The Pathless Sage
Beta read by I before A except after K
A/R: The poll about Zaraki is still there, so if you haven't yet, please go vote.
I got a good response to last chapter, a decent amount of reviews. So yeah, I can't stop myself from writing so I decided to just go ahead and write up the next chapter in the library, since my mum dragged me along anyway.
On with the story!
Kakashi stared his opponent down with no visible feelings, daring the younger fighter to make the first move. Years of training and life or death situations had taught him that taking the initiative usually ended with you taking the first hit, not dealing it. So Kakashi waited, observing his enemy.
Haku didn't know what to do. Over the years as Zabuza's tool in training, he had been taught over and over again to suppress his emotions. Even though he was normally rather good at doing so, facing down someone so infamous still instilled fear in him. He was almost the same age as the Gennin on Kakashi's team, and he wasn't as experienced as he would have liked to feel.
With Zabuza and Naruto, the fight was already raging at full force. The storm had begun, with Zabuza providing the rain and thunder, while Naruto provided the wind required to keep it going. Literally. Zabuza was throwing around water based Jutsu and the occasional lightning, whereas Naruto was constantly on the defence with wind natured Jutsu of his own.
"Water Style: Water Bullet Jutsu," molding as little Chakra as he needed to power the Jutsu, Zabuza spewed out a few globs of highly pressured water, the first one aimed straight at Naruto's face while the others cut off all routes of escape from the first. Zabuza was expecting Naruto to use his Wind Wall Jutsu again, but was surprised to see otherwise.
With an impressive show of speed, he dodged to his right, moving so fast that even the projectile that was meant to cut him off missed. Continuing with his trajectory, he ran at Zabuza's left, open flank, his Rinnegan flaring menacingly.
Seeing the change in the boy's eyes for the first time in the conflict, the ex Kiri ninja was rather surprised to see purple eyes glaring at him, rather than the blue and white that he was expecting. The boy's earlier clumsiness was also gone, replaced by an elegant, fluid looking motion.
Starting with a right hook, Naruto wasn't surprised to see Zabuza's left hand moving up swiftly to block. Ignoring the failed attempt to blow his opponent's head off, he used his momentum to bounce back up from the left, his fist flying in from underneath his enemy's guard. He was rather perturbed to feel a very hard, cold substance meeting with the speeding appendage.
Seeing the uppercut coming, Zabuza did the only thing he thought was logical at the time. He used the flat side of his blade to block the punch. Not only did it protect him from harm's way, it also had the advantage of injuring his opponent, who now backed off, sporting a lightly bruised left hand.
With a sigh, Naruto got back into his Taijutsu stance, which was little more than just standing there with his hands hanging in front of his face with his feet wide apart. While Naruto was rather good at actually fighting, his beginning stances were still poor.
"I really regret not bringing Ryujinjakka right now, it's annoying to fight a swordsman without a sword of your own," Naruto said, moving to pull out a kunai to even out the playing field just a little. He still hadn't learned any proper nature manipulation, other than the defensive Jutsu taught to him at the Academy, so he settled for a normal kunai, not a more expensive Chakra conducting one.
"Are you telling me you're trained in the way of the sword?" Zabuza asked, quite impressed by the young Gennin. It wasn't often that he was pleased by a Gennin, definitely not one from Konoha. He usually thought they were too soft to be proper ninja, except for the odd genius like Kakashi and Itachi. His opinions were not baseless.
"No, but I do know the basics of how to slice people apart with a sword. I might not be a trained swordsman, but it is still better than trying to fight someone that has a sword with my bare hands. I might have a lot of training under my belt, but I still can't break steel with my bare fist, and definitely not one that is made out of a Chakra conducting metal like yours." Naruto replied, grateful for the break he was getting from fighting. His job, after all, was to stall Zabuza, not beat him.
Deciding he had enough of letting the boy rest up, Zabuza charged in, his zanbato aiming to cleave his target in half horizontally. At the last second, Naruto brought up his hand with the kunai and stopped the massive sword dead in his track, which surprised Zabuza further. To block something as heavy as a zanbato with nothing more than a simple kunai was a feat beyond any normal eleven year old.
Sakura, Sasuke and Zaraki looked on in the thin mist, observing the two fights going on at the time. Well, one fight and a stare down, Kakashi and Haku still hadn't bothered moving from where they stood, seemingly content with only trying to subdue the other with glares. They did, however, glance at their partners from time to time to check how they were faring in their own fights. Sakura was still in denial of Naruto's skill, Sasuke looked on in open envy while Zaraki daydreamed about killing ... erm sparring with the other boy.
Seeing his chance, Haku charged Kakashi with senbons in his hand while the older man was sneaking a glance towards Naruto over his own shoulder. The result was Kakashi being impaled through the neck with the needles of death. Haku was almost ready to celebrate his victory, but his joy was short-lived as Kakashi exploded in a cloud of smoke.
"Nice try, but I am not one to drop my guard in front of an enemy," Kakashi admonished, all the while charging at Haku with a drawn kunai. Turning in near hysterical panic, Haku brought his senbons up just in time to block the speeding kunai, but not quickly enough to block the shuriken Kakashi had sneakily thrown underneath his kunai arm with the help of his other one.
Pain shot through his abdomen as the shuriken dug into his flesh. Luckily, in his attempt to be sneaky, Kakashi had favoured stealth over strength, which resulted in the shuriken flying slower and only causing a flesh wound rather than puncturing one of the many important organs that was located within the unprotected patch of flesh.
Finally breaking out of his reverie, Zaraki rushed at Haku's back while his attention was still on Kakashi. Their plan was to test out how good this fake missing nin was, but there was no need to keep him alive longer than he needed to. His sword came out of its sheath smoothly, despite the jagged cutting edge, looking as deadly and evil as it always had. Zaraki aimed a slash at the fake missing nin's open back.
Sensing danger, Haku tried to turn around, but wasn't fast enough as he felt a sharp pain shoot rapidly through his side. The diagonal slash that was aimed at his back caught his side and the side of his chest as he tried to turn. Fortunately for him, the sword only cut through his skin and flesh, leaving his ribs and lungs intact. Well, partially intact in the case of his ribs, as the sword left a noticeable scratch on his bones. The sword was sharp and jagged, so naturally it sawed through any bone it came in contact with.
Sakura's eyes widened in terror and disgust, she had heard about it being a part of the life of a shinobi and a kunoichi, but never before had she seen someone attacking to kill, not to wound. Though the fight didn't involve her and she had heard stories that were far worse, seeing someone nearly mortally wounded for the first time in her life would leave her scarred for the rest of her life, the same way that the stories about her teammate and teacher's life did the night before.
Sasuke, no stranger to death and destruction himself, was still a little disturbed to see someone his own age attempting to kill someone of similar age to himself with a straight face. When he decided to pursue the way of the shinobi, he resolved to do whatever he needed to do to get stronger, kill if need be, but he hadn't counted on being reminded of that vow so soon.
Naruto wasn't paying attention to his enemy's nigh mortal peril, he had his own problems to deal with. He was finding out the hard way that no matter how good you were with Taijutsu, an inexperienced fighter like himself was hard pressed to fight against a master of Kenjutsu like Zabuza. Especially so since his opponent had years of practice on the battlefield to get his skills and intention to kill sharpened, while Naruto only had experience doing drills and the occasional sparring.
Every attempt Naruto made to strike Zabuza was returned with a vicious counter attack, every attempt to evade was met with a blockade of his escape route, every attempt to block was shot down with another strike. Now that Zabuza was treating him like a threat, he was reminded just why Zabuza was such a feared ninja throughout the lands.
Slowly, wounds started to appear here and there on Naruto's body from close calls with Zabuza's sword. While he always somehow managed to block in time, Zabuza was getting closer and closer to cleaving him in however many pieces he intended to, while never wearing himself out with the use of Jutsu.
It wasn't all bad news for him though. While Zabuza was only using his Kubikirihocho and no Chakra, using such a large blade was still taxing on the body and the ex Mist ninja was starting to show small signs of exhaustion while the blonde Jinchuriki was still running around like the crazy ball of energy that he was. Inhuman training schedules, Chakra reserves of an Uzumaki supplemented with the Chakra of a Bijuu created a monstrosity of endurance.
"Brat, stop running around. I was starting to think that you were actually capable of doing something, unlike those useless brats over there, but it seems like you were useless too," Zabuza taunted, while visible signs of how tired he was started to show in the form of sweat on his face.
Utilising only a single handseal due to the hours of extra practice in the Academy supplementary classes, Naruto sent out the windy version of his best offensive Jutsu. "Wind Style: Slicing Wind Wall Jutsu." A wall of raging wind started to form around Naruto, spinning around him like a tempest and moving outwards to consume his opponent.
Not expecting the sudden use of Jutsu after such a long time without one, and his reflexes dulled due to exhaustion setting in, he was caught up in the slicing vortex. Pain shot through his entire body as the Jutsu started to cut shallow gashes all over his body. While not life threatening, even after considering blood loss, it was a rather painful experience.
"Who would have ever thought that overpowering a Wind Wall Jutsu had the effect if cutting stuff up around you? The wonders of overpowered Jutsu, turning a simple D Rank defensive Jutsu into a B Rank offensive one." Naruto thought gleefully, as he watched his first original technique wreak havoc on the Jounin.
"Why you shitty little brat!" An enraged Zabuza emerged from the dissipated attacked, sporting several light cuts all over his body, ignoring the monumental amount of pain through sheer combined force of anger and will.
At that moment, all activity stopped as the mist cleared slightly, followed by a loud, oily cackle that rang through the air and poisoned the ear of all that listened. People often classified others as evil due to their actions. While almost always the presumptions were misguided, sometimes they were spot on. That presumption was true for the cackling monster.
A small, sleazy looking man stood on the beginning of the bridge they were on now, laughing at the predicament that he had put the occupants of the bridge in. Gato stood there laughing, imagining the looks on their shocked faces, imagining his own victory. Victory, as he was soon to find out, that was not earned. Victory that he would not taste on this day.
The mist cleared further, revealing an army of hired thugs and barely trained samurai behind Gato. What they seemed to lack in skill and strength, they made up with their size and their sheer number. There seemed to be hundreds of them, all wielding some form of weapon or another, mostly swords of various shapes and sizes, though a few maces and clubs were present here and there.
"Gato, you traitorous bastard. What is the meaning of this?" Zabuza shouted, having stopped a few feet away from Naruto. He was still seething over what the boy had done to him, but his attention was now directed towards Gato and his army rather than the Gennin in front of him.
"What does it look like? Your services were too expensive, so I decided to terminate our contract," Gato said, his oily voice taking on a thick, superior tone. "Get 'em boys!" With a casual wave of his hand, he ordered his army to advance on the small number of ninja. They approached slowly, sure of the slaughter that was to come, as the ninja got ready to defend themselves against the assault.
Yes, there would be a slaughter.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a Chakra signature spiked through the roof and into the heavens above, its demonic feel making everyone present shiver.
Kakashi panicked, looking around frantically for the source of the Chakra. He had felt something similar on that fateful night eleven years ago and the thought of that monster rampaging again made his heart freeze.
Zabuza was excited and scared at the same time. It had been a long time since he felt a Chakra signature this strong. Not since his assassination attempt on the Mizukage failed, had he felt something this chilling. He was rather surprised, though, since he knew it couldn't be Kakashi that was putting out that demonic Chakra, since he knew for a fact Kakashi was a normal Jounin. "Who's Chakra is that?" He thought.
Sakura and Sasuke collapsed under the onslaught of the bloodlust that permeated through the air. They had felt Kakashi and Zabuza stare each other down during their first encounter, but that bloodlust was insignificant compared to what was in the air right now. If Kakashi and Zabuza's thirst for blood was as chilling as a hot summer's day, whereas this was the cold, dark night of winter, and a blizzard was raging all around them.
Gato was terrified. For the first time in his life, he was truly scared of death.
A/R: Medium sized chapter, but I was at the library and I was really pushed for time. Be glad I updated even though I am on hiatus due to a lack of means for typing.
That was a rather odd place to leave the story, and a sad attempt at a cliffhanger. Just be warned, there is a rather annoying surprise in store for you guys in the next chapter.
Please, please review. They make me feel better even though I don't have a working computer anymore.
=*=*=Personal Opinion Rant=*=*=
I don't get it. At the beginning of the story, Kishimoto made it seem like there were only 9 Gennin graduating per year, that there was a really small amount of ninja in a village. Then suddenly, you have this war, and you somehow get 60k Ninja coming of out of nowhere? Where are all of these forces coming from? I get it that they are cannon fodder, but shouldn't you also keep a sense of continuity in the number of ninja in a Village from the beginning of a story to the end of it?
Also, what is it with the Jutsu in Naruto? Kakashi is said to have mastered over a thousand Jutsu, but throughout the story, I don't think I have seen him use even a hundred different ones. What is the point of overplaying the number of techniques a person has if you are not going to back up the numbers?
=*=*=Personal Opinion Rant End=*=*=