"Nngk."
Why was it so dark? And why did he have such a headache? Naruto staggered up and out of the middle of a thick clump of bushes, earning himself a few minor cuts in the process. He had no idea where he was, though he had an inkling that this was somewhere near the route he and Haku had taken at the start of their date.
Haku. Gaah. She—er, he had poisoned him. It made perfect sense, as a final option after negotiations had failed, but it still hurt to think about. If it hadn't been for the Demon Fox watching over his body...
Wait, he'd been unconscious. Oh, crap. That meant his clones had all popped. He'd originally planned to keep them going overnight by using some of those all-nighter pills he'd borrowed way back when from Kiba (who tended to do his revision in one madcap rush the night before the exam). But the second he collapsed, the Multiple Shadow Clone Technique had terminated, and the special mission with it.
As his muddled consciousness gradually sorted itself out, the clones' memories flooded back to him. They were not at all what he'd expected. His clones had worked very hard indeed yesterday, and some of what they'd discovered in the process gave him hope that this unexpected setback wasn't fatal. In a way, the unconsciousness had even helped, giving his brain time to process everything they'd learned and make it easy to draw conclusions on how to proceed.
He dispatched a new set of six clones. There was still a chance as long as they could complete their mission in time.
Wait, what was the time?
Oh, cold hell. The sun was already high in the sky.
Naruto set off for the bridge at a dead sprint.
-o-
As he approached, he scanned the area, and he did not like what he saw.
At the far end, Kakashi-sensei was busy fighting Zabuza, and he was clearly at a disadvantage. Zabuza was surrounded by water on all sides, which he could manipulate for many of his techniques rather than having to spend chakra on creating it from scratch. Kakashi-sensei had to worry about friendly fire thanks to the fairly defenceless Sakura and Tazuna (though at least the battle appeared to have started before any of the other builders could arrive), and about minimising damage to the bridge, while Zabuza had no such compunctions. As if that wasn't enough, Zabuza was wearing some kind of sparkling visor, which kept reflecting light into Kakashi-sensei's eyes and stopped him being able to look at Zabuza's face.
Sakura and Tazuna, meanwhile, had sensibly taken cover between a couple of stacks of construction materials. This shielded them from potential crossfire, and limited melee threats to frontal and aerial approaches, though at the cost of leaving them with nowhere to dodge. Fortunately, Zabuza seemed intent on settling the score with Kakashi-sensei before worrying about completing his mission.
All, of this, however, was a picnic compared to what was happening on the near side of the bridge. Sasuke was trapped inside some incredible technique that looked like it belonged in a manga, a dome of floating person-sized mirrors made of a translucent, ice-like substance. A masked figure in a loose green outfit whom Naruto immediately recognised as Haku kept flying between these mirrors at impossible speed, throwing needles at Sasuke as she—er, he moved. Sasuke was looking increasingly like a human pincushion.
As Naruto's run brought him closer, he could just make out Sasuke's eyes. They had turned bright red, with the only other colours being the black of the pupil and the two tomoe, those strange comma-like dots, around the edges.
This was bad. Very bad. The Sharingan was popularly acknowledged as one of the most overpowered dōjutsu, and generally one of the most powerful Bloodline Limits in existence. It granted the user the ability to see chakra with their own eyes, thus effortlessly recognising clones, disguises and illusions for what they were (though curiously shadow clones were exempt). It let them memorise and reproduce other people's techniques after seeing them only once. And as if that wasn't enough, it allowed them the ability to track enemy movements fractionally before they happened, making the Uchiha deadly taijutsu users. If Sasuke had managed to awaken his Sharingan and it still wasn't enough...
Just as Naruto thought this, Sasuke collapsed.
As he came into range, Naruto spotted a gap between two mirrors, just large enough for a person to conceivably squeeze through.
He stopped. The mirrors were true ice after all, and he could feel the biting cold at their heart even from here. For a second, he was curled up in the warmest corner again, wearing all four of the outfits he owned under a threadbare blanket, wondering what he could possibly have done to deserve winter. The Hokage had been furious when he found out, mostly with himself, and that was the last day Naruto spent in a flat where the landlord controlled individual heating. But all the apologies in the world couldn't undo the past or take away the memories.
Then he looked at Sasuke again. He remembered them fighting side by side against the clones, and how Sasuke hadn't hesitated to take on six pseudo-jōnin without any A-rank forbidden techniques, secret Uzumaki Style last resorts or (in his mind) teammates capable of looking after themselves.
Screw it. Uzumaki Naruto was the only one allowed to defeat his rival.
He made the hand seals, hoping he wasn't too late. "Please don't work, please don't work, please don't work..."
It worked. Naruto was now inside the dome, and Sasuke was somewhere on the outside. This meant that, for the purposes of Substitution Technique consent, Sasuke presently counted as an inanimate object.
"Naruto?!" Haku exclaimed. "That's impossible! You should have been out for at least twenty-four hours!"
"Dammit, Haku!" Naruto shouted. "How dare you?!"
"I... I just wanted you to be safe..." Haku's voice was soft, unsuited to the masked assassin who'd just murdered a member of Naruto's team.
"At what cost?!" Naruto demanded. "Did you think I'd just be OK with you killing the people I care about?! Multiple Shadow Clone Technique!"
Naruto put his hands together, but the instant his clones were fully formed, they were instantly pierced by needles through the heart.
"I'm sorry, Naruto," Haku told him. "Please don't resist. All I can do now is keep you inside my Demonic Mirrors of Ice Crystals until my master finishes the job. Once that's done, there'll be no more need for us to fight."
"No more need?!" Naruto repeated incredulously. "You think we can be anything but enemies after you kill the people I care about? Multiple Shadow Clone Technique!"
This time, too, the clones were obliterated before they could so much as move.
"Then we'll be enemies," Haku replied with a sad finality. "But at least you'll still be alive. That's all I can do."
Dammit. Naruto urgently needed a strategy. He hadn't anticipated Haku being this fast or precise with his attacks. The only upside to his predicament was that the mirrors would conceal his fight with Haku from the others, giving him freedom to use his special techniques.
Naruto quickly threw a series of kunai at Haku, then used the opening while Haku dodged to make a fluid transition into a set of hand seals.
"Multiple Shadow Clone Techni—"
Pain blossomed from Naruto's leg. There had been no opening. Haku's evasion had been instant, his counter simultaneous. Even as he moved to another mirror, he'd thrown a needle at Naruto's thigh, the slim piece of metal going all the way through and out of the other side while the pain disrupted his attempt to use his technique.
"Please don't fight me, Naruto. I know countless areas of your body where I can throw needles without doing permanent damage. I won't let you perform any more techniques."
Naruto could see no solution. Haku had more than enough speed and precision to hit him as soon as he started making seals. He wasn't going to get back out of the dome of mirrors now that Haku's attention was solidly on him, and in his haste to save Sasuke he'd neglected to leave extra shadow clones outside the dome.
So that was it. He couldn't use the Shadow Clone Technique (or for that matter the normal Clone Technique). He couldn't use the Substitution Technique. He couldn't use the Transformation Technique. He couldn't use taijutsu. He could use tree walking, but there was nothing to walk on except the mirrors, and Haku would surely knock him off the second he tried. And he didn't have any Uzumaki-style techniques that didn't rely on some combination of the above.
He was completely out of options. He'd never felt so frustrated at his own powerlessness before. Was this the true face of genius ninja Uzumaki Naruto? He'd been so proud of himself, coming up with technique after technique that made the Academy basics look like children's toys, but in the end, was he nothing more than a wannabe doomed to be put in his place as soon as he finally met a real ninja? Here he was, no more use than a civilian, and his team was going to die paying for his failure.
Except... except there was still the Final Option. He could ask the Nine-Brained Demon Fox for help.
He'd never done it before. He never wanted to. He didn't even know if it worked like that. And there was no question that having people find out about the monster inside him, and watch him unleash it of his own free will, would put an end to his hopes of not being alone more surely than anything he could reveal about his intelligence. Assuming, of course, that he lived that long, and that the Demon Fox didn't have the power to simply consume him if he was so foolish as to open its cage of his own free will.
He looked around, through the gaps in the mirrors. Somewhere in the distance, Kakashi-sensei was fighting for his life. Sakura was wide-eyed, trying desperately to control her breathing. Tazuna had his eyes open and watching the battlefield, but at the same time his hands were together and his lips were moving soundlessly. And Sasuke was probably dead, and would die of blood loss very soon even if he wasn't.
As Haku watched him silently from behind an expressionless mask, Naruto thought about a lot of things. He thought about Vash and the one mistake that had defined that man's life. He thought about the Hokage's rambling, ridiculously idealistic lectures about the Will of Fire which united the people of Leaf (though it apparently didn't unite them with Naruto). He thought about Haku's envy of Naruto's "friends". He thought about the street children, and the adults with empty eyes. He thought about Hinata announcing her grand ambitions in a tiny, trembling voice. He thought about Kakashi-sensei, the adult, the team captain, who had told him to make his own choices.
Naruto closed his eyes.
-o-
With a click, a bookshelf rotated out of sight, and another took its place. Next to it, a gas lamp hung from an elaborate ironwork frame filled with spiralling designs. The lamp's light was just sufficient for comfortable reading in the armchair below, while shrouding the rest of the room in a gentle shadow.
This was Naruto's mindscape, equal parts clockwork and library. It had started out as a simple visualisation technique, a mnemonic trick called genius loci, but then Naruto had got into a manga about an oracle who did most of his fighting in mindscapes. Now, greatly expanded with ideas borrowed from a variety of stories, this was the place where Naruto came to rest while other people thought he was spacing out during particularly boring classes.
But he wasn't here to rest now. Here, in a place where everything had been shaped by his imagination, there was one thing he did not remember creating. One place that did not belong. One door he didn't dare to open.
Naruto took a few steps forward. There were a couple of distant clicks, and then the floor he was standing on, in fact a giant gear covered with an elegant red carpet, rotated out, sailing through a hazy blue void until it came to interlock with another. That other gear, consigned to the edges of Naruto's mind except when an occasional quirk of the mechanism sent it to the heart, was where he'd found the anomaly.
It was no different to the other doors that separated the static rooms of his mindscape—not too large, not too small, a simple rectangle fitting perfectly in the middle of a gap between two bookshelves. Except that where Naruto's doors were made of a pleasant varnished mahogany, this door's base colour was an uncompromising white. Over it, circular bands of every colour endlessly overlapped like the ripples of rain on still water, the juxtaposition only making both feel stark.
Naruto would never have gone near it before. If he could, he would have left this door to stand here, unseen and untouched, until his dying day. Now, he stood before it, but he still couldn't make himself reach out.
Yet here, in a place built entirely of illusions, Naruto could finally see the truth that Haku had realised from the beginning. Yes, Naruto didn't know what friends were. He didn't know how they worked. He didn't know if the people he cared about had ever once thought of him as a friend. But if despite all that he found himself standing here, determined to save them or die trying, then it didn't matter whether he was their friend—because they were his.
Naruto put his hand on the door.
Utter darkness. No sense of space. A narrow circle of a platform beneath his feet, known rather than seen to be there.
It was not what he'd expected. There should have been a cage, or a shrine covered with seals, or at any rate some kind of mystical barrier with him on one side and the Demon Fox on the other. Everyone knew that was how these things worked. Instead he felt small, and alone, and with no idea what to do next.
Before he could get his bearings, the eyes opened all at once.
They were all around him, far away but also vast. Thousands of eyes of every colour. Watching from every possible angle, even above and below. There was no hiding, no escape and no defence. Naruto screamed, stumbled and nearly fell off the platform into the endless abyss.
Something stopped him. A gentle golden glow encircled the platform, pushing against Naruto's back like a forcefield and illuminating the platform's meagre two-metre diameter.
Naruto looked down. There were four bands of light around the edge of the platform, marking the boundary between him and the darkness. Inside each one, strange black symbols he did not recognise were moving very fast, clockwise in the even-numbered bands and counter-clockwise in the odd-numbered ones. There was only one thing they could be—the Fourth Hokage's seal.
Naruto looked back up. The myriad eyes were watching him with cold, dispassionate interest. None blinked. Naruto felt tiny, an insignificant insect trying to bargain for favours with a power infinitely beyond his comprehension, with only four narrow strips of light between him and a fate more terrifying than he could begin to imagine. Every last element of his being was screaming at him to flee at once, to push this place away to the most distant corners of his mind and to seal even the memory of it behind every psychic lock he could get his hands on.
But he'd already made up his mind. It wouldn't just be him that paid the price if he failed here.
"Hey, Kyubey!" he shouted into the darkness. "We're getting slaughtered out there! I know you want this body to stay alive as much as I do, so lend me your power!"
The eyes continued to gaze at him. There was no response.
-o-
Once again, Naruto put his hands together for a technique. Once again, Haku had no choice but to hurt him. He flew out of his mirror, reaching for a needle—but what he saw made his hand stop in mid-move.
Out of nowhere, without any seals, a mask began to form in front of Naruto's face. At first, it seemed like Naruto was copying Haku's own stolen hunter-nin mask, but then the thing took full shape and it was wrong.
There were no eye sockets. Nothing to hold it in place. No markings. The only feature on that blank white oval, drawing itself into place as if an afterthought, was a pattern of overlapping rings of colour that belonged to no village Haku knew.
Haku's mind froze—only briefly, but long enough for Naruto to complete the seal.
A shadow clone popped into existence in front of Naruto and slightly off the ground. Its hands were already in the Shadow Clone Technique position. Without any delay whatsoever, it summoned another such clone in front of itself. That one summoned another. Before Haku could act, and before even his ninjutsu-boosted movement could take him out of the way, the final shadow clone in the chain punched him in the face with staggering force.
Haku's mask shattered. The blow sent him soaring backwards so fast he nearly lost track of his surroundings. His reaction time was only just enough to dispel the ice mirrors before the impact of the one behind him broke his spine. He landed hard on the stone surface of the bridge.
"Naruto? What is this?!"
Naruto did not reply, and it came to Haku that this might not be Naruto any more. The masked figure's body language was completely different as it turned towards him, no hesitation and no wasted movement.
As Haku sprang to his feet, the figure threw a kunai.
Haku raised his own to block, confident in his speed. There was a brief blur of motion, and suddenly the flying kunai was a five-metre-long steel pipe heading for his face, with no time to dodge.
Slam!
His master absorbed the impact with the flat of his sword, miraculously staying on his feet after a blow that would have brought down any ordinary man.
Haku, now a few metres away, quickly reassessed the battlefield. His master had used the Substitution Technique on him, risking himself to place Haku out of danger. In theory, Haku should now have been facing Kakashi, but for some reason Kakashi wasn't attacking. He was running towards them instead, weapons down.
His master wasted no time in dealing with the more immediate threat.
"Water Element: Geyser Blade Technique!"
A thin, broad, high-pressure blade of water erupted beneath the masked figure's feet. The figure didn't dodge.
Haku's heart stopped. Even a Kage couldn't survive a direct hit from his master's Geyser Blade. No mask was going to save Naruto now.
But, impossibly, the figure rose, standing on the lethal razor's edge as if it were any other body of water. As the blade dissipated, it lowered itself back to the ground, its body language still completely expressionless.
There was no human with that level of chakra control.
-o-
The worst-case scenario of all worst-case scenarios was in effect. The Demon Fox was loose—the beast that had killed Minato-sensei and half the village alongside him. Kakashi was no Minato-sensei, even after all these years. His team was going to be killed, and he was going to fail to save them. And this time he would almost certainly follow them, along with Zabuza, the fake hunter-nin and a large chunk of Wave.
If there was only a true Uchiha here, able to wield the full power of the Sharingan. If Obito had survived instead of him…
As soon as he heard and recognised the familiar thought, Kakashi wrenched himself out of the spiral with raw force of will. This was no time to give up, and no time to panic.
The Demon Fox hadn't escaped its human host yet. That meant the seal hadn't been destroyed, and that in turn meant there was still hope. Protocols existed for a partial awakening, even if nobody knew how they'd interact with Minato-sensei's mystery seal.
"Truce!" Kakashi shouted to Zabuza.
"What?!"
"Truce! This thing easily has the power to kill us all!"
Even that brief exchange had given the Demon Fox too much time to act. An enormous storm of shuriken flew towards the three ninja.
"Earth Element: Flowing Earth Wall!" Kakashi thrust his hands down, and a thick wall of brown stone rose in front of the three just in time to block the first few shuriken.
Then the rest started to change direction to circumnavigate it.
Kakashi was stunned. His Sharingan eye had told him there were no chakra strings attached to the shuriken. It should not have been possible to manipulate them remotely. Then, watching the shuriken as they came round the edge, he very briefly saw it.
The shuriken's paths were intersecting as the Demon Fox kept throwing more, their blades briefly interlocking like clockwork gears and changing each other's direction. It required a level of timing and calculation beyond any living being—but the Nine-Brained Demon Fox had processing power to spare.
At the last second, Haku threw up a barrier of ice around them, deflecting the attack.
"What the hell have you brought here, Kakashi?" Zabuza demanded.
"That boy is the host for the Nine-Brained Demon Fox," Kakashi said.
"The one that created the Leaf Crater where the old village used to be?" Zabuza asked in appalled disbelief.
Kakashi nodded, not wanting to waste time. It was true that the new Leaf Village was located inside the enormous crater left by the Demon Fox's attack. They had used its highest wall to carve monuments to the Four Hokage as a reminder to the villagers that, even in the face of the most terrible danger, they were being watched over and protected. But the Hokage wasn't here right now, and Kakashi was the only one standing between the Demon Fox and unimaginable destruction.
"I have a plan," he told the others, "but I'll need your help to keep it busy. Don't try to outsmart it, because you can't. Just overwhelm it with brute force so its attention is focused on us."
Kakashi could see the reluctance in Zabuza's eyes, and couldn't fault him. Amidst the treacherous shifting grounds of the shinobi world, where truth was whatever your orders said it was, and the line between sin and virtue was named "permission to proceed", a simple duel to the death had a purity all of its own. Having it rudely interrupted would leave a foul taste in anyone's mouth.
In one motion, Haku and Kakashi took down their barriers. The price of being unseen and unheard by the Fox was that it worked both ways, and now they had given it whole seconds to prepare. Kakashi quickly met Sakura's eyes, and her look of pure terror changed to one of terrified resolve. Then he began to fight.
The following battle was one of the most exhilarating experiences of Kakashi's life. Had it not been for his ability to keep track of chakra and super-fast movements with the Sharingan, Zabuza's near-limitless supply of water-based attacks, and Haku drawing out the full potential of his exceptionally flexible Bloodline Limit, they wouldn't have stood a chance.
As it was, the battle was merely a nightmare. The Demon Fox had taken advantage of their discussion time to conceal shadow clones in every inch of the battlefield around them, and Kakashi half-suspected that they'd only had that much time at all because it was toying with them. The sheer brutality of its attacks, however, did not feel like a game at all.
-o-
The Demon Fox moved its head a couple of centimetres to the right to avoid a thrown kunai, not even bothering to expend the extra energy to block. The blade sailed harmlessly over the edge of the bridge.
"Water Element: Water Dragon's Explosive Bite!"
An enormous torrent of water surged up from beyond the edge of the bridge behind the Demon Fox, sweeping up the kunai as if it were a weightless leaf, and arced over the Fox's head, raining down piercing water bullets.
The Demon Fox dodged with precise, economical movements, moving systematically away as it did so. When the water suddenly took the shape of a furious dragon and slammed down on top of it, the Fox was ready to move out of the way before it landed.
"Ice Element: Snap Frost!"
The dragon instantly turned to ice in mid-fall, becoming sleeker and more aerodynamic as it did so, speeding up just enough that there was suddenly no time to dodge.
The Fox promptly thrust a kunai up at the dragon's maw at exactly the right angle, exploiting a series of imperfections in the crystal to cause the entire thing to shatter around it, reverting back to water as it landed in a heavy but completely harmless shower around its target.
With that original kunai still in it.
"Lightning Element: Thunderlash!"
The moment the dragon unfroze, a whip of lightning snapped out from Kakashi's hands, grounding itself through the kunai and electrifying the water.
Or so it should have been, but at the same time, a piece of rubble in between Kakashi and the Fox flickered through shadow clone form and turned into a tall metal spike. It caught and grounded the whip, destroying itself in the process but leaving the Fox unharmed.
Kakashi silently cursed. They'd been at this for over a minute, and the only reason they were still alive was that the Demon Fox was apparently limited to the techniques for which Naruto's chakra channels were already conditioned.
Even that last three-way combo had been accomplished while simultaneously fending off shadow clones from multiple different directions. The clones were taking full advantage of the Demon Fox's incredible casting speed, and the fact that it had no need to improve mental focus by calling its technique names out loud. In fact, it never made any sound at all.
More specifically, the clones kept using the Transformation Technique to instantly shift forms in mid-combat. It only took one good hit to destroy a shadow clone, but at the same time shadow clones took on the full properties of the objects they were transformed into. It was frustrating trying to impale an opponent, only for them to turn into solid steel plate just long enough to deflect your blow, or to prepare to block a kunai, only for another clone to suddenly turn into a spear for your opponent to wield.
And the teamwork... Whereas the three shinobi were all experienced warriors easily capable of reading each other's combat styles and adjusting to match, the shadow clones seemed to act as a single hive mind, for all that the Shadow Clone Technique simply did not work that way. Zabuza, Haku and Kakashi's only advantage was access to a wider variety of chakra-based techniques, and they were being forced to push it to new, extreme levels.
-o-
"Naruto, you imbecile, what the hell do you think you're playing at?!" Sasuke's voice broke through the silence of the chamber where Naruto had just asked the Nine-Brained Demon Fox for help.
"Bite me, greaseball," Naruto reflexively snapped. Then he looked up. "Wait, Sasuke? You're alive?!"
As he started to listen, he noticed the other sounds beginning to filter through. It was pandemonium. There were claps of thunder, the sound of things shattering, screams and grunts of pain. At least one muffled "Aargh!" clearly belonged to Kakashi-sensei. A sense of horror slowly dawned on Naruto.
"You can compress time in here, can't you?" he exclaimed. "All this time I've been waiting for your answer, you've been in control of my body."
There was no reply, and the only motion was that of his reflection in the bottomless depths of thousands of dark pupils.
"That was Kakashi-sensei screaming. You were supposed to give me the power to protect my friends, not try to kill them!"
Somehow, the silence of the chamber seemed to deepen, its counterpoint the distant, muted noise of the real world heard as if from deep underwater. Naruto began to understand how naive he'd been, trying to negotiate with a vast, completely alien intelligence as if it were a rational partner seeking a mutually beneficial exchange. What it wanted, it simply took, and he had opened the door for it to do so.
"Let me out! The deal is off!" Naruto shouted. "Give me back my body!"
He looked around desperately, but there was no escape. All around, there were only the Demon Fox's eyes, and beyond them a darkness he never wanted to see illuminated.
He glanced down at the bands of light, his only allies in this insane space. He couldn't help noticing that the speed of the symbols in the outermost ring had slowed to a crawl, and its light was dim.
He knelt down, and placed his hands in the middle of the rings. "Please..." he whispered. "Please show me the way back."
And then there was a path. A narrow path of golden light, stretching into the distance to a familiar white door.
Naruto ran. The myriad eyes watched him go, never blinking.
-o-
As he regained access to his senses, Naruto saw Sakura standing in front of him, her body language tense with a fight-or-flight response ready to kick in.
"Oh, thank Heaven!" she exclaimed, relaxing slightly. "You're back!"
"What... happened?" Naruto asked dazedly. "And where's Sasuke?"
"Kakashi-sensei used his Sharingan to put me under a genjutsu," Sakura explained. "In the genjutsu, he told me to wait until that monster was completely focused on them, then use the Transformation Technique to turn into Sasuke and call out to you. He said if thinking Sasuke was dead made you lose control to the... the Nine-Brained Demon Fox, then maybe thinking he was alive would help you fight to get it back."
"Then he's..."
"He's alive!" Sakura exclaimed. "I heard him groan when I was preparing to turn into him. I think with his Sharingan he must have dodged just enough for all those needles to miss vital areas."
Naruto thought again about Haku's incredible speed, and wondered if the Sharingan had really been the only reason.
Meanwhile, on the other side, a bunch of white-masked shadow clones suddenly vanished.
"Truce over," Zabuza said flatly. "Haku, that thing broke my ice visor, so make one for yourself and take on Kakashi. I'll eliminate the host boy and come join you."
"Yes, master," Haku responded helplessly.
-o-
As far as Naruto could guess, there was only one reason he was still alive. Zabuza had succumbed to the most terrifying threat in the shinobi world, the invisible killer that claimed countless ninja, genin and jōnin alike: faulty intel.
Zabuza knew that Team Seven had somehow taken out twice their number in jōnin-level clones. From Haku's reports, he'd know that Sakura was no secret powerhouse, and that Sasuke hadn't yet awakened his Sharingan. Only Naruto stood out with his Multiple Shadow Clone Technique. And now, Zabuza had learned that Naruto was a demon host, and he'd even had the chance to witness the Demon Fox's power for himself. What other explanation could there be for Team Seven's impossible victory?
In other words, Zabuza was wary of him. Instead of obliterating Naruto in a single sword stroke as Naruto knew he could, the jōnin was hanging back, unwilling to be caught off guard by Naruto's devastating demon host abilities. The ones Naruto didn't actually have.
Naruto had to exploit Zabuza's wariness. He had to amplify Zabuza's smouldering uncertainty, fanning it into a flame that consumed the jōnin's powers of analysis. If he could just keep Zabuza off-guard long enough for Kakashi-sensei to… to deal with Haku…
No. No distractions. He was Uzumaki Naruto, Number One Ninja at Surprising People, and he was going to crush every last one of Zabuza's expectations.
He began his first hand seal, and in that moment of concentration Zabuza disappeared from his sight.
"Uzumaki-style Ninjutsu: Deadly Doormat Technique!"
A column of shadow clones went into feet-first slides at Naruto's feet, one after the other, each using the Transformation Technique to turn into a narrow slab of very smooth ice. Zabuza found his lightning-fast charge turning into an uncontrollable forward slide, and as he slid off each slab of ice, it reverted into clone form and tried to stab him.
Sure, Zabuza may have started out moving too fast for Naruto's eyes to track him. But you didn't need to see your opponent if you'd observed his clones' fighting style, and knew that he would close the distance in one linear motion.
"Water Element: Reverse Water Prison Technique!"
A sphere of water completely enveloped Zabuza's body, separating him from the ice. He fell onto the next slab with his full weight, shattering it instantly and bringing him below the level of the other clones' stabbing kunai. The sphere vanished as Zabuza swung his sword, slashing through every last clone with his extensive reach.
Naruto wasn't done.
"Uzumaki-style Ninjutsu: Loving Embrace Technique!"
As Zabuza rose, he found himself in the middle of a crowd of naked young women. At his age, he was probably well-versed in pleasures of the flesh, but the sight of perfectly-shaped body parts where he expected weapons nevertheless surprised him for a split second. That was all it took for the women to drape themselves all over him, shout "Transformation Technique!" and turn into intertwined bladed chains (exactly like the one wielded by the Demon Brothers). Zabuza was now unable to move without slicing himself into salad.
The missing-nin wasted no time. "Haku!"
Haku, busy in a kunai-on-kunai clash with Kakashi-sensei, quickly formed a few seals with his free hand. Kakashi-sensei looked as shocked at this as Naruto felt.
Zabuza stood perfectly still as a blast of ice spiked up from the ground around him, freezing the chains while leaving him unharmed. With a mighty shrug, he shattered the frozen clone chains, just in time to block the new wave of clones trying to cut his throat. They'd had time to get in too close to be cut by his sword, but that just meant he broke them with his bare hands.
Now it was his turn.
"Water Element: Water Bullet!"
Naruto leapt sideways to avoid the rapid blasts of high-pressure water.
But as he moved, Zabuza swapped with a piece of piping right next to Naruto's new location. Before Naruto could react, he'd been grabbed by the throat, and his head was plummeting towards the stone floor.
"Shadow Clone Technique!"
At the last second, Naruto's momentum was softened by a pre-transformed shadow clone mattress. He just managed to tuck his head in enough to avoid doing horrible things to his neck, then quickly grabbed the suddenly-vulnerable Zabuza and pulled him down into a reverse over-the-shoulder throw.
As Zabuza went down, Naruto used the momentum to keep going over him and off the mattress. And the second he was off, the mattress quickly turned into a clone, then, as Zabuza started to fall to the new lower height, into a bed of nails.
Zabuza, however, failed to be impaled. He calmly got up, completely unharmed, stretched as Naruto was briefly paralysed by horror, and picked up his sword again.
"Haven't been on one of those since genin training. Good times."
He registered Naruto's aghast expression. "What? I'm sure to you water walking must be a big deal, but in the old Mist you were culled if you couldn't do it by the age of five. Now spike walking—that was at least an interesting challenge for a while."
Naruto backed away out of Zabuza's range.
"Well," Zabuza told him, "that was a nice warm-up. But how about you show me what you can really do? Or are you just another kid without that monster to do your fighting for you?"
Zabuza was starting to relax, which meant Naruto was running out of time. He risked a quick glance over in Kakashi-sensei's direction.
The battle there seemed pretty even. Haku was scarily fast, but Kakashi-sensei had apparently fought very fast people before, and the experience advantage was a big deal when it came to things like setting up openings and taking advantage of the terrain. He was, for example, getting great mileage out of the fact that his Earth Element structures were permanent until destroyed or dispelled, and could easily reshape the battlefield, whereas Haku's ice required concentration to maintain, and was mainly being used for one-off attacks and barriers.
Naruto couldn't slack off either. "Uzumaki-style Genjutsu: Void Prison!"
It took only a second before Zabuza cut through it with a single swipe of his sword.
"Interesting idea. But I get the feeling you're still not taking me seriously. Water Element: Fist of the Water God!"
An enormous torrent of water rose over the edge of the bridge behind Zabuza like a living thing, and thrust itself in Naruto's direction. But between the instant chakra-based acceleration Naruto had accidentally learned during tree walking training, and his chakra control that transcended a genin's capabilities, he was able to move just far enough to avoid having every last bone in his body being shattered by the impact.
He charged back in, through the blind spot created by the tail-end of the water stream, summoning shadow clones on the way. His horde attacked Zabuza with everything they had.
As his clones were cut down in swathes, Naruto began to feel a sense of awe. He was starting to see Zabuza. Whether it was a lingering remnant of the Demon Fox's insight, the accumulated experience of countless fallen clones, or the fatigue from Zabuza's fight with Kakashi and then the Fox finally starting to catch up with him, the missing-nin was no longer the incomprehensible blur of destruction that he'd been at the start of the fight. He was still strong, immeasurably stronger than the likes of Naruto, but he was finally starting to look like a human being—and human beings weren't invincible.
Naruto created and dispelled a clone, sending the rest a single instruction. They charged in, every one of them at once, with a suicidal abandon that would have been impossible for an ordinary, sane person. It wasn't enough to faze Zabuza—not even close—but the abrupt shift in attack pattern forced him to briefly use his sword as a shield while he adjusted his stance, just like the water clone that had fought Sasuke.
Seeing his chance, Naruto tried to stab Zabuza through the hole in his sword, and Zabuza predictably re-angled the blade to turn the opening away from him.
That was when Naruto's wristband turned into a shadow clone. At the same time, a kunai lying on the ground behind that clone turned into another one, leapt towards him, and turned into a chain in mid-air. The clone grabbed it as it flew into his hand, and guided it through the hole in the sword.
On the other side, another kunai turned into a clone at the same time, grabbing the chain's other end. Both clones sharply yanked the chain down, breaking Zabuza's guard. To lay down those clones without Zabuza noticing—that had been the true purpose of the Void Prison.
Naruto's kunai met Zabuza's stomach, and this time there was nothing in the way.
But at the same time Zabuza's fist met Naruto's solar plexus.
Unable to dodge, instead Zabuza hit Naruto so hard that the genin flew backwards before his blade could penetrate. As Naruto caught himself, Zabuza pulled his sword upwards, tearing the chain out of the clones' hands, and then cut through both clones in one sweep. As for the chain, he threw it towards Haku, who froze it in mid-air while trying to pierce Kakashi-sensei with an ice spike using his other hand.
"Water Element: Water Clone Technique!"
Naruto suppressed a stab of panic. Where was the water clone? He couldn't see it anywhere. Last time, they'd turned up next to the caster, but Naruto didn't know how much leeway the technique gave. He had to—
An arm as solid as iron wrapped around his throat from behind, leaving him completely unable to breathe. Too late, Naruto realised that he was standing in the pool of water left behind by the Fist of the Water God Technique.
Before he could do anything, two more water clones grabbed his arms. Fully immobilised, he could only watch as Zabuza hefted his sword and charged in for a one-hit kill.
Naruto's life flashed before his eyes, a last look back at a world that had always hated him and sought to deny his existence. The few individual sparks of light he saw were set against a tapestry full of familiar, dark materials. Cruelty. Apathy. Contempt. It would end here, the way it had always been destined to end: with Naruto standing alone, his deceptions and his tricks no longer enough to keep the malice of the world at bay. In the end, his defiance had never meant anything at all.
But as his flashback ended, and the past finished pouring itself into the present, it had one last surprise left. Brand new memories, only seconds old, with the power to change everything.
Naruto had been born into a world of rules designed to make him suffer. Demon hosts were to be feared and hated, so he was a pariah in his own village. Those who were too different could not be tolerated, so he had to keep the most important parts of himself secret. And now, its latest rule forbade him to choose his own friends and foes, so he had to die fighting his first love and the man at the heart of her—his world.
Well, not anymore. Naruto looked death in the eye... and grinned. Screw the rules, he had intelligence.
Every single shadow clone left on the battlefield transformed back and screamed three simple words at the top of his voice. "Gatō is dead!"
Zabuza froze in place, his sword so close to completing its swing that Naruto could feel it drawing a line of blood. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Haku and Kakashi-sensei jump back out of each other's strike range.
"Explain. Now."
The water clone holding his throat slightly relaxed its grip.
"The shadow clones I sent to assassinate him just popped," Naruto told him as loudly as his aching throat would allow. "They did it. There's no one to pay you for this mission anymore."
Zabuza narrowed his eyes. "You? Assassinate Gatō? Why should I believe you?"
Naruto described the memories his shadow clones had sent back of the man in as much detail as he could: his location, his appearance, his clothes, his voice, his personal bodyguards, the sickening way he'd begged for mercy—absolutely everything Zabuza could use to verify that Naruto wasn't making it up.
"I sent my clones on the assassination mission yesterday morning. It got messed up when Haku poisoned me, but luckily they'd had time to learn that Gatō had just come to Wave and was nearby. He'd brought a heck of a lot of mercenaries with him, too, almost as if he was planning to betray someone."
Zabuza frowned. "Haku, go to the location he's described and check his story."
He looked back to Naruto. "If he takes too long, or if Kakashi makes one wrong move, the first thing I'll do is slit your throat."
Naruto tried and failed to nod.
Kakashi-sensei went off to administer first aid to Sasuke, under Zabuza's watchful eye, and the silence stretched on.
-o-
"Master, it's true! I had them show me the body!" Haku sounded like the happiest boy ever to return from a corpse viewing.
Zabuza sighed. "Great. We're broke again. I'm half tempted to kill you guys just for that, but Gatō was an asshole, and Haku's been trying to convince me you're the best thing since sliced bread, so maybe we'll call it quits for now."
Haku blushed.
"I've told the kid a thousand times that emotions and attachments are death to a ninja," Zabuza added, "but does he listen?"
Kakashi-sensei shook his head sympathetically, for all the world as if he was talking to a neighbour or a co-worker rather than a man who only a few minutes ago had been out for his blood. "That's the younger generation for you. No respect for their elders. I don't know how we put up with them."
Zabuza turned to Naruto. "Listen, boy. You managed to find a solution where nobody we care about has to die, and this little country even gets its shot at salvation. I appreciate that. But…"
His expression changed. In the depths of his eyes, Naruto could see blades whose purpose wasn't combat, stained with colours only medics knew.
"If you ever cheat me out of my income again," Zabuza growled, "I swear by the Sage of Six Paths that I will hunt you down and practise every one of the Hundred Tortures of the Bloody Mist on your still-living body."
Naruto shivered. "Yessir. I mean no sir. I mean I promise I won't."
Before stepping back, Zabuza held Kakashi-sensei's gaze for a long second, but Naruto would probably never know what passed between them.
Then it was Haku's turn.
"Naruto, thank you. For everything. I don't have words to tell you how glad I am we didn't have to kill you."
"Yeah," Naruto replied. "Same here. Meeting you has meant more to me than I know how to express."
Haku gave a bittersweet smile. "Fare well, Naruto. I doubt we'll ever meet again."
And before Naruto could say anything else, a blast of icy wind swept over the bridge. When it faded, Zabuza and Haku were gone.