A/N: I know that uploading this on a Thursday is probably a terrible idea in terms of reviews and reads, but I'm gonna do it anyway. The following two chapters are going to be the payoff of the past few chapters of buildup.
Time for The Bridge Calamity, Part One
Enjoy!
Satsuki strained heavily against the weight on her shoulders as she hauled a stack of five planks across the shockingly broad bridge. Work had begun on the structure at half-past five that morning, and it had not slowed for even a moment in the three hours since. The tasks were mundane and repetitive, but they were strenuous. Lifting wooden planks, taking them across, and laying them down. Over and over again.
"Get the other end of this thing, Naruto." Satsuki grunted as she neared the opposite end of the bridge from whence she had come. Naruto, who was working alongside Shikamaru to pry a crooked beam free to replace it more straightly, sighed and stood up from his crouched stance. He then circled around behind Satsuki and pushed up on the back end of the planks she was carrying, which were beginning to dip in level. The pair then walked the planks several meters to the left and set them down in front of Tazuna, who nodded approvingly.
"That should be it for now. I have what I need. The others can take it from here." he said, much to the relief of the genin. A few moments later, workers from other sections of the bridge arrived to relieve them of their tasks for the time being, Shikamaru included.
"Stay on guard. We still have work to do." the Nara said tiredly as he trudged over to his teammates, who had taken a seat leaned against the railing of the bridge. Satsuki gestured to Tazuna, who was directing his workers diligently.
"We're still right next to him, and our eyes are open. Kakashi is watching from up above as well. He's safe." she said firmly. Shikamaru reluctantly nodded and kept his eyes drifting from one side of the bridge to the other. He was clearly on edge, and with good reason. Satsuki herself was well and truly feeling the pressure of the situation, momentarily quiet as it currently was. Zabuza's arrival and subsequent rampage had taken place incredibly quickly last time, and likely would the second time around.
"Why do you never call him 'sensei'?" Naruto asked after a stretch of silence. Satsuki glanced at him and then up at Kakashi, who was standing watchfully atop a vertically balanced beam that stretched upward nearly twenty-five feet.
"Not sure. It just doesn't feel right, I guess." she said honestly. The blonde joined her in studying their teacher for a few moments.
"I think you owe him the courtesy. When push comes to shove, he's our only lifeline. We're dead meat without him." he said. The Uchiha girl returned her gaze to the concrete surface of the bridge on which they were sitting.
"Don't remind me. I'll come around to saying it eventually. Just not right now." she mumbled. In a moment of rare perceptiveness, Naruto switched the topic in a clear attempt to lift the mood.
"I found out why Shikamaru's been sneaking out a bunch last night." he said in a lower tone so as to prevent his male teammate from hearing him. Satsuki's interest piqued quickly, as she had pondered a number of reasons as to why the Nara had been slipping away.
"Let me guess, he was napping?" she asked. The blonde shook his head and smirked a bit in the direction of Shikamaru, whose back was turned to them.
"When I went to go check on him last night, he was with a girl. She looked around our age, maybe a little older. They were looking nice and friendly." he said wryly. Satsuki raised an eyebrow and let a humorous grin begin to form on her face.
"How friendly are we talking?" she pressed in a whisper. Naruto waved a dismissive hand and kept his gaze fixed on Shikamaru to ensure that he wasn't eavesdropping.
"Nothing too intimate, but she was hugging him pretty tight. He looked so lost." he said. The Uchiha girl gave him a bored look and tucked a strand of hair behind her left ear.
"Like you wouldn't be. I'm guessing you interrupted them and brought him back home?" she inquired. Naruto nodded and suppressed a chuckle.
"Yeah, I almost felt bad. She looked sorta heartbroken about him leaving. He definitely didn't seem to be in a good mood on the way back either." he said. Satsuki looked to the unaware Nara standing only ten or so feet away from them.
"Didn't think he had the game for that sorta thing, but good for him. Making friends way out here probably wasn't a great idea, though. Even if we make it out in one piece, we're leaving soon." she said, her tone nearly sounding sympathetic at points. Naruto absently drummed his fingers on the bridge.
"Don't you think that's a little dumb, though? It almost feels like things are set up so we can't be close to anybody but our own people." he said, more to himself than Satsuki. The Uchiha girl straightened out one of her legs in front of her and rested her right arm on her remaining bent knee.
"We were at war not too long ago. I don't know a ton about it, but things are apparently still tense internationally. Not so much that war is really a concern, but enough to make cross-country traveling a little bit risky these days." she replied. Naruto exhaled through his nose.
"Politics are stupid. I hated that class." he said tiredly. Satsuki nodded in agreement and shifted to make herself more comfortable on the hard concrete surface.
"I'd be lying if I said I enjoyed it. It was just a bunch of propaganda and boring statistics. It's the only class I came close to failing." she said in a far-less-than-fond tone. Naruto snickered.
"Nice to know that even the class queen could be a bad student sometimes." he said humorously. Satsuki barked a short laugh and scrunched up her nose.
"I never asked to be put up on a pedestal. It's not my fault most of you are a bunch of sheep." she said dryly. Naruto visibly prickled at her words, but quickly calmed himself and settled back down.
"Don't go hoping that Shikamaru or I are gonna worship you or anything like that, because we won't." he said. Though it was hardly a supportive statement, Satsuki found herself feeling quite satisfied with its message. To be the object of widespread affection had never exactly pleased the girl, and to be without the irritating calls and stares had been quite peaceful upon the formation of their cell.
"Good. Just keep it in your head that I'm still ahead of you." she replied. The blonde eyed her out of the corner of his periphery and scowled.
"You just love hearing yourself talk, don't you?" he asked irritatedly. Satsuki shrugged and relaxed a bit against the solid surface to her back.
"You say that like you don't run your mouth twice as much as I do." she countered lightly. Before Naruto could predictably fire back, any positivity and ease that had found its way into the atmosphere was swiftly put down by Shikamaru, who snapped them both to attention with his voice.
"On your feet. We've got mist."
Kakashi leapt down from his perch and hit the ground just a few feet from his genin, who were staring apprehensively at the western end of the bridge. A mist was rolling in, and quickly at that. Narrowing his visible eye, Kakashi made his way in front of the group and cracked his neck.
"Surround Tazuna and get in formation. We've been over this already." he ordered them. The teens obliged and positioned themselves in a tight triangular shape around the bridge builder. The silver-haired ninja then glanced over at the dozen or so workers who were standing around tensely. They clearly weren't entirely aware of what was about to occur, but they were smart enough to know that it was anything but good.
"Unless you want to be vivisected, run away." Kakashi called out to them. Needing no more prompting, the workers scampered away toward the eastern end of the bridge to escape to the ground on the other side of it. Thankfully, and surprisingly, each of them was able to set foot on natural ground without injury or incident. With them gone, all that remained on the bridge was Team Seven.
"He's taking a while this time." Naruto said nervously as the mist overlapped them and overtook the bridge in its entirety. Kakashi kept his silence and drew a kunai from the pouch strapped to his leg. He then tossed the small projectile out into the mist. A split-second later, a flash of sparks accompanied by a metallic sound of collision alerted the cell's collective senses.
"Giving up on ambushes this time around, are we?" Kakashi said in a tone just loud enough to reach across the space before them. The same mirthless chuckle that had haunted the cell once before then rang out in response.
"Why would I waste my time on something that wouldn't work? Even your brats saw it coming last time." came the voice of Zabuza, who was not yet visible. Slowly but surely, the sound of footsteps became visible. As they drew closer, Kakashi noticed something unsettling. There were two sets of feet drumming off of the concrete. A few moments later, Zabuza came into view. Alongside him stood the very same hunter that had 'killed' him a week prior.
"You were spot on, Shikamaru. Good work." Kakashi said, drawing a tense nod from the Nara. The Jonin then fixed his glare on Zabuza and the hunter.
"I see you brought some help. I never really took you for a team player, but looks can be deceiving." he said. The rogue swordsman pointed his sizable blade at Kakashi's chest.
"I'm not, don't you worry. I just don't feel like wasting my chakra on clones for your underlings again." he explained. The hunter at his side promptly took a step forward in the direction of Satsuki, Naruto, and Shikamaru. At this motion, Kakashi drew a pair of kunai.
"In that case, keep your eyes on me." he said as he prepared to engage Zabuza for the second time. Zabuza visibly smirked below the bandages that covered his neck and mouth.
"I wouldn't be too confident in your brats against her. She's about as strong as I am, if not more so." he said darkly. Before Kakashi could react, the hunter, who Zabuza's pronoun had confirmed to be female, charged forward at a blistering speed. In an instant, Satsuki blitzed to meet her in the middle. The two came together with a shower of sparks, as the Uchiha girl's swiftly drawn kunai struggled against a senbon utilized by the huntress.
"And Satsuki is the strongest genin Konoha has to offer." Kakashi countered as his student strained against her masked foe. Zabuza responded by gesturing for the Jonin to come forward. Though he was quite bothered by the notion of leaving his team by their lonesome once again, he had another war to win, and he knew it.
A beat later, both Zabuza and Kakashi vanished into puffs of smoke.
Satsuki gritted her teeth as she and the huntress repelled off of one another. Taking a glance around and straining her ears, she caught the sound of clashing blades not too far from their location. Zabuza and Kakashi had begun their duel elsewhere. Taking a deep breath, the raven-haired girl focused her attention back on the masked girl before her.
"You're a woman, huh? I guess it makes sense. I thought I smelled perfume on you when we came together just now." Satsuki said. The huntress remained silent and stepped forward. The slight shift in weight prompted Satsuki to engage once more. Taking the lead aggressively. The Uchiha girl swung her kunai at the hunteress' head, a strike that was easily ducked underneath. As Satsuki stumbled forward from her own momentum, her masked foe drove her left knee up into her stomach. The blow drew a clinch from the genin, but she managed to regroup just enough to avoid having her neck skewered by the following swipe of the huntress' senbon.
With the exchange decisively belonging to Zabuza's ally, Satsuki backed up several steps and joined the huntress in circling around the perimeter of their makeshift arena of sorts. She was at a large speed disadvantage, and it had shown through in their first clash. As she pondered what to do next, the huntress took initiative with a rush forward. Satsuki planted her feet and braced herself. In the split second before the huntress collided with her, the Uchiha girl spotted that her opponent had drawn a second senbon.
When the impact came, Satsuki was only able to catch one of the huntress' wrists. As such, she fully expected to be skewered on the exposed side of her neck. Surprisingly, the expected sting never came. Instead, the masked woman extended her free arm over Satsuki's shoulder and flicked her wrist forward. The senbon quickly launched from her hand.
'She was going for them all along.' the Uchiha girl lamented as she pointlessly craned her neck to watch helplessly as the needle sailed toward her teammates. A half-beat later, Shikamaru jerked his head and neck backward. The senbon then whizzed past the front of his throat, only missing by mere centimeters.
"This is between you and me. Leave them out of it." Satsuki hissed. She then shoved the huntress back and sent her back a few meters with a kick to the center of her chest. The masked woman dusted off the front of her garb and made a sign with her left hand.
"Facing me alone hurts you more than it does me. I've killed greater men and women than you." the huntress said, finally choosing to speak. The voice was muffled and clearly somewhat altered by the presence of the mask upon her face, but the voice was clearly feminine. Satsuki assumed her stance in response.
"If you're having any trouble with me, then you don't want anything to do with taking us all at once." she said as confidently as she could. The huntress shook her head and tapped her foot on the ground. Then, in an instant, all of the moisture that had accumulated on the concrete from the mist froze over into solid ice. Satsuki's eyes widened.
'She only used one hand for seals. Is that even possible?' she wondered in a slight panic. Giving her no time to process, the huntress charged forward and snapped the Uchiha girl's head back with a sharp punch that sent her stumbling to the ground due to the lack of traction on the ground.
"Talk less and pay better attention." the masked woman said as she beared down over Satsuki with a senbon made of ice hovering over her head. She then stabbed the needle down toward the genin's chest. Just as the sharpened point was about to puncture Satsuki's body, the huntress retracted the motion and stood up straight again. She then sharply pivoted off to her left, allowing Naruto, who had taken action to defend his teammate, to sail past her. Before the blonde could fully pass her, however, the huntress seized him by the front of his shirt and tossed him up into the air.
"What were you thinking?!" Satsuki practically screamed as the huntress conjured icey senbon between each of her fingers. Said needles were then thrown directly up at the airborne blonde. After a few moments of tense silence, Naruto crashed to the ground only five or so feet from Satsuki. He had been skewered by six of the eight needles that had been sent up at him, and he appeared to be in considerable pain, but none of the wounds were critical in nature.
"You alright?" the blonde asked in a strained tone as he painfully rolled onto his knees. Satsuki did the same and rubbed her cheek, where the huntress had struck her moments beforehand.
"The deal was that you only step in if I lost or died. Neither of those things happened." she complained through a clenched jaw. Naruto picked two of the freezing needles from his chest and shook his head.
"You looked pretty much screwed to me. At least try to be grateful for once." he said. Though she very much would have argued on any other occasion, the girl held her tongue and stood to her feet alongside her teammate. The huntress had, interestingly, stood inert during the short exchange of words, and was in the same position as she had been upon sending Naruto flying.
"Why do I feel like the two of you are going to be a pain?" she muttered just loud enough for her voice to be heard by the genin. She then took a glance at Shikamaru, who was standing in a defensive position in front of Tazuna, ready to move at a moment's notice.
"I normally wouldn't do this for a group as green as you all, but I'd rather make this quick." she said vaguely, her attention firmly back on Naruto and Satsuki. She then made a series of hand seals.
"We're about to get stabbed again, aren't we?" Naruto asked nervously. Satsuki held her ground and pursed her lips in a thin line as the huntress completed her sequence of signs.
'She was already whipping us both without much trouble. Whatever she's about to do, it's probably bad news for us.' she thought to herself grimly. The huntress' arms then splayed out to either side. For a moment, there was silence. Then, the air around the genin dropped in temperature and was drained of its moisture. Slabs of ice then began to form around them, each of which were about as tall as the huntress, and a few feet wide.
"What...in the…" Naruto began, trailing off breathlessly as the sheets of ice polished into reflective surfaces and began to levitate. Stranger yet, the huntress began to walk backwards toward one of the freezing sheets. When her back touched the ice, she quite literally melted into it.
"As you likely gathered earlier, I have a special ability of sorts. I can use my chakra to create ice and bend it to my will. It's my Kekkei Genkai." The huntress said as the slab she now appeared to be trapped within rose to join its fellow icy slabs in perpetual levitation. Soon enough, the ice stopped shifting around. Each icy sheet was reflective to the point of projecting a mirror image, and they had formed into a dome that completely encapsulated the two genin.
"This Jutsu is my most potent. Probably overkill given your inexperience, but this way, you're guaranteed to be dead within a few minutes. This is the Demonic Ice Mirrors." the huntress said, her voice seeming to echo from all sides.
"You missed one of us, bright eyes." Satsuki called out to the masked woman, who's image was now reflected into every single one of the icy mirrors. Indeed, Shikamaru still remained outside of the unusual formation alongside Tazuna. The huntress gave no visible acknowledgement.
"He can be dealt with later. As of now, the two of you are my priority. I'd focus if I were you, because things are about to become far more difficult for you." she said in a blank voice. Naruto began to reply, but was cut off when a storm of needles rained down upon them from every direction. Both the Uchiha and blonde moved to defend themselves, but were both struck by a multitude of needles anyway.
"Nobody has ever survived the situation you're in right now. Fighting back is pointless." the huntress said calmly from her mirrors. Satsuki wiped a bit of blood from her now-cut cheek and steeled herself.
"There's a first time for everything."
Kakashi spat blood out of his mouth as he avoided decapitation by the thinnest of margins. Once the blade of Zabuza had flown over his head, the jonin kicked low at the Rogue's ankle and swept him off his feet momentarily. A wild scramble for position quickly ensued, resulting in Zabuza receiving a cut below his right eye, and Kakashi being struck across the right side of his jaw. Both Ninja retreated several steps upon the engagement's conclusion.
"You're not as sharp as you were. Did I really rattle you that badly last time?" Zabuza goaded Kakashi, who shrugged slightly and kept his senses sharp.
"Well, I've mostly been stuck in bed the past week. And I mean that just about literally." he said, drawing a low laugh from the Rogue Swordsman.
"I suppose I can't be too proud of my own performance, then. I'll kill you either way, but I'd have preferred a less rusty version of you." he said, Kakashi triggered off of his words and charged in. The pair traded strikes twice, with each missing on their first attempt to strike the other across the neck with their respective blades. The second layer of the exchange decisively went to Kakashi. Having picked up on a patternable rhythm to Zabuza's offense, he delayed his entry into the Rogue's space a split second.
The deliberate pause resulted in Zabuza swinging and missing for a second consecutive time with his sword. The overextension left the left side of his face exposed, and as such, Kakashi wheeled up his right leg and slammed his shinbone into Zabuza's temple. The blow briefly staggered the larger man, causing him to lurch forward and stumble. With his posture bent over, Kakashi ruthlessly capitalized by driving the point of his left knee up into the Rogue's forehead. The combination of impacts sent Zabuza reeling back.
"Or maybe I've still got it." Kakashi said casually as his foe regained his wits and re-assumed his stance. Zabuza rubbed the side of his head and blinked several times. He then looked off to his right. He then chuckled and shook his head.
"You'd better hope your genin do too. That and more. Because they're in neck-deep." he said ominously. The Jonin scowled and looked to where Zabuza had just seconds prior. What he saw was greatly concerning. Naruto and Satsuki, both of whom appeared ragged, were trapped within a complex structure of ice. Shikamaru was stranded outside of it, and looked more than slightly frustrated. The only positive to be taken from the sight was that Tazuna was unharmed, and that nobody was dead.
"What is that?" Kakashi muttered under his breath. With sharp ears, Zabuza picked up on his nearly-silent question. Letting his blade drop to his side for a moment, the Rogue admired the work of his subordinate.
"Not even I can escape that Jutsu once it's in place. The girl's a prodigy. That's the long and short of it." he said. A cruel smirk then slithered across his bandaged face.
"Your kids are as good as dead. Haku has never left a target alive." he said confidently. Kakashi noted what he assumed to be the name of the huntress and uncovered his left eye.
"I'll just have to speed things up, in that case."
Satsuki heaved a deep breath and ducked down sharply to avoid a trio of needles. The past four minutes had been hell on earth, and she was feeling the effects. Ducking and dodging, blocking and enduring. It was a never ending cycle of defensive desperation, and her energy was being sapped little by little with each frantic movement. Naruto was fairing a bit better in terms of stamina, but he had been struck by the needles nearly twice as much as the Uchiha girl. He simply wasn't fast enough to evade them.
'We need to make ourselves a narrower target. She's just picking us off every time we move. If she focuses all of her firepower on one of us, somebody is going to die soon.' Satsuki thought to herself, yanking Naruto down to the ground to save him from being punctured through the cheek as the thought crossed her mind.
"Back to back, Naruto. We need to try something different." Satsuki hissed. Sensing that there was little point in not at least trying it, the blonde nodded and pressed his back to hers as they stood up to a vertical position. The duo then drew a pair of kunai each and braced themselves for the next onset.
"Your thinking is too straightforward." came the voice of the huntress. A moment later, with no warning, Naruto was doubled over by an unseen strike that sent him to his knees. Satsuki's back was then lit up with nearly a dozen needles through the opening that Naruto's drop had created. Crying out in pain, the Uchiha girl fell forward. She barely caught herself on her hands in time to prevent her head from colliding with the concrete.
"She punched me in the gut. That wasn't a needle. S-She's ridiculously fast." Naruto groaned. Satsuki coughed heavily into her palm. When she removed it from her mouth, there was blood. Not much, but enough to be slightly concerning.
"I think...I got all the needles this time." Satsuki said rigidly. Naruto then turned to face her, gasping slightly at the sight of her punctured back. Without hesitation, he began rapidly picking the needles from her skin. Satsuki yelped at the stabbing pain each removal caused, but remained still until the end.
"Thanks for that…" she muttered once her teammate had finished tending to her. They then returned to their feet, as ready as they could be to continue their unwinnable battle with the huntress. Before either one of them could even begin to form some sort of plan of attack, Naruto was buckled again, this time by what appeared to be a strike to his jaw. Drawing on what had happened less than a minute prior, Satsuki made a long dive to her left.
"Your guesswork is improving." the masked woman said from the mirrors as a swarm of needles stabbed into the concrete where the raven-haired girl had been standing only a moment ago. Satsuki's victory was incredibly short-lived, however, as while she had evaded being struck by the senbon for a second time, her retreat had left Naruto by his lonesome. With a swiftness and raw speed that Satsuki's eyes could hardly follow, the huntress brutally kicked her teammate in the ribs and sent him tumbling toward her.
Satsuki was able to catch him before he could slam into one of the ice mirrors, preventing him from taking any more punishment for the time being. After being steadied to a kneeling position, Naruto forced a smile.
"We're really getting fucked up here, aren't we?" he asked rhetorically in an attempt at humor. Satsuki looked on with worry as he attempted to stand. He made it to his feet, but only after a significant struggle.
'She's targeting him because he's slower than me. I can see and dodge the worst of her charges almost every time when I have room to think, but he's relying almost entirely on reflex. He won't last much longer like this.' she thought to herself. As she began to stand up, she saw the huntress' form in a mirror directly over Naruto's head. Each of her hands were loaded with senbon, and she was preparing to throw them.
'Not right now. Please not right now.' she begged the powers that be. Then, something strange happened. Unlike every other occasion on which the needles had been sent their way, Satsuki saw them leave the huntress' hands. They were still moving quickly, but they were fully visible to the Uchiha girl. Uncertain and exhausted as she was, Satsuki took advantage of the odd new situation by drawing a kunai and tossing it at an arc to intercept the needles. Surprisingly, the tactic worked.
Satsuki's kunai took the brunt of the impact, with only two of the original eight senbon managing to complete their journey toward Naruto. The rest were deflected. As an added bonus, the two remaining needles missed Naruto to both his right and left.
"How did I…?" Satsuki began, greatly surprised by her own abilities. Naruto then turned to look at her, and when he did, his eyes widened to saucers.
"Satsuki, your eyes." he said in an awestruck tone. The raven-haired girl immediately shifted her gaze to one of the ice mirrors, and what she saw was both incredibly heartening and very surprising. Her irises had turned red, and her pupils were rimmed by a pair of tomoe on her right eye, and a single tomoe on her left. Her Sharingan had finally awoken.
"We might have something to work with now." she said with a small amount of renewed enthusiasm. Naruto nodded and took a deep breath.
"I'm not sure how those eyes work, but I'll take anything we can get at this point." he said. Satsuki fixed her newly-acquired dojutsu on the huntress, who was looking on through her blankly still mask.
"I hate to ask, but could you cover me? I've got something I want to try." she requested. Naruto gave her a thumbs up and widened his stance. Satsuki then began to weave hand seals as quickly as she could. Though he was unable to see the huntress move, as had been proven numerous times, the blonde was able to infer where she would be headed based on past encounters. As such, Naruto took a calculated gamble by throwing himself out of position to cover Satsuki's left side.
The maneuver worked, for better or worse. Having guessed correctly, Naruto absorbed a harsh punch to his forehead that had clearly been meant for his teammate. Due to having braced for the blow, Naruto was able to prevent himself from falling over from the impact. The huntress then retreated back toward the same mirror from whence she had come.
'Checkmate.' Satsuki projected to the masked women within her mind. With her heightened perception and reaction speed, the Uchiha girl reared her head back and aimed her jutsu at the mirror the huntress was barreling toward.
"Fire Style: Fireball Jutsu!" she yelled. The burst of fire then launched itself forward from Satsuki's mouth. The burning stream collided with the mirror just before the huntress could reach it, causing her to stop in her tracks mid-air.
"Now, Naruto!" Satsuki yelled. Needing no more signaling, Naruto mustered his strength and leapt straight upward to meet the huntress. The blonde swung wide for their masked foe's head with his right hand. Unfortunately, he was easily evaded, and violently countered. Forming two senbon seemingly out of nothing, the huntress impaled both of Naruto's shoulders with needles and used him as a launch pad to kick off.
The extra momentum allowed the huntress to melt into one of her mirrors once again, and the impact of her feet on the blonde's stomach sent Naruto spiralling to the ground. Much to Satsuki's surprise and relief, her teammate was able to land on his feet after performing a slight roll on his way down.
"That almost worked. We need to try it again." Naruto said after ripping the senbon out of his shoulders and tossing them aside. He was battered, and his physical condition was worsening by the minute, but he was utterly refusing to slow down.
"Can you handle another exchange like that? She would have killed you if she'd aimed a little higher." Satsuki asked pointedly as she scanned each of the mirrors with her Sharingan to search for openings, or the start of another attack from the huntress. The blonde straightened his posture and produced a kunai from his pouch.
"That doesn't matter. We've got a job to do. If she kills us, Shikamaru won't have much of anything for her." he said strongly. Satsuki gazed at him as his knees involuntarily buckled under his own bodyweight.
'Naruto…' she thought to herself with great worry. He had absolutely no concern for his own well being. Another clash with the huntress would almost certainly put him completely out of commission. He was nearing the end of his rope. Shaking her head to clear away her sentimentality, Satsuki began gathering her chakra.
"Try to actually injure her. We need to make this count." she said, eliciting a curt nod from her teammate. Once again, Satsuki began to perform the sequence for her fireball jutsu. Unlike before, however, the huntress came charging from her mirrors far earlier. Somehow, Naruto was able to once again predict her location and position himself accordingly. In stark contrast to the previous sequence of events, Naruto did not simply act as a shield.
As he leapt across space to prevent the huntress from interrupting Satsuki's jutsu, Naruto cracked the masked woman on the temple with a harsh right-handed punch fueled by his bodyweight and forward movement. The punch knocked the huntress off-course and forced her to touch down on the ground for the first time since she had initiated her Demonic Ice Mirrors.
"Fire Style: Fireball Jutsu!" Satsuki yelled for the second time. Once again, she sent a burst of searing fire directly at the huntress, who jumped up to avoid being burned. Satsuki chased her across the airspace by changing her aim and forcing out a second blast of fire. The huntress was forced to twist and roll mid-air to just barely avoid being caught directly in the literal line of fire.
'Damn it. So close.' Satsuki mentally hissed as her fire fizzled out. She had singed the slightest edges of her foe's robes, but no actual damage had been done. Within seconds, the huntress was back in her mirrors, safe from harm. Satsuki pushed down her frustration and looked to Naruto, who was back on his feet.
"I managed to nail her pretty hard on the way in. I didn't hurt her much, but at least we know we can touch her if we play this the right way." he said optimistically. The raven-haired girl slicked her dark hair back, which was now damp with sweat from exertion.
"Yeah, that's good. I probably don't have more than two shots left in me, though. If at all possible, try to push her into my jutsu." she said through her fatigue. An unwelcome voice then pierced into the two genin's eardrums.
"I must say, you've been more troublesome than you have any right to be. Dealing with both of you at once has been irritating, to say the least. I think I'll be changing that dynamic now." the huntress said darkly. Then, there was silence. Slowly but surely, each of the reflections of the huntress filled their hands with senbon. Satsuki's eyes widened in fear. The needles were then sent tearing from the mirrors at a predictably blazing speed. With the help of her Sharingan, the Uchiha girl deduced where they were headed well ahead of time.
'She's aiming for Naruto. None of those are headed for me. She's trying to kill him right here and now.' she thought to herself. Terror quickly set in as the rain of senbon rapidly approached Naruto, whose senses were too dulled by exhaustion and the damage he had already taken to alert him to the mortal danger he was in.
'He doesn't see them. He can't feel them coming. He won't be able to react in time.' Satsuki thought to herself. She was only ten feet away from him, which wasn't especially far normally speaking, but in the present situation, ten feet was ten miles, and kunai would be useless. There were simply too many needles.
'He'll die. He's hiding it, but he's already badly hurt. There's no way he can take all of that. It'll kill him.' Satsuki mentaly panicked. A deadly solution then crossed her mind.
'Should...I? Is it worth it?' she pondered as the needles grew every closer. Time seemed to move in slow motion as the cruel reality of death crashed toward both genin in different forms.
"I'll protect them this time. No matter what it costs me"
At the memory of what she had sworn less than a day ago, Satsuki's stomach and chest were flooded with a burning feeling of fear that froze her in her tracks. It was entirely up to her. The life of another human being laid firmly in her hands. All she had to do was act, or hold back. The needles then seemed to increase in velocity. They were closer now. Closer to swiftly ending Naruto's tenure on earth. At this sight, Satsuki's fear burst into a wildfire of frenzied emotion.
'Protect it. Protect what you care about. Suck it up and quit shaking.' she coached herself, forcing herself into motion as the berating thoughts sliced into her. She needed desperately to move faster. She wouldn't reach him in time at her current pace.
'Move! Don't be a spectator! Protect what's yours, Satsuki Uchiha!' the raven-haired girl's inner voice screamed at her.
With one final, desperate push, Satsuki threw herself forward.
A/N: By far the longest chapter I have ever written for anything in any story on FFNET. I think it turned out okay, but that's for you guys to decide. I know, I ended on a cliffhanger, but you'll get to see it all come together tomorrow ;)
Tell me what you thought in a review :)
See you next chapter! Read and Review!