June 18, 13 AK
"Down!"
Naruto dropped immediately, a hand on Tazuna's shoulder to pull the client down as well. A huge blade whistled through the fog over his head not a moment later, firmly embedding itself in a nearby tree. He suppressed a sigh of irritation as he straightened up. Not five minutes off the boat to Wave and already they were being hassled.
He blinked in faintly irritated skepticism at the figure standing on the hilt of the massive sword. Honestly, had he never heard of taste? Trying to look impressive was all well and good, but then this chump goes and spoils it with the high pants.
Blond hair tilted slightly to the side as he pulled himself back up, head cocked in silent rumination. Then again, Hiroki-nii dressed kind of weird too, maybe all high ranked shinobi just lost their fashion sense?
The Mist-nin sneered through his face covering bandages, visibly assessing the Genin and dismissing them just as easily, a gesture which lit a spark of defiance in Naruto's gut which he carefully banked and stored away for later. The enemy's expression shifted as he looked at Hiroki-sensei, however, becoming more interested at the glinting bracers and pitch-crimson mask.
"Well well, Hiroki the Pariah. They let someone like you lead a Genin team? Leaf must really be scraping the bottom of the barrel."
His Sensei had been still, Sharingan eyes spinning slowly, but at the enemy's words some of that stiffness bled away, replaced by a sort of hostile looseness. The expression made Naruto tense slightly, and prepare for a fight.
"You know, I'm really not a fan of that name. But I suppose it would be rude not to complete the introductions. Children, say hello to Zabuza Momochi, A-rank Missing Nin, the Demon of the Hidden Mist, and their first Genin to fail the final exam."
Naruto grinned, showing teeth in an expression he didn't quite feel through all the nerves. Despite that he made the gesture anyway, because appearances mattered and showing he was ready to soil his pants would be much worse for his survival prospects than faking a confident smile.
"Ne, ne, Sensei, what final exam? How'd he become a Genin then?"
Zabuza looked positively murderous but Hiroki-sensei spoke loudly to carry through the fog, a vicious smirk written in the twist of his mask.
"Well, as we all know, Konoha is The Best Village, but unfortunately the bar for that particular distinction is rather low, considering our competition. You see, in Kiri they had a special exam; once you were through all the other tests, they'd pair the students up two-by-two... and have them fight to the death."
He blinked, torn between disgust and confounded disbelief. His teammates apparently shared his feelings because Sakura spoke up, fans drooping from a guard position a hair as she expressed her skepticism with such a ridiculous practice.
"Seriously?"
"Yep!" Sensei sounded positively gleeful.
"That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. And I'm on a team with Naruto."
He hated to admit it, but Naruto totally agreed with Sasuke's deadpan words. The first part anyway.
The ninja from the Village Hidden in the Retards growled angrily from his spot on the embedded sword, jabbing a thumb at his chest aggressively.
"But they ended that exam when a child, one who wasn't even enrolled, slaughtered the entire graduating class! Me!"
That was certainly scary, but there was no way he could pass up an opportunity that obvious.
"Wow, that is honestly even worse. Not only did they routinely throw away half their ninja, but the training wasn't even good enough for the entire class to beat a single child?"
With a scream of rage, Zabuza tore his massive sword from the trunk of the tree and hurled himself at the Genin squad, only to be brought short when the slab of metal impacted on a dull grey plane of force extending from Sensei's bracers.
The swordsman snarled, bearing down on the much smaller Konoha Jounin.
"I've got you in my Bingo Book, Pariah; Genjutsu and speed are all you're good at, and neither will work on me. I'll slice you in half and butcher your Genin too."
Sensei smiled, eyes drooping slightly as he shifted forward a bit, arm not even trembling from the strain of the contest of strength.
"Oh Zabuza, you should know better than to believe everything you read in books."
The mask stretched as Hiroki-sensei opened his mouth and exhaled in the enemy's face. The missing-nin recoiled in surprise as his flesh began to blister, before his head exploded into a cloud of boiling water.
Without pausing for a moment, the elder Uchiha spun in place, the silver barrier on his bracer reshaping itself into a thin spike which plunged into the chest of another Zabuza clone, who likewise dissolved into a spray of water. The very tip of the freakish broadsword barely nicked Sensei's cheek as it disintegrated, sending a thin spray of blood over the Genin in their protective huddle.
Naruto had a bare instant of forewarning, hands plunging into the pocket of his hoodie almost in slow motion as a figure congealed out of the mist only inches in front of him, right in the middle of Team 7's defensive triangle. The blade was already swinging when it was intercepted once again by his brother's bracers, but it looked like Zabuza had accounted for that as well. In the moment of impact the Missing-nin shifted the position of his hands along the hilt of his blade, turning a horizontal slash into an uppercut which lifted Sensei off the ground and sent him skidding towards the nearby water.
The enemy was gone before Naruto even finished drawing his sickles, bursting from the water behind Hiroki-sensei with hands already locked in a seal.
"I've got you now!"
Sensei only stared impassively back as he was engulfed in a transparent sphere of water, even as a new water-clone rose from the river.
"Children, masks on! I'll leave the water-clone to you; remember your mission."
Every member of Team 7 immediately pulled out a rebreather and secured it with the aid of a little chakra. When your teacher liked to use poisons, you learned to heed warnings about air quality.
The copy of Zabuza rushed at their huddle, sword in a ready position to strike. The imitation wouldn't be as strong as the original, but it was still likely to be a hard target to beat. Naruto flipped his hands into his favorite seal and immediately sent out a half dozen clones, all with wicked sharp kama already drawn and some ready to be thrown at a moment's notice. The first three didn't even see what hit them, and the fourth was kicked into the fifth and sixth so hard that the fifth dispelled outright, the last clone sent flying… as his sickle trailed behind him, pulled along its chain by his momentum, right towards the water-clone's head.
Zabuza-clone saw the trailing chain and ducked forward, eyes widening in surprise as he was forced to abruptly shift his motion into a sideways roll to avoid the ascending edge of Sakura's wickedly sharp fan. A roll which was cut brutally short as Sasuke's plummeting form slammed a sword straight through his chest. The look on the clone's face was absolutely priceless for the second before it dissolved into a puddle of water.
Sakura shifted her position into a more general ready stance with a little flourish of her fans, clearing away a bit of the lingering mist with a sweeping wave.
"Naruto, client secured?"
"State blue."
The temporary team leader nodded her pink head at the code phrase, indicating Tazuna (smelly, stupid, lying, no-good, drunk) was hidden and out of the immediate danger area.
Their attention was drawn towards a soft sound from the water, Sensei smiling fondly at them even as he floated in the bubble of water. Something about the angles of Hiroki's face looked a little odd, and thin dark lines were radiating out from the corners of his eyes almost like feathers.
"Such dutiful children. Well, I suppose it's up to me now, ne Zabuza? Really though, you should have known better. Keeping a fire ninja so close? After all, seas boil, and everything burns."
The hooded form in the Water Prison began to glow with a soft light as Sensei let his eyes drop closed for a moment of concentration.
"Sage Art: Aegis of Immolation."
With an astonished widening of his eyes, Zabuza pulled his arm out of the bubble only moments before it violently exploded into a cloud of steam. Seconds later, even that haze seemed to fade away, burnt off by the intense heat radiating off of their Jounin Sensei, who stood, pose confident, upon the surface of the vigorously boiling water.
"Like I said, you shouldn't believe in everything you read in books. Just because I don't like Ninjutsu, doesn't mean I don't know any."
Sensei was now so bright it almost hurt to look directly at him, and with a soft 'whumph' pale flames started to lick across the surface of the river immediately around the Jounin's sandaled feet.
"This is one of my personal inventions, and I must admit, not the most impressive technique, despite the difficulty I had perfecting it. All it does is raise your body temperature to about 2500 Celsius. Just hot enough that even water burns."
A frustrated growl came from the former Mist-nin as his hands flickered through a long string of seals. A huge pillar of liquid rose from his side and rushed towards Sensei, taking the shape of a dragon as it sped headlong towards the searingly hot ninja, whose only response was a slight bracing of position.
The impact was as loud as an explosion, sending a wave of steam and water across the battlefield and obscuring the two Jounin from view. Naruto tensed in preparation for anything as the intensely warm and humid air blew across his face; he trusted his teacher, but anything could happen in a fight between powerful ninja and they might still need to fight a weakened Demon of the Mist if Sensei had been injured.
A figure came flying out of the cloud in the next second, falling with a painful thump on the other side of the road. He breathed a sigh of relief as he noted the bare chest. Zabuza.
The air near Team 7 blurred for a moment as Sensei exited a Body Flicker, skin still glowing a bright yellow-white, sending waves of heat out strong enough to give the Genin a sunburn. Good thing they were already wearing rebreathers; air that hot would cook their lungs.
The Missing-nin staggered to his feet, hefting his sword again but visibly wavering with large, angry-looking red marks splattered across his visible skin which were probably very painful. Team 7 tensed, preparing for a fight for their very lives-
Cut off quite suddenly when a trio of needles embedded themselves in Zabuza's neck, causing him to twitch before slumping to the ground, dead before he hit the dirt. A youngish looking figure appeared a moment later, features concealed by a red and white porcelain mask covering their entire face.
"Thank you very much for your assistance; I have been looking for a chance to eliminate my target for some time now."
Hiroki-sensei cocked his head assessing, a faint ticking sound coming from the ground nearby as the scorching heat began to cool.
"Please be sure to inform your master that I would like to talk when he gets better, Yuki-kun."
The masked figure stiffened before hoisting up Zabuza's body and disappearing in another flicker. Niisan's head turned as if tracking something before he shifted his attention back to the Genin.
"Sakura, what did the Hunter-nin do wrong?"
Her fans closed with a click as she slid them away, shifting out of a defensive posture with a flick of her pretty pink hair.
"He should have processed the body immediately, not taken it away."
Sensei smiled approvingly.
"Anything else? Sasuke?"
The other Uchiha was surveying their surroundings, sharingan glittering, hand stroking nervously on the hilt of his sheathed sword.
"He used senbon. They aren't very good for killing strikes, they're used mostly for poison delivery and hitting pressure points. The neck isn't a good location for a lethal senbon hit either."
"Just so."
Hiroki-sensei glanced over to Naruto, still smiling slightly.
"Naruto, good work exfiltrating the client; you might want to get into the habit of having a few clones nearby all the time though. Your attack was effective" -Sensei looked over all of them to spread the praise- "but it might have been more effective if you had a few strikes coming in from ambush as well."
Naruto grinned proudly, hands linking behind his head as a pair of clones appeared from the woods dragging a dripping Tazuna. Sensei nodded once more before wincing slightly, the little lines around his eyes fading away.
"Well, if you wouldn't mind, I think I'm going to collapse now."
. . .
A/N: Wow, that certainly sounds a lot like what happened in canon doesn't it?
Naruto is a good actor, and the team works pretty well together.
Yeah, Hiroki has sage mode. In this case, he needs it or else Aegis of Immolation becomes a flashy suicide technique.
Each of the elements has certain properties, and Fire is a little more effective against its counter element than some others. In this case, heat/light/consumption beat cold/flow/absorb. But mostly because of the intensity.
Fun Fact: No one has seen Hiroki cast a genjutsu since he was 14. Not even Kakashi.