The sun broke through the misty clouds and shone clear upon the newly built bridge.
Kakashi kept a disinterested looking eye on Tazuna's construction workers who were finishing up their labor, placing the last slabs of concrete, nailing final nails, and polishing the wood.
Zabuza and Haku were dead, but even if Kakashi didn't know what was about to happen, he knew a man like Gato would not let such an insult pass. The bridge would break his stranglehold on Wave's economy. Such a man had a big ego, and would want to make a grand entrance on a day everyone would be there to witness. The day the Great Naruto Bridge was completed.
Kakashi frowned a little under his mask and glanced at his students who were trying not to look too excited a little way off. Would that be the bridge's name again? The Great Kakashi Bridge was... garish, even by his standards. It was hard for a shinobi to exist in the shadows when one's name was plastered all over a major bridge. Obviously, Naruto was the exception. He always had been.
He was aware of Naruto's shift in attention a moment before the boy spoke.
"Kaka-sensei!" he said, squishing his face up in what might be concentration on any other student. "Something is coming closer, over that way." He pointed to the opposite end of the bridge, where it connected to the land beyond. "Like little fireflies. I dunno..."
Sakura huffed and crossed her arms. "Now you're sensing fireflies? What does that even mean?"
But Kakashi suspected he knew. He languidly rose from his perch atop a railing, where he'd been overseeing the last of the construction. The mist was not thick today, but it was difficult to see far. Gato's mob of men would be obscured for some time yet.
"Sakura," he said, "what would you have done if you did not graduate with your genin class?"
The girl visibly paled, probably thinking his question a threat to cut her from the team. But she was made of sterner stuff (he'd made sure of it this time) and squared her shoulders. "I would have gone to work in my parent's business."
"But you would have had some knowledge of shinobi arts."
"Useless ones," Sasuke grumbled. He leaned against the railing of the bridge, his head down, his arms crossed. Sulking as usual. "How to make clones."
"I've gotten better, Sasuke-kun!" Sakura said in what was almost a sharp tone.
Naruto nearly bounced up and down. "I would have kept trying! I'm going to be Hokage and I'm not going to let failing stop me!"
Kakashi nodded once and decided to step in before his entire team fell into squabbling. "Some do as you say, but most failed graduates become samurai, or hire themselves out as mercenaries for hire." His eye settled on Naruto, "Most still have access to their chakra, though they don't use it. It's small, but there. Like seeing fireflies in the dark."
"Hey..." Naruto's face screwed up again in what must have been intense thought. He looked down the misty bridge for a long, long moment. Then back again. "Hey... does that mean... but there's a lot of them coming, sensei. Does that mean...?"
Kakashi nodded. "I suspect," he said with an inner smile. Foreknowledge was a great advantage, "the man who hired the Zabuza and his associate has brought reinforcements." A dark mass was forming in the distance, way on the other side of the bridge. "A great many reinforcements," Kakashi said.
All three children went very still. Kakashi had warned them that something would most likely (ha!) happen today, but he didn't inform them of the numbers they'd face. No need to cause undo anxiety. Still, over the last 48 hours, he'd gotten them prepared as best he could. There was a reason he had all three of them practicing water and tree walking.
Thanks to Iruka's meddling, they had a new trick up their sleeve.
Tazuna's remaining construction workers started to notice the oncoming mob as well. Alarmed shouts rose up all around them. Some men and women abandoned their tools and simply went sprinting for the 'safe' end of the bridge, by the village. Not many of them looked surprised. Perhaps they knew something was coming as well.
"You know your duty," Kakashi said to his students. "If these men get past us, they will pillage the village. They will rape the women and kill the children. Then they will seize the bridge and this village will never be free. It is our duty to stop them."
The mob drew closer - individuals in the front ranks could be picked out and the menacing gleam of bladed weapons caught the sunlight.
"Kakashi-sensei..." Sakura's voice warbled slightly, but she fell silent a glance from him.
"Naruto and Sakura, you are with me," Kakashi said. He looked at Sasuke, "You will guard Tazuna."
The boy stared at him. "I should be fighting! Make Sakura do it. She's-"
He had no time for this. At least Sakura had known her place in the previous timeline. "The mob will be targeting Tazuna specifically. He must be protected at all costs, and as medic you will need to be kept in reserve. There will be injuries."
Sasuke looked mutinous and Kakashi again wondered if he had been wasting his time so far. Instead, he waved Naruto and Sakura off a little ways. When he was reasonably sure they wouldn't be overheard, Kakashi withdrew a scroll from his pocket.
"Take this."
The boy didn't. His dark eyes narrowed. "Am I a messenger, too?"
Kakashi whapped him upside the head. Not enough to hurt the Uchiha, but enough to stagger him a little. "This," he said with patience he did not feel, "is the keystone. Once this scroll is lit, the others will ignite and explode."
Sasuke's eyes widened. Kakashi had pried from Naruto one of the secrets of the exploding tags that Iruka had taught him. The boy's tags were rudimentary and not all that powerful, but they could be tied by lines of chakra together. And enough of them generated quite a lot of energy. Kakashi had made all three genin walk up and down the pillars of the bridge over the last few days as part of their "training" to attach them at weak points. Even if only some of them exploded...
"Should we lose," Kakashi said, knowing that they wouldn't, "ignite it."
Sasuke took the scroll in a slightly trembling hand. It was a calculated balm to his ego. It was important that he didn't rush into the fray - and somehow reveal his sharingan eyes in the process.
The boy nodded, and, tucking the scroll into his vest, went to join Tazuna. The old man had stayed on the bridge as his people left, his wide brimmed hat in his hands and desperation on his face as he stared at the oncoming mob.
Kakashi ambled over to Naruto and Sakura. He crouched, purposefully relaxed, between his two students as the mob and the man who led him, Gato, stopped some one-hundred feet away.
Gato's oily voice rose above the clatter of men and weapons behind him.
"So you are the one who defeated the Demon of the Mist."
"Yeah," Kakashi said, putting as much yawn into his voice as possible.
Gato shook his head. "I suppose Zabuza wasn't was strong as I thought. That's okay, I never planned on paying him anyway!" The man paused to laugh at his own joke, then continued, "This isn't your fight, Leaf Shinobi. Let me take the bridge and I promise to you that no one will get hurt."
"You're a liar!" Naruto screeched, his voice high with fear and anger. "I don't believe you." Then he threw the mob the finger.
"Kakashi-sensei, do you have a jutsu to take care of them?" Sakura asked anxiously.
"No. There are too many." That was a flat out lie. Kakashi could summon his dogs and he knew quite a few water jutsu's that would help with the mob. Now that his chakra hadn't been drained by fighting Zabuza, he could pull out all the stops.
But like a mother fox brings a rabbit with a broken leg to her cubs to kill, so Kakashi figured that this mob of armed citizens would be good practice. Speaking of...
"We need more on our side," he said with a glance to Naruto.
It took the boy until the slow count of five to get it. Then he grinned widely and crossed his fingers. Instantly, a couple hundred Narutos popped into existence around them. Kakashi completed the seals himself, filling out the ranks with fifty of his own clones. Sakura scowled at them both as if they were cheating.
The mob hesitated for a moment, but when Gato screamed at them to charge, they came on with respectable cries of war and with their weapons glinting.
It was ridiculously easy to kill Gato, as it was with most civilians. Zabuza had done so without the use of his arms and only a kunai in his teeth. Kakashi didn't bother doing it himself - he let a clone have the honor.
Unfortunately men as a mob was like a demon with many heads. Some saw Gato die and faltered, but the rest were too blood-maddened to take notice or stop.
Naruto's many clones poofed out right and left - they were good for perhaps one hit, and sometimes not even then - but what the boy didn't know was that he gained experience with every one of them. Kakashi kept an eye on the real Naruto and watched how his aim became more sure, more determined.
Sakura held her own in the middle of the melee, too. There were men who hesitated at sinking a blade into a 12 year old girl. They got kicked in the face for it. Others didn't hesitate at all, but Sakura's limberness served her well and more often than not those got a kunai or a shuriken in the stomach.
Kakashi knew that the fight would be won in their favor. His experienced eye glanced over the field of battle, and he knew that any moment the mob would falter as too many around them all fell. They would-
A rumbling BOOM shook the bridge. Kakashi staggered and had to leap back as his aim was thrown off and he nearly impaled himself on knife taped to a stick that someone was using as a spear. The first BOOM was followed by a succession of others and then the very ground below them began to tilt.
Kakashi looked back in horror to see Sasuke with Tazuna, safely on the other side of the bridge. The scroll in Sasuke's hand was alight with flame.
The Uchiha was blowing up the bridge with everyone on it.
Happy New Year! :D