The Wheel that Turns
Chapter Two- Taken Away
Disclaimer- see all my other stories
Kakashi let out a puff of air as he stretched his muscles, done exercising for the morning. Everyone seated at the table looked up when the door burst open, revealing Sasuke with Naruto propped up against him.
"There are shinobi here," Sasuke said, tossing Naruto into a chair and taking a seat himself.
"What? But there isn't a village," Sakura said, puzzled.
"What did they look like?" Kakashi asked quickly. If his hunch was correct, it would be Zabuza's little masked helper (or helpers).
"One was a girl in a pink kimono, long brown hair, I didn't see her face, around sixteen. The other was a tall male, long black hair, in a black kimono with dragons on it… and he had the Sharingan," Sasuke said through gritted teeth.
"Sharingan? Not possible," Kakashi muttered to himself.
"But… I talked to the girl in the clearing, she was really nice and picked herbs, she couldn't have been a shinobi! And she was a boy," Naruto said, confusing himself.
"Take me to the clearing,"
"Yes, the scent stops here, and mixes with another one," Pakkun the nin-ken grunted, nose to the ground. Kakashi had gotten him to track the scent down the little used road to the spot they had disappeared.
"Then take the others and search the island, we need to find them before they find us," Kakashi said, getting ready to summon the other dogs.
"SENSEI! IT'S ZABUZA!" screamed Sakura over the comm. link he had given her as his team went to the bridge with Tazuna.
"Shit, too late," the silver haired jounin said, poofing over to the bridge.
Kakashi arrived just in time to see Zabuza and his helper wading through a sea of Naruto-clones.
"Well, well, well, so you weren't dead after all. And I was right, the masked one was playing on Zabuza's team," Kakashi said, raising an eyebrow at the water around his teams feet.
"Damn, I was hoping to kill your brats before you got back," Zabuza said, idly destroying clones with large sweeps of his sword.
"The brat who was shaking before was still shaking, but managed to destroy my water clones. He might have been a worthy rival, hey, Haku, if he wasn't going to die today," Zabuza mused, still destroying shadow clones.
"Indeed," Haku mused, taking out shadow clones with sweeps of hands armed with senbon.
"So tell me, how did you manage to conceal one in a shadow?" Kakashi asked, conversationally.
"Jiraiya gave me the idea. Get out here and help, Neji," Zabuza replied, as if talking about the weather. A figure rose from the shadow and launched itself towards them, landing with his hand on the back of Sasuke's neck and a triple bladed kunai to his neck.
"Nice to see you again, Uchiha," purred the boy sadistically, before throwing Sasuke behind him and destroying a bunch of shadow clones in the process. Two punches sent Naruto and Sakura flying, unconscious.
"Now, Uchiha, it's just you and me," Neji snarled, disdain dripping off every syllable of Sasukes surname.
"Who are you!" Sasuke snarled back, the shadow clones gone as Naruto was knocked out. Neji swiped at Sasuke, who deflected it with a kunai in his own hand, just barely in time.
"My name is Neji, and I guess you could say Neji Hyuuga," said like 'dog shit'.
"Hyuuga! But you had the Sharingan!" Sasuke said.
"Please, I can have everything from the Sharingan to the Rinnegan," Neji sneered, attacking Sasuke at a leisurely, for him, pace.
"You can't be a Hyuuga, there are none missing, and the only ones who have had kids recently are Hiashi and… Hizashi, shit, Kurenai said his wife was too big for only one," Kakashi swore, walking through the past years mentally.
"Is that my father's name?" Neji asked, completely disinterested. He sped his attacks up a notch, forcing Sasuke to dance away as best as he could, picking up small scratches that were draining his energy.
"Not like I give a damn about Konoha and it's damned clans, I was born free of those leashes. Stupid, being allied to a village as bad as that one anyway,"
"What did you say!" roared the reawakened Naruto, flying easily over Neji's head as he ducked.
"Naruto! Deal with that Haku kid!" Sasuke barked, starting his own assault against Neji. Naruto only stood beside Kakashi and watched the two prodigies fight, as Zabuza and Haku were doing across from them.
"You are not real shinobi, you lack the ability to kill," Neji sneered, were it not for a well thrown kunai slicing past his face, he would have swung his kunai straight into Sasuke's stomach. The taller of the fighting pair shot Kakashi an acidic glare, before he smirked and looked back at Sasuke.
Kakashi and Sasuke's eyes widened when Neji's face morphed, becoming sharper and a shade paler. Lines traced themselves down his cheeks, and his hair changed so that bangs framed his face.
"How do you expect to win if you cannot kill?" his new, deeper, icier voice drawled, hand grasping the back of the frozen Sasuke's head and jerking it towards his kunai.
Neji let Naruto tackle him away from his team mate, the pair of them landing closer to Haku and Zabuza. Neji's skin flushed a deep tanned brown, a scar slicing across his nose and his hair spiking up.
"Naruto," he whispered pleadingly, getting a sadistic chuckle from Zabuza when the blond on top of his student froze, kunai in hand.
"I-Iruka-sensei!" Naruto whispered, surprised and scared all at the same time. A Kakashi clone yanked him off of his sensei's look-alike just before the kunai aimed at his back struck.
"What's the matter, Kakashi? Getting cold feet?" asked Neji as he sat up, face pale and round, hair, silky and black and spiky, and one of his eyes gone, leaving a gaping, bloody hole.
"O-Obito!" Kakashi stuttered, frozen. The revered Copy-ninja stumbled back, away from his opponent.
Sasuke, who had recovered from seeing his brothers' face, launched himself at the person causing rampant fear throughout his team.
"How are you doing this!" he shouted, frustrated as his brothers face looked at him again.
"Like I would tell you, foolish genin," Neji sneered, words so close to what Itachi had said that night that it sent Sasuke into a rage. He attacked wildly, without abandon, and quickly found himself pinned to the pavement with kunai through his clothes, another at his throat.
Three words seemingly sealed Sasuke's fate.
"Kill him, Neji,"
Before his name had been uttered, Neji's arm was arching up to send the three pronged kunai through Sasuke's heart.
Before it could connect a long-bladed kunai was shot through his arm, lodging at the hilt in his bicep. A cry was caught by clenched teeth as Neji fell back onto the concrete, pinned there by the force of the kunai digging into the bridge.
Immediately, Kakashi lunged forward after Zabuza, intent on engaging him and finishing him off. Sasuke ripped his clothes and jumped up, his own kunai now at Neji's throat.
"Kill me, I have failed my wielder, kill me," Neji whispered coldly.
"No! We can take you back to Konoha, back to the Hyuuga!" Sasuke said, watching as Neji's face melted back into his brothers.
"Kill me! Sasuke!" Itachi's voice snarled, Neji jerking his head up and slitting his own throat on Sasuke's kunai. The Uchiha let out a cry, which was unknowingly echoed by Haku behind him, as blood splattered out onto his hands and dripped down his face.
Sasuke lurched to his feet, dropping his kunai and stumbling back, unknowing of Sakura and Naruto's horrified stares on him. He was shoved aside by Haku, who was instantly using his mediocre healing jutsu on his younger brother.
"Neji, damn it! Neji don't leave me!" Haku said fiercely, chakra pouring into Neji's body and putting fresh skin over the wound.
"Haku! Deal with the genin!" Zabuza's gruff voice commanded and Haku's body immediately stood and twisted to face the three, frightened genin.
"Now I shall kill my own heart and take your lives," he said before whipping a barrage of senbon at them. All three let out terrified, pained screams as they were struck for the first time by enemy weapons, scrambling to get away from him.
"There is no future for you," he said, readying another set of senbon. As focused as he had been on fulfilling Zabuza's commanded, he was snapped out of it when Kakashi revealed his ace, the Lightning Blade.
Three bodies were suddenly in motion, Kakashi, streaking forward with lighting in his hand, Haku, darting through his Ice Mirrors to defend Zabuza, and Neji, not even conscious yet, racing to do the same.
A crushing axe-kick by Neji sent Kakashi's Lightning Blade slicing through Haku's shoulder and out to graze Zabuza's chest, instead of killing Zabuza like it was aimed to do, it harmed Haku instead, who coughed up more blood than had already been splattered as he grabbed onto Kakashi's arm, intending on holding him for Zabuza to finish.
Kakashi, eyes wide in shock, had barely registered what had happened before Zabuza began to speak.
"Well, well, seems my tools weren't so useless after all," the Demon of the Bloody Mist said, swinging his sword back, intending to get to Kakashi through his two apprentices.
Kakashi jumped back, knocking Haku out of the way of Zabuza's swing as he did so, landing a ways away, blood covering his outfit, letting out a small smile of relief as Neji ducked out of the way and collapsed on the sidelines.
Haku coughed up more blood on the other side of the bridge, by the railing, not even trying to stop the blood flowing from his shoulder.
"Sasuke, Naruto, tie Neji and Haku up for transport back to Konoha," he said, preparing himself for his final showdown against Zabuza.
When Neji awoke it was to a plain white ceiling, and his brain almost tricked him into believing that it was just a dream, that fight on the bridge. Nothing changed in the way he was laying, his breathing didn't change and his eyelids didn't flutter. Nothing gave away to the world that he wasn't asleep.
He cast his senses out, looking for the chakra of Haku and Zabuza, the former was in the same room and fluctuating weakly, but there was no trace of the latter. He listened as a pair of people approached, and let their voices wash over him.
"I don't want them in my house Kakashi-sensei!" a woman's voice exclaimed, almost panicked.
"Yes, I understand Tsunami-san, a second, jounin squad should be here today, and we will be gone. Your worries are over, Gato is dead and so is Zabuza,"
Unbeknownst to Neji, he and Haku both let out a keening, mournful cry behind their gags, strips of cloth forced into their mouths to keep them from biting their tongues and drowning in their own blood.
The two adults in the hall raced down the hall and Kakashi threw open the door, revealing them both curled up on opposite sides of the room, sobbing and wailing. Neji sat up as best he could and screamed obscenities at Kakashi as best he could through his gag, before collapsing with sobs again.
The noise brought the rest of Tsunami's family and Kakashi's team running, gathering in the hall and looking through the door.
After exacting a promise from him so that he would not die, Kakashi undid Haku's gag, allowing the feminine boy to speak.
"What are you going to do with us?" the broken boy asked through his slowly leaking tears.
"You are coming back to Konoha with us," Kakashi answered simply, as he felt four chakra presences approaching fast.
"Then you are condemning the pair of us to death," Haku said, and refused to say more. Kakashi gazed sadly at the last of a great clan as Tsunami ran to let the four jounin in.
"I feel sorry for those two, having a Master like that," Tazuna said softly, getting looks from his grandson and team seven that made him shake his head and walk back towards the kitchen and a bottle of sake.
Neji glared death at Kakashi as the silver haired jounin brought his fellow jounin into the room they were keeping Haku and Neji in.
"Whoa, is that much restraint really necessary?" asked Asuma.
"Trust me, it is," Kakashi said, thrusting his hands into his pockets.
Everything that could be strapped down on the two boys had been. Even their fingers were bound shut, because Kakashi had seen Haku use one handed jutsu seals.
"Which one is the Hyuuga?" asked Genma, looking between the two, who both had their eyes closed. Neji smirked before opening his eyes, looking at Kakashi and shifting into the one-eyed form of Obito. Kakashi hid a wince as the other jounin all made various forms of exclamations, Genma going far enough to swear.
"How did he do that!" Kurenai demanded, backing up a step when Obito's form melted into Itachi Uchiha's. A few seconds after that, Iruka was glaring hate at them, a thing all five jounin never, ever wanted to see from the real man.
"It's his Kekkei Genkai, I don't know what it's called, but it must be from mixing the bloodlines of the Uchiha and Hyuuga," Kakashi said, not looking directly at Neji as he turned back into Obito.
"It's the Chigakure, that's what… Master Zabuza called it," said the nearly broken and monotone voice of Haku, choking on his dead Masters' name.
"And who's this?" Kurenai asked, her eyes softening as she went over to crouch by Haku.
"My name is Haku," the brown eyed boy said softly, leaning against the wall.
"What clan are you from?" Kurenai asked as Raidou walked over slowly.
"… we are from the Momochi clan," Haku said firmly, tears leaking down his face again. Neji's face became his own as tears leaked down it, the jounin all trading looks with each other at Haku's answer.
"We depart for Konoha immediately, go and get your kids, Kakashi," Asuma said, taking up his role as leader again. Kakashi nodded and exited to collect his team, who were saying goodbye to Tazuna and his family.
"Let's hope they find something or someone better to live for," Tazuna said to him as the other four jounin hauled them out.
"We can only hope," Kakashi said, clapping the older man on the shoulder before leading his morose team after the other jounin. He sighed as he looked at his depressed team, knowing that he couldn't help them.
They had experienced what shinobi life would be like, and he could not change that.
Ooooookay…
Sooooo… Reviews? Anyone?
For referance I still have no perfectly planned plot for this, I'm flying by the seat of my pants because I didn't expect it to be so popular. Please, tell me what you think about this and where you think it might go.
Kira