Rewinding to the time when Menma was chasing Orochimaru and Kabuto, the scene shifted.
Above the ruins of Konoha, a flash of white light appeared. Two figures—one large, one small—plummeted from the sky, screaming. It was Boruto Uzumaki, from the future timeline of the original story, alongside the one-armed Sasuke Uchiha.
"Waaaaaah!"
Boom!
The surrounding area was reduced to rubble, with no buildings or trees to break their fall. Boruto crashed headfirst into the ground, his panic-stricken scream cut short by the impact.
Sasuke, falling nearby, landed on one knee, bracing himself with a single hand.
"Ugh… my chakra's all used up…" He lay on the ground, mumbling weakly as he clutched his left eye. Beside him, Boruto's head was buried in the dirt, letting out an unintelligible whimper. With hands and feet flailing, he desperately pulled at his head, creating a comical spectacle.
"Ugh!!!"
Glancing at the disheveled Boruto, Sasuke took his hand from his right eye and sighed softly. He reached out, grabbed the boy's ankle, and yanked him out with a whoosh.
Boruto, dangling mid-air by his ankle, clutched his neck and screamed, "Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!!!"
"Mr. Sasuke, could you be a little gentler? You almost broke my neck!"
"Sorry." Sasuke offered a half-hearted apology before setting Boruto down and starting to assess his surroundings.
"Seriously, no sincerity whatsoever," Boruto muttered, rubbing his neck as he scrambled to his feet.
He frowned after a quick glance around. "I don't sense Urashiki's presence, and…" He pointed to the desolate, dilapidated ruins surrounding them. "Where is this wretched place?"
"It looks like a wasteland after a major battle in a movie," Boruto added, looking around with wide eyes. "I don't know what happened!"
He'd never seen anything like this before.
"Something's definitely off. We need to investigate."
Although the surroundings were dilapidated, they gave Sasuke a strange sense of familiarity.
"Something's not right?" Boruto, standing beside him, didn't understand. However, after seeing Sasuke's empty hands, he screamed and started frantically searching the ground.
"The turtle! The talking turtle is gone!"
"Here it is." Sasuke crouched down, picked up the turtle-shaped device from beside his feet, and tossed it to Boruto.
"Be careful!" Boruto hurriedly caught it, then carefully examined it in his hands. "Sasuke-san is so clumsy!"
"If it breaks, how will it get us out of this awful place?" Boruto asked sarcastically, shaking the unresponsive device vigorously while giving the expressionless Sasuke a reproachful look. "Look, it was working fine when we were fighting Urashiki, but now it's completely unresponsive!"
Sasuke merely glanced at Boruto in response, then chose the highest point of the ruins and headed toward it. "Stay close to me. Don't get lost. Be careful of the dangers here."
As a ninja who had spent years wandering outside Konoha, searching for the ruins of the Ōtsutsuki clan, he understood the dangers lurking in such places.
"Danger is good! I'm the hero who defeated Momoshiki Ōtsutsuki!" Boruto, a spoiled rich kid, was already fearless. Having participated in the war against Momoshiki, Boruto was even more undaunted.
"…" Sasuke was too lazy to pay attention to Boruto's boasting. If Boruto didn't look so much like a young Naruto, he would have slapped him twice already.
And what about being the hero who defeated Momoshiki Ōtsutsuki? That was all he had painstakingly arranged to ease the father-son relationship between Boruto and Naruto. To get Boruto involved and to recognize Naruto's goodness, Sasuke hadn't even used his full strength against Momoshiki, holding back. If he had, he and Naruto would have already defeated Momoshiki, whose fighting talent was as lacking as Kaguya's. Boruto, naively believing it was truly his doing, thought he had saved the day.
Thinking to himself, Sasuke also reached the top of the ruins. With no other ruins obstructing the view, the surrounding environment was completely exposed. However, the scene before him caused his brows to furrow, his pupils trembling in their sockets.
"How is this possible… What happened?!"
"What happened?" Boruto asked curiously, following closely behind.
But the next second, Boruto froze, pointing incredulously at the distant mountain. "Th-th-th-that's the Hokage Rock?"
"Why are there only six? Where did Dad's seventh Hokage Rock go? And the fifth one looks wrong, too, but I feel like I've seen it somewhere before…"
"It's Jiraiya." Sasuke's face was grim, but he still answered his companion's question.
"Jiraiya…" Boruto thought for a moment, then immediately remembered the photo he had seen. "Ah, I remember now—it's Dad's master! We still have a photo of them together at home! But it's strange, wasn't Dad's master deceased a long time ago? Why is there his Hokage Rock here…?"
Faced with Boruto's question, Sasuke didn't answer immediately. Instead, after once again confirming the surrounding terrain, he said in a deep voice, "Don't be surprised, Boruto. If I'm not mistaken, this is also Konoha, a different Konoha from our world."
"A world where Jiraiya agreed to become Hokage, but still couldn't escape his fate of death, and in the end, the village was destroyed by Pain."
Although he didn't have much information, Sasuke still managed to analyze a possibility based on the available information. After all, he had heard Naruto mention the Rōran Dragon Vein, which could travel through time and back to the past. So, the appearance of this turtle that could travel through worlds now made quite a bit of sense.
"Another world!!!" Boruto stared at him with a look that said, "Are you kidding me?" "You're not kidding me, are you? How could there be another world where people are the same but things are different? Wait, no…" Boruto suddenly looked at Sasuke with shining eyes. "Could this be the parallel universe and multiverse theory that's been all the rage lately?!"
"I didn't expect Mr. Sasuke to be so open-minded, unlike my dad—he doesn't know anything I say!"
"I'm not sure either." Sasuke frowned and shook his head solemnly. "Perhaps we've just fallen under a genjutsu like the Infinite Tsukuyomi."
Just as the two were talking, the turtle-shaped device that Boruto was holding made a sound.
"Warning! Warning!"
"Time travel has encountered unknown forces and deviated from its intended path. Target coordinates have been severely deviated from their orbit!"
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