The moment he thought about meeting his father as a teenager—around the same age as himself—Boruto could barely contain his excitement.
After hearing Sasuke's words, he asked skeptically, "Sensei, is it possible that so much time has passed that your memory is getting fuzzy?"
"Impossible. I'm not that old yet."
"Really? Because if this is supposed to be around the time you graduated, Sarada told me that the Uchiha Clan in Konoha had already been wiped out by then, and you were the only one left, right?"
A trace of sadness crossed Sasuke's face, but he still nodded.
"That's right."
That only confused Boruto even more. He pointed toward two shinobi walking down the street below.
"Then how do you explain that guy?"
Hearing that, the adult Sasuke withdrew his gaze from the distance and looked down.
The moment he saw them, he completely froze.
The two shinobi had their backs to him, so he couldn't see their faces. But the uniforms they wore were burned into his memory.
They were Public Security Force uniforms.
And on the back of one of them was the unmistakable Uchiha fan crest.
The problem was—how was that possible?
At this point in time, his beloved older brother should have already massacred the entire Uchiha Clan. There shouldn't have been any clan members left.
Although the Police Force had continued to exist afterward, there was no way the village's replacement recruits would still be wearing uniforms embroidered with the Uchiha emblem.
And if this were somehow before the Night of the Uchiha Massacre, then a number of landmark buildings scattered throughout Konoha didn't line up either.
Sasuke clearly remembered that those structures had all been built after the massacre.
The more he looked around, the less anything made sense.
Too many streets and buildings failed to match his memories.
More and more, he began to suspect that this wasn't the world he knew at all.
"Could something have gone wrong with the time travel?"
Boruto didn't understand any of that.
He was simply fascinated by everything around him.
"Sensei, where are you right now in this time period?"
"If this is before the Chūnin Exams, then I might be out on a mission. Or I might still be in the village."
"If it's after the Chūnin Exams..."
"I'm not in Konoha."
Sasuke deliberately left out the fact that he had defected from the village after the Chūnin Exams.
That wasn't exactly a glorious chapter of his life.
No need to tell his student about it.
"I see. Then this should be sometime after you and Dad graduated, but before the Chūnin Exams. Granny Tsunade probably hasn't returned to become the Fifth Hokage yet."
"How can you be so sure?"
Boruto pointed toward three figures sprinting through a street to the southeast.
"That person should be you, right? And next to you is Aunt Sakura. The blond guy has to be my dad."
"So Dad was actually this handsome when he was young? He doesn't look anything like the photos at home."
Your dad was a complete knucklehead back then. Undersized, poorly groomed, dressed like a walking fashion disaster, and totally incapable of making himself look presentable.
Handsome my ass.
But Sasuke didn't have time to make fun of him.
Because when he followed the direction Boruto was pointing, he saw the familiar Team 7 from his memories.
The lineup was correct.
The people were not.
Sakura hadn't changed much.
Her hair was longer than he remembered, but that could still be explained. If she hadn't gone through the second stage of the Chūnin Exams in the Forest of Death yet, she wouldn't have cut it off.
But what was going on with Naruto?
Where was that hideous orange outfit he loved so much?
And those longer blond sideburns—was he trying to imitate his father?
The problem was that at this point in time, Naruto shouldn't even know who his father was.
He certainly shouldn't know what Minato looked like.
The most outrageous part, however, was himself.
Back then, he definitely didn't own a set of clothes that looked this good.
And there was no way he would have had a ninja sword hanging from his lower back.
His swordsmanship habit hadn't developed until after he began training under Orochimaru.
This definitely wasn't the Konoha he remembered.
Something was seriously wrong here.
"Let's go, Boruto. Something isn't right."
"We need to learn more about this place before we can decide what to do next."
Boruto looked reluctant.
"But Sensei, aren't we here to protect Dad? Since we've already found him, why don't we just go over there?"
"Idiot. Did you forget Karasuki's warning?"
"If we recklessly make contact with people we know from this point in time, it could create temporal distortions and put the very existence of our world at risk."
"Oh. Right, Sensei."
Boruto had plenty of complaints about his father and loved arguing with him.
Oddly enough, though, he always listened to Sasuke.
The two of them leapt down from the rooftop and headed back toward the forest the way they had come.
Sasuke planned to avoid Team 7, who were clearly heading this way, find a place to change clothes, and disguise himself.
He couldn't let anyone recognize at a glance that he was the future Sasuke.
Especially the forehead protector on Boruto's forehead—it absolutely couldn't stay on.
A non-Konoha shinobi wearing a genuine Konoha forehead protector was practically asking the ANBU to invite him in for a "chat."
As for the rest, the plan was naturally to gather intelligence while secretly protecting Naruto.
No matter what, there was no mistake about one thing: before long, Ōtsutsuki Urashiki would come to steal the Nine-Tails' chakra.
Karasuki had already confirmed that Urashiki would arrive in the near future.
Even if this Konoha wasn't the Konoha from his memories, and this Naruto wasn't the idiot he remembered, Sasuke still wouldn't allow Urashiki to succeed.
Unfortunately, his plan fell apart almost immediately.
...
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh—
As soon as the adult Sasuke and Boruto emerged from the opposite side of the small forest near the training grounds, they found themselves instantly surrounded by three ANBU operatives who had been tailing them.
Earlier, the two intruders had remained in heavily populated areas, making it difficult for the ANBU to act.
Now that they had returned to the training grounds, the ANBU no longer had any reason to stay hidden.
They were ready to capture the pair.
"Not good."
Sasuke's heart skipped a beat as he rapidly considered his options.
He had been careless.
His battle with Ōtsutsuki Urashiki during the time-space jump had nearly exhausted all of his chakra.
Because of that, he had completely failed to notice that someone had been following them the entire time.
Boruto, on the other hand, wasn't worried in the slightest.
ANBU?
He'd seen plenty of them.
They were basically all under his dad's command.
What was there to be afraid of?
The ANBU captain was none other than Uchiha Itachi.
At that moment, his eyes stared fixedly at the two intruders through his mask.
After receiving a report from the Barrier Team, they had rushed to the location where the spatial disturbance had occurred.
Given the current state of the shinobi world, the only person Itachi could think of who might trigger the barrier with an unfamiliar space-time disturbance was Obito.
He just didn't know why that guy had come to Konoha again.
But when he arrived with his team, Obito was nowhere to be found.
Instead, while searching the surrounding area, they had unexpectedly discovered two suspicious strangers.
Honestly, the two idiots had practically announced their presence.
They had been standing openly on a rooftop, acting as if they were merely sightseeing around Konoha.
They were so conspicuous that Itachi would have had to be blind to miss them.
Still, something about them was strange.
One looked like an adult version of Sasuke.
The other resembled Naruto somewhat, even sharing similar whisker-like marks on his face.
He was even wearing a Konoha forehead protector.
And neither of them showed any chakra fluctuations associated with a Transformation Technique.
Perhaps they simply looked similar.
Or perhaps they were using some kind of disguise.
Either way, from Itachi's perspective, anyone who entered Konoha through a space-time ninjutsu without permission was unquestionably an enemy.
"Who are you two?"
"What business do you have entering Konoha?"
Inside Konoha, Itachi wasn't disguising his voice.
Naturally, Sasuke immediately recognized who was speaking.
Uchiha Itachi.
The brother who had long since died in his own world.
A different Team 7.
An Uchiha Clan that still existed within Konoha.
And now, his beloved older brother standing before him as well.
There was definitely something wrong with this place.
No matter how similar the details appeared, this was not the Konoha he remembered.
Keeping his expression perfectly calm, Sasuke replied, "Sorry. We accidentally ended up here while experimenting with a jutsu."
"We have no hostile intentions toward Konoha and will leave immediately."
Itachi wasn't about to believe such nonsense.
"Is that so?"
"Then why is he wearing a Konoha forehead protector?"
"Trying to impersonate a Konoha shinobi?"
"And you call that having no hostile intentions?"
Sasuke felt his thoughts becoming increasingly tangled.
But he knew there was no way he could explain the situation clearly.
At this point, forcing a breakthrough might be the only option left.
Boruto's quick thinking kicked in.
Pointing at his forehead protector, he said, "Oh, this? I bought it because it looked cool."
"All the major villages sell forehead protectors outside, don't they?"
Itachi nodded slightly.
"That's true."
"But you've overlooked one detail."
"The souvenirs sold outside are different from the custom-made forehead protectors issued by the villages themselves."
"The one you're wearing is a genuine model complete with anti-counterfeiting markings."
"So tell me—where exactly did you get it?"
Boruto: "..."
Where else could I have gotten it?
My teacher gave it to me after I graduated from the Ninja Academy.
Twenty years in the future.
Right now, that same teacher is only twelve years old and happily playing with bugs somewhere in Konoha.
Itachi didn't bother asking any further questions.
The two of them clearly had no intention of talking.
But that was fine.
Uchiha Itachi had always been very good at making people tell the truth.
Activating his Sharingan, Itachi immediately prepared to pull Boruto into a genjutsu.
Compared to adults, children were usually much easier to extract information from.
Besides, he only needed a single second.
The moment Sasuke sensed the fluctuation of ocular power, he knew exactly what this unfamiliar version of his brother intended to do.
Instantly, he appeared in front of Boruto.
His Mangekyō Sharingan activated as he blocked the invading genjutsu.
And then Itachi saw it.
Within the mysterious shinobi's right eye was an equally strange pattern.
That familiar ocular power.
There was no mistake.
It was the Mangekyō Sharingan.