12

Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Kakashi, and Tazuna were about six hours away from Kirigakure. They'd stopped for the night in a small clearing and were bedding down for the night. Naruto had called the first watch and Sakura had already fallen fast asleep against Kakashi's shoulder. Sasuke was nodding off, and Tazuna had just meandered into the forest to, as he put it, "take a dump". The statement was something Naruto hadn't wanted to hear, and it had put disturbing images into his head. At the moment he was trying to kill his imagination.

"Are you all right?"

Naruto looked up from his blank inspection of the scroll he held in his hands. He'd planned to look through all the new weapons he'd acquired earlier in the day and sort them into things he thought he would need and things he would save to keep at his apartment for later use. Naruto shook his head for a second and focused on what Kakashi was saying, finally realizing he was speaking of the events earlier in the day. He was beginning to hear that phrase a lot.

He nodded his head. "I…yeah, I'm fine. I just feel foolish now. I was dwelling over the past far too much even though I've seen the effects from doing that before."

"Sometimes…" Kakashi began. "Sometimes grief stops us from seeing past the things we are dwelling on. It happens to the best of us."

"But to let it get so far…" Naruto persisted.

"You seem intent on making the worst of yourself, Naruto." The Jounin pulled Sakura down off his shoulder and maneuvered her head into his lap. Naruto assumed the man's shoulder had been falling asleep, but Sakura didn't protest the movement, sound asleep as she was.

"I…"

"Regardless of age, anything can get to anyone in the right circumstances. It doesn't matter who you are or how powerful. But, you said you won't have to worry about having those panic attacks anymore, right?"

Naruto nodded hesitantly.

"Then stop beating yourself up about it. The past is the past."

"That's what Kyuu has been saying."

"Your Bijuu?" Naruto nodded at Kakashi's questioning look. He was sure he'd mentioned her name out loud before, but he didn't remember actually explaining who she was, and, although he was sure Kakashi knew who he was referring to, he knew Kakashi was curious. No one really ever got the chance to talk to a Jinchuuriki about their Bijuu, after all.

"You should listen to it."

"Her. Kyuubi is female." Naruto said, uncrossing his legs and stretching them.

"Right." Kakashi said without missing a beat. "You should listen to her. She's right."

"I think so too."

"Do you?"

"…yeah." Naruto confirmed awkwardly.

"Good, then." It seemed that there was no way to end such a conversation, and Kakashi's words sort of trailed off into the air.

The two met each other's eyes and Naruto started giggling like the child he appeared to be. Kakashi smirked, now sure that his student was in a better mood. Sakura groggily swiped a hand at the silver-haired Jounin, murmuring for them to be quiet. That only made Naruto laugh harder, but his laughing fit didn't last long; Sasuke looked up at them with squinted, tired eyes and glared. Then he got up and, leaning his head on Naruto's thigh as he laid back down next to the blond, told them off in a clearly sleepy voice.

"Shut up and be a useful pillow, dobe."

Just hearing that phrase out of the once stoic Sasuke's mouth made Naruto want to roll around in laughter, but, seeing the dark rings around Sasuke's eyes, he determined to let the Uchiha sleep.

He looked up and met eyes with Kakashi, seeing the man's smirk die off below his mask as he caught sight of Sasuke's tired features. They exchanged questioning glances, but neither of them knew what was wrong. They'd been travelling all day, but that was no reason to be so tired. It was like Sasuke hadn't been sleeping lately. He was beginning to worry about the boy. Had this happened the first time they'd come to the Land of Waves? Had he not noticed?

Naruto was abruptly interrupted from these worrying thoughts as Tazuna strolled back into the clearing. Immediately, Naruto did a subtle Kai release. When nothing happened, he relaxed, assured that the man was no intruder in disguise.

He'd had a bad experience back when he was in ANBU, where an enemy had killed one of his teammates and acted as them for just enough time to kill his other teammate. Considering he'd been the only survivor, although he'd killed the enemy ninja, it hadn't been the best of missions, and it still hung over his shoulders as a warning to check when someone came back from somewhere out of sight.

Tazuna, unaware that he'd just been the target of Naruto's intense focus, scratched his ass and fell back onto his bed roll, falling asleep immediately upon impact. Naruto shook his head in disgust. No matter how much the man had grown on him in his own time, the bridge-builder was still a manipulative, arrogant drunkard. Especially since none of the events that had caused them to get close had even occurred yet.

But, putting the matter aside, and with these brilliantly jovial thoughts in back of his mind, Naruto set to work on inspecting his new weapons. Kakashi just watched him with a raised eyebrow until he finally leant back and closed his visible eye.

xXx

Naruto pushed his dampening hair from his eyes as they walked through the mist. He'd started growing his hair out and it kept falling in his eyes so often that he was tempted to cut it all off again, but he remembered how useful having long hair was, since he'd adopted Jiraiya's Hari Jizou, and other hair jutsu.

They'd just stepped through the boundaries of Kirigakure a few minutes before and he was on guard for a threat he knew would soon appear. Kakashi lead the group with Sakura and Sasuke following behind with Tazuna in the middle. Naruto brought up the tail end of the group. His hands were in the pockets of his pants, idly playing with the kunai and shuriken he'd hidden there for quick access.

This time, he ignored the rabbit rustling in the brush, but when Kakashi sent him back a casual glance, which the man had done every time there had been a suspect noise (which had begun to make Naruto a little exasperated), Naruto nodded. The attack had begun.

xXx

When I saw Naruto nod at Kakashi out of the corner of my eye, I knew something was up.

The looks had been casual enough. Just a sensei glancing back to make sure his students and client were alright. But by the fourth shaken head from Naruto, I figured the two of them knew something the rest of us didn't. Sakura was clueless; she was diligently observing the landscape for something out of place, not bothering to pay any attention to her team. And Tazuna…well…the old geezer seemed to be drunk again.

Finally, I noticed a pattern. Every time there was a suspicious noise, anything that made a sound loud enough to be a ninja lurking in the shadows, Kakashi looked back at Naruto. I took an educated guess, considering ninja had already been hired by Gato to kill us once already, and figured that every time Naruto shook his head meant there was nothing to worry about. Going with this theory, when he nodded his head, I tensed up. So did Kakashi. Well, lookie there. Got it right in one.

"Get down!" Kakashi shouted just as a whistling sound reached my ears.

Although I saw Sakura freeze, I jumped at Tazuna, not expecting him to be able to react quickly to Kakashi's command. I pushed him down to the ground and he fell with an oomph. I hoped Naruto could get to Sakura, but he did one better.

Just as the huge flying blade reached the edge of my sight, Naruto jumped in front of Sakura, who was directly in its path and about to get cut into even halves, and who would've never been able to move in time, and he diverted the path of the blade.

With a kunai.

I laid there in amazement and something I don't want to admit as awe. It would take amazing skill, accuracy, and strength to pull that off. To completely alter the direction of something that large flying so fast.

"Well, I see your guards aren't completely incompetent, bridge-builder." Came a rough voice from the direction of the tree that the sword had imbedded itself in.

Pulling Tazuna to his feet and maneuvering him behind me, I looked and saw a tall gangly-looking man standing atop the handle of what was presumably his blade. He was shirtless and wore striped pants and gray camouflaged sandals and arm-warmers. It didn't look like he had any other weapons on his person. Either he was incredibly stupid or insanely powerful, but the moment I looked into his eyes I immediately decided the latter. He had cold, cruel eyes.

I felt more than heard Naruto and Sakura come up on either side of me and Tazuna in a protective formation as Kakashi stepped back and motioned us.

"Momochi Zabuza." Kakashi said simply.

"So you've heard of me Kakashi Hatake. I'm honored." The man replied sarcastically.

"You all should stay back. He's on a different level than those other ninja. You'd just get yourselves hurt." Kakashi directed at us. Somehow though, I felt like he had left something out, like he'd added more to the sentence in his own thoughts.

Slowly, the silver-haired Jounin put a hand up to his hitai-ate and pushed it up, uncovering his eye. Because none of us could see his face, we wondered what he was doing, but the man, Zabuza, commented on the movement.

"You must think highly of me, Hatake, to reveal your Sharingan so soon."

"Sharingan?" I exclaimed, unbelieving of the sentence that had just passed the man's lips. There was no way anyone could have the Sharingan. Me and my brother were the only living Uchiha! Unless…

"Calm down, Sasuke. I meant to show you this earlier, but I never got the chance. For right now, just let it be." He glanced back at me and I could feel my eyes widen when I saw the proof of the Sharingan under a scarred, half-mast eyelid. It was spinning. I took a deep, shaky breath and nodded slowly. A deep part of me acknowledged that, before I graduated from the academy, I wouldn't have taken this discovery nearly as calmly. Everything that had to do with the Uchiha clan just got under my skin, then. But, either way, this was a bad time and place for me to make a big deal about it.

"Good, we don't need brats getting in the way of our fight, do we Kakashi?" I nearly growled at the man, but the words had a sense of finality to them. When I focused in on the man, I saw that he held himself in a position to jump as he crouched on his sword with his legs tensed.

A second later he and his sword disappeared with a large crack.

xXx

I followed the conversation warily. Almost all the actions taken so far had been the same, but none of the words had been. This time around I recognized Sasuke's shock at seeing the Sharingan, but he hadn't spoken out the first time; I really couldn't expect anything to be exactly the same in this timeline.

My arm was still a little numb from where I'd redirected Zabuza's sword, but I'd wanted to prove to Zabuza that I had some strength to me. That way I could talk to him as an equal a little more easily later on. After all, Zabuza was one of those people who respected power above all else. Somewhere in the area I could feel Haku watching the proceedings and I knew he was focusing almost completely on me and Kakashi, the foremost threats in the group.

The moment Zabuza jumped away from the tree I had to physically restrain myself from throwing my kunai at the spot I knew he'd land. I cursed the fact that I had to hide most of my abilities from my teammates. And the main problem was that even the weak techniques that I had revealed were already making Sasuke suspicious. Thank Kami Sakura was too amazed to think about it further, but now I had to be more careful.

Zabuza landed on the surface of the water not far away from us. There, he gathered his chakra and activated his signature technique. His Kirigakure Jutsu. As another bad sign, he did this without speaking, whereas I was sure he had bragged about it the first time around. The mist started to grow thicker around us, and before it grew so thick that I could no longer maintain eye contact with him, I decided to get Kakashi's attention. I felt Zabuza's killing intent spread over us through the mist.

"Kakashi-sensei…" I started in a worried voice. He looked back for a moment after losing Zabuza's movements. Without moving my head I looked out at the mangroves pointedly.

"Don't worry, Naruto. I will never let my comrades die." He said to hide his subtle nod. I nodded back. Before I made my own silent escape I looked over to Sasuke. He was trying to stop himself shaking. I clenched my teeth, remembering the feeling.

The moment I silently summoned my clone and made my way out of the mist was the same moment Zabuza attacked Tazuna, Sasuke, Sakura, and my clone. I felt my heart speed up in giddiness as I realized my abilities had risen back to such a point that I could outmaneuver a master of the silent killing technique in the midst of his own attack. Shaking my head and drawing my attention away from the fight, which I was sure Kakashi could handle, I extended my senses to search for Haku and a second later I jumped away to find his hiding spot.

The second I came up behind the crouching, masked figure, Haku spun around and shot some of his senbon needles at me. It reminded me just how much I abhorred senbon needles. I caught four of the five he sent at me, but I only just managed to move my neck aside in time for the fifth to sail past it.

"Who-!" I saw Haku freeze before darting a glance back at the fight where my clone was shouting out a warning to Kakashi that Zabuza was behind him. Haku quickly reached into what I assume was a hidden pocket in his kimono and pulled out more senbon.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" I said quietly, putting up a hand in a widely accepted surrendering gesture and the other with the index finger against my lips, telling Haku to be quiet. I didn't want to draw the attention of the people fighting on the ground. Haku quirked his head to the side in confusion but did not put his weapon down. Good man.

"I don't care what you're doing here or what you do after this, but I want you to deliver this letter to Zabuza after the fight. The offer it contains includes you as well. I want you to think very carefully and realize that every word in it is the truth."

"And what guarantee do we have of this." Haku replied warily, taking the envelope I had pulled from one of the pockets of my pants carefully and inspecting it to make sure it was no trick.

"None. But realize that you have everything to gain and nothing to lose by only reading and considering it. If you make a decision, come find me. I'll be in the area the letter specifies. And don't get any ideas; that's not where Tazuna is going to be."

"And what makes you think you and you're team will survive this fight?" Haku asked softly.

I smirked. "Intuition." I backed away to jump down and rejoin the fight, but Haku stopped me. "Who are you?"

"If you decide to take me up on my offer, I might just tell you."

The next moment found me switching places with my clone just as the mist completely dispersed. My spirits sunk as I realized Kakashi sensei had just been captured in Zabuza's water-prison jutsu. I realized I was going to have to get him out of it. Looking around me, I saw the others were nearby and one of Zabuza's water clones was standing almost ten feet away from me. A thought occurred to me that, if everything was going the same way, why not let it stay the same?

I guessed I was supposed to be scared, but the adrenaline of the fight was just too much. Either way, the man took my shakes as fear and I let him.

"Look at the scared little boy, playing at being a ninja. You know just because you wear a hitai-ate doesn't mean you're a ninja."

I glared at him. "Shut up!" I shouted. I still didn't take well to anyone insulting my pride as a ninja and apparently he didn't take well to being told what to do. I quickly put my arms in front of me to cushion the blow of the kick Zabuza aimed at me. I let myself fly back, but before the force of his kick connected I subtly put a tracking jutsu on his sandal. I had to make myself look like I was a genin, after all, but there was no use in letting the opportunity go by.

When I landed on my feet, the man raised an eyebrow at me. "Well, aren't you the talented little genin, to take a kick like that and still manage to stay upright."

"I thought-" I paused, winded even though I'd blocked the brunt of the kick. "I thought that I wasn't even a ninja in your book."

"Are you trying to make me mad, smartass?" Zabuza asked, amused regardless of what he'd just said.

"Naruto, everyone, you have to get out of here!" Kakashi shouted from his prison. "He can't follow you if he has to keep me here."

I raised an eyebrow myself at that. There was no reason for the man to say that. Even if Kakashi didn't think I could handle Zabuza, I had still made it clear that the man had a partner, who could and would hunt us down. I mentally shook my head. He must have been trying to further my cover.

"I have a plan!" I looked back to Sasuke and Sakura and declared loudly into the open air while locking eyes with Sasuke. He looked confused for a second before nodding, though.

"No! This fight was over the moment he caught me! You have to protect Tazuna!" Now I knew Kakashi's words were to further my cover. Kakashi had already made it clear to Tazuna's face that, on this mission, he valued the lives and well-being of his students far more than that of their pseudo-client. I looked back at Tazuna who was staring at me with something like surprised realization, as if he'd only figured out just now that there was something more to me than it looked.

"No…He's your sensei, and I got us all into this mess in the first place by lying, so you just do what you need to." Tazuna said with a firm nod.

"That's that then. I suppose it's time for some teamwork?" Sasuke commented. Sakura looked a little dazed.

"Yep."

"Do you brats really think you stand a chance against me?" I could tell the man was about to go on and I had a feeling that it was to enlighten my team upon his upbringing. I didn't need Sasuke's or Sakura's nerves to be any worse than they already were, so I interrupted him.

"So I'm back to being a brat again? Make up your mind!" I think I went too far. Zabuza glared at me and went to attack, but he didn't go for me. Seeing him darting forward to elbow Sasuke in the gut, I raced to my right and managed to beat him there and take the hit for Sasuke, who wouldn't have known how to take a hit from someone who had actually wished him real harm. I was almost sent flying again, but Sasuke, cursing at me all the while, steadied me.

"Why the hell did you do that for, dobe!" He said in a harsh whisper in my ear.

"Because I owe you." I answered back, even though it must've confused the hell out of him. Without paying attention to his reaction, though, I immediately formed the hand-signs for my clone technique and summoned enough that I was camouflaged among them.

Zabuza made a comment or two on the number of clones but I paid him no attention until he started swinging his huge sword around and destroyed over half of my clones all at once. I transformed myself into the form of one of the windmill shuriken I had nipped off of the Demon Brothers and had a clone throw me to Sasuke. The moment I flared my chakra at him, he knew the plan and secreted one of his own shuriken out of his pack with a big production and a subtle hand. The next thing I knew I was spinning through the air. Sasuke threw me and his shuriken (AN: That's not a weird way to think of it at all, is it?) at the original Zabuza, who caught Sasuke's shuriken easily. After he dodged me by jumping up into the air, I released the transformation and cast multiple kunai and shuriken at him.

I let myself fall into the water just as Zabuza was forced to release Kakashi from the water prison. As I swam to shore, I realized that everything that happened after that, happened exactly the same way it did before, with Zabuza and Kakashi exchanging banter and attacks like crazy and us, the rest of the team and Tazuna, standing there on the sideline looking like idiots.

After we were soaked in a bigger-than-large wave from Kakashi's and Zabuza's fight, the situation came the point where Haku appeared, just after he made it look like he'd killed Zabuza. The boy/hunter's gaze fell on me for a short while as he explained away his station and purpose for being at this place. Kakashi, looking more than dead on his feet, just looked at me out of the corner of his eye. Seeing me make no move to stop the two of them, he did the same. Sensing the lack of ill intent, for the time being at least, Haku spirited himself and Zabuza away.

Kakashi fell into a dead faint the moment they were gone. I shivered, realizing that I'd have to be careful in the way I dealt with things. There was no way Kakashi would be able to recover fully by the time the battle on the bridge came around, and he wouldn't be able to help if I got myself into anything I couldn't handle.