Before Kakashi could react, there was another noise, this one no less horrible: the unmistakable sound of a large blade cleaving through flesh. Three times. Only incredible reflexes allowed him to bring up his own kunai in time to block, leaving him struggling to hold back the weight of the attacker's sword.
"Wind Element: Squall Technique!"
A blast of pressurised air swept through the clearing, instantly wiping away the mist. The attacker's balance faltered for a split second. Since Kakashi had expected the technique, he was ready to take advantage of the opening. He ducked under the sword as he brought his kunai up and through his enemy's stomach. He felt a rush of liquid down his hands. At the same time, a series of four popping noises resounded in quick succession around him.
"You live up to your reputation, Hatake 'Sharingan' Kakashi," a deep male voice commented.
Kakashi looked up to see his attacker, perfectly alive, standing on a high tree branch across the clearing, near the lake. A tall, well-muscled man, bare-chested and wearing grey camouflage gear on his limbs, he carried an enormous broadsword with a large circular hole near the top of the blade. Despite the white half-mask covering the lower part of his face, a sure sign of good taste in shinobi gear, the crossed-out Mist symbol on his headband and the unique weapon made him instantly recognisable.
Kakashi quickly glanced around. Just as planned, his team were standing around him in perfect formation. Naruto, Sakura, Sasuke and Kakashi Prime were all in aggressive stances with weapons out. At a nod from the original, the clone dispelled himself.
"Momochi 'Demon' Zabuza," the real Kakashi replied. "One of the Seven Shinobi Swordsmen, and master of Silent Killing and Water Element techniques. It seems Gatō is really pulling out all the stops on this one."
"You sent a squad of shadow clones out as bait, knowing that you'd realise the instant one was destroyed, and had your real squad ready to take me out before I noticed that there was no sound of bodies hitting the ground," Zabuza observed. "I like your style. If that hadn't been a water clone, I'd be dead five ways by now."
There was no reply. Kakashi was busy analysing the terrain and estimating how much chakra he could spend on this fight. He also had to consider his team's mental state. Musclebound heavy-hitters were nothing special in the shinobi world, but Zabuza's true danger was said to lie in his mastery of psychological warfare. Even a powerful ninja might fall prey to fear when Zabuza ceased to be a swordsman and became a deadly predator stalking them unseen and unheard.
"Of course," Zabuza went on, "if that hadn't been a water clone, it would have been me, and then you'd all be dead by now. Or at least your little genin would. They look like they've come straight from Leaf's ninja school, not waded through rivers of blood to get here like you and me, Kakashi."
Kakashi could see them beginning to freeze up as waves of Zabuza's casual bloodlust began to erode their composure. He couldn't allow that to happen. He needed Zabuza to be wary of the genin, forcing him to split his attention—locked into combat with Kakashi as the greatest threat, while having to constantly watch his back at the same time. But if Zabuza could take them out of the fight right now, he could then dictate the flow of the battle by forcing Kakashi to protect them, turning the team's superior numbers from an advantage into a deadly weakness.
"Don't let him get to you," Kakashi said firmly. "Psychological warfare is one of the basic weapons of the shinobi. If he can convince you that you're weaker than you really are, he's already won."
"You think I'm trying to screw with their minds?" Zabuza laughed. "Why would I bother? Their lives are already forfeit—I'm just letting them die with their eyes open. Let them see how they have been sent to certain death, their lives traded for money as one resource for another, while their leaders continue to preach of 'loyalty' and 'bonds'."
Kakashi's childhood had been devoured by war, together with his friends and his illusions. Zabuza was a man of the same generation, doubtless forged in the same fires. On some level, Kakashi had more in common with this remorseless killer than with the innocents the Hokage had given to him to shape. For that reason, in the moment that would make or break his team's morale, he found himself unable to look Momochi Zabuza in the eye and proclaim the truth and justice of the Will of Fire.
But before his hesitation could doom the team, salvation came from the most unexpected quarter.
"I know what you're doing," Naruto exclaimed, "because I have this secret Bloodline Limit too!"
He struck a dramatic manga-esque pose, hands cupped in front of his wide-open mouth as if preparing to project a sonic beam.
"Windbag Element: Endless Monologue Technique!"
Whatever tension had been filling the clearing abruptly vanished in favour of incredulity. Everyone, including Zabuza, stared at Naruto disbelievingly.
"Huh," Naruto said. "Nothing happened.
"Oh, yeah," he exclaimed as if struck by a revelation, "the Endless Monologue Technique doesn't actually do anything. It's just a way to enjoy the sound of my own voice. Then again, I'm only a doomed little genin. Maybe a jōnin like you can unlock its amazing hidden powers?"
He looked up at Zabuza. "Well? We're all waiting."
There was silence for several seconds. Then there was a sudden "snerk" as Sasuke finally failed to suppress his laughter.
"Naruto, you are such a moron!" Sakura likewise gave up resisting the call of her most fundamental instincts.
Kakashi just rolled his eyes in resignation. He couldn't for the life of him remember what he'd done to the Hokage that was bad enough to deserve getting assigned this team.
After that, there was no possible room for verbal intimidation, so Zabuza didn't waste any more time. He jumped off the tree branch—and straight onto the surface of the lake. His landing was so perfect that the surface barely rippled.
"Water Element: Water Clone Technique!"
Six identical Zabuzas rose from the surface of the water, indistinguishable from the original and fully sharing his death-promising aura. Moving with machine-like synchronisation, they turned as one and headed for the direction Team Seven had come from.
Kakashi's firepower was orders of magnitude above what it would take to destroy some water clones. He turned towards them and started forming seals without hesitation.
He didn't make it. The original Zabuza's blade came down, and even with Kakashi's speed he barely drew a pair of kunai in time.
"I don't think so, Kakashi. I'm your opponent."
With his momentum checked, Zabuza's melee offensive turned into a conventional duel of strength versus speed. But before Kakashi could begin setting Zabuza up for a deadly ninjutsu combo, he had one urgent order to give.
"Intercept them before they find Tazuna!"
Zabuza snorted. "You're willing to sacrifice your genin team just to slow me down?" he asked loudly. "And here I'd been told Leaf had grown soft in its days of peace."
"Don't listen to him!" Kakashi shouted at Team Seven's retreating backs. "Water clones only have a tenth of the original's power! You can do this!"
-o-
Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura faced off against the six water clones, which had evidently decided to eliminate their pursuers early on rather than risk being backstabbed. Each one had a copy of Zabuza's huge sword, and a stance that spoke of decades of experience in using it to kill.
Things didn't look good. What did Kakashi-sensei mean about a tenth of the original's power? Were they a tenth as fast? A tenth as intelligent? Did they have a tenth of the original's chakra? Naruto needed more information, and he doubted that Zabuza's water clones were the kind of ninja who loved explaining their abilities.
"Elemental clones are pre-programmed constructs," Sasuke said quietly. There was an unhealthy trace of eagerness in his voice. "That means they can't think for themselves to adapt to new challenges. If we can take them by surprise, it won't matter how strong they are."
Naruto caught himself nodding before he could help it. It was at times like this that he found himself grate—less annoyed than usual at being on the same team as Sasuke. Sasuke would pick up on important things, and then explain them to Naruto and Sakura with various degrees of condescension, allowing Naruto to sit back and maintain his idiot act without compromising the team's effectiveness.
But even though the clones were mentally more machine than man, in a way the team would still be stuck trying to outthink Zabuza. The jōnin had sent his clones on an independent mission, as opposed to the usual approach of using them as disposable materials for one-shot stratagems, and that suggested that he was a particularly skilled clone user. Using elemental clone techniques at a high level was incredibly hard, because you had to have a solid grasp of clone AI in order to devise effective behaviour patterns for them, and then you had to practise until you could create a clone with a complex program at a moment's notice without having to take time to concentrate. It was like trying to write a publishable academic treatise in your head, in a couple of seconds, under combat conditions.
In the absence of alternatives, Naruto had always relied heavily on clones for both training and technique testing. That meant having to put a lot of time and effort into studying clone AI—a hard task made harder still when all the useful guides were books he couldn't afford to buy and wasn't allowed to borrow. But shadow clones had the full formidable intelligence of Uzumaki Naruto himself, and that discovery had been liberating enough to make up for the fact that he'd apparently wasted years of effort on mastering a skill he would never need to use again.
Until now. As a competent clone user, Naruto could appreciate Zabuza's level of mastery in a way that Sasuke couldn't. It would be even worse if Zabuza was one of the select few who understood emergent behaviour. An elite clone user, Naruto knew from his reading, would emphasise high levels of basic abilities like dodging and taijutsu, and then program the clone to scan the situation for ways to combine them as effectively as possible. If an ordinary clone was a shogi player, with a list of move sequences and an algorithm telling it which one to apply at any given time, then a master's clone was a martial artist constantly looking for openings and opportunities. These were scary, ANBU levels of skill, and Team Seven would have to push themselves to the limit to overcome them.
"Naruto," Sasuke snapped him out of his contemplation. Quickly turning so that his hands couldn't be seen from the front, he made the hand signs for Distraction, Three and Second.
Naruto nodded. Surprise was still the clones' greatest weakness, and Zabuza would rue the day he'd sent them to challenge the Number One Ninja at Surprising People.
"Uzumaki-style Ninjutsu: Harem Technique!"
A dozen naked girls appeared out of nowhere, all of them looking remarkably like an older, gender-swapped Naruto, and with curiously static wisps of cloud around certain parts of their anatomy. Naruto was instantly struck by a sharp wave of killing intent, and it took him a second to realise that it was coming not from the clones but from Sakura. Before she had time to comment, however, the girls had closed the distance to their targets, and were trying to drape themselves over the water clones with exclamations along the lines of "Oh, Master Zabuza, your sword is so big!" and "I've always had a thing for sextuplets!" There were at least three different puns on "wet".
For obvious reasons, Zabuza had not programmed these clones to resist seduction. For a second, they froze, unsure what to do with very obviously unarmed women acting in a non-hostile (and in fact downright friendly) fashion. Then, moving as one, they destroyed them with precise hand strikes to vital areas, but the girls had already served their purpose.
"Fūma Shuriken!"
A great four-bladed shuriken flew towards the middle clone at chest level. It was about to duck under it, when one of the others, with a different angle of view, called out a warning. "Shadow Windmill!"
The targeted clone instantly changed its mind and stepped to the side. The shuriken flew past it harmlessly. So did the second one which had been hidden in its shadow, ready to decapitate a crouching opponent.
Then the explosive tag on the hidden shuriken detonated.
The dodging clone was instantly obliterated. As an added bonus, the force of the blast flung the original shuriken to the side, and into another clone, which exploded into a burst of water.
Sakura opened her mouth, probably to praise Sasuke's skill, but a simulated Zabuza voice cut her off.
"Water Element: Concealing Mist Technique!"
Within seconds, visibility was down to zero. Naruto couldn't see the rest of his team, never mind the enemy. Kakashi-sensei's voice echoed in his mind. "A master of Silent Killing". The art of tracking targets by sound alone while silencing your own movement and breathing, then killing them so quietly that nobody ever noticed until it was their turn.
The mist might as well have been a solid grey wall, wrapping around Naruto and taking away all sense of distance and direction. Somewhere out there, four clones were navigating it without effort, while Team Seven wouldn't even know which way to flee. All Naruto could hear was his own heartbeat, steadily growing louder as the suspense mounted.
Louder with excitement.
Earlier, Zabuza had broken one of the cardinal rules of the ninja: he had let an enemy witness his speciality technique and live. And after hearing Kakashi-sensei's shadow clones pop in Zabuza's mist the first time, Naruto had been preparing. In his mind, he divided the battlefield he remembered into a hexagonal grid.
"Multiple Shadow Clone Technique!"
A series of clones spread out through the mist. Some tripped and fell. Others ran into trees. It didn't matter. Enough of them got in position and started running in circles (well, hexes) around each segment of the grid. Each sang whatever song it felt like at the top of its voice, and Naruto was a very, very bad singer. The cacophony was worse than that time he'd managed to plant a crate of fireworks labelled "tax ordinance paperwork" in the corner of the Hokage's office, and later casually light the fuse while the Hokage was berating him for a different prank. (The Hokage had been very puzzled why Naruto was wearing earmuffs in midsummer.)
Naruto could barely hear himself think, much less listen to his surroundings. Let's see Zabuza track him or his teammates by sound now.
Unsurprisingly, he immediately felt one of his shadow clones get sliced in half. Then another. And another. And then...
"Gotcha."
Naruto didn't say this out loud. Instead he said, "Shadow Clone Technique."
A clone appeared next to him and instantly dispelled itself again. Its memories promptly transferred themselves to every other clone—and specifically the fact that there was a Zabuza clone at coordinate 16-D of the hexagonal grid.
Over a dozen shadow clones converged on that one point, and between their sheer numbers and the fact that the water clone was as blind as they were with all the noise, at least one kunai got through.
Three down, three to go.
The mist disappeared at once, the water clones abandoning a failed strategy with a speed of judgement that only reminded Naruto of the calibre of his opponent. The Zabuzas moved with the speed of hungry sharks, and Naruto's grid-running clones disappeared so fast that for a moment his consciousness was one unbroken litany of sword cuts.
Once again, there was nothing between Team Seven and their enemies.
Then things went wrong.
Zabuza's clones moved in without hesitation. One went for each of the three genin, and Naruto no longer had the leisure to keep track of his teammates. He ducked under a swipe that would have shattered his skull, then barely managed to block a knee blow that would have crushed his ribs. It still sent him flying backwards, and he endured slamming his spine against a tree only through the padding of an emergency Shadow Clone Technique.
Zabuza's taijutsu and kenjutsu were devastating, and there was no possible way to fight back. It was all Naruto could do to avoid taking direct hits, and try to drag the battle out as long as possible in the hope that some opportunity would present itself. If the worst came to the worst, he could use some of those techniques, but... but then they'd know. And he'd lose everything he'd spent years building up. It probably wasn't as bad as being eviscerated by Zabuza, but it came pretty damn close.
Sasuke was faring better, but not by much. He was more agile than Naruto, but Zabuza's ridiculously wide blade doubled as an effective shield, and the circular hole near the top allowed the clone to keep watching Sasuke while blocking, minimising the blind spot. Sasuke tried several times to stab his opponent through it, but Zabuza must have seen that trick coming, and his clone kept shifting its position and angle too fast to give Sasuke a chance.
And then, as Naruto was jumping back from a deadly swipe, and Sasuke was desperately recovering from a failed lunge, the third clone cut Sakura in half.
Or so it thought. The two halves of the log clattered to the ground as Sakura reappeared next to a tree a good distance away. She really was good at the Substitution Technique.
Zabuza was better. Another clone, taking a break from fighting Naruto, was waiting for her as she reappeared. With a single, casual movement, it smashed her head into the tree. Sakura fell, and stopped moving.
Sasuke was standing at an angle which let him see this, and his movements suddenly grew frenzied. His rapid kunai strikes actually broke his Zabuza's momentum, and the second he made an opening, Sasuke leapt back.
"Fire Element: Great Fireball Technique!"
The clone had no room to dodge the enormous fireball coming towards it. Instead, it did something unexpected. It threw its sword at the flames. As it sailed through the air, the blade exploded into pure water, not quite quenching the fireball but shrinking it small enough for the clone to evade. With flawless coordination, one of the other clones threw it its own sword as a replacement.
It was simple, yet brilliant. Fire ninjutsu were always weak against Water ones, and everything about Zabuza's clones was a facsimile made out of water.
An enormous blade cut down as Sasuke, still running forwards to press his expected advantage, was unable to stop himself in time. It cut right through his shoulder—
And once again a bisected log tumbled to the ground.
In a flash, Sasuke appeared at the edge of the clearing. The unarmed clone was waiting for him, but before it could even begin to move, Sasuke disappeared again within the same instant.
He reappeared where he'd been before, sending half the log back to its original location. Before the clone could lift its sword, it found a kunai thrust through its neck.
Two left.
Elemental clones seldom used ninjutsu—they were only imbued with a small amount of chakra on creation, and using it up risked destroying themselves without their enemy having to lift a finger. But having lost their numbers advantage, it seemed Zabuza's clones no longer cared.
"Water Element: Water Bullet!"
A tightly-bound mass of water shot at Sasuke's head with incredible speed. It was all he could do to dive sideways to avoid it, then push his hands against the ground and go into an impromptu cartwheel to dodge the second shot.
And then suddenly the unarmed clone was lying on the ground next to him, having swapped places with Sakura's log. The water bullet's sole purpose had been to drive Sasuke into position.
The clone's arm snapped out, grabbed his head, and slammed it viciously against the ground. Sasuke was down.
The other clone, facing Naruto, wasn't holding back either.
"Water Element: Geyser Blade Technique!"
Before Naruto could dodge, a sudden blast of pressurised water came out of the ground beneath his feet, faster and more devastating even than Zabuza's sword. Within a mere second, there was nothing left of him.
At least until a couple of distant tree branches turned into shadow clones.
"You call yourselves clones?" Naruto Twelve jeered. "Any true clone would know never to let the original onto the battlefield."
The Zabuzas turned to face the Narutos. The unarmed one drew a kunai.
Both Narutos considered the battlefield. Sasuke and Sakura were out, but they seemed to be breathing. Which figured. If a professional assassin like Zabuza had wanted them dead, he'd have finished them off the second they were disabled. Why hadn't he? Hostages? Interrogation? Zabuza didn't strike the Narutos as the type to have a soft spot for kids.
Not that the clones' motivations were going to matter for much longer.
"You guys just made two extremely stupid mistakes," Naruto Three informed them.
"You hurt our team," Naruto Twelve continued.
"And you made sure they couldn't see us fight," Naruto Three finished.
"And now you pay."
The two clones started making seals at the same time as the Zabuzas charged towards them. They finished just before the enemy got within striking range.
"Uzumaki-style Genjutsu: Void Prison!"
There was a blur of something coming from the Narutos' hands too fast to comprehend, and the water clones vanished from sight.
The Narutos were proud of this technique. Even now, inside their prison, the water clones would be experiencing no sight and no sound—just limitless darkness. It was how the Narutos imagined it would feel to be trapped in the void before creation, empty of anything but their own awareness. Poetic justice indeed for the master of Silent Killing.
And the best part? The Dispelling Technique, the bane of all genjutsu, would do nothing to save them.
Elemental clones usually weren't programmed to defend against genjutsu. They already processed information differently enough to humans that most genjutsu users wouldn't bother to try. Which meant that genjutsu defence would be a hole in even Zabuza's clone AI. The Narutos had all the time in the world to confer, strategise, and prepare their next techniques.
Finally, the Zabuzas figured out the trick. Their blades cut through the soundproofed, interlocking black panels forming solid boxes around them, destroying the Transformed shadow clones they were made from.
But their day was only about to get worse.
The first, armed Zabuza clone found a kunai flying at it. It shifted its sword to block.
"Uzumaki-style Taijutsu: Battering Ram Technique!"
With a flicker, the kunai was replaced by Naruto Twelve. Then, in the same instant, he disappeared again—to be replaced by an enormous log. And thanks to the wonderful property of momentum exchange, which allowed even fast-moving ninja to use the Substitution Technique to safely swap with static objects, the log was moving at thrown kunai speed.
The blow took the clone clean off its feet. Then, as it fell, Number Twelve replaced the log once again, and started stabbing. The water clone never had a chance.
Meanwhile, the other Zabuza clone found a hail of shuriken flying at it in a broad spread. Most of them went hopelessly wide, flying above the clone's head and off to its sides. What few were on target were effortlessly deflected with a kunai block.
Naruto Three was unfazed.
"Uzumaki-style Shurikenjutsu: Trick Shot Technique!"
As the shuriken passed Zabuza, each one turned into a shadow clone, and each shadow clone, still in mid-flight, started to throw kunai as fast as it could draw them.
There were too many angles, and not enough time to turn. The clone was destroyed even before Number Three's own supplementary kunai could reach it.
The battle was over.
A few seconds later, a bush near the edge of the clearing turned into the real Naruto. He gave the clones an approving nod, and all three busied themselves with trying to wake Sasuke and Sakura.
Unfortunately, his teammates were out cold. Then again, they weren't dead, despite everything Team Seven had just been through. After leaving the clones to drag them out of sight and stand guard, and dispelling all the others that he'd hidden around the area during the Concealing Mist Technique, Naruto himself ran off to back up Kakashi-sensei.
His haste turned out to be unwarranted. He met Kakashi-sensei halfway back, apparently hurrying to do the exact same thing for Team Seven.
Naruto filled him in. His story was a masterpiece worthy of Uzumaki Naruto himself, managing to describe the battle in a way that was entirely consistent with what Sakura and Sasuke had seen, and to make it sound like their success was mostly thanks to Sasuke, and to make it sound like Naruto was trying to downplay Sasuke's role as much as possible in favour of his own.
Kakashi-sensei duly acknowledged the achievement. "You took out all six? I'm proud of you three. I thought you'd manage to whittle their numbers down enough to stand your ground until I was done with Zabuza, but this is extraordinary."
"So what happened with Zabuza, anyway?" Naruto asked.
Kakashi-sensei's (probable) smile vanished. "He outplayed me. I was about to finish him off when a Mist hunter-nin came in, dealt the deathblow with a thrown needle, and retrieved the body."
"Why's that bad?" Naruto endeavoured to look confused, although he could already see where this was going. "Isn't it those guys' job to kill missing-nin and destroy the bodies before anyone can get village secrets out of them?"
"That's just it," Kakashi-sensei explained. "It's unusual for them to retrieve the body instead of destroying it, and when they do retrieve it they normally use a special seal for storing corpses in scrolls. They certainly don't carry it off by hand, especially when the body is twice their size.
"And unfortunately, I only realised all of this three seconds after the hunter-nin moved out of combat range," he added. "Following him would have meant abandoning you three, and I didn't have enough chakra left to send a shadow clone after you and still face an opponent of unknown level."
Kakashi-sensei was being unusually forthcoming. Was he feeling guilty? Some small part of Naruto's mind stored this behaviour pattern away for later use.
"So you're saying... what? That it wasn't a real hunter-nin?"
Kakashi-sensei nodded. "He's probably one of Zabuza's allies. That means Zabuza is still alive, and now he's seen many of my best techniques, and has time to work out counters for them. And if he was planning this from the start, he probably took care not to show me his best techniques, so we can't do the same."
Naruto shivered. The genin's battle with the water clones had been decided by this kind of knowledge. They'd known how elemental clones worked and chosen a strategy that took advantage of their enemy's weakness. Naruto had known about Silent Killing and the Concealing Mist Technique, and been able to formulate a counter that saved his team from certain death. And his own trump card, the Multiple Shadow Clone Technique that no genin was supposed to know, had been the key to their victory. If Zabuza had known Naruto's capabilities in advance the way he now knew Kakashi-sensei's, and programmed his clones accordingly…
"So what do we do?" he asked Kakashi-sensei almost pleadingly.
"Fortunately, we have time to prepare as well. Zabuza's feigned death was close enough to the real thing to fool my sight, and that means he won't simply be able to shrug it off. Even if the reinforcements I requested don't catch up to us in time and we have to cross into Wave alone, I will be able to train you for the final confrontation while he recovers.
"The good news is that we can be sure of our safety in the meantime—his pride and his professional reputation both demand that he not let another mercenary finish his job."
After picking up Sasuke and Sakura, and retrieving Tazuna from his camouflaged hiding place, they stopped by the original lake so that Kakashi-sensei could pick up his used ninja tools. And Naruto's jaw dropped.
The peaceful lakeside clearing had been reshaped into a vision of elemental hell. Jagged spikes of rock, cracked and broken but still sharp enough to cut, rose from the lake. Water-filled chasms divided up the landscape, plugged in places by crumbling remains of thick stone walls. Uprooted trees littered the edges like discarded rubbish, with even the survivors marked by great holes punched clean through their trunks.
This was how jōnin fought when they didn't have to worry about friendly fire.