It has been 3 years since Kakashi had laid eyes on Zabuza since his death in the Land of Waves. His attire was still he same, his same set of dark purple pants with leg warmers on his arms and legs. His face was still covered and bandages, and who knows how thankful Kakashi was for that, considering that half of his face was decaying. In his hands he held his Zanbato.

His eyes were rolled into his head, leaving his terrifying white eyeballs staring aimlessly at the world. His body was also terribly scarred from the numerous stab wounds that led to his death. Flies fluttered around the rotting corpse making his eerie presence more mortifying.

Kakashi stared down his old opponent, "That's impossible! You can't be Zabuza!" The figure behind Zabuza moved slightly, his leg stepping forward out of the dark.

"Not exactly, Kakashi." A crouched old man came out of the shadows. His face was covered in a cloak leaving the left side of his face showing the wrinkles and scars of age. He wore rags all over his body, his legs hiding under a torn cloak. He grinned from under his drapes, bearing his yellow rotting teeth as sharp as thorns.

"Of course. This isn't Zabuza… it's only his corpse." Kakashi glanced to the dead body standing between them, "How much more repulsive can you become? Nakigara… the Undead Puppet Master."

"Heh heh heh heh heh, I'm glad that my name is still fresh in your memory Kakashi. I know that your name has been burning inside my soul for a long time… especially since you did this to me." Nakigara pulled the cloak down from his head to reveal the deformed features of his face.

In his earlier years in ANBU, Kakashi was well known for his successful missions and relations with the Sand Village. One of his missions was requested of him by the Kazakage, who needed a bodyguard to protect him from an unknown assailant. The mission was S-ranked, and Kakashi gladly accepted it.

During the same night of his arrival, an assassin attempted to assassinate the Kazakage, but was foiled by a trap involving wires that entangled the pursuer before he could complete his task. The assassin identified himself as Nakigara, the Undead Puppet Master. To prove his point Nakigara attacked Kakashi with his favored jutsu, Dead Corpse Puppetry. The victim puppet turned out to be the corpse of an infamous rogue known as Kirite, an ANBU Black Ops captain from the Rock Village.

The struggle was quiet fierce as Nakigara's excellent chakra control and his faster than life reflexes proved to be challenging against Kakashi's Sharingan. Eventually, Kakashi found the weakness in his jutsu, and caught Nakigara off guard, delivering his Chidori right into his face! Nakigara's face was cut and torn away by the attack, but despite this, he managed to escape.

Nakigara's face now differed greatly from his original visage. While fourteen years ago his face was old, wrinkled bearing a scar by his left eye, the right side of his face now seemed like it had been made out of the skin of other people. He had red skin for his cheek, yellow skin above his eye, and brown skin for his jaw and chin. All of it sewn together with unprofessional stitches that stuck out through sore dead skin near the corners of the patches.

"You destroyed who I once was, Kakashi. Do you have any idea what kind of Hell you put me through after that? My whole right side was rotting, deformed, dead… and so I looked to my hobby for my solution. I found the corpses of the dead and used their skin to give myself a face worth showing to the world." He reached up to his face and gently raked his fingers over the stitching.

"Do you know what it's like Kakashi? To wake up everyday and have to search through a collection of bodies for the proper skin to stitch to your face. Preserving the skin throughout the day so it doesn't rot and infect itself. It's my own Hell, Kakashi. And it's all your fault."

"Well, it seems only fair that your Dead Corpse Puppetry Jutsu be your undoing. Your own curse." Kakashi leered to the old man, focusing on his hands which at the moment lay at his side.

"You're right Kakashi, it is my curse. But this curse fills me with power. A sense of unsurpassable ability." His hands twitched and the Zabuza puppet took a fighting stance wielding his Zanbato. Kakashi reached for his shuriken and tried a preemptive attack. Nakigara's fingers twitched again, and Zabuza brought his sword up and blocked the shuriken.

Kakashi's eyes went wide, "How did he do that? His arms were broken when he died!"

"That is the fine art to my puppetry, Kakashi. When I collect a corpse, I fix it, and even improve it. Zabuza's speed, if you recall, was nearly untraceable. A disadvantage is that I cannot match that speed. But his power… his strength paired with my reflexes. It makes me so much more." His fingers twitched and Zabuza swung his sword at Kakashi, who leapt back and dodged it by a hair.

Zabuza swung again, this time getting his sword locked with one of Kakashi's kunai. Nakigara simply backed away to give the two a field to fight on, "As you may have guessed, Kakashi, I have been sent to kill you as your personal assassin. As I said to my superiors, and I think you should do the same before your death…… put your best face on. Heh heh heh ha ha ha!"

The decrepit old man twitched his fingers and on command, Zabuza unlocked his sword from Kakashi's kunai and swung from the side. Kakashi jumped up to the ceiling and aimed down as he lunged forward and clashed with Zabuza's sword again. On impact, Zabuza pushed back then threw his guillotine blade at Kakashi, who fled in a different direction to avoid the attack. His sword struck the ceiling and got stuck.

Zabuza reached up and grabbed his sword but he found it difficult to take out as it had driven itself deep into the ceiling. Kakashi took this time to take out several kunai in each hand and throw them at his opponent while chaining them with hand seals, "Kunai Shadow Clone Jutsu!"

Hundreds of kunai replaced the original that hurled at a supposedly defenseless Zabuza. Zabuza's dead body gave no hint as to what it was going to do next until it finally leapt up to the ceiling dodging the kunai that were meant for him. For the short time that he was upside down, he pulled his sword from the ceiling and landed firmly on the ground, his body returning to a defensive position.

"Incredible Kakashi! You truly are one of a kind. You can even hold your own against the Undead. Heh ha ha ha!" Nakigara cackled in the background. Kakashi gasped for air vigorously as the pain of the broken ribs began to affect his stamina. If the fight went on any longer, he would damage his body beyond repair.

"I have to hand it to you as well Nakigara. You know that Zabuza's body has no chakra, so he cannot perform feats like walking on walls or increasing his speed. Yet you make that up with your years of experience of handling your puppets."

"Ah! Undead puppets. Heh heh heh." Nakigara informed.

Kakashi stumbled back to gain distance from Zabuza's range of attack, "But even a Puppet Master has his weaknesses." Kakashi performed some hand seals and hid his kunai behind his back.

"Ha! Weaknesses! That word no longer applies to me Kakashi! Maybe when we first met, but not now and not ever!" Nakigara's violent fingers motioned for Zabuza to attack and so he did, lunging forward and uppercutting his sword at Kakashi.

With precise timing, Kakashi leaned his body back in order to avoid the blade, kami knowing how much pain that inflected on his ribs. In a puff of smoke Kakashi then disappeared and flashed behind Zabuza bearing a kunai in his hand, "One Thousand Years of Death!" The kunai flew forward and the surprise attack was unavoidable!

The kunai pierced into Zabuza's back with relative difficulty, but it stabbed him nonetheless. The puppet was motionless and Kakashi froze to see if his plan had worked. Nakigara commented from behind, "Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! Kakashi are you serious? Did you forget the most essential rule of the Undead? They're dead! You can't kill them again! Heh ha ha ha!"

Kakashi smirked from behind his mask, "I've fought you before haven't I, Nakigara?"

"Huh?" Nakigara's face was puzzled slightly.

"In our first battle, you claimed to 'untouchable'. But you remember how that battle ended don't you?" Kakashi said in a smug voice.

Nakigara didn't want to hear anymore, "Shut up and die Kakashi!" Nakigara's fist clenched and Zabuza rotated his sword and stabbed past his body and into Kakashi's chest. Kakashi once more disappeared in a "poof" of smoke and Nakigara's eyes went wide, "WHAT!!?"

"A puppeteers disadvantage is that he cannot move without severing his ties with his puppet. Therefore they are open to close range attacks."

Kakashi suddenly burst through the floor and spun his kunai in his hands preparing for the final cut, "You're finished!" Kakashi sliced forward and cut through Nakigara's body with relative ease. The blood spattered…. Wait… there was no blood!

Kakashi noticed this detail immediately and looked up to see Zabuza coming at him with his sword again. Kakashi put his kunai up and locked it with his sword, while he tried to figure out what went wrong, "Nakigara! What did you do?!"

Nakigara's split body swung from side to side as he staggered across the room, "Surprised, Kakashi? I owe this one to Sasori of the Red Sand."

"Sasori? But he's dead!"

The torn rags slumped to the floor unveiling Nakigara's horrible secret. Most of his body was composed of body parts not his own. His arm was purple, his chest was a nasty infected yellow, his legs were nothing but lumps with shoes, the only part that looked remotely human was the area around his heart.

"No thanks to your students Kakashi! Heh heh ha. But you see, Sasori was the only one who truly appreciated my work. My art of the Undead. He said that my Undead Puppetry Jutsu was something worth studying, and I gladly offered my body for the experiments that he ran through me with Orochimaru." The split ends of his body started from his shoulders and diagonally into his chest just missing the area around his heart.

"So this is how you have advanced since our last meeting? I'm glad to see it." Kakashi freed one of his hands and held Zabuza at bay with the kunai in his opposite hand.

"Oh you'll be glad Kakashi, glad to know that you died here and now instead of painfully waiting for old age to take your life. Fortunately for me, a death of any kind is not a luxury I will ever need to afford!"

Kakashi lifted his headband from his eye, "You should not underestimate me Nakigara. The results will be the same. Tonight, you will die a most painful death." Kakashi's Sharingan eye opened giving Kakashi a new sense of feeling around his environment as he stared down his opponents. The tide of the battle was preparing to change.

"Only words!" Nakigara's fingers crumpled and forced Zabuza's movements to continue as he forced through Kakashi's kunai and sliced through the apparent clone that disappeared as the sword came into contact. Nakigara lost no time in looking for Kakashi, who appeared next to his TV and flipped it, making it fly at his opponent.

With a simple movement Zabuza cut the TV in half, but not without sending sparks all over the room and accidentally setting the floor on fire! Nakigara took precautionary steps away from the fire as it began to grow, crackling and sparkling as it turned the room into a blazing battlefield between Kakashi and Zabuza.

Zabuza's body lunged forward and swung at Kakashi, but he saw it coming and he dodged it in time by jumping onto the ceiling again and walking on the roof away from the flames. Zabuza threw the sword again, but this time clearly missed his target since his sword struck the area next to him.

Kakashi made a quick glance at the sword and looked back, but it was too late for him to get away from Zabuza's attack as he grabbed onto the handle and used it as leverage to lift himself into the air and land a kick on Kakashi's side where the ribs were broken. The masked ninja immediately felt the effects of the kick breaking his body's balance and his chakra stopped running through his feet making him fall to the flames bellow.

Kakashi managed to land on his back as he crashed through his coffee table and missed the pool of flames that was originally below him. Grabbing his side and crouching over, he coughed up the blood that followed the symptoms of internal bleeding. Kakashi removed his mask and spit out the blood that had accumulated in his mouth, adding pained wheezes to his brief moments of recovery while Zabuza was getting his sword.

"How pathetic Kakashi. I would have seen you as more of a challenge but it seems that you are just child's play. My Undead puppet shall obliterate you yet. Heh heh heh…" He moved his fingers and Zabuza began to walk towards Kakashi's side.

Kakashi gagged on his own blood again and spat on the floor, "You know, Nakigara… you keep thinking that you are the only one that has changed. That you're undead body gives you all the advantages; and that having Zabuza as your puppet is all you need to beat me." Kakashi turned his head and faced him, "But there is more to this battle than you think. I have my own secret weapon as well."

Kakashi closed his eyes momentarily, Nakigara cackled and ordered the final blow, "Finish it!!" Kakashi's eyes flashed open and his Sharingan became active, "Mangenkyou Sharingan!"

Kakashi's Sharingan eye, once just red with three tomoe, changed it's shape into a sort of pin wheel (different from Itachi's Mangenkyuo). He channeled his chakra and looked closely at his opponent, "What controls the puppet? The strings, cut the strings and lose the puppet!" Kakashi focused intently on Nakigara's hands and in an instant they disappeared! The puppet Zabuza stopped in his tracks and wobbled a bit as his body fell backwards into the flames, as dead as it had been before.

"MY HANDS!!! KAKASHI! WHAT DID YOU DO????!!!!!" Nakigara's astonishment and shock was smothered all over his face, he held up the stubs that used to be his hands and his mouth fell agape.

Kakashi slowly moved Zabuza out of the fire and put out the flames on his rotting body before looking back at the shocked assassin. His Sharingan went back to normal and he shut it in order to conserve whatever chakra he had left. "What happened to the great Undead Puppet Master, hmm?"

Nakigara stared at the stubs, "You'll pay Kakashi. I swear, you'll pay!"

Kakashi lazily leered at his opponent, "Be mindful of your surroundings, Nakigara, for they can put you in a deadly situation.

"Huh?" Nakigara heard a cracking noise from above him. He looked up to the ceiling which had been damaged by Zabuza's sword strikes and of course by the fire that was soon devouring the room. Veins of broken plaster and cement appeared one by one as the roof became weaker and weaker. "Ah-ah-ah- AAAAAHHHHH!!!!!"

In a single death defying leap Kakashi and Zabuza's body dove out the window and escaped out of his apartment as it collapsed in on itself in a fiery mountain of rubble and concrete, taking the infamous assassin with it to a scorching grave.

Kakashi looked on at his home as the smoke rose from the dying blaze. Beside him lay Zabuza's body, motionless and running cold and moldy. He fought for every breath as he pulled his headband over his Sharingan eye and lay back on the ground. His ribs were aching and burning inside of him, even thinking was hard enough let alone mumbling, "Tomorrow… is going to be a long day." Kakashi glanced over at Zabuza's corpse and eventually fell asleep under the strain of his own body.