Hmph.
A little piece of advice for anyone that is (or plans to become) a teacher: please don't make tests consisting of stuff you haven't truly taught or barely even acknowledged during classes. Seriously. This is a huge dick move. If you have to test your students, use the things you actually spent time teaching them, or do your job correctly and dive deeper into certain topics if they are truly important. Or else they riot and nobody likes that. (Well, my class riots, at least. Glad I'm changing classes this semester)
That's biggest cause for this taking so long to pop up. College alone cost me more than the three weeks I had been hoping to focus on this. There were some in-chapter problems as well, but in short: writing is hard and life is busy. I've left a slightly more detailed note in my profile, if anyone cares. I apologize for this but, really, the biggest time sinks were completely out of my control. (And there might have been some time wasted with Fire Emblem Fates, RWBY... and Overwatch, which was my early Christmas present... but hey, I need to have fun sometimes too!)
Even though this might make me lose some new readers who skim the chapters and could get scared by how long chapter-wise I've spent in the Wave arc, I decided to split this into two updates again, but the next part is almost out of the oven. Because of unplanned content and my attempt to compensate for the delays, this chapter got way too big and I'm sure some of you, my current readers, wouldn't like that big of a wall-of-text.
But mainly, this is because my beta's dad underwent an eye surgery and left SimplePotato playing nurse/babysitter in these last few days. I already feel a guilty about him doing this payless work for me on normal days... so this was also to make things less chaotic for him, too.
As a wise man once said: Please understand.
And enjoy!
Land of Waves arc
Chapter 16: Shattered, part 3 (Current Version: 1.0)
Silence. Again.
Inari, discouraged, walked away from the house's doorsteps and began to wander the streets.
"What do I do now...?" he muttered. "Nobody's willing to listen to me!"
He took the moment to wipe the sweat off his brow. Running through the entire village made him tired, and considering no one even opened their doors for him after he knocked and said his piece, that's the only thing he got for his efforts.
"It doesn't matter," the boy decided. "If nobody wants to come with me to the bridge... if nobody has the courage to fight for our land, then I'll just have to help Naruto and the others by myself!"
Determined to protect what was dear to him with his own two arms, just as his father had taught him, Inari ran as fast as he could back to his house.
It had been a while since he had last used his grandfather's old crossbow... but it would have to do.
The pain and the deafening crash of the Ice Mirrors falling apart had sobered him.
"What... ugh, what happened to me...?"
Naruto took heavy breaths, and his stomach protested against every single one of them, making him wince. The cause of it all was the hole he found above his belly button. It hurt like hell and it was bleeding profusely... and there was also an odd sensation, not unlike the feeling of being healed by medical ninjutsu, as if his insides were slowly knitting themselves back. Uncomfortable.
That was the only reason he wasn't panicking, despite the thought of dying from blood loss passing through his mind. Assuming that body was indeed healing by itself, somehow, he simply used his hand to help stop the blood flow while trying to regain his bearings.
Naruto's senses were all much sharper than he remembered, but he felt a numbness deep inside his head, almost as if something was working to block him from processing what was around him.
'It's kinda like what happened that time with Mizuki and Iruka-sensei,' Naruto realized. The sensations were much stronger in this instance, though.
He then paled. The biggest difference is that he hadn't felt in control this time around. His memories were messed up too, which could only mean...
Naruto's gaze fell to his bleeding stomach again, but his eyes focused beyond that.
'Was that... the fox's power?'
A scream interrupted his thoughts.
The despair in the voice—a girl's, he noted—was palpable, and it made him even sicker. Naruto felt as if he should've known who the voice's owner was and why she was screaming, but his mind was drawing a blank. Something had happened but his memories of the past few minutes were foggy.
Absentmindedly, he looked around the area as he tried to piece together what had happened. There were Ice shards scattered all over the place, slowly disintegrating as they lacked an energy source to keep them whole. There were also a few needles and pieces of concrete with corresponding holes in the ground here and there, and drops of blood in some places as well...
"Okay... I know I got here and decided to sneak along the sides of the bridge to find a cool place to make an entrance from, but then I found that wall of ice. I kicked it and that didn't work, so I went back to ask Sakura-chan and Shino for help and then broke through that thing with a steel beam. Right." He nodded to himself. "Then I tried to help Sasuke with his fight, but..."
Naruto frowned. His memories from the fight with Haku were hazy and incomplete. He knew the fight wasn't going very well for him and his teammate, though.
His eyes then landed on a body that was practically buried in a pile of Ice shards. Though he still couldn't recall the events completely, the memories started to come back to him.
Sasuke had died to protect him.
"..."
The thought still brought too many strong emotions for the young Uzumaki to properly process. His eyes started to moisten with unshed tears, but he refused to let them flow or to approach Sasuke's corpse. Instead, he just gave out a weak chuckle, which clashed heavily with the strongest emotion he was feeling.
"You'd be mad at me for wasting time instead of going out there to fight, huh...?"
Sasuke didn't answer. Naruto knew that he wouldn't, but it still hurt more than any of the insults he knew the Uchiha would have thrown at him.
Still, with that thought in mind, he hurried out of that area and went deeper into the mist. He remembered a scream coming from that direction...
He followed a trail of Ice, mud, and blood until he saw one of the masked ninjas, kneeling on the ground while staring at the broken half of another mask. The long, unbound hair told him it was the girl who fought Kiba and Hinata, but what was she doing there?
'Is she... crying?' he wondered, observing how her shoulders were trembling. Confused, he got closer, but his footsteps were loud enough to alert her of his approach.
She whirled around. Realization crossed her features for only an instant before something else took over.
"...You!"
The enmity in her voice was strong enough to make Naruto take a couple steps back, while the masked girl rose. She pointed at him, accusingly, and Naruto just knew there was a hateful glare aimed at him from behind that mask.
But it was also an analytical one. That malevolent chakra and killer intent were gone, and Haru saw that while the Uzumaki no longer was walking on all fours like a beast, his eyes were a much darker shade of blue than the ones she remembered from their first meeting. His whisker marks were thicker and his impaled stomach seemed mostly healed from where she could see, too.
It was simply unbelievable. All of her and Haku's efforts were for nothing. Just what was he?
"You killed my brother! You... you monster!"
What word could be used but monster? Nothing could describe that furious, wild creature that acted purely on instinct and exuded evil as perfectly as that word.
Haru didn't know any other way to call it, but she immediately found out that allowing her emotions to flow freely was a fatal mistake.
Naruto's first reaction, before her second sentence, was confusion. He didn't remember killing anyone. But when he heard her last words...
"No! I'm... I'm NOT a monster!"
With a pulse of energy, it started again.
His teeth became longer once again and the blue in his eyes was overcome by red as the pupil changed shape, but that terrifying mix of chakra and killer intent had yet to be unleashed completely.
His memories still had holes in it, but he didn't need them anymore. He understood enough already.
"That guy... your brother, huh?! He killed my friend too!"
The girl almost chuckled in response. This was exactly why she hated how Haku and Zabuza both wanted to fight against the Mizukage more for the sake of revenge than anything else. Because her brother had killed Naruto's friend, he paid with his life.
'And here I am, about to try to kill him because of it.' Giving in to the emotion, her energy flared and Ice began to form in her hands. 'I wonder... if I manage to kill him, will someone care enough to hunt me down to avenge him too?'
Not that it would lead anywhere.
Her brother had died and she had proven herself a failure during this mission. Zabuza was investing on her, but the payoff would never be the same as it had been with her brother. Haru knew he cared for both of them, but with her brother dead and her usefulness as a tool severely limited... would that be enough to justify still keeping her under his wing? Was it just wishful thinking to believe that he truly cared for her?
Emotionally shaken from her brother's murder and her own insecurities, Haru came to one conclusion:
'No... I was just lying to myself this whole time.'
Haru considered Zabuza as a second father, but he never treated her like a daughter. She would be discarded, like a broken tool that became useless. And thus revenge was the only thing she could cling on to. It was against her every ideal, but at that point, what else was there to fight for?
Without Zabuza... without Haku... she was nothing. And as a huge pile of absolutely nothing, she had no answer to that question. No purpose.
She, however, had an answer to Naruto's accusation.
"He killed your friend, but he left you alive. I will correct that mistake. You will die just like the other two!"
Even as she dashed forward, Haru knew she was outmatched... but in that case, at the very least, she could spare Zabuza the trouble and throw her life away herself.
Not for the first time, and probably not for the last, Kakashi cursed his own irresponsible attitude.
"What's the matter, Kakashi? Getting tired already...?" Zabuza chuckled, his voice slightly distorted by the influx of seemingly demonic chakra that coated him.
Kakashi didn't honor that taunt with an answer.
But it was true. He was physically out of shape—a deadly combination of the lack of constant practice and the aftermath of their previous duel—and his chakra levels were getting lower and lower from sustaining the Sharingan. He still had more than half of his reserves to go, but he wasn't sure how much they would last.
...And that's not even considering that after activating his shroud, Zabuza not only got stronger and somehow more resilient, but he also got faster. The enhancements weren't very significant on their own, but all of them together meant Zabuza could actually bring his Kubikiribocho back to the fight: blocking was harder and dodging also became difficult even to a Sharingan-user, especially with his invulnerability to the dojutsu's natural Yin Release.
But Kakashi had to keep going. Not only Konoha and the entirety of the Land of Waves depended on him, but so did his squad. His full squad—not just his three cute little genin. Kakashi knew that the moment he died, all seven of them would die with him.
The destruction the bridge had gone through during their duel was proof of that. Wet craters from Zabuza's Water Dragon Jutsu littered the battlefield, with the odd kunai and shuriken or burnt concrete from Kakashi's own repertoire of techniques accompanying it. He was sure that more damage could be found beyond the walls of mist that surrounded the small ring of fogless air Zabuza had designed for their fight, evidence of past failures at ambushes from both sides.
Gripping his kunai tightly, Kakashi dashed forward to engage his enemy once again. His only hope of winning their fight was to take Zabuza by surprise while also keeping him on the defensive.
It took everything Kakashi had to keep up with a swordsman of Zabuza's caliber. His Sharingan could almost see the future, and what his eyes couldn't see, his own experience in the battlefield completed the foresight for him.
Kakashi was fast and skilled, but not enough to avoid everything. There was a huge tear in Kakashi's heavy flak jacket, from the left shoulder almost through the right hip, from which blood leaked freely. The strike hadn't hit bones or organs other than skin, but it and the smaller wounds he had sustained throughout this whole battle made sure every movement hurt.
His thoughts weren't on those things, however. A small opening presented itself, but just as in every other attempt, the intense chakra surrounding his enemy's body made the kunai do nothing more than a shallow cut, and Kakashi almost lost his arm from Zabuza's counterattack.
'Ugh... I need something to stop him from moving.' Kakashi continued to press the opening until he was forced to back off, repeating the endless dance between himself and Zabuza. 'Only a really strong technique has a chance of getting through that chakra cloak, but how do I do that?'
To kill, he needed to immobilize. To immobilize, he needed a distraction. But between the lack of cover and Zabuza's extremely acute hearing, how would he go about doing that?
It turned out that the answer was... to do nothing.
Zabuza's focus wavered when both of them heard a scream of despair. A feminine scream that Kakashi didn't recognize, but the voice's owner was obvious to Zabuza. 'That was... Haru!'
The swordsman's eyes widened from the realization but narrowed immediately afterwards as Kakashi used the distraction to blur through seals.
He slammed his hands on the ground. "Earth Release: Mud Wall!"
As the technique's name proclaimed, a tall wall of mud rose from the ground, and Zabuza growled as he heard Kakashi's fading footsteps from behind the structure.
"That won't save you from me, Kakashi!"
Zabuza wasted no time in sprinting towards the blockade and cleaving through it with a mighty, roar. The mud structure fell apart in the wake of the Kubikiribocho, and just a few meters behind it...
"Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu!"
The giant sphere of searing heat consumed Zabuza before he even had a chance to react.
The Mist jonin could do nothing more than scream in pure agony as the flames ate at his shroud. Quickly, the demonic technique's aura faded and the unnaturally strong blaze consumed it and then his skin, overloading his senses with pain until it became too much for even him to bear.
Zabuza's blazing corpse crashed to the ground, still burning.
Kakashi wanted to sigh, relieved that the battle had finally ended... but right before Zabuza's cloak faded, he felt a spike of the Kyuubi's evil chakra. Weaker than before, yes, but still a cause for concern.
Sparing one last look at the fire that obscured the dead Zabuza and the discarded Kubikiribocho that fell with him, Kakashi covered Obito's eye again to conserve what little chakra he had remaining and walked away from the corpse.
"Well, now that this is over, I better go help my students before things get worse..."
"Too late."
Instinct and years of training took over and Kakashi pivoted.
Or at least he tried to, but suddenly being enveloped in a gigantic sphere of horribly heavy water made that movement an impossibility. Kakashi only managed to turn his head, with much difficulty, to face his assailant.
He glared at the man. 'So that's the power of the silent killing style... amazing. I truly didn't hear him coming,' Kakashi noted with disgust.
The swordsman, undoubtedly, was smirking underneath his mask of bandages. His left arm was outstretched inside the Prison to keep it sustained. His hair was singed and parts of his skin were red from burns.
Superficial damage.
"That's what you get for underestimating me," Zabuza laughed, enjoying the thrill of victory and that look of helplessness in Kakashi's sole visible eye. "You see, Kakashi, some techniques like mine can be regulated. My shroud at its weakest doesn't work well, I admit, but it was more than enough for that pathetic attempt at a Katon jutsu. You should've gone with your affinity instead of a badly copied trick, idiot."
'So Lightning would have gotten through, huh?'
Kakashi shifted his gaze to the arm that connected Zabuza and the Water Prison.
"Now, Kakashi, I've heard drowning to death is not a particularly pleasing experience..." Not being able to contain himself, Zabuza burst out laughing again, reveling in his victory. "Enjoy my parting gift, because I know I will enjoy watching the life leaving your carcass behind."
Briefly, as Kakashi glared at him, Zabuza let himself imagine how powerful he would become with the power of the Sharingan. When he noticed the glare, he once again chuckled, enjoying the other man's suffering. "No matter how many jutsu you know, Copy Ninja, there is not a single technique that can get you out of there."
Kakashi, once again, had to concede that Zabuza was saying nothing but the purest truth.
With the Demon's mocking laughter echoing around him, he accepted that his fate was sealed.
Escaping without help would be impossible.
Hinata had noticed at a fairly young age that despite occasional successes, her life always found ways to remind her that she simply wasn't enough.
She should've known better by now.
Still, those reminders tended to be far more direct when she had been a little girl. The various Jyuuken instructors she had had over the years never minced words with her, making it clear that what they were seeing was insufficient for the heiress of the clan. Her father simply opted for silence most of the time, but the glint in his eyes told her what words couldn't.
This time it was different. There was nobody but her own conscience yelling at her for the chain of incompetence that led to her current situation.
Her Gentle Fist wasn't good enough. Any other Hyuuga in her place wouldn't have had as much trouble as she had, even at a range disadvantage. More importantly, if given an opening they would have landed a crippling blow, instead of one that only stopped the enemy for less than a minute... whatever the cause for that might be. She didn't know why her strike failed to do the heavy damage it was supposed to.
Her Byakugan wasn't good enough. If her eyes were stronger then she wouldn't have needed to focus so much on piercing through the mist when that explosion of orange chakra happened. Thus, she wouldn't have been as vulnerable as she was and perhaps would have noticed and avoided the enemy's ambush. Instead, Kiba had to jump in to save her and they almost got themselves killed anyways. Worse, she had instinctively wasted so much of her chakra in maintaining her dojutsu while the Ice Barrier pushed her, and it didn't help her in any way. In fact, it only caused a mild headache
Weirdly, her strength had been enough. Hinata couldn't believe that she had actually managed to get a grip on the bridge, considering the lingering Ice coating it to the edge... and it had been a major stroke of luck that she had caught Kiba's hand as they fell. But what was the point? She couldn't get them up anyways. Not with just one arm—which at least she knew wouldn't have been expected of her, considering her age and build.
There was a simple solution to her problems, however: The Tree Climbing Technique, which allowed her to defy gravity with nothing but her own chakra.
But her mind wasn't good enough. The pressure of being in a life-or-death situation, her own wounds, as well as the terrifying and oppressive aura that had suddenly taken over the bridge, made it impossible for her to keep calm enough to focus on getting just the right amount of chakra necessary. Hinata attempted it multiple times but her feet always ended up slipping. Each failure only frustrated her more and it all went spiraling from there, making each try more impossible than the last.
The only other ideas she had required more people, but Kiba was knocked out and she couldn't call for help.
She was almost crying from sheer frustration at her uselessness, but a small moan from below distracted her before the tears could start flowing.
"...Kiba-kun?"
Another moan. More like a pitiful whimper, actually.
"Kiba-kun!" Hinata felt happiness surging through her as her teammate awakened. With Kiba there, they could work together to escape safely!
... Kiba wasn't very pleased by her presence, however.
"Go away, Hana...!" he mumbled, only barely awake.
'Hana...? Wait, isn't that his sister's name?' Hinata shook her head; that didn't matter. "Kiba-kun, please! Wake-up!"
Hinata kept calling his name for a little while to no avail, so the girl decided to do something a little more drastic.
"Sorry Kiba-kun!"
She kicked his ribs.
"Wake—"
Twice!
"—up!"
Thrice!
"Gah, stop it!" Kiba finally reacted. "Dammit Hana, I told ya to not ent—holy shit where the hell is the ground!? This is not my room!"
Indeed, instead of his cozy little bedroom with a solid wooden floor, the first things Kiba saw were a thick cloud of mist hanging below his feet and a wall of concrete that ended somewhere beyond that cloud.
Panicking, and rightfully so, Kiba started flailing around as his very confused mind processed that there was nothing separating his feet from the air and that he was wounded.
"No, stop! W-we'll fall!" Hinata pleaded as her fingers slid a little more due to the sudden movement. "Kiba-kun, stop!"
"Hinata?!" Finally glancing up, Kiba immediately understood the precarious position they were in. He stopped moving... unless you counted his heart, that is, which was still beating furiously. "I think I just shaved a few decades out of my lifespan..."
They took a couple seconds to recompose themselves, and then Hinata broke their silence.
"Um... s-sorry for waking you up like that, but I didn't have a choice."
"No worries... hehe, I think I deserved being shown that a Hyuuga can actually kick things."
Despite the tension, Hinata giggled a bit. "I was going to tell you that earlier, but then..." her expression tightened. "Kiba-kun, we don't have time. Are you alright?"
"Well," Kiba's answer was flat, "my shoulder got impaled by a lance of Ice and I feel faint. I... think I twisted my ankle up there too while that mirror thingy was pushing us, cuz that's also hurting. 'Sides that I'm fine."
His forced nonchalance didn't stop Hinata from paling. Those two first facts were connected, as bleedings cause the blood pressure to drop. Now they were racing against one more clock.
And that last part... it took quite a bit of Hinata's willpower to avoid cursing something "I... I was hoping you could climb the wall. Y-you know, with chakra."
"Sorry, I don't think that's gonna happen." Kiba shook his head, and then paused. "Wait, why can't you? You mastered that thing in, like, a day!"
"...I tried, b-but... but I can't! I-I can't do it now." Hinata looked away, feeling even worse than before. "It's just not working."
Kiba looked lost for a moment. "Uh... don't worry! It's okay! We're not Shino or Sakura but I'm pretty sure we can think of something!" Then it hit him. "...Hold on, we can ask for them help!"
Hinata still looked bothered. That idea had crossed her mind, but it had glaring flaws. "They are a bit too far away, aren't they? And that girl is still out there. If... if we try calling someone she might hear it and come f-finish us off, and they can't fight her in this mist."
The Inuzuka considered that for a moment and sent a stream of chakra to his nose. "Let me check it out... hmm... ugh! They really are too far away," he concluded after a few seconds spent sniffing around. "Akamaru isn't moving either so he's probably still knocked out... shit!"
The two genin spent the next few minutes brainstorming for ideas, but nothing viable seemed to come to mind. Their plans always had a key problem they overlooked: Hinata had suggested that Kiba could use her as a makeshift ladder to climb up, but his shoulder made that practically impossible. He later suggested that he could use kunai to carve holes into the bridge so that he use the handles as a foothold, but Hinata doubted that the little daggers would support his weight.
They fell into a silence, and while Kiba kept focusing as much as he could into coming up with a way out, Hinata was becoming increasingly sidetracked by her aching left hand, which was gripping the bridge less and less as time passed. She knew their time limit was fast approaching, but remained quiet to not make Kiba nervous too.
Hinata was aware that she also had the option of simply releasing her hold on Kiba and saving herself, but she refused to consider the notion. It was her fault that he was in that situation and her responsibility to see him through it.
As the thought passed through her head once more, she tightened her hold on his hand as she glared at the other. That small action made Kiba silently realize that he had now become a liability.
'Dammit. Dammit! AAAARRRGH! If only she had her other hand free instead of having to save my sorry ass!'
Believing himself to blame for their situation, he banged his own head against the wall of the bridge in hopes of forgetting the blunder that got his shoulder out of commission.
That bump was just what Kiba needed to get his brain in gear. 'Hey... that can work!'
But... it would require some delicacy on his part to convey the plan properly.
"Hinata, I'm gonna let go of your hand."
"What?!" The girl shrieked and almost twisted her neck from how fast her head moved."No, you can't!"
"Wait, wait! No!" Kiba felt her hand crushing his. "I didn't mean it like that! Ouch!"
...Delicacy really wasn't one of Kiba's stronger points, but he got the job done at the end of the day.
"...Are you sure?" Hinata questioned him, still uneasy. If he was feeling faint before, he was likely worse now. She didn't like his plan.
But the boy just winked at her, smirking. "Leave it to me! I—"
Kiba was silenced by a scream.
It forced both genin to turn towards the direction the wail came from, but the only thing they could see was mist.
They knew that voice.
"W-was that..."
"Yup. Unless my ears stopped working, it's definitely that girl we fought."
Neither genin knew what to make of that, but Kiba took the initiative to find out.
"Look, Hinata. I'm gonna do it, okay? Things up there seem to be getting wild and I think Naruto and Sasuke might need some help"
"Okay," the Hyuuga mumbled back, turning away.
Kiba's idea was to release her hand to try and to grab her leg instead, freeing that arm so that Hinata could better support herself. If that didn't let the girl climb up, at least they would buy more time... but Hinata didn't even want to look. She trusted Kiba, but in the chance he failed, she didn't want to have the memory of her friend falling to his death stuck in her mind.
She went back to staring at the edge of the bridge, just as Kiba was preparing himself to release her... and in that moment, Hinata realized the idea's fatal flaw.
"Kiba-kun! Don't do it!"
...Is what she wanted to say.
Before the first syllable even left her mouth, before she even had a chance to grip Kiba's hand more firmly... he had already let go; his arm was already reaching for her leg.
The plan's flaw? Ice and sudden bursts of movement never go well together.
Having to support Kiba's weight accelerated by gravity at the moment he grabbed her ankle, was exactly the last push Hinata needed to lose her weakened grip entirely.
With instinct guiding her, she still tried to latch on the bridge again as soon as Kiba released her hand.
But it was too late.
They were already falling.
Though the words never formed in Hinata's mind, deep within, her entire being felt that death was coming. Bracing for the lethal impact and with Kiba screaming below, her eyes closed.
...And then her momentum was broken suddenly broken by something that had latched to her waist.
Her eyes opened and she saw what they were: a pair of white arms coming from inside the bridge. They pulled her towards the wall, making a self-defense mechanism kick in to force her eyes shut as her brain predicted a collision that never happened.
Hinata didn't see anything else. She just felt.
The shift in motions made Kiba lose his own grip on her ankle as the concrete swallowed her body.
Her senses expanded in a similar but completely different way than how the Byakugan worked, allowing her to feel movement far on both sides of the bridge, even if she couldn't interpret the chaotic signals properly.
There was the lingering smell of something familiar. She felt the warmth of another human being—duller than usual but warmth nonetheless—before she was tossed upwards, forcing her body to break through a thin sheet of what felt like glass as she was shot skyward.
When her eyes opened again, Hinata found herself above the bridge, meters in the air. There was a hole in the bridge's surface, but it recomposed itself quickly, leaving a patch of unfrozen concrete as the only evidence of the hole's existence.
She heard Kiba's scream fading, before gravity took over and slammed her on the ground
The fall was almost infinitely shorter than what she thought was going to happen moments before, but it still shook her entire system on the impact.
Hinata had never felt more confused.
She struggled to get up and struggled even more to comprehend those last few seconds. 'What just happened?'
Her eyes widened.
"Oh no!"
She ran as fast as her legs could take her towards those broken guardrails, almost slipping on the ice again... but as she drew closer, she slowed down and knelt, trying to peer through the clots of mist that hid the ocean from her eyes.
"Byakugan!"
...Nothing. There was no signal of Kiba's presence or of whoever managed to save her from falling.
"Could it be that Kiba-kun was saved too?" she wondered. "But then—"
A spike of energy cut her off, stealing her attention. Foul energy.
It was nowhere as strong or intense as the last time, but when her Byakugan came to life, she recognized that shining orange glow that contrasted with the sea of normal, light blue chakra. The evil aura was once again present and similarly subdued.
Hinata knew that trying to force her sight would lead nowhere. Thus, she was faced with a choice
'Should I go follow that light... or go back?'
Her choice should've been obvious.
Hinata was tired. Her body was battered, bruised. Her mind wasn't as sharp as it should've been due to fatigue and stress. She was in no state to be approaching a battlefield and knew she would be nothing more than a nuisance to her sensei and friends, if not outright a hindrance. The smartest decision was, by far, to go back and regroup with Shino and Sakura.
And yet... she was drawn to that light. The waves of negative emotions that undoubtedly were associated with it scared her, but what her dojutsu informed left her curious. It was mystifying.
Her Byakugan wasn't advanced enough to detect the differences in colors between chakra of various kinds. Far from it. Everything looked the same to her: black, white and blue... except that one light.
Before she came to the conscious decision to, her legs were already carrying her towards it.
Towards that twisted sun.
While her brain still had its doubts, in her heart, Kurenai knew she had made the right choice.
The Hyoton: Ice Prison was a technique that immobilized the target and slowly killed them through hypothermia. Haru, however, hadn't experimented enough with that jutsu to apply the chakra draining properties she had discovered in the Ice Release, which the Genjutsu Mistress took advantage of.
Others, in her place, might have lost hope of escaping on their own. They would've given up on trying and would've waited for help. If they knew the technique, they at least might've used Fire chakra to warm themselves.
But Kurenai immediately began to plan her escape. She didn't know when or if the opportunity would present itself, but if that time were to come, she needed to be prepared. In the world of ninjas, she had quickly learned that every second mattered, and every moment had to be utilized to its fullest.
She had been frozen with a kunai in hand, while the other hovered near its sister in case a jutsu was necessary. Though the Ice proved incredibly resilient, it wasn't indestructible. Little by little, millimeter by millimeter, Kurenai used her Earth chakra (which she had figured was one of the Hyoton's weaknesses fairly quickly) and the extremely small motions her body was capable of while practically frozen to carve a way out.
Progress was slow... but there was one moment where the Ice appeared to cease fighting against her will. With her chakra to weaken the structure and the kunai to damage it, Kurenai used those precious seconds to free her hands.
The Earth Release: Headhunter Jutsu had allowed her to drag herself and the surrounding terrain underground. Under the prison, Kurenai formed a Mud Clone, and made the Ice pieces that fell with her to return to the surface as she escaped.
She knew that approaching Zabuza head-on, even from below the earth, was suicide. If he could track even a user of the Headhunter's stealthier "cousin"... still, Kurenai theorized that moving slowly would allow her to bypass the Mist jonin's acute hearing. A serious fight with Kakashi was not something he would take lightly, and it would serve as the cover she needed.
Even after the explosion of chakra that she knew meant Naruto's seal was not working correctly—as if she would ever forget the feeling that lingered in the air during the battle in which her father got killed—she stood by her plan. Kakashi had the means to deal with that situation, so taking out Zabuza still was the top priority.
Techniques such as the Headhunter also adapted the user's senses, but she could only go so far by interpreting magnetic and sound waves. The other battles she could feel going on elsewhere worried her, but it wasn't until she was certain that at least one allied genin was almost falling from the bridge and couldn't get up for unknown reasons that she decided to abort that mission, leaving Zabuza to Kakashi.
Kurenai reached her destination at the last possible instant. She was able to save Hinata easily enough, but when Kiba didn't follow... she didn't hesitate and threw herself off the bridge to save him, tossing Hinata to the surface as she dove.
Her body pierced the clouds of chakra-laced mist, then the normal mist that surrounded the ocean's surface until she caught Kiba in midair.
Kakashi had warned her about Zabuza's jutsu after their first encounter. The Water Release: Lake of the Underworld made large bodies of water almost impossible to swim through. It was practically like swimming through hardening cement.
You could still use chakra to avoid falling through but... if you for some reason had to dedicate chakra to protect your body from a fall, that intersection of chakra levels where you could also fall safely into waters tainted by the Lake of the Underworld was almost impossible for a normal ninja to get right. Even someone of Kakashi's caliber might have failed.
Kurenai wasn't a normal ninja. She was a master of the most sensible kind of chakra available: the Yin Release.
They landed safely. Though... Kurenai's eardrums were in a serious risk of rupturing from the sheer volume of a certain Inuzuka's screams.
"You can stop screaming now, Kiba," she said with light humor as Kiba opened his eyes and looked around, completely lost.
"...Huh?! Kurenai-sensei?!"
She nodded, with a smile brought forth from Kiba's stupefied expression. He glanced around and noticed he was now the "bride" in a classic bridal carry, and only a meter or so from entering the ocean.
He slumped in her cold, bandaged arms, where he was safe. "Please don't tell me every mission is going to be like that, Kurenai-sensei..."
Kurenai had a funny remark on her tongue, but swallowed it as she noticed Kiba's pierced shoulder and reverted to her serious self immediately.
"Let's go back to the bridge. We need to look at your wound, and then I'll be helping Kakashi."
"That'd be nice because this hurts like a b—no, wait! Hold on!" His head flew up and he looked around, startling Kurenai. "I think I hear someone!"
"Where?!"
...Stealthily following the sounds, they found a thick, jagged platform of Ice, on which a person clad in green robes was clinging to, body half-sunk in the water. Unlike before, there was no mask hiding the effeminate features the boy had hidden behind the disguise of a hunter-nin. Now, he was completely focused on trying to save himself, and had yet to notice he wasn't alone.
An enemy. Not a threat, at least at a first glance, but an enemy nonetheless. Kurenai was on guard immediately.
"Kiba, I'll shift you around," she whispered. "I know your shoulder hurts, but use your other arm and hang on to me."
Going from a bridal carry to a piggyback ride wasn't exactly pleasant to Kiba given his still-bleeding shoulder, but he endured.
"Before we go further, I'm going to warn you," Kurenai glanced backwards. "I'll be interrogating that boy. I don't know how far I will need to go, but this might become... unpleasant," she spoke a possible understatement.
Kiba gulped, but nodded. "Go ahead. I-I don't mind." It was either that or drowning...
Smiling at her genin's bravado, she started to weave hand signs. If Zabuza had a weakness they could exploit, then she would find it.
Almost as if to question Hinata's foolish, curiosity-driven decision to pursue it, it only took a little more than a dozen steps in the "sun's" direction before the chakra levels became even more intense. While it still had to overcome that first explosion, the intensity of the killing intent made going forward much more daunting than before.
But something deep inside her was telling her that she needed to see it, that following that invisible thread was important. And so, she kept walking in pursuit of that light.
The Byakugan detected that the orange chakra was pushing the mist's chakra away, but that discovery only happened when she was too close to handle the dojutsu. The orange chakra glowed too intensely for her to keep it activated, but the sounds of a nearby battle guided her feet.
If the situation wasn't so tense and serious, Hinata would have burst out laughing.
A flashy explosion of bright orange that practically demanded that everyone stopped what they were doing just to pay attention to it? To acknowledge that it existed? That stood out so much compared to everything and anything around it?
She should've figured it out immediately, but the realization somehow eluded her until the last second. That she had associated it with the sun in her mind also should've made it obvious enough to her, but when the mist parted, allowing the girl to witness it with her own eyes... she wanted to deny it.
'No... there's no way. This... this is wrong!'
...But she couldn't. It was irrefutable.
The bright blues that she had come to associate with hope and courage were now stained with a bloody red that spoke of malice and wrath. The adorable whisker marks that complemented the carefree smiles that had always made her heart skip a beat had transformed, becoming thicker and meshing with his bared, elongated fangs to paint a scary and completely out of place expression.
Animalistic. The hunched posture, slit pupils and simply the way he moved as he dodged daggers of Ice and pounced on that masked kunoichi Hinata fought earlier all suggested that he'd become some sort of wild beast, with speed and power greater than what she had ever seen from him. The girl was clearly outclassed.
But his mere presence... that foul energy that radiated from his body and made a simple act such as walking harder and harder as she moved forward until it became impossible to take even one more step and even breathe...
Things were starting to fall into place.
The times she saw him being kicked out of a grocery store... her memories of seeing him trying to enter playgrounds only for the kids to flee from him or be taken away by their parents... the way the adults treated him with repulsion or fear...
And yet, nothing truly made sense.
What was happening? How? When? Why?
Hinata found herself frozen in a futile attempt to decipher those and a myriad of other questions that arose from that simple discovery, which only resulted in a headache.
Her eyes followed what wasn't, but at the same time was Naruto, and her brain was trying its hardest to not lump what she was seeing with every other precious memory she had of him, even as his fist crashed upon the masked girl's body multiple times, eventually hitting her covered face and obliterating the chakra-enhanced mask as the girl fell to the floor.
What Naruto saw behind the broken shards made him freeze as well, and Hinata almost sunk to her knees when the oppressive aura that surrounded the area ceased and every evidence of Naruto's... whatever it was, started to disappear.
It took some seconds for both of them to recover. Hinata frantically tried to pump oxygen into her system when her lungs started working again while Naruto was regaining his senses as the Kyuubi's influence receded.
He then recognized the figure lying on the ground in front of him and gasped. Hinata saw the surprise in his eyes and followed his gaze.
They reacted at the same time.
"Wait, you are...!"
"H-haru-san?!"
'Huh?!' Naruto whirled around and his shock intensified at the sight of someone he had thought dead. The realization that Hinata was alive—and possibly Kiba, too—made his lips curl upwards.
He was smiling... until he realized what her presence there meant.
'Shit!' He felt the color draining from his face. 'She was here. She saw me! This is bad...!'
Even though he had considered that she might have known about the Kyuubi, now there was no escaping it. She now knew something was wrong with him. What would Hinata do with that information? What if she told the rest of Team 8? Or Sakura?
Would they, too, start hating him like the rest of Konoha?
The fact that she averted her gaze and refused to look at him didn't help him read her reaction. But her shaky posture told him what her eyes didn't: she was scared.
Haru's voice drew their attention."Y-You... survived? But how?" she asked Hinata, before coughing drops of blood as she tried to get up.
The Yuki felt as if a bull had mercilessly stomped all over her body, which wasn't that far from what had happened. There were probably more than a few broken bones inside her, but at least there had been enough of her own Ice lying around for her to manipulate, otherwise she might have been far worse from chakra exhaustion.
Hinata ignored the question, as she didn't understand it either and thinking about that would just make her headache worse. Instead, she focused on the sense of betrayal that was welling up inside her, evident on her features. "So, you... were with Zabuza right from the beginning. Y-you used us."
The Yuki winced, feeling a small pang of shame at the accusation. "Yes. I'm sorry, but Zabuza-sama needed my help to get better.."
'I actually... helped the enemy,' Hinata sighed, disgusted. If her father ever got wind of that...
"Wait, so he sent you there to spy on us or something?" Naruto barged in. He was expecting that Haru would have a harsh reply or an angry glare for him when she turned, but she just looked tired and worn out.
"Our meeting was just a coincidence," she stated, assessing him with her eyes. Warily, she decided to test the waters. "I asked that favor then because I was in a hurry. Zabuza-sama needed to be well again as fast as possible. And..." she hesitated. "...I need to ask another favor."
"Uh... wait, what? Do you really think we'd help you?!" Naruto blurted out, feeling insulted. "We're fighting on different sides!"
"Yes... I'm your enemy," the previously masked girl readily agreed. "And you've defeated me. I don't have much chakra left to keep fighting, especially not against two at once... so what's the next step?"
Naruto, stumped, stared at Haru confusedly before turning to Hinata for help. He recoiled when he saw the horrified expression on the half of her face that wasn't covered by her hands.
"You... y-you want us to kill you?!"
"What?!" When Naruto saw that Haru didn't correct Hinata, he started to become angry. "Why would you say something like that?! I-I mean, sure, you're pretty weak now and we don't get anything from letting you go, but that's no reason to kill you either! You can still, I dunno... run away or something!"
The Yuki smiled sadly at him. It was now clear to Haru that the creature that killed her brother and the young boy that she met in the woods days prior were, somehow, different people. She had made a mistake by trying to make that monster resurface in a hopeless attempt at vengeance, Haru realized. As she had always thought, that kind of "logic" would always be wrong.
But her mistake didn't change one simple fact.
"I... don't have anything to live for anymore."
"What do you mean?!" Naruto furiously snarled at her and regretted it immediately when tears began to fall from Haru's eyes.
"My brother... and Zabuza-sama. T-they were my reason to exist. But... b-but Haku-nii is dead...!"
"Your brother...?" Hinata tried to enter the conversation, though her eyes flickered towards Naruto for a moment. It was from seeing how he now guiltily refused to look at anything but the ground that she connected the dots. "D-do you mean the other masked ninja?! The one that fought Naruto-kun and Sasuke-san?"
Finding it too difficult to speak, the other girl just nodded as she continued to sob, leaving Hinata to deal with an even worse headache.
She closed her eyes and rubbed her temple. 'Things are moving so fast... did Naruto-kun really kill that ninja? Is that related to that... transformation? And come to think of it, where is Sasuke-san?'
Unlike Hinata, Naruto's curiosity was stronger than his empathy, and he soon gathered the courage to press for more information. "What about Zabuza? I mean... he's fighting Kakashi-sensei, but he might come out of it alive even if he loses. Right?"
"Zabuza-sama, he... I owe him my life, and I've dedicated my life since that day years ago to repay that debt. But... he only allowed me to follow him because of my brother. That was what truly interested him; what made him help me that day. I... am not a useful tool by myself," she finished, wiping her eyes with her haori's sleeve, futilely.
Haku and Zabuza had never said anything to her, but she figured everything out as the years passed by.
That day when the swordsman had found two street rats—a little boy trying to create Ice as a last resort to bring comfort to his sick sister, who was hallucinating from her fever—she knew that Zabuza's help hadn't come for free.
But the same went for Haku's abilities. What truly drove that young boy to accept being Zabuza's tool was the hope of giving his last precious person a chance of surviving. That was the only reason the jonin kept providing for not only Haku, but his helpless little sister. It was either two or zero.
Haru's role was to assist them with menial chores while Zabuza focused on Haku's training. Though she did receive some basic training, she mostly stuck to simple things such as shopping and cooking. It took years for her to manifest the Hyoton willingly, and almost two more before she could actually apply it in combat. Only recently did Zabuza allowed her to join him and Haku on certain jobs.
"I've been trying to get stronger all this time to help protect them, and look at what happened!" she shook her head, still crying. "I got my brother killed, and Zabuza-sama lost his best tool in the process! There is no way Zabuza-sama will ever want to see me after this..."
"Then come back to Konoha with us!"
Both girls recoiled at Naruto's sudden outburst.
The expected shock and confusion that followed that declaration did nothing to stop the Uzumaki from continuing, even if he wilted before he kept going. "I know that... I killed your brother. I know that nothing I do can fix that, but still! I could help you find something else to live for! I can talk with the old man—I mean, the Hokage! He's a nice guy, so if we try to explain things to him I'm sure—!"
"If only things were that simple, Naruto-san." The Ice-user smiled sadly at him. "I have a special bloodline. You saw all that Ice, right? Even if your Hokage truthfully agrees to care for me... my safety in a foreign hidden village will not be guaranteed." Her gaze turned to Hinata. "You know what I'm talking about, right?"
"What is she talking about?" Naruto also turned to face her.
Hinata, still shaken by the fact that Naruto had killed someone, stared dumbly at them for a couple seconds before her brain caught up with the questions.
The Hyuuga then looked away as she envisioned what could have been her own present in a faraway land, had her father not arrived in time during that incident so many years ago... and, somehow, she found it in herself to explain it without mincing words.
"Haru-san fears that our village might use her to create more children—more ninja—with her kekkei genkai. Even... even if she doesn't want to."
Naruto was, in many ways, ignorant and naive. But not even he misunderstood the message.
He wanted to lash out and defend the Konoha that he loved so much, but a part of him questioned that. If Hiruzen hadn't even been able to stop the village from mistreating him like they did, could he really say that Haru wouldn't be kidnapped and turned into nothing more than a factory of Ice-wielding soldiers?
Both girls watched as Naruto visibly came to the conclusion that he couldn't make that promise. He couldn't vouch for the entirety of Konoha.
"I see you understand now," Haru coughed, spitting more drops of blood. Had one of her broken ribs punctured her lung? That would certainly explain the pain. "So... will one of you... do me that favor?"
The brunette's gaze shifted between both of the younger ninja. She felt guilty, placing that burden on them, but when push came to shove she discovered she was too much of a coward to take her own life.
One look at Hinata was all she needed to know the girl wouldn't do it.
With only a bit of imagination, Hinata was able to put herself in the other girl's place. She could feel the hollowness and sorrow from dedicating her entire life, her existence, to someone else... only for said life to suddenly lose all meaning or purpose because of her own failures. Hinata understood perfectly how suicide would be such an appealing idea in that case.
She had never wanted to be a kunoichi or to kill someone. Hinata had accepted that there was a high chance she'd have to do it eventually, but when the time came, the small Hyuuga though she would be killing an "evil" person or at least someone that was a threat to her team, which would be easier to handle. Not... a nice person that clearly was only following orders from an evil one and couldn't even fight back anymore.
Naruto, on the other hand, was mulling over that first sentence. How could he possibly understand someone that wanted to die because she was no longer useful to a heartless asshole like Zabuza Momochi? He couldn't relate to the idea very well. There was a lack of context, there.
Naruto felt like he needed more information to make the correct decision, but there wasn't time for that. Not in that situation.
But what he did know for sure... was that half of the blame fell on himself. He was sure that if he had managed to control himself and not fall to the Kyuubi's influence, the other masked ninja might still be alive and his sister wouldn't be trying to indirectly commit suicide.
If giving the girl a chance to rebuild her life in the Leaf Village was out of the question... then there was only one way to take responsibility.
"...Alright. I... I'll do it."
Naruto barely heard his name being whispered behind himself. Trying to ignore whatever judgment was lying behind the pair of lavender eyes he knew for sure were following him, Naruto drew a kunai and faced Haru.
"You... really sure about this?" he asked one final time, feeling a lump in his throat. Could he really do it...?
Haru simply nodded at him, smiling despite her guilt. "Thank you... and I'm sorry."
She was looking forward to a chance to meet her parents and brother again. She missed her father and mother terribly, even though her memories of them were muddy, but most of all, she needed to apologize to Haku for letting him die. And Zabuza... would be happier with her gone.
As she no longer had a reason to live for, Haru didn't mind dying.
...Until a far-off sound made her realize her life could have one last purpose.
It only takes a single mistake for one to lose, even when they have the upper hand.
This was one of the many lessons that the life of a shinobi taught to Zabuza, and one of the first things he drilled into the heads of everyone that ever fought under his command. It was also a lesson he took joy in teaching his enemies when the opportunity presented itself. He favored quick kills, but if he could end a fight in the slowest, most painful way possible, he would. Zabuza had no problems in admitting he was a cruel sadist.
Another lesson he made a point to drill into his students and subordinates was to not waste chakra unnecessarily, no matter the circumstances. Given that he always had lead teams focused on swiftly assassinating targets, it was one piece of wisdom that rarely turned out to be life-saving in his career as a Mist shinobi since his missions relied more on natural stealth and physical prowess than fancy ninjutsu.
It wasn't until he began to lead the life of a missing-nin that he started to depend on it. You never knew when or where one of the Mizukage's hunters would be waiting, readying an ambush. Saving chakra saved his life and that of his pupils many times in the past few years. Forgetting that lesson was the biggest cause for his last defeat.
But Zabuza never thought there would be a time both of those lessons would be at odds with each other.
He had spent some time having a friendly chat with the imprisoned Kakashi. The swordsman made sure that Kakashi knew what would happen to his Sharingan eye and the other members of his team after he drowned to death. The hate in the Leaf jonin's one visible eye was absurdly amusing to Zabuza, especially because he was drawing out his own death.
"You know, holding on to that Wind jutsu is not going to do you any good," Zabuza mocked him. There was a cheap and simple Fuuton technique that allowed the user to increase how much air their lungs could hold, and Kakashi was clearly making use of it. "Your brats couldn't do anything to me if they tried, while that useless partner that your stupid Hokage sent with you can't do anything while she's frozen. Help won't come. You are just wasting chakra... and in fact, so am I."
It was only then that Zabuza remembered that his Demon Shroud was still barely active. It barely wasted chakra, but Zabuza still chose to cut off the flow between himself and the sword strapped to his back.
The smile Zabuza had behind his mask, however, began to disappear.
Why?
Because once he did so, he saw Kakashi's existence coming to an end.
A powerful flash of white and blue took away Zabuza's vision, and the only thing he knew in that moment of sightlessness was pain. The scream that escaped his lips was but a reaction, and it drowned out the voice of the only being that was watching the spectacle of lights, from behind the cover of the mist.
All because of the Sharingan.
"You were right when you said I should've stuck with my affinity... and that's what I did."
Kakashi saw, from a safe distance, as the center of the Water Prison blew up in an explosion of Lightning, splashing electrified water in every direction.
Waves of raw electricity ran through Zabuza's body. The current melted through nerves and organs, burned tissue and hair, ravaged the muscles... starting by the left arm, which had been holding the Prison together. That arm was ruined beyond repair, becoming a bloodied, red mess that would never be obeying any of Zabuza's commands again.
Not that he could do it even if it was intact. As a veteran ninja, it was within Zabuza's abilities to keep moving while under unimaginable pain, but his legs refused his orders, much like his eyes refused to see despite being open.
Paralysis.
Such was the beauty of the Lighting Release: Shadow Clone Jutsu.
'No. No! NO!'
Zabuza could only hear his own loud screams—physical and mental—as well the hissing of the shocks running beneath his skin... until suddenly that last noise almost ceased.
As the mass of mist that he created now stood without a fuel source and slowly began to fade, it dawned on Zabuza that death was coming.
'How could I've been so careless?! Damn you, Kakashi! Damn you to hell!'
Almost as if sensing the other jonin's wrathful thoughts, Kakashi stared him down as he finished stabilizing his final technique.
"You have no one to blame but yourself, Zabuza. Your arrogance was your downfall."
When sight blurredly returned to the paralyzed swordsman, he discovered from where the sounds of sparks were coming from—Kakashi hands. Electricity danced all around the Copy Ninja's body, but the star of the show was the glowing ball of Lightning chakra.
Zabuza recognized an assassination technique when he saw one.
"You complained about me only using copied things, so how about I show you a technique that I created on my own? I call this... the Raikiri."
The final result of his failed attempts at creating Raiton: Rasengan was Kakashi's original jutsu. The chaotic sphere of energy had incredible piercing power, and even more so when it was used at high speeds—something that only a Sharingan-user could do safely. No armor could withstand that kind of attack.
It was, perhaps, more than what Kakashi needed to end the fight considering his opponent's lack of mobility... but Kakashi didn't know for how long Zabuza would remain like that. In all the few times he had ever relied on the Shadow Clone's Raiton variant, he had been close enough to the enemy to end them swiftly.
This time, since he had to play around the swordsman's senses, he was too far away for to be willing to bet on Zabuza staying still. If Zabuza were to move even an inch... a kunai or shuriken could end up failing to kill him instantly, which was not a chance Kakashi could take. Diving with a Raikiri in his hands and with his Sharingan active, however, would give him the ability to react and land a killing blow even if Zabuza attempted to dodge.
It wasn't the perfect plan, in theory. Like before, if Zabuza had been careful enough to set up something to substitute with, the attempt would fail. 'I can only hope he either was too overconfident this time around or that the shock and blindness disoriented him enough.'
With that thought, Kakashi accepted that it was all or nothing and bolted.
His original eye focused on Zabuza as tunnel vision took hold of it. His Sharingan eye was immune to the effect, but it too locked on to Zabuza, watching almost as if in slow motion every quake the man' body suffered from the clone's discharge.
What Kakashi didn't know is that his fears were for naught. The possibility of Zabuza escaping on his own was zero. The paralysis would last just enough that he'd be impaled before he ever had the chance to try.
...If Kakashi could take the shortest path possible.
A whirl of leaves appeared in front of Zabuza, interposing itself between the two jonin. From the whirl came...
'That girl!'
Though now unmasked and bruised, the unbound hair made it easy to recognize the kunoichi that had frozen Kurenai.
For one moment, he realized that the girl had a look in her eyes... the same look that haunted him in his nightmares almost every day.
As fast as Kakashi was moving, he wasn't fast enough to reach the girl before she slammed her hands on the ground.
'Zabuza-sama, I hope that I can still be useful with this!'
Pumping every drop of chakra she was able to, a thick, spiked wall of Ice rose from the bridge, blocking the Leaf jonin's path. She smiled as Kakashi was forced to chakra-jump to avoid a brutal collision, and her knees buckled as she allowed the chakra exhaustion to lead her into the darkness.
After hearing Zabuza's screams of pain, she knew she could do one last thing to be of use to the man that saved her life so many years ago. That she had to use practically every last bit of her reserves to execute her plan was of no concern—she was expecting that the drop of her chakra levels alone would kill her, but the girl underestimated her own body. The chakra she could shape and the chakra her body needed to survive were very different things.
Maybe... just maybe, this would be enough to convince Zabuza to keep looking after her in the future...
And as the girl started to drop to the ground, Kakashi reached the peak of his jump. 'I can still kill him!' he instinctively realized, poising his still-electrified hands to go through Zabuza's chest as he fell, ready to impale him with the Lighting Cutter.
But he then saw, in slow motion, the moment Zabuza's body overcame the paralysis and caught Haru with his good arm before she fell, only to use her as a projectile and human shield both.
Kakashi felt his hand piercing skin and muscle during the collision, somehow managing to grab the girl as both flew from the collision. Blood leaked from the deep wound on the girl's hip to Kakashi's hands, but he had little time to pay attention to that.
The Demon was hot on their trail, his massive sword held firmly in the one hand that still worked.
Kakashi's feet touched the ground for only a moment before he leaped again, and again, evading Zabuza's furious slashes as best as he could with the girl still in his arms. An easier task than one might have thought—Zabuza wasn't at peak condition anymore, and Kakashi's Sharingan was still active. But not a task to be taken lightly.
The swordsman's rush ended when a boot slammed into his stomach, knocking him away. Kakashi took the moment to carefully set Haru on the ground and glared at the man opposing him.
"You attacked, knowing that hitting me meant killing this girl. Your ally."
"Of course. Unlike you, I'm not stupid enough to waste a good opportunity when I see one," came the sharp reply, followed by...
"I can't believe I'm hearing that!"
Kakashi's eyes widened. "Naruto!"
The aforementioned Uzumaki could be seen stomping towards the two jonin, with a worried Hinata trailing right behind him.
She caught up to him and grabbed his shoulder, forcing him to face her. "Naruto-kun, no! W-we shouldn't go there! It's too dangerous!"
"Naruto, listen to her!" Kakashi agreed in a serious, commanding tone. "Fall back and make sure Tazuna is protected!"
Kakashi's order went ignored. Naruto pushed Hinata's hand away and kept moving until Zabuza was clearly in his sights. He still had a little common sense and didn't get that close, though.
Zabuza kept the boy just on his peripheral vision; Kakashi remained a threat. "The orange clown, huh?"
"I'm not a clown, you jerk!"
"I'm surprised to see you here," Zabuza continued, ignoring the insult. "So you escaped Haku's jutsu and left your friend to fend for himself, huh?"
"What?! No!" The disgust in Naruto's voice was palpable. "That guy? Haku? He's dead!"
Zabuza froze. 'No... no! That's impossible! They managed to kill Haku?!'
"And because of that, when I beat her too she started to beg me to kill her!" Naruto screamed, motioning to the passed out girl in front of Kakashi and then at Zabuza. "All because of you! She thought you wouldn't want her anymore!"
"...And she thought correctly. What use would I have for her alone? Haku was the one that truly interested me," Zabuza spat, emotionlessly. "That boy was truly talented, despite his soft heart. But... I always knew the girl's devotion to me would come in handy one day."
Zabuza's glacial response made Naruto recoil, but anger refueled his will. "You... she still tried to protect you even then, and you tried to kill her! What is wrong with you?!"
"What is wrong with me? No. What is wrong with you?" Zabuza turned slightly towards Naruto now, glaring at the boy while still keeping Kakashi in sight. "There are only two kinds of people in this world: the ones that use others, and the ones that are used! That's the way our world works, you stupid boy!"
"...This is horrible," Naruto heard Hinata muttering from behind him. He, however, couldn't utter a word and just stared at Zabuza, shocked by how much the man simply didn't care. How could such a stonehearted person inspire loyalty in anyone?
Any reply Naruto might have had wouldn't have mattered anyways. Zabuza's arm whipped forward, deflecting a kunai with his own, and the swordsman then became a blur as he raced forward to meet Kakashi head-on, as best as his damaged body still could.
Naruto felt a hand on his shoulder again, this time in a much lighter touch. Hesitant.
"Naruto-kun, p-please! We need to go," Hinata pleaded with him. "It's not safe here."
The blond boy spared one last look at the unconscious girl on the bridge's floor. She was simply too far away for him to manage to get her to safety as well, as trying that meant getting between Zabuza and Kakashi.
Reluctantly accepting that, he turned back and nodded to Hinata. "Okay... you're right. Let's go back!"
Activating her Byakugan, Hinata lead him back into the mist and away from the conflict...
A/N:
...
I'd just like to apologize again about not giving you guys the full content in one go, especially after this huge delay, but...
I really didn't want to have such an important update go live without my beta's input, but I didn't have the heart to bother SimplePotato with so much stuff while he needs to take care of his father. I hope you understand this. (For the more empathetic ones out there: his dad is fine, he just needs help.)
Like I said, the next chapter is close to done. It just needs beta'ing and editing before being posted. (or rather, the next part of this chapter. It will be named "part 4" but it's just part 3). The bridge ordeal is mostly over and, like the very first "shattered", half of the chapter isn't about the bridge battle.
I hope you guys liked this third part, however. The next one will be going live only a while after SimplePotato does his thing! (I'll be briefly revisiting the past chapters to fix some stray typos and etc in the meantime)
And to pass the time between these two updates, assuming you haven't come across this great fic already, I'd like to take the time to recommend to you guys the story Son of the Sannin by Ander Arias. It's a Naruhina story where Jiraya and Tsunade hear the news about Minato and Kushina's death and hurry back to Konoha, intent on taking care of the baby Naruto. This ends up forcing the three (oh, and Shizune) to live together in one place and... well... shenanigans!
The fic is currently starting its C-rank mission arc, and since the author was kind enough to leave a recommendation to my own fic there (and dropped nice reviews!), so I'm returning the favor here! It has recently broken the 100K words mark, so it should hold distract you while I play more Fire Em—I mean, work on the fic. Yeah, that.
Hopefully you guys can learn from Ander Arias and drop nice reviews here too? ...I'd understand if you choose to wait til the next update, though... unlike Chapter 15, this wasn't meant to be a full experience by itself.
See you all in a few days!
(Fun Fact: Maybe you'll disagree with me later, but I think this is "Chapter 16: the bad half". The next part is not only bigger but much better, IMO, and I actually dislike most of the content you just read. My reviewers/beta tend to disagree with me when I think my stuff sucks, tho, so who knows...)