Boruto continued falteringly, finding the subject almost too much for him. “I mean, ninja, we’re changing with the times, too, y’know? My dad, the principal at the academy, everyone says so. Back in the old days, it would have been unthinkable to have a policy of capturing enemies instead of killing them whenever possible. But we live in an era of peace now, so we have the breathing room to do that kind of stuff. They say you gotta change with the times… Although all that stuff was before I was born, so I don’t really know.” Boruto lifted his face. The bright eyes he’d inherited from his father, eyes that were so much brighter than his father’s, stared straight at Lily. “And then I guess what’s left is a mix of the old stuff with the new stuff, adapted for us to use it now… I dunno.”
“For me.” Lily took a shallow breath. “I have such a hard time accepting that kind of thinking. I grew up having it beaten into me that our mission is to protect our doctrine, the religion that’s been passed down for hundreds of years.”
“I kinda get that, too,” Boruto said slowly, staring at the dark water. “I used to totally hate science. I thought I’d never be okay with it. But Old Man Sasuke taught me all kinds of stuff, and it’s like, I’ve started thinking that maybe it’s not so bad as all that. Although there’s still loads of stuff I can’t accept. So…”
“What?” she challenged. “Are you trying to say you managed to change, so I can, too?”
“No, that’s…not exactly it.” Boruto fumbled for the words. He hated science. That feeling hadn’t changed. But even so, maybe he had to start taking steps toward it. It was only since Sasuke became the master of Team Seven that he’d started thinking like this.
“We just had different educations, huh?” Lily said, sounding jealous somehow as she looked at Boruto. “I wanted to think freely the way you do. But it’s too late now.” She took a deep breath. “I can’t change now. But yeah, the generation after me, I’m sure they’ll adapt. I want to believe that.”
Someone knocked on the roof.
“Boruto? You in there?” It was Mitsuki.
Boruto heaved a sigh of relief and sidled up to the ceiling. “Mitsuki! I’m here!”
“You sound okay. What about Lily?”
“I’m here,” Lily said awkwardly.
“Thank goodness. Listen carefully, both of you.” Mitsuki started speaking faster. “Sasuke froze the area around the ship with Ice Style so it wouldn’t sink, but it looks like there’s a big hole in the fuel tank. He says the oil might spill out into the ocean if we leave it like this.”
“Seriously?!” Boruto yelled.
“And so, uh…the ship’s going to fly in a minute. Can you fire your Rasengan straight down and escape once the ship’s been in the air for ten seconds?”
Boruto and Lily exchanged a look, forgetting for a moment the situation they were in.
What? The boat’s going to fly?
“Amazing. It really is frozen.” Sarada shivered at the cold air rising up around her. A massive lump of ice neatly surrounded the boat floating in the ocean. When she leaned forward and looked over the side of the boat, she had the strange sensation she was riding on top of a massive mountain of ice.
“Isn’t salt water supposed to be hard to freeze?” she asked, looking back at her father on the deck.
“You know your stuff,” Sasuke admired. “I didn’t actually freeze the ocean water. First, I generated pure water with Water Style, and then I turned that water into ice.”
“You changed the water to ice? How?”
He paused a moment. “It’s a matter of imagination. The way water molecules move in relation to each other is what makes them water. And when the molecules are more tightly linked, they become ice.” He turned the palm of his hand upward. Water began spilling out from between his fingers like a fountain. In an instant, it was frozen solid.
“Conversely, if the molecules separate from each other and start to move freely, that is steam.” As if in response to his words, the frozen water melted, then evaporated, without leaving a single drop behind.
“It’s gone,” Sarada gasped.
“An application of Water Style,” he told her. “A man I met once called Haku used changes in wind and water at the same time to generate ice. But that was a special technique, passed down within a single clan. Only they could master it. If you train, though, it’s possible to do this much at least, even if you’re not a member of the clan.”
“I get it. That was actually pretty easy to understand, Dad, unlike your usual lessons,” Sarada quipped.
Sasuke smiled slightly. “We should get started.”
“Okay!” She ran to the prow of the ship where the massive anchor hung.
“Are you sure you can lift it?” Don’t push yourself, he was about to say and then relaxed abruptly.
Sarada yanked the anchor up with both hands. “This is nothing.”
“You take after your mother,” he said.
Sarada turned a proud smile toward him. She hoisted the heavy anchor over her shoulder. The anchor was attached to the ship by a chain. The chain and its fastenings were frozen solid with Sasuke’s Ice Style.
“Which way should I throw it, Dad?” she asked.
“Wherever you’d like. I’ll follow your lead.”
Feeling reassured, Sarada readjusted her grip on the anchor.
Lorentz Gun, tackled by father and daughter. But it wouldn’t be a kunai that went flying. It would be the ship’s anchor. They would make the anchor fly—dragging the whole ship along with it—before exploding the whole unit in midair to dispose of it. If they could burn it to ash with ultrahot flames, they could limit the damage to some ash on the ocean surface, which was far better than the oil leaking out into the water.
Sasuke looked back at the battered deck. Somewhere inside the frozen boat, there was a very stupid girl who had willingly jumped into the fissure in the deck and an idiot boy who’d gone after her without giving a thought to his own life. He had to save them and tell them not to be so reckless. It was his responsibility as Boruto’s teacher.
Standing at the railing on the prow, Sarada lifted the anchor above her shoulders. “Here we go, Dad!”
“Anytime.”
She sank down and took a deep breath before throwing the anchor as hard as she could. “Take that!” The steel anchor flew into the air, pulling the chain along with it.
From the palms of his open hands, Sasuke shot two crackling bolts of electricity.
The instant the electricity hit it, the anchor shot off faster than the human eye could follow. The chain snapped straight, and the block of ice around the boat began to creak and groan. A heartbeat later, the ice shattered, and the boat floated up. The sky grew larger before their eyes. Sarada staggered backwards. Sasuke caught her by the arm.
The massive ship slid along in the sky, yanked forward by the flying anchor.
There was a sudden weightlessness that made Boruto’s stomach rise up inside of him. A moment later, the force of gravity returned twice as strong.
Holding Lily with one hand and kneading his chakra with the other, Boruto counted. “Six…seven…eight…”
The ship began to creak and groan, unable to withstand its own weight and speed as it flew through the air. It was only a matter of time before it was yanked apart.
“Nine…”
Ten! Boruto turned his chakra into turbulent air and threw it down with his everything he had.
The roar of the lower half of the ship ripping away nearly shattered his eardrums. Lily might have been screaming beside him, but he couldn’t hear anything. The shattered boat scattered to the wind. And then so did Boruto and Lily.
Far below them, he could see the dark ocean.
As they fell, Boruto scanned the water’s surface. Off in the distance, there was something like an ice shelf, likely the flying ship’s launch point. A narrow bridge of ice stretched out from the shelf, and on top of it, he could see Mitsuki casually waving to them with one hand. Next to him, the men in purple from the boat were tied together.
If he could avoid the frozen parts and use Wind Style to create a cushion before they hit the water, they should come out of this unscathed. The problem was that it wasn’t just him; he had to keep Lily alive, too. He didn’t know whether he could slow them down without ripping them apart. The odds were fifty-fifty.
“No other choice now.” Boruto gritted his teeth. He was getting ready to try when flames suddenly exploded in the sky above them.
He looked in time to see the ship swallowed up by an explosion of such force it looked like it would reach the moon. The black flames would not go out until every last bit of the ship was consumed.
Sasuke’s Inferno Style Flame Control.
Boruto didn’t need anyone to tell him that the two shadows leaping from the burning boat were Sasuke and Sarada.
Sasuke held Sarada’s arm as he chased after Boruto and Lily, adjusting the air resistance with his chakra. Once they were alongside Boruto, he tossed Sarada out and reached his hand out. “Boruto, give me Lily.” He smiled at Boruto’s hesitation. “Don’t worry. I won’t hurt her.”
“Really?” Boruto asked.
“You don’t trust your master?”
“That’s no fair,” he muttered and passed Lily to Sasuke. Perhaps from sheer terror, Lily had at some point lost consciousness.
“Dad! The water’s coming up on us!” Sarada shouted.
To soften the impact of the water landing, all three ninja turned their Wind Style toward the ocean, the gusts pushing deep into the surface of the water.
There was a single large splash followed by two smaller ones. They all popped up to the surface again at the same time.