A/N: Finishing this late at night, but if I didn't get this out today, it'd be another two weeks. So here. I seriously hope you enjoy it. We're finally into the thick of it! The battle at the bridge begins here! Serious action for the next couple chapters. And this is ALL ONE SCENE. Pretty impressive, even if it is a short chapter. All Sasuke's POV, with Sharingan action and everything. It's fun. I hope you like it!

Chapter 33: Reminding

Sasuke leaned back on the low wall, propped up on his elbows, his eyes closed. Anyone who didn't know him might have thought he seemed bored, but it was rather the reverse—he was trying to block out the immediate noise and feel of the bridge workers around him and of Naruto, Shino, and Sakura—who had learned a Genjutsu, it seemed, and been sent to guard with them—and focus his attentions outward. He could hear no sign of any threat nearby, but that was no certain guarantee. It wouldn't be especially difficult to sneak up on them.

"Hey, Sasuke, stop looking so glum!" Naruto said from the other side of the bridge. "It's like a break!"

Sasuke frowned at his teammate—surely Naruto was aware that he was just on lookout. Naruto nodded imperceptibly and crossed his fingers in the Hand Seal he used for the Shadow Clone Jutsu so quickly that even Sasuke almost didn't see it.

Ah, Sasuke thought. He's running recon, then. The Uchiha slowly allowed himself to relax. Naruto would give him fair warning.

"Just trying to rest," he said casually. "Have to keep up my strength."

"Oh?" Naruto teased. "Did Sasuke-chan have trouble sleeping?"

"No," Sasuke grunted. "But I'm going to have a rough night tonight."

"Why?" Sakura asked concernedly.

He shrugged. "I'm going to be up late knocking the stuffing out of the idiot."

"Bastard."

The four of them stood in companionable silence for a time. Then Naruto spoke again.

"I'm bored," he said matter-of-factly.

"Short attention span, much?" Sasuke muttered dryly. Sakura giggled, but he wondered if it was because it had been funny or because he'd said it.

"Hey, I can focus on something for quite a long time!" said Naruto, glaring at him. "Attention span isn't the issue! There's just nothing to focus on!"

Sasuke shrugged. "Should I get you a babysitter or playmate?"

He got a poke on the forehead for his trouble, but it didn't bother him as much as it once might. "You're a bastard, Sasuke," grunted Naruto sourly.

"You've mentioned," Sasuke nodded sagely. "Oddly enough, though, no one else ever does."

"You're a bastard," Shino said with perfect poise.

Sasuke turned his eyes skyward. "Really Shino?"

"I am quite within my rights," said Shino without inflection. "It is beyond true, if…"

"Shino!" Naruto exclaimed, pointing off to the distance. "Look! An interruption!"

Sasuke nodded gratefully at Naruto. He couldn't expect Shino to forget all he'd ever done, and he had put it behind him—which was enough—but it didn't change how the words had wounded him.

Sakura, however, didn't understand Naruto's motives, and hit him. "You little…!" she muttered. "Don't be a jerk just because you're bored!"

The Uchiha winced on his friend's behalf, but said nothing—what, after all, could he say?

"Sakura-chaan…" Naruto whined. "Don't hit me! I thought our relationship was mutual—no abuse!"

Sakura froze. Sasuke put his head in his hands, but in that safe darkness, he hid a smile. Naruto, you idiot, he thought fondly.

But Sakura didn't hit the blond. She took three deep breaths and turned away, leaning back on the railing. "Guess I need to get used to this, if I'm going to be on your team," she muttered. "Don't be stupid if you can avoid it, Naruto."

Sasuke looked over at the girl, surprised. She was looking up towards the heavens, breathing deeply.

Naruto leapt up on the railing beside his raven-haired teammate and studied their fellow as well. "You've grown, Sakura-chan," he said quietly.

Both the girl and Sasuke looked over at him in surprise, though hers was greater. His eyes no longer held the playful twinkle of a moment before but now seemed a deeper blue, and though he was sure Sakura couldn't see it, Sasuke recognized something like pride or happiness in them. Naruto was glad that Sakura was becoming the teammate he remembered once again.

Suddenly the blue eyes widened and shifted again, becoming a blaze of cerulean fire. "Sakura, go," he ordered flatly. "Tell Kakashi-sensei that they're here."

Sasuke's eyes widened and, straining his ears, he heard the splashes of Ninja's feet on water—behind him. He whirled as Sakura began to run. "Shino, go with her," he ordered.

The Aburame didn't even bother to reply—Sasuke heard his retreating footsteps behind him.

"Civilians!" Naruto called to all of the building crew. "The enemy's shown up. Go—we'll contact you when it's safe."

"Tazuna!" Sasuke called over the sound of panicked workers. "You stay here—we can't have them following you to town and bypassing us!"

Tazuna nodded and fell into place behind the two of them. The bridge was almost empty…

"Wind Style:" said the cold voice of the Dishonored, "Great Breakthrough."

Sasuke had half expected the entire bridge to be thrown—instead, all of the civilians still on it flew off as though thrown by a great hand, landing in the dust behind the Konoha Ninja. Naruto turned, looking at them in surprise, but Sasuke nudged him—there, at the very point where the bridge ended, three figures had landed on the stones.

The Dishonored's skull-like mask faced directly towards Naruto, and despite the distance, Sasuke knew the lenses and the eyes behind them were focused directly on the Uzumaki.

For a moment there was perfect silence. Then the Dishonored moved.

He drew out one of his many sealing scrolls and pulled out of it a number of knives. Sasuke's heart sank—he would know those three-pronged blades anywhere. I'd hoped he wouldn't have any… he thought grimly. Wishful thinking, I suppose.

The kunai were thrown all over the bridge, embedded in the stone all around them. Naruto stared at Sasuke in alarm, but there was not time to speak.

In less than an instant, the armored Shinobi was to Sasuke's right. Sasuke blinked—his Eternal Mangekyo whirled—there was the lightning fast action of drawing two kunai. The blade unsheathed from the scrolls entwined around his enemy's wrists—Sasuke had expected that, he'd known the design—he blocked…

The Dishonored had teleported away. He stood by Zabuza again, so perfectly poised that Sasuke almost thought he had imagined the moment of lightning-fast combat. Only one strike, he thought. He can teleport all over the battlefield swinging undetectable single strikes. That is the power of the Hiraishin.

Naruto could do that too, though, as he demonstrated by performing a quick teleport to one of the Dishonored's kunai and back. "They're the same seal," he whispered o Sasuke upon returning. Sasuke nodded.

There was silence again. Then Zabuza spoke. "Haku, you know what to do."

The white-masked Ninja raised his arms, and mirrors of ice formed all around them, risindg from the sea below. Haku stepped back into one and was all around them.

"You don't have the Chakra to sustain that long," Sasuke said, and he was fairly confident it was true.

Naruto shrugged. "They may not have to," he said grimly.

Sasuke grunted and began forming Hand Seals. He had a plan.

Sure enough, as he formed the second seal, a senbon flew at his neck—his Mangekyo Sharingan csaw it with ease. He snatched it out of the air and completed the jutsu. His eyes snapped on to the rapidly-moving form of the Ice Style user in the air over the bridge as he brought his hand—and the senbon in it—to his lips. "Fire Style:" he said quietly. "Flaming Senbon."

The needle flew at incedible speeds and intercepted Haku in mid-leap—Sasuke had compensated for his motion. The ice Ninja dropped to the bridge, alive but in pain—Sasuke had hit him in a nerve cluster in his lower back, and the fire had begun to burn his clothes.

Zabuza yanked out the senbon and patted the fire dry. "Dammit," he muttered—Sasuke's trained ears picked it up, even over that distance. "Didn't expect… Dishonored?"

Sasuke's left eye widened—his right closed. The Dishonored had vanished in the moments he'd been focused elsewhere.

He blinked. So had Naruto.

He squinted. Oh, he thought, shocked.

They had not vanished—they were in a fantastic game of cat and mouse across the great Hiraishin board that the bridge had become—never in one place long enough for any normal man to see. Even the Eternal Mangekyo barely picked it up. They would appear, already striking, and just as they blocked one another, vanish and appear elsewhere. It was like a dance, each Ninja able to predict the other's movements fairly well and able to make up for mistakes with the speed of Hiraishin.

"Naruto!" Sasuke called. "Can you keep him busy?"

The blond's "Yes!" had an odd echo to it, born of the fact that it was spoken from a hundred different places at slightly different times over the course of that one moment, but Sasuke understood it well enough.

He turned his attention to Zabuza. He felt the blood begin dripping from behind the closed lid of his right eye. The fool was still wondering where his ally was, Sasuke noticed amusedly.

The eye opened. "Amaterasu.," Sasuke said flatly. The black fire spewed forth across the battlefield. Sasuke's left eye tightened. "Blaze Release," he murmured. The flame split and formed a ring around the startled Kiri Shinobi.

I should kill him, Sasuke thought, watching the man as he suddenly looked at him in shock. I won't get another opening this easily.

His shoulders slumped. Naruto wouldn't forgive me, though. Instead, he fragmented the fire, sending parts into each of the ice mirrors all around them. They burned and melted just like anything else in the grips of the technique that was Itachi's and Sasuke's signature.

"Don't take your eyes off your enemy, moron," called Sasuke to the Kiri Jounin.

"What are you doing, kid?" Tazuna asked in fright.

"Trust me," Sasuke whispered.

Zabuza glared at him. "Okay, little Genin," he said, spitting with fury. "You asked for it. Last time I underestimated you. Not this time."

Kubikiriboucho was out in an instant and Zabuza was moving with a speed that Tazuna found quite impressive, judging by his gasp. Sasuke knew better—Zabuza was no faster than he had to be—he was a heavy-hitter, primarily.

Sasuke, on the other hand, used speed as another weapon. He wasn't as fast as he had been, though—he couldn't have matched Lee, by any means—but he was, thought not faster than Zabuza, faster than Zabuza expected.

That would have to be enough.

Sasuke drew two kunai out again and leapt to his left, channeling Chakra to his feet to stick to the railing of the bridge. Timed perfectly, he leapt back, arms forward, kunai pointed. His outstretched limbs slipped through the hole in Kubikiriboucho—he flipped the kunai outward, bent at the wait to plant his feet in the earth and spun.

Kubikiriboucho was torn out of Zabuza's hands andflew skyward as Sasuke released it. In an instant he had translated his spin ninety degrees and was stabbing towards Zabuza's side with his twin blades.

The former Kiri-nin leapt away in shock. Sasuke tossed the two kunai after him, caught the falling sword, and swung it into a classic kenjutsu stance all in one fluid motion. He channeled his immense stores of Yin Chakra into his arms in order to carry the sword—better, he noted with slight pride—than Suigetsu had ever managed.

He and Zabuza glared at each other across the field of Hiraishin knives. The sounds of Naruto and the Dishonored colliding again and again echoed all around them. Then Sasuke's Sharingan saw Zabuza channel his Chakra into a quick jutsu.

"Water Style: Hidden Mist Jutsu!" the former Mist Ninja said forcefully, releasing the energy outward.

Sasuke's Sharingan went haywire. The mist being formed and maintained by Zabuza's eyes, it appeared to his Doujutsu to be an extension of the man's Chakra system. To the hyper-sensitive Eternal Mangekyo, it was rather traumatic to be breathing in parts of the enemy's Chakra.

Sasuke sighed, releasing the Sharingan. For now, at least, it would be easier to fight without it.

A/N: I can't go any further, because it's getting too late. Next time: Kakashi and the others get back into the thick of things, and the battle gets more connected—less two separate battles, more one big one. Not sure if the battle will end next time, though.

Anyway, this arc is probably going to be quite a bit shorter than the last one, but I think it, too, will end with a flashback. Not sure of what yet—got a couple ideas, but we'll see.

Hope you enjoyed, and do me a favor by dropping a review on the way out, please!