A Sense of Duty

Naruto and Delta exchange strikes, the cyborg using boosters in her legs to launch upward and reshaping her limbs into oversized weapons. A Lava Release Rasenshuriken shreds those legs, yet she rebuilds them almost at once. Spotting the pattern, Naruto aims for her midsection but hesitates to strike near her face, wary that she could swallow his technique. Watching from a distance, Boruto suggests catching her off guard, though Kawaki counters that his father cannot cut loose while the two of them stand in the blast radius. Kawaki adds that by holding back Naruto is steering Delta's assaults away from them and hunting for his own opening. Dismissing his offer of surrender, Delta fires searing beams from her eyes, which Naruto slips past.

Kawaki notes those beams exist to counter foes who heal, damage too severe for even his own upgraded frame to mend. Naruto guesses the attack strains her heavily, but Delta shrugs it off, insisting a single clean hit is all she needs. As the brawl tightens, Naruto goes down and Delta lines up another blast. Boruto triggers his Kāma unaided and launches a Vanishing Rasengan, betting she cannot absorb what she cannot see, but her airborne drone senses it and she draws it in anyway. She closes on him, knocks him aside, and thanks him for the idea. Grabbing Himawari, she tosses the girl skyward and unleashes her beams so they will catch Naruto as he moves to save her.

When the dust settles, Naruto has Himawari safely in his arms while Kawaki has intercepted the beams with his transformed limb. Kawaki collapses, wounded and unable to regenerate, and Delta is stunned that he would do this for the family. Boruto blames himself, but Kawaki reasons that Naruto being struck would have doomed them all, and jokes that it settles his debt over Himawari's shattered flower vase, an offhand remark that leaves Boruto laughing and Delta seething. The chapter belongs to the Kawaki Arc and was collected in Volume 9; Viz issued it as Owed Debts.