Mitsuki's Disappearance Arc

Covering episodes 71 through 92, this arc follows the Chocho Arc and leads into Parent and Child Day Arc. Its through-line is Mitsuki's departure from the Leaf Village and the pursuit that his teammates mount to recover him, woven around a Five Kage Summit and a sudden strike on Konoha.

Mitsuki wakes from his first dream, startled that he can dream at all, and shares the strange experience with his friends at Lightning Burger, admitting he has never once felt the urge to rebel against his parent. When Shikadai turns up with a chick that imprinted on him after hatching, Mitsuki likens the bond to his own choice to attach himself to Boruto rather than his brother or father. With Team 7 assigned to guard the Five Kage Summit, whose agenda concerns the Otsutsuki clan, the acting Kage bring in Kakashi, Mei, and A, while Onoki's absence sends Konoha shinobi searching the village for the wandering Tsuchikage. Boruto, eager to answer a riddle Naruto posed about the world's hardest rock, tracks Onoki down, and the old Kage agrees to answer if the genin show him around.

While touring, Onoki uses Dust Release to shield a villager from a falling beam and collapses from the strain. Waking, he mistakes Boruto for Kozuchi, a grandson lost in youth, then reveals that the toughest rock of all is a shinobi's unbending will. He presses Mitsuki about his own will, but the boy cannot answer. Soon after, Mitsuki finds his apartment has been entered and a letter left on his bed, which he burns. At dawn the next day the gate guards Uo and Sao are attacked, and Mitsuki himself strikes Uo down with Lightning Release. As the Police Force works the scene, Sai discovers a discarded forehead protector among the trees.

Konohamaru identifies the recovered headband as Mitsuki's, and after Ino reads the comatose guards' minds, it emerges that Mitsuki struck the guards down together with two shinobi from Iwa. Naruto orders the village sealed until Mitsuki is returned, but Boruto and Sarada resolve to retrieve their friend themselves. When Naruto contacts Kurotsuchi, she confirms she dispatched no shinobi and promises that any of the three found in Iwagakure would be sent home to Konoha, leaving the young ninja to chase Mitsuki's trail on their own.