Let's start this from the beginning

Swordsmen of the Mist

VII

Kakashi crouched heavily breathing with one knee on the ground as he studied the new person that had appeared in front of him, ignoring the pain in his chest and the uncomfortable feeling of having hot blood running down his chest.

The woman had black eyes and long, red hair that, together with a Kiri forehead protector, was tied at both sides by a piece of cloth in such a way that both ends of the material protrude upwards while the remainder of the hair was allowed to flow downwards. She also wore a loose, pin-striped long-sleeved shirt with a dark obi around the waist, black pants which got much looser near the ends similar to a hakama, and striped leg-warmers.

Most striking, however, were the two slender, double-edged swords in her hands, both of which had an upward-curving prong near the tip of one side of the blade and another near the base of the other side of it.

He knew who this kunoichi was.

"You're 'The Lightning Blade' Ameyuri Ringo," he said with a croaking voice. "Wielder of the legendary twin swords Kiba."

Ringo laughed, sounding genuinely delighted. "Oh~? 'The Copy Ninja' Kakashi Hatake knows my name? I'm honoured!" The grin on her face became even wider, revealing two rows of sharp teeth that seemed to be a trademark of the Seven Swordsmen. "And impressed as well. I really thought I got you with my attack, and yet you survived!"

"I remember reading about your death in a report several years ago," he said, ignoring the latter part of her reply. "There weren't any rumours of your survival ever since or I would have heard of them. Would you mind explaining to me how you're still alive?"

"Is that truly so hard to understand? I mean, all I need to do to stay hidden is to not leave any survivors behind, right?" She then chuckled. "It's quite funny how many of my kills were credited to Kushimaru and Jinin, actually. They don't even use lightning techniques! Seriously, don't you guys do your homework?"

Kakashi remembered reading the reports of the various incidents their two targets were accused of and discarding the mentions of people being killed by what was thought to be lightning strikes. After all, just because it wasn't their natural affinity didn't mean that they couldn't have mastered such attacks. It was actually normal for Jōnin to do so.

Now he wished he hadn't been that dismissive.

He also suddenly realized that the Taki corpse he had found a few days ago had spotted burn marks that couldn't have come from a fire technique, suggesting the woman in front of him had been responsible for that as well. Maybe the reason Kushimaru and Jinin were so overzealous about fighting us was at least partly to stop us from spotting her...?

"I have heard a lot of stories about you," Ringo said. "A prodigy who has copied over a thousand jutsu. I hope you can live up to your fame; it would be so boring if you died too easily!"

She raised both her swords over her head.

"Raitō Jutsu: Rakurai!" (Thunderswords Technique: Thunderbolt)

Kakashi, who had already prepared himself to dodge an attack, frowned in confusion when the lightning that shot from her weapons didn't fly towards him but the open sky. However, his confusion quickly passed and transformed into horror when he saw the energy spread out before coming back down much stronger and in much greater number than the lightning that had originally flown upwards.

Ignoring the pain in his chest, Kakashi jumped back and forth to avoid the lightning bolts, thankful that such artificially created lightning was much slower than natural one. That would have been impossible to dodge.

Unfortunately, evading these lightning bolts distracted him enough to almost allow Ringo to catch him by surprise again.

He tilted his head away, barely dodging the blade that would have decapitated him had he been any slower, before sending a hasty kick towards his opponent. It didn't even slow Ringo down, though, and so he found himself faced with another sword slash half a second later that he blocked just barely with a quickly drawn kunai

Kakashi had no time to ponder on the widening of Ringo's grin as a sudden bolt of electricity discharged from her swords, passed through his kunai, and finally hit his body.

Then, in a small puff of smoke, his body was replaced by a block of wood.

"Suiton: Mizurappa!" (Water Release: Wild Water Wave)

There was no surprise on her face when Ringo turned around and threw another charge of lightning towards the water technique that shot out from Kakashi's mouth. This time far from being caught off-guard himself, however, he simply twisted his body and 'threw' the liquid like a whip before stopping the process of infusing the technique with more chakra and consequently breaking the water's connection with his body. As a result, his opponent suddenly found herself faced with an incoming wall of water that had been charged with her own electricity.

Ringo let out a deafening scream as the attack hit her, but the sound quickly died away as her body was enveloped by the waters.

There was an almost eerie silence afterwards as the fight came to a halt during which Kakashi cautiously moved towards where his opponent's body should be.

The emphasis was on 'should be', for all he found was more water.

"Raiton: Gian!" (Lightning Release: False Darkness)

He didn't even bother to turn around when he felt the build-up of chakra behind him and instead fell to his knees while forming hand seals of his own.

"Doton: Doryūheki!" (Earth Release: Earth-Style Wall)

Kakashi knew that using an earth technique to defend against a lightning style attack would be mostly useless, but in this case, its main purpose wasn't to block him from his opponent's attack but her gaze.

Just as he had hoped for, he could finish his second set of hand seals before the lightning bolt broke through the wall, shortly followed by Ringo herself.

He dodged the lightning by a hair and managed to duck under the sword slash, but he instantly found himself on the defence once more as he let himself be pushed further back with every second.

Not that he could have done much to begin with; not only couldn't he outright block her weapons with his kunai out of fear of being hit by lightning and thus was forced to merely redirect or dodge them, but the wound on his chest also still hurt and constantly sapped his energy reserves. While he had hit some pressure points to lessen the bleeding just like he had learned in the ANBU, Kakashi was pretty sure he would still bleed out if he couldn't do at least some basic treatment within the next fifteen minutes.

"You shouldn't get distracted while fighting someone like me!"

Kakashi was pulled back into the present by a powerful kick to his chest that sent bolts of pain through his body while knocking the breath out of him. There was no time to pity himself, though, as Ringo chose that moment to throw one of her swords at him.

He managed to avoid it at the last possible moment, fortunately ending with only a small cut on his cheek rather than half a missing head. However, his last-second evasion meant that he was now in an unbalanced stance that made it impossible for him to prevent Ringo from closing the distance between them and thrusting her one remaining sword right through his lungs.

Ringo gave a self-satisfied smirk and was just about to say a few parting words when Kakashi's body dissolved into water.

"What the-"

Before she could finish her sentence and even before the water from his dissolved clone hit the ground, the earth cracked beneath her feet and the real Kakashi emerged with a kunai in one hand. Ringo, her eyes wide with shock, instinctively tried to jump away, but she was too slow to completely avoid the attack and ended up with a wound that cut her open from her left knee all the way up to her navel.

Ignoring the way his body screamed in pain at the strain of his movements while also blending out the almost deafening rush of blood in his ears, Kakashi pushed forward and continued with his attacks now that it was finally he who had the advantage. Still surprised by the sudden turn of events and slowed down by the injury to her leg, Ringo could do nothing but clumsily back away while focusing on defending herself from his most lethal attacks only, resulting in dozens of small cuts appearing all over her body.

Then she stumbled and fell to the ground.

Kakashi, not someone to look a gift horse in the mouth, immediately rushed forward to finish the job, only to jump into the air instead when his instincts screamed at him to get away from there.

Unfortunately, that didn't help him avoid the sword that flew at him from behind entirely, resulting in a deep gash at his left hip.

When he landed back on the ground a few moments later, Kakashi couldn't keep on his feet and fell to his knees.

Ringo was in a similar position a dozen metres in front of him, at least, obviously in no condition to immediately exploit his weakened condition.

"You are as impressive as I thought you would be," Ringo said, and although her breath was now noticeably more laboured than to begin of their fight, her face still adorned a wide grin. "I think I'm a bit disappointed anyway, though. I expected a little more variety in your techniques, you see."

"I'm pretty sure I used more techniques than you, so I don't think you have any ground to stand on with such complaints."

She chuckled. "Ah, but it isn't me who is famous for supposedly having copied over a thousand techniques, is it? After all the stories I've heard, I thought I would come face to face with an endless number of different attacks. Instead, all I see are clones, a mud wall, and a basic water technique. Where are all your copied jutsu, I wonder?"

She ripped a piece of fabric from her top and began to bind it around her wound as she spoke, and while Kakashi would have liked to stop her from doing so, he decided that it was more productive to use the laps in their fight to treat his own wounds as well.

"Just throwing techniques around for the sake of variety would be foolish," he replied after a few seconds. "The advantage of knowing so many techniques is that it allows me to choose the one that is best suited for any given situation. I wouldn't be here right now if I always wasted my chakra on random attacks without a care in the world regardless of whether they make sense or not."

Oddly enough, Ringo looked disappointed by that answer. "And here I looked forward to a challenge," she sighed, her grin fading for once. "How dull."

Kakashi narrowed his eyes. "That's a rather dismissive attitude for someone who barely avoided defeat just a minute ago."

"Whether it was close or not doesn't matter," she said while her lips curved upwards again. "The important thing is that I did survive it. Furthermore, wouldn't you agree that you came out of this bout worse than I did?"

There was unfortunately something true about that claim. While the injury to her leg would slow her down and thus theoretically give him more opportunities to connect an attack as a result, his own injuries slowed him down as well, so the advantage was basically non-existent. In fact, considering his injuries were worse than hers, it was really he who was in an unfavourable position.

Kakashi had at best ten more minutes before he would lose his consciousness from blood loss.

"I'm still wondering about that," he finally said. "I don't see a clone in that direction, so how did your sword suddenly come back to you?"

Kakashi actually didn't expect an answer to that, of course. Not that he needed one in the first place as he had a pretty good idea anyway. However, Ringo unexpectedly seemed to think about it for a few seconds before shrugging and explaining it to him.

"It's one of my swords special abilities," she said with a fond look that he thought wouldn't be out of place on the face of a mother talking about her child. "I can control them from afar even without touching them. As you found out for yourself, that's a great way to catch an opponent by surprise. "Ringo then chuckled. "I guess the fact that you survived not only one but two of my surprise attacks means that there must be a grain of truth to the stories I heard about you."

Swords that can be controlled by one's mind, huh, he thought, having his suspicion confirmed. That could actually become a problem.

One of the most effective ways to win against a swordsman was to separate them from their weapon, so if she could just summon them back to her, this strategy wouldn't work on her.

I guess I need to think of something else.

"Well then," Ringo said as she slowly stood up. "Shall we continue? You're not dying already, are you? The fun part has just begun!"

Suppressing a groan at the resulting pain, he followed suit.

Zabuza was thankful that Jinin had chosen this rather spacious underground arena for their fight. Had he been forced to confront the man in the comparable narrow corridors, he might have had more of a problem swinging his gigantic sword. Here, however, there were no such troubles, allowing him to fight to his heart's content.

"You should have tried to assassinate me again instead of fighting me heads-on," he shouted while swinging Kubikiribōchō in a wide arc towards Jinin's head. "Not that you would have succeeded, of course, but at least you wouldn't die quite as quickly!"

Jinin ducked below his attack and retaliated with a powerful blow from Kabutowari's hammer, flying past Zabuza's face close enough for him to feel a breeze before making the floor crack when it hit the ground.

"Killing you without you even realizing it wouldn't be satisfying at all! I want to watch the despair in your eyes when I crush your bones and the fear when I finally cut off your head!"

Zabuza laughed while deflecting the following axe strike to his stomach with nought a thought. "Big words for someone who could barely even cut me at all during our last fight."

"Considering all you managed to do was to destroy a mere clone of mine, I don't think you have any ground to stand on!"

He wanted to give a snide reply in exchange, but an uncomfortably close attack cut him off.

Deciding that the time for talking was over, Zabuza began to concentrate on the fight in earnest. He waited for the perfect moment to strike as he momentarily allowed himself to be pushed back while dodging most attacks and deflecting those he couldn't avoid to lull Jinin into a false sense of security until he saw his chance.

The next time his opponent brought down his hammer with admittedly frightening force, Zabuza held Kubikiribōchō up with one hand on each end and blocked it.

The power behind the attack almost made his knees buckle and shot painful tremors down his arms while his shoulder groaned under the pressure, but he stubbornly held his ground. Then, with an angry scream, he pushed back, throwing a surprised Jinin several metres backwards.

Caught off-guard as he was, Jinin could barely dodge Zabuza's follow up attack.

While both of them were much more comfortable in the offence than in the defence, Zabuza could at least effectively use his weapon as a shield of sorts. Jinin, on the other hand, wasn't so lucky; both his fighting style and his weapon were ideal for swift and powerful attacks, but they offered little in terms of defensive abilities.

That became obvious less than a minute into Zabuza's attacks as Jinin was forced more and more to take blunt hits in favour of avoiding Kubikiribōchō's edge; he crossed his weapons above his head to block Zabuza's strike only to get kicked in the stomach, took an elbow to the face in favour of deflected an attack that would have cut him in half, and was reduced to swinging his axe in a hurried, uncoordinated manner just to give himself some more space to breath.

"What were you saying about crushing my bones and cutting off my head, Jinin?" he laughed when one of his attacks finally drew blood. "Maybe you should just surrender. I promise to make your death quick if you do!"

The wound on his opponent's hip was small, but just the fact that he had been wounded at all was a great victory. After all, the party that was injured first often experience a loss of morale while the exact opposite was true for the one whose attack had succeeded.

Jinin grunted with an angry expression on his face, but instead of replying, he did something unexpected:

He jumped away from him.

Now, for all that defence was an undesirable position for Jinin, Zabuza knew the man long enough to be confident when he said that he didn't let that weakness make him run away from an opponent and especially not another swordsman. Jinin didn't even like to use the Silent Killing technique more than absolutely necessary, dammit! Making such a move was completely out of character for him and thus made Zabuza's alarm bells ring.

It was thanks to that that he didn't immediately follow after him, giving him enough time to react and jump away when Jinin began to make a hand seal.

A second later, the ground between the two of them exploded.

So he prepared our fighting ground in advance, he thought with a huff as he watched the stirred up dirt and dust in front of him with keen eyes, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It's not his usual style, but I really shouldn't be surprised. In the end, he had always been a coward.

The sudden build-up of chakra on the other side of the dirt cloud made his eyes go wide.

It was the only warning he got before the maw of a dragon made from water broke through the dust.

"Suiton: Suiryūdan no Jutsu!" (Water Release: Water Dragon Bullet Technique)

Zabuza was jumping backwards and forming hand seals even before the dragon's head had entirely left the cloud.

"Suiton: Suijinheki!" (Water Release: Water Formation Wall)

As there was no already existing water source close by, he was forced to use his own chakra to create some. And while that was technically not a problem in and of itself, it was unfortunately a little bit slower than it would have been otherwise, meaning his shield wasn't nearly as strong as he would have preferred it to be when the water dragon crashed into it.

The technique softened the impact, but it still made him groan in pain when his shield was broken and his opponent's attack blew him through the arena.

He first flew through the air and then skidded across the ground before finally coming to a halt in a crouched position at the other end of the room, leaning on his sword -there was no way he would let go of his weapon even if he was hit by an opponent's technique- for support.

There was not much time for him to gather himself, though, as he was forced to block an axe slash from the suddenly appearing Jinin a moment later, leaving him wide open for Jinin's follow-up attack to Zabuza's chest.

He was sure that his ribcage would have been shattered hadn't he managed to get his left arm between the hammer and his chest just in time.

However, even the fact that he avoided a lethal wound didn't distract him from the seething pain that shot through his arm when probably every bone in it broke in the same instant.

"Suirō no Jutsu!" (Water Prison Technique)

Zabuza's head spun around, his sight somewhat fuzzy from the onslaught of pain, while his eyes widened in surprise at the appearance of a second Jinin, but he was unable to do anything to stop the sphere of unnatural heavy water from forming around him.

Kubikiribōchō fell clattering to the ground to his right a second before he was completely enveloped by the water.

"How the mighty have fallen," Jinin said with a nasty drawl as he stepped closer to him. "You seemed so confident just a minute ago, but look at you now!" He laughed. "Say, wasn't this one of your favourite techniques? You always enjoyed the hopelessness in your opponent's eyes after you captured them, didn't you? I never understood that, to be honest, but I think I can see the appeal now."

Zabuza sent him a glare instead of foolishly attempting to speak and consequently wasting precious oxygen, but Jinin clearly understood what he was thinking.

"Now don't look at me like this, old friend. You can't blame me for fighting dirty, can you? If anything, you should feel honoured that I was forced to resort to something like this instead of killing you the good old-fashioned way!"

In hindsight, it had truly been naïve of him to overlook the possibility of Jinin doing something like this. Furthermore, such short-sightedness was completely out of character for him! The only explanation Zabuza could come up with for his behaviour was that he must have been blinded by his eagerness to kill his former colleague.

Fortunately, he still had an ace up his sleeve just for situations like this.

"You know," Jinin continued, completely unaware of Zabuza's thoughts. "I never liked you. I'm sure that doesn't come as much of a surprise, of course. All of us hated each other to some degree. However, in my opinion, you were the most irksome of us all. A little poser kid who thinks too highly of themselves, that's what you are. Did you really think that murdering your classmates made you in any way special? Don't make me laugh! I always wanted to kill you, and now I finally have the chance to do just that."

He couldn't suppress a snort at that stupid monologue, not even caring about the wasted breath.

What had Jinin done to deserve his spot in their group? Zabuza had sweat and bled to be where he was today while Jinin had merely been chosen as Kabutowari's successor by its previous owner, or so he claimed. For all they knew, that could have been a bald-faced lie. The only reason nobody complained was that he was actually somewhat talented in the weapon's usage.

Also, look at where the both of them were now: while Jinin was a wanted criminal with no place to call home and no true agenda to keep him going, Zabuza was the last member of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist still loyal to Kirigakure and one of the Godaime Mizukage's closest confidants!

So, who was the true 'poser kid' between them, huh?

There was no way a single snort could give all of these thoughts away, but going by the furious expression on his face, Jinin got the gist of it anyway.

"You still think you're better than me, don't you?" he growled. "Well, let me prove you wrong, you bastard!"

Zabuza waited until Jinin was almost upon him, his axe raised to cut him apart while he was sitting seemingly helpless in the water sphere, before he made a single hand seal.

The explosion tags he had hidden beneath the bandages around Kubikiribōchō's hilt exploded.

The explosion immediately ripped the water prison apart, destroyed Jinin's water clone, and threw the original away all at once.

Jinin managed to regain his composure a few seconds later, but by then, it was too late to do anything but widen his eyes at the sight of the huge sword flying towards him before it pierced his chest and swept him along its trajectory until it embedded both of them in the wall at the far end of the arena, pinning Jinin against it a meter above the ground.

Zabuza limbed slowly towards his former colleague who was trying to speak only to fail due to the blood that quelled from his mouth.

"Please don't be angry at me for fighting dirty," he said with an exhausted chuckle. "To use your own words, you should be honoured that I resorted to such measures to beat you!"

While the water prison had actually protected him from the explosion for the most part, it had been impossible to get away from it completely unharmed. Considering its strength, however, he should probably count himself lucky that all he got were some mediocre burns on his right arm and leg.

It was rather annoying that both his arms were now as impaired as they were, though.

Jinin tried to speak again, but it ended in just another chortle. Furthermore, he was visibly growing weaker by the second.

"Spare you energy, old friend," Zabuza continued. "For someone in your current position, every second is very, very precious. Also, I didn't go through the annoyance of getting hit by my own attack to see you die so soon! I want to watch you struggle, watch you try to get out of this only to realize that it is impossible."

He sent Jinin a nasty grin, revealing his sharpened teeth now that the bandages around his face had been burnt off. "You were right, you see. I do enjoy the hopelessness in my opponent's eyes when they realize that their death is inevitable."

Jinin tried to retort once more, but he barely managed to open his mouth while the light in his eyes steadily grew weaker.

"You see, your greatest mistake was to not kill me when you had the chance. You should have known by now to only play with your prey when there is absolutely no way for it to break free." He chuckled. "I would tell you to take an example from me, but alas, it's unlikely that you have enough time left to take advantage of this lesson."

There was still anger in Jinin's brown eyes as he glared at him, but that quickly transformed into fear and ultimately desperation as he grew weaker and weaker.

Then, he finally closed his eyes for the last time, deprived of the opportunity to say some last words by the blood that filled his lungs.

"Idiot," he muttered as he pulled Kubikiribōchō out of the wall with a grunt, uncaring of Jinin's lifeless body that fell to the ground as a result. "If you want to gloat, make at least sure that your enemy is already dying."

Most fights between shinobi of roughly the same strength usually lasted for a comparatively long time, but other than that, most confrontations ended rather quickly. However, there was a surprising number of shinobi who acted like Jinin and got overconfident as soon as things progressed even a little bit in their favour which then regularly cut their lives short when their opponents used this lapse in judgment against them.

For all the disdain he felt towards Jinin, the man should seriously have known better.

"Who's the poser now, bastard?"

With these words and the knowledge that there was no one close by to observe his moment of weakness, he collapsed to the ground with a heavy breath.

To this day, there seems to be some confusion about Haku's gender, so let me clear things up:

Haku is very much a girl in this fic.

However, I didn't do this because I have a certain pairing with her in mind like it's usually the case in genderswap stories. Simply put, I kept messing up the pronouns and grew tired of correcting them while editing the chapters every single time Haku had any screen time.

The long story is that I literally thought Haku was female for years. I watched the Wave Arc when I was a young child, liked it, and then didn't continue to watch Naruto for some reason until years later. Furthermore, when I ultimately did continue to watch the show, I jumped straight into the Chunin Exams Arc without rewatching the Wave Arc first. I only found out about Haku's gender relatively recently (as in 1-1/2 years ago) and still aren't used to thinking of him as a boy.

All the female!Haku fics probably didn't help either.

I hope this clears things up! :)