After nearly a week of recovery, Zabuza had finally decided that he'd procrastinated long enough, and that it was long past time that he completed his mission and got the hell out of Wave before he found himself doing something stupid like kidnapping and adopting his cousin. Clearing off the bridge and creating an ambush for the newly recovered Copy Ninja and his brats had been easy. His cousin has strangely not been with the team when they'd confronted him, and he had a sneaking suspicion why that was. Nearly seven minutes into a rather intense battle, Zabuza's cousin had decided to make an appearance. And, what an appearance it was. It was loud, it was noisy, it was everything a ninja shouldn't do, and one of the randomly flung shuriken that had gone in all directions across the battlefield had somehow managed to hit Haku rather than one of the boy's teammates.
Zabuza's jaw nearly visibly dropped at his cousin's entrance. That had to be worse than what he'd heard about Maito Gai's "Dynamic Entry" which was legendary for being a somewhat painful joke. Was that kid really serious? The last time he'd seen anything like that was when a couple of kids were playing at being Ninjas. That shuriken must have hit Haku by chance or something, because there was no way in hell that the boy could've deliberately hit Haku considering the fact that his cousin was stupid enough to risk death by making an entrance like THAT. How the hell could he be related to THAT?
Zabuza grabbed a few shuriken of his own from his pouch and tried to throw them in order to definitively test the theory since there seemed to be a lull in the battle while the others tried to recover from their own incredulity over the boy's entry. Key word there being "tried". The slight burn in a certain area and his arm stopping mid throwing arc prevented him from completing the throw. It would seem that the two of them actually were related, and Uzumaki Naruto's mother apparently hadn't been negligent in one particular duty at the very least.
"Fuck." he said aloud as he rubbed the spot where a certain seal was located. "We really are related."
He could tell from Kakashi's look that the Copy-nin had found the action to be significant for some reason. Kakashi had probably already found the boy's seal, if he was anything approaching a competent Jounin instructor. Fortunately for cousin Naruto, the boy's teacher hadn't gone messing with something he didn't understand.
The battle continued after Zabuza's young cousin proved to have been born with roughly the same amount of common sense as his cousin Akira and crawled into Haku's jutsu to join his teammate who clearly wasn't happy to see him there.
Following his cousin's disappearance into Haku's ice jutsu and the resumption of hostilities, Zabuza focused on his battle with the Copy Ninja until a rather impressive killer intent and a hint of a strange red Chakra blew by, engulfing both him and the Hatake.
"Three guesses who Aunt Kushina's successor was." he muttered to himself as he tried to rein in the fear he was feeling as the battle continued, growing increasingly more aware of the fact that there was a Jinchurriki on the battlefield with each passing second.
All too soon, he was pinned by a pack of dogs and the Copy Ninja was bragging about some jutsu he'd invented that had a longish powering up time.
As Kakashi powered up his Raikiri, a thought suddenly came to him. He powered the jutsu down as he was in mid-swing for what would've been a killing blow had it hit Zabuza. That was apparently a rather good thing as the next thing he saw was Momochi Zabuza's young accomplice standing between him and the Demon of the Mist looking confused. The swordsman standing behind his teen-aged human shield made some comment about him being a coward for not following through with the attack.
"I'm just being smart." he replied. "Naruto would never forgive me if I killed his only living relative, and since I'm going to be stuck with him at least until he becomes a Chunin, that could be troublesome."
"Only living relative?" Zabuza asked.
"Kushina-san's brothers died during the Third Shinobi War. Kushina died soon after giving birth to Naruto. Naruto's father died while fighting the Kyuubi." he replied, not elaborating any further.
His words had apparently distracted the swordsman enough that he dropped the Mist Jutsu that had been getting progressively weaker as the battle progressed and its user grew tired. It was then that a gang of mercenaries with Gato at its head was revealed to be standing at the end of the bridge.
Gato made some rather stupid speech that pretty much summed up to: he had absolutely no intention of paying Zabuza.
"It seems that our fight is over Kakashi." Zabuza said when Gato was finished talking.
"It looks that way, yes." he replied.
"I'll take the fifty on the left if you take the fifty on the right." Zabuza said, as he began to shred the bandages that surrounded his mouth with the sharpened teeth that were practically a trademark of Kiri's Seven Swordsmen.
"Just leave some for Naruto." he said.
"As long as you leave a few for Haku." Zabuza replied.
With the conflict between them gone, a new battle was joined, this time with Kakashi and the Demon of the Mist working together rather than trying to kill each-other.
"Uh..." Naruto said as he looked at Haku, not quite certain as to what had just happened. Haku looked back at him and shrugged.
He shrugged himself, before making a couple of hand seals and yelling "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu."
Since he was kinda tired, only about two hundred of him joined the fray. It was at that point that the villagers led by Inari arrived.
Edited 2-27-17