15

The moment Naruto stepped back onto the bridge was the same moment that one of his clones alerted him of Gato's arrival. He nearly jumped in surprise at the suddenness of the dispersion of his clone, but all he could think about was stopping the mock battle taking place already.

"Zabuza, Haku. He's here." The two of them jumped back together, landing not five steps from him. Kakashi raised an eyebrow and Sasuke looked at him questioningly. He shook his head.

"Do you want to take them out? Or shall I?" Zabuza, who had been consulting Haku as to whether they were actually there or not, since Gato's mercenaries were not visible yet and Haku was evidently a better chakra sensor than he was (an interesting fact to know), turned to face him after receiving an affirmative.

"Do as you like. I won't kill my employer unless he goads me to."

Naruto smiled. Oh, he'll goad him to, alright.

Go after that weasel from behind, Naruto. Let's run him into his own demon's maw.

That would be rather ironic, wouldn't it?

"Kakashi-sensei!" He jumped to land next to him and Sasuke.

"Gato has brought mercenaries to kill us all with. Shall we take care of them, or shall we run him to Zabuza?" He asked to maintain a semblance of hierarchy in front of Sasuke; he already knew what Kakashi would choose.

"I won't do all of Zabuza's dirty work." Kakashi said before running towards the woods that Naruto pointed to, almost bouncing as he went. The blond stared for a moment, never having seen his sensei so giddy. The man must really dislike Gato…Or Zabuza had hit his head too hard during their spar. Shaking his head, he reached to grab Sasuke's wrist and pulled the boy with him as he followed his sensei's footsteps. As he ran, he spoke to Sasuke.

"I'll explain everything as soon as I can, Sasuke, I swear."

"I know you will. Because if you don't, I'll make you." Sasuke said, glaring at Naruto impressively. Naruto grinned, hiding it by observing the surroundings to his left. Sasuke had a backbone. In his old time, no one would question him, even the old Sasuke, who had only just begun to come out of his shell again when he was killed.

This is the Sasuke I want to keep alive.

Just don't keep secrets from him for too long. Not yours or his own.

I know.

Naruto dropped Sasuke's arm, which he'd apparently still been dragging the boy along by. They reached the wooded area at the end of the bridge easily. Itachi was no longer there, Naruto noticed. Once they breached the line of trees, they turned to circle around Gato's company.

xXx

Sakura nearly fell from her perch in her haste to stand as the hairs on the back of her neck rose. She shivered, though it was not from the cold. The tree she sat in gave her a bird's eye view of Tazuna's house, although Inari and his mother were on the dock, hanging laundry to dry and were temporarily out of sight. She had figured that she would be able to see any intruders, but something felt out of place.

Jumping to the ground, Sakura jogged around the house and made her way through the trees to the dock. She didn't hear either of the house's inhabitants' voices, so she pulled out her kunai.

It turned out, as she crept around the last obstructing corner, that she was right to be wary. There were two men, not ninja, though they looked like hired goons, just finishing up with tying up Inari's mother, Tsunami. One of them held Inari himself upside down by his foot, and the boy was thrashing around, trying to remove the hand on his mouth.

There was a cast iron frying pan lying on the ground a few feet away, which Inari had presumably attacked them with. Carefully, Sakura formed the hand signs she needed and then she jumped into action, not noticing that she was doing something she never done before. She was acting like a true Leaf ninja.

xXx

Naruto, Sasuke, and Kakashi rounded up Gato's mercenaries fairly easily. The men could hardly be considered ninja and they didn't even see Naruto, Sasuke, or Kakashi until it was too late.

Naruto threw himself down into the clearing showily and launched a paper bomb at the nearest tree. Moments later, with a loud boom, the tree fell into splinters and heavy branches. Gato's men fled, right along the path Naruto had urged them towards. He heard Kakashi and Sasuke doing the same to his left and right and he grinned ferally, taking pleasure in seeing the process of Gato receiving his just dues.

Quickly, he outpaced Gato's men and made his way to the bridge, seeing Haku and Zabuza patiently waiting. He slowed his steps until he came to a stop in front of them. Zabuza was looking out at the fog-laden water. He had an uncertain look to his face, as if he knew what they were doing and was unsure if his inaction could be considered as betraying his employer. Haku just stood by the man's side, his body language screaming serene and calm. The two of them turned questioning looks to Naruto when they registered his presence.

He threw a thumb over his shoulder, pointing at the trees behind him in explanation, just as Gato's hired hands came running from them with Sasuke and Kakashi on their heels.

Gato, although his short legs would usually ensure his being the last of the group, was currently in the lead. But then he saw Zabuza, and all the blood in his face drained away. He dug in his heels and ordered the men to stop with a yell. After a look at what laid ahead of them, his men quickly obeyed.

The cowardly man, and stupid if what he was about to say had any weight, brought himself together before he yelled in Zabuza, Haku, and Naruto's direction, trying to defend himself by placing the blame onto someone else. Unfortunately, that someone was already displeased by the mere presence of the man, and Gato's words only stroked Zabuza's ire.

"So you are a traitorous fool after all, Momochi!"

"Those words seem to be more suited for yourself, little man!" Zabuza barked. He swung his sword to his shoulder, affecting a very aggressive stance. "What's with your group of goons?"

Gato, suddenly understanding that his very presence was the only thing that was now causing a very hale and healthy Zabuza to turn on him, paled further and swayed on his feet. He paused, considering his options. Then the man signed his own death writ. He turned to his hired guards, nearly two hundred strong, and gave them their orders.

"Attack!"

xXx

Her attack was over within seconds, leaving her breathless and very proud of herself, regardless of the fact that her opponents had been weaklings. Inari and Tsunami were fine and the two men who had attacked them were tied up in their place. The mother and son were clutching each other, and she'd just finished searching the two men, divesting them of their weapons as she'd seen Naruto do with the Demon Brothers.

She wondered if the rest of her team needed any help, but she immediately discarded the idea of leaving Tsunami and Inari alone at this house, while there could be any number of enemies coming to help these two men. Suddenly, she realized that she was all alone at this moment. And it didn't really scare her.

She was a ninja, and now? She'd taken out two full grown men by herself. She was proud of her status. She no longer wanted to be a kunoichi with a ninja husband to show off around the village. She wanted to be a help to her team on a mission. And she would, once she made sure her client's family was safe.

"Tsunami-san. Inari-kun. Please come with me. I need to make sure you make it safely to town before I go to my team."

Tsunami looked up with watering eyes. "We can get some of the townsmen to go with you." She offered.

"No. This is a fight between ninja. Regular citizens shouldn't get involved." Sakura said, remembering the rule from her studies. When people without chakra interfered with a battle between ninja…well. It wasn't pretty and it usually resulted in a lot more bloodshed than intended. "Come on. We need to go now."

They left after gathering up some essentials in case the house was further attacked while they were gone and made it to the town within the next fifteen minutes without incident. By then, Sakura was becoming more and more jumpy. She left the two of them at one of Tsunami's closer friends' houses and made her way quickly to the bridge, which was still further away than she wished.

Sakura ran hard, along the worn path paved on either side by the thick growth of trees, not stopping for a moment until she heard the unmistakable sound of movement off to her right. Alerted, and already on the look-out for suspicious behavior around her, she dove into the nearest thicket of shrubs and tried to still her jumping heart.

The world around her was silent for a moment, then…

"Why is Gato having us circle around?" A complaining voice asked. It was clearly followed by the sound of a blade cutting through underbrush and hanging vines and branches. Sakura held her breath. They were only a few feet away from her and…yes; if she peered through at just the right angle…she could see the boots of at least fifty men, trekking through the forest. And moving towards the bridge at a moderate pace.

"Shut up!" She nearly jumped at the voice that came from close beside her. "We're here because we're getting paid. He wants us to ensure Zabuza and his brat die and so we will. I don't want to hear your complaining!"

"Whoever put you in charge, Shinoda!" another member of the group said loudly.

"Nobody, idiot. But I, for one, want to get paid more than I want to hear complaints. Unless you want to see the sharp end of my wires."

The odd threat that ended that statement sent a shiver through Sakura, and it silenced the rest of the group.

She couldn't see the man, but the way he had worded the threat made her suspect his weapon specialty was razor wire. If that was true, she was almost certain he was a ninja, because razor wire was something that was really only ever used by ninja, who could manipulate its conductive properties and had the reflexes necessary to handle the long, sharp weapon without harming themselves. This would make the third ninja she knew of besides Zabuza and his partner who Gato had hired. And if her suspicion was correct, then this was the man whose strength Gato relied upon the most, judging by how he was entrusted with men to conduct what she suspected was an ambush. That made this man very dangerous.

Though she waited for more to be said, the silence carried on until the group of men had passed her. Slowly, she worked her way back onto the road and jumped into the trees that lined the other side. She wanted to stay away from that group and get to the bridge before they did. That meant she'd have to put her recent training to use and use the trees.

xXx

Somehow, Naruto was sure Gato had back-up goons coming to assist him. There was no way that the original two-hundred men could be upright after a fight with five trained and talented ninja. Not after fifteen minutes. Not even after five.

Granted these men were not completely useless. In numbers, they were quite effective in their attacks; they'd managed to give him some viciously stinging cuts, too. That said, he himself had broken the limbs of and incapacitated at least forty men. He'd killed five.

He was sure that Kakashi and Zabuza had taken care of that many, maybe even twice over. And Haku and Sasuke were hardly lightweights. So how else could there be almost a hundred men still standing and fighting? They must have been coming from the cover of the trees.

He could see Gato a little ways off, just outside the tree-line, standing with crossed arms and a smug look on his face, even as he watched Naruto drive his elbow into the back of a man's neck with more than enough force to knock him out and slice open another man's leg with his kunai.

Zabuza was a little ways off, cutting a swathe through his opponents, although they had learned enough by now to stay out of his sword's range and attack with long-range weapons, not that that was slowing their death rate any. Kakashi was nowhere to be seen. He was probably taking care of stragglers who decided they'd had enough of the battlefield they'd created.

He'd seen his other teammate every so often, flitting among the enemy like a deadly kunai, causing snaps and spurts of blood wherever he went, although it seemed the boy wasn't aiming for kill spots (which Naruto was glad for; he never wanted to see a bloodthirsty Sasuke again). It also seemed as though Sasuke and Haku had taken a liking to covering each other's backs, and although he wasn't sure who had made the first move in that strategy, it was a good one and he was glad that Sasuke wasn't going to get stabbed from behind anytime soon. There were dozens of senbon needles sticking out of many of the bodies that littered the ground.

Creating four clones so he could back off and take a moment to look around, Naruto worried over Gato's influence stretching so far as to allow him to hire so many men. It was a small army and they weren't backing off very easily either, which meant they were being paid very well. That thought brought another to mind, though. If their employer was dead, would they still this risk fighting?

Nodding to himself, Naruto jumped above the not-small group of mercenaries towards Gato, whose eyes widened at the change of strategy. The man yelled something, but Naruto couldn't quite make it out. Then, as the man raised his arm and pointed at him, the blond figured it out. A small cloud of kunai and shuriken was aimed at him from behind the trees and he found himself unable to direct himself out of their path, stuck in mid-air.

Quickly, he pulled out another kunai with his other hand, and with both hand duly armed, he managed to block and parry most of the weapons, but two kunai and twice as many shuriken slipped past his guard, the kunai sticking deep in the flesh of his thigh and shoulder and the shuriken nicking his limbs and drawing blood. He was forced to retreat back into the crowd of mercenaries to lick his wounds. Kakashi was by his side in a moment, just as he was pulling one of the kunai from his thigh.

"Are you alright?" He didn't sound overly worried, but he covered Naruto from the mercenary attacks so he could recover.

"Yeah, fine. I just didn't think he'd hired any ninja besides Zabuza and Haku. He doesn't seem like the type who trusts ninja. But, there are at least two of them staying back behind the tree-line over there." Naruto pointed. Kakashi looked and nodded.

"Right. I'll get them. Keep an eye on things here. I don't like this situation. Gato isn't as stupid as we thought."

Kakashi was gone before he could reply, and Naruto, suddenly incensed, threw one of his kunai into the crowd of mercenaries violently. A man dropped. Naruto couldn't understand what he'd missed. When he'd snuck into Gato's stronghold, Gato had mentioned no more than fifty mercenaries for the ambush. What had happened? Had the shipping magnate simply changed his mind at the last second? Or had someone warned him of their preparations against his attack?

Damn it! He cursed. He felt Kyuubi shift. She was awake.

What's wrong? She asked, sleepily. He could practically feel her carding through his memories as she caught up with the situation.

I don't know! This damn timeline is screwed up.

Calm down, Kit. All we need to do is take Gato down, right? Then we can just-

She was interrupted by the sounds of explosions all around them. The trees from the place Kakashi had just jumped to exploded outwards, preceded by Kakashi himself, who all but ran on four limbs in his hurry. Simultaneously, at the other side of the small battlefield, more explosions were followed by the entrance of Sakura, who was nearly the last person he had expected to see. She was wreaking havoc with her paper bombs, but she ran out of them within seconds. It was all too soon; she'd only managed to take a good quarter of their enemy out with her surprise attack.

He quickly made his way through the crowd, stabbing and slicing all the while, towards Kakashi and Sakura, who had managed to find each other quickly enough. Kakashi looked a little frazzled at almost being blown up, but he was okay. Sakura, on the other hand, looked like hell. Her clothes had cuts and tears all over them and she was covered by dirt. She was panting and looked to be on the verge of crying in relief.

He made it to their side just as she began to explain her presence. "-and Inari back in the town. But when I was coming here… I saw another group of mercenaries. I think they're Gato's. They were on their way to ambush the bridge I think. And they had at least one ninja with them!" Sakura gasped out.

At the same time, Naruto pushed her back against the side of the bridge and parried a sword swipe from an enemy behind her. The man received a stab to his liver for the attempt. He was pulled back by the other mercenaries to get him out of the way. Sakura grabbed his shoulder and squeezed it in gratitude. He just kept his eyes focused on the now-more-wary mercenaries.

"How many, Sakura?" Kakashi asked, a little breathless himself.

"At least…at least fifty, sensei." She answered quickly.

"Damn it!" At that bit of information, Naruto swore aloud. Quickly, he summoned three clones and sent them to Sasuke, Haku, and Zabuza to inform them of this development and to help them fight. "Kakashi-sensei, what happened to the ninja in the trees?"

"I think they're down, but I can't be sure. The bombs weren't mine; I think they backfired on them."

"Let's hope." Naruto replied under his breath.

"Sakura, stay with me. Cover my back, alright?"

"Right, sensei." Sakura confirmed, pulling out a kunai. She took a deep breath and gripped it tightly, ready to fight once Naruto moved out from in front of her. Naruto met Kakashi's eyes.

"I'll go after Gato." Naruto murmured as he went darting away.

There was no time to waste.

xXx

Sasuke had been fighting non-stop for what felt like hours, but he knew it had only been twenty minutes at the most. A man would attack, he would reply with a slash of his kunai, and that man would pull back to let his fresh comrades in on the action. He'd felt the senbon needles flying past his head often enough, accompanied with screams of pain, and he knew that Haku was covering his back. He'd returned the favor more than once and Sasuke knew, from the moment Gato had shown up, that they were no longer enemies.

But still, the fight was never-ending. He had taken so many men down, it wasn't even funny. He'd never been in the midst of a battle before, but he had a sneaking suspicion that just because one's perception of time changed, it didn't mean that the perception of the number of enemies did.

And he didn't think the number of enemies was dropping by much at all. So, the moment he heard the news from Naruto's clone (the confirmation of his suspicions and the impending arrival of more back-up), Sasuke knew he had to act. He flagged down Haku and outlined his plan. Haku looked unsure but, seeing the sense of the plan, agreed.

They left the battlefield to attack Gato's back-up team.

xXx

Naruto had gained four new, shallow, stinging, irritating wounds on his body by the time he got within twenty feet of Gato. He wished he had taken the time when he was near Kakashi to bandage the kunai wounds on his thigh and shoulder, but he had needed to hurry. Now, his bloodied clothes stuck to his skin and blood was rolling in slow rivulets down his right leg. He cursed colorfully in his thoughts.

He had already hated Gato, but now…well…Naruto really wanted to kill the man. Which, considering how easily he'd made his way to the man, should be easy enough. He stabbed the last man that stood between him and his mark in the kidney, and the man fell down, silently screaming all the way. Scanning the trees behind the man for the ninja who had been there earlier, he saw nothing, and he approached predatorily.

Gato spotted him and began to back up warily. Naruto smirked and let Kyuu's chakra bubble into his eyes, turning them into slits. Gato began to slide down the tree he'd pressed himself against. He could hear Kyuu's savage laughter in the darker corners of his mind. He felt like joining her. The first time he'd met the man, he'd wanted to kill him for disgracing Haku's body. Now he could.

But he was not so inhumane as to torture a man on his deathbed with dramatics. He would only draw it out if there was something important at stake and, right now, there was more of a reason to kill Gato quickly and get rid of his goons than to draw the man's death out.

So, without further ado, Naruto slit the man's throat.

It was only then, of course, as Gato lay there at his feet with his already-gray skin paling further as blood escaped from his death-wound, that the clones he had sent to Haku and Sasuke decided to dismiss themselves and make it known that the two boys were making their way to intercept a possibly dangerous group by themselves.

Which, by the way, Gato could have told him (read: been forced to tell) the whereabouts of.

Fuck!

xXx

"If they were planning on ambushing us, like your kunoichi said, they must have been planning on coming from this side." Haku stated as he and Sasuke ran away from the bridge and towards the town, checking over every square inch of forest between it and the fighting. "The fight on the bridge has moved towards the middle of the bridge and they can't have planned to come from the mainland so maybe they had planned for the fight to migrate towards land more than stay on the bridge."

"And Gato's main group came from the south, so they must be coming from the north. Sakura couldn't have beat them by that much time, so they should be somewhere around-" Sasuke broke off as the high-pitched sound of what he recognized to be razor wire whipped around in front of him and Haku.

"Get down!"

He tugged at Haku's sleeve and pulled the boy down with him just as the wire cut clean through the two trees in front of them. He cursed as he realized it was being reinforced by chakra. Suddenly, there was a half-circle of what he suspected were more mercenaries in front of them and the ring-leader seemed to be the man up-front and center, holding a long strand of razor wire in gloved hands.

"It seems we've run into two of our targets a bit ahead of schedule, men. Let's take care of them." He said, eyeing Sasuke's headband and all but ignoring Haku, having seen no marks claiming him to be a ninja.

Sasuke saw glares directed at the man, but none of the fifty or so men objected. A hand on his arm drew his attention back to his companion. Haku had removed his mask to breathe easier after they'd left the fighting, and his feminine features were disconcerting, but Sasuke forced himself to remember the way the boy's kick had numbed his leg earlier. There was no mistaking that Haku wasn't strong.

"Can you handle the ninja? I'll take out the rest." The boy said. Sasuke looked back at the group for a moment before nodding slowly. "Okay, get back, then. Go!" Haku added when Sasuke looked confused for a moment. Sasuke quickly moved back and away, however, when he saw Haku form an unknown hand sign. The boy said something quietly under his breath, and suddenly the air around him froze. Sasuke saw mirrors of ice begin to form around their attackers and, as he backed further away to avoid being entrapped by them as well, Sasuke gasped.

He recognized it for what it was- a kekkei genkai- the moment Haku stepped back and merged with the mirrors. The older boy's appearance could be seen in every one of the mirrors, and suddenly he began showering the inhabitants of his trap with senbon needles. Sasuke could tell that Haku was not merely shooting from the mirrors, but rather moving rapidly from one mirror to the next and shooting the needles as he moved. Of course, the Uchiha could only just barely tell the boy was moving, and he knew that the non-ninja mercenaries thought that mere reflections were their attacker. Haku would have no problems.

Himself, on the other hand, he wasn't so sure of.

As he'd backed away and past the barrier of their attackers, so had the ninja leader of the group. The man was staring at Sasuke, readying himself to throw his wire. Sasuke crouched, making a smaller target of himself. He slowly inched his hands towards the pouch at his waist. Not unfamiliar with using wire as a weapon, he always carried gloves to handle it, but he didn't have time to reach them before the man attacked.

The wire itself was thin and metallic, hard to see in the gloom of the forest. Sasuke barely saw it before the length was upon him. It was aimed low, for his legs, and he jumped up and forwards, knowing that the man could easily cut him apart if he chose only to jump upwards. Instead of waiting for the man to pull back his weapon, Sasuke threw two shuriken at the wire, hoping to pin it to a tree, but he had no such luck. The man just twitched the fingers of his right hand and the wire jumped up to cut his shuriken to pieces. Sasuke's eyes widened and he retreated quickly, ducking under the wire this time as it was pulled back.

It took a few hairs with it.

"So you realize it's reinforced, now, right?" The man asked him lazily, coiled the wire as he spoke. "I wouldn't suggest touching it if I were you." He grinned, and cast his wire yet again, using his right hand to control smaller movements and his left to reel it back in.

Sasuke's eyes widened. This time, he couldn't see the wire at all.