I do not own Naruto in any format, this is fan fiction

The remainder of the time was spent training and continuing the construction of the bridge. Gato was every day more and more furious that his own hired killers had either desserted him or they had been killed on his orders. The cause was the same however, their failure to stop the drunken bridge Mamet from completing the bridge that would ruin him. Gato could not understand how could a bunch of brats defend the bridge so well, planting bombs, putting acid on machinery, pushing concrete bags into the river, nothing worked.

Inari had taken Naruto's advice to heart and he had been busy the entire time either helping his mother or trying to get the neighboring kids to motivate people to volunteering in the construction effort. This made sure that Tazuna had plenty of people to help him do menial labor,while his crew did the heavy duty construction, then and about 50 shadow clones of Naruto henge into ordinary citizens. Tazuna had to agree with him, he was a quick learner, he never figured out why he learned so quickly but it was no as important as finishing the bridge.

It was when the bridge was almost complete that Gato hired some sellswords to attack the construction sight, and sent another group to kidnap Tsunami and her son. Too bad that Naruto left at least half a dozen shadow clones to wait for such a thing. They heard Inari make a racket about letting his mother go. He kid wax kicking, biting, and punching them, but it had no success. One of the shadow clones changed into Tsunami and substituted himself with her. He them proceeded to kill the guy that had been holding Tsunami by cutting his throat.

In the confusion of the spray of blood the others shadow clones killed the rest of the men, who were blinded by the blood that was spraying from the first guy killed. Tsunami began to cry worried about her son, until he ran to where she was. The two quickly agreed to clean the place as to prevent Tazuna any stress. Inari cleaned most of the blood after he and Tsunami dragged the bodies behind their house.

Gato was not happy to see Zabuza and his helper helping to defeat the people that he hired to kill the brats, and Tazuna. "Zabuza are you out of your gourd!? I hired you to kill the drunken fool, and instead you are there helping them!? What in all hell is the matter with you!?" Zabuza looks at Naruto and they both thew his missing Leger and journal for all to see. "What I should ask is why are you guys working for a dead beat who will not pay you? Cause he is flat broke."

The sellsword stopped on their tracks. They each looks at Zabuza and saw in his eyes that he was telling the truth. They all told him to go and be a stray dog's bitch. They all left him to a very pissed off Zabuza and Naruto. "OK let's decide who gets the fat baldy!?" Zabuza and Naruto began to play a game of rock, paper, scissors. This made Gato angry enough that he picked out a sword and ran like a crazy person trying to kill at least the brat.

As soon as he was 20 paces away from them, the both took out a kunai and did the shadow kunai jutsu. As the kunai hit Gato making look like a human pin cushion, they both said at the same time and high fiving each other. "Just kidding!" Gato was bleeding pretty badly and they clearly aim to inure but not kill, Tazuna and the village decided that he should hang by the neck and be given a watery grave. The entire construction crew and village celebrated as the kids took big broomsticks and tried to use the body of Gato like a piƱata.

Haku was pretty busy in a wonderful date with Sasuke, and Sakura was simply glaring at them from behind some crates. Zabuza and Naruto decided to have a sparing match and it came to a draw. Zabuza began telling him why he left Mist in the first place, and how it was caught in a civil war. How a few of the seven swordmen scattered looking for people to join the rebels and help put an end to the civil war. The Mizukage was clearly insane to order the execution of all bloodline users in Mist, it was like eliminating their most powerful ninja, it made no sense for him to do that.

"Why do you use two blades instead of a single sword?" Zabuza clearly wanted to know. Naruto had no way to answer except show him. When he placed the blades back to back and infused them with Chakra they became this rather brutal looking katana. He pulled the chakra and put together as the pummels touched and infused one again became a two bladed staff. Once again he pulled the chakra out and placed them in a cross and once again he induced them, they became a four blades shuriken, it looked almost as big as to be able to cover half his back. Once again he returned the blades back to normal.

"I have a lot of options thanks to these blades, I would be a foul not to use them." Zabuza was impressed but he asked him to spar with him again, but this time with the almost demonic looking katana. Naruto told him that was not such a good idea, but seeing his friend honestly wanted to spar, he agreed. He cut threw Zabuzas blade like a hot knife through butter. Thank goodness he was using a disposable blade. "See this thing when in that form tend to eat metals."

He asked what did it eat in the other forms, the staff ate minerals, the shuriken ate liquids, and two twin blades ate energy. All this was later converted to chakra he could tap as they fighting continued. "So you don't run out of chakra as long as their are enemies to fight." Naruto corrected him he still had his own chakra. "I don't spend chakra as long as their are enemies to kill." Zabuza had to admit he was glad he was not his enemy.

"How do you feel about my girl and your boy having a relationship? I know Haku has quite the crush on him. She would not stop saying how cute she found him." Naruto sat down on a log and looked at him with a serious expression. "As long as she truly loves him for being him, and does not want him to use him for jus her own benefit, I have no problem at all. She is skilled, kind by the way she was holding her pet. If they want to have a relationship, I have no problems with it. But I am no fortune teller I will just have to wait and see."

The group left together and it was rather funny to see. Zabuza, Kakashi and Naruto were talking like they had been friends for years, Sasuke was walking pretty close to Haku, who was blushing at some of the things they were whispering to each other. Sakura looked like someone just ate the most sour thing in the world at one moment and a dog that had a bad case of rabies the next, I guess even she noticed how close Sasuke was walking with Haku.

Or maybe it was that now that Haku was not wearing her hunter ninja disguise, and instead was wearing something more form fitting, her figure was clear to see, and Sakura was not happy to find that Haku indeed had a much more attractive figure than she did, but she was not going to say that she was jealous of how much bigger Haku's breast were, or how she clearly had some really nice looking skin and hair. Sakura worked constantly on her appearance, to the point she neglected her own training, but Haku managed to make herself look good, and still managed to train.

She just could not figure out how in the world did she manage it. There were only so many hours in the day after all. How did Haku, manage to train and keep her appearance to look that good!? It was by the time they reached the village that Sakura just had to ask. "No major secret, my housekeeping tends to give me plenty of chances to train, and if you spend a few minutes before you sleep, you can always brush your hair and use some nice moisturizing creams, a facial mask would not hurt."

Sakura could not believe it was something so simple. Naruto commented that Mikoto always looked wonderful to him, and with him helping around the house he knew how much of a workout housework really was. Sasuke also told her that he also knew since he also saw the benefits of helping around the house. "Have to learn to be independent don't I dad?" Naruto began to laugh, "You sure do, son. You sure do."

The Hokage was more than happy to allow Zabuza to join them, in fact he was made for the job he had just created. Zabuza would be something close to an inspector to see how the teachers were doing in teaching their students. He would then report to the Hokage about what was good, bad and plain ugly. It was the day teachers would cry into their sake every year from that day on, the day that their easy job died, and they would actually have to earn their pay.

The village hospital accepted Haku as a new doctor, and then the doctors really became happy. The young woman had began to share some of the innovative ways she came up with to deal with pesky reoccurring illnesses. Nothing made the doctor 's happier than to be able to have a simple standardized method to deal with such illnesses. It simply allowed more time for research and development of cures for other things.

Mikoto had a bit of a difficult situation, one the one hand her son has more motivated and happy than she could had seen recently, if that was even possible. The other was that she was seeing how her baby boy was getting closer to adulthood, and that would mean that it was not far in the future before she saw him say his vows and marry some lucky girl, all indications pointed that the lucky girl was going to be Haku.

Naruto simply was happy to be able to sleep again in the most comfortable bed he ever found, the one that he shared with Mikoto. When he first introduced Zabuza and his daughter that was something that made him still laugh. When he mentioned Zabuza's name Mikoto tried to kill the man with a kitchen knife, she would have succeeded too had it not been for Naruto's timely intervention. Zabuza knew that moment to never and I mean never get on this lady's bad side

Kakashi could not understand how a brat like Naruto could maintain a relationship with Mikoto and Sasuke even called him dad. He was still very much single and very much alone. He was drinking pretty heavily in the local bar. "Just what is his secret!? How can a guy like him keep a woman so happy! He has not been with her for that long and they behave like they have been married for years!? I just don't get it!?" Anko had enough of hearing this and decided to tell him what she believed.

Anko sat down next to him, and taking his glass she drank his sake. "It is really simple, he is not a pervert, or at least not with anyone else but with her, and he makes an effort to be irreplaceable. It is just a matter of putting in the effort. Any idiot can see that as plain as the headband in front of your face." Kakashi told her that drinking out of his cup it was called an indirect kiss. "Maybe you will get to directly kiss that and a few other things, if you put in the effort."

That is the day Kakashi stopped reading Icha Icha, or at least not in public, and not alone. He decided that he would put in the effort and much to his surprise Anko would indeed prove worth the effort. It only took a Kakashi two weeks and some very nice dates before Anko was quite happy to call him her boyfriend.