Water geysered up and rained down around them.
“Whoa!” Doused in the heavy water, Boruto pitched forward onto the deck.
He tried to get to his feet and realized he finally had control of his body back. Which meant this water…
“It’s pure. Dad made it.” Sarada smirked, similarly soaked. The scientific tool her father had given her when they were setting out had been equipped with a pure Water Style to escape the control of a bioelectrical attack.
Boruto leaped to his feet and stared hard at his wet hand. Pure water. A fusion of nothing but oxygen and hydrogen. He needed to remember its feel on his skin so he could make it himself. I couldn’t generate this under my own power now, but I will next time.
He tensed his entire body. The enemy must have been able to see Sarada and Boruto in order to attack with the faint electrical current. It was very likely that they were being watched from somewhere nearby even now. He and Sarada stood back-to-back and scanned their surroundings. Several minutes passed with no movement from their opponent.
Did they run away?
He heard a faint noise, like gears biting into each other, and gasped. When he turned his head in the direction of the sound, the bench there exploded.
Dodging the pieces of wood flying through the air, Boruto and Sarada leaped backward, Boruto to the right, Sarada to the left. It wasn’t a large explosion but it was enough to knock them off balance.
Bang! Bang!
The first bullet grazed Boruto’s thigh. The second one hit his side. Whirling around, he saw the face of the person standing there, and all color drained from his own.
“Sorry, Boruto,” said Lily.
“What are you…” His voice shook. “You… So you’re one of the bad guys?!”
“Bad? Maybe to you.” Lily’s face was cold, hostile. The barrel of the gun in her hand was pointed directly at Boruto. The purple outfit she wore proved, whether he liked it or not, her membership in Shigetsukyodan.
He stood rooted to the spot, stunned, unable to accept the sight before him.
Sarada took a step forward. “Boruto trusted you. I won’t let you get away with this!” she shouted, and threw a shuriken.
Instead of stepping aside, Lily swiftly held a hand up in front of her body, palm out, fingers pressed together, and straightened her back.
Sarada’s shuriken should have plunged into her chest, but instead, the blade swerved wildly to one side just as it was about to hit Lily. Its once straight trajectory curving unnaturally and the blade stabbed into Lily’s open palm.
“Huh?!” Shaken, Sarada immediately threw three more shuriken.
But the result was the same. The shuriken curved wildly along the way and were almost sucked into Lily’s hand.
“I can’t target critical points?” Sarada muttered and furrowed her brow.
Plasma crackled and popped around Lily’s hand. Her palm was enveloped in in electricity. Which meant…
“She… Did she concentrate current in her hand to create a magnetic field?” Boruto wondered, stunned.
She had generated a magnetic field in her hand using an electrical current and avoided any critical hits by pulling in the metal shuriken and kunai. Boruto and Sarada wouldn’t be able to do any real damage with long-distance shuriken attacks. It was indeed a desperate way of fighting.
“A close-range battle it is!” Boruto leaped at Lily.
She pulled all four shuriken out of her hand and launched them at him. They closed in from all directions, including his blind spot. It would be impossible to dodge them all. He braced himself for at least one hit, bending over to protect his heart and other vital organs.
Ting! Ting! The shuriken bounced back with a crisp sound. By the time he realized Sarada had knocked them down with an assist, Lily was already on top of him.
“Ngh!” He grabbed the barrel of her gun and yanked it upward just as she fired twice.
The recoil from the shots made the bones of his fingers tingle. Boruto pulled his arm back with everything he had, ready to rip the gun from her hands, but Lily didn’t resist. Instead, she let go, causing him to lose his balance and pitch forward.
“Whoa?!”
Ready for this opening, Lily thrust a hand out to press down on his chin and shove the long fingernail of her thumb into his mouth.
This is bad! He bit down as hard as he could on her thumb.
Not only did Lily not flinch, she smiled slightly. “If your body is covered in pure water…then I just have to release the current inside of it.”
An intense, fiery shock shot through him. “Hngah!” Fireworks exploded before him, and his body reeled backwards. Every muscle in his body seized, and he shook almost hard enough to turn him inside out. His mind went white, and he desperately tried to hang onto his fading consciousness. He couldn’t pass out now and leave Sarada to fight Lily on her own.
No way a shinobi’s gonna lose to an idol in a fight!
Through sheer willpower, he raised a trembling hand and grabbed Lily’s wrist. In is other hand, he kneaded chakra. Rasengan. But his muscles were still trembling uncontrollably. He wouldn’t be able to fine-tune this blow, and if he hit her with a full-power Rasengan, Lily wouldn’t survive.
“Hngh…” He groaned. He bent so far backward that his spine creaked. I don’t have time to hesitate. I just have to do this…
“Take that!” Sarada landed a kick in Lily’s side, and the idol’s finger was yanked out of Boruto’s mouth. The pop star’s slender body flew helplessly through the air and somersaulted across the deck.
Freed from the electrical attack, Boruto got to his knees. Panting, he wiped the sweat away. The Rasengan he’d kneaded into existence disappeared with a faint fwsh.
“Boruto, you okay?!”
“Yeah, I can move…”
That Sarada, no mercy… She doesn’t hold back against another woman.
His relief was fleeting. Once he got to his feet, his jacket suddenly puffed up. “Huh?”
The kunai in his pocket ripped through the fabric of his jacket and flew upward.
“Aah, dammit!” Boruto reached out, but his fingers grazed the kunai in vain.
The weapon shot toward Lily’s bloody hand and dug into the center of it. A smile flitted across her face as she yanked it out and turned the tip not toward Boruto or Sarada but her own throat. She would kill herself before she would let herself be captured. Just like the other Shigetsukyodan members.
“Lily! Stop!” Even as he leaped at her, Boruto knew it was no use. He wasn’t going to make it.
A black cloak flapped behind her. There was a flash of movement as something chopped down onto her wrist, and the kunai fell from her hand.
Sasuke kicked the blade into the ocean. “Slipped out of house arrest?”
Lily stiffened. Sasuke’s tone was extremely even, but there was a hard edge to it that sent a shiver up Boruto’s spine.
Lily had just barely managed to hold her own against Boruto and Sarada. Now that Sasuke had appeared, that difference in power would be overwhelming, an unbreachable gap. Even still, she turned bravely to glare at Sasuke.
“I’d rather die than be your prisoner.” Her tone was challenging, but she no longer had any means to commit suicide. Not only had she used every weapon in her arsenal, she’d been restrained by Sasuke. She had no chance at victory.
“Lily…” Boruto’s voice trembled. “Why would you…”
Lily frowned and said nothing. She dropped her head.
Boruto clenched his fists. She taught me all kinds of idol stuff. I even maybe thought she was kinda great. But that was all just an act?! It was all too much.
There was a sound from the prow of the ship. He turned to see that the man who’d been stretched out on the rubber lifeboats had regained consciousness and was now pointing a broken handgun at them.
“Th-that guy… He’s awake!” Boruto jumped at him.
But after failing to get off a surprise shot, the man realized he had no chance of victory now. He tossed the gun aside and pulled himself to his feet before spreading his arms and falling backward toward the sea.
“Wh—Another suicide?!”
“Boruto! Don’t!”
Sasuke grabbed Boruto’s shoulder to keep him from running over to the side of the ship.
Boom!
A pillar of water shot up and rocked the boat.
“Suicide bomb?!” Boruto looked up at his teacher. “He had a bomb on him?!”
“No.” Sasuke shook his head. “Most likely, he launched a full-power Lightning Style technique in the ocean.”
The issue now was that the explosion had been right beside the boat, and the ship’s construction just happened to be weakest on its sides. A massive fissure ripped through the body of the enormous vessel. The weight of the ship being rocked back and forth by the surging waves only helped the breach grow.
The ship was splitting in half before their eyes.
“We’re gonna sink!” Sarada shrieked.
“Don’t panic,” Sasuke said, calmly. “The size of this ship, it won’t sink if we freeze the ocean.”
“Huh?! Can you even do that, Dad?!”
A red shadow shot across Boruto’s field of view. It was Lily, he realized, but she was already beyond his reach. Without a moment’s hesitation, she jumped into the fissure between the crumbling planks of the deck.
“Lily!” Without thinking, Boruto leaped into the crumbling interior of the ship after her.