Showdown! The Best of the Best

Chapter Twenty-One

Even though he knew it had only been a few days since he'd seen Konoha last, it felt like years had passed. The wind that bled through the Land of Fire ruffled his wild blonde hair knowingly as Boruto stood atop the Great Stone Faces, gazing out over the village he called home. Feeling a knot in his stomach, he clutched the amulet that Clockwork had given him that allowed him to come here. Stepping forward and wracking his brain, Boruto cursed silently to himself.

I have one hour, he thought worriedly. Who do I find to ask for help? 

His father was the obvious choice, Boruto realized. The Great Stone Face he currently stood on belonged to Naruto Uzumaki, the Seventh Hokage of Konohagakure, the Hidden Leaf Village. The shinobi sovereign, one of the world's most powerful living ninja, also happened to be his father. Quickly, though, Boruto realized that this idea was self-contradictory for obvious reasons. His father was almost always busy with the Herculean duties of running literally the entire village. Even a task as important as stopping Kris Kringle still came at the cost of risking life and limb. And Konoha could not afford to lose its Hokage. 

Not again.

Konohamaru-sensei? That idea made a little more sense. While he wasn't even close to the same league as Boruto's father, the young shinobi's teacher was a powerful ninja in his own right. Konohamaru led Team 7, Boruto's elite squad of shinobi, responsible for carrying out missions in service to the Leaf. It could work, Boruto knew, if he explained the situation to the elder ninja. However, there was the possibility that he was out on a mission of his own. After all, Konohamaru did sometimes run solo missions. 

Boruto knew his time was short. He needed someone that he knew would be available, beyond a shadow of a doubt. He couldn't spend the entire hour dashing about the village in search of random shinobi. There was an obvious choice here. Boruto knew at least two people who cared for him so deeply, who had fought beside him and watched him struggle and fail time after time, who he was almost sure would have his back. But was it the best idea?

Screw it, Boruto thought. When have I ever gone along with the best idea? 

And, with that, he vanished in a blur of movement, his mission resolute. 

Even now, after having spent so much time there, the scale of Ba Sing Se still baffled Toph. Still, it was hard to go unnoticed, even in a place as vast as the city of walls and secrets. And especially for someone like her. Toph was one of Team Avatar's founding members; though she had come on a bit later in the time of Avatar Aang's training, she had still aided him and his friends in saving the world. So, it figured that, on the way to the palatial tea shop known as the Jasmine Dragon, the prodigious Earthbender would be stopped more than a few times by familiar faces.

During these brief, cordial exchanges, Toph did her best to channel the bespoke upbringing thrust upon her in the Beifong family, in an attempt to be courteous and polite to those that had not seen her in quite some time. By the time a quarter of an hour had passed, however, she had grown impatient. One would-be friend of a friend that attempted to greet her suddenly had the ground beneath him shifted to one side, with the diminutive but fierce Earthbender storming irately past. Half an hour had already passed by the time she made it to the Jasmine Dragon. 

A familiar face awaited her at the tea shop's grand entrance. She knew this man. She had bonded with him on a journey, a long time ago. He'd been a stranger then, but that hadn't stopped him from making her tea and giving her several pieces of valuable, worldly advice. This man was so pure, so wise, so benevolent, that his only wish for the world to be in the aftermath of the One-Hundred Year War, was to re-open his tea shop.