Disclaimer: I like stating the obvious.
Zabuza Momochi mentally scolded himself. He should have known it would come to this; they'd stayed in the land of Waves too long. Regardless of any precautions they may have taken, ANBU were clever and not easy to deceive.
The enemies he knew to be hiding in the foliage now were no amateurs; the mizukage would be insane to send the inexperienced young after his formidable hide. He had once helped shape the ANBU into what they were, but that was to his disadvantage as they would know his trail well. There were three of them, he sensed, though he wasn't aware if they knew he was aware of them yet. Chances were they did, but he gave no sign of recognition just in case.
Sitting on his stump, Zabuza stared off into space. Haku and the noisy kid had gone off to train some time ago, and unless the latter of which had tried to escape again, chances were they would return very soon. This alarmed the Demon of the Mist, as he wasn't sure if the foreign genin would screw things up somehow if he appeared. As gifted a student as the blonde appeared to be, he couldn't help but remember just how easily defeated Haku had reported him to be.
One of the hunter ninja shifted in the leaves, prompting Zabuza to catch a glimpse of what was most likely a female from the corner of his eye. The kunoichi crouched down, steeling herself to pounce. Zabuza brought himself to wonder exactly when his opponents were going to make their move. It wasn't that he was afraid of the squad, but he always had to be cautious, and it was often unwise to make the first move in the ninja world.
Seconds stretched into minutes without any sign of an attack, and Zabuza's adrenaline system began to run on a buzz. Is hand sporadically clenched the hilt of his sword as he strained his ears to maintain his vigilance before a completely new sound pierced the atmosphere and caused the Momochi to turn his head and reveal himself to an ANBU.
A laugh drifted through the air, sounding bitter and out of place. Zabuza cursed at the blonde who had undoubtedly been the source of the noise in his mind. The ANBU were on the move, having seen that Zabuza now knew they were there. The professional killers would waste no time with doing away with one of their own kind, and two of them dropped down from their various verdant perches.
Zabuza grimaced beneath the gauze covering his face and grudgingly lifted up his sword. He realized that Haku and Naruto would be arriving soon, but his own livelihood came first.
The two masked ninja who had confronted him took out their own weapons in response, the taller of which removing a scythe from a holster while the shorter handled a katana with expertise. The Momochi immediately responded by creating a dense fog with his jutsu, causing the immediate forest to be filled with the thick mist. It would serve as both a distraction to the enemy, as well as a signal to both his student and their hostage.
The ANBU were only slightly fazed by the fog, as they had been trained to do battle under many circumstances. A slash sent the scythe of one of the Momochi's aggressors out to parry, the blow having given away one of the Momochi's possible positions. Of course, a few moments and defensive maneuvers later, it became apparent that Zabuza had cloned himself several times. The ANBU tensed their guard, but were by no means impressed, and the deadly battle dance commenced as both sides weaved, evaded, and attempted hack away at the other.
Naruto had trained especially hard that afternoon, mimicking every punch and kick Haku had shown him. They were basic taijitsu, but Naruto had still tried to commit them to memory, as they were different fro the base curriculum of the martial arts Konohagure offered. In between his brainstorming for escape plans, he pondered the usefulness of his new skills. The two jutsu were useful, he was sure, but not if he didn't find a way to combine them with other things he learned. He mentioned these thoughts to his more lenient captor, and Haku had smiled.
"Why do you bother asking me these things? If you can pull off your shadow clones while at the same time employing your sexy jutsu, how am I supposed to add to your obscure thoughts?"
Naruto let of a grudging laugh at this, though with the quiet afternoon air, the sound echoed into the forest. Haku listened to the echo and stopped walking completely. There was a reason the afternoon was so unusually quiet, and a reason his friend's voice had carries so well in the air.
"The birds have stopped singing," the mist ninja remarked, causing Naruto to stop his march.
"Well, s-o-r-r-y if I was being too loud, b-" Naruto began to insincerely apologize before his slightly-enhanced hearing picked up on it, too. It wasn't just the birds; there was this veil that had come over the forest. The remaining sounds of the forest became somewhat muffled, and the vision of the two boys became foggy.
Haku quickly processed what was happening as the jutsu-induced fog rolled over the in a wave.
"Master Zabuza!" the black-haired youth gasped before darting off.
Naruto Uzumaki wasn't the brightest being on the face of the earth, but even he was aware of the fact something had gone wrong for the rogue mist shinobi. He wondered if he could use the ruse as an escape before he remembered that he was hopelessly lost in the wilderness with nothing but the stars to guide him. Even then, there was always the chance that he would screw up as astronomy had never been his forte. Between these facts and his inability to do the anything but what was right, Naruto barreled after Haku before the teal-colored blurry form left his view entirely.
Haku didn't make it very far before the third ANBU made her appearance, her mask containing an elaborate swirl of pink paint between the eye-slits. The well-toned woman executed several jutsu in a matter of seconds, launching a wavering image of herself though Haku's body. Zabuza's young ward had reacted, of course, sending a flurry of senbon into the opponent before him, but they ghosted through her as she drifted through him.
A mirage jutsu?!
The areas of his body the hunter's image touched felt weak, slowing his movements with the stamina being leeched. Haku fell to his knees and would have been ended there and then if a strong pair of hands hefted him out of the way before the specter of the third hunter passed through the young kakkai genkai user again and vanished without a trace.
"Show yourself!" Haku's blonde savior shouted into the fog, his voice no longer echoing with the dampness hanging in Zabuza's jutsu-manufactured vapors. The melodic laughter of a woman who was probably in her early twenties greeted the jinchuriiki's hearing to the left. Naruto jumped out of the way as a flurry of bladed projectiles greeted the area he had previously inhabited before.
Haku struggled to his feet, but Naruto heard the next set of shuriken coming for the gentle shinobi and pulled him out of the way yet again. Haku's brain was in a haze, and though he was attempting to break out the ice mirrors, Naruto could tell he was struggling to do so. Seeing this vulnerability, Naruto hefted Zabuza's accomplice onto his back.
Te female ANBU couldn't believe how easy her job was becoming; she had been expecting more of a fight from the kid that had reportedly been traveling with their mark, but she hadn't expected him to be traveling with another. She didn't know how to thank her luck for the fact the two were already fatigued, either.
Now, one of the children was down and the other had hastened to protect him. It was foolish, really. In the world of the ninja elite, it was important to look out for one's self.
By placing Haku on his back, the blonde had made himself vulnerable by sacrificing the use of his hands. The spectacle was quite pitiful, and the masked woman allowed herself to gain an unhealthy measure of overconfidence as she prepared her nutrient-stealing jutsu yet again.
Naruto's bright blue eyes widened in shock as the woman's image materialized in another angle than he had anticipated. Within instants, the dangerous wisp flew throw his center, leaving the woman quite pleased with herself before she realized the boys hadn't fallen into a heap. Instead, they vanished in a puff of smoke that was barely noticeable in the dull fog.
She recovered from the shock quickly, however, and immediately went to work pinpointing them again. They weren't to interfere with her comrade's work, no matter how she managed the feat.
Naruto bolstered himself in the tree branch he had jumped to at the last possible moment, Haku gripping his shoulders until he could place his feet on a branch. The two didn't care speak, but both were rather inventive.
Haku gathered his energy and pulled a new handful of senbon from his robes, and Naruto soon overpopulated the tree with doppelgangers, half of which he modeled after Haku. The Uzumaki made a motion and sent a majority of the shadow clones running in various directions, their objectives being to lure their current adversary from their true location.
It took all of thirty seconds before the elite huntress found the first set of doppelgangers, and she dispatched the with ease. While she was mildly impressed with the cloning abilities being utilized, she was still quite good at her job.
Throughout the next few minutes, the brunette woman from the village Hidden in the Mist scoured the area, taking out the numerous groups of bunshin piece by piece. Eventually the clones would run out, she knew. Not even a kage could keep a steady output of chakra that intense.
Haku had taken advantage of Naruto's distractions to gain a defensive position, where he was able to repose just long enough to pull of his signature attacks if he needed to. Naruto, in the meantime, had been granted nonverbal permission to raid his ally's inventory of explosive tags, which he placed on his two remaining kunai carefully before putting a decent amount of distance between himself and Haku's perch.
Their plan was simple; Naruto would employ himself as a diversion while Haku waited for a precise moment to envelope the area in his bloodline abilities. This assignment was right up Naruto's alley, as he had plenty of experience as a diversion. If the sixty-eight failed escape plans he'd enacted were any indication, he'd had a lot of practice in the field as of late.
After making the preparations for their strategy, Naruto stood in the grass and began to holler a few mistruths that were extremely convincing at the time.
"YOU KILLED HIM, YOU BITCH!" the Uzumaki's voice shrieked, alerting the ANBU to his position while at the same time assigning him with a motive for carelessness. It wasn't too improbable for someone to have died as the aftereffect of her jutsu, and it wasn't unthinkable for a friend to become rash and bull-headed over such a loss. She smirked. Even if ANBU were good at sensing traps, they could be lulled into believing their opponents to be hot-blooded morons. Oh, the irony.
She was on the yodaime's sole offspring within ten seconds, hurling attacks and duplicating herself with mirages in the fog. The distance between them slowly closed, and Naruto began to realize that the woman was lapsing into her martial arts to compensate for the now-ineffective long-ranged tactics she was employing earlier.
Naruto ended up blocking and ducking a great deal over the next precious minutes, and had to concentrate very hard to not break his defenses. It was to his advantage that the kunoichi had only the minimal amount of training in close-ranged taijitsu, however, as he had been tired before the encounter had even occurred.
In this situation, there would be no flashy jutsus. Between the two of them, physical contact would be superior as a means of combat, as a jutsu would have required time to pull off. Both Naruto and the female he was facing became so engrossed in their own battle that neither realized it when ice mirrors surrounded their tussling forms.
The woman executed a spinning back kick, and Naruto bolted out of the way at the last second, suddenly aware that Haku had enclosed the space. A smile formed on the whiskered-cheeks of the genin as the ANBU began to realize what was happening. Before she could gain her bearings, however, she was assaulted with needles from all directions.
She wouldn't go down at first, standing stubbornly and batting a majority of the wooden senbon off before they could damage her greatly. At one point, the woman began to form some sort of counterattack, but Naruto had taken the initiative of bowling her over with his own weight, which served to occupy her long enough for Haku to make the final blow.
The woman died instantly, and though Naruto felt a small surge of guilt, he was immensely relieved when the whole ordeal was over.
Zabuza Momochi looked over his work. For having such high initial opinions of the opponents he had faced, they had been quite a disappointment in battle. With ruthless efficiency, the wanted criminal bent over his fallen foes and took whatever money or medical supplies they were carrying before scanning the area for his absent followers. To the closest thing Zabuza could feel to relief, Haku and the brat from Konoha were easy to find, the latter helping the former down from a tree while making quiet conversation.
Needless to say, Haku was elated with the fact Zabuza had emerged victorious and fussed over the wounds the older man had obtained, all the while being stared at by the prisoner.
"He saved my life, Master Zabuza," Haku indicated, causing the Uzumaki to feel a sinking sensation. Zabuza regarded the blonde with an appraising glare.
Damn me and my morals, Naruto gulped.
Author's note: Steven K, Skendall, please activate our connections so that the beta-ing may commence. For the rest of you, I hope this satisfies your need to know exactly what Naruto was up to.