Chapter 11
"Hey, old man!" Naruto called, his voice carrying over the sound of clashing metal and drilling jackhammers. "Where do I put these?"
Tazuna barely glanced at the bunch of timbers over the boy's right shoulder before pointing over at the H-sector. Nobody paid attention to the unbelievable strength of the short blond anymore, not after what they had seen him lift since the day he had started helping out.
The genin put down the wooden girders and dusted his jumpsuit off before doubling back to Tazuna. Seeing as the man was talking with one of his fellow workers, he walked up to the railing and leaned over.
Building a bridge was as hard a work as Naruto had originally thought it would be. The thing was huge, and if it had been up to him, he wouldn't have had the slightest idea about where to begin. He had been working at it for the past five days, and although he had picked up a couple of interesting tricks from the regular guys, there were still so many things out of his grasp it wasn't even funny. That said, he could have learned much more than what he already had if he had really wanted to. Or better, if he hadn't had better things to do.
Meaning training.
The young blond looked at the couple of dozens Kage Bunshin down at the bay. The majority of them was merely practicing the water-walking exercise, but a few had already worked their way up to simple on-water spars. At some point even Sakura had joined that group, he realized noticing the spot of red and pink in the midst of all that orange.
Naruto smiled, wind battering at his face as he followed his clones with his gaze. Water-walking was much more difficult than tree-climbing, but he was finally starting to get the hang of it. He was glad he had convinced Kakashi to teach it to him. The jounin had looked almost disappointed upon realizing he already knew the most basic chakra-control exercise, and had seemed hesitant about teaching him the more advanced one. When Sakura had asked as well, he had finally relented and explained them how it worked.
It had been decided, then, that the two genin would have escorted Tazuna to work on the bridge, the perfect spot for them to train as well, on the condition that Naruto's clones kept the Cover Materia equipped at all times. They had checked to see how far from Tazuna the sphere activated and realized the bay below the bridge was well within the limits.
Sasuke stayed behind at Tazuna's house with the recovering Kakashi. The Uchiha was still struggling to learn the tree-climbing exercise, much to his frustration and Naruto's amusement. That gave the blond bragging rights he never missed the opportunity to exploit and he just couldn't wait to master water-walking to rub that in as well.
"Naruto!" Tazuna called, interrupting his train of thoughts. "Stop daydreaming and give me a hand with these! You said you wanted to learn something, didn't you?"
"As if you've taught me anything until now!" the blond genin shot back in annoyance. "All you do is making me move things from one place to another! If it hadn't been for Gin-san and Gon-san I wouldn't have learned a thing!"
The old client scowled for a moment before relenting under the amused looks of the nearby co-workers. "Come on, I'm gonna show you something super cool this time. Just stop whining."
"You whined first!"
"Hey, you-" He visibly reigned on his temper before continuing between clenched teeth. "You should know I'm the Pier Master around here. You wanna know something about it? Come with me!"
He walked away primly, and after a moment of hesitation, Naruto followed.
Tazuna led him to the K-sector and started explaining how the spot had been trickier than expected. They had finally stabilized it but the next step was crucial and Naruto would help them with that.
The blond worked his ass off for the next couple of hours and felt deeply satisfied when the job ended successfully, although not really thanks to him. When the time finally came, he walked off with a huge smile on his face and jumped down to the bay to spend lunch-break with Sakura.
He found her sprawled on the shore, head leaning against the second pier of the bridge as she looked at the clones still up and at it.
"Sakura-chaaaan!" he called, practically skipping towards her. "I brought lunch!"
The pink-haired girl turned to him and smiled slightly, straightening up. "Tsunami made these, right? I'm starving."
He plopped down next to her and offered the bento box prepared by Tazuna's daughter, before opening his own. He caught a couple of whiffs of it and murmured noncommittally.
"It smells good," he said, not completely convinced. "It's not-"
"Ramen, yeah…" Sakura finished for him with a roll of her eyes, looking too tired to actually berate him. She took a pair of chopsticks and offered it to her pouting teammate. "How's the bridge coming?"
The blond's smile returned to his face in record-time as he beamed at her. "Awesome! Tazuna says it won't be long before it's completed. We solved the problem at the K-sector and we're going to continue down the line this afternoon."
The young kunoichi nodded uncomfortably, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. "Did anyone else…"
She let the question float there unfinished, but she knew the other understood. She had asked it regularly in the past few days, after all.
'Did anyone else quit?' was the complete version of it.
It had happened five days before. Half a dozen of Tazuna's men had walked up to him to tell him they wanted to stop working on the bridge. They were afraid Gatou would take action against them and thought the project wasn't worth losing their lives over.
Naruto had been present at the time and, needless to say, he had been very vocal about it. He just couldn't stand people acting like that, turning their backs on something that was evidently very important for their country and for themselves. His earlier confrontation with Inari had come to his mind and the simple thought that Tazuna's grandson could have been right about heroes, courage and hard work – like Tazuna's co-workers were implying with their decision – had made him hit the roof in anger. He had berated those men for even thinking about it, and if Sakura hadn't stepped in, he would have probably hit someone as well.
The blond's expression soured just at the memory. He had started giving a hand with the bridge right after that, but even he didn't know what he had hoped to accomplish with that. Yes, he was stronger than all of Tazuna's men but his help was hardly invaluable, and his presence there hadn't stopped another batch of cowards from abandoning the construction site the day before, either.
He felt completely useless when he thought about it.
"No," he grumbled eventually. "No one quit today."
"Good," Sakura said at once, a forced cheerful tone in her voice, but she struggled to find anything else to say. "Good."
The cries of his Kage Bunshin training on the water's bay filled the silence that followed as they finished their lunch. Naruto kept scowling at the food, and Sakura had to wonder if he thought that intimidating it with a look it would solve his problems… or maybe turn into ramen.
"I don't know how they can keep it up for so long," the kunoichi eventually said, nodding in the clones' direction. "They've been going at it non-stop since we got here. You're really amazing, you know that?"
After a moment of shocked embarrassment, in a rare moment of insight Naruto interpreted the comment as an attempt to lift his morale. Even knowing that, he couldn't contain a grin while his left hand scratched the back of his head.
"Eh-eh… thank you," he said quietly. "But you have me completely thrashed on water-walking. My clones still lose their footing and drop under the surface at times. You have already mastered the exercise, already."
Much to his surprise, she didn't look very pleased with the praise.
"Much good it does me…"
"Don't say that!" he berated her, frowning. "You're lasting longer and longer every day," he pointed out helpfully. He knew stamina was a sore spot for her and he wanted to return her the favour by cheering her up this time "Your chakra reserves are increasing visibly. I can tell, you know?" And he could, he could since coming into possession of his latest weapon. "You're getting better!"
Sakura smiled at that, looking a bit more determined. "I have to admit I envy that power of yours. More so than Fire or even Ice, that Materia is incredibly useful."
Naruto shrugged slightly, putting down his finished lunch. "It's alright, I guess. I prefer others."
"I bet," the pink-haired girl said with a knowing look. "Not flashy enough, is it?"
The blond grinned. "Among other things, yeah."
"Any luck in deciphering the orange bar?" she asked then and he frowned.
A week had already passed since the discovering of his newest Materia and he wasn't any closer to solving the mystery of the orange bar than he had then. The power of the yellow sphere, which he had later dubbed Sense Materia, consisted in performing a through scan of the person he targeted and showing him their fighting characteristics. It worked easily enough, pretty much like the Steal Materia did. As long as he had it equipped, the ability to see through others' traits was as accessible as walking or talking. It didn't require chakra nor did it give itself away with flashy circles of light, which was definitely a plus in Naruto's opinion – if he decided he wanted to study an enemy, he didn't want them to know that. The only condition for its use was that the holder had to keep the target inside his visual field for the information to appear.
Then the process was instantaneous as what looked like colourful graphs of various length unfolded horizontally as if on a digital screen. It reminded Naruto of the few lessons with a computer back at the Academy he hadn't skipped. The bars also lit up flashingly whenever what they actually represented came into play, which had helped a lot in discovering what they meant.
The problem with understanding this new Materia was that there was neither a graph caption nor a legend accompanying its effects, making it difficult to pinpoint what exactly it showed. Only thanks to the joint effort of the Kyuubi and Team 7, Naruto had been able to decipher all the colourful bars.
All but the orange one, that is.
He glanced at the group of Kage Bunshin who was standing safely on the shore, watching their fellow clones fighting. He had appointed them to keep the Sense Materia activated and observe the training in the hope to unravel its last secret. He considered their expressions for a brief second.
"They don't look very happy," he said eventually. "I doubt they discovered anything new. Besides, they would have called me if they had. I told them to."
Sakura sighed and shook her head.
"What trait could orange possibly represent?" she wondered aloud with a little smirk. "Apart from the power to annoy people, I mean?"
"Hey!" the blond protested.
Her smirk widened a little as she stood up.
"Thank you for the lunch," she said, dusting her skirt. "Time to pick up my training. I've rested enough for today."
She walked resolutely down the shore while Naruto wished her luck. He watched as she joined the group of Kage Bunshin simply standing still on the water before moving his gaze to the group sparring lightly not far from them.
A clone's flying kick had just missed when a stream of unexpected images flowed into his brain and into those of his copies training in front of him. The Bunshin still in the air sported a very puzzled look as the surprising set of memories disrupted his concentration and made him drop underwater. The other clones stopped their movements as well, as they dealt with these strange new pieces of information.
Naruto himself blinked owlishly as he thought about what had happened in a quiet clearing of the large forest nearby. A Shadow clone, one of the few stationed around Tazuna's house, had just dispelled himself after taking part to a quite weird conversation with a girlish boy, who had actually turned out to be also a ninja in the end.
Or at least, as strong as one.
The boy and the clone had met near the clearing where Sasuke was practicing the tree-walking exercise, and they had talked about precious people, of all things. The kid had been nice throughout the whole conversation as they had looked for some kind of medical plant that grew in the forest, and he had looked and sounded harmless all the while. He had left with the revelation of his true – and baffling – gender. That was when the Kage Bunshin had had the idea to check with his newest Materia, which in retrospect didn't make much sense considering it showed completely different things from gender, but it turned out useful anyway, as it revealed the girlish boy's strength.
Pointing his eyes at the retreating figure and using his newest skill, the clone had watched as different bars of various length and colour had appeared all around the small figure. Despite having experienced that countless times already, it was still fascinating to see the graphs materialize so suddenly. They had filled most of the space in his peripheral vision, their tones clear enough to let him see what was beyond, although tinged according to their colours.
And they had showed that the boy was no civilian, though he was no jounin either. He was as fast as Sasuke – who Naruto hated to admit was a bit faster than him – and had almost as much chakra control as Sakura – who completely shamed Naruto in that department – despite having something like ten times the amount the kunoichi had – which was the equivalent of a spit in a swimming pool as far as the jinchuuriki was concerned, instead. The boy's physical strength was nothing to brag about, though.
As the clone who had dropped underwater returned to the surface before inexplicably diving once again, Naruto thought back at what the mysterious ninja had said. If fighting for someone else made you stronger like he had explained, then the boy had to have a very precious someone in his life.
"Boss! Boss!"
Naruto raised his head to look at the weird Kage Bunshin of before, now floating at little distance from his fighting copies, waving his arm to attract his attention.
"What is it?" the original blond shouted back, cupping his hands around the mouth and standing up.
"Great news!" was the other's yelled reply and Naruto had to blink, puzzled.
"And you got them underwater?"
"Yes! There's a Materia somewhere down here!"
Everybody stopped what they were doing and turned to the swimming clone. "Really?"
"Yeah! I can't really see much and it feels very far anyway, but you can only sense it when you're underwater!"
Without a moment of hesitation, every Kage Bunshin around simply stopped channelling chakra to their feet and dropped below the surface.
"Hey!" Sakura shouted indignantly as some of the splashes reached her.
A few seconds later, they began to reappear and shout that yes, there was really a Materia underwater, seemingly far away.
"What are we waiting for, then?" Naruto said excitedly from the shore. He pointed at the copy who had first sensed the sphere. "You! Go get it!"
It turned out that it was easier said than done. The Materia was so deep into the bay that no clone was able to even get a good look at it before running out of breath and puffing out, and only Sakura's intervention stopped Naruto from going himself and most likely die trying.
"At least wait until tomorrow!" she reasoned while standing heroically between the bay and the boy. "I'm sure Kakashi knows a way to get to it easily… and without drowning."
The blond relented at that and decided that it probably was a good idea. It wasn't like the stone would go anywhere, after all. As Sakura sighed tiredly and resumed her training, he went back to working with Tazuna and tried his best to keep his mind off the nearby Materia, not really succeeding.
The next day, Naruto departed from Tazuna's house with a huge smile on his face and an air-mask in his hands. Only the latter made it to the bridge.
Upon arriving, in fact, the first thing he saw was Gon-san and four other workers lying on the ground.
"Gon-san!" he shouted, immediately running up to him. The mask fell to the ground, already forgotten.
"Wha-what happened?" a clearly distressed Tazuna followed.
They crouched beside the man and realized with some relief that he was alive.
"A-a monster," he slurred feebly. As he talked, a rivulet of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
In the meantime, Sasuke was checking on another worker. He had finally learnt the tree-climbing exercise and had been allowed to come with them, and it actually seemed like that would be a stroke of luck.
"This one's only unconscious," he said quietly.
"Naruto, there's no time for that now!" Kakashi said quickly. "Bring Tazuna-san back here, hurry!"
After a moment of hesitation, the blond escorted the client to where Kakashi and Sakura had taken a defensive position and a beat later Sasuke joined them as well. Naruto was turning his head left and right to try and spot whoever had done this, but a familiar mist was slowly masking everything around them.
"So it was a trick!" he growled heatedly, thinking back at the possibly fake hunter-nin. "He's still alive!"
There was a derisive laugh rising out of the fog, and like last time, it was impossible to pinpoint where it came from.
"Of course I'm alive, brat," Zabuza's disembodied voice said from nowhere and everywhere. "And I've come to take your head!"
The missing-nin's killing intent crashed against them like a physical presence but Naruto was ready this time around and he didn't even need the Kyuubi's cackle to shrug it off.
"Shaking again, eh poor kid?" the Mist shinobi continued and Naruto had barely the time to realize he was talking about Sasuke before a dozen Zabuzas suddenly appeared all around them.
As he called forth chakra to unleash his Materia, he heard the Uchiha reply.
"I'm shaking from excitement!"
Green light flashed in a circle around him, immediately followed by six balls of fire magically appearing underneath the nearest swordsmen, consuming them with a roar. As they burst out in harmless splashes of water, Naruto idly noticed that the ones behind him had met the same end with the compliments of one smug Uchiha. The blond grinned. After seeing all those Suiton jutsu thrown around in the first battle, pairing the All Materia with the Fire one had been the obvious choice, but he was glad it had already worked out to his advantage.
As Sasuke returned his smirk in kind, he braced himself for the next attack.
"Well, well, well," Zabuza said and they all turned to look at him as he came out of the mist with the fake hunter-nin on his side. "It looks like you will have some fun, Haku."
The small figure, Haku apparently, nodded slowly. "It does indeed."
Naruto took a moment to quietly scan them with his Sense Materia. He had to shudder and then scowl at the missing-nin. Looking at his long graphs was like looking at Kakashi's – highly humbling and a little depressing. That was one of the reasons why he wasn't as enthusiastic as Sakura about his newest Materia. It made him awfully conscious of the very long way he had yet to go to reach his dream.
He soon moved his gaze to scan the other shinobi who seemed-
"You're the boy from yesterday!" he gasped, easily recognizing his stats and then his appearances as those of the girlish ninja who had talked to his Kage Bunshin the day before. He blinked at him in confusion. "What- why?"
There was a moment of silence and the blond wondered if Zabuza's companion was surprised under that mask of his.
"Hello, Naruto," he said simply.
"Naruto, how do you know him?" Sakura asked with a disgruntled look.
The orange-clad genin was still short of words, his eyes shifting confusedly from the boy to the Mist shinobi while his mind thought back at their past encounters.
"One of my clones met him in the forest," he eventually said. "I didn't know he was the fake hunter-nin. If I had…"
But he had to stop because he didn't know what came next. If he had known… what would he have done?
"I'll fight him," Sasuke declared after that, advancing forward and away from their group.
Annoyance overruled his indecision and Naruto took a step forward as well.
"I'll fight him too!" he fired back and the Uchiha snorted.
"Don't get in my way, Dobe."
"It's you who should stay out of mine, Teme!"
"Could you, maybe, work together?" Kakashi amicably interrupted their banter. "Just a suggestion."
The two looked at each other in distrust but then nodded.
"Alright, let's cream this poser!" the blond said seriously, shoving everything else in the back of his mind.
Sasuke only grunted in reply.
"Sakura, step in front of Tazuna-san and don't leave my side," the silver-haired jounin ordered and the girl immediately complied. "We'll let them handle him."
As soon as he had said that, Naruto's attention was drawn back forward, as a whirl of motion materialized in front of him. Even as he dodged to the left, the boy identified as Haku grazed his shoulder with a fist while his other hand, wielding a senbon, clashed against Sasuke's kunai.
The blond kept on moving, his fingers forming the beloved cross-shaped seal for the Kage Bunshin no Jutsu. Twenty clones appeared and immediately equipped the Cover Materia in the only empty slot of their left holster. A couple of them charged the masked boy from behind but were dispelled as he spun around and threw a handful of senbon in a circle.
That action gave Sasuke an opening and he immediately struck with his kunai, only to see it deflected at the last moment. He continued the movement with a left kick that his opponent was a bit too slow to parry, and the blow drove the enemy back a couple of feet.
One of the clones pounced on the boy for a flying kick but, again, Haku's superior speed worked to his advantage and the copy was dispelled.
Naruto too ran at him now, in the wake of the Bunshin gone up in smoke, fist shooting forward and aimed at the boy's face. He didn't know why but he felt a deep desire to break the boy's mask, to see his expression and look into his eyes. The punch was dodged, however, and he saw Haku's hand rise up towards his neck.
A clone suddenly materialized between them, took the blow in his stead and burst like an empty balloon. Perhaps having instinctively expected this, Naruto ignored the smoke and slammed his right foot squarely into his opponent's stomach, earning a satisfying oof in reply and tossing him away. Sasuke jumped in the air incredibly quick but his five shuriken only embedded on the bridge floor as Haku managed to roll backwards and then laterally.
The boy had barely stood up and he had already completed a series of seals, and one-handed to boot. Gasping in surprise, Naruto saw as the water from Zabuza's Bunshin rose all around him and his clones. Shaping into countless of senbon, the water needles soon converged on them. It was a cool jutsu and he wouldn't have minded learning it like he had learnt the Water Prison technique, if only his Enemy Skill Materia listened to what he had to say. But the sphere worked differently – he knew that now, after days of testing – either choosing what to copy randomly or based on some yet to be discovered criteria, he still didn't know. These flying water senbon of death were not impressive enough, apparently, for no knowledge of the jutsu appeared in his mind when they rained down on him.
The blond waited for the various popping sounds to stop resonating in his ears and then sprang out of the thick cloud of smoke that had gathered mostly around him, as his copies' Cover Materia activated to protect him.
He jumped into the clear air again, noticing how every last one of the clones had been dispelled, and couldn't help but exhale loudly in seeing that Sasuke had been out of the range of the attack. He was also pursuing the enemy already, his slim body moving deftly around Haku. The Uchiha finally landed a very vicious kick to the boy's face and Zabuza's companion was thrown back, right at the Mist shinobi's feet.
"Looks like I have the advantage in speed," the dark-haired boy said smugly while Haku adjusted his mask.
Naruto snorted.
"I hit him too but you don't see me bragging," he mumbled under his breath, but Sasuke heard him.
"I hit him twice," he countered. "And his butt is still on the ground for the second blow."
"Oh yeah?" The blond huffed as he walked up to his teammate. They were getting farther and farther away from Tazuna and the rest of the team, and the three figures now appeared blurred in the drifting mist. "What about these, then?" he asked, producing a large bundle of needles from one of his pockets. "Did you by chance steal all of his senbon? I don't think so!"
It was Sasuke's time to snort at that. "Big deal. He can make thousands of others out of damn water!"
"I didn't know that!" the jinchuuriki snapped back. "I took these things before that!"
Zabuza's laughter stopped their argument.
"Haku," he told his companion in amusement, "do you realize that at this rate we'll be driven back?"
"Yeah," the masked boy replied, standing up and forming seals. "We can't have that."
Naruto looked around as the water still on the bridge shot up in the air and surrounded him and Sasuke. In a split of a second, as a sudden cold chilled his spine, it had coalesced into dozens of large ice mirrors connected together by numerous plinths made of ice as well.
"What's this?" he wondered aloud, staring at the building of sorts that had formed around them.
Before he could realize that fleeing was most probably a good idea, every escape route was perfectly blocked as what could have been described as an ice-dome trapped them inside.
"Hey, I can do Ice ninjutsu too," he said nervously, not really thinking that a comparison between this complex-looking technique and his quite simpler Materia was a fair one. But when he saw Haku physically enter one of the mirrors, he was forced to add, "Okay, I can't do that."
The masked boy was perfectly reflected in every surface of the ice-dome now, and he seemed to be looking at them with complete calm.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't want to use this jutsu, but you didn't leave me any other choice."
His voice sounded like it was coming from every one of his reflections, and Naruto was left turning left and right in confusion.
"Which is the real one?" he asked Sasuke, but no answer came.
"I'll show you my real speed," Haku declared, then.
The next attack was little more than a blur. Naruto's eyes strained in vain to follow the enemy's movement as he flew from one mirror to the other like a crazy pinball, slashing him and Sasuke with what looked like an ice-senbon as he went.
And that was the other reason why he couldn't agree with his teammate's opinion on his Sense Materia. The thing was somewhat flawed, clearly. It could give him an estimation of what to expect from the enemy, but it obviously couldn't take into account things like special abilities or techniques. Naruto's own enhanced healing, for example, inherited from the Kyuubi, wasn't considered at all by his defensive bars, which should have been much longer than what his Materia showed him and instead put him unfairly just above Sasuke in the department. He had hated that when he had seen it.
Haku, here, was another perfect example of the sphere's flaw.
When he had used it to scan the boy, both a few minutes earlier and the day before, he had been showed that his speed was more or less on par with Sasuke's. While it could have been considered true – or close to true anyway – before the appearance of the ice mirrors of doom, it was now utterly and patently wrong.
After trying to catch the masked shinobi only to catch needles on his arms instead, Naruto was showered by another huge barrage of senbon that pierced his legs. A cry of pain escaped his lips as he joined Sasuke on the ground, both of them trying their best impressions of porcupines.
When he looked up again, he saw that Haku was only visible in the mirror in front of them, now.
"I don't want to have to kill you if possible, nor I want you to have to kill me, but if you come at me, I will destroy my heart and turn myself into a true, heartless shinobi." His tone turned solemn as he continued. "This bridge will be the battleground where we defend our dreams. My dreams are Zabuza's and I'll protect them even if I die. For he is precious to me."
He then raised his hands, ice senbon appearing between his fingers. His voice too seemed to become suddenly chilly.
"For him, I will kill you."
Naruto slowly stood up, glaring at the boy and idly noticing that Sasuke was giving him the same look.
"I can't die here," he said resolutely, "because I will become Hokage!"
That said, he threw himself at the mirror, his flying kick impacting violently against it. The ice wasn't in any way affected, nor was the masked boy residing in it.
"Dobe!"
He turned around quickly only to see the Teme bringing his fingers up to his lips. He barely had the time to dive out of the way before Sasuke's Great Fireball hit Haku's image. When the flames had receded a little, though, it was clear that even the Uchiha's ninjutsu had obtained no better results than his kick.
"It didn't do anything!" the blond cursed.
"You can't melt this ice with that level of fire," Zabuza's companion calmly informed them.
"That's what you think!" Naruto shot back stubbornly. He brought his hands up to form his favourite seal and looked on in determination as fifty clones appeared both inside and outside the dome. Pointing grandly at the mirror in which Haku was dwelling, he shouted at the top of his lungs.
"FIRE!"
Green light flashed everywhere, and for a brief second, nothing seemed to happen, the proverbial calm before the storm. Then an interminable series of painfully loud roars began and a continuous stream of flames rose from underneath most of the mirrors, as clone after clone called up the power of their Fire and All Materia combined. After a moment of hesitation under the overwhelming burst of heat, Sasuke joined the fray as well with his family ninjutsu.
Haku seemed to regard the attack with a bit of apprehension. He couldn't even move from his mirror now, because his position was constantly subjected to a torrent of flames that threatened to burn him to a crisp should he poke his face out of the ice. Instead of flying from reflection to reflection, the masked boy was forced to simply throw out ice senbon against the army assaulting him. Despite the movement limitation, though, the small weapons were very effective against one-hit enemies such as Kage Bunshin, even after passing through the terrible heat inside the dome. Naruto positively snarled as he once again called the power of fire from his Materia.
Clones were starting to go up in smoke all around them now, as Haku had apparently decided to get rid of them quickly before the flames could seriously affect his construction. Needles started piercing Naruto more frequently as the number of Cover-equipped Kage Bunshin thinned significantly.
"Damn it!" Sasuke cursed, frantically trying to avoid the small weapons flying around. "Fire isn't doing us any good!"
Naruto cursed as well while a senbon missed his right eye by inches. His teammate seemed to be fairing a bit better as far as dodging went – he was also trying to catch their enemy, occasionally – but it was clear he couldn't last long either.
"Trying to follow my movements with your eyes is impossible," Haku said calmly, once again able to move from one mirror to another now that the Fire attacks had reduced drastically. "You'll never be able to catch me. This jutsu uses the other reflections to transport me supremely fast and I can also attack you from inside a mirror should you trap me in one like before."
"Shut up!" Naruto snapped.
Haku seemed to ignore him. "From my point of view you seem to be moving in slow motion."
The blond quickly created as many clones as he could, feeling decidedly light-headed as a staggering amount of chakra left his body. The flames all around the dome were immediately renewed, though, as hundreds of fresh Bunshin completely replaced the dispelled ones.
At the same time, the sound of his copies puffing out of existence started to pick up as well, and more and more were materializing to take a needle for him, as now, for the most part, Zabuza's companion seemed to be targeting him personally. Despite Haku's incredible speed, though, it seemed that the Cover Materia was more than able to keep up with him. And at least, all the dead clones were returning their chakra to him. He was already feeling much better.
Countless ice senbon were thrown in his precise direction, but now that they were only coming from one mirror, as Haku was once again stuck in a single slab of ice, they were also easier to defend against, even though the blond could hardly follow their speed.
'Naruto,' the Kyuubi suddenly called through their mental link. He sounded perfectly calm too, as if completely unconcerned by the raging inferno going on around them. 'You should take a look at your Fire Materia.'
Startled by the clear sound of the demon's voice even in all that noise, the blond's gaze shifted to his left arm, where a strange bulge had appeared under the orange sleeve.
Rolling it up to the elbow quickly, he looked in awe at how much bigger the Fire Materia in his holster had become, as dozens after dozens of Kage Bunshin had used its great power. The thought of the stone outgrowing its slot had just passed through his mind when suddenly the experience piled up until that point reached the next level.
"Is this-" he started to say, but had to stop.
With a piercing crash that could be heard even over the roaring fire around, the sphere seemed to actually fall apart. What was possibly just its outer shell simply shattered into countless, fine pieces that dropped to the ground, immediately forgotten. Naruto's eyes instead were completely focused on the sphere that was left behind, safely equipped in the holster and so small he wouldn't have thought it was a Materia at all if not for the easily recognizable green colour.
'Don't let the size fool you,' the Kyuubi whispered to him. 'Now it's much more powerful than before."
A senbon pierced through his left calf, effectively reminding him of the battle that was taking place around him. As he peeled his eyes off the small stone, an excited breath left his mouth, and when he turned towards the nearest mirror and called up chakra, he couldn't help the large grin twisting his lips.
It was impossible not to notice the difference between this second level jutsu and the first level one, as he poured something like six times the normal amount of energy behind the technique. Instead of the usual relatively large ball of fire, what followed the green light surrounding him this time was a thick pillar of flames rising up from the ground to the ice ceiling and devouring the nearest mirror as it went. There was also the possibility that it lasted longer than its smaller counterpart, but Naruto couldn't be sure with all the chaos that was going on under the dome. The Kyuubi cackling in his head wasn't helping much either.
What he was sure of, instead, was the loud cracking sound that followed his attack, as the targeted mirror shook dangerously on its plinths. When the blond attacked again, the noise tripled in intensity as first that mirror and then that half of the dome crumbled to the ground. Kage Bunshin cheered from the other side of the ruins and Naruto quickly joined them, happily leaving that damn ice-trap behind.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a dark shape fly through the air to intercept what was the unmistakable blur of Haku, as he shot out of another collapsing mirror with part of his kimono on fire. The boy's hand was yanked downward, hard, and his body slammed to the ground, the impact violent enough to extinguish the flames on his clothes.
Sasuke kept him pinned there as more clones cheered happily.
"No way," Haku mumbled, face flattened to the bridge while a kunai was held at his throat. "You followed my movements? How?"
Naruto approached them quickly and couldn't contain the gasp as the Uchiha answered.
"I can see you better now."
Inside Sasuke's eyes, the Sharingan was blazing hungrily.
Author's notes – The Sense Materia was a huge pain in the ass. It's probably the FFVII aspect that fits less with the Naruto manga. I had to alter it a little, too, and let's just say I'm not exactly delighted by the result. Anyway, the new chapter is coming out soon.
Uncle Stojil
