Let's get this trainwreck moving.


"We've only lost a half-day of travel." Kakashi said; these were the words that Naruto woke up to, with the sun shining overhead. "All due respect, but after your safety comes our own, regardless of the time constraints. Failing a mission is a black mark against any ninja's record, but it's more important to survive and regain honor than to die a failure."

"You don't understand! The longer we take, the worse the chokehold on my nation becomes!" Tazuna said.

"Oh?" Sai interjected, hanging upside-down from a nearby tree. "I was under the impression that we were an escort detail, not an economic salvage crew. Would you care to enlighten us, sir?"

Naruto had sprung up, red eyes trained on the elderly bridge-builder who'd gotten them a quarter-day across Hi no Kuni. Sai was as plain-spoken as they came; for him to be using sarcastic honorifics, he was clearly envisioning Tazuna dead on the ground. Involuntarily, a hand rose up to the three equally-spaced scar-lines that ran across his throat, and he couldn't say that he wasn't feeling a similar contempt.

"Nami no Kuni is currently under economic siege by Kirigakure. Gato, a billionaire businessman, is using Kiri funds to have mercenaries extort the people of their livelihoods. He's also been given a small protection detail from Kiri...even though two of them are worm-food now." Kakashi explained, answering for Tazuna.

"Salvaged a bit from them, too. Razor-chain, their gauntlets, kunai and shuriken, with some scrolls and explosive seals thrown in." Sasuke grinned.

"What's the plan?" Naruto asked. "If you're right, sensei, then we're stepping into a bear trap."

"The Hokage hopes that if we can remove Kirigakure's influence, and Tazuna is allowed to finish building his bridge to the mainland, they'll choose to provide Konoha with their business rather than having ships sail to Kiri." Kakashi said. "We would receive a small royalty percentage on all sales for the first two years, to offset the low pay we take for the mission."

"So we're continuing the mission." Sai stated.

"And we should get moving while the sun is still here to guide us." Kakashi said, ending the conversation.

In minutes, their camp had been taken down and stored, so travel could resume. They traveled on foot for three more days, though they passed uneventfully. Each time he took watch, between Sasuke and Kakashi's shifts, Naruto could hardly focus on his surroundings as his eyes shifted between his teammates and his client.

"It's more important to survive...than to die a failure." Kakashi's words rang through his mind, each night, as he waited.

The Hokage had sent them on this mission. That meant he believed they would succeed, didn't it? That had to be the case. They were already embroiled in an eleven-year conflict with Kumogakure; it wouldn't make sense to use Genin as sacrificial lambs to start another war over. At that point, it would practically be a Fourth Great War.

No, they were capable of success. That was why they'd been chosen for this mission. It wasn't because he and his younger teammates were orphans who had little of a home to come back to. It wasn't because Kiri was in a weakened state and had other powers looking to strip them of their resources. Konoha was an affluent city-state, moreso than most other ninja villages or their respective civilian capitals, so they had no need of Nami's resources. This was just a ploy to prevent Kirigakure from taking the fruits of the citizens' labors for themselves.

And yet, in the back of his mind, something told him that it could never be so simple. He wasn't sure what that voice was, because he'd never heard it outside of his thoughts, but it was disembodied cynicism in all its glory. The Hokage had preached of peace and love for decades, but across his broad life, three Great Wars had been waged and a private fourth conflict remained strong. How did that saying go, again?

If you pray for peace, be ready for war.

As a concept, the notion held water; to be willing to fight for something meant that it was tied to your convictions. And yet...there was so much death. Even for ninja, who put their lives on the line every day, there were some things that came across as asking too much. They'd been given a laundry list of reasons to turn back and accept the punishment for failing a mission, but Team Seven continued to press on. It made no sense.

Neither did the sudden surge of ferocity he'd displayed as he'd leapt into the short-lived fight with the brothers from Kirigakure. He'd been aggressive, and then he'd felt it amplify to incomprehensible levels; it was the same surge of power he'd tapped into when Mizuki had betrayed him, though he hadn't felt it again in the months since. Did it only come out during real combat? What were its capabilities, its limitations?

Ever since he'd killed Mizuki, his movements had felt sharper, a sixth sense for danger embedded in the back of his mind; after awakening his chakra in the academy as a child, he'd been able to regenerate from wounds, regardless of their size. Staring at the sea, as Team Seven moved towards the coast of Nami no Kuni, Naruto had to admit to himself that he felt more comfortable as the mist rolled in over the course of the morning.

What was happening to him?


"Good luck, Tazuna." The captain of the ship whispered, clapping a hand on the older man's shoulder before turning around and moving back to his ship.

"Stay safe, Shigure." Tazuna offered quietly, before he and Team Seven headed further inland.

Within two minutes, the light brown sand gave way to healthy grass, as deep a green as Naruto had ever seen. The mist that had blanketed their approach towards Nami no Kuni was all but gone; only dew, on the leaves of nearby trees, had remained. Naruto had thought that Kakashi was fully alert before, but as far as the Jounin was concerned, they were in an active warzone. The good news was that their enemies' resources were finite. Due to the distance between Nami and Kiri, as well as the small size of their current territory, there would be no reinforcements. There would also be relatively few skilled fighters among Gato's henchmen.

The bad news was that Team Seven was stranded on their own. Severely outmanned, outgunned, and under-prepared, they had to survive in hostile territory until Tazuna had finished building his bridge. Worse still, their foes likely knew they were here. After the Demon Brothers had failed in their assassination attempt, dying in the process, their superiors would take note of the fact that they'd failed to report back.

"Hey, Tazuna, is it always this breezy in the-" Naruto stopped speaking abruptly, realizing that the cold chill he felt wasn't from any wind.

"Diamond formation around Tazuna." Kakashi ordered. "Kirigakure ninja are bloodthirsty assassins, we need eyes in all directions."

Rustling came from a bush as mist began to creep into the greenery surrounding them, and Sasuke threw a shuriken straight at it, only for a white hare to leap away from the foliage.

"Just a rabbit." He sighed in relief, before the mist around them immediately thickened in intensity.

Naruto stood at the back of the diamond, and while he knew that Tazuna was only a few arm-lengths away, he couldn't see the old man to save his life.

"Been watching you ever since you passed through the mangroves on your way to the mainland." A voice came out from the mist, from all directions at once. "That ship was a nice vessel, shame her captain had to go down without her."

Naruto's heart had leapt into his throat, even as it slowed its beating, and he could feel the repetitive ba-bump reverberate ominously throughout his entire body.

"There are eight targets. The throat. The spine. The lungs. The liver. The jugular vein and the subclavian artery. The kidney, and the heart. Any one of them is a lethal blow...all I have to do is decide which one to strike first."

"Big talk from someone who's too afraid to show themselves." Sasuke said. Without warning, an elongated senbon needle had buried itself in his side, and the Uchiha gasped in pain.

"That was a warning shot." The disembodied voice declared. "Did you really think I would fight fairly?"

"Futon: Daitoppa." Kakashi unleashed the Great Breakthrough technique, the mist around them giving way to reveal that they'd been corralled inside a dome of close-layered ice panels that shone reflectively. And yet, there was nobody else among them...until a masked figure appeared in one of the frozen mirrors.

"Unfortunate." The ninja said, though they shrugged nonchalantly after the word had left their mouth.

"Katon: Goukakyu!" Sasuke shouted his technique's name, but the flames of the Uchiha clan's signature technique dissipated harmlessly as soon as they reached the ice panels.

"Well, that's not good." Sai said. "Futon and Suiton, combining to create Hyoton jutsu?"

Under normal circumstances, Katon would overpower Futon, and a strong-enough Katon technique would neutralize a weaker Suiton jutsu. Combining the two together, however minor, exponentially increased the resistance to fire. Sasuke was at a disadvantage...but nobody had said anything about brute force.

"Tajuu Kage Bunshin!" Naruto yelled, a mass of clones filling the area of the dome around them; while it was impossible to see from their vantage point, Naruto had drummed up even more doppelgangers to appear outside of the ice.

One hit became two, and two became two hundred, as Naruto's Kage Bunshin shielded his team and client from harm. Even then, something was wrong. The ice was broken by sheer blunt force trauma, and Team Seven escaped from the ice-cold clutches of death, but there was another ninja with their masked assailant; tape-armor covered the bottom half of his face, like a poor man's mockery of Kakashi's own mesh mask, but his eyes were those of a mad dog who was itching to fight. He'd taken to killing Naruto's clones in the time before they'd punched their way through the Hyoton technique, and the ease with which he held his blade aloft was nothing to sneeze at.

"Konoha just loves shoving their hands in other villages' business, huh?" Momochi Zabuza asked, his head tilted to the side.

"Not our fault he chose to hire Konoha-nin." Kakashi said nonchalantly. "We just showed up for the job."

"Well, that's true, but it doesn't help either of us. You're guarding a man who I want to see dead, on the ground, in front of me. Any chance I can convince you to leave Kirigakure to its territory-to-be and turn the old man in? Truth be told, I don't actually need him to be a corpse, but...well...I like killing. Never would have thought that the Issenjutsu no Meijin would greet me in this dump, though."

"Well, I wouldn't have thought that a country too poor to afford a ninja village's protection would have drawn someone like a member of the Seven Swordsmen out here, so I'm just as surprised as you are."

Zabuza shrugged, but the Kubikiribouchou wasn't lowered. Instead, the Jounin of Kirigakure hoisted it to rest on one shoulder, and Naruto had to pause to marvel at the man's strength. That sword was easily as tall as most men, if not taller, and most of the blade was decently thick before it fanned out to its single edge; a backswing wouldn't cut anything, but it could turn bones into splinters with a strong enough pull.

"It's not like I chose for my unit to come out here, but we're getting paid...and you killed two of my men, which I'm not particularly excited about. So, even with those kids with you, I'm not inclined to show you too much mercy. Haku! Deal with the brats!"

"As you command, Zabuza." Haku sprung off to the side as Zabuza engaged Kakashi, and the masked ninja stood in front of Team Seven's Genin.

"You two go help sensei. I'll deal with this clown." Naruto ordered, rushing forward. Avoiding a stab from one of Haku's senbon, he delivered a vicious right cross that Haku couldn't back away from in time. The mask around his face shattered into pieces, and Haku saw the future of Konoha's mighty war machine with his own two eyes.

Haku launched two senbon towards Tazuna, but ink snakes rose up to knock them off of their trajectory.

"You can't seriously believe we'd abandon you like that, Banchou." Sai said. "Not me, at least."

"Kakashi's a Jounin, he can handle himself. We'd be getting in the way." Sasuke said.

"Fine!" Naruto said, hissing as a senbon stabbed into his arm.

"Your camaraderie is admirable, but I'll have to put an end to it here." Haku declared, mixing shuriken and kunai into his next aerial attack.

"Suiton: Mizudeppo!" Haku called out the name of his attack.

Water condensed from the mist, pooling into an oblong pebble-like shape, and it came forward with more force than Naruto believed precipitation had any right to. It ripped through his leg, as he'd leapt away from Haku in the process of the casting, and it took Naruto a moment to realize that the Water Gun hadn't lost momentum after leaving him with its exit wounds. Almost in slow motion, he watched the deadly liquid sail through the air...only to catch Sasuke's smug smirk as Sai tackled Tazuna to the ground. A quiet light shone on the grassy plain they stood on, and then?

Then, the world was fire. Naruto was flung forward by the blast, which had used up one of the explosive seals that they'd taken from the defeated Demon Brothers. Kakashi and Zabuza, caught off-guard, had similarly been knocked away.

With two tomoe in his Sharingan, Sasuke stared Haku down. His hands seemed to blur as he wove through his hand seals, and this time, the Goukakyu wouldn't be denied. Heat rolled out of the Uchiha's mouth, condensing itself into a fire that stretched out twice as tall and wide as he was. The fireball rolled on as Haku dodged to one side, Sasuke's armor-tape-covered shin rising up to block a stabbing senbon.

"Clones!" Sai yelled, as one moved to engage him and another attacked Sasuke from behind.

Sasuke wasn't turning, did he just assume that one was going after Naruto? The blond rushed up, moving to block the attack aimed at Sasuke's neck, but his footing went slick. Naruto looked down, his brain registering that the ground beneath him had become a sheet of ice, and that was the last thing his left eye saw. A senbon came down from above, the attack intended to sever Sasuke's spine, and Naruto could feel the needle touch something inside of his head.

It started with a low groan, his human mind formerly too simple to grasp and command the power he'd been blessed with. An awful, ear-splitting headache that hurt enough for Naruto to cry tears of pain. He clutched at the senbon after Haku had backed away from what should have been a killing blow, and he ripped it away. His skin was crawling with metaphorical millipedes, and in their place was a sudden undulation between hot and cold. In one moment, Naruto felt like his body was freezing to death; in the next, he was burning and dehydrating. In the process, despite his body's attempts to regenerate the eye he'd lost, the replica kept getting destroyed.

And then, noticeable to everyone present, came the nauseating wave of energy that Kakashi would never forget. The last time he'd felt it, a decade and a half ago, he'd been there. He'd been witness to the proceedings that had shattered his world forever, on the night Naruto had been born. Utter violence, and dreams of damnation, had haunted him ever since.

"You were supposed to be dead." Kakashi whispered. "Sensei was supposed to have killed you."

Naruto felt the surge of power thundering through his veins, a source he'd twice tapped into that was now fully exposed. Red miasma coiled around him, painful sensations fading as his singular eye gazed upon the world in its true state.

"Eyes on the prize, Kakashi." Zabuza warned, the only words that the Jounin would be given before the Kubikiribouchou swung around. Kakashi wove under the blade, a kunai coming up to leave a cut along Zabuza's face, and the pair of Jounin began running through identical hand seals.

"Suiton: Suiryudan!" Both men shouted, the watery dragons colliding and exploding into rain and steam. Zabuza lifted his blade and swung once again, as Sasuke, Naruto and Sai all killed the icy clones that Haku had called forth.

The real one's not among them.

This time, as Zabuza's sword came down, Kakashi opted to block instead of dodge; he was strong enough, the massive head-hunting blade stopping in its tracks, but Kakashi had been fighting against Zabuza alone. He'd accounted for his students taking on the Kiri-nin's apprentice, but Sasuke's Goukakyu had acted as more of a diversionary shield than an attack against the once-masked shinobi. Kakashi couldn't turn, practically trapped by the force of the blade that he'd blocked.

Haku was there.

A senbon was there.