Disclaimer: Naruto is not my property. I'm 100.3 percent sure of it.
Author's note: Zabuza time! I bet you never thought I'd get this far!
A well-sculpted man crouched behind a tree, listening and waiting. His muscular form sat atop a sword that defied convenience in size. The man breathed slowly, so still that even the local wildlife began to act as if he had been nothing more than an extension of the tree itself.
A bird perched on his kneecap, nestling against the fabric while it groomed itself. Zabuza could have killed it with just a slight movement if he had wanted, but the creature remained unharmed. In fact, the assassin found himself temporarily enamored with it, if only to pass the time.
Patience came naturally to the criminal; it was essential for missions such as the one he was currently employed with. Sooner or later, his target would come down that path. As the situation usually favored the latter, the elite outlaw would find very odd ways to occupy himself.
He counted the seconds in his head. Two hundred and thirty-five. The wren stayed on his leg for over three minutes, completely unafraid of the owner of its perch. The blind faith reminded him of someone, but he didn't actually name the bridge right away.
What is that Haku doing? Didn't I tell him to stay close? he wondered, fairly certain it wouldn't matter, but curious nonetheless. For all he knew, his young ward could be anywhere. It crossed Zabuza's mind to be a little concerned, but he instantly dismissed it. There probably wasn't anything to worry about.
The Demon of the mist let out a sound of irritation, scaring the bird that had taken a liking to his knee. Without so much as a peep, it took off into the forest beyond. Almost immediately, Zubaza Momochi missed the warmth it had left on his skin. With the heat gone, the humid cold of evening was free to seep in more than it had before.
Time passed slowly, leaving the former commander time to eat a quick meal. The stale hunk of rice didn't last very long, but it left him feeling more efficient. He needed all the strength he could gather, just in case things got tough. He really needed the money.
A tuft of gray hair got stuck in a low-lying twig. The owner of the tuft in question stifled a sound of disdain and pulled away from the snag. Despite his constant vigilance, the occasional branch from the marsh trees smacked or ensnared Kakashi Hatake. Between his lack of depth perception and tall hairstyle, that had happened a lot in the last few days.
The scalp irritation aside, Kakashi had developed a headache anyway. Two of them, in fact. Naruto had, for whatever reason, decided he needed to mimic Sasuke's every movement, causing the Uchiha more than a little bit of annoyance. Since Sasuke didn't do very much other than walk with poor posture and brood, it was a fairly easy task to copy his actions. At first, it had been entertaining for the three not involved. After about two minutes, however, it got old.
"Quit it, Naruto!" Sasuke demanded abruptly, having had enough.
"Make me!" the addressed spat, his eyes filled with glee.
"Shut up, Naruto!" Sakura growled from the left of Tazuna. Her green eyes were sharp with irritation. Tazuna was tuning them out, at least.
Naruto snorted and made to begin again before stopping suddenly, forcing Kakashi to bump into him. His blue eyes began searching the area frantically. "Did you guys hear that?" he asked dramatically, his eyes wide with fear.
Sakura and Sasuke looked at their teammate skeptically. Tazuna was split between being worried and being furious. Even Kakashi looked ready to groan at what he thought was a joke on Naruto's part before he heard it, too. Canvas brushing against bark. The sound in itself was so minute that not even an elite could be blamed for not pinpointing it. For Naruto to have noticed such a small detail was impressive.
"You three!" he shouted to his students, his visible eye calculating, "Defense formation around the builder!"
Naruto Uzumaki did not know what else to do, so he immediately obeyed. He stood to Tazuna's left while Sasuke stood to the right. Sakura protected the rear so that together the trio formed a triangular defense around the elderly man.
With that, they waited for their hidden opponent to reveal himself and make a move.
Zabuza was frustrated when he was discovered. It had been an obnoxious child who had heard him, no less! He began to wonder if he was losing his touch when he recognized the leader of the rag-tag team. The assassin's breath hitched with anticipation.
He had to plan quickly if his speculation was correct.
"So, no wonder the Demon Brothers failed to take the old man down," Zabuza's voice spoke in a low rumble. Kakashi's head whipped around to locate the source. "-Copy Ninja Kakashi."
Surely enough, the man standing on the branch with a broadsword haphazardly balanced on his shoulder was no small threat. The Konoha jonin immediately exposed his Sharingan to the shirtless predator, causing Sasuke to flinch and shiver.
"Everyone, be careful! This man is way out of your league!" the instructor warned, never taking his eyes off Zubaza, who was now executing a jutsu. The Sharingan watched every movement carefully, but was effectively rendered useless soon enough.
A mist thicker than any they had experienced on their journey quickly surrounded them. Naruto instinctively stepped closer to the builder and accidentally bumped into Sasuke, who was still trembling with mortal terror.
Under any normal circumstance, the blue-eyed troublemaker would have mocked his rival's weakness. Right then, however, he understood the importance of having Sasuke as a fully-functional warrior. With that in mind, the Uzumaki's elbow gently nudged the petrified Uchiha's ribs.
Two terrified dark eyes bored into Naruto's blue ones. Swallowing his own fear, Naruto forced a reassuring smirk. The nonverbal communication took less than ten seconds, but the impact on Sasuke's panic was obvious.
The black-haired genin inhaled and exhaled deeply, letting some of his fear vanish. There was still a significant amount left, though. Naruto could sense this and was about to slap his arrogant teammate before Kakashi intervened with a few choice words.
"Sasuke! Don't worry. I'll protect you, all of you. I won't let my comrades die." his words traveled through the fog, sounding at once both close and far away. There was a collective sigh of relief that Naruto did not share in. Try as the jounin might, he was only human.
"Don't be so sure of that, Kakashi," Zabuza chuckled, his voice coming from all directions at once. Naruto could hear his heart throbbing like thunder. How long was this man going to toy with them? Zabuza's mutterings soon filled his ears. He remembered the chant of a human body's weak points, but it still chilled him to the bones to hear it. The main reason(other than the fact it was incredibly creepy and instilled fear in the hearts of men) lay in fact he knew what would happen directly after.
True to form, Zubaza appeared inside the defense formation, weapon at the ready. Naruto felt the man's breath on his neck; his hair stood even further on end. Slowly, the blonde head arched around to fact the half-covered face of his enemy.
The next few moment elapsed at a nightmarish crawl. Before Sasuke or Sakura had any time to even flinch, the missing ninja's elbow drove into Naruto's belly with incredible speed and force. He didn't even cry out.
The taste of coppery blood covered his tongue, but the Yondaime's son managed to muster enough strength to shove his bo-staff into the ground to break his fall.
Zubaza's powerful hand reached for Naruto's head-guard, prompting the blonde to swerve to the left, then the right. His movements were labored, but they were just enough to cause the man to fail in taking his prize.
"You won't touch it!" the Uzumaki shouted, blood flying out of his mouth before he fell to his knees.
The assassin growled and readied another blow, but was rudely interrupted by several shuriken to the face, which then melted into a puddle of water with the rest of the body. Kakashi grimaced, having only hit a doppleganger.
"A clone!" Sakura whimpered, staring in horror at the damage that the copy alone had caused. "Then, where-?"
Her spine erupted in tingles so intense it almost hurt. Every muscle in her body tensed when she spotted the sword heading for her teacher's neck.
"KAKASHI-SENSEI!" she called out, trying to warn him of the impending death.
Nevertheless, the blow still hit. There was a sickening moment when the blade appeared to rend flesh, but it was soon apparent that the teacher was safe and sound when water replaced his form. Zabuza startled, the sight of his own jutsu copied left him awed.
The moment didn't last, though. It soon came to Zabuza's attention that the jonin's true position had played right into his hands when the kids looked into the water with relief. Water; his element. Kakashi had been careless.
"What's wrong with this water?" the Hatake stammered, suddenly tense, "It's heavy!"
It crossed Naruto's mind to be mildly concerned.
With a smirk, Zabuza's body melted into a pool of water and reappeared next to the water-logged sensei.
"Water prison jutsu!" he hissed behind gauze, executing the hand-signs in a flash and encasing the elite Konoha shinobi in an impenetrable sphere of the solution he had been hiding in.
"This might just be water," he announced with a mirthless chuckle,"-but it's stronger than steel. It's over, Kakashi."
"No, it isn't!" Naruto shouted immediately, causing both of the elite in the water to look in his direction with incredulity. The boy painfully staggered to his feet and held his staff upwards, prompting a small laugh from Zabuza.
"Don't, Naruto! You can't beat him!" Sakura cried out before even thinking. She ran to steady him, but he pushed her away gently. Sasuke looked on with morbid fascination, unsure of how to react.
"Run! All of you! This man can't follow you so long as he keeps me immobile!" Kakashi ordered, his face taught with lines of worry and anger. The urgency of the command lingered.
Sasuke didn't move, obviously in deep thought.
Sakura took a few steps back, but couldn't bring herself to obey.
Naruto shook his head and made eye contact with his teacher. Even as Zabuza created a clone to go forward to their position, the blue eyes bore into Kakashi's senses.
"I am Naruto Uzumaki, the one who will be Hokage. I will protect those who are important to me!" the twelve-year old announced loudly, smiling at his imprisoned sensei with those bright eyes. "You won't hurt Kakashi-sensei!"
There was so much warmth backing those words that Kakashi could feel his little-used tear glands attempt to work. The boy was so genuine, but what good would that do?
"Don't!" the teacher repeated, almost pleading.
Zabuza scoffed, his clone readying an attack. Naruto pulled the staff into a defense position and shifted his weight onto his hind leg. Sasuke and Sakura took out their respective knives and stood in front of the horrified Tazuna. He wasn't going to stop them from saving Kakashi; the guilt would drive him mad if anything happened.
Kakashi felt as if his heart would stop. His students were going to be brutally murdered in front of him because they wouldn't abandon him to his fate. With unadulterated horror, the jounin watched the game begin.
Zabuza took the first move, swinging the giant blade with deadly accuracy and force. Naruto jumped out of the way on the first and second attempt. The third was halted by a distraction on Sasuke's part; a ball of fire aimed at the clone's exposed chest.
Sakura threw several knives shortly after the doppleganger dodged, one of them just grazing his arm. With the time that had granted, Naruto had duplicated himself with Shadow Clone Jutsu. All seven of them jumped at the enemy with their weapons at the ready.
Zabuza's clone swatted the onslaught off effortlessly, leaving the real Zubaza chuckling in the distance before he felt a presence behind him.
Naruto Uzumaki slammed the pole into Zabuza's muscular neck, a blow too clumsy to actually hurt him. Like a red cape in front of a bull, the orange streak was instantly targeted by Zabuza's outstretched arm. He grabbed the staff before Naruto had regained balance and rammed it backwards with experienced finesse, burying the shaft in Naruto's abdomen.
It wasn't until that exact moment that Naruto had remembered what he had done last time to more agreeable results. This time around he had neglected to utilize Sasuke. That was a mistake, no matter how Naruto thought of it.
Being impaled hurt, the jinchuurki had to admit. Not quite as much as the poisoned claw to the back, and less than being stabbed in the neck, he decided. The decorative patterns on the metal did chafe the open wound, after all. If he was lucky, it wouldn't kill him, though.
Sasuke and Sakura had their hands full; the clone was relentlessly dodging and getting closer to Tazuna. Every single strike, throw and diversion was being used against them. The elite was toying with them, as well. He was taking it easy on them.
"Sakura! Look out behind you!" Sasuke shouted hoarsely for what must have been the twelfth time in the past three minutes. With the warning, his partner managed to evade by a donkey's hair yet again. The Uchiha threw more weapons from his rapidly-shrinking arsenal, but couldn't keep it up much longer.
"Naruto!" Kakashi called out desperately from his prison. The Bo staff had not left Zabuza's hand, and the addressed boy was rigid behind it. The preteen hadn't even so much as blinked at the mention of his name. Blood seeped from the wood and fell on the surface of the marsh like raindrops.
"NARUTO!" the teacher urged again, this time to be rewarded with a weak smile from the Uzumaki. One last clone appeared under the water's surface and pulled down on Zabuza's feet, causing the assassin to lose his concentration and release the cage and staff.
Zabuza's eyes widened. Oh, shit.
Kakashi Hatake was not a man to be trifled with. His fuse may have been long, but once lit, it became a dangerous wick indeed. The deadly combination of a cunning mind and the use of a kekkai genkai made for a vicious killing machine. Now, the list of things that set him off was almost as long as anyone else's, subject to change and grow with his experiences. Though he had never been in that particular situation before, Kakashi Hatake became sure of one thing.
Watching your student get impaled with his own weapon while attempting to save you wasn't pleasant. The sight felt like having a summon pulled off inside your body. That feeling in itself was not new to the man. It tingled, burned, and generally caused him great discomfort.
There was a moment of absurd clarity within those writhing moments, however. All questions about the blonde-haired boy that had plagued his mind until that very moment faded away with one conclusion: Naruto was no fool. Despite what anyone else may have thought of him, the boy was by no means stupid, cruel, or useless.
If Naruto, who was gravely injured, could keep fighting for his teacher's life while impaled on a stick, who was Kakashi to think him rash? Naruto knew the stakes. He always did, regardless of how he had acted. The act of not thinking before an action in his case was merely one of time-saving. For someone who knew their priorities, morals, strengths, and weaknesses as well as the young Uzumaki, discretion would only point to the same course of action that would have been taken in the first place. Kakashi thought of these things from under the water with his injured student floating beside him.
As unpleasant as the impact on firm ground was going to be, the teacher knew he had to get his pupil out of the waters before he drowned.
The jounin's hands firmly grasped Zabuza's ankles, pulling the assassin under the waters of the marsh. From there, Kakashi sent a chakra-backed blow into the man's face to stun him. With the few seconds that bought, Naruto was tossed out of the water. From the boy's heightened trajectory, he spotted Zabuza's sword-wielding replica attacking his teammates.
Sakura was barely keeping up, he could tell with his dimming eyes. Sasuke kept the clone on his toes, but was still unable to break the advance on the bridge-builder. Tazuna had dropped his belongings, and was preparing to fight himself if he had to. Naruto, being Naruto, felt he had to help them in spite of his injuries.
In a burst of strength, the young airborne ninja yanked the weapon out of his torso to hold it in front of him. His eyesight went white with the searing fresh agony the action brought. He could practically FEEL his insides falling apart. Despite his best efforts, he let out a scream in his pain, alerting the water-clone to his presence.
Zubaza's face shot around to face the noise. In a movement almost too fast to be seen, he jumped out of the attack's range, not even bothering to debilitate the boy that was no longer a threat to him. True to his assumption, Naruto barely was able to stand upon touching the ground. Sakura gasped at the grisly sight of all the blood welling from the wound in his middle.
Zabuza's clone pulled his sword back to the ready, commencing the onslaught once again. The bridge builder was pressed even further back, and Sakura had to peel her eyes away from her friend to defend him. In the course of five seconds, she blocked three potentially fatal attacks targeting Tazuna.
The Uchiha boy could not bring himself to look away from Naruto's struggle to remain standing with his face to the enemy. Something inside him wished the knucklehead would just fall over instead of tormenting himself.
"Naruto! You can't do anything like that! Get down!" Sasuke finally raged, unable to keep his irritation with that unwavering spirit in check.
Knowing he had all the time in the world if he was, in fact, dying, Naruto studied Sasuke's face. Asshole though he might have been, the black-haired egotist was worried about him. The Kyuubi's mortal vessel attempted to say something in return to the would-be traitor(something rude but funny, of course), but failed utterly through his labored breathing. There would be no comeback this time.
Guess you'll have to take over from here, teme, if I want to live… he reasoned, reasonably sure he heard laughter in the furthest recesses of his mind, causing him to blink.
Naruto Uzumaki truly and honestly did not want to die right then. After all he had done, and after all the work, he didn't want to have to face Zabuza once again when he awoke. It was hard to know that when you failed, you weren't remembered by anyone for all the hard work. In a way, though, he was used to it. Uphill battles came with the territory of his life, and metaphoric climbing gear tended to be at the ready.
With a grin, Naruto nodded to his rival and collapsed forward, motionless. Sasuke felt his face darken. He hadn't really been expecting Naruto to listen. He hadn't, either. The nod that had just been sent was not one of agreement. It was a passing of the baton, a silent declaration of trust. Sasuke wasn't used to it, and he understood then that he had been avoiding it on purpose. It was one thing to disappoint your own expectations, and another to betray someone else when they thought of you with that much confidence. To put it bluntly, it hurt. It hurt to see someone who actually gave a damn about his existence without worshipping it had been a privilege. A true equal who saw him as an equal was now sprawled out in front of him, possibly lost to the world forever.
Sakura's scream forced him to face the enemy once more. To her credit, she was attempting to parry the giant sword with a single kunai knife, and was successfully buying time. There wasn't much, though. If Sasuke didn't act fast, he'd be short two companions instead of one. No matter how annoying Sakura could be, he didn't much care to see her killed in front of him.
Then, a miracle happened. Zabuza's concentration was broken so thoroughly that the clone had dissolved, leaving Sakura visibly shaken and the bridge-builder swooning with relief. Sasuke didn't let down his guard for a second, however. Immediately his eyes went to work locating the true Demon of the Mist.
He was not surprised in any way to find Kakashi staring their opponent down, but the fact that they were performing the same jutsu in perfect synchronization with each other was a tad disturbing.
Elsewhere, deeper in the forest, Haku's Zabuza-senses were tingling. They had an uncanny knack for doing that whenever the man for which they were named was in great danger. No matter how inconvenient their timing, Haku never failed to heed them. True to nature, Haku's mask immediately covered his face, and the race against time to save the older ninja's life began.
Hold on, Master Zabuza! I'm coming!
Author's note: Moo.