After another hour of walking, a short boat ride through a dense fog, and then another half hour of walking Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke all sensed the two people that they had been waiting to meet up with. They looked at each other calmly to make sure that the other knew what to do. Naruto had made a plan for this moment already because he knew it would be coming. Then all of them looked at Kakashi who didn't even notice the slight presence of their enemies.
There was a sudden rustling in the bushes and Naruto threw his kunai at it making sure to miss his target so that he wouldn't kill the creature. Kakashi looked up just as Naruto was doing this to make sure that it wasn't an enemy. He wasn't surprised to find that Naruto had thrown his kunai at a bunny, but he was surprised to find that the bunny was white in the middle of spring.
Naruto moved forward and picked up the bunny that was shaking from almost being killed. He pulled it towards himself and softly began to murmur words of comfort to the creature to calm it down as he petted its snow white fur. "I'm so sorry that I threw that kunai at you little bunny. It had to be done or no one would have noticed you and one of the enemy ninjas would have been able to use a substitution jutsu and sneak up on us," he muttered to the bunny.
Kakashi tensed up at this thought. "That means the enemy ninja are close by us," he said quickly as he turned to give orders to his students, "Naruto, Sakura, Sasuke, I want you to… Where the heck are Sakura and Sasuke?"
Tazuna gasped when he realized the students had left. Neither he nor Kakashi had noticed their disappearance, but Naruto seemed to be unfazed by the thought that his comrades were missing. "I'm sure they're around here somewhere," he said.
At this moment there was a loud clanging sound of metal hitting metal and Kakashi was just about to go towards that sound, but Naruto held him back. "What are you doing?" he growled to his student, "If you don't let me go then your comrades will be killed."
"If I let you go than you will ruin our plan," answered Naruto as he tightened his grip on his sensei's arm.
"What plan? You haven't even spoken two words about any of this. How can you have a plan?" Kakashi growled.
"It always pays to be prepared so that when something like this happens when you have no time to discuss what will happen next," Naruto said calmly.
"Fine," sighed Kakashi as he thought that there enemy was probably just another group of assassins like the ones they had faced before, "What is this plan then?"
"It's quite simple really," said Naruto as he let go of Kakashi and returned to petting the little creature, "I make all attention go to me, which I did by attacking the bunny, and Sasuke attacks the leader, and Sakura attacks the subordinate. Each is to make sure that the enemy is not able to use any jutsu because we don't know what they will do." Of course what Naruto neglected to say was that there was more to the plan. The plan actually spanned until the end of this mission when the bridge would be made, but if he said that then Kakashi would be suspicious again and that would be hard to explain to their teacher. "If they need help they call out and then you can go and help them Kakashi-sensei."
"Fine," said Kakashi as he rubbed his temples to try to get rid of his growing headache, "but if anything goes wrong I'm going to go and save them. You got that?" Naruto nodded his head with a silent victorious smile on his face.
Sasuke had immediately gone to Zabuza when Naruto had given the signal for them to move, which was attacking the bunny. He got there just in time to catch Zabuza's sword when he threw it. Throwing it back Sasuke pulled out his own sword which was much skinnier than Zabuza's.
"Well look what we have here," said Zabuza as he caught his sword, "A little kid thinks that he can beat me. I don't think so kid. You'll never beat me with that little sword. You might have had the smallest of chances when you had my sword, but since you gave it back to me you're gonna die." At this he began to poor out the killer intent that had caught Sasuke in their other life.
Sasuke laughed at the weak attempt to make him afraid. He had felt much stronger killer intent from the Kyuubi before it merged with Naruto. "You won't scare me with such little tricks," said Sasuke as he got into a fighting stance.
Zabuza growled and lunged forward at Sasuke with a downward thrust, but Sasuke merely moved to the left of the branch he was on and kicked Zabuza in the back. "Wouldn't it be better for you if we moved this to ground level so that you don't have to make sure to keep your balance in a tree?" asked Sasuke as he watched Zabuza regain his balance from his last attack.
"Sure kid," Zabuza growled, "Whatever will help you."
Sasuke snorted at this. He was perfectly capable of a sword fight in a tree because of two reasons: one was that his sword was much easier to control because it was much lighter and two was that he had trained with both Sakura and Naruto who had each tried every way to get him of balance in a tree just as he had them.
They both jumped to the floor and Zabuza immediately turned and thrust his sword at Sasuke who just moved two steps to the right. Zabuza growled at how easily the boy seemed to be dodging all of his attacks. After moments of thrusting and slashing Zabuza brought his hands together to make a seal for a jutsu, but he was stopped by Sasuke's next words, "Are you so weak that you can't even beat a child who's not even half your size without using justus."
Zabuza growled and again he launched into another frenzy of attacks which Sasuke dodged easily. "You wish kid," he growled.
Sasuke allowed Zabuza to get a little angrier about not being able to get any hits before he said, "With a sword that's that big you can only do three things: downward slash, sideways slash, and thrust. All of which are easily seen coming and are easy to dodge."
Zabuza growled and did a downward slash making Sasuke move right, but in the middle of the attack he changed it and moved it to the right. Sasuke widened his eyes in surprise as the sword came to cut his middle. "That's what you get for being so cocky brat," said Zabuza with a victorious smirk as he placed the sword on his shoulder.
"Naruto is very good at hiding his emotions and faking ones that he really doesn't feel. He taught us a lot about this as it is a good thing for a ninja to be able to trick others. I myself didn't have a problem with hiding my emotions, but making ones that I did not feel was hard for me," said Sasuke and Zabuza looked around for any sign of the enemy, but he found none. Not even a drop of blood. "One of the emotions that we learned was the emotion of surprise. I was going to wait a little longer so that we could have a little fun, but I'm bored of you." Zabuza didn't know what was coming as Sasuke, who had been using his chakra to stick to the sword moved forward and used the back of his own sword to hit the back of Zabuza's neck and knock him unconscious. Sasuke picked up Zabuza's limp body and put it over his shoulders as he sheathed his sword and picked up the larger one to carry along with him.
Sakura had gone towards where Haku waited for Zabuza to attack the genin. She quietly snuck up behind the boy as she was getting ready to attack him. "I won't let you attack me so easily," said Haku as he turned to face her.
Sakura smiled at him and asked, "How did you know I was there?"
"During this job Zabuza-san ordered me to watch everything that happens. Your friends attempt to distract me from your disappearance was futile, but there are two of you missing. Where did that other one go?" answered Haku.
"To Zabuza," answered Sakura.
"He's going to die you know," said Haku without showing any signs of being surprised, "No one has ever beaten Zabuza-san."
Sakura smiled again, "There's a first time for everything you know, and Sasuke likes to be first." She settled herself into a fighting position and watched as Haku did the same. After watching each other carefully to see if they could find any weaknesses Haku was the first to attack. He lunged forward and threw three of his senbon needles at the pressure points that would paralyze Sakura if they hit. However, Sakura, who was a great medic nin and knew where all of the pressure points were, dodged them easily. This kept happening until Sakura saw an opening for her to attack. She moved forward quickly so that she wouldn't lose this chance and threw a punch at Haku's gut. Haku was unable to avoid it and the force of the punch knocked him unconscious. He began to fall to the ground only to be caught by Sakura who, after collecting all the senbon needles from the scene of their battle, carried him back to where the others waited. She hadn't put a lot a chakra into her punch because Naruto had asked them both not to hurt the enemy ninjas too badly.
Both Sakura and Sasuke got back to the rest of their group at the same time carrying their heavy loads. Tazuna gasped, Kakashi's visible eye widened considerably, and Naruto just giggled and said, "My, what a mighty catch you have there," as he pulled out a rope and moved towards them.
"Thank you Naruto," said Sakura with a big smile as she put her load down next to a nearby tree.
"It was like taking candy from a baby," muttered Sasuke as he placed Zabuza's limp body with Haku.
"It's not nice to take candy from a baby Sasuke," said Naruto with a large grin on his face. Sasuke just rolled his eyes and helped Naruto tie up the two. "Any serious injuries?" he asked them. Kakashi and Tazuna thought that Naruto was asking about the two of them since they had just defeated an S-rank criminal and his subordinate, but both of them shrugged.
"Just a bruise in the stomach," said Sakura happily.
"He'll have a bad kink in his neck when he wakes up," said Sasuke.
"That's great," said Naruto happily, "What about you guys?" Both Tazuna's and Kakashi's eyes widened again.
"Not at all," said Sakura while Sasuke shook his head no and their spectators gasped, "I love how you care more about these two than you do us," said Sakura with a pout.
"Don't worry Sakura. That just means that I think that you two are much stronger than they are." A groan was heard from the two unconscious people as Haku began to awaken. "Well good morning," said Naruto as he crouched down to be at eye level with him, "Did you have a nice nap?"
Haku just looked at him through his mask as Zabuza began to awaken as well. "What the hell?" he yelled as he struggled to break free from his binds.
"They're chakra ropes," said Sasuke, "You'll never be able to break free of them." This just made Zabuza try harder.
Naruto watched Zabuza try to break free for a moment before saying, "My name is Naruto Uzumaki. This is Sasuke Uchiha, and this is Sakura Haruno. The two over there are Hatake Kakashi, our sensei, and Tazuna the bridge builder. It's nice to meet you."
"Why the hell would I want to know who you are. As soon as I break free from these ropes I'm gonna kill you all starting with you," growled Zabuza as he let out his killer intent again.
"That won't work on me," said Naruto with a smile, "Besides I just wanted to make a deal with you two."
Zabuza narrowed his eyes and said, "What kind of deal."
"We want you to join us back in Konoha. I already got permission from the Hokage to bring anyone back who I thought would be a good asset to the village."
"Why would I want to go and join such a weak village?"
"Our village is not weak," said Sakura indignantly.
"Two of our genin just defeated both of you," said Sasuke.
"I underestimated you," growled Zabuza, "and I went easy on you. It won't happen again."
"You keep telling yourself that," Sakura said as she rolled her eyes.
"Well if you think that we are so weak," said Naruto as he gained Zabuza's attention again, "Let's make a different deal. I'm gonna let you go and you'll have until you next decide to attack us to think this over. When you next attack us if we defeat you then you have to join us in Konoha and if we lose then you go free and we die."
"What if we decide that we don't want to join your team?"
"Then you die," Naruto shrugged his shoulders, "You don't have to decide now. Just before you next attack us." He moved forward untied the rope that he was holding the two as prisoners, but before he had completely taken the knot apart he took the two senbon needles that Sakura had conveniently forgot to put back inside of Haku's pouch. "but I don't want you guys to get in trouble from Gatou because you didn't finish your job. So you have to go to sleep Zabuza." With this he plunged the senbon needles into the same pressure points that Haku had used in their first battle to simulate death. Haku gasped and when the rope was no longer holding them he quickly grabbed Zabuza and, just as he had the first time, he disappeared.
"Are you an idiot?" yelled Kakashi as the two escaped, "Those are S-rank criminals. You can't just let them go like that!"
"Don't worry Kakashi-sensei," said Naruto as he turned to face him, "They'll come back soon and then they'll join Konoha just like I asked them to."
"You just got lucky this time," said Kakashi, "Next time they'll slaughter you."
"Don't worry Kakashi-sensei," Naruto said again.
Kakashi rubbed his temples to calm himself and his headache down and then said, "Since they got away and will soon attack us we have to train. When we get to Tazuna's house we'll rest and then tomorrow we'll train."
The three students smiled happily, though Sasuke's was more of a smirk, and all five of them went on their way after they waited for Tazuna to come out of his fear and shock at what had just happened.
yay i was able to finish this chapter quickly