Soldiers

Makaba waited in an alleyway, her back pressed against the wall for what little protection mere masonry was worth. Before the power of her village's latest in a string of never-ending enemies things like walls and buildings and armies were as useless a shield as they'd been against any of the other recent calamities. Across from her and beside, the rest of her new team waited with her, all of them having been thrown together not more than an hour before – all the 'lucky' survivors from a dozen other teams.

"Stay strong," the chunin counseled with grim resolve in answer to the oppressive silence and almost cringed as she realized how hopelessly hackneyed that sort of advice was at this point. Having thus committed herself, she doubled-down: "As long as we're still fighting we're still in it." The woman amazed herself with how reassuring she was able to sound, how similar to some of the better, stronger shinobi she'd grown up with or served under though her material could have come straight from a bad action movie. Still, there was point to it. Psychology was a real thing and anything she could do to improve her team's, even a little, was worth a try. Soldiers who believed themselves defeated surely would be.

Though her mist-ninja's pride reflexively rejected pessimism and craved victory the cold reality was hard to ignore. Half her family had died from the outcasts' plague, half her friends and colleagues from fighting Rahaman and then the 108 Demons. And now these bandaged fuckers had shown up out of nowhere and were more than capable of finishing off everyone who was left. In her mind, like a hot coal cooking the meat of her thoughts, burned the idea that it was all connected somehow, gears whirling as part of a single machine devoted to a single purpose, though she'd be damned if she could figure out anything that even came close to making sense.

Makaba wasn't alone in this. All of Kirigakure's widely-feared mist-ninja had been laid bare, reduced to children grasping at straws. Rumors bloomed like mushrooms after the rain: Haku was back, seeking revenge for his dead Master Zabuza, or maybe he was on the Mist Village's side this time for reasons unfathomable; there were leaf-ninja loose in the city or was it shinobi from Lightning Country or Yotsu Triad hit-teams? The Mizukage had finally snapped and unleashed a dreadful curse upon his own village before succumbing to his mania, opening up a portal to hell that had vomited forth the vengeful, blood-drenched legions of all Kirigakure's past victims. Plots! Conspiracies!

Out of all the fanciful suppositions, Haku's being back was true. Makaba had seen him with her own eyes, him and his yellow-headed partner, when he'd challenged Lady Terumi then vanished with her. That part disconcerted her, not so much that the Demon's Apprentice was still alive - supposedly-dead shinobi reappeared from time to time, there was nothing unusual about that. But with Haku, he'd been confirmed dead by the Mist's ANBU ninja-hunters. When they said you were dead and put a big, black 'X' over your face in the Bingo Book, you were. They'd even brought back his remains as proof.

Another gear, Makaba supposed, blew out a weary breath, then cracked her fingers one at a time. War she could understand. A gang of pissed-off blood-gifted ninja clans carrying grudges she could understand but all of this together was just too much. Even the thought of dying wasn't so bad, it was the not knowing why, it was knowing that maybe this was the end of Kirigakure and that after all the other wars, the struggles, sacrifices and close-calls that it would end on her watch.

"How soon?" Shinsuke asked her.

At least she thought the ninja's name was Shinsuke; she hadn't quite caught it. The introductions had been kind of rushed and perfunctory as none of them was really very likely to live through this anyway.

Makaba bent and chanced a glance, using a small mirror to peek around the corner and down the street. It was ridiculous that they didn't have a sensory-specialist with them but that was a whole 'nother story. That second's look showed a figure, tiny in the distance, bandage-swathed, robed and hooded, pacing their way, untroubled, unhurried, spooky beyond belief. Who or what it was, why the hell this 'leper' and its cohorts were destroying the city, no one knew. The one thing Makaba did know that it didn't (or hoped it didn't) was that Lady Terumi and her second in command, Captain Ao had discovered a pattern in the invaders' paths of destruction. The bandaged figure was walking now toward a crate that had been placed in its path – a crate filled top to bottom with explosive tags and buried in a shallow pit under the street then covered back with paving stones to hide it.

The mist-kunoichi shut her eyes and shook her head. This was some pretty desperate shit. But since they'd already tried every jutsu, every kind of weapon, had even resorted to tai-jutsu hand-to-hand, this tactic wasn't really that farfetched. When the improvised mine detonated, the explosion would be titanic and very likely wipe out yet another precinct of the city they were trying so desperately to defend. Though it had to be said - in its current state, one would hardly notice.

"One minute," Makaba growled a reply.

Everyone shared a glance, got to the ground, donned goggles, wrapped cloth over their nose and mouths, shut their eyes and covered their ears. At this point, no one assumed the explosion would actually take an invader out but maybe, just maybe, weaken one to the point where a follow-up attack might…with emphasis on the word 'might'. The thing was: even if it did work there were eleven more!

The kunoichi fought back a swell of emotions. Now was not the time. Even so she couldn't help but curse under her breath, her mind screaming: How has it come to this?!

Zero.

The world seized under a convulsive boom that shivered her bones, sloshed her innards and filled her with an overpowering dread that maybe this had been too much and they themselves would be to blame for the annihilation of their own village. The ninja gritted her teeth, tears filled her eyes, her entire body tensed tight as a fist as if that might stave off oblivion. Slow seconds trickled past as the cacophony faded at last, its rattling echoes died away and Makaba peered up into a wall of choking grey. Specks and flakes of dirt and stone settled against the laminated glass of her goggles and she nearly gagged on the first hard, slow breath through her improvised mask.

"Forward!" Makaba barked and the squad moved out into the street in close formation with weapons drawn, gliding quickly, quietly but blindly toward, hopefully, whatever bloody fragments remained of their enemy. There was a nice thought but fuck all, any shinobi who only fought when they were favored to win was no true shinobi at all.

Even with all her experience navigating through what her instructors called 'visually-compromised environments' like fog and mist in which she was entirely comfortable, the way forward was agonizingly slow, one laborious footstep at a time over a rubble-strewn obstacle course in the uncertain dark, every inhalation grabbing at the tender lining of her throat. And somewhere out there, she knew, was a blast crater – a fucking deep one. Bad luck to fall into it, Makaba considered then trembled.

Something wasn't right. Was that a flash of chakra or just her nerves? Sure would be nice to have a sensory-type. Unsure, Makaba signaled her squad to stop just as an unheard of breeze picked up. Slow and whispering at first, it stirred the thick, particle-choked air then swelled into a stiff, steady wind.

Just who the hell knows Air Style jutsu around here? the kunoichi wondered, grouchy but still appreciative. Even if they lost their cover at least they'd finally be able to see again, breath again. Makaba crouched, made ready and looked up as the curtains of dust lifted and light returned.

A horrified gasp took her. The 'leper', the bandaged creature with its chakra energies crackling, hovered there in space exactly on the spot it'd been when the bomb had blown, unmoved and unaffected. Beneath it stretched a huge pit - a great blasted cavity where nearly an entire city block once stood. The sense of failure, the utter waste of hope and effort hit Makaba like a blow but more immediately the realization that they were all about to be killed. The bandaged apparition flickered mirage-like and was suddenly there upon them.

"Scatter!" shouted Makaba to her troop, praying that maybe a couple would survive. She herself sprang away just as unexpected reinforcements arrived, zipping by and under the kunoichi in swarming, screaming fury. She looked left and right at all the mist-ninja – a swarm of jutsu-made clones, all golden-haired and small. They had no chance whatsoever against the leper but never-mind that, they had bought her and her squad precious seconds to get away. Gratitude filled her but then it dawned on her where she'd seen him before.

Rather than make straight for the pre-established rally point, Makaba scouted around furiously, circling and searching, eyes scouring the rooftops until she found who she was looking for then landed beside the pair just as the last of the clone army vaporized under the scythes of the invader's chakra.

"Haku," she snarled, looking squarely at the boy though he looked so much like a girl it was hard to think of him as one. Still, this was The Demon of the Hidden Mist's student…and more if you believed old rumors. The new ones said he'd beaten Krishenay Rahaman and half his host of the 108 Demons. Maybe that meant she ought to be more polite but she didn't feel like it and he didn't look very dangerous either no matter what his reputation.

Haku regarded her with sympathetic, annoyingly neutral but wary attention. Only then did words fail her.

"You! You know what's going on, don't you?" Makaba sputtered at last, more frantically than she would have liked.

"Not all of it but quite a lot," answered the slender teenager in a sad, thoughtful voice you'd never take for a killer's. "It would take a while to explain and knowing doesn't help as much as you'd think it would."

Makaba didn't quite know what to say to that. The Demon's Apprentice's reply had only confirmed the worst of her suspicions. Her hands shook at her sides as the image of gears flashed through her mind. "Spare me a long story then. We're fucked aren't we?" she offered desolately.

Haku frowned, a shade of awkward apprehension playing over his porcelain-pale face. "It's likely to get worse before it -."

"Oh stop it already!" the other one, the blond who'd created the clones interjected, stepping forward with fire in his striking blue eyes. "Never mind that," he told her brashly and it dawned on her just how young he was, just a kid, a twelve or thirteen year-old genin, that Haku was not much older. "We GOT this. Look, things look bad now but Haku, Shikamaru, who's like a genius, and this spooky Okino guy came up with a plan and it's freakin' unbelievable!"

Makaba's mind spun with questions and, like a mosquito among the naked, it was hard to decide where to start. "Wait…Okino?" blurted the kunoichi, "Okino the Manatee?"

Maybe it was because the Mizukage was dead, Kirigakure was beset with plague and under a military-enforced quarantine, crawling with monsters and demons and Heaven-and-Earth knew what else that his name popping up didn't seem as ridiculous as it should. And there was something about this odd yellow-haired kid – she'd never seen an expression more sincere or strangely confident. "I -," the kunoichi started, shut up then began again, knowing things were bad if she looked toward a pair like this for a way out. "Ok, fine, so what comes next?"

"We should run for our lives," advised Haku, his contralto voice rising with urgency as he pointed.

Down below and blocks away but still as distinct as if it was right up close, the leper had stopped…so far none of them had stopped for much of anything. But this one had. The chakra energies around it bubbled and swelled, taking on glorious shapes in a kaleidoscope of angry colors. The bandaged figure was no longer at its task of destroying the city. It was coming for them.


Inoue

Doom. One never did get used to the feeling, only able to accept it with better grace. Although terribly interested in knowing howhow Lord Hirai had survived the Fire-Tongue Fleet's bombardment of his castle, how he had threaded his way past her guards, how he had found her in the first place, Inoue knew that none of that really mattered. 'How' wasn't relevant. The fact that this man was still alive, here in the sanctum of her ship that she'd thought utterly impregnable made all questions unnecessary. She could panic, run, attack, scream for help – all choices so unseemly for a woman of her advanced years and status. Surely the grand matriarch of an august ninja clan and Councilor of Kirigakure would not devolve into the 'fight or flight' response left over from primordial biological origins. If Kissohamaru had found her here, she could not escape him. Even if she could kill him, and that was hardly a certainty, it would do no good. Inoue knew him well enough to know that he wouldn't have come at all if that wasn't the case.

No. Now was the time for dignity, for resignation.

In she went, to the chair Kissohamaru gestured her toward. As she walked then slowly sat, the faint stink of cool iron diverted her attention to a corner of the room where a man's body lay face down on the carpet amidst a vast and vivid pool of glistening red.

Inoue's lips trembled with grief as she recognized Pradesh, her head of security. She'd always known he had his faults but never imagined that being able to be killed was one of them.

"You used a garrote," Inoue noted offhandedly, "how terribly old fashioned." The Councilor remembered Pradesh as an absolute demon in battle, a master of countless jutsu and weapons, and yet he'd been taken by a century-old man armed with nothing more than a length of wire strung between wooden handles - a simple farm tool used to slice wheels of cheese. It struck her then too late just how stupid she'd been sending ALL of her Nephilim to destroy Kirigakure. Had she retained even one to stand watch, perhaps this conversation would not be happening but maybe even that would've been too little, too late. Despite years of planning and preparation, her dreams of a new Kirigakure had failed. She had failed and could no more save herself from her fate than a stone could save itself having already gone over the cliff.

Lord Hirai gestured absently and nodded. Lamplight glowed in his hair, lustrous as real silver, just as it seemed to vanish into the leaden features of his face. "I am a bit out of practice but felt the moment called for a certain…emphasis."

Inoue could see it now, the tension in his expression, the anger her colleague held back. Maybe one never got used to that either. At the right side of her desk, close to Hirai's hand, a glass jar rested. Within it, the almost fully but not totally dissolved remains of one of the dozens of timed-release lozenges she'd used to contaminate Kirigakure's fresh water system. The poison was a diabolically clever design with an effect indistinguishable from disease. Beside it sat a child's half-burned doll. She didn't need an explanation of where it had come from or what it meant. The presence of these items unnerved her, testified against her just as the long history she and Kissohamaru shared rose up like a great wave: all the times they'd been allies, all the times they'd been adversaries. In all they'd ever exchanged over decades of working together, in matters great and small, noble and monstrous, never a glimpse of their true selves.

"I have terms, Councilor," Kissohamaru announced aridly, with an edge in his voice as he got right to the point. "They are as generous as the consequences of refusing them are severe."

"Yes, I have no doubt." And Lady Chinami Inoue really didn't have to hear the rest. Her own life didn't matter so much but her clan, her friends and servants, everyone who'd ever been associated with her, most of them safe and sound in Wave Country or distant outposts… She met his eyes. "I accept."

"At last then - a blessed return to sanity." The old man straightened, nodded in acknowledgement. Perhaps he really hadn't known what her answer would be. "Well…the first thing you must do is call off your hounds. And there goes another of Kirigakure's weapons. That you would use them for an errand like this, ah, what a waste." His face crinkled under a pained expression. Clearly he had much to say, much to get to but had just put it aside. "Chinami, I never imagined you'd go so far. Did it really have to come to this, this treason?"

"Yes," Inoue found herself admitting, "it did." At this point, why not? "After the last great ninja war, and then Water Country's civil wars and all those who'd lost their lives, all those who'd sacrificed, we were promised and then ourselves in turn promised to build a better world. But it's not better. Nothing you or I have ever done was ever going to take us there, not really. There's no end to this path, there's just," she froze, trembling with pent emotions she could neither express nor contain, "more path."

"That, my dear," Kissohamaru sighed tiredly, disappointed, "is the whole point. Could you have really spent decades as Councilor without understanding that?"


Naruto

The Kirigakure cityscape flew by in a blur of grey edges and planes as the two bounded again through the streets and up onto the rooftops. Naruto's chakra and breath flowed, sweat dripped as he ran. He'd raced before, pushed himself, tested himself to see how fast he could go and for how long before but it had been a long time since he'd actually fled from anything. A gang of bullies had chased him once; this was before he'd entered the Leaf's Ninja Academy and before he'd made up his mind that even the worst beating he could suffer was better than running away.

Even though these bandaged guys, these Nephilim, had power enough to wipe out an entire city, it was all he could do to stop himself from planting his feet and facing the one chasing them even though it would be suicidal. The prospect of being obliterated didn't bother him maybe as much as it should have which made him wonder if maybe Haku was right to be exasperated with him about stuff like this.

But as desperate as their flight was, the wind was with them! Just as Haku's kekkei-genkai had saved them from falling before now it sped them along, blowing at their backs, lifting them through soaring jumps like magic; it was like running, riding and flying all at the same time. Under different circumstances, this would really be a lot of fun!

Naruto yelped just then as that guiding wind blasted him suddenly sideways, carrying him tumbling through space toward a lower rooftop. Behind him, just where he'd been, the air flashed and sizzled. Half a city block beneath glowed red and melted away in a surge of volcanic heat. From the river of molten stone rose the pursuing Nephilim, cloaked in chakra, its wrappings and robes rippling in the updraft.

Stunned by the sight, Naruto barely recovered in time to get his feet back under him as the roof came up then gave way almost as soon as he'd touched it. The whole building teetered and fell but the two ninja rode the top along its pendulous descent and sprang away, the beneficent wind wafting them well clear of the splash of its debris but depositing them almost into the arms of another awaiting Nephilim.

Naruto gawped, realizing too late that the first, far from being a mindless automaton had been herding the elusive pair toward one of its brethren. Moving far too fast to stop, Naruto pivoted sharply as did Haku and the pair arced awkwardly around the strange figure that only turned its head to follow them with its gaze as they passed. The first had closed in now, chakra blazing in a fiery halo. Its energies leapt to engulf the two ninja but were checked by the second.

Naruto shared a look with Haku who was clearly as surprised as he at this unexpected rescue. Behind them, the two Nephilim settled into a debate of sorts, a contest waged with the push-pull of their fearsome chakras, and though they seemed evenly matched it was the first who prevailed. The figure raced around its near-twin to descend upon Naruto and Haku. As it rose up, its aspect morphed into a glittering monstrosity that gathered into its clawed hands the fire of a hundred suns and sent it lancing toward the pair.

The world vanished, its substance for an instant transformed into unearthly light. When it returned, Naruto felt first the stone under his feet followed by the steam in the air and hot rain on his cheeks. He dared a look past his upraised arms to find a new world tinged in black and fire – a warrior built of chakra that he and Haku were sequestered safely within. Standing before it facing the Nephilim stood Kisame with his sword, Samehada at the ready. Beside the two of them stood Itachi Uchiha.


Haku

"You have a way of vexing us, Naruto," intoned Itachi though his attention remained rooted unwaveringly on the raging Nephilim, "leaving us or leading us into uncomfortable situations. It's quite uncanny."

Inoue's bandage-wrapped soldier stood ghostly still for a moment as it seemed to adjust to its new adversaries, its chakra, like Itachi's, coalescing into a quasi-human shape. Kisame shifted his stance, grinning and eager for war. The Nephilim surged at the massive, former mist-jonin and met him in thunderous collision.

Itachi turned toward Naruto who crouched warily under his desolate, black gaze. "And now it's time we should go," the Akatsuki said.

One moment, Haku wasn't exactly sure what he should do or even what he could do, the next moment his eyes showed him of the blur of piston-motion pulling away from his right side. The Akatsuki had just heel-kicked him. In case he had any doubts pain exploded from his trunk, excruciating beyond measure. Haku collapsed to his knees then to all fours as bile burst up his throat, burning sour in his mouth while tears flooded his eyes.

Naruto was quick and leaped furiously to attack but Itachi snatched him out of the air by the neck and silenced him with a flash of his unholy Sharingan eyes. All of this had been done as quickly and smoothly, with an effortlessness that you might expect from a jonin with Itachi's reputation. But even expecting it would not prepare you.

Haku crawled, palsied and crippled toward the two – Itachi standing triumphant with a lifeless Naruto in his grip like a wolf with a rabbit in its jaws - compelled for whatever inexplicable reason to do something, anything to save him, that even a feeble clutch at the Akatsuki's cloak might make a difference somehow. The teenager's trembling fingers reached but fell short. Itachi looked down at him, his mystical eyes blazed but the rest of his face remained a dispassionate mask.

And then colors filled the air, bright and iridescent like sunlight shining through a prism. Itachi whirled toward the vengeful Nephilim that, having dispensed already with Kisame, stood now just outside the walls of his Susanoo, a plain-robed figure wound in bandages and cocooned in menacing chakra that swelled into the form of an angry god clad in glittering, jeweled fire. All around them, the city evaporated, transforming under the pressure of its will into a sea of white froth. The god raised its fist; behind it ten more just like it flowered then struck.


With teeth clenched, body bent and his alabaster face slick with sweat, Haku took another agonizing step forward then hauled Naruto's slack form after him. He braced as another wave of nausea pulsed, wracking him with fresh misery. Despite that, he couldn't help but chuckle. Of all the man's talents, Itachi's taijutsu was probably the last thing anyone brought up when they spoke of him. It was reassuring to know that the notorious S-class criminal had not neglected this element of ninjutsu though he had at his disposal so many more spectacular expressions.

And as for him, the "Demon's Apprentice", Zabuza Momochi's disciple and blood-gifted scion of the lost Aramata clan - he'd just been brought down with a single blow that, in addition to cracking ribs and bruising organs, had disrupted his chakra system. So where he might have raced past this dingy alleyway before at such speed that it wouldn't have even been a memory, now he had to slog down it inch by inch, dragging his incapacitated teammate (who could hardly be considered large) behind him with scant bodily strength like so much luggage. If Haku had even cleared a few dozen yards since the Nephilim had smashed down Itachi's Susanoo and turned its wrath upon the former leaf-ninja, he'd be amazed. Just to make it to the next street might take him half an hour!

"How p-primitive," he quipped, wheezing. "How do 'lowly' civilians do this every day?"

Of course he knew the answer to that very well, having lived as one for those many months following Zabuza's death. You did what you had to with what you had to work with how ever little it was.

Haku heaved himself forward another step, another, then again and had to stop and clutch his throbbing side. The pain had ebbed some which was an encouraging sign, and he could feel his chakra flow returning though it was just a trickle. A distant boom like thunder suggested that Itachi and the Nephilim were still amusing each other, far enough away perhaps that he and Naruto wouldn't be wiped out by accident. Of course, Haku knew Itachi would never allow Naruto to die before he and the Akatsuki could pry out the Demon Fox's chakra.

Haku looked up then, hopeful that the next street might be closer now than he remembered. Instead he found the way blocked by a bandage-wrapped figure that stood not three paces away - the second Nephilim.

"Serves me right for being overly optimistic," Haku muttered, imagining that those words might be his last, but the sepulchral figure only stood there.

Moments dragged by. Haku narrowed his eyes and, since the bandaged wraith was refraining from destroying them, crouched, dropped his hand to Naruto's shoulder and gave him a pulse of chakra, that little bit he'd recovered. The genin blinked groggily as he shook off the effects of Itachi's jutsu.

"We have company, Naruto," Haku advised him quietly, gravely then slowly straightened and couldn't help but stare at the Nephilim with growing curiosity. With one hand bracing his ribs, the teenager took a halting step toward it.

"W-what are you doing, Haku?" Naruto gasped as he made his way to his feet.

Haku moved closer, enough to notice the narrow gaps in the wrappings over the mummy-like torso and arms, saw the missing flesh beneath. He peered curiously into a man's eyes, glistening through the slits in the bandages. Very slowly, very cautiously, Haku reached out and parted them, peeled them away from a coarse featured face and a coarse-cropped head defaced all over with shinobi seals, surgery scars and a collection of older wounds long faded. The teenager gaped and took a backward step.

"Wait," croaked Naruto in amazement, reading his friend's reaction, "do you know him?"

Haku worried his lip then gave the leaf-ninja a brief, backward look. "Yes…and so do you. It's Meizu, one of the Demon Brothers who attacked you on the road to Wave Country."

The leaf-genin stared then went goggle-eyed as he pointed. "What? Him?!"

"I'd assumed that Kakashi had killed him, but instead…" Haku muttered then paused as a plausible alternate history filled in the blank spaces of what he'd always thought had happened – Gozu and Meizu, alive after their failure to kill Tazuna, making their way back to Wave Country and Zabuza's hideout, ambushed by the Mist's Ninja-Hunters and delivered, not to death, but to new masters much less forgiving, to face tortures unimaginable. Yet here the ninja stood with enough left of his former self to recognize, if only just barely, a former, not friend, exactly, but comrade-in-arms. "You saved us, Meizu," offered Haku solemnly. "Thank you. I—I know you never thought much of me."

If the ninja heard, he made no sign.

Naruto gave a worried frown, peered around Haku and asked in a softer voice, "What happened to him?"

"He's been," Haku searched for the word, "altered."

"What do you mean? Like altered how?"

Haku swallowed and thought for a moment. "You remember how Rock Lee can open his chakra gates through the power of his will," he said, and Naruto nodded. "Meizu's have been forced open or removed through spells and surgery…as have other parts of his mind. Having so much energy flowing through him is destroying his body. He…he is not who he was…and he will not survive this."

"But there's," Naruto started to ask, his blue eyes flickering, "there's gotta be some way to fix him, right?" The silence that followed was answer enough. "How could anyone do something like that to someone?"

Naruto and Haku flinched as the man's energy suddenly surged and began to change. The seals crafted into his skin shifted, the inked lines of kanji and glyphs wriggling like worms into different patterns, their meanings inverted. At once Meizu began to dissolve, skin and bone, even his wrappings yielding to chakra until that too was gone and there was nothing left but the after-image of his expressionless face.

"W-what happened; where'd he go?" asked Naruto.

Haku shook his head. Though he'd deduced from what Okino had left out of their plan that Kirigakure would be saved from Inoue's monstrous soldiers somehow, he had no answer for this. The ninja world had gobbled up yet another life and that was what it did, whatever the reason. It didn't do to dwell for the world had no pity for the introspective. He had to note though how telling it was that Meizu, and very probably all of Inoue's soldiers, had vanished leaving no evidence of who they were or who they had been.

Haku went sprawling then as Naruto shoved him hard and shouted; something fast blurred past his cheek. The teenager spun, senses alert as a blue-grey shape flew at him with maw wide open and ringed with razor teeth but it was knocked aside by an equally-fast Naruto then half-restrained by two of the boy's clones which slowed the gnashing beast long enough for their master to slash it out of existence with his kunai-knives - a shark, or rather, a semblance of a shark made entirely of water. More appeared, flashing from the street or out of the walls but were brought down by a hail of the Narutos' shuriken or frozen into ice by Haku's kekkei-genkai. The two retreated then fled, jumping up to the rooftops, as a ravenous swarm of jutsu-created monsters pressed them.

Haku landed lightly and sprang again, noticing too late the black-robed specter closing on Naruto. In mid-air the teenager went to his quivers and sent two flights of senbon at the Akatsuki which delayed him enough for the leaf-genin to spin away and escape, if only just barely. Aided by the wind, Haku joined his companion and the two dropped from the corner of the building to a jumbled five-way intersection down below. A battered-looking Kisame awaited them, he and his water-clone brethren all with swords brandished, grinning, blocking every avenue of escape. While Haku's mind raced for a way out, Itachi landed before him, silent as an owl and the teenager gasped. A blast of cold wind blew Haku back but before his widening, grey eyes a gleaming spray of crimson and silver flowered – silver, the color of his senbon spilling from his quivers, bright needles spinning through the air; crimson, his own exsanguinated blood.

Haku struck hard against a door, cracking its wood, and slumped down to the pavement. Only then did he feel the pain, the sickening hot gush across his chest and belly, the sudden stickiness of his clothes and the seam cut into his skin and bone. He could tell plenty by how it felt and didn't dare look. Paces away from him, Itachi snapped his sword dry with a smart, expert motion of his arm then returned the blade smoothly to its sheath. The Akatsuki was ragged too from his battle with the Nephilim, his cloak and shirt singed in places, revealing bare, burnt skin; and there was a telling tension about his eyes from one of which leaked a thin trail of blood. In Haku's ears, his heartbeat pounded, almost drowning out the sound of his own name echoing in Naruto's rasping cry while Kisame chortled gloatingly in the background.

I'm sorry, Mari, the former Demon's Apprentice thought, imagining the stream of curses she'd offer to his clumsiness.

Naruto filled his speckled vision as the boy stumbled then froze with a look of horror. Haku's lips trembled as he gave his friend an apologetic look and thought to say something but nothing came to mind.

Clearly intent on not being any further delayed, Itachi paced toward them but was warded away by a curling tail of scintillating energy. Haku blinked, noticing now the mounting fury in the blonde genin's transforming, whisker-marked face, his eyes like two suns, teeth stretching into fangs, the cloak of angry, vulpine chakra burning like unholy fire.