Chapter 265: Tobitake Keigo

One year later, Tonbo moved through the forest east of Konoha.

He appeared upon a branch, vanished, and emerged from the neural pattern laid across a distant rock. The next transfer placed him between two cedars where a baby watched from a blanket beneath the trees.

Keigo's eyes widened each time his father disappeared. He tried to clap and produced only a delighted wave of both hands.

Tonbo stepped from the nearest pattern and lifted him.

"Was that impressive?"

Keigo answered with a triumphant sound and caught his collar.

He was Tonbo and Ayame's third child. Born after Tonbo's body had undergone years of Contact Evolution, he already seemed physically stronger and more alert than Tenyu and Maki had been at the same age. Tonbo knew a proud father could find genius in any stare, but the difference appeared often enough to hold his attention.

He swallowed a military ration pill while carrying the boy back toward the training area.

The stronger his body became, the more material and energy its changes required. Tonbo now needed concentrated food and medicine throughout the day. Greater endurance allowed faster evolution; faster evolution increased that endurance again. The cycle would continue until the biological information he had accumulated could offer his body nothing new.

Today's success expanded that information into movement.

His early neural transfer required one uninterrupted pathway. If the network broke, he could move signals only as far as the last living filament. By combining the technique with natural energy, he had learned to cross the gap between separated neural patterns.

The result resembled Flying Thunder God without belonging to the same system. Tonbo transformed his body along the information carried by his nerves and emerged from another prepared pattern. Because the method grew from his own network, it joined more naturally with the rest of his abilities.

It was also his first true senjutsu.

Natural energy bridged what ordinary chakra could not. That principle promised similar advances in his other techniques, though Tonbo doubted any descendant would reproduce the method at the same depth. They would need his affinity, his modified body, and the accumulated structure of his neural network.

He tested the transfer again with Keigo held close. The marks climbed over their clothing and skin, converted both bodies into the pattern, and rebuilt them inside the room prepared at home. The baby showed no fear. He looked back toward the place from which the forest should have followed, then laughed when he found only familiar walls.

Flying Thunder God crossed distance through a formula fixed to its destination. Tonbo's method used the nerves as both route and description. It demanded more of his own transformed body and less of a universal seal. That made it difficult to teach, but it also allowed him to carry the other functions of his network through the transfer instead of arriving with them disconnected.

The achievement should have eased his concern about the Ōtsutsuki. It did not.

For more than a year he had searched for Urashiki without finding a trace. The enemy might arrive after the Fourth Shinobi World War, during it, or at a point Tonbo's uncertain knowledge had never shown him. An Ōtsutsuki entering while every major nation fought elsewhere could destroy every plan built around remaining hidden.

Keigo began fussing in his arms.

"You miss your mother. I understand."

Tonbo formed a seal with one hand. Branching marks covered both of them, and the forest disappeared.

They emerged through a pattern on the floor of their home.

The transfer cost chakra freely, but chakra was no longer Tonbo's limiting resource. His evolved body produced immense physical energy, while Mind Reading and decades of mental training had strengthened the spiritual half required to refine it. His reserves now approached those of a tailed beast even without a separate amplification technique.

Naruto still possessed the greater natural inheritance. Tonbo's advantage came from keeping both halves of chakra in balance while his body changed. Every piece of information collected through Contact Evolution altered that balance, and every successful adjustment allowed the next change to proceed faster.

Ayame sat in the living room knitting a small shirt.

"You are making more clothes?" Tonbo asked. "We can buy them. I can make them with ninjutsu in minutes."

"Father hired enough people that there is almost nothing left for me at the shop," Ayame said. "And this is something I want to make for him."

Keigo reached toward the moving needles as though supporting her argument.

"My technique would also be paternal affection."

Ayame looked up.

Tonbo revised his position immediately. "I said you are an excellent wife."

The child laughed at the change in his voice.

Konoha had recovered steadily under Tsunade. The shinobi of Naruto's generation, apart from Naruto and Sasuke, had earned chūnin rank and begun leading small units. Rebuilt streets no longer carried the appearance of an emergency camp.

Chōji, Shikamaru, Ino, Kiba, Shino, Hinata, Neji, Lee, Tenten, and Sakura had not become identical officers merely because they shared a generation. Some led missions regularly; some divided field assignments with study; some specialized in work a standard three-person team could not perform. The common promotion marked Konoha's confidence that they could carry responsibility beyond following a jōnin.

Tonbo was preparing to leave the village's front line as well.

He trained Ino in the Analysis Team's full work: field collection, mental techniques, intelligence review, and command. Inoichi had once passed the unit to Tonbo; Tonbo intended to return it to the Yamanaka line through a successor who could actually perform the role. Ino continued studying medical ninjutsu under Tsunade while leading her own assignments.

The combination suited her clan techniques. Medical study taught her to recognize the damage a mind or body could sustain; Analysis taught her how quickly information became useless when separated from context. Tonbo expected her to make mistakes before taking the chair. He also expected her to learn faster than an outsider who possessed neither the Yamanaka arts nor her practical experience.

Tenyu and Maki would advance through the paths their abilities opened. Tonbo had already given them more instruction and more advantages than most children could receive. He did not need to place them in his chair as well.

At twenty-nine, the idea of retiring from ordinary operations pleased him. After the coming war, he wanted to create a Technology Development Bureau and bring Orochimaru and Kabuto into it. Researchers of their ability were too rare to discard if he could direct their work toward his own projects.

He still lacked one scientist.

Amado existed somewhere beyond Konoha's intelligence network. The name surfaced in Tonbo's uncertain knowledge of Kara, but every search found silence. None of the organization's important members had exposed themselves, and looking for a man before his work entered the public world meant searching without a trail.

The absence itself told him Kara understood concealment. Ordinary missing-nin left purchases, bodies, employers, or frightened witnesses behind. A scientific organization required laboratories, materials, and test subjects. If none appeared under the names Tonbo knew, Kara had either built a network deeper than Akatsuki's or had not yet placed those names at its surface.

Tonbo watched Keigo study the yarn in Ayame's hands.

If the boy's curiosity endured, the next great researcher might already be in the room.