Chapter 8:
Unable to find Shino or the chocolate in the classroom, Boruto and Chocho went to the teacher's office to look. There they found Shino at his desk with the chocolate resting on top of the papers he was grading.
"I can grab it easy," said Boruto.
He crawled behind Shino's chair and reached to get it.
"What are you doing?" Shino asked without turning around.
Boruto pulled his arm back and tucked himself into a ball.
Shino peered down at him. "Boruto? What are you doing?"
He knew there was no point in trying to hide or sneak away. He stood up and got right to the point. "Uh… That box on your desk. Can I have it?"
Shino looked behind him and back at Boruto. He picked it up and handed it to him. "This?"
Boruto snatched it away. "Yes! Thank you." He showed it to Chocho. "This is it, right?"
She hurried over and checked the box. "Everything looks intact."
"I haven't gotten to it yet," Shino confessed. "Is there a problem?"
Both Boruto and Chocho breathed a sigh of relief.
"We just had to make sure you didn't eat any of this," said Boruto. "It was accidently poisoned."
Chocho smacked him. "Don't tell him that!"
"Poison?" Shino straightened up in his chair. "What kind of poison?"
"It's not important. We're handling it."
"My insects can break down many kinds of poison, so I probably would have been fine. What I want to know is how this happened."
Boruto didn't want to involve any of the adults, keen on doing this with his friends since they had a better understanding of it and a reluctance to get in trouble, so he just grinned and insisted everything was under control.
Shino wasn't having any of it. "If there's a problem, then I need to be informed so I can…"
Shikadai rushed into the office and wedged himself between Shino and his friends. "We were trying to be discreet," he told Shino. "Turns out this was intended for someone else and Chocho got embarrassed. I told Boruto it would be stupid to say it was poisoned but he thought it was the best way to get you to give it back without a fuss."
The clever lie seemed to work as Shino relaxed a little, scanning the faces of his students. Since Boruto was the one who said it was poisoned and Chocho scolded him for saying that and how she seemed relieved to find that the chocolate hadn't been eaten, Shino decided to believe it. It did make the most sense.
Relieved they managed to prevent someone from eating the chocolate, the group left the school to search for the remaining two, hoping it would be just as easy.
It was so much fun to harass Boruto all morning. Watching his pain and misery brought Mitsuki such joy. It was so amusing to watch his teammate scream and get flustered.
Musing over the malice he carried for both his teammates brought words of such loathing and hurt to his lips. Their reactions to his contempt and honest lust for verbal and psychological torture was his way of finding twisted pleasure and venting his disdain for the two of them.
He wanted them to know just how little he thought of them. How pathetic and idiotic and irritating they were.
Having vented such things helped at the moment but now he was left with the heat of his hatred searing into his flesh.
He wasn't satisfied. Not in the slightest.
Their faces, their voices, the knowledge they would still be on the same team even after being insulted so highly.
The pain and inconveniences along with the insults weren't enough the slate is scorn. He had to do more.
"I hate him. I hate him." Mitsuki could feel his body heating up, every muscle in his body tense as he thought of them. "I hate him so much. I can't stand him. I hate him."
He would never be satisfied until Boruto was erased from this world. He had to be the one to do it. Letting someone else do it for him would leave him unsatisfied. Only by going after Boruto himself could he be gratified.
After leaving the school, the group thought it would be best to look for the delivery boy before going after Iwabe. Boruto suggested they split up to look for both at the same time but a noise distracted them.
A teenager was in a shouting match with his employer in the middle of the street. The adult was trying to calm him down but the more the boy shouted, the shorter the adult's temper became.
"That's him," said Chocho, pointing. "That's the delivery boy I gave the chocolate to."
"I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say he ate it."
"We just have to get him to eat salt, right?" asked Boruto.
"I don't get why it's salt that reverses it," said Inojin. "Wouldn't something bitter also work? I mean, if we're talking opposites."
"Never mind that right now," said Sarada. "We can grab some salt from inside that restaurant."
"Way ahead of you," said Shikadai, holding something up. "I snagged this from your place, Inojin. They're salt tablets. I figured your mom wouldn't mind too much."
He poured the contents of the small bottle into his hand to count how many they had. There were only five in the bottle. They could make do with that amount.
"Should we hold him down and shove it down his throat?" Boruto asked, getting ready for a fight with the delivery boy.
"He's not a shinobi, so we have to be careful not to hurt him too much," said Shikadai. "On the other hand, he's probably irrational. We need to be careful, Boruto."
Figuring a civilian would be easy to overpower, Boruto took charge and ordered everyone to tackle the teen and pry open his mouth. Unfortunately, he was the only one to do it. Everyone else stood by to form a plan.
Boruto tackled the boy around the middle which was only powerful enough to knock him off balance and into the wall. He grabbed the back of Boruto's jacket and flung him to the ground one-handed.
"Just as I thought," said Sarada, watching. "With that kind of rage, he's bound to be stronger than usual and easily riled into a frenzy. That's why we need to form a plan before attacking."
Rolling his eyes, Shikadai tried to think of a solution that would be simple and easy. The only thing throwing him off was the teen's unpredictability. Even an enemy he's never faced before could be figured out because they were rational. If the teen was going to behave like a wild animal, it might be best to treat him like one.
"Don't you walk away from me!" the teen shouted at his boss who tried to retreat into the restaurant. "We're not done!"
Boruto grabbed the boy's ankle to hold him back but the boy kicked him and stormed into the restaurant.
More shouting ensued, then clattering. Boruto raced to the door to find the teen throwing things at his boss and shouting nonsense.
Worried the teen might go for one of the utensils next, Boruto pushed his way inside past the other employees standing around gawking and pulled the teen back with both hands.
"Snap out of it!" Boruto shouted. "This isn't you!"
"Screw you, brat!" He took a swing at Boruto's head but he climbed up the boy's back and straddled his shoulders. He claws at Boruto's legs but couldn't pull him off.
"Boruto!" Shikadai shouted from the door and threw the bottle of salt tablets to him.
Knowing they might need the rest, Boruto caught the bottle one-handed and took out one tablet. He tried to get it in the boy's mouth but he kept moving. He finally managed to get it in his mouth, nearly getting bitten in the process.
Rather than swallow it, the teen spat it out and twisted his body, ramming Boruto and himself into the wall behind.
Boruto took out another tablet.
The teen willingly threw himself on the floor, successfully throwing Boruto off. The teen grabbed a pan from the counter and tried to beat Boruto over the head with it. His boss stopped him but that only enraged him further.
The boy stood and punched the man in the stomach, took the pan into his other hand and clubbed him over the head with it.
The other employees flooded the kitchen, grabbing the teen in an effort to stop the fight. With so many people in the cramped kitchen, Boruto was nearly trampled. He curled into a ball and rolled under a table. From there he crawled until there was space enough to move.
A girl was thrown to the ground and another was ripped away by her hair and tossed aside. Two boys were still trying to hold the teen back but they were getting overpowered as well.
Boruto couldn't get a clear shot for an attack or to get the tablet into the boy's mouth.
"Move!" he shouted to the group but no one was listening. "Get out of the way!"
Boruto's heart sank when he saw the boy's hand reach for one of the knives on the counter. He had no choice. Boruto charged in and tackled the whole group, knocking them to the floor. One got up but the other was trapped in a headlock with the infected boy. They were both trying to wrestle each other on the floor.
"Let him go and let me handle this," Boruto told them but once again was ignored.
"Move, move!" Sarada shoved her way into the kitchen. The others were having similar trouble getting inside on account of the crowd standing around.
Boruto was trying to pry the two teens apart but couldn't without seriously injuring them. Because of the headlock, if he tried to rip them apart by force, he would risk breaking the teen's neck.
He and Sarada locked eyes for a moment and immediately knew what to do.
"Sarada!" He threw the bottle to her.
She caught it and waited for an opening.
Boruto dove back in and tried to peel the teen's fingers off his coworker to no avail, so instead he started to taunt the teen to draw his attention. It took a few tries but eventually it worked. He released his coworker to go after Boruto.
"You little brat!"
Sarada threw a tablet into the teen's open mouth.
He bit down on part of it, tasted salt and started spitting.
Uncertain if the boy got enough, Sarada readied another tablet just in case.
Boruto and another coworker tried to hold the teen down but he continued to fight. He put this coworker in a headlock, too, and kept his legs wrapped around Boruto's torso to keep him from getting too close. Boruto kept taunting him so Sarada could get another clear shot which was easier this time around. As soon as he opened his mouth to rant about the lowlifes he worked with and the ungrateful kids who treated him like an all-day convenience, Sarada flicked the tablet into his mouth.
He paused for only a moment to swallow it, then continued his tirade against the restaurant and how little he thought of everyone who worked there and how they took advantage of him.
Just as his coworker's face was turning blue from the headlock, the teen loosened his grip. He flopped onto his back, winded and stared at the ceiling.
Boruto held out his hand to prevent the workers from taking any further action.
"What the hell happened?" the teen asked, his face no longer contorted with rage. "When did I get back here? What's going on?"
No one was willing to fight anymore but they were wondering why their buddy went berserk like that out of nowhere.
To prevent the ignorant boss from firing the boy for reasons beyond his control, Sarada quickly explained that the teen was fed something bad by mistake and she and Boruto came to cure him. Understanding that it was not the teen's fault and glad to know everything had been settled, the boss didn't discipline the teen and told everyone to clean up and get back to work.
The delivery boy was still confused but happily resumed his job and his coworkers seemed happy to have him back to normal again. No one sustained any serious injuries.
"Good cover, Sarada," said Chocho.
"Well, it is more or less the truth. I'm glad we took care of it before things got any worse. I was worried about all those tools they have in that kitchen."
"Me, too."
Chocho went inside the restaurant and tapped the boy on the shoulder. She said something to him and the teen pulled out the box she had given him earlier. She took it, opened it, closed it and smiled at him. Then she waved and rejoined her friends outside.
"What was that about?"
She put the empty box in her bag. "I wanted to make sure we got proof he had the chocolate. He said he ate it an hour ago as a snack between deliveries."
"Imagine how much worse it would have been if he had taken it this morning. He would have probably been even more violent."
Chocho closed her bag with a nod. "He ate the whole thing, so we don't have to worry about him sharing it with someone else. This leaves Iwabe and Mitsuki left, right?"
Shikadai took the bottle back from Sarada. "Let's go find Iwabe and hope he hasn't eaten it yet."
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