one with the lightning’s behind the door.”
He met her eyes briefly before flying out from behind the container to charge toward the stairs and kick down the door. Wood fragments exploded outward, quickly followed by a Lightning Style unleashed on Boruto.
He dropped into a defensive posture and immediately guarded with a Water Style wall. But as long as the water wasn’t pure, it was an excellent conductor, and naturally, the Lightning Style pierced his wall.
“Youch!”
A burning pain shot through his arm, and he staggered backward. The lightning user moved to close the distance between them.
Crap. The word had no sooner crossed his mind than the man’s eyes were rolling back in his head. He sank down to the ground, revealing Sarada standing behind him. She’d apparently given the man a solid bop on the head.
“What were you even thinking, you idiot?! Of course electricity’s gonna pass through Water Style!”
“I know that!”
Right. He did know that. But he’d had in his head that pure water wall of Sasuke’s and had used Water Style without thinking.
Before he had time to reflect on this, a bullet ricocheted off the floor at his feet. He figured out the position of the sniper from how the bullet splintered the wood on the floor and headed for the right side of stairs.
He startled the man hiding behind the wall there, who reflexively fired his gun without aiming. The bullet shot through a container far behind him. Crouching low, Boruto charged. The man lowered the barrel of the gun and concentrated on putting Boruto in his sights.
Taking advantage of this opening, Sarada slipped around behind him and kicked the enemy in the back. “Take that!”
The man pitched forward in a crescent and the barrel rose back up. In an instant, Boruto was upon him, twisting his wrist toward the ceiling and forcing the gun from his grasp. The man let out a pained noise. Sarada grabbed his neck from behind and slowly tightened her grip. When the man dropped off into a gentle slumber, she laid him down on the floor and chased after Boruto, who was already off and running.
“Two more, yeah?” he asked.
“Should be.” She nodded.
He’d heard an engine earlier, which meant someone was using the jet skis. No one would have been stupid enough to run to the lower deck, where there was no path of escape. They raced up the stairs and out onto the deck.
“Where the heck did they go?” Boruto whirled his head around. There were no lights on the deck, but he could see the area around him well enough.
He heard the rustling of cloth and leaped backward at the same time as Sarada.
Bang!
A gunshot. He couldn’t tell where it had come from, but Sarada instantly activated her Sharingan.
“Behind the lifeboat!”
“I got this!”
He concentrated his chakra in the soles of his feet and leaped directly upward. A target in vertical motion was half-impossible for a gun with no scope to get a lock on. The barrel wavered, its user unable to accurately measure the distance from his hiding place behind the boat. Boruto came down hard on the gun barrel and let his momentum propel him forward into the sniper’s face, knocking the man unconscious.
In the next instant, a fiery pain blossomed in his shoulder. Bright red blood jetted up from the fresh bullet wound. Looking back, he spotted a man hiding behind the door pointing a gun straight at him. Boruto flung himself backward, but there turned out to be no need for that.
Sarada threw a shuriken to split the barrel of the handgun perfectly in two. “Take that!” she shouted, closing the distance between them to swing her right fist squarely at the man’s face. He went flying onto a pile of inflatable rafts and didn’t get up again.
Four. That was all of them.
“Boruto, your shoulder’s bleeding!” Sarada came racing over to him.
“It’s just a flesh wound,” he told her, touching his shoulder gingerly.
“Well, we better stop the bleeding at any rate. I’m ripping your shirt.” She held up a kunai. He could feel that the wound wasn’t serious, but he still nodded and moved his arm as if to take off his jacket.
Crackle. He heard something that sounded like a firecracker going off, and his body suddenly stiffened. Once again, he was gripped by the feeling that his own body wasn’t his to control, just like at the concert.
Before he even had the chance to be upset at what was happening, his arms were reaching forward, ignoring the commands his own brain was sending out, to yank the kunai from Sarada’s hand.
“Get back, Sarada!” Boruto barely managed to squeeze the cry out of his frozen throat.
“Boruto?!” She immediately jumped back. “What’s wrong?!”
“Same as before… I…” That was all he could manage to say. Even the muscles in his face would no longer do what he told them to.
His feet kicked at the ground on their own. His zombie arm slashed the kunai at Sarada—once, twice. Sarada deftly avoided the blows, but she didn’t look like she could hold out for long. With almost nothing on the deck for her to hide behind, she was at a severe disadvantage.
“Sarada!” he cried. “Punch me in the face! Knock me out!”
“I’d be happy to, if we knew I could free you like that!” Sarada shouted, a desperate edge in her voice. “But maybe you’ll keep coming at me while you’re unconscious! Like a zombie!” She kicked up a life preserver, and the plastic ring hit him in the face. His head spun and his face went numb, but his body kept moving, nimble as ever, despite the fact that he was on the verge of passing out.
His nose was bleeding, but without the ability to control his body, he couldn’t even wipe it away.
Dammit. What am I gonna do here? The last time this had happened, he’d escaped thanks to the pure water of Sasuke’s Water Style. He would just have to do the same thing.
If I just make a wall of pure water, then I can crush this.
“Who’s controlling him?” Sarada shouted, her eyes racing around the deck. “Where are you?! Show yourself! Get out here!”
Boruto tried to knead chakra around his body, but his hopes were dashed. His body still wouldn’t accept his control.
He took a deep breath and held it. He had to forget about what was going on. Forget everything—Sarada, his zombie body, the pain in his shoulder, all of it—and close himself off in his own head. He filled his mind with the image of cold water. Pure hydrogen and oxygen, just the two elements—
The kunai he held slammed down to stab deep into the deck. Bits of wood flew up into his cheeks.
Collecting his scattered focus, Boruto once more tried to concentrate on his chakra. He calmed his mind, leaned into the image of water.
His body slashed horizontally with the kunai. With exquisite reflexes, Sarada dodged the blow, and Boruto lost his balance. With no control over his body, a graceful fall was out of the question and he landed on his face. But even before the pain of this hit him, his body leaped to its feet again.
I can’t concentrate. And anyway, why would I be able to make pure water now when I’ve never done it before?
Spirits sinking, he noticed his free hand digging into his pocket. “Sarada! Shuriken!”
A heartbeat later, his hand found the shuriken and flung it at Sarada. The shuriken raced through the air, spinning ferociously, and ripped into Sarada’s shoulder.
“Ow!” Sarada screwed her face up as blood started to ooze from the wound.
Boruto’s feet kicked at the deck, racing to take advantage of Sarada’s momentary weakness with the kunai held high.
“Sarada! Run!” he cried.
The slicing blade glittered sharply. Sarada flew back to dodge the blow, but the tip of the kunai slid through the lock of hair hanging in front of her face, and it flopped down onto the deck. She stumbled and staggered as Boruto closed in on her, still brandishing the kunai.
“Run! Sarada!” Boruto cried, desperately.
Sarada grinned. “Not run, Boruto.”
Huh?
He stared, baffled, as Sarada pressed a button on the scientific ninja tool on her wrist. A scroll popped out and she held it high above her head. Erupting from the center of the scroll was…
Water Style.