Hello everyone! Welcome back to A Spark of Hope! I'm sorry for the long delay, I had to focus on academics (exams for majors and then thesis writing)!
Truth be told, I could have posted this last Sunday, but then a close friend and I had a sudden breakdown in communication (a fight out of the blue) while I was proofreading this chapter. It hurt a lot, and I think I had a mental health crisis over the next two days (Monday and Tuesday) where I could barely sleep or focus on my thesis and requirements. We're still not talking, and it seems she prefers it that way, so I've decided to let her be and leave the door open. If she comes back or apologizes or anything reconciliatory, then I'll welcome her back with open arms. If she doesn't, and that's the last time we ever spoke, I can't really do anything about that =(

So anyway, I'm feeling better now! And I got to submit the first draft of my thesis manuscript just a few hours ago! Midnight deadline, and I submitted 11:59 pm! Clutch XD

Enough of my life update and the totally unnecessary drama though! I truly hope you enjoy Chapter 2! Familiar faces abound ;)

Chapter 2: Explanations

He sighed in relief and let go of her arm. "Hey Sarada-"

In a heartbeat, Sarada wrapped her arms around Boruto and squeezed as tight as she could. Her hands were shaking while they kept him in a warm embrace. "B-Boruto… Y-You… You're actually here…"

He returned her hug, and for a short period of time that seemed far longer for them, they stayed there in silence, merely absorbing and enjoying each other's presence for the first time in years.

Finally, Boruto chuckled and told Sarada, "I'm glad I saw you out of the corner of my eye. I was passing by when I heard the commotion. At least I was able to stop you from seriously hurting anyone."

"It would have been better that way," Sarada huffed angrily. "They were insulting-"

"I know. I heard you yelling at them. But we don't want you to get into trouble, do we?"

"I suppose you're right… I don't want Lord Seventh to have to cover for me. I know he has so much to handle already."

"Is dad super stressed?"

"You bet! If I'm tired, he's a hundred times more exhausted than me, yet he's still working so hard. I'm just glad we can all rest tonight."

"What do you mean? Isn't there a party tonight?"

"Well yeah, there's a dinner at your place… Wait a minute…" Sarada then realized something. "Oh! That's why Lord Seventh made me promise to go tonight, why he wants everyone to be there later! Because you're back! You were going to be a surprise!"

Boruto laughed and ran his hands through the hair on the back of his head. "I told Mom and Dad and Hima to keep it a secret. It would be a huge shock to you and everyone else when I suddenly appear at dinner tonight."

"Definitely. And I'm still sure that nobody else knows yet."

"Well… I did see Iwabe a few minutes ago."

"Oh, really? Did you two get to chat?"

"No, he was surveying the land for the new suburbs they're building. It looked like an extension project of the city?"

Sarada asked him, "North side, right?" Boruto nodded, and Sarada continued her train of thought. "Yeah, Konoha is growing faster and faster, and we need to keep up with the population growth with more living spaces. But I didn't know Iwabe was working there right now. That's cool."

"I don't know if he saw me. He seemed pretty occupied. But yeah, we'll see later tonight…"

He took a long look at the dark side street they were in. "You know, this is the same alleyway where I met Denki all those years back, just before we all entered the Academy. I beat up several kids who were bullying him." The blonde shinobi smiled while reminiscing. "Speaking of Denki, I was on my way to his place."

Sarada asked, "Really? Why exactly?"

"I need to hand this thing off to him." Boruto pulled a blue and yellow USB from his pocket and showed it to Sarada. "Also, he told me he needed to inform me in person about something important, though he didn't really explain. He just promised it would be interesting and relevant, that it's best if he spoke to me in person about it."

"Well, he's not at Kaminarimon Building right now, I can tell you that."

"Huh? Where is he then?"

"In a lab at the university. It's where he does physics experiments and the like. Incidentally, I was heading there too. I was going to meet up with Wasabi and Namida for our therapy session. But Namida hasn't messaged me back, so they're probably not be free yet."

"You want to come with me to Denki first?"

Giving it some thought, Sarada noted that Wasabi and Namida were most likely still busy, while she had nothing else important to do. So she nodded. "Okay, let's go to Denki first, and after that we can go look for Wasabi and Namida there."

The two old friends headed towards the university, the gate of which Sarada estimated was perhaps a five-minute walk from where they were.

While they were walking, she asked, "Where's my dad, by the way?"

"He went ahead back home. He thought you and Aunt Sakura would both be there. Don't worry though. He'll be there at the dinner tonight."

"That makes me even more excited to go tonight." She sighed. "And I'm just glad you're here. I haven't seen you and Dad in so long, and I didn't know when you'd be back."

"Same… I'm sort of relieved to be back in Konoha. I was worried being back here would bring up horrible memories or things like that, but I'm okay so far. And also, just to let you know, we're here to stay."

"I suppose I'll have to get used to you and your antics again," Sarada joked lightheartedly. "But tell me, how have you been since the last letter? Like, where did you and Dad stay?"

"Last letter was back in May," Boruto recalled to himself. "So since two months ago… We were in Oto in the Land of Sound. We stayed there for about a month and a half… and it was free because Orochimaru paid for it. You know, cause Master Sasuke is basically his representative in the Shinobi Union and all that, not to mention them going way back."

"Yeah, with Team Taka right? Dad, Aunt Karin, Suigetsu, and Jugo?"

He nodded. "Speaking of them, I met the families of Karin and Suigetsu. Their kids are actually around our age, believe it or not!"

"Really? Ohh, I want to meet them too! What are their names?"

"A… Hmm… Their names… Umm, hehehe…" He swallowed and scratched his head. "Uhh…" The blonde shinobi snapped his fingers, his face straining in thought. "Shit, I'm blanking out."

"Really Boruto?" Sarada reacted with faux-disappointment. "You can't even remember their names?"

"It wasn't as if I spent the entire two months with them," He shrugged. "I was only with them for a couple of days, you know?"

"And besides, you were never really good with names," Sarada pointed out. "I'm so fucking happy Kirara chose Kirakira and not your suggestion. Tiger Festival, am I right?"

"After all these years, you still haven't gotten over that?" He sighed and raised his hands above his head. "That was like six years ago!"

"Yeah, I'll never forget you suggesting 'Tiger Festival' as a name. It's that bad!" She stifled more laughs before jesting, "I'm one hundred percent sure it's a name that doctors would slap you for trying to use on your kids."

The two childhood friends cackled together as they neared the tall red walls surrounding Konoha University. They entered through the familiar main entrance gate of their old Academy, passing by black and white signs that read, "No Firearms Allowed".

"There are so many new buildings," Boruto said in awe as he looked around his former campus and its current students that were roaming about. He smiled, for he remembered the many special and precious moments he and his friends had in their Academy days, albeit limited to the original Academy Building and the training fields behind it. The sites on which these newer buildings now stood used to be green fields or cordoned-off excavated areas, and so they were not as memorable to him.

"The demand for more specialized jobs rose," Sarada told him what she had learned, "and so did the demand for all these different courses and majors. And when Lord Seventh signed the law that made college education in Konoha University free, students from across the country and abroad jumped on the chance to get better paying jobs and a better life. You'll find colleges of all sorts here now. College of Education, College of Engineering, College of Social Sciences, College of Arts and Humanities… I could go on…"

They passed through a large flock of college students that was both converging and diverging at the front steps of a prominent, long, five-story tall building. It was the College of Social Sciences, according to the metallic blue sign by the foot of the steps. The students were wearing casual clothing and had backpacks or handbags with their academic supplies. There were also some students and guards that were bringing in microphones, electrical equipment, and instruments such as drums and sousaphones.

"We'll pass by some food stalls," she informed him as they rounded the corner. "Do you want to catch a bite?"

"I've already eaten. But if you want to, we can stop and eat for a bit."

"I ate lunch before today's war conference began," she told him as they turned the corner, the food stalls brimming with students coming into view to them. There were hundreds of students there relaxing, lining up, hanging out, sitting on stone benches or makeshift tables or inside wooden roofed huts. They were eating various rice meals, noodles with steamed dumplings, fish balls, and squid balls, among many other dishes.

"It's a good thing we're not hungry right now," Sarada chuckled. "With that many people, it'll take forever for us to get our orders."

Boruto followed behind Sarada as she walked through the crowded path, crossed a street, and passed through a gate in a chain-link fence into a heavily forested area. "Where-"

"This is the Arboretum Path," Sarada explained as the path turned from unequally spaced stone stairs to stone steps, and from those stepping-stones to gravel. "It's a shortcut to Physics."

"Okay then, I'm just following you."

They walked under the shade of the leafy trees of the arboretum. The birds chirped their songs from their nests high above. The gravel crunched under their feet as they walked by. Several students rushed past them for their next classes, kicking up pebbles and displacing them onto the tall grass along the path.

The path itself forked to different destinations multiple times, each fork having corresponding wooden signs that denoted the trails to the Institutes of Biology, of Microbiology and Biotechnology, of Chemistry, of Mathematics, and of Physics.

"All of these institutes have their own buildings now?" Boruto reminisced further. "Wow… I remember them being at the Academy Building when we still studied here."

"The STEM courses moved away from our old building once the demand for courses soared. It was simply high time for it. The former wings couldn't fit everyone. Not to mention, the Chemistry and Physics wings were burned down during the Kara Offensive. So they just constructed brand new buildings for each institute."

They made their way out of the arboretum and onto the road by the Institute of Biology. "Over there," she pointed whilst walking to a brownish circular building that was four stories tall. "That's where Denki is… By the way, what's in the USB?"

"That actually is supposed to be top-secret. But since Denki is circumventing the system, and also since you're going to be with us anyway, that's not really an issue."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It's the full Gozu Tennou manuscript inside this. Your father had it with him for guidance for easier traveling between dimensions and brand-new locations. Denki needs it for something, so I'm giving it to him."

Sarada smiled and shook her head. "I knew he wanted to get the Gozu Tennou, but Sai-sensei denied his requests several times, precisely because it's supposed to be top-secret and all that."

"I mean, I'm sure we can trust him, right?"

"Yeah, of course we can."

As they arrived at the Institute of Physics and entered the lobby, Sarada waved to the female guard at the reception table. "Hi, is Denki Kaminarimon in?"

"Give me one moment to check," the guard enthusiastically replied as she checked a logbook. "Yes, he's here. He's at Room 306 right now."

"Great, thank you." Sarada smiled and briskly walked up the stairs, two steps at a time, with Boruto keeping up beside her.

"He's doing some science experiment here, isn't he?"

Sarada giggled silently and smirked, though she made sure Boruto didn't notice.

"He has no clue what's about to happen…" She thought to herself as they got to the third floor landing.

Room 306 was only two rooms away from the stairwell, so it was easily visible. And as soon as Boruto got there, he immediately opened the sliding door. He shouted, "Hey De-"

An entire classroom full of young students suddenly turned their puzzled faces towards him. Boruto swallowed and began to step away, his face now flushed with embarrassment.

"Umm sorry, I think I got the wrong room-"

"BIG BRO?" Boruto immediately recognized the voice. He scanned the class and quickly found his younger sister, grinning and waving wildly at him whilst sitting beside her teammates, the purple-haired Yuina and the raven-haired Eho, as well as Ryogi, who waved to him as well. His face grew red as a rose in humiliation.

"H-Hi Hima!" He stammered and took a step back, preparing to disappear even before the professor could tell him off. "I'm so sorry to interrupt, everyone-"

"You always knew how to make an entrance," another familiar voice sighed. Following the voice, Boruto finally recognized his old friend in front of the class, facing the whiteboard, calmly placing his black, blue, and red markers down on the table beside him. "You always found ways to disturb our class too…"

Denki Kaminarimon turned to face the doorway, his face lit up with a bright smile. "It's really nice to see you again, Boruto."

For a few seconds, Boruto was stunned silent, wondering if this was real or another one of the hallucinations his mind was prone to having. But Sarada gently pushed him inside the classroom and snapped him back to reality. "Good afternoon, Professor Denki."

"Good afternoon!" Denki greeted back to Sarada. "Now please, go and sit wherever you'd like. There are some chairs at the back you can use."

Denki then addressed his class. "My students, for those of you who don't know, these are two of my oldest and dearest friends: Boruto Uzumaki, son of Lord Seventh, and Sarada Uchiha, the presumptive Lady Ninth. I've fought with both of them in countless occasions, chief among them being the Battle of Mount Tirad. They are excellent ninjas. The are heroes… And more importantly and relevantly for our class, they'll be sitting in with us today."

"…Wait what?"

Everyone else inside the classroom shared in an extended bout of laughter at Boruto's reaction, until Denki gestured for order and attention.

"Anyway, back to today's lesson. It's a good thing that we're only ten minutes into class, less things for me to recap." He turned to Ryogi. "Ryogi, based on your notes, where were we before our friends came in?"

"Current research into fonon theory… evolving from the earlier elemental theory," Ryogi read his notes aloud.

"Huh?" Boruto interrupted, the confusion obvious in his voice. "I don't remember taking this up back then."

Denki smiled. "Well to put it simply, our physics curriculum had a sort of revolution while you were away. No need to worry though. At the very least, I'm sure you still recall elemental theory."

"Water, Wind, Fire, Earth, and Lightning," Sarada listed down. "Those are the five fundamental elements, right? The basic styles we use most often for our jutsus?"

"Yes," Denki answered her. "Those are five of the seven fonons."

"So," Boruto concluded, "the other two are the Yin and Yang styles?"

"Not quite," Denki clarified. "I'll explain in more detail as we go along, but Yin and Yang, being Light and Darkness, are two sides of the same coin."

"Okay, one more thing though. What are fonons again? I know I've heard you and Namida talking about them before, but I never got to know what they are."

"Do you remember Namida's Sound Style Jutsus? The ones she called Fonic Hymns? Those are connected to our topic now. Lord Orochimaru and I did some more research on it, this new model of chakra combined with quantum mechanics, and what we've learned is what we're teaching now."

The young professor turned back to the whiteboard to write. "So our New Standard Model… Fonons… I prefer to spell it with an f, but using ph instead of an f is also acceptable…"

He turned back to facing his students. "To be exact in definition, fonons are permutations and excitations in the all-permeating quantum fields that transcend and connect the dimensions of our universe." He saw the faces of his students starting to contort in confusion, their eyebrows furrowing, their mouths agape. He let out a nervous-sounding laugh in an attempt to reassure them. "But don't worry, I won't go any deeper into detail. The last thing I want to do is to overload your minds with information. I can already sense that I've scared most of you off from pursuing theoretical physics degrees."

The class burst into a few seconds of mirthful giggles, and Denki patiently waited for them to settle back down once more. "So for this class, I want you to simply think of them as analogous to waves, to ripples in water, or as vibrations on strings. The last one I mentioned is actually pretty related to where the term phonon comes from. Phonons, emphasis on the ph, are packets of sound and heat energy that are present in all modes of vibrations and waves, similar to how photons are the packets of energy present in light and in electromagnetic radiation."

He pointed back to the two similar words he had written on the board. "That's why I prefer to distinguish fonon from phonon. Phonons are the packets of energy. Fonons on the other hand are the excitations themselves, from which we can harness and manipulate energy in the form of our chakra. We can list them down. We already know most of the basic ones, anyway."

He pressed some keys on his laptop, awakening the digital video projector that hung from the ceiling. Within a few seconds, his organized slideshow flashed onto the clear section of whiteboard. "Fire, mostly heat and combustion, and some heat-related plasma states. Water, mostly associated with liquid water, but it could be extended to anything having to do with the liquid state of matter. Lightning, related to electrons, electricity, and electric plasmas. Wind, anything having to do with the gaseous state. Earth, anything related to the solid state of matter. And Light, the electromagnetic spectrum of light, as well as its absence, its opposite in Darkness; as I mentioned a few minutes ago, they're merely two sides of the same coin, two extreme ends of the same spectrum."

Denki paused and turned to his class. "Everyone still with me? Feel free to ask any questions, okay?"

Himawari was furiously jotting down what she saw from the slides and from what Denki was saying onto her notebook, while her teammates and Ryogi took glances at her notes from time to time to copy and summarize the important concepts. Denki took that as his cue to wait a few seconds before moving onto the next slide.

"Alright… And then, there's the most recently confirmed one: the Seventh Fonon, Sound. Sound, or vibration in general, is a wave or disturbance in any medium it can propagate through. These transmission mediums include air, water, earth, metal, electric currents, plasma, energy fields, and even in light."

He then emphasized, "This makes the seventh fonon unique in that it can take effect and travel through most useful mediums, the only exception being vacuums, empty space."

"Again, I don't want to make things too complicated for you. So to simplify as much as I can, I'll give this analogy: Just as each type of force has a corresponding force field, such as gravity and gravitational fields, each type of chakra or fonon has its own field of fonons, its own string-like dimension, its own medium of propagation. The various subsets of chakra manipulation and elements, such as the rare and exotic ones like lava style, explosion style, crystal style, and wood style, can all be explained by using combinations and overlaps of these seven base fonons. On a side note, this new model of chakra also predicts currently undiscovered styles, so more lab tests and research are still needed to confirm their existence…"

*******XXXXXXX*******

"Okay, that will do it for today," Denki breathed a sigh of relief. "If there are no more questions, see you guys next week! Happy weekend!"

"Thank you Sir Denki!" Most of the students picked up their already-packed up bags and began filing out of the room.

On the other hand, Ryogi, Himawari, and Yuina stayed behind to clean the whiteboard with the erasers, while Eho collected the litter on the floor and threw it in the trash bins along the hallway. Sarada sat on one of the chairs on the front row, typing messages to Namida and Wasabi on her phone. And Boruto leaned on the professor's table next to Denki, who was putting his laptop and its charger into his bag.

"Since when did you start teaching?" Boruto asked his longtime friend.

"Last year," Denki answered him, "after I published my research with Orochimaru and our proposed new model of chakra. I'm surprised you didn't hear about it."

"I don't know. I might have heard something about it, but maybe I forgot about it because of the training Uncle Sasuke and I had. Or maybe I thought it was a dream? I don't think my mind is the most reliable for distinguishing reality from fantasy anymore."

Denki paused. "You still see her, don't you? Sumire?"

Boruto huffed a deep sigh upon hearing Denki ask. "Yeah, I do."

"Don't worry, you're not insane." Denki slung his bag onto his shoulder. "I see her in a few of my own dreams too. She would give me some ideas to try, some theories to test. She'd listen to me explain my new discoveries, help organize my thoughts, and provide connections with other relevant topics that I hadn't thought of yet. Of course, I'm sure it's my own unconscious doing that for me, but I find it fun to think she's actually the one talking to me."

"I… Same. I'm happy and content with thinking of her as always being by my side."

Denki tilted his head slightly. "Is she here right now for you?"

Boruto looked to his sides to check. "No, not right now. I don't mean literally always, but I see her and talk to her a whole lot. Like, every night?"

Denki nodded and embraced Boruto, who quickly returned it. "Everything will be okay," Denki reassured him, patting his back.

As the two old friends separated from their hug, Sarada approached. "I just spoke with Namida. I asked if Wasabi's speech is done."

Denki reacted with anticipation. "Ooooh, how is she doing?"

"It hasn't started yet. There were a couple of delays due to technical difficulties, and some of the speakers before her went long."

"Then what time will you and those two lovebirds meet up?"

"Namida says that Wasabi is hoping to begin speaking within the next 30 minutes, and her speech should go on for about 10 to 15 minutes."

"So you guys have at least a half hour to talk to me? That should be enough." The young shinobi-turned-professor turned to Himawari and the others. "You've helped the janitors a lot. Now, let's go."

They left the classroom and walked down the hallway, the concrete walls of which were colored beige for the top half and red for the bottom half.

"Denki," Himawari asked, dispensing with the normal manner of how students address their professors because they were already good friends beforehand. "How rare exactly is Sound Style? How rare are its users?"

"It's exceedingly rare. Only a handful of people who are capable of using Sound Style or manipulating the sound-vibration fonon have been documented in scientific literature."

"And we just so happen to know one of those people," Sarada spoke with a smile.

Denki nodded back, knowing exactly whom Sarada was referring to. "Yup, Namida. You're hanging out with them later for your therapy session, right? Namida and Wasabi?"

"Yeah, we'll go and see Miss Saito today."

Meanwhile, Yuina lamented, "Too bad she's no longer an active kunoichi. I would have wanted to watch her unique sound and singing jutsus in action."

Himawari told her teammate, "Now that I think about it, it's a good thing I was able to watch her sound style jutsus… That was back when Kara attacked Konoha three years ago."

"Hold on, wait, hold on," Boruto pleaded. "What happened to Namida? And when did it happen?"

"After you left the village," Sarada told him, "she was honorably discharged, as were a lot of our friends. We'll tell you more about it later."

They arrived at Denki's lab room, where he would often stay in between classes, and so they stopped in front of the door. "We'll go on ahead," Himawari told them.

"Wait," Denki asked, "what time is the dinner party again?"

"Seven o'clock onwards," Sarada answered.

"Hmm, I might be a bit late, but I'll be there for sure!"

Himawari grinned. "Nice! See you guys at the house tonight!"

"I'm so excited!" The bright blue eyes of Yuina shone. "I haven't been over at your place in a while!"

"We'll have some drinks tonight," a chuckling Ryogi added as he, Himawari, Yuina, and Eho continued down the hallway to the stairs.

"Now I understand why your father invited all of us over for dinner," Denki told Boruto as he opened the door to his lab room. "It was to celebrate your return."

"Yeah," Boruto laughed. "I told them to keep it a secret, so you'd all be surprised when out of nowhere, I'd walk down the stairs."

Denki and Sarada joined him in laughter, with Sarada guaranteeing, "If word doesn't come out, everyone else will be so shocked. They might even mob you out of sheer happiness."

"I don't know about that. Himawari knows, and for sure she'll tell Inojin. Inojin might tell Shikadai and Chocho. If it gets to Chocho… well, it won't be much of a secret anymore, would it?"

Denki snickered and placed his laptop bag on his desk and then proceeded to turn on his own supercomputer, which occupied roughly a fourth of the entire room's space. Above the slight whirring of the freshly activated cooling fans, he assured, "Still, everyone will be so happy to see you again, regardless of the shock factor."

"I guess you're right… Anyway, you wanted this, right?" The Uzumaki pulled the USB out from his pocket and showed it to Denki. "The entire manuscript of the Gozu Tennou is in this."

"Thank you so much!" Denki smiled and breathed deeply. "Sarada knows this, but I've asked several times to be allowed to see it. I was rebuffed every time because it's a high-level state secret and because we're in a time of war. Ugh, I need to see the entire thing, not just the combined seven pages of mostly blacked out sentences that I could find online."

He then imitated the voice of the clerk he had talked to. "Oh I'm so sorry, Sir Kaminarimon, but this document is TC-SCI: Top Secret and Sensitive Compartmented Information. You don't have the required rank or authorization to see it."

"Yeah," Sarada added, "that means that only the government higher-ups, like Lord Seventh and Sai-sensei can have access to the information. They're afraid of the information getting out to the public and falling into the wrong hands."

"Do you have access to it? You're close with Lord Seventh, after all."

Sarada shrugged. "Maybe? I just never thought of asking, sorry."

"Nah, it's fine."

Boruto handed over the device, and so Denki proceeded to plug it into his supercomputer. "This might take a while to scan."

"In the meantime," Sarada requested, "can you explain your new model of chakra and fonons further? Like, if you want, you can go more in-depth with what you found in your research."

"You mean the New Standard Model?"

"Yes. I found it interesting, seeing how even our understanding of chakra itself has changed with the advancement of science and technology."

"Okay," Denki obliged with a slight chuckle. "First of all, according to modern string theory, there should be eleven dimensions in our universe."

Boruto immediately put his hands to his eyes and cheeks. "I'll ask you to stop," he joked. "I felt my brain breaking just by hearing you say that."

"Hahaha… Sarada said I should give more details, and I was simplifying it the best I could too." Denki continued his explanation, "Now, we have our three normal spatial dimensions: up-down, forward-backward, and left-right, also called the X, Y, and Z directions. We also have one dimension for time, and those four dimensions are what constitute spacetime. Then, we have seven more spatial dimensions, but they're pretty miniscule, to say the least. Each of these dimensions has their own quantum fields. One quantum field for each fonon: the Fields of Fonons. The seven fonons, the seven basic types of chakra that we're able to manipulate, we discussed those in the lecture. Now, I need to emphasize how small these seven dimensions are. They are very, very, very tiny spatial dimensions, near Planck's Scale tiny."

"Planck's… Scale?"

"Planck Length in this case, cause Planck Scales can also refer to Planck Time and Planck Energy, among others. But yeah, Planck Length; ten to the negative 35 meters, which is basically as small as small can get without the laws of physics losing their meaning. It's not the smallest possible length, but we just can't be sure what happens at anything smaller. But going back to the main point, these tiny dimensions can be open-ended or close-looped, making them comparable to strings in classical physics. Hence, String Theory."

Sarada asked, "So what did you present to the Institute of Physics? Like physical proof of the eleven dimensions? And how it affects chakra use?"

"Not physical or photographic proof, if that's what you were asking about. But Lord Orochimaru and I were able to approximate the theoretical energy functions of these string dimensions by getting their eigenvalues, their natural frequencies. And then we were able to approximate the ones for their combinations using Fourier Series Analysis."

"In short and simple terms, the energy values we came up for the seven fonons and their resonant combinations in our theory were pretty close to the measured real-life energy values for the basic elements, like Water-style, and the combinations too, like Wood Style. The Institute quickly had other groups follow up on our study to confirm our findings. Their results were also within the margin of error, so our theory has passed these tests."

Denki sighed lightly and ruffled his black hair. "And here I am now, one of the youngest professors in the university, teaching a subject I may have just made a lot harder for the younger students."

"You're a good teacher," Boruto reassured him. "Sarada and I were able to understand, and your slideshow helped a lot."

"Boruto's right," Sarada replied. "Your students were paying attention to you, and you held their attention enough with your jokes and your step-by-step approach to the problem solving."

"Awww… Thanks, both of you."

"Also, my little sis kept up with her note taking. Everyone else around her was copying notes from her. No bad teacher could ever inspire that kind of focus or zeal in a class."

Denki nodded to Boruto. "She's probably the most studious in my class. Second would be Ryogi."

"Great professors beget great students," Sarada summarized.

"I'm sure that also applies to you and Lord Seventh," Denki pointed out to Sarada, and then similarly to Boruto, "and to you and Uncle Sasuke."

"Ohh by the way," Boruto remembered, "you said that there was something really important that you wanted to talk to me about? It's why you wanted me and Sasuke to come back, aside from the Gozu Tennou?"

"Yes… Hmm, how should I begin?" He paused and looked away for a few seconds, and so the room was left in near-silence apart from the continuous humming of the supercomputer behind Denki. "Okay… I had a dream recently. A dream about physics, about antimatter in particular."

"You have dreams of physics?" Sarada's eyes grew wider behind her red-rimmed glasses. "That sounds amazing, if not mind-melting."

"Hahaha… It's a little bit of both, in fairness."

"Antimatter?" Boruto expounded from what he knew. "The opposite charged particle of normal matter?"

"Yes. In fact, antimatter is merely matter going backwards in time, something that is corroborated with the math of the physics involved."

"They are fundamentally opposite, matter and antimatter," Denki continued. "But separately, they act in the same manner, as if there's no difference. However, when they come together and interact, they produce a tremendous amount of energy according to the famous equation, e=mc2."

"…What exactly does that have to do with you wanting me here?"

"In short, they annihilate, releasing all that tremendous energy outwards." He sighed. "And I've been thinking over the past few days that it could have been what Sumire did."

"Sumire," Boruto wondered aloud, "used antimatter? What do you mean? How?"

"It would make sense though," Sarada concurred, "given how massive that explosion was that night…"

"It's just a theory," Denki said. "I haven't really done any deep research on it because I don't know the inner workings of her Gozu Tennou. I don't know what it's capable of. I don't know much about how dark chakra works, or how Nue would store energy in itself."

He continued, "But hypothetically speaking, if Sumire's Gozu Tennou seal was able to convert chakra or energy into antimatter, if it had an internal mechanism and a sort of sealed container for such a purpose, then she could have used it for purposes such as annihilation and turning back time…" He glanced at Sarada, and they nodded to each other, exchanging knowing expressions.

Boruto shook his head. "What even-"

"Because antimatter is itself," Sarada explained even before Boruto finished his question, "just matter going backwards in time."

"What's all this about?" Boruto's frustrated voice rose. "What's all this about Sumire and antimatter and turning time backwards?"

"Boruto," Denki informed him while still keeping his calm demeanor, "Wasabi talked to me about Sumire doing just that. Do you still remember the third day of the Battle of Mount Tirad? On that day, Sumire performed a jutsu that forced time backwards, however for only a brief moment, and only within a small localized area."

Much to Boruto's disbelief, Sarada corroborated Denki's story. "In doing so, she saved Wasabi and Namida. But she lost control and caused the explosion and avalanche on the Hod Pass that day. That's what halted any further assault up through the Hod Pass, not enemy cannon fire like they told everyone else… At least, that's what I remember hearing when I eavesdropped on you guys."

There was a long period of heavy silence inside the room.

"Denki," Boruto finally spoke, "if you're telling me it's possible to turn back time… Can you send me back three years to save her?"

"No." Denki shot his proposal down, shaking his head vehemently. "Absolutely not. Just hypothetically, for you to go back in time, you'd need to be in control of, or struck by, either a massive quantity of energy or enough particles with loads of momentum, enough to turn the very matter that makes you what you are… into antimatter. The catch is, you'd have no shot of surviving that energy surge or particle stream. And even if you somehow survived your entire body turning into antimatter all at once, it would instantly react with the matter around you; with the chair you're sitting on, the ground your feet are on, the air you're breathing right now. You'd destroy everything within a kilometer's radius of this place and seriously damage the rest of Konoha."

"Then why would you even suggest that Sumire could do this, if it's actually impossible?"

"Impossible for you and the rest of us. But I can speculate that the Gozu Tennou seal, and by extension Nue, could possess internal mechanisms for the necessary matter-energy conversions and for separating matter from antimatter to ensure its stability. Or it could have done it independently of Sumire, meaning she herself didn't turn into antimatter, but the seal contained it and had some shielding from normal matter to avoid instant annihilation. I don't know. That's the entire reason why I want to see the full Gozu Tennou!"

He then further suggested, "And maybe we could figure out more if we find Nue, if we can get him back here."

"Unfortunately," Sarada told him, "Nue died in the explosion at Mount Tirad. And we never found its body. It must have been vaporized-"

"No Sarada. Nue is alive and well."

Another heavy, unsure silence descended on them, and it was only broken by Sarada's question a few seconds after.

"But wasn't Nue tied to Sumire's life force?"

"In a way, yes, through the Gozu Tennou."

Boruto then questioned him, "Then how can you say Nue is alive?"

"With these." Denki pulled out his phone from his pocket, opened it, and showed it to them. "Scroll right."

They saw pictures of what appeared to be an odd, tiny creature burrowing in the snow. It was a creature with a snakelike tail, tiger-patterned skin, a white mane, and a pair of glowing yellowish eyes.

It was unmistakable.

It was Nue.

"These are photos captured from recent security footage. It's from an area near the Rem Fortress," Denki explained. "A contact of mine there sent me these less than three days ago."

"Then… if Nue is alive…" Boruto's eyes grew wide. "Is she… still alive?"

Denki shook his head before standing up to check on the progress of the Gozu Tennou file rendering on his supercomputer. "I don't know if we can say that."

It was Sarada's turn to speculate. "Perhaps she released Nue from their contract before her death?"

"That is a possibility. But anyway, we're going back to Mount Tirad next week for the commemoration, right? Maybe we could spare some time then to look for Nue? We could also tell the others about it later tonight."

"Sounds good," Sarada responded with a smile, while Boruto slowly nodded in agreement.

Sooo... how was it? Perhaps there were some questions answered? Well, the chapter is named "Explanations" for a reason XD
Of course, not all questions can be answered right now, so stick around for the rest of the story! The next chapter, Chapter 3: "Slow-Healing Wounds", will come out next week! Wasabi and Namida will be there, along with several other characters from the first story!
PS: Maybe not Sunday because this comes out today (late Friday night/early Saturday morning), but maybe next Sunday? Hehehe ^_^

If you liked this chapter, or if you loved certain parts or lines, feel free to leave comments and kudos! ^_^