I didn't read over/edit this as much as I would have liked, but college has a way of taking up your time. Rather than deprive you of the next chapter, I decided to post and partially edited one now, and come back and edit it later. Hopefully, I'll have some time to write this weekend, but no promises.
Once again, this chapter is written by Lionheart. All credit and thanks goes to him. I'm actually kind of embarassed... he's written more words for this story than I have...
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Kakashi was no longer fighting for Tazuna, the bridge builder. Nor was this about Wave country, or the mission. His very existence as a shinobi of Konoha was now threatened by the poison running through his veins.
Oh, sure, he'd been a genius, had special talents of his own, but since he'd gotten his Sharingan eye those had all faded away into the background as he had come to rely more and more on the powers of his marvelous eye.
Heck, the hardworking, driven idealist he'd once been no longer existed. If he lost the Sharingan he might have to retire as a ninja, because otherwise he'd have to entirely reinvent his style, and that just sounded too much like work.
His lazy days of easy successes were on trial here, and he had to win or else lose those, and possibly his career as a shinobi, forever!
He would have summoned his nin dogs long before this, relying on their noses to sniff out his opponent, but this battle was done on top of water, and his summons could not perform the water walking jutsu. Oh, they could swim, but that would make them clumsy noisemakers at best, too slow to do any good and they'd probably all head to shore at a slow dog paddle anyway. He couldn't afford to waste his remaining chakra.
Maybe if the fight moved to land, but Zabuza would not permit that, as he held too much of an advantage here, out on the water. And, since he held the promise of the antidote that could save Kakashi's precious eye, Kakashi had to go where Zabuza led him in hopes of getting that from him.
So Zabuza had the luxury of staying out at sea where the advantage was his.
Kakashi was also forced to be aggressive and press the attack, else the other nin might just slip away on him and deny him any chance to cure his eye. And that, combined with the other, put far too many choices in the hands of the swordsman already, giving him far too great an advantage.
There was once a time when Kakashi had relished these kinds of fights. They had made him heady with the adrenaline rush and thrill of a dangerous battle. But he'd since become so used to lazy victories that it almost surprised him how much he dreaded this one!
For the first time in he didn't even know how long, the Copy Nin found himself afraid - afraid that he would not get to see this victory. Only then, as he realized that and subliminally called up all of his best resources, did he realize just how dangerously out of shape he had gotten.
And that realization terrified him.
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Anko had been poisoned by a senbon needle, by a fairly potent hallucinogen that Haku had hoped to take her out of the fight, as the best genjutsu were the ones created within your own mind. However, as Orochimaru's former apprentice, Anko had a resistance to all things poisonous that was downright surreal, and it did not have the effect that Haku had desired. Instead, being drugged only seemed to infuriate Anko.
Multiple rains of ice needles out of the misty sky descended on Anko, all of which she deflected using a wind jutsu. Spires of ice rose from below trying to entrap her, which she nimbly avoided, not even wasting her chakra to counter.
'Stupid bitch is wasting chakra fast. At this rate, I'll...' that thought got cut off as a huge sword made of ice neatly bisected her from shoulder to waist.
But it turned out to have been a mud clone, and as Haku landed after making the strike, she searched in vain for her true target. The Konoha kunoichi was good at hiding, at least.
A dozen senbon and dango sticks bounced off of her armor, and Haku moved to relocate through the mist, not bothering to counterattack as she was that confident the source of those was yet another clone.
It turned out she was wrong, as Anko as Anko leisurely watched as Haku blatantly ignored her opponent, seeking the imaginary real target. Anko absently wondered if this was why Orochimaru enjoyed his mind games so much, before returning to her attack.
---- ----
The fight between Naruto and the Demon Brothers involved a lot of running around, as the two attackers were perfectly willing to bypass the remaining genin to take out their target.
It was with an even mixture of brilliance and stupidity that Naruto fought his foes. Dozens if not hundreds of Tazuna henges got involved as distractions, while Konoha's number one surprising ninja had stashed the real one in among the bodies of fallen workers, turning the enemy's disguise and surprise trick back on them while they hunted his clones.
So the Demon Brothers were utterly flummoxed in finding their true target.
On the other hand, they seemed to have settled for beating the crap out of the Naruto, who was losing scores of clones every moment, it seemed.
Sakura just sat there, ignoring the fights going on all around her as she hung her head, bangs hanging down to cover her eyes as she lightly stroked the forehead of the unconscious Sasuke, whose head now lay in her lap. Luckily, the Demon Brothers seemed to be focusing all their effort on destroying Naruto, and the blond boy was taking extra risks to ensure that happy state continued, as he didn't know what he'd do if those two turned their attention to his helpless teammates.
That fight changed when one of the Demon Brothers got a good, solid hit in on the real Naruto, wrapping several lengths of chain about his waist. That should have been the end of it. Were it any ordinary nin that fight would have been over. The missing nin would have flung him around like a wrecking ball, smashed him up against any handy surfaces and probably not have stopped until the orange clad nin was dead.
Instead, Naruto let the other nin lift him high in the chain and swing him wide, but the moment he'd passed over the railing of the bridge on a wind-up to lead into a great big smash to follow...
Naruto Henged into an anchor.
Although he didn't know it, Naruto Henged like nobody else. What he thought was a Henge was in fact something different, more akin to the shapeshifting of a trickster fox than a simple ninja disguise.
He didn't know the difference. No one had ever taught it to him, but when he changed form he took on the qualities of whatever he changed into.
Suddenly pulled off balance, off his feet, and out of alignment, by the utterly unexpected weight on the end of his chain, the demon brother flew off the bridge himself, hauled down by his own chain through a gap in the now broken railing (a gap which was not big enough, originally, for the Demon Brother to pass. No, he tore it wider with his own body, paying for his passage with large rents torn in his flesh), to meet about thirty Naruto copies just waiting for him down below, all jumping up to pummel the helpless nin as he fell.
Naruto jumped back up onto the bridge a moment later, grinning wildly at the sole remaining brother, who suddenly realized he was now alone among an army of clones, and the paired tactics that had been working so effectively before were of no use without a partner.
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Anko had not been this serious about a fight in years, yet the outcome of this one MATTERED to her! So she was pulling out all of the stops and fighting at a level above that which Haku had expected.
An ice clone of a person wearing head to toe ice armor was easy to pull off, disguised well, being very hard to tell from the original. If nothing else they were so durable Anko didn't often know if she'd hit one or the ice bitch. They even cooled the real Haku's body temperature, making them seem all the more realistic. Anko smirked as the clones began to act sluggishly. While the icy armor hid Haku among her clones by cooling her body, the icy temperatures couldn't be ignored, and they were beginning to affect her speed and judgment.
Haku's mirrors had been very strong, but it came as an unexpected and unwelcome surprise to find that her clones were too. They only fought as well as any other Water Clone, or a tenth of the original's power, but the fact that she could abuse them and they wouldn't vanish only helped the girl disguise herself among them more effectively.
The fact that they all wielded massive swords that could easily slice her in two with a hit meant that in spite of those clones having slower thoughts and reflexes than the girl herself, Anko still could not ignore them.
The two kunoichi were exhausting each other with the pace of their fight.
And Anko got even angrier as she suspected that her opponent wasn't really trying to kill her. What did it take to get that chick to take her seriously?!?
Haku sliced apart another clone, but this time instead of dissolving into mud it exploded outward in a hail of snakes, wrapping around her and pinning her arms to her sides, with her legs too tightly bound to move.
The ice wielding kunoichi instantly formed ice blades across the surface of her armor to cut through the bands of constrictor snakes she had been wrapped in and break free.
However, that delay as she fought to do that was enough to finish her.
Anko might have gloated about having created a Snake Bunshin all on her own after witnessing an Aburame do the same using those bugs of theirs, but she didn't have time, nor did she care to waste her breath. This chick was her enemy, and she was going down.
Not soon, not later, now.
She might not have the Chidori, and the Rasengan was simply a legend as far she was concerned, having died out with the Fourth Hokage as far as she knew. Still, those were just the most infamous assassination attacks.
Charging her fist up with poison, elongating her fingernails into claws, Anko appeared out of the mists just as Haku was slicing her arms free of the last of the jonin's snakes. Slamming her charged fist into the girl's chest, Anko grimaced in triumph as she felt the ice shatter under her blow and hear the cry of pain as the maiden took the impact to her breastbone.
Anko's triumphant expression turned scowl as the ice of her victim's armor suddenly sprang forth and raced up the jonin's arm, spreading out over her own body in less than a second, stopping just short of freezing over her head as Haku's eyes at last glazed over and the servant of Zabuza released a soft gasp of air before tumbling aside to lay motionless in the water, kept afloat only by the buoyancy of her ice armor, with the Konoha jonin sealed to her unconscious body by another layer of ice, frozen with her arm still linked to the girl's shattered breastplate, their two linked bodies simply bobbing in the motion of the tide, a kind of feral trophy, a testament to the gruesome nature of the fighting made all the more terribly by Anko's feeble and utterly hopeless attempts to free herself from her covering.
"Great job, Haku." Zabuza's voice echoed throughout the pervasive mist. "I sure picked up something useful. She volunteered to stay by me, to be my tool. Taking out your partner she has given me all the chance I need to finish you off alone."
Kakashi remained silent, yet Anko struggled fruitlessly to speak. Breathing was a challenge for her, trapped in the death grip of the ice.
One of Zabuza's clones appeared to loom over the helpless jonin. "The Ice Coffin technique, Her most deadly weapon. She's rarely used it before, she is too kind. If an opponent merely touches her ice she can cause it to spread over them, immobilizing every part of their body in an armored cocoon not even my great strength can break. In the final version of the attack she can crush the bodies of whomever she has imprisoned with the implacable force of the glacier, pulverizing them instantly, leaving only a spray of blood and liquefied organs behind. Even bones would be powder. But I have not convinced her to kill her heart enough to use it in battle. She has only ever practiced the final form on bodies and on pigs. A pity. It would have been glorious to see it."
A wave came up, striking the trio and then came the sound of shattering ice. Anko sprang up from the water's frothing foam and lunged at Zabuza, who fell back, toying with her...
...until Kakashi appeared by her side. Between the two jonin they had Zabuza on the clear defensive, Kakashi even going so far as to stab a kunai through the mighty Mist Swordsman's arm, proving this to be the real one and not a copy, even as he partially crippled his opponent...
... up until Anko turned on him, stabbing a kunai into Kakashi's side. Kakashi turned to look at her, and as he did brought the Sharingan around to see that this was not Anko. She'd fought by his right side, the one without the power to see through illusions.
He'd foolishly jumped out of hiding to help as Zabuza pretended to have a fight with one of his own clones.
Through a gap in the mist behind him, it was possible to see the true Anko, still trapped in ice, hand frozen inside of Haku's chest, wash up against the shore, having been propelled there by the force of Zabuza's summoned wave - used to get them out of the way so Kakashi would believe his illusion.
The Water Clone currently Henged to look like Anko twisted the knife and Kakashi crumpled, clutching his injury
Zabuza walked out of the mist, chuckling. "And so, the might Copy Ninja, Kakashi of the Sharingan, falls to a simply illusion. Oh, how the mighty have perished."
He brought his sword high with one hand, then brought it down in a mighty slash, cleaving the body before him in half...
...only to freeze with Kakashi's Chidori less than half an inch from his face.
"You used a similar tactic the last time we fought, and Anko would have been swearing up a storm. I expected someone with your reputation to have seen through it, but I guess that was asking a bit too much." Kakashi panted, one of his arms around Zabuza's throat, the other holding a charged Chidori less than a heartbeat away from impact with his enemy's face. "And now, the antidote, if you please," he demanded with false politeness.
Zabuza chuckled deep in his throat. "Ha ha ha! I don't know what you are talking about."
Kakashi scowled. His eye burned, now swollen and watering, unable to see clearly for all of the tears and mucus that was building up within the socket. "You said that you carried the antidote!!" Kakashi screamed in the other nin's face.
Zabuza answered him with a wide, toothy grin, "I lied."
Rage cluded his mind, and Kakashi slammed the Chidori into Zabuza's chest...
...only to learn that his opponent had somehow switched with another of those water clones of his, and that there are penalties for sinking a hand covered with a lightning jutsu up to the wrist in a clone composed of salt water, as salt water conducts electricity.
Kakashi fried, electrocuted by his own technique turned back against him. It wasn't nearly as bad as taking it full on, but it was still worse than he could take in his weakened state.
The famous Copy Nin went down, and it was not an act this time.
The Mist Swordsman's laughter boomed out loud and long across the waves.
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The shrouding mists dispersed, and Zabuza came to the top of the bridge and threw Kakashi's crumpled body down, rolling it several yards across the concrete surface nearer to the remaining Konoha nin.
Sakura screamed out "SENSEI!!" and ran to the fallen form of her teacher, rolling him over to put his head in her lap, whereupon she urgently began to shake him and ask him to wake up. But he was completely unresponsive.
Naruto immediately rushed forward and put his back to her, facing off solo against the swordsman who had destroyed his team.
Zabuza raised his eyes and saw, behind the orange clad nin, the last of the Demon Brothers knocked out and tied to a light pole by his own chains.
"Impressive kid. But you're half dead already, and I've already got my fill of conquests today. You can live, if you'll stand aside. All I want now is the bridge builder."
Naruto smirked, as the terrified Tazuna lurking behind him was just another Henged clone. But, as he was about to open his mouth to reply, a new voice cut across the battlefield.
"I think I can take care of that on my own, now."
The mist cleared out more fully and a small army of mercenary samurai appeared out of the shrouds, at the sea end of the bridge.
Zabuza rounded on the small, old man who stood at their head. "Gato! What are you doing here? And what's with all of these men?"
"Hehehe, the plan has changed." The treacherous old merchant chuckled. "Well, actually, I planned to do this all along. Zabuza, I'm going to have you killed here. I never planned on paying you any money."
Naruto's jaw dropped, and the missing nin stiffened, while the mad merchant went on gloating.
"Hiring a normal ninja from a hidden village is expensive, and they have their own interests that might not coincide with mine, leading to the possibility of betrayals. So I get you missing nins who are easy to take care of afterwards. I get you ninja to battle each other until you are exhausted, and once you are weakened my mercenary samurai can kill you off with numbers, and in the end hiring ninja doesn't cost me a thing. A good plan, don't you think?"
The Konoha genin watched the set of the swordsman's shoulders change.
"Boy, it looks like my priorities just changed."
A trio of Gato's samurai hauling on ropes pulled the ice covered bodies of Anko and Haku up over the side of the bridge. The still body of the younger of the two kunoichi provided a sharp contrast to the silently raging and fuming helpless anger of the entrapped Anko.
Gato walked over to the twin statues, using his cane to rap hard upon Haku's unresponsive skull. "It's a pity I can't keep him like this. The boy would make a fine trophy. If only I could keep him frozen like this he'd make a nice statue for my gardens, don't you think?" Gato leered, before kicking the frozen body, toppling it and the helplessly linked Anko over. "But I have no use for sentimental treasures. I prefer the more tangible sort."
Naruto glanced between the heartless merchant and the girl's silent mentor. "Say something! Stand up for Haku! Weren't you friends?! Weren't you always together? Don't you feel anything at all?"
"Shut up, kid." Zabuza growled, not turning to face him. "I used Haku the same way as I was used by Gato. That's all there was to it. In the world of the shinobi there are only those who use and those who are used. We shinobi are simply tools."
"He threw away his life for you! Doesn't that mean anything to you?" The orange clad nin simply grew more passionate in his cries. "That's too cruel." He wept, tears making sludge out of his face. "He gave up his life, his dreams, for you, and you don't have anything to say?!"
"Kid, you don't need to say any more." The missing nin groaned. "Haku was always stronger than me, in so many ways. It pained her to have to fight you. Haku fought not only for me, she fought for you too. She was too kind."
Naruto was silent, stunned at the revelation.
Sakura glanced up to see this announcement. But Naruto only occupied her attention for a few seconds before she returned it to their sensei's still body.
Zabuza sighed. "Yeah, kid. She was." Looking around his shoulder he met the blond nin's eyes. "I'm glad I got to face you guys at the end. Yeah, kid, you may be right. We shinobi are still human, and humans cannot truly become emotionless tools."
The mighty swordsman stalked forward, and Gato's mercenaries fell back before his slow advance until he knelt at her frozen body.
Zabuza smiled. "This is goodbye, Haku. Thank you for everything. I'm sorry."
The missing nin then raised a hand and brought it down on the ice, smashing Anko free of her imprisonment, whereupon she immediately rolled back, hand raised with nails still elongated and coated in now frozen poison.
Zabuza ignored her except with words, speaking as he raised his sword another time. "Take care of the orange kid for me, shinobi. He may grow up to be better than all of us."
Anko grinned, shaking frozen chunks of poison from her claws. "You don't think I'm going to let you kill these bastards all alone, do you? Don't be greedy."
Zabuza smiled at the jonin.
As the two attacked, Gato's men began dissolving into a thin, red paste.
Behind them, unnoticed by Zabuza, Haku coughed, and a bit of color began returning to her cheeks.
The army of villagers arrived not long after.
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Surprisingly, most of the bodies of the workers on the bridge were not dead. The reason for that was simple. It had been part of the plan for the Demon Brothers to hide among them as two more anonymous bodies, but they could not count on the sharp senses of two of Konoha's jonin to miss their breathing.
Rather than use jutsu not to breathe, and perhaps give themselves away by the chakra signature or a revealed genjutsu, Zabuza's side had elected to hide hay in a haystack - two breathing bodies among many breathing bodies, injured, incapacitated but not dead.
Picking them out of that disguise was much harder. So they could safely be assumed to pull it off, which, indeed, they had done.
The amount of living workers was even higher than that background would have called for, as Haku had been allowed to practice her difficult and dangerous false death technique on them, in case her team might need it in the future, as they'd been forced to rely on it before.
It also spared her heart to feign death rather than inflict it on those who had brought no hurt to her precious people.
Still, that is not to say that all of those workers survived. Zabuza had required some pools of blood and sprayed entrails across the scene for the effect he'd wanted to achieve, one to put those jonin in a fighting frame of mind so they could be goaded into an attack upon those clones, and thus fall into the Mist nin's little trap with the exploding notes and falling bridge.
However, it had been part of their plan from the beginning, that if things had gone according to their design, Zabuza and Haku would occupy those two Konoha jonin while the Demon Brothers would fight past the resistance of whatever genin they'd left behind to guard Tazuna, and once the bridge builder was dead the missing nins would withdraw. If those Konoha shinobi had tried to follow, it had been part of their plan, suggested by Haku, to inform their pursuers of the living yet injured state of so many of those fallen workers, and that they could yet be saved.
It was by no means a certainty that they would then call off pursuit. But the ninja of Konoha had been known a time or two to be too tender hearted, and it was a plan that cost the attackers nothing whether it failed or succeeded.
Although, there was almost a certainty that at least Kakashi would remain on their tail to press the attack in hopes of retaining the use of his spectacular eye. But for Zabuza it was all to the better if Kakashi sought a fight while some or all of his supporters got sent back to save the wounded.
Still, while it had not worked out that way, it brought great joy to the people of Wave who'd arrived for the rescue to find, after Zabuza had picked up his team and departed, that the losses among their own were few.
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It was party time in Wave.
Gato had been defeated, his mercenaries dispersed, and the enemy ninja departed. The injured had been carried off to be cared for, and a time for celebrations had begun.
All of the bodies had been removed, save for only a few, and as a quiet descended on the bridge, Naruto found himself alone with his team. Turning to his teammate, enough of the thrill of victory had passed that he began to worry over the fallen.
"Eh, Sakura, are... Sasuke and Kakashi-sensei..." he gulped.
The girl raised her head, radiating calm. "They are going to be fine, Naruto. These two merely need to sleep for a few days."
Instantly buoyed up, the boy poked a thumb at his chest. "Oy! Sakura-chan! Did you see how I protected you?"
"Thank you, Naruto. That was very brave." The pink haired girl smiled up at him, causing the boy's face to light up in a megawatt grin. Then, acting very unlike Sakura, she moved the ninja's head from her lap and placed it gently on the ground, standing up she walked over to the blond lad blinded by his own smile. And, with a statement of, "Such bravery deserves encouragement so you'll continue to fight your best later," she kissed him.
Naruto nearly died of joy right there, freezing up from the shock of it.
Releasing him demurely, the pink haired girl blushed and looked at the ground. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom."
As she walked off into the forest, Naruto called after her, waving, "Oy! Sakura-chan! Does this mean you'll go out with me later?"
Turning around once, the young kunoichi smiled. "Oh, Naruto-kun! You have to grow up into more of a gentleman before I'll do that!" Then she departed into the forest with a skip in her step.
Once safely under the cover of the trunks and the leaves, the kunoichi's face and clothes morphed, losing Sakura's features and pink hair as she released the Henge to reveal the female medic nin who had helped Zabuza earlier in his bid to become Mizukage.
Zabuza and his helpers met her there in the forest. The medic nin answered their unspoken question by raising a bottle, in which three eyeballs floated. "I got them all, collected each one by playing 'distressed teammate checking up on her wounded allies'."
Yes. The life of a missing nin was hard, almost unbearable at times, and no scrap of advantage could be discounted.
Especially the Sharingan.
"Did the boy's activate?" Zabuza asked of her harshly. "No use transplanting an eye if it grants us no advantage."
"It did," she nodded. "Not naturally, but stress and panic hormones are what triggers them most often. There are jutsu used to simulate those, not used often because the subject has a fifty percent chance to die of heart failure. But the boy lived through it, so all three eyes are now active Sharingan."
"Excellent," Zabuza grinned with a shark toothed smile.
"I also discovered that Haku was alive."
"What?!?"
"The jounin used poisons that forced her into a near death state, similar to what Haku used on you. Unfortunately, I was unable to recover Haku without suspicion, so I left her in their care."
Back at the bridge, Sakura groaned and rolled out from under a pile of bodies, and woke with a start. The last thing she recalled was seeing Sasuke get hit by lightning and crying out his name. Now everything was different.
Naruto only scratched at the back of his head. "Oy, Sakura-chan. How did you get under there? I thought you were going out to take a pee?"
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Two days later, when Sasuke and Kakashi come out from under the anesthetics they were surreptitiously put under, they found themselves in Tazuna's house.
Sasuke blinked awake to see Sakura bending over him. However soon her look of joy changed to one of concern. "Ano, Sasuke," Sakura asked, very shy of pressing about his wounds. "Why did your eyes turn brown?"
Moments later she ran downstairs to find their teacher standing by the door staring out to the sea. Kakashi turned around to face her. But where the red Sharingan eye had once been was a perfectly normal one whose iris was blue.
"Kakashi-sensei, what happened?"
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End Chapter
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Omakes- Lionheart originally wrote these as part of the chapter, but I felt they didn't fit well with how I wanted to carry it out. So here they are as omakes.
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Omake One
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"Kid, those missing nins about turned you into hamburger, and you aren't training till I SAY you're training, got that?"
Naruto stuck out his lip and pouted. It had been an interminable two days.
"Here," pulling him by the arm, Anko shoved him into Gato's office. "I'm sick of you complaining about being bored. Here is kind of a companion game to Hokage. It's called 'Merchant Empire', and you'll find all of the manuals and things on the shelves and in those file drawers. The game is loaded onto the computer. It was Gato's copy. Have fun."
And with that, she turned and left.
---- ----
Omake Two
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"Ey, dere brudda! Weesa jus kummin bak from a biiig long assignment an we be wantin our money!"
Iruka looked up from the papers he had been working with at the mission desk. The haggard Konoha chuunin gazed up into the face of a tall, muscular blond guy with long, wavy hair, blue eyes and a mustache who was wearing one of the loudest Hawaiian shirts he had ever seen open front over a tee shirt, a set of sandals and Bermuda shorts. Beside him was a gum-smacking blonde girl, and two teenage boys with red hair and freckles, his genin team, obviously, as the big man pounded their backs joyously, saying in a rich, deep voice, "Say hello to da man wit our paychecks, my little keikeis!"
"WhatEVER, Dad." The newly blonde Haku rolled her eyes in a perfect imitation of a rebellious teenage girl as she smacked her gum. "Can't we just get this over with? I'm overdue for a facial and manicure. It's been, like, forEVER!"
Iruka noted the young girl, wearing a bright blue leotard under a flower print skirt, with legwarmers and wristbands on, looked rather cute. Almost Naruto's age, too.
Noting his scrutiny, the girl bent over to peer at the chuunin over the tops of her glasses. "Hey! I remember you! You're that Academy teacher guy. Iruka, right? Let me tell you, you gave a GREAT lesson on infiltration! Saved my life more than a few times."
Puffing up with pride and satisfaction that at least one of his former pupils remembered him fondly and found his lessons valuable, the chuunin smiled.
The two redheads, dressed in identical polo shirts and slacks, both nodded in syncro. "What she," one started. "Said," the other finished.
"Cut it out, you guys. You're creeping me out." The undercover Haku addressed the former Demon Brothers as she smacked her gum loudly.
They weren't the Demon Brothers. After all, the Demon Brothers were dead, right? The reports had been filed that said so. No, these were an entirely different set of people, just another genin team of Konoha returning from a long term mission, that's all.
And, if the medic nin who'd helped them out had, after going missing nin, had become a specialist at cosmetic surgery, offering permanent disguises, hair follicle treatments, and other subtle identity alterations to missing nin, well, that wasn't listed in any Konoha records, now was it?
Nor in Gato's. They'd made sure of that. After all, only an idiot would not presume that Konoha's shinobi would be all over the old man's records within minutes of his corpse cooling.
So that was why, already having identities as Konoha ninja who'd been spying on him, before they'd left, the former Zabuza and his team had inserted all of the appropriate files into that merchants records to show the other end of that story, that people matching the descriptions of the Konoha team had been there doing their jobs, just like good moles should.
Gato's pet bureaucrat just moments ago finished filing the teams reports over the years into the official mission archives. It wasn't their fault if no one had ever bothered to look over them before, now was it?
And that mole in Konoha's bureaucracy, along with several other of Gato's key contacts, had had their information erased from Gato's records before Zabuza's team had left Wave country.
It wouldn't do for Konoha to find out about them, after all. Not while the missing nins could still find their own uses for them.
The rest of this disguise was acting, but as missing nins they had to be good at that to have survived that long ducking and dodging hunter nins. And to build images separate from their previous outlaw selves, they were operating by the principle "Different is good."
"Sorry," "Sis," one twin started and the other finished, to Haku's well-acted accompanying shudder.
"Yousa gotta forgive da little keikeis," Zabuza gave a wide smile of perfect, even teeth (that the medic nin had corrected from his previous look of filed points like shark teeth) as he idly played the ukelele. "Weesa played a family fo so long dey habbin trouble makin da switch bak."
Haku rolled her eyes, folded her arms and stomped her foot, addressing her mentor as this act required, "Oh, and like a couple of Kyuubi orphans like us object all that strongly to having someone they can call 'Dad'. Look, you guys might not have been my family before, but you are now. Deal."
Iruka suppressed his chuckling over this interplay as he finished checking out their files, accepted the final mission report form, and filled out their pay vouchers, thinking fondly all the while that this was what made Konoha great: their people.
"Saaay," Haku pivoted round to face him, smiling wide and chewing loudly as she played up the airheaded blonde role to the hilt. She asked about a team she knew from records was dead. "How are Yuka and her team doing? I bet they haven't been on any assignments as important as this one, huh?"
Iruka smiled sadly, looking up gently. That was really the problem with long term missions, as teams got out of touch and didn't hear the news. That disaster was years ago. "I'm sorry. Yuka's team was killed on a mission," he checked their papers, "not long after you left, actually."
"Oh! Bummer! Who am I going to hang out with now?" Haku drawled, looking appropriately disappointed. "What a major downer."
Handing out their rather substantial pay checks for an extended duration B rank mission, Iruka smiled as the group left, quarreling. They were not the first team he'd seen come back majorly changed by long term infiltration, nor would they be the last. Most would normalize eventually, though there were one or two exceptions. But it still helped him feel good inside to know that Konoha's people would always pull through in spite of it all.
That pleasant feeling doubled when he saw them reach a consensus, and instead of taking a rest to spend their pay after a very long assignment, head over to the dispatch desk to pick up another mission.
Yes, the people of Konoha were strong enough to pull through anything.