Chapter Seven: Progress

It was the rabbit that started it. The harmless looking little white bunny Naruto had startled out of the bush in his misguided attempt to look 'cool'. At least that was what Kushina insisted on blaming, and Minato was choosing to not disagree.

And all the unfortunate rabbit had done was be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It wasn't as if the little white furball had thrown that giant sword that had nearly taken everyone's heads off. Not that Kushina was likely to listen to logic.

'I'm watching you, bunny...'

'Kushina, focus. Large man, larger sword, makes Kakashi nervous? I think we should be paying attention,' Minato frowned.

Kushina would have made a face if she'd had one. 'I am paying attention, just... not being able to do anything is driving me crazy! Naruto, use the scroll already!'

Minato silently agreed with her as they watched his student try and take on an A-class missing-nin with one arm. It... wasn't going well. Though, the fourth was honestly impressed by how well the silver-haired jounin was doing. In spite of the dire situation, he had managed to calm his genin down so they weren't panicking. They had enough presence of mind to form a defensive position around the client while their sensei focused on fighting the major threat. Naruto and Sasuke were even giving each other significant looks like they were planning something to help.

The yondaime sincerely hoped not. They would be slaughtered.

Everything took a sudden nasty turn south when Kakashi was thrown clear out into the water. In a flash, Zabuza was standing over him and rapidly forming hand seals. "Suiton: Suiro no jutsu!" The water swirled up and around the dazed shinobi before solidifying into a sphere with him neatly captured inside.

Kushina cursed as the enemy turned his attention to their son and his teammates and formed a mizu bunshin. There was no way this was going to end well. Especially since Naruto had frozen up again. Granted his opponent was leaking enough killer intent to make a chuunin wet themselves, but this was so not the time!

"Heh, wearing those headbands and acting like ninjas," the enemy clone sneered, standing up straight from first forming. "Only when you're good enough to be listed in my bingo book can you start calling yourself shinobi. You are not shinobi."

In a barely perceptible flash of movement, the Zabuza bunshin blurred and suddenly Naruto was flying backwards from a vicious kick to the forehead. His hitai-ate came loose, and the water clone caught it under his foot, stamping it harshly into the ground. Naruto was shaking uncontrollably as he stared up at the menacing psychopath sneering at him.

Kakashi yelled for them to run, and for a moment it looked as if Naruto was going to take that advice. Then something made him pause and he glanced down at the bandage on his hand. They weren't sure what exactly it was that changed, but Minato and Kushina could almost feel the determination settle into their son through the seal. Sometimes that happened with really extreme emotions, but not often.

The boy glanced over at his leaf headband being crushed underfoot, and came to a decision. Much to his parents' horror, he let out a cry of rage and charged head-first at the mist-nin.

Ignoring the gasps and shouts of warning, he continued his charge until Zabuza's clone swatted him away contemptuously at the last minute. Naruto slid back several feet from the force of the blow, skidding to a halt next to his teammates.

'What the hell was that about?!' Kushina demanded.

Minato mulled it over for a moment before giving up. 'I don't know. Maybe he just needed to prove to himself he wasn't a coward?'

They both puzzled over this until Naruto painfully climbed to his feet and the object in his hands came into their field of vision. He'd managed to snatch his hitai-ate back.

'Aha!'

'I don't know if that was awesome, or just incredibly stupid.'

'Shut up, Namikaze. It was totally awesome.'

"Hey...," Naruto spoke, bringing their attention back to the outside, "you eyebrowless freak, put this in your bingo book. The man who will one day become Hokage..."

He brought his arms up to tie his headband back on and glared defiantly at the enemy in front of him. "Leaf-village ninja, Uzumaki Naruto!"

'Hell, yeah!' Kushina cheered.

"Hey, Teme, listen! I have a plan," Naruto called out confidently to his teammate.

"Teamwork? From you?" The Uchiha kid turned to raise a skeptical, but curious, brow at the blonde.

"Yeah, let's get wild!"

'... it's almost scary how much of you is in there,' Minato spoke, a mix of trepidation and awe in his tone.

'He's an Uzumaki to the core!' Kushina snickered.

"Such overconfidence," the mizu bunshin mused. "Do you really think you stand a chance?"

Again their opponent body-flickered over to where he could slam bodily into Sasuke before bringing an arm down to crush the boy into the ground, making him cough up blood.

"Sasuke-kun!" Sakura screamed.

Naruto cursed and quickly formed the familiar concentration hand-seal in order to summon a small army of clones. He let them charge in and distract the enemy while he fished in his pack for something.

That was when he pulled it out. The scroll. The scroll. The one Kakashi had given him.

'YESSSS!' Kushina hissed in triumph.

Naruto was in the process of breaking the binding on it when Zabuza's clone dispersed all his bunshin in one massive stroke of his sword. Within a second the enemy was on their son with a harsh kick to the stomach, knocking the rolled parchment from his hands. Naruto was sent flying again as the scroll tumbled uselessly to the ground.

'ARGH! So... close...!'

"Teme! Distract him for me, I need some time!"

The Uchiha brat spat out something that sounded suspiciously like 'easier said than done' before leaping up into the air and flashing through hand-seals."Katon: Gokakyu no justu!"

Naruto used the cover of the sudden eruption of flames to summon more clones and sent them after the fallen scroll.

"Suiton: Mizurappa!"

Water sprayed out from Zabuza's mouth (or at least the spot in front of his bandaged face) and canceled Sasuke's fireball in an explosion of steam. Ignoring the raven-haired boy for the moment, the enemy instead went straight for the one who had called for the distraction. In a brief flurry of blows, he'd knocked away all of the clones and stood bemused over the roll of paper. "Hmm... what's so important about this...?"

He took great relish in Naruto's cry of frustration as Zabuza unravelled the scroll, barely even pausing to destroy the few Naruto clones that had tried to ambush him, and stared down at the storage seal inside. Curiously, he activated it. When all that appeared after the white puff of smoke was a single harmless-looking three-pronged kunai, he laughed. "Is this supposed to help you defeat me?"

"Sensei!" Naruto called out with hurt in his voice. "What the hell?"

"Kage Bunshin, Naruto!" was all Kakashi replied from his watery prison.

Grumbling something about stupid, lazy, unreliable teachers, the blonde formed his favorite cross seal and summoned about a dozen more clones. Then he had them charge the water bunshin, much to his father's delight.

Minato reached out with his chakra to his wife. 'We're going to have to be fast if we don't want to be killed right away. You ready?'

'Oh, it. Is. ON. Let's do this!' she replied eagerly.

The yondaime chuckled as he strained his senses to their limit. The very instant he could feel one clone in range, he sent Kushina. Barely a fraction of a second later, another clone appeared and he activated Hiraishin for himself.

Hold on, Naruto, Mom and Dad are coming...

A/N: Yeah, so... that's the chapter. And I'm going to go run away now before people stab me with sharp pointy things. Eheh.

Sorry for taking a while with this one. Christmas shopping kinda stole all my free time. Then Christmas parties, and I'm also a sucker for caroling and Christmas choirs. Did I mention I like Christmas? XD

Hopefully I can get the next chapter up soon, lots of awesome action and just a smidge of oyako. Buckets of Kushina insanity to go along with it. I'm not very good at combat scenes, but I think I did pretty well. Also, I have some awesome scenes planned for Minato as well, though not for a bit yet (he's kinda passive like that. : / ) so no worries if you think I'm neglecting him. Personally, I think he's awesome just for being the ever-patient voice of reason in this whole menagerie of madness. XD

Oh, and if anyone knows someone/is someone who would be willing to beta this for me, let me know. I think my writing-at-2-in-the-morning is showing more than I think it is. XS

As always, thanks for taking the time to read my stuff, and I love all my reviewers and readers. :3

-Py