.

Change is the only constant in life.

We got the Wave mission that next day.

Hiruzen handed us the scroll like it was a gift. As we stood there, and I watched Naruto freak out in his excitement and Sasuke actually crack a grin, I felt more like he'd given us a curse.

"I—I still can't—can't believe you're letting the… the girl ta… take the front position," Tazuna slurred, his words intermingled with hiccups.

Don't say anything. Don't say anything.

"Do you not know when to shut the fuck up?"

Damn it.

"Kasumi," Kakashi said, a deceptive mildness to his voice. "What did I say earlier?"

"Whatever."

I darted forward, pulling ahead of the rest of the group, as per what Kakashi had permitted—it was something of a not-quite order, really—me to do.

Naruto and Sasuke were flanking Tazuna, Kakashi was bringing up the rear, and I had been left on point, there to sense out any oncoming signatures that were heading our way. I was certain, though, that I had been placed there to keep me away from Tazuna as much as scout out the path ahead of us.

Tazuna, in all his wasted glory, was loud, smelt like liquor and vomit and stupidity, and had taken to making more than a few comments that had me wanting to punch him in the mouth.

Or the throat. Or the groin.

I wasn't picky.

Either way, leaving me in his general vicinity for any extended period of time was a bad idea all around, and Kakashi had realized that. The fact that, by that point, Konoha was no longer within the range of my chakra sense, only caused the mess of nerves brewing in the back of my mind to swell, further shortening my temper and lessening my ability to be around him.

I took to the trees instead, bobbing and weaving through the branches. The exertion was relaxing, something to focus on instead of the drunken slob that tottered along in the background, something to calm my mind.

I let the pain in my legs overwhelm the worries in my mind about what lay ahead of us.

I let the heat of the sun beating against my back swallow up the jittering voice in my mind that questioned the way my presence would alter the incoming events.

I let the burning of my lungs distract me from the longing that ached in my heart, the part of me that wanted, more than anything, to go the fuck home.

It took two days, by which point we were nearing the eastern coast of Fire Country and the edges of Konoha's reach, for the first group of thugs to blip on my radar.

I paused, anchoring myself against a tree branch with a cluster of chakra along the soles of my shoes—one, two, three of them, all advancing towards our group at a snail's pace. They were a fair distance off, enough kilometres away that I couldn't discern any details about them, save for my certainty that they were civilian.

I raised a hand to my comm and flicked it on. "Hey, I've got three."

"Oh?" came the drawled reply.

"They're, eh… six kilometres off your position?"

"How far off of yours?" Kakashi asked.

"Five or so."

"Civilian?"

"Yep."

"What's the ETA?"

"An hour?" I guessed. "You're both moving at about the same speed, I think."

"Understood," he answered. "Go scout ahead. I want you to broadcast an analysis of all three on the public channel once you get there."

"Alright."

I shut off the comm and pushed off the branch, catapulting through the canopy of the trees with ease.

Five kilometres may not have sounded like a long way to travel, but even at ninja speed, it was a fifteen minutes jaunt through the trees before the targets were within visual distance.

I caught a brief glimpse of them through the cover of the leaves—three men, average height, average musculature, each with a weapon—and looped around to trail them from behind. I kept my breathing controlled and low, not wanting to risk alerting them, though I doubted that they could have detected me anyways. It was a good habit to keep up.

Creeping out to the edge of the branch I had settled on, I raised a hand and shifted the leaves out of the way, channelling as much chakra into the fine pathways of my eyes as I dared—blinding myself by accident would be a nightmare while in a mission situation, even temporarily.

A minute passed in which I observed the men and let my breathing return to normal, switching position as needed.

When my thoughts were collected I pushed my comm into the 'on' position. "I'm in position," I said.

"Hey, hey, Kaka! How's it—"

"Shut up, idiot. This is meant to be used for information delivery only."

"Don't call him an idiot."

"What she said, bastard!"

As tempting as it was to bang my head against the bark at that moment, I resisted the urge. "Don't call him a bastard."

"That's enough," Kakashi cut in, sounding less than amused. "Kasumi, I believe you have a report to deliver?"

"I'm so glad you asked." I squinted, shifting forward, pulling what details I could from the retreating backs of the men. "Three men, ranging between their early twenties and early thirties. Average builds on each. Two of them have swords hanging by their sides, one left-handed and the other right-handed, while the third has a war hammer. I think the one with the war hammer is the leader—he's leading their group by a couple of feet, his posture is more upright and confident, and he's got more scarring along his skin than the other two."

"Any type of armour?" Kakashi asked.

"None," I responded. "They're just wearing civilian clothes—they're probably overconfident in their abilities."

"Keep trailing them," Kakashi ordered. "When we cross paths, I want you to attack from behind."

"Got it."

"Wha—attack from behind?" Naruto cried. "That's so dirty!"

"That's kinda the point," I said.

The sound of Kakashi sighing crackled through the earpiece. "I'm ordering radio silence on this channel," he said. "If you need to contact me, do so directly, Kasumi. Otherwise, wait for my signal upon engagement."

"'Kay."

The connection died. I turned off my mic and continued on, holding my distance.

The three men didn't appear to be the most intelligent bunch, nor were they going out of their way to be conspicuous as they traversed the dirt road. They conversed in bellowing tones and had bouts of roaring laughter; they shoved each other around and stomped forward at a marching pace, leaving behind a trail that anybody with the slightest bit of tracking experience—that would be me—could follow with ease.

It was, yet again, a show of cockiness—or of vast stupidity. They either assumed they could handle anybody who might follow them or hadn't considered that somebody might try in the first place.

It didn't matter either way as even a fresh genin could handle opponents of their ilk without issue.

The minutes ticked by, the morning sun rising high into the sky as noon approached. The heat, which had been intense on its own from the onset of the day, grew worse, as per usual of the summer weather in Fire Country. I was glad that I had opted for a grey tank top and a mesh undershirt rather than a t-shirt.

I shifted closer, closing some of the distance between myself and the mercenaries once the two groups of signatures were within minutes of colliding, getting my comm prepared on reflex.

Tazuna was the first one to come into view, with Naruto and Sasuke close behind him, Kakashi at the back. While Tazuna was too inebriated to be fazed and Kakashi too experienced, Naruto and Sasuke both tensed up at the sight of the group of men. Naruto showed the signs of nerves with a higher level of clarity, from the tightening of his shoulders to the bunching of his fists in his pockets, while Sasuke displayed it in the heightened movement of his chakra signature.

I didn't feel the slightest bit of trepidation at the thought of fighting with the men, not when I knew that it would be child's play compared to what was ahead of us.

I sat back on my heels, watching with my chakra sense from under the cover of the forest and awaiting my signal.

"Lookie at what we got here," a voice said, following it up with a chuckle.

"A couple o' kiddies and two old men."

"Terrifying," a different voice agreed.

I rolled my eyes and muttered to myself, "Jackasses."

There was the barest of twitches in Kakashi's signature—I had forgotten that my comm was on.

"Hey, hey, Kakashi," Naruto said. "Can we just beat them up already?"

"Relax, idiot."

"Stop calling me that!"

I sighed and made a mental note to get back at Sasuke for that comment later.

"Come now, Naruto," Kakashi said, not bothering to chastise them. "There's no need to pick a fight with everybody we come across."

"That brat ain't the one who's gonna be picking a fight, old man," one of the voices said.

I could imagine the unimpressed stare Kakashi was throwing their way in response.

The further you got from Konoha, the less likely it was that the locals would recognize you as a ninja. Given that we were nearing the coast and the nearest Konoha outpost was a half-day trip from our location, there was a high chance that anybody we might encounter would have never seen a ninja in their lives. Their idea of a ninja would be built from horror stories and legends, boogeymen rather than people, an image constructed of traits taken from stories told by mothers in attempts to scare their children and tales spread by the daimyo to keep his citizens in line.

The word ninja conjured up demons who lived in shadows rather than soldiers who wore the skin of men.

Konoha never fought to dispel that in the rural parts of the country as there was no need—they had nothing to gain from those people. It was, in fact, to their benefit to keep up that visage with those near the borders, as it deterred any form of back dealings with the other countries.

The signatures of the three men jolted, aggravated by adrenaline as they reached for their weapons and prepared for a fight that they'd never get.

Kakashi pulsed his chakra once, twice.

I abandoned my spot and hopped down onto the dirt road without a sound.

Naruto and Sasuke had placed themselves in front of Tazuna, kunai out and stances ready, though the hand that Naruto held his kunai in visibly shook, in stark contrast to the steady grip that Sasuke had on his. They had the undivided attention of the men.

Taking advantage of that fact, I ghosted up behind the man closest to me, one of the sword wielders. The heel of my foot acquainted itself with the back of his knee, slamming into the joint, his bone collapsing beneath the blow and emitting an audible crunch. He went down with a cry of pain and dismay. As his body crumbled I followed up with a knee to the ribs, sending him careening through the air and into a nearby tree.

Compared to sparring with Sasuke or Lee, the movements and reactions of the men were sluggish and pitiful, worse than Academy students.

The other two men turned to me, facing away from the boys. I cocked my head and gave a little wave.

"Wha—a little girl?"

"Hi," I said, taking a couple of steps back, making a bit of space. Right this way, assholes. "Are you sure you wanna do this?"

The other sword user hesitated, giving me an apprehensive look, his eyes darting from where I stood to the leader of his group. His comrade didn't share his good sense—the man with the war hammer appeared resolute, angered rather than dissuaded.

"Pathetic," he spat, glaring at the downed member and tightening his grip on his hammer. "What a useless piece of trash."

"Is he the only one?" I asked, goading them on. "Neither of you look particularly useful, either."

Come on, hit me, you know you want to.

They obliged.

Both of the men lunged, the one with the hammer taking the initiative and his comrade trailing behind him.

Sasuke darted forward and flew at one of the men, nailing him in the back of the head with the hilt of his kunai. I expected Naruto to attack the other man, as was the obvious action for him to take, but realized at the last second that he had remained frozen in his place.

Shit.

I threw myself to the side in an awkward, one-handed cartwheel, landing back on my feet again a few feet away.

My hand grabbed at my kunai holster and I pulled one of them out, reversing my grip on it to throw from the blade instead of the handle. The hilt smacked into the middle of the man's forehead and knocked him off balance. Sasuke took the opening and finished the job, dipping down into a low sweep to knock the man's legs out from under him and letting the momentum carry him back up, delivering a vicious round-house kick to the man's back.

There was no need to finish the job—we were strongly discouraged for ending the lives of those who weren't likely to come after us again, especially when they were citizens of the Land of Fire.

Naruto stared at us with wide eyes. His hand hadn't ceased shaking.

Sasuke spared him a smug half-glance, scoffing, walking around the group of thugs. "You're such a scaredy cat."

"Shut up," Naruto answered. The expression on his face hardened, morphing into an annoyed scowl. "I just—I knew that you two had it covered."

"Sure."

Naruto looked to me, expecting me to defend him, to tell him that what he did was alright, I supposed.

I offered him none of that.

He was a child. He hadn't been hardened by battle. He was scared and that was fine, that wasn't unexpected, nor was it unreasonable—but it was dangerous for a ninja. If that fight had involved more than thugs that I could handle in my sleep, a slip up of that manner could have been lethal. If that fight had been one Naruto faced on his own, he would have died for his lack of action.

There was no forgiveness for those who couldn't handle the pressure of battle. This world didn't show mercy to the weak—it devoured them. Naruto needed to learn that; to coddle him and lie to him would be unkind.

It felt like a knife twisting in my gut to do it, it left me with a hint of guilt stabbing at my heart, but I would do it.

"I'm going to move ahead again," I said, meeting Kakashi's gaze. "I'll contact you about any other potential threats."

The fire crackled in front of me, the flames spitting sparks up into to the night sky and providing an ever dimming light to guard against the otherwise impenetrable black.

Naruto and Sasuke were both out cold on either side or our meagre camp. Kakashi was laying up against the trunk of a tree, his eye shut but his signature bouncing with an activity that spoke of faint slumber which could be broken in seconds. Tazuna was staring up at the foliage above, his sleeping mat strewn out across the dirt to my left, placed close to my position so as to provide an easy defence should the need arise.

I had a small portion of my attention sectioned off to monitoring the chakra activity of the area around us while the rest was focused on the movement of the chain in front of me, the links stretching out from the bracelet that hung off of the middle of my forearm.

The grasp I had over the chain was tenuous at best. It was as if I was learning to make use of another limb, with a feather touch being insufficient and not garnering even a twitch from the chain, while a harsher touch turned it erratic. It reminded me of the learning curve that came with chakra control in general. Practice made perfect, and all that. Overthinking about the finer details of controlling the chain muddied the effect and with enough time, moving them would become something akin to second nature—that was what the shopkeeper had told to me, at least.

I wasn't certain I bought that, but given that he had made eight rings and two bracelets, and had intended for them to all be used at the same time, there had to be some truth to it.

The rings, with their thinner chains, were more difficult to learn with. I carried them around in a pouch that was attached to the back of my waistband, as a precautionary measure, but in practice, the bracelets were easier to use. The other perk to using the bracelets was that it left my hands open—punching somebody with rings on hurt like a bitch if you didn't know how to cushion the blow with chakra in just the right way. I may have been good, but that was still a bit above my level.

The chain stretched out a few metres in front of me, whirling and curling, shifting and flowing with the light breeze that swept through the air, appearing almost ethereal.

"You should go to sleep," I said, my eyes locked on the chain and the chakra that coated them. "We'll be leaving before it's light out."

"How'd you know I wasn't asleep?" Tazuna grunted.

He sounded as sober as I had heard him since we departed Konoha.

Your muscles are too stiff, your chakra is too active, and you snore like a fucking foghorn while you sleep. "Ninja shit."

"That's it, huh?"

"That's it."

"Even you little brats are impossible."

"Yeah."

Tazuna shifted, groping at his bag for his bottle of sake and taking a swig. He pushed himself up into a sitting position, his joints popping and cracking at the movement, and he settled into a cross-legged position with a sigh.

"Y'know," he said, tipping his bottle back again, "I've been meaning to ask you—what's somebody with a Wave accent doing in Konoha."

"It's not a Wave accent," I answered.

"It may be dulled, gaki, but that's a Wave accent."

I rolled my eyes. "Don't be stupid—it's not a Wave accent."

"Yeah? Then what is it, huh?"

"None of your fucking business, that's what."

I had long since stopped bothering to dull my words with Tazuna. There wasn't any reason to avoid offending him, as there would be no action taken against me for doing so—what could he do by that point? Send us away? Complain to the village? Not a chance.

If he wanted my respect he could earn it like anybody else. Being a rude, nosy old drunk who had knowingly put four people in danger and spent the entire trip demeaning us wasn't helping his case any.

Tazuna leant his head back and chugged the contents of the sake bottle, tossing the empty container onto his sack. "Have it your way," he said, raising a hand to wipe it across his lips. "Stuffy ninja."

He collapsed back down onto his mat, rolling onto his side and facing away from me.

Two more hours passed before I had to rouse everybody except Tazuna to finish our trek to the coast.

.

.

The encounter with the Demon Brothers kicked off not when I came across a puddle on a dry dirt road, but when I stumbled on a couple of inconspicuous girls wandering the road who had the signatures of ninja and a fuzz around them that spoke of a henge.

I had gone ahead but didn't have my chakra sense extended to its full potential, putting the two men within spitting distance of the rest of our group, no more than half a kilometre.

The second their signatures hit my sense I altered my path, veering left to leave space between myself and them, not wanting to risk alerting them if I got too close. I looped around and took up a position that situated me at their flanks.

A hand switched my comms on. "Hey, Kakashi," I murmured. "There's a couple of ninja up this way and they're on a direct course to where you guys are."

There was a beat of silence. "Are there?"

"Yeah," I answered. "It's kind of hard to tell, 'cause there's a henge around both of them, but I think they're either genin or chunin—whichever, I can guarantee that they're not civilians."

"Good work," he replied, the tightness in his voice audible even through the speaker. "Return back to our position."

"On my way."

The scene that greeted me when I landed in front of them was a Not Happy Kakashi staring down Tazuna, Naruto and Sasuke both watching the scene unfold from a few feet away. Kakashi had led the group off of the main road, parking it behind a couple of trees in the forests that lined the path, out of sight from those who would be heading through.

Tazuna was, as any sane person would be, shitting bullets under the gaze of Kakashi, leaning away from him and averting his eyes down to the ground, a bead of sweat dripping down from his forehead.

"Now that we're all here," Kakashi drawled, "care to explain why there are two ninja currently heading our way?"

"I don't know," Tazuna said, further shuffling back. "They might just—they might just be wandering ninja. Your folk do that sometimes, don't they?"

"Both of them are disguised," I put in. "They're walking in this direction henged as civilian girls. If they were just regular missing-nin then they would have been travelling at ninja speed and they wouldn't be taking an open path like they are. Plus, there's nobody else within about six kilometres—I checked. Whatever they want, it involves us specifically."

Kakashi stared, appraising me with his one steely eye, and gave a slow nod. "She's correct. The trap they've set is one intended for a civilian, not ninja, meaning that they aren't after my team—they're after you. So, I'm going to ask again, and you're going to answer me: why are there two ninja coming towards us?"

Tazuna took a swig of sake and proceeded to spill his guts to our group.

I didn't listen; I knew the gist of what he was saying, had that much stored in the back of my head along with the rest of the bits of knowledge I retained about the world I was in. I spent the time tracking the two signatures that made their way towards where we were, monitoring them as they grew closer.

"Kakashi, we gotta help them!" Naruto cried, pulling my attention back to the conversation at hand. "He's just trying to help his village!"

"He lied to us," I said. "He put all of us in danger."

"For a good reason," Naruto said. He huffed, shooting me a look out of the corner of his eyes. "We're ninja, we're supposed to help people."

"We're supposed to do our job," I countered. "Taking on a mission like this is beyond what our job calls for."

"I don't care! I wanna help this guy—come on, Kaka, you should too!"

"What, do you think we can't handle it?" Sasuke asked.

"Not really, no."

"I'll be the one fighting the ninja while you three will handle the mercenaries that we encounter," Kakashi cut in. His voice held no room for contest. "I doubt Gato has anybody at his disposal that's capable of beating me in a fight."

If only you knew.

I frowned, crossing my arms over my chest, a bitter taste tainting my mouth.

There was nothing I could do. While pushing boundaries happened to be a pastime of mine there were limits to what I could do, lines that even I could recognize were not to be crossed—fighting a commanding officer on a direct order was one of them. He wasn't offering us a potential plan of attack, he was giving us the plan of attack; there was no room for negotiation.

Kakashi was our asshole of a teacher, that much was true, but beyond that, he was our superior. That had to be shown respect, whether or not I liked it.

Fuck this, fuck you, take me the fuck home. "That means you'll be dealing with the two ninja heading our way?"

"It does."

"They're a minute off if they keep their pace," I told him. "Their signatures have been getting more active the closer they get—I'm not really sure what specifically has their chakra aggravated, though."

Kakashi nodded. "All of you form a defensive position around Tazuna. I'll signal you when I'm done."

A sprawling, monstrous amalgamation of chakra smacked against my sense and every muscle in my body seized on instinct, alarm bells blaring and red flags waving in my mind.

Zabuza.

The lapse in attention caused my foot to slip against the branch in front of me, having not had any chakra coating it to keep its grip. I righted myself mid-air, catching hold of the next outstretched limb with my hands and swinging myself back up, gaining a foothold on the nearest branch. Without a seconds hesitation, I pivoted and launched myself in the other direction.

He was close. He was moving faster than I was. He was making a bee-line for my location.

Fuck.

He shouldn't have been there—the village that we were headed towards was half a day's walk, at best.

I made a quick hand seal and released the weight from around my wrists and my ankles, fumbling mid-air for the second time in a one minute span, the sudden lightness of my limbs throwing off my centre of gravity. I forced myself to recover and pushed ahead at twice the speed I had been travelling at.

"Uh, Kakashi," I said, not missing the shake in my voice. "There's—there's a ninja coming, and he—he feels like he's a jonin, at least."

"How far behind you?"

"Thirty seconds," I answered. "He's… he's faster than I am."

"I'm on my way—just stay calm, alright, Kasumi?"

Calm was the exact opposite of how I felt at that moment.

I let out a breathless laugh. "Easy for you to say."

Something about having an A-rank missing-nin on my tail lit a fire under my ass like nothing else and my legs carried me through the trees at speeds I had never imagined they were capable of reaching. I forced myself to focus on the chakra signature of Kakashi hurtling towards me instead of the signature of Zabuza that was gaining on me at a steady pace.

Zabuza was ten seconds behind me, at most, when I emerged from the forest and Kakashi came into sight, kunai in hand and Sharingan blazing, his chakra signature crackling with adrenaline.

He stood in the middle of a clearing, one which had no water within the vicinity.

What the fuck.

I hit the ground at a crouch, letting my knees fold with the impact. I stood again, opening my mouth to speak, when every hair on the back of my neck stood on end.

Panic jolted through my limbs, my adrenaline skyrocketed, my blood roared in my ears.

The yin chakra from my shadow slid over my skin of its own accord and I flung myself to the side, not caring about anything except getting out of the way as a sword bigger than my entire body sliced through the air in the exact spot in which I had stood. The ground scraped against the skin of my shoulder, rocks lodged themselves in the fresh wound, pain burned across the whole of my right arm, but I hadn't been turned into a human shish-kebab.

I was alive.

I pushed myself up into a sitting position, the yin chakra falling back into its place as my panic ebbed away again.

Kakashi had moved to occupy a chunk of my line of sight, turning himself into a human shield. Zabuza was across from him, his sword buried into the trunk of a tree and one hand settled on the hilt of it, his amusement tinged eyes boring into mine.

"Well, look at what we have here," he rumbled. "A wee little girl playing kunoichi and Kakashi of the Sharingan."

"How astute of you," Kakashi answered.

Zabuza yanked at the hilt of his sword, the bark cracking around the blade as it dislodged itself from the trunk and sunk into the ground at his side. "I suppose you're going to tell me you don't know where the bridge builder is, right?"

"Afraid so."

"Pity," Zabuza. "I'll just have to kill you both and go hunt him down myself—I doubt it'll be that hard. I can already smell the sake from here."

There was a spike in Zabuza's chakra and he rolled his shoulders, cracked his neck, opened his stance; killing intent spread out around him.

Being overwhelmed by killing intent felt the way that I assumed drowning did.

Thick, oozing energy, tainting the air you breathe and constricting your lungs, clogging your throat and weighing down your chest. It was copious and sticky, like tar seeping through your pores and coating your insides.

I choked as I attempted to inhale. My hand rose to my mouth, my throat. Tears sprang to my eyes.

I couldn't breathe.

Knowing why it was happening didn't do anything to lessen the shock and panic and discomfort. The chakra in my shadow curled upwards again, reacting to my distress, layering over my skin even as I tried to push it down.

"Kasumi, calm down. I'm not going to let anything happen to you—you're going to be fine."

Fine. Fine. Fine.

I forced myself to intake air around the killing intent, to centre myself, to relax.

Fine, fine, fine.

I forced myself to get up onto my feet.

Fine, fine.

I forced my knees to stay straight, to not wobble, to hold my weight.

Fine.

I was fine.

"Understood," I croaked.

Kakashi spared me a brief glance over his shoulder. "Good. Go regroup with the rest of the team."

The order to defend Tazuna went unsaid.

"Alright."

My legs felt like noodles, limp and uncooperative, tremors running through them as an after-effect of the killing intent, but I managed to work my way out of the clearing and into the forest, not missing the way that Zabuza's signature jolted in my direction and Kakashi's followed to intercept.

Zabuza wasn't stupid. He knew what was going on, what game we were playing at.

I felt around the forest and located Haku's signature hovering not far off, poised to interrupt the fight at any given moment, and Naruto and Sasuke and Tazuna's signatures, a half minute run off of my location and heading in my direction. If I were to guess, they were going against orders that Kakashi had given them.

Oh, great.

That was exactly what I wanted to deal with at that moment, another thing to add to the confusion and fear that was already clouding my thoughts.

It had begun to hit me that I didn't have a damn clue what was going to happen to Kakashi. None. Not a single idea. That was because the Wave Mission I had thus far experienced didn't in any way, shape, or form, match up with the one that ran through my head.

We had run into mercenaries, unlike what I recalled.

We had had an encounter with the Demon Brothers that was foreign to me.

We had met up with Zabuza at a different time, in a different location, and in a different manner.

Something was messing around with the events of this mission and it didn't take a genius to figure out what—it was me.

My presence had caused the entire damn mission to take on a new form and that thought did nothing to assuage the fear and apprehension that I felt about the situation, serving to worsen them instead. The knowledge I had could, for all intents and purposes, be thrown out the window for what use it would be to me.

I stopped in my tracks when the three of them entered my vision, Naruto and Sasuke running with Tazuna on the latter's back.

"What the hell are you two—"

"Kaka!"

Naruto ran forward, ploughing into me and wrapping his arms around my upper body in a bear-hug. Fire burned in my shoulder and I jerked back, a yelp escaping my lips. Naruto let go, jumping away with wide eyes, taking note of the injury to my shoulder.

Naruto opened his mouth to say something but Sasuke beat him to it, asking "Where's Kakashi?"

"He's back there," I said. "He's fighting a missing-nin."

"What?" Naruto cried. "Hey—we gotta go help him!"

"Uh, no we don't."

"We can't just leave him! What's with you?" he exclaimed, looking at me with narrowed eyes. "We have to help our teammate!"

"He's our teacher, not our teammate," I said, "and he's fully capable of helping himself."

Probably.

Hopefully.

"We still need to try and help," Naruto insisted.

"If we try and help him, Naruto, we're just going to get in the way," I said. "We should stay back here, let him fight for himself, and keep the client safe."

Naruto balled his fists at his sides, his chakra fluctuating. "No!"

He flew past me and took off in the vague direction of the fight.

"Naruto!"

"Idiot," Sasuke muttered.

For once, I felt no desire to correct him.

"I'm going to go after him," I said. "Can you stay—"

"I'm coming."

The desire to rip my hair out, however, was growing with each second that passed. "No! Kakashi ordered us to watch the client."

"I can do both," he said. "I'm not letting you and the idiot go do something stupid and jeopardize the mission."

"For fuck's sake—fine, but you're carrying the client. I can't with my shoulder injured."

"Hn."

We didn't manage to catch up to Naruto. With my body still trembling from the after-effects of the killing intent and Sasuke weighed down by the body on his back, neither of us were in the condition required to make it in time.

I felt as Naruto's signature reached the epicentre of the battle, jolted at the sight, and sprung forward.

My blood ran cold.

Zabuza's signature twisted towards Naruto; Kakashi's signature twisted towards Naruto.

The three masses of chakra blended in a collision that blurred on my sense.

I pushed my legs harder, harder, harder, pulling ahead of Sasuke.

Another clash, a second, a third, a fourth. Both signatures were getting dimmer, lower, while Naruto's held at a steady pace behind Kakashi, always behind Kakashi. We were feet away when a third signature entered the fray and I watched the senbon pierce Zabuza's skin in the same second that I charged through the treeline.

All that was left to see was the aftermath.

Kakashi had one hand clamped down on his forearm to cover a nasty gash, blood leaking from various other points of his body, and a very empty chakra system, but he was alive. Zabuza lay on the ground at his feet. Haku, with his mask covering his face and his fingers lined with senbon, stood in front of Kakashi, engaged in a low conversation with him.

Naruto was on the ground behind Kakashi, his eyes wide and locked on Kakashi's back and brimming with tears, but he wasn't my first concern at that moment because I could feel the faint flicker of Zabuza's chakra, marking him as alive, oh so alive.

I made a decision in that moment.

My hand reached down towards my kunai pouch.

We weren't playing around. Our mission wasn't a game. We were in a real field environment with real consequences to our actions. It was a life or death situation and throwing an A-rank ninja who could hold his own against our teacher and a prodigy with Ice Release into the mix tilted the scales further towards the latter. Worse was that, by that point, I knew that I was going in blind.

Fingers, slick with perspiration, curled around the grip of the kunai.

Could the mission have a happy ending, with all of us making it home safe and sound? That was possible. Could the mission go sideways—as was the long-running theme for Team 7—and leave all of us injured, dead, or permanently scarred? That was also possible—in that fact, I took issue.

The blade of the kunai scraped against the holster as I drew it.

I refused to face a possible death sentence when the solution to avoiding it was right in my face. There was no reason to take a chance if there was a way to get out of it. I knew that on my own, I couldn't take out Haku, I couldn't eliminate that threat, I couldn't give us that extra bit of safety—but Kakashi could. He was suspicious, that much I was certain hadn't changed. He knew that something was off. All I had to do was give the situation a push.

The weapon shook in my hand, my hold so tight that the lines of the leather wrapped around the grip of the kunai would be engraved in the skin of my palm.

I could do it. I could do it.

Kakashi, from where he stood, noted the action, his uncovered grey eye darting over to me as his muscles tensed.

I would do it.

I cocked an arm and threw the kunai, the tip zipping towards Zabuza's neck.

Haku moved to intercept the kunai in a flash of motion, batting it away with an outstretched hand. Kakashi followed him, striking like a viper—in one single, fluid movement, Kakashi had a kunai embedded into Haku's throat.