A/N: Definitely made some of you mad with that cliffhanger last time out, but I think we all broadly know what comes next. Either way, what you're about to read is going to be where this story diverges from canon big time.

Time for The Bridge Calamity, Part Two

Enjoy!

He had known that he was bound to die. The words of the huntress had made it all too clear that she was sick and tired of dealing with a functioning pair. From there, all it took was simple deductive reasoning. Satsuki's sharingan granted her more than enough perception and reactive speed to keep herself safe. Naruto lacked such senses. He was tougher than she was by a wide margin. The sheer volume of punishment he had endured would have killed Satsuki in half the time. Unfortunately, that durability mattered little in the grand scheme of things.

Though he could not see or perceive the assault coming his way, Naruto knew it was coming. The end had arrived, and there was nothing he could do about it. Fully expecting a harsh impact, or the feeling of a thousand tiny puncture wounds, the blonde braced himself as best he could. No such sensations came to him. In fact, he felt no pain at all when the split second of time he had been afforded passed. Instead, he found that he was being tightly squeezed by something. Opening his eyes fully, Naruto identified what was holding on to him so firmly.

"S-Satsuki…?" the blonde began unevenly. Indeed, what he found when he fully processed his immediate surroundings was his teammate. Satsuki was tightly hugging him, with her arms snuggly wrapped around the back of his neck and her face resting into his shoulder. The rest of her body was flattened against his entirely. It took Naruto virtually no time at all to deduce what it all meant. Her entire body was littered with senbon, from the back of her neck all the way down to her ankles. Naruto's blood froze in his veins.

"What the hell is wrong with you? Why would you…?" he started, not bothering to finish his sentence when Satsuki's grip on him slipped and she began to melt to the ground. Immediately moving to support her, Naruto knelt down with the raven-haired girl resting in his lap. She was barely conscious. The shock of the sheer number of times she had been wounded at once had taken its toll. Despite it, her somehow still-present Sharingan shifted to his face as he cradled the back of her head.

"I...I'm as lost as you. It all just...happened. It was too quick…" she said weakly. Naruto shook his head and began frantically picking needles from her sides and the sides of her neck.

"That's crap. You've got a reason. You would never just do something like this." he insisted, panic and confusion tearing apart his ability to speak clearly. Satsuki flinched and shifted in his arms as more senbon were removed from her body.

"Maybe...maybe that's why. You said something like that a few days ago." she said quietly. Her voice was weakening with every word. The blonde quit tending to her wounds and met her eyes with a look of puzzlement on his face.

"What do you mean?" he asked. The Uchiha girl shakily reached up and gently pressed her fingers to his neck, right where his pulse rhythmically beat in and out. Her hand remained on his neck during her following response.

"Y-You said that you...you knew that I wouldn't be there for you when p-push came to shove. T-That I'd let you die…" she said. Naruto's expression twisted into one of guilt-ridden grief at her words.

"I just wanted to make you leave me alone. I...I didn't mean that." he said with his eyes clamped shut. Satsuki's hand then softly drifted away from his neck and back down to her side.

"It's not like I didn't deserve to hear it, N-Naruto. Not after what I said to you." she said honestly, her sharingan finally fading away and reverting her eyes to their normal black color. The blonde clenched his jaw and moved to begin picking needles out of her. When he reached for one that had somehow lodged into her stomach, Satsuki gently took hold of his hand with her own and gave a nearly imperceptible shake of her head.

"It's okay. There's nothing y-you can do. I'm dying, Naruto. I'm dying…" she said softly, repeating the declaration of her own nearing end several times. The blonde shook his head rapidly and opened his eyes again.

"I don't want you to die. I'm not gonna let you die." he assured her with all the firmness of a wet piece of paper. It was then that his eyes finally overflowed. Any pride he had felt in being a Shinobi had burned to ash. On his very first task outside of his own home, a teammate, and the closest thing he had ever had to a friend of some sort was cascading toward a sudden demise. It was painful. Tremendously so.

"I'm not going to let this happen." he practically whispered, more to himself than his teammate. For all that they had fought, disagreed with, and hounded one another, Naruto had come to value the volatile girl in his arms. Hearing his hoarse self-talk and the tears dripping down his face, Satsuki's blood-stained lips pulled into a small smile.

"You're really crying for me. You're s-such a sap." she said. She then released his hand from her grip and reached up. She then wiped a few tears from his cheeks.

"T-Thank you, though. If the last thing I'm ever going to see is y-you crying over me...then I'm okay with that. It could be so much worse than this." she said gratefully. The light in her eyes then dulled. Sensing this, Naruto shook her a bit.

"Save your energy. Stop talking, Satsuki." he begged her emotionally. The raven-haired girl took a deep breath and met his wide, concerned eyes one last time.

"Give her hell for me, Naruto…" she said in a decaying, breathless tone. Then, finally, her body entirely went limp. The blonde shook her once again a moment later.

"Hey, quit messing around. We're in the middle of a fight. Don't sleep." he muttered, unable to force himself to raise his voice. No response, and another shake of her frame.

"Answer me when I'm talking to you. Don't ignore m-me." Naruto begged a touch louder. With each subsequent rocking, there came no response from the inert girl who lay dead in his arms. Eventually, with no more denial left in him, Naruto hugged Satsuki's head into his chest and clamped his eyes shut as burning tears soaked his face again.

"Satsuki…" he whimpered tearfully. She was well and truly gone. In an instant, a strong-willed, prodigious, intelligent girl had been reduced to a bloodied corpse. As Naruto bitterly pondered the cruelty of the situation, another voice chimed in.

"She really threw herself into the fire for you. An odd choice, given that you're about to die."

The confident words of belittlement had come from the huntress. In an instant, Naruto's temper flared. Using the last of his self-restraint, he gently laid Satsuki on her back and closed her eyes with his finger tips. Once the task was done, he rose to his feet with his eyes still downcast. All of the sadness and sorrow he felt from the passing of Satsuki was rapidly replaced by a burning fury. As his anger consumed him, the air within the dome of ice began to heat up.

"I'm gonna make you pay for what you did to her." the blonde growled. His palms then began to bleed from his clenched fists. His nails were lengthening rapidly, as were his canines. In a rapid explosion, red chakra flew forth from the genin's body and spiralled up into the air. A roar of repressed anguish and indignation then ripped from Naruto's lungs and shook the entire bridge. The spiralling tower of burning chakra then condensed around him and streamlined into a flaming aura.

His eyes were blood-red, his canines had sharpened into serrated fangs, and his nails had lengthened into claws. With a glance back over his shoulder, he saw that Satsuki's body was still unharmed. He then bared his teeth and roared once again. His mind was a haze of rage and murderous intent. The shockwave sent forth from his body by his exclamation cracked every single of the ice mirrors badly. He then focused his eyes on where he knew the true location of the huntress to be.

In one powerful motion, Naruto burst forward and slammed his fist into the reflection of his masked foe. Instantly, the mirror shattered, and out of it came exactly who he had been aiming for. The Huntress flew backwards and tumbled to the ground. The moment she made contact with the concrete, all of the ice mirrors shattered into a shimmering dust of snow. Not slowing his momentum even slightly, Naruto charged after her aggressively. Something precious had been stolen from him, and he would take it back in blood.

The huntress had landed just a few feet away from Shikamaru, who looked momentarily shell-shocked. Naruto then increased his velocity to prevent any sort of conflict between the two. When he reached them, he opened his hand and swiped at the masked woman's throat with his newly-acquired claws. The huntress ducked underneath the attempt at decapitation. Though he was able to catch himself with his feet under him, Naruto was in no position to avoid the harsh punch that he ran face-first into.

The strike snapped his head back and backed him up a step, but did little to genuinely damage him. The defining lesson that his deranged, violent mind was able to take from the sequence was that, despite the incredible increase in power he had experienced, he still needed to be wary of the huntress' speed. With his eyes locked on her, Naruto stepped forward to attack the masked woman once again. Though she appeared to begin to do the same, she abruptly froze in place.

"Now, Naruto! As hard as you can!" Shikamaru yelled. It was then that the blonde realized that the Nara had connected his shadow to the huntress' in the midst of the confusion. Taking the slim opening with both hands, Naruto blitzed forward and cracked the huntress' square between the eyes of her mask with all the force he could muster. The subordinate of Zabuza was sent crashing to the ground nearly ten feet away. For a time, there was no movement. Eventually, though, the huntress sat up and began to rise to her feet once again.

Due to the impact of Naruto's fist, her mask had been completely shattered, leaving her face bare and exposed.

Shikamaru felt his stomach drop as the face of the huntress became visible for the first time. Brown eyes, fair, light skin, and pink lips. It was exactly as he had initially expected. He had been entirely right. Had he only remained confident in his instincts, the shock he was experiencing at present would have been nonexistent.

"H-Haku…" he breathed. The same girl he had laughed and bantered with. The same girl he had been forced to pick lilies with. She had murdered Satsuki, and now she was standing face-to-face with Naruto, who had undergone a violent, monstrous transformation upon the death of the Uchiha. Seeming to have heard him, if only slightly, Haku turned her head toward him and held eye contact with him for a few seconds. Though her features were blank and emotionless, her eyes held a sea of conflict.

"We'll talk later." she said simply. She then turned her attention back to Naruto, who's expression was viscerally enraged. He appeared to recognize Haku was well, if only from his brief glimpse of her the previous night. With his left eye twitching and his fists clenched, the blonde finally spoke.

"Is this some kind of sick joke? The girl Shikamaru was sneaking out for?" he demanded through clenched teeth. Haku visibly flinched at his tone. She clearly didn't like being a known quantity, and the fact that she was seemed to be fueling Naruto's already-intense wrath.

"What I've done lately affects nothing." she shot back. Naruto tilted his head to one side with a disturbing look in his eyes. Shikamaru then felt a prick of cold moisture on the top of his head. In addition to the mist, it had begun to rain. Ignoring the new shift in weather, Naruto took a heavy step forward.

"What would have happened if I hadn't walked in on you two last night? Would you have slaughtered him too?" he questioned darkly. Haku lowered her stance and prepared to fight.

"He'd have been dead long before you arrived if I'd wanted to kill him that night." she replied. The grief-stricken genin returned his head to a vertical position and dug his feet into the rough concrete.

"You would have taken everything from me. And you're still going to try." he said hollowly. Haku's words had entirely fallen on deaf ears. Naruto was completely and totally consumed by his negativity. No more words were spoken between them. A beat later, they charged to meet one another halfway. The clash was telling. Though they initially halted each other in their tracks with nearly equal impacts, Naruto quickly wrenched Haku off balance and plastered her across the left side of her jaw with an elbow.

Haku quickly rebounded from the staggering blow and returned fire by lacing the oncoming genin with a straight punch that landed squarely behind his left ear. The strike knocked Naruto off-balance momentarily, but he was utterly unfazed. With great ferocity, he continued his charge and doubled the huntress over with a harsh, driving knee to her solar plexus. With no hesitation, Naruto seized her by her hair and yanked her up to her feet again.

'She's got nothing for him. Not as he is now.' Shikamaru thought to himself solemnly, shivered slightly as his teammate brutally spun Haku's head to the side with a fully-committed punch upon releasing his grip on her hair. Just as the thought crossed his mind, however, Haku made a hand seal with her left hand and produced a larger-than-usual senbon. She then slashed it across Naruto's face and sent a spray of blood across the concrete. Against every moral bone in his body, Shikamaru felt himself relax slightly at the sight of Haku's moment of success.

'What the hell is wrong with me? She killed Satsuki, for god's sake. She lied to me over and over again. Why...why am I not happy watching her get thrashed?' he pondered as Naruto pushed through the blood streaming down his face and kicked Haku's legs out from under her. The Nara involuntarily flinched a moment later when his teammate slammed the point of his knee into the bottom of Haku's chin as she staggered to her feet.

Shikamaru fought the urge to avert his eyes as Naruto continued to cleanly strike Haku at all levels. Body, head, and legs. Each of them were being comprehensively torn apart. Her head was routinely snapped back by punches, her ribs were consistently tenderized by the blonde's knees and shinbone, and her legs had been swept out from under her multiple times.

'Quit feeling sorry for her. She has this coming. She murdered a girl in cold blood.' Shikamaru scolded himself as he forced himself to keep watching. It grew no easier to watch. Naruto was out for carnage, and he was getting what he wanted. Taking a deeper look into the blonde's eyes, Shikamaru found emotions other than anger. Pain, confusion, grief, and raw, undeniable sadness.

'He's barely holding it together. He'd be balling his eyes out if he didn't have Satsuki's murderer right in front of him right now.' he thought to himself grimly. Another set of sharp punches from Naruto then sent Haku staggering back. Unfortunately, she fell to her rear end right in front of the Nara. Shikamaru stumbled back a step and curled his hands into fists. Slowly and painfully, Haku dragged herself back up.

'Please don't. I know you're about to, but…' Shikamaru mentally begged the girl. As he had feared, the huntress cast him a glance over her shoulder. She began to mouth something, but was cut off almost instantly by Naruto suddenly appearing in front of her and knocking her flat on her back again.

"Eyes on me." Naruto growled as he reached down and seized her by the front of her hunter's robe. He then picked her from the ground and held her up in front of him with their faces hovering close together. Shikamaru shuddered at the murderous tension in the air. Then, despite his better judgement, Shikamaru spoke.

"She's done, Naruto. She can barely defend herself." he said carefully. Without moving his head or shifting his feet, Naruto dragged his eyes away from Haku and fixed them on his teammate ominously.

"She's not done till I say she is. Looks to me like she's still breathing." he said darkly. Shikamaru held his ground and shook his head.

"Killing her is pointless. We can draw information out of her." he argued. Naruto eyed him dangerously and maintained his suspension of Haku's semi-limp form.

"You're working a little too hard for this. She just killed Satsuki. Our teammate. Our friend. You should want her dead as much as I do right now." he said huskily. Before Shikamaru could respond, Haku flared to life once more. Having silently formed an icy needle in her left hand, she stabbed the senbon down toward Naruto's neck. With no difficulty whatsoever, the blonde caught her wrist.

"Cute, but worthless." he said coldly. He then clamped down on the wrist he had caught, producing an unsettling cracking sound that caused Haku to cry out in pain. He then turned his back to Shikamaru and dropped the huntress down to the concrete while maintaining his grip on the front of her robe.

He then began dragging her toward the edge of the bridge.

Kakashi shook his head and pursed his lips as he watched the events unfold before him. The sudden, explosive increase in power Naruto had experienced several minutes prior had resulted in something of a temporary ceasefire between himself in Zabuza, as they both looked on in shock. Unlike the Rogue Swordsman, Kakashi knew precisely what source Naruto was drawing his newfound strength from.

'The seal loosened. Apparently, raw emotion can force it to leak chakra if the trauma is extreme enough. I figured this would happen at some point, but Naruto is putting out more raw power than even I can.' he thought to himself. It was a baffling sight. One minute, Naruto had been on the verge of being broken down completely, and the next, he was savagely beating Haku into the ground. All because Satsuki had died in the crossfire. It was a truly horrible situation.

"I really never thought I'd see the day." came the voice of Zabuza, drawing the Jonin's attention back to the man in front of him. Still on guard, Kakashi indulged him in his vagueness.

"The day your sidekick lost, or the day you died? Because today is both." he asked. The Rogue Swordsman chuckled and shook his head.

"We're not done yet, so hold that second thought. The first one is accurate, though. Haku has hardly even struggled before. This is new territory. It really looks to me like she's going to die." he said in a nearly mystified tone. Kakashi raised an eyebrow at his tone.

"Don't you care? She seems quite loyal to you. If she weren't, she'd have run by now. Naruto might be the most dangerous thing on this bridge right now, us included." he pressed. Zabuza shook his head and tightened his grip on his sword.

"She's a tool, nothing more. A damn good one, but still a tool. I can find another one." he said blankly. The silver-haired Ninja redrew his kunai and focused his eyes on Zabuza once again as he sensed the rising tension between them once more.

"You don't sound too sure of that. People are precious, even if we try to tell ourselves we're just using them. I've been there, trust me." he said. Zabuza took a step forward and reared his enormous blade back in preparation to strike.

"Giving advice to the enemy? You're soft." he said. Kakashi shrugged and charged forward to meet him. The pair then clashed blades for the umpteenth time that day, sending yet another spray of sparks in all directions.

"I'm not cruel enough to insult a dead man."

Haku struggled to keep her breathing pattern consistent as her back was ground against the rough concrete. It certainly didn't hold that she was more or less being choked by her collar. She was being dragged away to her demise, like a rabbit caught by a wolf. She was battered up and down. Her head pounded, her ribs were bruised, her legs were deadened, and her wrist had just been viciously snapped in multiple places. She was unable to fight back in any meaningful way. Not anymore.

As such, she gave no resistance when she was whipped up from the ground and suspended in the air once again. For the second time, she was face-to-face with Naruto, who's expression was just a tad less maddened than it had been. He still glared at her with boundless contempt, but he seemed to have reigned himself in just a tad. A quick glance downward revealed that she was dangling over a river far below. She was being held over the edge of the bridge.

"I don't know what you told him or how you said it, but you've got Shikamaru more on your side than he should be." Naruto said roughly. Haku met his fiery, blood-red eyes and maintained her look of apathy.

"He's quite naive. Very sweet, but definitely naive." she said as clearly as was possible given her position. The blonde snorted and tightened his grip on her collar.

"Don't talk like you know him. All you did was use him for information. I still think you'd have killed him if I hadn't shown up." he said. The huntress shook her head slightly and stared up at the storming sky.

"I had three chances to kill him today. Each of them, I either ignored or purposefully botched. If I wanted your teammate dead, he would be. We've been over this." he said. Naruto stared at her silently for a moment.

"Why, then? Why didn't you kill him? You were just fine with murdering Satsuki." he questioned. Haku met his eyes again and blinked a raindrop out of her right eye.

"I don't like to kill people. I only do it when I have to, which is quite often. My talks with Shikamaru happened outside of battle. I had no reason to hurt him. I...actually came to quite like him." she admitted. Naruto bared his teeth.

"Quit trying to make yourself out as a victim. You killed a girl. You killed my friend. Nothing you say is gonna get you sympathy from me." he hissed. Haku swallowed a sum of blood that had accumulated in her mouth.

"For whatever it's worth, it was nothing personal. I was doing my job." she said calmly. The genin's frame shook slightly.

"It means nothing. She's still dead. She can't come back. She's gone because of you." he said unsteadily. Each time he referenced his fallen comrade, he grew more emotional. Haku studied him for a moment as she dangled over the edge.

"Did you love her?" she asked curiously. Much to the huntress' surprise, Naruto shook his head and steeled himself to erase any emotion that had been present on his face.

"No, I didn't. Not the way you're saying. But she was something else to me. Something I'd never had before." he began, taking a labored breath between thoughts to fuel himself.

"I've got nothing. I've always had nothing. Ever since the day I was born. Then, when I became a Ninja, they gave me a team. They gave me my first...my first family. Or at least something like it." he said with downcast eyes. After a moment, he continued.

"I finally had people to care about, and people who cared for me, even if only a little. You went and took that away. You killed the only friend I've ever made. I'll never forgive you for that." he said with anguish-laced passion. His gaze had returned to her, and it was as intense as ever behind his weak veil of composure. At his words, Haku let out a weak laugh.

"It's funny. We aren't all that different. I made my first friend this week, too. And I'm about to lose him as well." she said quietly, looking past Naruto's shoulder to Shikamaru, who was watching them with a look of pained discomfort. Picking up on this easily, Naruto straightened the arm he was holding her with fully.

"You don't deserve friendship." he said coldly. Sensing what was to come, Haku locked eyes with Shikamaru and gave him a soft, apologetic smile. Then, in an instant, Naruto let go of her robe collar. As she plummeted down toward the river below, the lonely huntress closed her eyes and folded her hands over her chest.

'Maybe in another life, Shikamaru-kun.'

A/N: Okay, so I think that was pretty great. I enjoyed the hell out of all of those scenes. I KNOW that Naruto came off as extremely belligerent and cruel here, but I think it fits given that he has no attachment at all to Haku in this version.

Tell me what you thought in a review :)

See you next chapter! Read and Review!