Wave Arc: IV

Kakashi was still on watch the next morning. At least, we assumed he was; he didn't turn up for breakfast, and he hadn't left any instructions. It wasn't impossible that he'd been horrifically wounded in the middle of the night and was now bleeding out with no backup, but surely he'd've left a note.

"I guess we… train?" Sakura suggested. "If we stay near the bridge we can keep an eye on Tazuna, and Naruto can leave a clone for the house."

"Works for me," Naruto said, poofing a clone into existence without bothering to take his arms out from behind his head. The clone gave a jaunty salute and bounced off to the roof, calling a trio of extra clones as it went for greater patrol coverage.

… There was something mildly terrifying about the way Naruto casually spammed clones, when you thought about it. Worse was the fact that neither he nor Sakura realised how exceptional he was. They were getting a very skewed idea of normal chakra limits.

"Hn," I said for want of anything better to add, and followed the other two down towards the bridge. Sakura kept fiddling with the end of the braid she'd kept in from last night and occasionally blushing, but other than that we seemed to have moved past the awkward atmosphere. It was probably my imagination that they were walking a bit closer than usual, and I scowled and told myself to get a grip.

I had a full day of no sugar lined up, and barely any fruit leather left. That was a safer problem to focus on.

Tazuna accosted us with blueprints as soon as we arrived. "Identify the keystone and suggest a suitable material!" he demanded, shoving the papers in Naruto's face.

"Wha - you haven't taught me anything about keystones!"

"Then how do you expect to be a builder, huh? Trick question! This is a suspension bridge, we're not using keystones!"

"Ah, It's ok, Tazuna-san," Sakura said, pulling Naruto back before he could shout a response. "We're not going to get in the way of your team, we're just going to be doing some training by the water. We'll stay close so we can guard you, but we promise not to interfere."

"Not to interfere, huh?" He scratched at his cheek. "Well, why not? If you just learnt a bit faster you could be useful. Think of the things I could build with an army of ninjas on hand!"

I opened my mouth to protest that that's not what ninjas were for, then I remembered d-ranks and shut it again. Who was I kidding, if Tazuna had the money then that was exactly what ninjas were for. Or genin, at least. The high stakes life-or-death battles that people were accustomed to imagining only really happened to jounin, most ninja were used for infrastructure and cheap labour.

Well, jounin and genin who happened to be main characters, but those were minor details.

We went down to the river bank under the bridge, aiming for a patch that had larger rocks by a deeper bit of water and avoiding the worst of the mud. The other two faltered when we reached it, glancing back at me guiltily.

"You should practice," I said, flicking my gaze away. "Water walking is important, you need to learn it."

"Yeah, but what about you, bastard?"

I wrinkled my nose. "I need to learn it too. I just…" I didn't want to finish that sentence so I shrugged and changed what I was going to say. "I want to try some more things with wire. I think I can move it with my chakra if I concentrate."

"You could try water walking by the shore?" Sakura offered. "It's not hard to start. Sensei just said to push our chakra out to make a surface to stand on, but also pull it to keep it stable."

"That's it?" I asked. It didn't seem like much instruction, but a lot of ninja teaching involved working things out for yourself, so I supposed I shouldn't be surprised.

She nodded. "Then he left to go on patrol. It's easier if you do it further out because the water's flatter, but if you stay near the edge then… it could be better?" She trailed off, clearly uncomfortable bringing up my inability to swim. I tried to hold back my instinctive grimace; it wasn't her fault I was such a mess, and she was actually being tactful in how she talked about it.

"Maybe," I said instead, and sat down on a rock to start messing with a length of ninja wire. Thankfully she and Naruto took the hint and left me to it.

And I had been at least partially truthful. I'd noticed when reaching out for things with my chakra that I could, sometimes, move them. Not with any precision and not consistently, but if I concentrated then I could tug something towards myself, or if I pressed too hard trying to sense something I could sometimes knock it over. Small things, fairly light and with not much resistance, but wire was hardly heavy. In theory I should be able to run my chakra along it and control where it went. I knew you could buy chakra conductive metal that did something similar, but given that my kawarimi sense was very much focussed on physical objects there was no reason I could think of why it wouldn't work with normal wire.

An hour later, I had at least four reasons, not the least of which being that it was fiddly as fuck.

"Work, you bugger," I growled at the length of wire in front of me, and reached out to it for the thousandth time. My chakra refused to run along it so I had to recreate the shape myself and make it match as much as possible. It was tedious, but doable, at least while the wire was still on the ground; the problem came when I tried to pick it up. After a lot of trial and error I'd got it to the stage where I could make it move; I had not, however, got it to the stage where I could make it move where I wanted. Sometimes it jerked violently up towards my hand, sometimes it flopped over in a pathetic roll, often one section would go vaguely the right way and I'd lose my grip on the rest and the whole thing would fall apart.

This time though seemed promising. I'd got the whole wire covered, and was oh so carefully lifting the end closest to me a fraction off the ground. "Stay," I told it, inching my way along and tugging on the next part. "Stay. Don't do it, stay where I put you - oh fuck you you ignorant slut."

I glared balefully at the coiled pile of shame and failure and sat back on my heels. "Progress," I muttered sourly to myself. "Definitely progress. Shitty progress, but. Ugh."

Still, at least I was staying dry. Sakura was doing better than Naruto on that front but both of them were more than a little soggy. Sakura seemed fine when she was standing still but hadn't mastered lifting her feet up, and her cautious crab-walk sliding over the surface was weirdly distracting to watch. Naruto, on the other hand, was trying a similar approach to tree walking and taking the whole river at a run. He actually got quite far jesus-lizarding his way upstream, but he also used so much chakra he was creating waves in his wake that sent Sakura flying every time he got near her. Which he had done. Twice. She was pissed and it was hilarious.

"Push and pull, huh?" I said, frowning at them. The wire was doing my head in. I needed a break. "Push and pull… like a vibration? Do you make a chakra platform, or are you meant to rely on the surface tension?"

I scooted forward to the edge of my rock and unfolded a leg from underneath me, hovering my foot just over the surface of the water. I already knew that water felt solid to chakra because I'd already tried and failed to kawarimi through it, so if I just ignored the fact that it was a liquid…

"Sasuke," Kakashi said, and I startled and scrambled back from the water to land in a defensive crouch.

"I wasn't swimming," I blurted. "It's not deep enough. I just wanted to try."

"Ah," he said, frowning down at me in confusion. He blinked and visibly put my reaction out of mind, then dropped into an untidy squat next to me. "I have a jutsu for you. Watch."

And, before I could even register that statement enough to be surprised, he started running through hand seals. Confused but intrigued, I watched; he performed them slowly enough for me to follow, rat dragon boar snake dog -

"Sensei, that's a water jutsu. I'm going to be a genjutsu specialist."

"Watch," he repeated, and did them again, faster this time and finishing on the dog to mark it as a water technique. He brought the final seal up to his chin and breathed over the backs of his hands, creating what looked like a thin glass bubble that stretched to cover his face. When he lowered his hands they passed through it and it seemed to disappear, though from the faint shimmer as he tilted his head I guessed it was just invisible.

"You see?" he asked, and yes, the bubble was definitely still there because his voice sounded muffled and distorted. I nodded, and he used an inverse dog seal to dispel the technique.

"Ok. Copy."

"Right, ok, apparently it's don't use sentences day," I mumbled. He thwapped me on the head, moving fast enough that I didn't have a chance to duck, and glared at me until I went through the seals. I hesitated over the last one and didn't actually push the chakra through to complete it. "What does it do?"

"It's a variant of a poison filtering technique. The chakra forms a solid barrier around your face which neither air nor liquids can pass through. It lasts indefinitely, but in practice you only have a couple of minutes of air before you pass out."

I frowned, running the explanation through my head again. Why would Kakashi be so insistent I learn a technique to defend against poison? Was he worried I was going to try and gasify the poisons I was using on my shuriken and - air. It clicked. Air. "It's the bubblehead charm," I said, wide eyed. He'd given me a jutsu version of the Harry Potter bubblehead charm to breathe underwater.

Holy fuck, he'd actually tried to fix my drowning problem.

"Bubblehead?" he repeated. "Ah, I suppose it could be. I hadn't thought of a name yet."

Holy fuck, he'd created a jutsu to try to fix my drowning problem.

I swallowed around my suddenly dry mouth and dropped my gaze to my hands, bewildered. What the hell. Why would he - what the hell? Ninja weren't just protective of their techniques, they downright hoarded them. Particularly ones they'd developed themselves, because those were the secret weapons you could pull out that no one would know how to counter. You didn't just go and make a brand new jutsu because some idiot kid threw a tantrum at you then go and give it to them.

I mean, who knew what the idiot kid would do with it. They might abandon you and run away from the village and join their brother's terrorist organisation. Who knew.

"Sasuke?" he prompted, and I blinked as I looked up. My eyes were stinging painfully and I felt small and shaky. I didn't like it and my first instinct was to scowl and shy away, but on the other hand, I was still so confused. He'd not rescued me when I was drowning. He'd not taught me water walking when I asked him to. He'd not - there were a lot of things he'd not done. But he'd created a jutsu for me. I didn't understand.

"Right," I said instead, and brought my hands up again. Whether it made sense or not, Kakashi had done it, and the jutsu was one I needed. A couple of minutes wasn't a huge amount of air, but it was enough. I put everything else out of my mind and focussed on the hand seals, rat dragon boar snake and blow over the back of the last one - dog.

The chakra was cold as it passed out through my mouth, cold and wet in a way I wasn't sure if I was imagining or not. The bubble was cold as well, rippling up my face like someone dragging an ice cube over my skin, over my lips up to my nose -

I felt a spike of panic as it blocked my nose for a second and the jutsu dispersed. Shit.

"Again," Kakashi said, back to his one word sentences and watching me intently. I took a breath to centre myself and gathered my chakra again. Rat dragon boar snake blow dog - ice cube up the face - nose - fuck.

"Again," he said, but I was already running through the seals. This time I held my breath beforehand so I wouldn't feel it being blocked, and the bubble got as far up as the bridge of my nose before I lost it.

"Again."

I grit my teeth and tried again.

.

It took me the rest of the day to succeed at the bubblehead jutsu. Much as I hated to admit it, the water chakra was easier to work with than the fire chakra I was used to - it had none of the loading time I associated with ninjutsu, which I now realised was me converting my chakra to fire before I could begin using it. But still, chakra was meant to be a warm glow, alternately fast and flickering or strong and smouldering. Water chakra was cold, running through me like a chill. It could be just as fast and responsive as fire was - maybe even more so given how easily it listened to me in comparison, but there was a solidity and weight behind it that, frankly, I didn't like.

"Well, tough," I said, frowning at myself in the bathroom mirror. "It might save your life. Suck up and deal."

My reflection frowned back, as bony and short as ever. At least the kunai wound had healed enough for me to ditch the bandages that morning, so that was one thing I had going for me.

I shook my head in frustration. This was not sucking up and dealing. This was wallowing in self pity and it needed to stop. I was bony and short but I could tie myself in a pretzel and I still had more muscles than I'd ever had in my past life. I was fine, I hadn't been kicked off the team for being a liability, I had no excuse for, for - moping about things. I was fine, damnit.

"Fucking mess," I muttered, and stepped out the bathroom.

"Who were you talking to?" Inari asked, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed in his normal sullen pout.

"None of your business," I said. "Why were you eavesdropping? Don't you have somewhere else to go be sulky at?"

I wasn't… good with kids.

"I need to wash my hands," he said. I rolled my eyes and made to go past him - I could already hear the others downstairs, dinner was about to start. He didn't move though, stubbornly blocking the corridor and squinting up at me. "You don't look dead."

What. "What."

"I heard the other two talking about it yesterday. They said you died. You don't look dead to me." He glared at me as though my lack of a coffin had personally offended him.

"The hell," I said. "Do you eavesdrop on everyone? It's still none of your business. I'm clearly not dead. Move."

"Dead people don't come back!" he insisted, and still didn't move.

Not with that attitude they don't, I thought, but I bit my tongue and didn't actually say it. I didn't want to drag the conversation out either, as thrilling as it was, nor spill all my secrets to a whiny pre-human. "My family died," I said shortly. "I didn't. Nor am I going to. What I am going to do is have dinner." And, because I was a ninja and what was the point in having these skills if I wasn't going to use them, I stuck my hand to the ceiling and swung myself neatly over him to get past.

"You don't know that," he said, jogging after me and failing to take the hint. I scowled at him, but he scowled right back and carried on. "You're facing Gato. You're going to die. You're all going to die, so what's the point?"

"Who the fuck said there had to be a point? I'm hungry. That's why. Go wash your hands."

"You're hungry? What kind of stupid reason is that?"

I stopped, just outside the kitchen. He wasn't going away. Why wasn't he going away. If he was waiting for an inspirational speech about heroism, he wasn't going to get it from me, but if I didn't make him stop then he'd snipe at me through dinner and Sakura would get mad at me for swearing.

So, I turned around and crouched down in the most annoying, patronising way I could. "I like mochi," I said. "And ice cream. Dango. Strawberries. If I died, I wouldn't be able to eat. So, I fight people who want to kill me, because if I just rolled over and gave up I'd never get sweets again. Ok? Good. Piss off."

I gave him a gentle shove backwards to emphasise my point and stood up again.

"That's it?" he called after me as I finally entered the kitchen. "That's stupid!"

I waved a lazy hand and didn't bother turning back. He'd already called it stupid. Get more creative with your insults, proto-person, they suck.

"What's stupid?" Naruto asked as I sat down.

"Your face," I answered, because my insults were barely any more creative than Inari's, and hid my satisfied smirk in my tea when he squawked.

.

Kakashi was on patrol again that night, and though I was slightly worried about his mental health at this stage - he'd seemed more than a touch frazzled when he was teaching me, and was also still going round on crutches - I wasn't going to turn down another chance for proper sleep. It came with the price of recreating Sakura's braids on Naruto's sexy no jutsu hair, which would have been a lot easier and more relaxing if he was able to sit still. I'm pretty sure that Sakura was able to follow along and mimic them in her own hair though, which was the important part.

We took the bridge watch in shifts the next day rather than relying on Naruto's clones, because otherwise neither Sakura nor I would actually pull our weight on the mission. Not that there was much weight to be pulled right at the moment given how quiet everything seemed, but it was the principle of it. Tazuna wasn't paying us to practice water walking and swear at ninja wire.

Although, was he paying us? If this had been the c-rank he'd originally bought we'd be home by now. I had no idea how the logistics of the mission upgrade worked. Huh.

Anyway. By the end of the day Sakura had water walking mostly down, and by the end of the next she was going through her katas on the surface almost fast enough to be useful in a fight. Naruto could run, jump and cartwheel pretty much endlessly, but if he stood still for too long he slowly sank until the technique failed and he fell in. I'd got the bubblehead charm to a state where I could summon it practically in my sleep and hold the bubble for a full ninety seconds before it became too hard to breathe and I dropped it.

And, because I wasn't going to expand that time with practice - the issue was that I was breathing in the same air I'd just breathed out, I was both piling up the carbon dioxide and running through the oxygen and that wasn't something doing hand seals faster would solve - I'd also progressed, tentatively, to cautious steps and then even more cautious sprints on the surface of the water.

In the shallows. We're talking puddle depth here. I saw no purpose in dumping myself in the river if I didn't have to; it was still water walking if there was solid ground two inches below the surface.

All this, on top of the usual stretches and workouts, limited sleep once Kakashi put us back on night watches, the occasional spar when one or all of us got sick of training, and being used as a runner to carry messages around the village for Tazuna. It was exhausting. It was like Kakashi thought we wouldn't have the energy to be sad if he used it all up on making us do drills. Which was potentially valid and potentially working, but still. Exhausting.

And, one afternoon when the bridge was about two thirds done, it was over.

I was on watch, sat at the top of one of the suspension supports with a small orange book in my lap. The book'd started as an experiment - could Naruto henge into something he'd never seen? No, was the answer; he could copy the cover of Icha Icha but the pages were blank - but we realised that it was much less strain for Naruto to receive the memories of a henged clone than one that had been actively thinking before it dispelled. They were now our early warning system; dispel the clone, and even if Naruto only got a vague impression of what was happening he'd know enough to know where you were and that you needed his attention.

I noticed the mist first. It came off the river in waves, some patches thicker, some lighter - it looked natural. It happened like that sometimes, even during the day if the air was cool enough. After that came the absence of noise, the hammering and banging and general clatter fading out as the sounds were absorbed by the mist.

I frowned, leaping down from my perch to land in a near silent crouch. From the bridge level, the mist looked too thick to be natural, and the sudden chill compared to the warmth of the air above set my skin prickling with unease.

"Tazuna-san," I said, walking towards where I knew him to be. The mist swirled around me, settling in a dense layer up to my knees and creeping over the edge of my vision. I couldn't see my feet, and the other bridge builders were little more than shadowy outlines. "Tazuna - Kakashi?"

The figure in front of me turned, hands in his pockets and eye curved up in a lazy smile. "Sasuke-kun," he greeted. "Go and train with the other two, I'll take the next watch."

The voice was a perfect match. So was the appearance, even the way he slouched. My eyes flicked almost imperceptibly up to his hair; Kakashi's, in this much dampness, would frizz so badly that some of the front sections would start to spiral out in tiny corkscrew curls. This man's hair did not. Henge.

"Hn," I said in careful non-acknowledgment. "Where are they training?"

"Down by the river. More water walking." It was more information than I hoped he'd have. Or she - henge could easily disguise gender. Did it mean someone was watching Naruto and Sakura? Were they in danger? Gato hadn't hired any other ninja in the original, but this scenario didn't match what I remembered of canon. The building crew were here, for one, even if they were being eerily quiet.

Not that canon was the beacon of truth I used to think it was, but I couldn't think of any changes I'd made that would affect Gato's choices.

"See you later, Sensei," I said, turning with a casual wave. I kept myself loose and deliberately careless and bent my knees in preparation to leap away. Except, instead of jumping I sent an illusion clone springing off while I kawarimid with a nearby pebble - hopefully, the imposter Kakashi would mistake the sound of the pebble as just the sound of me leaving. I crouched behind what looked like a cement mixer, concentrating on keeping both my chakra and my heart rate suppressed while I tried to see what was happening.

I only had one Naruto clone. If I dispelled it now, all he'd know was that there was a strange mist and Kakashi had sent me home - I didn't know if he'd pick up on the danger. I didn't know how much danger there was to pick up on.

Then: Zabuza. He seemed almost to coalesce out of the mist, as though he were some kind of spirit made out of air and water. My breath caught in my throat. I didn't need Sakura and Naruto, I needed Kakashi. The real Kakashi. Where was he? He was meant to be nearby. How had Zabuza got past?

"You're too soft," he scolded the Kakashi imposter. Haku, it had to be Haku. Shit. They weren't meant to be here yet. Shit. "Remember the mission."

Haku dipped his head in a respectful bow. "Yes, Zabuza-sama," he said. "The workers are unconscious. When they wake, they will find their tools missing and the bridge builder dead."

My mind raced. Gato wanted the bridge stopped, but he also wanted Wave broken so it wouldn't disobey again. So why wasn't he killing the workers? Martyrs, my thoughts suggested. Gato's crew was old because they knew it was dangerous, they'd volunteered to keep the younger members of the town safe. If they died, Gato was turning them into heroes - whatever Inari thought of it - and the town would rebel against him in their memory. Tazuna was the kind of batshit brave that could never be cowed, he had to die, and for the rest… Psychological warfare? The realisation that Gato could have had them killed at any point would be a heavy one. If they were scared off, there'd be nothing left for Wave to rally behind.

I needed to get Tazuna out of here.

I also needed backup.

I stabbed a shuriken into the clone book, keeping it pressed against my stomach to try and hide the smoke and the flare of chakra. I still wanted Naruto to get more information, but I couldn't delay any longer - I could only hope he'd heard Haku and Zabuza. As soon as the clone was gone I moved, sliding soundlessly out from behind the cement mixer and back to one of the suspension supports. The mist was too thick at bridge level; I needed height. Even from just a few metres above I could see clearer, and I wrapped a henge around myself to blend in as much as possible with the concrete and metal behind me.

Where was Tazuna? I didn't have time to be cautious. I couldn't hear anything, I couldn't see anything, but the mist wasn't solid - my chakra cut through it easily, thin tendrils searching for anything old man shaped. I felt a worker, slumped over on the floor, a pile of twisted steel cords, the other end of the bridge - there. Just before the end of the bridge, one figure backing away and two advancing. Thank fuck Zabuza was dramatic and liked to intimidate his victims, if he'd gone straight for the kill I'd be too late.

With Tazuna firmly fixed in my head I dropped off the bridge and hit the water running. My heart raced, but I didn't let myself - couldn't let myself think about what was under my feet. The bank was getting closer, but Tazuna was running out of time; I pushed myself faster, four seconds, three, two -

I switched with him the second my foot hit the shore, flinging Tazuna to safety and sending myself straight into the path of Zabuza's oversized sword. I yelped, twisting to the side just in time to avoid being decapitated and scrambled into another kawarimi with a random piece of building debris. I hadn't gone far - I'd reached for the first thing I could find and swapped in a panic - but with the mist and my henge still active, I thought I might've got away with it.

Where the fuck was my backup. Kakashi, please, I'll take back everything I said about you being a dick, just don't leave me to die again.

"Ah," Zabuza said from somewhere behind me. "I thought I felt someone poking around. Come out, little leaf. The mists are no place for you to hide."

I grit my teeth and tried desperately to think of a way out. Haku had his ice prison, unless that was another way I was going to get screwed over by reality not following canon, but Haku didn't want to kill anyone. If I ended up fighting him then all I had to do was stall enough for Naruto to get here and use the kyuubi to break his mask and realise who -

Oh. Oh no.

Reality hadn't followed canon. Naruto had never fallen asleep in the forest after a tree climbing training session. He'd never met Haku. Fuck, he'd never been given his core nindo, but more importantly he had no reason to spare Haku's life, which was minorly inconvenient given that I wanted him to live.

If I fought Haku I'd lose and either Tazuna would die or Haku would die - or hell, why not both - and if I fought Zabuza I'd lose and I would die. And then probably Tazuna and Haku. These were shit odds.

I heard the kunai a second before I saw it and threw myself aside. It skimmed over my shoulder; if my reflexes had been any slower, that would've been my throat.

"Didn't I say, Konoha? The mists are no place to hide. I know where you are wherever you are and there's nothing you can do to stop me."

His voice echoed from all around me, and though I lashed out with my chakra trying to lock him down he was too slippery for me to know where he came from. I felt something move towards me but couldn't tell where it was aimed so I gambled and leapt straight up, spinning in the air and sending a fistful of shuriken back the way I'd come. They missed, but Zabuza had tracked my jump and was waiting for me when I landed, and I twisted to try and change direction but I couldn't move far enough -

"Sasuke!" Tazuna shouted, and hooked an arm around my waist to tackle me out the way. He landed in a controlled roll and shoved me back towards the main part of the bridge. "Get out, stay away from this fight - get the workers back to the village."

"What - no, you're the mission, I have to -" I faltered to a halt as Tazuna raised a hand and dispelled his henge, and Kakashi glared back at me with both eyes uncovered.

Oh thank fuck I was going to live. I would never say a bad word against this man ever again. He was my precious sunshine child and I loved him.

"Now, Sasuke," he commanded, shoving me back with - I'm not actually sure, a wind jutsu? I didn't see any hand signs - before unsheathing a short sword from his back and diving forward again.

A short sword. Against Zabuza's overcompensation? Relief at seeing him was warring with the fact that I was still very much in danger and the combination left me almost off-kilter enough to giggle. Battle of the swords. Would it be the size that counted, or would it be the way they used them. Swords.

Then the water dragons started rising and I remembered that yes, I was still very much in danger, and started running.

.

Zabuza: Go deal with the genin, would you?
Haku: *politely asks Sasuke to leave so he won't get caught in the battle*
Zabuza: listen,,,