Here's chapter six. Special thanks to Black Phoenix 7777 for beta reading for me. His work is really well written and very good, so you should check him out (apologies if you're a girl phoenix)
This chapter ends kinda darkly, so it kinda earns the M rating through violence. Just a warning.
Please R&R!
Zabuza scowled at his visitor as he looked at the short shipping magnate slash crime boss. Gatou had barged in to his hideout, demanding to talk to the recovering shinobi.
It was bad enough that his weapon, Haku, had gone missing, but now this arrogant little man thought he could just come in and say whatever he wanted?
"What do you want?" Zabuza growled.
"I've come to inform you that since you don't seem to be able to complete one simple job, I've decided to hire some new help who can." The little man sneered.
"Hah, that's a laugh. You got lucky when you hired me in the first place. There aren't many missing nin of my caliber, and nobody but a shinobi will stand a chance. So who'd you hire, tweedle dumb and tweedle dee there can't be who you're talking about?"
At this, the two men indicated put their hands on their katana and loosened them in their scabbards.
Holding a hand up to stop his subordinates from doing something rash, Gatou said, "No, I found another shinobi, but this guy actually seems to know his stuff. Plus, he didn't ask for a damn fortune like you demanded."
At this statement, a familiar face entered through the front door.
"Well I'll be damned! Raiga, how have you been? Been to any good funerals lately?" Zabuza was smiling under his face wraps, not that anyone could tell.
"Ahh, Zabuza sempai, it looks like you were waiting for me to arrive for your funeral." Raiga Kurosuki replied.
"Nah, I'll be over this in a couple of days. With the two of us together, we can pull off the funeral of a guy I'm sure you've heard of, Kakashi Hatake." Zabuza said.
"Ooh! I have heard of him. His will be a splendid funeral! Then we can have a nice funeral for this bridge builder I've been told about."
"Don't tell me you don't have a eulogy planned for Gatou here as well?" Zabuza asked.
Gatou and his two lieutenants looked a little upset at this statement.
"Of course! His was a real challenge, because he seems to have no redeeming features. I ended up having to research some of his PR work for his legal ventures to find material."
At this, Gatou was beginning to wonder if he hadn't made a major mistake in hiring another swordsman of the mist.
"Resourceful, Raiga. I'm impressed."
"That means a lot coming from you sempai," Raiga responded with a smile.
Zabuza turned a glare on the three uncomfortable looking men standing by the door. "We can take it from here. You can see yourselves out."
The three left in a hurry, Gatou already making plans to ensure the bridge builder's death.
XXX
It was the day before the bridge was scheduled to be finished, and the day that Zabuza was expected to make his move. Having recovered, Kakashi took Sasuke and Sakura with him, going with Tazuna to the bridge, while Naruko bound Haku, as she would not be bringing Haku to the bridge until Kakashi confirmed that Zabuza was attacking.
This is why Haku and Naruko were upstairs and Haku was artistically bound completely immobile from the waist up with his legs tied together in such a way to form shackles that prevented him from walking any faster than a shuffle, when they heard a commotion caused by pieces of the front door hitting the floor, followed by Tsunami's scream.
Naruko motioned for Haku to stay put, and rushed out of the room to protect the bridge builder's daughter. As she reached the foot of the stairs, she saw the retreating forms of two men, each with a katana strapped to their waist, dragging Tsunami away.
Reaching for a pair of kunai, Naruko flung one at the man on the left, a shirtless man who was holding his sheathed katana in his left hand as he held Tsunami's arm with his right. Using a few hand signs, she aimed her palm at the kunai she had just thrown, calling out, "Wind release: Gale palm jutsu!" A blast of air issued from her palm, catching the kunai in mid flight, increasing the speed of the projectile drastically.
Waraji didn't even have time to blink before the three pronged kunai had embedded itself in the back of his skull.
Before he even hit the dirt, Naruko had flashed to the kunai embedded in the unfortunate lieutenant's skull, flinging a shuriken around Tsunami to neatly slice the smaller man's, Zori's throat.
As Naruko placed one foot at the base of the shirtless corpse's neck to remove her kunai from its skull, Naruko turned to Tsunami and asked, "Are you all right? Where's Inari?"
Shocked at the violent deaths of her erstwhile captors, Tsunami stood in shock for a moment before she answered. "They said they only needed one hostage so they let him go. I don't know where he went. They said they were taking me to the bridge," She answered.
Seeing the woman was in shock from the ordeal, Naruko quickly formed a pair of clones. She sent one back to the house to pick up Haku and bring him to the bridge, while the other was tasked to stay with Tsunami and make sure she was all right.
XXX
(Meanwhile, back with Kakashi and company,)
As Tazuna and the three Konoha shinobi accompanying him arrived at the work site, they saw that all the workers had been barred from entering. Two shinobi, both carrying swords, were standing on the bridge, keeping the workers off of it.
'So he really did make his move today, and just like Haku said, Gatou hired more help,' Kakashi thought. To Sasuke and Sakura he said, "Protect Tazuna at all costs. I'll deal with these two." 'Crap, I recognize that other guy as another of the seven swordsmen of the mist. How am I going to take on two of them?'
Lifting his hitai-ate to reveal his sharingan, Kakashi called out to Zabuza, "Come back for more already? Seems like you couldn't handle one jounin and three little genin by yourself, so you brought a friend to help? I expected more from the 'demon of the mist' Zabuza."
Zabuza just turned to his associate and asked, "Do you want Kakashi, or the kids?"
"Oh, I'll always go with the greater number of funerals," Raiga responded.
"Very well, have fun."
In unison, the two former Kiri shinobi activated the hidden mist jutsu, quickly covering the entire area in a thick fog.
"I learned from last time, Kakashi. This time I won't let you hypnotize me with that eye of yours," Zabuza's voice echoed all around Kakashi, making it impossible to pinpoint his location by sound.
As Zabuza separated Kakashi from the others, Raiga made his way toward the two genin and the bridge builder. Seemingly without warning, a ball of lightning flew through the fog, forcing Sasuke to dodge as Sakura forced Tazuna to the ground.
"Aww, you dodged my attack. No matter, your funerals will still be beautiful when I'm done with you."
The fight quickly degenerated into attack, dodge, attack, dodge, with all the dodging done by the genin, and all the attacking done by Raiga.
Sasuke was pushed to his limits, since Raiga had deemed him the greatest threat, he had focused most of his attacks on the fowl haired genin. As Sasuke continued to dodge attack after attack, He started to see changes in the attacks. They seemed to be becoming slower, easier to dodge. He hadn't realized it yet, but he had finally unlocked his sharingan, one tomoe spinning around one eye, two spinning around the other. [AN: I just checked the manga, and when they show the close up of both eyes, one has a tomoe with no tomoe directly opposite it, so as far as I can tell, he starts with three tomoe divided between his two eyes.]
Just then, all the fighters heard a female voice call out, "Duck!"
Recognizing the voice as Naruko's, Sasuke ducked, and Sakura once again brought herself and Tazuna to the ground.
An instant later, a dozen voices called out in unison, "Fuuton: Daitoppa! (wind release: great breakthrough. I love the Japanese name for that jutsu) The mist was instantly blasted away, along with Raiga, revealing a firing line of clones, all with their palms out.
Seeing the condition of her teammates, Naruko asked Sasuke, "What happened to you, where's Kakashi, and what the fuck's up with your eyes?" she asked as she dispelled her firing line.
Sasuke blinked a few times, processing. Finally, he arrived at the part of the question that most interested him, he asked, "My eyes?" It dawned on him what Naruko must be talking about, and quickly pulling out a small steel mirror, checked his reflection. Sure enough, he had finally achieved sharingan, even if it was incomplete.
Sakura, however, was paying more attention, and answered the other parts of Naruko's question, "We've been protecting Tazuna while that guy was shooting lightning balls at us, and Kakashi's fighting Zabuza over there," she said, pointing Raiga out and then indicating further down the bridge.
Quickly drawing eight tri-kunai, she flung them all at Raiga saying, "Then I need to end him quickly, Kakashi will need our help."
Deftly blocking all the kunai with his swords, Raiga sneered, "Did you honestly think that a handful of kunai was enough to 'end me quickly?'"
"Not really. But this is though," holding her right hand back to strike, Raiga was surprised to see a ball of swirling chakra so powerful it was visible form in her palm. Hearing the urgency in Ranmaru's warning, Raiga prepared himself to dodge the jutsu.
He could not have prepared for his blonde opponent to vanish in a yellow flash of light, only to reappear directly in front of him, her jutsu already connecting.
Astoundingly, he held his ground as the jutsu tore into him long enough for ranmaru's carrier to fall to the ground after the jutsu destroyed the straps. An instant later, the jutsu burst, sending the mortally wounded swordsman flying, right into a crowd of thugs no one had noticed before.
Naruko's finishing blow landed at the same moment that two other things occurred. The first was that Haku arrived with naruko's clone. This was unfortunate, because he arrived just in time to see the second event, which was Kakashi's lightning charged hand emerging from the center of Zabuza's back. As the blood spray spattered Haku's face, the boy fell to his knees, openly weeping at the death of his mentor.
Silence reigned for a long moment, broken only by Haku's broken sobs.
The quiet was broken by a slow clapping. Everyone left standing turned to face this new arrival, Kakashi pulling his blood soaked arm from Zabuza's chest.
Then, a short man standing in front of a crowd of at least one hundred armed thugs, spoke. "Good job! Now I won't have to pay the not so small fortune those two worthless shits demanded for their 'superior services'," he said. "These guys don't require even one tenth the price, and look how many of them there are! I don't care how good you shinobi think you are, you can't win against an army!"
In a quiet, dangerous voice, Naruko asked, "Do you care to test that theory?"
Not even glancing at her team, Naruko said to them, "You three protect Tazuna and Haku." She then formed the familiar cross hand sign, and a number of clones equal to the number of thugs appeared.
At this sight, Gatou visibly paled. However, he tried to keep up a tough attitude, ordering, "Get em, boys!"
The thugs were a little reticent to charge, considering that they had just seen one little girl create an army of armed opponents in an instant. As they crept forward cautiously, Naruko called out, "This is your last chance to surrender peacefully. I cannot guarantee your survival if you continue to fight."
A few of the thugs showed signs of hesitation, but after Gatou yelled, "Come on, she's just one little girl!" the crowd mentality quickly reasserted itself, bolstering their resolve.
Shaking her head, Naruko silently ordered her clones to act. Half of them flung the other half straight up into the air. While airborne, the clones all drew a single shuriken, throwing them at the attacking mob. Several hand signs later, the sixty or so shuriken became six thousand, as each shuriken was multiplied by one hundred.
The rain of death lasted only a few moments, but when it finished, every single thug was dead or dying.
Dispelling her clone army, Naruko slowly walked up to Gatou, who was paralyzed with fear.
Staring up at her bloodstained visage, Gatou couldn't help but think she was some kind of angel of death. "P-P-Please d-d-don't kill me!" he stuttered.
"For your crimes against your fellow man, I grant you the mercy of a swift death."
Using the executioner's blade she had picked up along the way, Naruko took one swing, and without a backwards glance, left Gatou's decapitated corpse where it lay.