Freed from the Water Lock, the balance shattered.
Kakashi and Zabuza clashed again atop the lake. Their movements outstripped normal sight; chakra treads dented the surface into whirling eddies that smoothed a heartbeat later. Zabuza swung the beheading blade, every hew raising a curtain of spray to veil Kakashi's view—his earlier wound from the Rasengan still making his motions a touch sluggish. Kakashi's Sharingan read the lines ahead; he slipped each strike by the smallest margin while his hands raced through seals, priming a counter.
Naruto and Sasuke held a line before Tazuna. They'd burned a lot of chakra freeing Kakashi and could only keep tight guard for now.
Zabuza's pressure crested. A roaring dragon of water surged at Kakashi.
Kakashi didn't dodge. His Sharingan had already copied the sequence. In the same beat his own hands flashed—the twin water dragon he conjured collided midair with Zabuza's, bursting into glittering rain that thickened the mist over the whole lake.
Now.
Using the watery veil, Kakashi began shaping a far more complex technique. The Sharingan rifled his memories of Zabuza's Suiton, sifting for the strongest. Chakra swelled around him; the lake bucked in concentric waves. He was about to unleash Suiton: Daibakufu no Jutsu (Water Style: Great Waterfall Jutsu) to end it.
Two senbon whistled through the fog.
Their paths were wickedly oblique, skimming around the storm of gathering chakra to appear from an impossible angle. Zabuza had just braced off the dragon's impact; his body was in momentary stiffness. The needles sank into the side of his neck with surgical precision.
Zabuza went still. His life signs vanished in an instant.
A figure in a white mask appeared beside him, the crest of the Hidden Mist engraved on the faceplate.
"Thank you for the assistance," a cool, youthful voice came through the mask. "This missing-nin will be taken back for processing."
He hefted Zabuza's body onto his shoulder and turned to leave.
Kakashi let the forming technique fall, stepped to the place where Zabuza had dropped, and checked the neck pulse. A few seconds later he rose and glanced at the masked hunter.
He knew this trick: a special feigned-death method using acupuncture to suppress every vital sign. Still, if this really was Kirigakure's hunter-nin, there was no grounds to interfere.
"Alright. Threat's over," Kakashi told his students.
Naruto scowled. "Tch! Who even was that guy? Why does he get to just take the body?"
Sasuke said nothing, eyes following the hunter-nin until the figure vanished into the trees. In his head he replayed the needles' entry—timing and precision like that didn't happen by accident.
Team 7 regrouped and pressed on with the mission, escorting Tazuna.
They trudged along the coastal path and reached a colossal bridge still under construction. The skeletal span arched over the strait, awe-inspiring even unfinished. The air grew clammy. Without warning, white fog rolled in from all sides, swallowing the view until only a few meters remained.
"This mist…" Kakashi halted, every muscle gone taut. "Something's off."
Before he could finish, two silhouettes swam out of the whiteness, sharpening into focus.
Zabuza, who should have been on his way back to the Mist, stood at the fore with the beheading blade on his shoulder. Beside him was the "hunter-nin," now unmasked.
If not for the shinobi garb, one could have mistaken the youth for a girl. This was Haku.
"Kakashi, we meet again," Zabuza's voice rolled through the haze. "This time, I won't give you any openings."
"Haku, take care of the two brats," he ordered without looking back.
Haku nodded, hands blurring. The temperature plunged; frost filmed the ground.
"Hijutsu: Makyō Hyōshō (Secret Technique: Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals)."
Dozens of ice mirrors sprang from nothing, smooth-faced and rimed with chill, encircling Naruto and Sasuke into a seamless ring. Haku leaned back—and slipped into a mirror. A breath later his reflection filled every panel, a hundred Haku staring in from all directions.
"Damn it!" Kakashi moved to help, but Zabuza's blade swept in with a howling arc. Kakashi had to give ground. Steel shrieked and the two locked again; Zabuza pinned him in place.
Inside the mirror world the cold bit to the bone.
Back-to-back, Naruto and Sasuke turned in a tight circle. Every mirror showed a Haku—expressions and micro-movements identical. There was no telling the real from the false.
"From here on, I'm your opponent," Haku's voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere.
The words had barely faded when a storm of senbon sprayed from each mirror. In the closed space, silver needles wove a net with no gaps.
Naruto split off clones, trying to smother the barrage with numbers. The needles tore through them; every puff of smoke cleared and the senbon kept coming, arrowing on toward their bodies.
Sasuke's Sharingan had opened; three tomoe turned slowly in his eyes. In his vision, each senbon traced a dark line—just enough to read the flow. He seized Naruto's arm and, with acrobat's contortions in the cramped cage, twisted their bodies around the lethal mesh.
"This won't work!" Sasuke shouted, sweat beading his brow. "He's too fast! My eyes can barely keep up!"
Naruto's jaw clenched. "Damn it! My Rasengan can't hit him—he keeps moving through the mirrors!"
They were trapped for the first time. Every strike—taijutsu or ninjutsu—crashed uselessly against unyielding ice. Haku's attacks, by contrast, came like a curse glued to their skins, each dodge draining what little stamina and chakra they had left.
Rips opened across their clothes; thin red lines scored their skin. Chakra burn slowed their feet.
"Sasuke! Behind you!" Naruto yelled.
Sasuke spun—only to find glittering ice needles already at his eyes. He wanted to move, but his body lagged behind his will.
In that split-second,
Naruto didn't think—his body moved. He lunged, throwing himself in front of Sasuke.
"Sasuke!" Sasuke's pupils knotted tight in shock.
He could see it clearly: those killing needles knifing for Naruto's back.
No.
He couldn't let it happen.
Something fierce and wordless crashed through Sasuke's mind. Instinct took over—he shoved Naruto aside with a hard reverse pull, turning his own back into the line of fire.
He shut his eyes, bracing for pain.
It didn't come.
A crisp ring of metal on metal sounded.
Sasuke opened his eyes.
A man in dark clothes stood in front of them, a red-and-white fan crest on his back. Two fingers pinched the senbon that should've pierced Sasuke—needlepoints hanging half a thumb's width from his chest.
Sasuke and Naruto stared, dumbstruck. An Uchiha? Hired as an escort, too? No—the old man had said he was broke; there was no way he could afford the Uchiha Guard.
Shisui released the needles; they tinked onto the ice. He looked back at his battered juniors, a warm smile on his face.
"Good work, you two."
He swept his gaze over the mirrors, and a plan clicked.
Shock rippled across every Haku face in the glass.
Shisui's three-tomoe spun—then snapped into a unique four-spoked windmill.
Mangekyō Sharingan.
An unseen force, beyond sight and beyond feel, snapped onto every Haku within the mirror realm—and onto Zabuza where he battled Kakashi in the fog.
Haku and Zabuza froze at the same moment. The heat in their eyes guttered out. They didn't realize they'd been caught—only that a crushing drowsiness washed their minds. Eyelids leadened. Bodies slackened.
And they toppled into deep sleep.
With the caster's consciousness severed, the ice mirrors lost their chakra scaffolding. They didn't shatter; they unraveled from the edges into a million glittering crystals and winked out.
Naruto and Sasuke stared at the man who had felled two powerful foes with nothing but a glance. Their brains blanked at the sight, unable to parse what had just happened.
Kakashi took it better—everyone in the Court of the Gods knew each other's powers to some degree—but even he felt the honest, physical awe. The Uchiha prodigy, Shunshin Shisui, really lived up to the legend.
Time to train harder, he thought, or he'd be letting Lord Shinju down.
As for Naruto and Sasuke, they had only one question left in their hearts: just what kind of power was this?
(End of Chapter)
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