As soon as he was sure that his followers had been thoroughly separated from their friends, Zabuza stopped and allowed Naruto, Sasuke, and Tucker to encircle him.
"Give it up, Zabuza! You don't have a chance against us!" Sakura shouted to him. Instead of replying, Zabuza simply crossed his arms and laughed.
"What's with you? Stop laughing!" Naruto yelled. Zabuza ceased his maniacal laughter and immediately took on a tone of utter seriousness.
"Very well," he replied. "Then let's begin!" Before any of them could react, he threw three kunie at Tucker. Luckily for the dark-skinned boy, the Fenton Ghost Peeler's armor was thick enough to protect him. The boy looked down at the small knives sticking out of the metal, sighed with relief, and looked up in time to see Zabuza run up and punch him in his helmeted head. Hard. Tucker attempted to get up, but he was slow in doing so because of the additional weight of the armor.
"My kunie might not be able to penetrate your shield, but this shuriken sure will!" Zabuza asserted as he cast the device at the recumbent boy. Before it could make contact, though, Sakura ran in front of Tucker and performed a substitution jutsu. A stump took the place of the genin and was struck by the shuriken, and the momentum of the device caused the stump to be thrown back and bounce harmlessly against Tucker's armor.
As soon as she'd performed the jutsu, Sakura reappeared off to the left and launched an anti-ghost kunie at Zabuza. The Demon of the Mist dodged by bending backwards at the waist and allowing the kunie to pass over him. Zabuza's skyward view was suddenly blocked by Naruto, who had jumped and whose trajectory carried him and the kunie in his hand directly into Zabuza. Zabuza reflexively bent all the way backwards and kicked up in a handspring. Not expecting this, Naruto got kicked in the face and flew backwards. Fortunately, it hadn't really been Naruto; it'd just been a shadow clone that disappeared in a puff of smoke after sailing for a few feet. The real Naruto had already thrown an anti-ghost shuriken at Zabuza, who sidestepped to dodge it. Then, to everyone's surprise, the shuriken disappeared in a puff of smoke and turned into Tucker.
"Eat this!" He cried as he shot at Zabuza with the Fenton Peeler. Too slow to dodge the blast, Zabuza was struck dead-on with a green beam of energy and destabilized to ectoplasm.
"It was…just a clone," Sakura murmured.
"That's right," a voice replied from behind Tucker. All of a sudden, the boy was thrown forwards as a second Zabuza kicked him from behind. Tucker slowly stood up but doubled over as he was hit in the stomach by a shuriken that Zabuza had just thrown. As Zabuza had predicted, the shuriken did indeed pierce his armor. Sakura ran over to Tucker just as the Fenton Peeler's armor retracted, and examined the wound.
"He'll live," she reported grimly, "but we should get him out of here as quickly as possible."
"Unfortunately, you getting out of here at all isn't going to be possible!" Zabuza spat as he threw three kunie at Sakura. Naruto immediately summoned a shadow clone to jump in the way of the kunie and take the hits instead. The real Naruto ran up to the other two as soon as his clone disappeared.
"Quickly, give me the Fenton Peeler!" Sakura tossed the small gun to him. Naruto pressed the button and was immediately covered in the device's armor.
"Shadow Clone jutsu!" Naruto shouted as twenty clones appeared out of nowhere. All of the clones were wielding a Fenton Peeler and were protected by its armor. One of the clones tried to run up to Zabuza, but he was impeded by the armor.
"I can't move," he complained.
"That armor may protect you, but it limits your mobility!" Zabuza yelled. The Demon of the Mist hefted his sword and began swiping at the clones. Most of them managed to jump out of the way, but three were struck by the sword and disappeared in clouds of gray smoke. After one attempted strike, Zabuza overbalanced and stood with the sword pointing forward and one of his legs extended behind him in order to regain his balance. A Naruto clone took this opportunity to do a sweeping kick and knock Zabuza's leg out from underneath him. The clone fired the Fenton Peeler at Zabuza while he was lying on the ground, and he melted into a puddle of ectoplasmic goo.
"Another clone!" Naruto shouted angrily as his clones all disappeared, leaving the original standing next to Sakura. The two genin stood silently for a minute, their senses fine-tuned to detect the presence of another clone about to attack.
"I think that was the last one," Sakura finally said.
"We should go find the others, then. We need to get Tucker some help," Naruto replied.
"Let's go." The two of them picked up Tucker and headed in the direction that they'd come from.