Naruto swore. The two bastards from about a week ago had shown up at least a day earlier than expected and in a place that had been completely unexpected considering the usual Modus Operandi of the sort of missing-nin who were of a more mercenary bent. Rather than showing up in a place where they could cause a great deal of collateral damage which would have left the team scrabbling to protect innocent bystanders, they had turned up on a newly built section of bridge he hadn't gotten around to trapping yet because he'd run out of certain necessary materials and hadn't found ones he could use to jury rig traps that would capture a ninja. He was now seriously regretting focusing more on Tazuna's home and the nearby village where he believed an attack more likely due to the fact that the team would be distracted trying to avoid harm befalling innocent bystanders and therefore be more vulnerable.
He swore again when he realized that he'd flipping left Tazuna's home almost completely unprotected aside from a few traps he'd shown Tazuna's family to avoid in case he wasn't around to set off the others for some reason, as he'd deemed automatic traps that didn't require someone there to set them off to be a danger in this case especially with small children and untrained civilians around. Looking back now, he realized that he should have thought to leave at least one clone behind to activate the traps he had set. As Tetsuo-sensei used to say, "Bad things happen when people don't think".
After he finished swearing, he made a few Kage Bunshin while Sasuke was busy cutting down Zabuza's Mizu Bunshin at Kakashi's urging and dispatched them to Tazuna's residence in case there was someone else waiting in the wings to try something underhanded while he and his team were otherwise occupied. Zabuza had one accomplice with him, and logic dictated that where there was one, there was usually more and that any of the ones he couldn't see in front of him could be getting up to any amount of mischief. When he turned back to the fight after sending the clones off, the Zabuza guy himself had shown up along with his masked accomplice. The instant after they appeared, Sasuke volunteered to be the one to deal with the accomplice, which meant that he would be hanging back with the rest of the team and protecting the client until it looked like Sasuke needed assistance.
Despite the prodigious speed of Zabuza's accomplice who was so fast that he created his own whirlwind, Sasuke had him evenly matched. This wasn't all that surprising considering that two areas that Sasuke seemed to really shine in were Speed and Taijutsu so, he was the better choice to face Zabuza's accomplice in a straight up fight in this case. From the looks of things, Sasuke wouldn't be needing any help despite his opponent's surprising ability to make one-handed seals which was revealed when Sasuke had restrained the other hand. Based on Sasuke's current speed and the speed of those water, or rather ice senbon, Sasuke would be able to easily escape the Jutsu.
His job for now was to protect the client from Zabuza who had not yet made a single move in their direction since the destruction of his Mizu Bunshin for some strange reason.
Inari had been on the toilet when he had heard the loud swearing coming from outside. His first thought when he'd heard it had been that one of the neighbors had stopped by for a visit and had run afoul of one of Naruto's traps. He'd nearly done that himself on more than one occasion, and had almost had to be rescued once. That initial notion had been thrown out the window when he heard his mother scream and several dishes shatter however.
When he ran out of the toilet to see what was happening, he saw two men with swords taking his mother hostage. One of the men had tattoos on his face that reminded him of clown make-up and was wearing a hoodie, and the other one who wore an eye-patch with three straps was topless and covered in tattoos. When they noticed him, the one with the tattoos on his chest and arms moved to attack him.
"If you hurt him, I'll kill myself." his mother said, halting the man in his tracks. "You need a hostage, right? And, you won't have one if you harm him."
The man who was some sort of rogue swordsman turned away from him and back to his mother who glared at him defiantly, daring him to make a move. The rogue swordsman and his partner then bound his mother and started dragging her away as he stood by and watched helplessly. They had taken his mother and there had been nothing he could do about it. If Naruto were here, he would...he would...
Whatever he would do, it wouldn't be standing here watching as his mother was dragged away like he was doing. That Kakashi man had told him as much a couple days earlier.
The boy named Naruto who'd lectured him on his first day here came in five minutes after the boy named Sasuke, completely wiped from his training. When he slumped over at the dinner table after the meal had ended, it was obvious that he was completely exhausted, even moreso than the Sasuke boy who looked pretty tore up himself.
"Why?" he asked. "Why do you do this when it's not even your fight? It's not your country, and it's not your business! Why do you do this even knowing that you're just going to die?"
"Because, this was once my mother's home. And, even if it wasn't her home I'd do it anyway because it's the right thing to do." Naruto replied, sounding upset. "I could just as easily ask you why you sit around wailing that you can do nothing while your people suffer without even trying to do something about it!"
Unable to reply to the boy's accusation since he couldn't think of one that didn't sound like a pathetic excuse even to himself, he ran outside. Even though every reply he could think of sounded like an excuse, he knew that there was nothing that he could do about the way things were, he was just too small, and there was only one of him. As he was sitting on the dock that was attached to the house thinking how unfair the Naruto boy's question had been, Naruto's teacher came outside and joined him.
"Naruto's like you in some ways." Kakashi-san said. "He never knew his father while growing up as well."
As he furiously scrubbed the tears from his eyes so he wouldn't look like a total sissy in front of this stranger, he wondered why the man was telling him this.
"He never knew his mother either, since both of his parents died the day he was born. He had no friends as a small child but, he never let that get him down, and I've never once seen him cry about the fact that he was alone, even when there had been no-one there for him. I think he got tired of crying early on." Kakashi-san continued.
He sat still wondering exactly where this story was going since so far, all he was hearing was that Naruto didn't cry despite the fact that he didn't have any parents. Naruto's life wasn't anything like his however. No evil man had taken over his home and killed the man he'd called father right in front of him.
"What few friends he did manage to make became all the more precious to him because they had been few and far between." Kakashi-san continued.
What did this have to do with him? So, Naruto had had a bad life but, not as bad as his.
"One day, two of his friends were killed, and three others were badly injured right in front of him and he was then left to face two much larger and stronger opponents alone since there was nobody around to help." Kakashi-san said.
"What happened next?" he asked realizing what the man had finally been getting at.
"Instead of fleeing, Naruto did what he had to do to save his friends, even though there was a very good chance that he could die doing so. At that point, all he cared about was getting his remaining friends to safety, and he did everything it took to do so despite the fact that he was out-armed, out-numbered, and the enemy held the advantage." Kakashi-san replied.
Here he was in a similar situation to the one Naruto had been in back then, his mother was being taken away from him, and rather than fighting, he was sitting and crying about not being able to do anything without even once trying! His stepfather Kaiza had told him that if there was something precious to you, you protected it with your own two hands, even if it meant risking dying. Right now, the most precious thing in his life was being taken from him and he wasn't even trying to protect it!
Like hell!
There was a time when someone had to stop crying and running away, and stand up to fight for what was theirs no matter how strong the people taking it from them were, and that time was now!
"Let go of my mom!" he yelled at the two men who were leading his mother away after he'd run from the house and onto the wooden walkway that led to the path to the village to confront them.
"Run Inari!" his mother yelled as the two men whirled to face him.
As she yelled for him to flee, one of the men knocked her to the ground.
They had hurt his mother! He was going to kill them. He had no weapons, and the men who had his mother had swords but, that didn't matter. Like in that old story, he would hit them and, if they cut off his arms, he would kick them and, if they cut off his legs, he would bite them to death. He wasn't going to let them take his mother away from him. His mother was one of the most precious things in his life and he would do everything in his power to protect her.
The men moved to attack him, and he suddenly found himself elsewhere.
"Thanks for distracting them kid." said Naruto, who had shown up out of nowhere, taken him out of the path of danger, and was unbinding his mother whom he had rescued as well. "I wasn't sure if I would make it in time."
As he stared up at the other boy in wonder, he heard something behind him. When he turned to see what the commotion behind him was, he saw that it was two more Narutos who were beating the crap out of the men who had taken his mother.
"Seems you really do have a backbone kid." Naruto - or was it another one of his clones? - said as he patted him on the head.
Moments after the fight started, the two men who had taken his mother were down on the ground bruised, bleeding, and unconscious, brought low by someone who was only half their size. Seeing them in this state, he realized that they were not the insurmountable obstacles he had at first thought them to be. It was as Naruto had said earlier, they were only strong as long as you did nothing. In that case, he would make everyone do something, and they would take the strength away from the biggest of the monsters. He would rally everyone, and have them fight! This was their home, and Gato couldn't have it!
"Where are you going?" Naruto asked when he turned back to the house to grab any weapons he could find.
"I'm going to get everyone, and we'll get Gato together!" he replied.
"Well, in that case, I think I'll help. It's better than just hanging around here looking after you guys." Naruto replied. "Besides, I will be needing to tell the villagers what areas to avoid if boss and the others fail at the bridge, and it comes down to a street fight."
Naruto watched as Sasuke became trapped in an unknown jutsu that involved sheets of ice. Within the jutsu, the boy with the name that was very familiar for some reason was peppering Sasuke with senbon. He knew for a fact that the boy was deadly accurate with those things since he had paralyzed his master with them by unerringly throwing them at points that were very close to spots that would have been fatal, which made this activity more puzzling, unless...Unless, the boy wasn't actively trying to kill Sasuke.
Outside of the fight between Sasuke and Zabuza's accomplice, there was a virtual standstill as they stood facing Zabuza who had yet to make a move.
Why were their opponents not actively trying to kill them?
He knew that part of the reason that Zabuza hadn't tried to kill them was because Kakashi was keeping Zabuza in check in regards to Tazuna, and Zabuza was keeping Kakashi in check in regards to Sasuke. In that fight, neither would move until one or the other was certain of their advantage, which was the reason why Zabuza currently wasn't trying to turn them into sashimi with that sword. Sasuke's opponent however...
There was no reason for Zabuza's accomplice to spare Sasuke, no reason at all. He had him completely outclassed in that jutsu, and could have ended it all in the first strike. Instead of killing him right away however, he was giving Sasuke a very slow death with a thousand paper cuts and every opportunity to figure out a way to defeat his opponent.
As he watched the fight, trying to figure out what Zabuza's accomplice was up to, Sakura went over and tossed a kunai to Sasuke who had dropped his in the boy Haku's initial attack. The kunai didn't reach its intended recipient however because Haku went through the other side of one of the mirrors he'd rather foolishly assumed had been one-way and caught the thrown weapon before it could reach Sasuke. This gave him the first bit of good news he'd had throughout the entire battle. If Zabuza's apprentice was forced to fight on both sides of the mirrors, there would be an increased chance of the boy making a mistake that would allow them to defeat him.
With that in mind, he made his way over to the unusual jutsu that was a result of a Kekkei Genkai in which Sasuke was trapped, hoping that Sakura and Kakashi would be enough to protect Tazuna should Zabuza finally decide that attacking would be to his advantage. When he reached the dome of ice mirrors, he circled it looking for any weaknesses. There were none that he could see. After his first circuit, he decided to check the strength of the mirrors themselves. As he was powering up one of his Wind Jutsu, Zabuza threw several shuriken at him which Haku knocked off course with several senbon.
"Please let me deal with them Zabuza-sama." the boy named Haku said as the shuriken clattered to the ground.
"Fine Haku, go ahead." Zabuza replied before turning back to his standoff with Kakashi.
Sasuke took the opportunity to attack since Haku was distracted with him, but it didn't do him much good since the boy hadn't been nearly as distracted as he had seemed, and he intercepted Sasuke's attack and made yet another attack on Sasuke. In this attack, Sasuke was hit by about a thousand more senbon, and yet again the needles caused minimal damage, slicing here, scraping there, none of them stabbing into the boy who looked a bit like a pin cushion.
During Haku's attack on Sasuke, he attacked one of the mirrors with the Wind Jutsu he'd been in the middle of forming when Zabuza had thrown his shuriken and it did not break. It didn't even so much as crack. The Zabuza's accomplice responded to this attack by sending a volley of senbon in his direction while tossing yet another one at Sasuke. Undaunted, he attacked the mirror again at the same point that he had attacked it before hoping to further weaken it. Nothing. He attacked it again. Still nothing.
Inside the mirrors, Sasuke used one of his fireball jutsu. The mirror that it hit briefly started to melt by the time the fireball had burnt itself out, and rapidly reformed shortly after it had done so. He attacked the mirror that took the brunt of Sasuke's attack hoping that the melting and reformation of the mirror had weakened it somehow. Nothing there either. Realizing that he was getting nowhere, he decided to use the strongest of his small arsenal of Wind Jutsu on the mirrors despite the fact that he only had it half-mastered and Tetsuo-sensei would have given him hell for using a jutsu he hadn't fully mastered in battle. After making the seals for the Kazekiri no Jutsu, he launched the blade of wind at the mirror closest to him. It barely made a dent.
"Why do you try so hard to defend him?" the boy Haku asked. "Is he precious to you?"
"No." he replied honestly. "But my mother and the Yondaime entrusted me with the protection of Konoha and its citizens before they died, and they are precious to me. I will not let anyone from Konoha be harmed if there is anything I could do to prevent it. I will not let them down."
"I too have someone I need to protect." the boy said. "Being a shinobi is difficult for me, and I do not want to kill you, but I will kill my heart and be a shinobi in order to protect my precious person. He has entrusted his dreams to me, and I will not let him down either. I'm sorry."
With that, the boy started to attack Sasuke once more. There was nothing he could do about it from out here but try to break the jutsu since the boy was moving far too fast. Perhaps...He sent a number of Kage Bunshin into the jutsu to assist Sasuke. They were promptly dispelled, but Zabuza's accomplice had been distracted from Sasuke while they lasted. Hoping to keep the masked boy distracted, he sent in another wave while he attempted to break one of the mirrors with an explosive tag.
The mirror yet again refused to break. Hearing some sort of commotion behind him, he turned to look. While he'd been focused on freeing Sasuke, the standoff between Kakashi and Zabuza had finally heated up into a battle.
Edited 11-26-12.