Last time
Naruko is walking again. The others are training to prepare for the next confrontation with Zabuza and Kisame. Sai and Naruko have reestablished contact with Kurama, who wants to kill Kisame. With Sai's help, they might be able to get the drop on them, since he already knows how the battle is going to go.
Tazuna is dead; Zabuza killed him, and plans to kill the others as well.
Chapter 8
The Land of Waves and Sharks, Part 3!
Naruto, or Sai, as he'd regretfully deemed himself, had been to funerals before. He'd never been to one wearing a disguise before, though. Kakashi-sensei was right that they needed to stay incognito. The killers were watching them. They might even be in attendance.
Sai remembered looking at the special kunai that the Fourth gave him this morning. A day and two minutes remained, ticking down to the moment it would be "safe" for him to try the jutsu again.
The 4th hadn't been too specific on what could happen other than, as often happened with jutsu, it simply wouldn't work, and clearly waiting until the timer went down didn't secure them a way back home.
The turnout was large as to be expected. Tazuna always had a way with people. His cause was just even if his methods weren't exactly pure, and even though Sai knew that, in his world, Tazuna lived and built the Great Naruto Bridge, it didn't make things any less saddening.
Tsunami was a wreck and Inari had to be strong for her, but Sai could see the boy had hit some kind of breaking point. Naruko, for her part, said nothing out of respect and hung her head down, making certain not to say anything that would upset the pair.
Kakashi spoke ill of himself, regretting that Team Seven's mission had turned out a failure, calling Tazuna a good man (with an asterisk, but good nevertheless).
Naruto and Sakura were about equal in recognizing that they had no right to bicker or comment, mostly keeping to themselves. There were bite marks on Sasuke's lower lip; a failed mission, a dead person found in the middle of the floor, a screaming daughter and no words to comfort her.
Sai could only guess why Sasuke's mood was even lower than the rest of his team's.
Kurama didn't show, and Sai thought that best. He probably didn't have much of anything nice to say to anyone.
"Shuichi Minamino."
"Eikichi Onizuka."
"Urameshi Yusuke."
"Sasuke."
"Haruka Tomatsu."
"Taiga Asuka."
They were throwaway names, aliases for Sai, Kakashi, Naruto, the ever-so-original younger Sasuke, Sakura, and Naruko to have on the guest registry. A quick Transformation Jutsu and they were in, keeping themselves posted around the perimeter, but also trying their best not to make it look obvious.
The rain started with no mercy, threatening to flood the funeral goers out then letting up without any theater or ceremony. "Shuichi," "Yusuke," "Onizuka," and Sasuke had filtered themselves in ordinary black funeral wear. "Haruka Tomatsu," her pink hair changed to an ugly brown, and "Taiga," pigtails changed to a single, pork bun-shape, wore the same but with matching skirts.
Zabuza could attack from nearly any direction. Kakashi was sure of it. He asked Sai for clues, information from the supposed future Sai had claimed to hail from about Zabuza's next move, but it was no use. Sai had gone cold at the sight of Tazuna lying there.
That was nothing compared to the boiling going on inside of him now, but the fact of the matter was that things weren't going like before. When his senses caught up with him in the crumbling public space, he realized that others had piled up tent coverings like little roofs, used wooden planks and big, heavy barrels to create brief shelter from the occasional blasts of rain that plowed through.
Across from them under a hand-crafted awning, past the rows of chairs, in front of the casket that held her beloved father and the last hope the Land of Waves had – Tsunami was on knees and elbows, sobbing with Inari right next to her, who was doing the same. Laughter and comfort that had seemed far away hours ago seemed to be on different continents, stacked under tombs locked away behind heavy doors.
There was no reason for Zabuza or Kisame to go after them per Gato's contract, but Sai remained uneasy, and hatched a backup plan to have a shadow clone switch places with them if anything seemed amiss.
Three fourths of the seventy to eighty person crowd were doppelgangers in the less literal sense, copies of him of his own making. The rest were Tazuna's neighbors and construction crew, downtrodden and weary. Kakashi approved of the plan. They only hoped that it would be enough.
"Kakashi-sen… Kakashi?"
The squad leader turned his eye to him. "I think that's the first time you've said that."
"It's just that… this wasn't the way things were supposed to happen. None of it, I mean, Tazuna survived everything. He's supposed to be here with Tsunami and Inari."
There was a pause, and then Kakashi followed back with: "I've heard a lot of shinobi say that."
"Why? Why didn't I stop him?"
Kakashi let off a hard breath. "I haven't fully accepted your story, Mr. Sai. I've gone over the details, confirmed the way you and Naruto use chakra to be the same, but I just don't think my mind is ready to buy into it. Still, from what you've told me, I can make some rational judgments."
Sai lifted his head desperately.
"The first," Kakashi cleared his throat and said, "is that if your dimension had a version of everything going on right now, it's now totally different in the way things happened. You only knew Zabuza was here, and Kisame you said was part of the Akatsuki, an organization of S-Rank ninja we've never seen in the Land of Fire. It proves that, if they exist, parallel universes don't have to follow each other exactly. You and that Kurama person are proof."
Naruto listened further as Kakashi drew in breath.
"I'm only speaking from personal experience, but fretting over things you could've done differently is a one-way road to losing perspective. Every person on this planet dies, Sai, sooner or later, preventable or otherwise. If you'd done anything differently, this version of you wouldn't matter; a different you would be asking the same thing, wondering why somebody else died for a different reason."
He stopped, letting it sink in. Naruto… Sai watched Naruto and Naruko huddle like siblings. Looking at a younger version of himself (under the abnormally large schnozz and the big eyebrows), Sai thought about his other selves; Naruko passing her test with his help. Would she have, if he'd not intervened? Then on the other end Kurama, playing possum the entire time. They had no way of knowing if any part of him was truly still in there, or if it was all the fox. Sai hadn't known the fox existed until meeting Pervy Sage, getting flung off that cliff. Something had caused that meeting to happen even sooner.
Naruko's face grew serious and alarmed. She palmed at the sides of her head, and Sai moved closer to her, examining.
She was sweating.
"It's Kurama," she said. "He's talking to my Nine-Tails."
Great. That was what they needed. Sai asked what it was saying to her, but she did as he'd asked and tried her best not to clue the others in. Then she took her gaze from her feet over a certain distance, around fold-up chairs and wet cushions, around a steel, criss-crossing series of beams that sat away from the proceedings, and over a narrow body of water to a hump-shaped booger of land.
Where Kurama was, hand held against a tree, watching intently. His eyes were closed in concentration, burying a conversation through some silent, unknowable method. The same vest and shirt. The same shorts and sandals. Sai wondered if he'd moved at all since their last conversation.
"What is it?" said Kakashi, coming to Sai from the right.
"I'm not sure. Kurama's trying to tell us something."
"-An enemy?"
Kakashi gazed over to Kurama, not totally convinced Naruto's duplicate was on their side.
"Naruko?" Sai asked.
"I don't understand, what do you want me to say?"
"Just tell us what it's saying." Sai noticed the turning heads. Sasuke had caught onto them, knowing something was up. Sakura had finished laying a flower on Tazuna's casket and gone looking for Sasuke then, seeing his attention being on them, became wary.
"Kurama's saying that there's somebody here… and it's somebody who wants to kill."
"Tsunami? One of us? Who?"
Naruto was starting to catch on too from the way his face and posture increased, like a person trying to make themselves look bigger in front of a wild beast to scare it off.
"I don't know! But it's everywhere. He says he can practically smell it, killing intent…"
Kakashi cursed and scanned around. Sai aped him and spotted the white fog that appeared at their feet. The raindrops had started calming down again, replaced by the ever growing presence of a thick sightlessness in every direction.
Blank walls of vapor closed in on them. Pockets and handcuffs opened around their limbs and captured them.
Sai remembered looking at the special kunai that the Fourth gave him this morning. A day and two minutes remained, ticking down to the moment it would be "safe" for him to try the jutsu again.
The motion of Sai and Kakashi's worst fears coming to pass was a swift storm of water, rain, and steel flying in every direction, twisting and bending through the air. Hissing and flashing, four assailants made short work of the crowd.
The trained members from Konoha heard their squad leader yell the order to take cover. Reflexes that even Sai was surprised at took hold. A clone of himself snatched Naruko and placed her well below the oncoming fire. Tsunami and Inari shrieked and found shelter behind the coffin. The crowd of people, now reduced to a few shell shocked people, waited for the bad news.
"Long time no see Kakashi," came Zabuza's voice, slitting through the mists. "I see you decided on getting helpers. The same ones I heard about."
The way of the ninja, Sai's personal code, was to never go back on his word. It didn't mention anything about staying alert in the face of supreme danger. Naruko and Kurama hadn't come far enough in their lives yet to make that pledge. They were lucky, and Sai was jealous.
A pale person spun from the mist and created a hole from where Sai could prepare for the oncoming attack. At the same time, a second gap was punched through the fog, Kurama making his move. The two of them met with their blows just feet away from him. Kurama's hand gnawed around the masked foe's with considerable effort.
The pale, masked teenager made a hand seal with his free hand.
"Are you the one called Sai?" his voice croaked out.
"Names like that one lessen me," said Kurama with a snarling, painted grin.
At the same time, a second masked person stepped through the mists and faced everyone. Haku. Sai could never forget that icy demeanor. He moved with uncanny ease, almost as if he, rather than Sai, had done this dance before.
"Hey, looky looky, the gang's all here, some brats, a freak, an orange wall ornament, Kakashi, and dear old Tazuna."
It was right at that moment that a firm, black-painted quartet of fingers patted Sai on the shoulder. Kisame Hoshigaki walked out from behind him.
Even Kakashi looked shocked. Their perimeter had meant less than nothing to the shark man.
Kisame eased his way in front of them to where Zabuza and Haku were standing, watching. Here they were - 7 Konoha ninja and 1 aggravating Naruto Uzumaki put together out of circumstance, and 4 Hidden Mist ninja, three of them ghosts from an alien world where good people died for absolutely no reason.
The next move was the pale teen's as he did something Sai didn't see, making Kurama howl and rip his hand backward from the white, bony weapon that appeared from inside the teen's body.
Memories flung through Sai's mind. The bone guy was the one who'd tried to take Sasuke to Orochimaru. He was here with Zabuza!? Sai didn't know his story, but he remembered throwing an army of shadow clones chock full of the fox's stupid chakra at him, and not even laying a scratch after numerous mix-ups. According to Lee, he was the strongest person the Bushy-browed martial artist had fought up until that point, including Gaara.
More memories raced. They outnumbered Zabuza and his crew and the difference was in the air, literally. No one on Zabuza's side breathed hard or wasted oxygen. Naruto and Naruko were clutching their breath. Sakura was trying to look brave after seeing Tazuna's coworkers and their butchered bodies littering the place, and she was failing. Even Kakashi was rattled.
Sakura, standing there, fighting Kabuto-
No!
Kurama had his back facing Sai, his attention completely on the bone guy.
"Kimimaro," Haku uttered, "that's not him. That one," he said, pointing.
Haku's instruction made the white-haired teen's eyes fix directly on Sai. This was going to be trouble. The mist was increasing suddenly as if preparing for the inevitable.
Kakashi ordered Team 7 to do as they'd practiced. There weren't any targets they were being paid to protect. The mission had ended in failure when Inari found his grandfather's body. Staying in the Land of Waves was a calculated risk and more than a team of genin and two strangers were equipped for.
But a real shinobi, as far as they were concerned and per Kakashi-sensei's teachings, was obligated to see through what was about to happen. Tazuna didn't deserve his death, but he damn well deserved a funeral, and they would make sure he got one.
No one said it, but they were all a little pissed off and looking for payback, too.
Ninja who break the rules were scum. Ninja who abandoned their allies were worse than scum. There was no courage or honor in abandoning the defenseless. The Third Hokage's words called to him as he prepared to fight...
Kakashi wasn't sure if he found Zabuza first, or if Zabuza found him first. The heavy slab of sharpened steel had moved quicker than expected. Kakashi put as much chakra into his hand as possible and caught it, immediately regretting it when the massive stinging pain rushed through his arm and the rest of his still recovering body.
He stared into the eyes of a piranha, wide, bloodshot, and hungry.
"You wanna know something Kakashi?"
"You're a real piece of work, Zabuza," Kakashi cut him off.
"I bet you're wondering why come after the woman and the child?"
Idle chatter was death in the world of ninja. They were too experienced for that. Each word was met with a strike or a swing, a step forward or backward. Kakashi moved to uncover his Sharingan with no preamble.
Zabuza drove a curved kunai through Kakashi's other hand, stopping him. They were locked together again, pushing for dominance with one of Zabuza's weapons only inches away from something vital.
"You're scum, Zabuza, coming to a funeral like this."
Zabuza grunted. "I just want you to know, 'Sharingan' Kakashi, I didn't come here for them. We came here for you' lot."
Kakashi could feel his stance weakening, giving under the crushing weight of Zabuza's upper body strength.
"I was only contracted to kill the bridge builder. After that, my crew and I would have allowed you to take your team of children back to your village of wet nurses. It's what that one said," Zabuza said, gesturing at Sai, "what Haku overheard that signed your death warrants. Hidden Mist shinobi are a superstitious lot, but we don't argue with information. You'll take whatever you know about my, Haku, and Kisame's jutsu with you to your graves."
A pop in Kakashi's knee was all it took. The silver-haired ninja bent, and hurled Zabuza's arms as far off-course as he could manage. Kakashi sent his elbow right into Zabuza's nose, missing him with a hastily-drawn kunai as the bulky mercenary reacted and pounced backward.
"You're right about one thing, Zabuza," he said. "Mist ninja are superstitious, and superstition is the religion of cowards, liars, and dead men."
Naruto Mugenden
Chapter 8
TO BE CONTINUED
