Even with the thick bandages covering his mouth, Zabuza's demeanor clearly conveyed a cynical smile.
"Dead end?" He slowly shifted the greatsword behind his back, then pointed a cold, deadly gaze at Sasuke. He deliberately raised his hands as if initiating a complex Jutsu. "You call yourself Sasuke, yes? I will now show you the nature of a true ninja."
Sasuke held his enhanced sword, the Qingfeng, steady. Kakashi also focused, his remaining eye narrowed. The Copy Ninja calculated: Zabuza was a highly experienced fighter. Having seen the combined power of Naruto and Sasuke, he surely knew the probability of succeeding in the assassination was near zero. What was this "Demon Man of the Mist's" last, desperate play?
Zabuza performed the first hand seal with agonizing slowness. Everyone watched, hyper-focused.
"Unseal!" he hissed dramatically.
Poof!
His entire body disintegrated into a puddle of water, splashing onto the forest floor.
Then... nothing.
An odd silence descended upon the clearing. Sasuke held his sword in a battle ready stance, his eyes scanning the periphery with intense confusion.
"What the—!?" Naruto yelled, clenching his fists. "It was a clone? Where is he? Where did he go?"
Shen Mo, watching the remote feed from the now-vacant barbecue stall, barely contained his laughter. This was the moment that had surprised him before. Zabuza, seeing no profitable outcome, had executed the perfect, low-cost tactical retreat. Just as he appeared to be preparing a lethal counter-attack, the real Zabuza was already long gone.
Sasuke and the others remained frozen, scanning the area for minutes. Finally, they were forced to concede: the enemy had fled.
"What was that?!" Sasuke's face was flushed with frustrated disbelief. "When did he switch? That's what a 'real ninja' is? Abandoning his mission and running away!"
"Agh, damn it!" Naruto was equally furious. He had all this new power, but the target had dissolved, leaving him with nothing to hit.
"Sasuke... he did not abandon his duty," Kakashi explained, rubbing the bridge of his nose in resignation. "You must understand, a truly seasoned ninja prioritizes mission success through adaptability. In this scenario, disengaging and seeking a new opportunity from the shadows was the most logical action."
Kakashi surmised Zabuza's retreat was due to his own presence, but he hadn't anticipated such a swift, unemotional reversal. Sasuke's young mind wrestled with the cruelty of this pragmatism. He resolved that when the time for his revenge came, he would leave no room for such an escape.
Shen Mo, deciding that a half-dead Zabuza would make a better customer than a fully retreated one, realized he needed to manually intervene to create the proper market conditions.
He looked at Tsunade, who was placidly eating a grilled rib. "Tsunade, I believe some work has just come up."
"Go on," Tsunade waved him away dismissively, a lazy contentment in her eyes. "Just don't tell the teacher I wasn't adequately entertaining our guest."
"Of course not." Shen Mo managed a helpless smile, reading her thoughts—she was annoyed by his slight inattention but had orders to be civil. He vanished instantly.
Back at the barbecue stand, the chopsticks in Tsunade's hands snapped in half. Her arm muscles tensed, and she suppressed a visible surge of rage. That insolent brat!
In the forest near a silent lake, Zabuza finally paused, allowing himself a visible sigh of relief.
A figure dropped lightly from the branch above. It was Haku, the slender young man who was Zabuza's only partner.
"Zabuza's disappearing act never fails to fascinate me," Haku remarked softly.
"Hmph. You always say annoying things," Zabuza grumbled, though his tension eased slightly.
"I am not being sarcastic," Haku countered, his sweet smile unwavering. "If it is Zabuza, I know you will strike again soon."
"Perhaps not," Zabuza admitted, his voice low and serious. "Those two brats may be even stronger than you."
Haku's long, delicate eyelashes fluttered, his gaze dropping to the ground. After a heavy silence, the youthful voice, tinged with absolute devotion, emerged. "Then I will fight for Zabuza until the very end."
Zabuza looked at the boy, his lips moving beneath the bandages, but he offered only a deep, cold grunt, accepting the pledge.
Suddenly, the atmosphere warped. The comforting sounds of the forest—the rustling wind, the chirping of insects—vanished, replaced by an unsettling, absolute silence. Zabuza could only hear his own heart, and Haku's, beating rapidly.
Wrong!
Zabuza instinctively grabbed his greatsword and scanned the periphery. Haku mirrored him, kunai poised, standing back-to-back in their practiced defensive stance.
They stared, horrified, at the scene before them: absolute stillness. The air current had ceased. Leaves that should have been fluttering hung motionless. A bird, frozen mid-flight, was suspended in the air. Even the motes of dust in the sunbeams were perfectly static.
The profound silence, broken only by their frantic heartbeats, transformed into raw, primal fear.
"Dispel!" Zabuza and Haku instinctively executed the Genjutsu-breaking hand seal.
No effect. The eerie silence persisted.
"Zabuza!" Haku cried, pointing a trembling finger toward a large oak tree directly ahead.
Zabuza saw him. Leaning casually against the trunk, seemingly indifferent to the frozen reality, was a man in a perfectly tailored black suit.
Shen Mo smiled gently at them, his eyes observing. But the man produced no sound—no rustle of clothing, no heartbeat, no sense of presence. He was simply an absolute discontinuity in the paralyzed environment.
Shen Mo had arrived. Without an introduction, he had spent a small amount of Trade Points to instantly amplify his psychic presence and persuasive aura to an unnervingly powerful degree, creating the ultimate sales pitch: the demonstration of absolute, effortless control over reality.