Konoha's Swordsman

Chapter Two

AN: Okay so I posted my first chapter, after working on writing it for several weeks where I added a few hundred words here and there, and then I had an idea that was turning into a chapter to a new story idea. Oh and many people were wondering who would teach Naruto kenjutsu, but I am surprised no one figured it out yet, as I have already dropped several hints at who it will be. And on another note, I have nearly a DOZEN similar collections that could be turned into stories, but only three or four have real potential, like The Chronicles that I mentioned in an Author's Note in Drop our Mask. Let me know if you guys would like for me to post those ideas on the site, and then I would have a poll for which stories I will continue. Drop Your Mask and Corrupted Realities WILL be in there, as I do plan on continuing both of those. Wow, sorry for the long author's note, but I had a few things to say. So, without further a due, chapter two of Konoha's Swordsman:

Naruto ran up to Sarutobi and Iruka, a bright smile on his face, "Alright! We finally get a real mission! Soon enough, I will take that hat from you Jiji!" Naruto could not stop smiling as he felt giddy with anticipation.

Sarutobi chuckled at that, replying kindly, "And I am sure you will someday Naruto."

Addressing Kakashi, Iruka informed him, "Your client Tazuna will be here any moment now, and you will begin your journey to the land of waves right away. I know it is rather sudden to leave so soon, but that is the life of a ninja, you can be called to a mission at any time."

Just like Iruka had said, Tazuna arrived soon enough, walking into the room while sipping at a bottle of Sake.

"What is this? I asked for a ninja team, not some snot nosed brats and a Cyclopes!" The man seemed slightly intoxicated from his sake, yet it was definitely really rude either way.

Speaking firmly, Sarutobi spoke, "I assure you Tazuna-san, the three young ninja are capable of handling any bandits that you could encounter, and Kakashi Hatake is one of the top jounin in the village."

Naruto could hardly believe what he heard. How was Kakashi one of the top jounin in the village? All he ever does all day is be really late, be lazy, and read his porn novel. Either he hid his strength very well, or the village was DEFINATELLY not as strong as people thought. Both were equally disturbing to Naruto.

Tazuna reevaluated his original assessment of the three young ninja, looking over the determined face of a boy with the Uchiha crest on his shirt, so he was obviously better than the others. This assumption was completely backed by the fact that the girl had bright pink hair, and looked like she wouldn't hurt a fly.

The second boy, blonde with blue eyes, was definitely the best looking of the three, from the impressive sword strapped to his back, to the very professional clothing he wore, black cargo pants, a dark gray sleeveless shirt, with a gray vest over it, looking like a gray version of the chuunin vest. He definitely looked the most prepared of three, but the Uchiha kid would obviously be pretty talented.

For what Tazuna was REALLY afraid of, they may actually be enough to protect him from the men he knew Gato would send to kill him. And of course, if the jounin was one of the best in the village, that was definitely a great plus. With Tazuna accepting that the ninja squad would be enough, they headed to the village gates, heading toward wave country.

Haku knew she would always obey whatever Zabuza told her to do, and while this would not be the worst thing she had done for him, what Zabuza and her were going to do, pulled at her heartstrings. To accept the contract from Gato to kill the bridge builder, they would get the money they needed for what they had planned, but they would crush the final hope for the small country that was struggling to be free from Gato's control.

In killing the bridge builder, they would condemn the people to a life of poverty and near slavery. As Zabuza had talked over the little details with Gato, she had decided to walk around the town where the bridge builder lived, and what she had seen had disturbed her.

In the streets, it was rare to see any one out, everyone was holed up in their house, to avoid Gato's thugs. The few people on the streets, were merchants trying to sell what they could, but no one had the money to buy anything, and most of the fruit on the island was past its expiration date.

While Zabuza told her they would do what they had to do to get the money to change Kiri, even if in their efforts to change one country, they doomed another. It was very sad to her, and her heart called for her not to help Zabuza with it, her mind knew she would help him, for it was the reason for her existence, to aid and serve Zabuza.

But again her heart told her that there should be more to life than that, and that she had already paid Zabuza back for saving her those years ago, when everyone else had abandoned her. That part of her told her that killing people was wrong, and it was that part of her that caused her to never kill anyone, even if she had nearly killed many people, she could never bring herself to do it.

But no matter what she thought, she would serve Zabuza, for that was her reason and purpose in life. Setting herself straight, Haku began to walk back to Gato's main base, her mind set back to doing what Zabuza asked of her.

Back with team seven and Tazuna, it had been several hours since they had left Konoha, going at a slow walking pace, since Tazuna would be unable to go faster. As they walked along the road to wave country, Sakura delicately stepped over a puddle, an innocent enough occurrence, if it had rained in the last few days, but as Kakashi realized, it hadn't.

Recognizing the trap that would be set in motion when the whole team had walked by the puddle, Kakashi quickly slowed his pace to walk at the back of the group, and then creating a shadow clone as he substituted with a log, all as he stepped over the puddle,

As he had suspected, as he had stepped over the puddle, two figures rose out of the water, masked men with gruesome claws on one hand each, connected by a long chain. Kakashi observed from behind the tree line as they both dashed very quickly, wrapping the chain around Kakashi's clone several times in a few seconds, then to snap it taught around his body, causing the chakra reinforced chain to snap through Kakashi's shadow clone, which was what Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura and Tazuna saw when they turned around, Kakashi being torn apart by a chain held between two men.

They all got to see as what they thought was Kakashi, torn to shreds by a chain held between two men who had seemingly come from out of no where. One of the man laughed, a short chuckle, "HA! That was too easy! So much for your jounin! With him gone, this will be so easy!"

Sasuke was the first to move, quickly moving towards one of the men, a kunai in hand as he leapt at him. Sasuke prepared himself for whatever counter move the nin would try, but what he wasn't expecting, was for the second man to swing around, nearly catching Sasuke between the chain, but he ducked down below it just in time as it passed over his head. He had seen what that chain had done to Kakashi, and how fast they could kill him with it, the chain would have to be taken care of.

Thankfully, Naruto had realized that same thing, a second before Sasuke did, so he leapt in between the two mystery ninja, stabbing his sword through a link in the chain, driving the sword into a tree. The sudden pull of resistance caught both nin off guard, as they were pulled onto their backs, unable to pull the chain free.

Seeing what Naruto was doing, Sasuke jumped towards one of the nin, who was still on his back, plunging a kunai towards his face. What he did not expect, was for the ninja to break the chain free from his gauntlet, swinging the claw up, exceeding the reach of Sasuke's kunai, heading straight towards Sasuke's face.

To Sasuke, everything seemed to move in slow motion, as he could watch the claw move towards his face. But in reflex, Sasuke cut his kunai back towards the claw, stopping it from reaching up to his face, and then using his advantage of being above his enemy, pushed the claw down, down and down, pushing the deadly claw toward the enemy ninja's face, but then he twisted his kunai, pointing it down at his face, which he dug right between his eyes, which were wide with fear as he died.

It took Sasuke several seconds to look up from the man's petrified face, just in time to see Naruto drive a roundhouse kick right into the other enemy's face, throwing him off his feet to thud against the tree where Naruto stuck his sword in the chain link to neutralize the chain.

Seeing the man slump down against the tree, obviously unconscious, Naruto pulled his sword free from the tree, placing it in the sheath as he turned to see Sasuke, standing over his enemies dead body, his kunai driven into his brain, in what was definitely a very gruesome sight. But what really drew Naruto's attention, were Sasuke's now red eyes, with a tomoe in each eye.

"Sasuke, your eyes!" Naruto pointed at Sasuke's face in bewilderment, not understanding how Sasuke's eyes had suddenly turned red. "They are red!"

It was that moment that Kakashi appeared in between Naruto and Sasuke, eye smiling at them. "Good job you two, you both managed to incapacitate a chunin level ninja alone, even if Sasuke had cut it a little close, but I see your Sharingan in your eyes Sasuke, congratulations!"

"Sensei! You are alive? We just saw you pulled apart by that chain!" Naruto turned to where the ambush had commenced, but saw nothing there, meaning Kakashi had played the chunin level ninja into a false sense of security.

Sasuke, for his part, just stood there stunned. He had his Sharingan! He was another step closer to being able to defeat Itachi! Still stunned, Sasuke felt his eyesight return to normal, and in that moment, he smiled.

Then Sakura and Tazuna walked up to them, Sakura looking green when she saw the dead body, and Tazuna too looked like he would be sick.

Kakashi turned to Tazuna, his voice growing firm as he questioned him, "Now Tazuna-san, mind telling us why there were two chunin level ninja, Kiri's ex-Demon Brothers on top of that? This is definitely not what you told us to expect on this mission, which means you withheld information about the mission, which is a criminal offence."

Tazuna cringed, "Well uh, things in Wave are a lot worse than what you think, there was a business entrepreneur named Gato that set his sights on Wave, and swiftly bought up all of the shipping businesses, then he drove all the prices up on the island, so he has crippled our economy, and driving everyone into poverty!"

"Things were already really bad, but then he started enforcing rules on the people, using hired thugs to kill anyone that tried to stand up to him. I would have paid for a B rank mission, or even an A rank if we could have afforded it, but it took me weeks to get the money for a C rank together, we simply could not afford anything more."

"My solution to Gato's crippling hold on the island, was to build a bridge connecting Wave to The Land of Fire, so that he could not control everything through shipping. But as we are nearly half done with the bridge, he started threatening to kill me, and everyone that would work for me on the bridge, so we stopped working on it so that I could get a ninja team to help us out, and protect us from the thugs he sent after me. He must have learned that I went to Konoha to get help, so he must have hired those guys to kill me."

Kakashi groaned, he had lied about the mission parameters, and if Gato had sent chunin to kill him, he would probably send someone stronger next time, which his team would not be able to handle.

"I am sorry Tazuna-san, but if Gato hires stronger ninja to kill you, my team will not be able to handle that, I do not want to risk my students' lives on this, I will have to take my team back to Konoha."

Naruto was stunned at that, Kakashi would just walk away from the man pleading for help? "Sensei! We can't just walk away from Tazuna-san like this, he will be killed if we don't help him, and if an entire COUNTRY of people is suffering under the rule of a tyrant, it should be our duty to help! Even if we do not get paid as much as we should, I know that if you are as strong as Hokage-sama said you are, that you alone could handle whoever they send to kill Tazuna-san, and we will be here to help you!"

Naruto was completely sincere in wanting to help Tazuna, and the people of Wave, and Tazuna's story pulled Sakura's heartstrings as well, making her want to help as well.

"Naruto is right Kakashi-sensei, how could we just walk away like that? He is begging for our help, I could never leave him if we really can help them." If Naruto's argument hadn't changed Kakashi's mind, having Sakura beg him to let them help him changed it for sure.

Kakashi sighed, "Well, if Sasuke agrees with you that we should help, we will stay with Tazuna-san and ensure that he finishes that bridge, but Tazuna-san will have to at least pay for a B rank mission, maybe A. Sasuke what do you think?"

Sasuke did not even have to think about it, "If we can help them, we should."

"Alright, that settles it then, we will stay and help Tazuna-san."

Walking over to the surviving Demon Brother, Kakashi bound him, and tied him to the tree with ninja wire, and summoned a dog next to him, who with a few words, raced off in the direction of Konoha. Kakashi grabbed Naruto's sword from the tree, handing it back over to Naruto, who replaced it in his sheath.

Kakashi turned, and the five of them again set off for wave country again. It had nearly been two hours that they had walked, when Kakashi had a weird feeling.

'Why haven't we run into anyone else yet, surely whoever else Gato had hired would have caught us by-' Before Kakashi even finished his thought, he yelled out, "Everyone get DOWN!"

Everyone dove to the ground, obeying Kakashi's order, as they all heard a loud "WHOOSH" go by where they had been seconds before.

Everyone turned to look at the giant sword that had come from seemingly thin air that had embedded itself deep into a tree. As they watched, a tall man, wearing blue cargo pants, no shirt, and bandages wrapping around the lower half of his face jumped down onto the zanbato, chuckling.

"Well, well, well, Sharingan Kakashi! With a genin team no less! If you are defending Tazuna, it is no wonder that they failed." Zabuza was still laughing, obviously thinking they stood no chance against him.

Sasuke's eyes opened wide at that, 'SHARINGAN KAKASHI? Kakashi has a Sharingan? How could he have gotten a Sharingan?'

Zabuza spoke up again, "How about you show me that Sharingan, Kakashi! We both know you are going to need it pretty soon unless you hand over Tazuna to me."

Kakashi did not speak to Zabuza, instead telling team seven to stay away from the fight, and protect Tazuna, and that Zabuza was on a level even with him.

Now addressing Zabuza, Kakashi spoke, "I will not hand over Tazuna-san to you, you would have to kill me to get to him." Kakashi slipped into his fighting stance, as a hand reached up and lifted his headband to uncover his eye.

AN: I had forgotten how great it was to check my email after updating a story, to see 100 emails waiting for me :D