By the time my brain finished buffering, Kakashi was already inside a floating sphere of lake.
Not an illusion. A real, churning globe of water, hanging above the surface like someone had tried to drown him in a snow globe. Only his head and one shoulder were visible. Everything else was trapped, limbs pinned by the spinning current.
Zabuza Momochi stood beside him, half-submerged, one muscled arm sunk into the water sphere up to the elbow like he was casually stirring a pot.
On the bank, roll call:
One bridge builder shaking hard enough to rattle his own bones.
One sulky Avenger-in-training.
One orange-clad disaster.
And me, ink stains and all.
"Don't move," Zabuza called, voice thick with amusement and murder. The mist warped it, echoing around us. "If any of you brats twitch, I crush the prison. Your sensei's lungs fill. He dies before you hit the water. Clear enough for you?"
The pressure of his killing intent crawled over my skin like a cold tide. My throat tightened.
Naruto's chakra went wild. It whipped around him in jagged bursts, panic and fury tangled together until I could almost hear it buzzing.
"Kakashi-sensei!" he yelled, taking a step toward the lake. "We have to—"
I grabbed his sleeve so hard my knuckles popped. "Naruto."
He spun on me, eyes wide, breathing too fast. His chakra was a storm trying to claw out of his skin.
"We can't just stand here!" he snapped. "We can't just watch him—"
"I'm not planning on watching anything," I said, though my voice came out rough. "But if you sprint out there screaming, you will get him killed."
He froze… which was worse, in its own way. All that chakra had nowhere to go.
Hands shaking, I formed two quick seals. Boar. Ram. My fingers slipped; I forced them to keep moving.
I pressed my fingertips to the inside of his wrist, drawing a tiny spiral of chakra on his skin—uneven, sloppy, barely a proper seal.
"Calm Stroke," I muttered.
The pattern sank in. His chakra bucked against it first, a wild colt kicking at the bit. Then the edges blunted just a little, enough for air to reach his lungs.
He sucked in a shaky breath. "What did you—"
"Dialed the panic down from 'screaming kettle' to 'boiling pot,'" I said. "We still need your crazy. Just… focused crazy. Yeah?"
His eyes flicked past me to the lake, to Kakashi's head barely above the surface.
"…Focused," he echoed, swallowing. "Right. I can do focused."
"Debatable," came a dry voice to our left.
Sasuke stepped up beside us, kunai already palmed, jaw set so hard it looked painful. His chakra was a tight, angry flame, pulled in close, as if he could burn Zabuza down just by glaring.
"You two finished having a moment?" he said, not looking at either of us. "Because I'm not planning on dying here."
"Nice to know we're on the same page," I muttered.
Kakashi's voice drifted over from the prison, thin through the water. "Stay back," he called. "Guard Tazuna. This is beyond your level."
The surface of the sphere sloshed dangerously as Zabuza shifted his stance.
"You heard your babysitter," Zabuza said. "Run along home, little genin. This is a grown-up fight."
"Shut up," Naruto growled under his breath.
Sasuke didn't answer, but his hands tightened. His eyes tracked everything: the distance to the water, the way Zabuza's arm was sunk into the prison, the slow drift of the three remaining water clones along the shoreline.
"If that technique needs constant contact…" he murmured, mostly to himself, "…then the clones and the prison are both drawing from the same source."
He flicked a glance at us. "If we make him divide his attention—force him to block something he can't ignore—the prison will destabilize."
"And if the prison drops," Naruto said, hope sparking, "Kakashi-sensei can fight for real."
"Exactly."
"Tiny issue," I said. "We're squishy."
Sasuke ignored me and started pulling gear: wire, shuriken, scrolls. Planning mode.
Naruto leaned toward him, agitation roasting off him in waves. "You've got a plan, right? You always have a plan."
Sasuke's mouth twitched. "I have an idea," he said. "It's reckless."
"That's my whole specialty," Naruto said. "Hit me."
"Not literally," I added, stepping back. "Please."
Sasuke's eyes slid to me for half a second. "You stay with the client," he said. "If this doesn't work, someone needs to be between him and those clones."
"Great," I said. "Love being the human sandbag."
Still, I grabbed Tazuna's elbow and dragged him behind the biggest rock I could find. My fingers fumbled for my ink case. If this went sideways, I wanted something between us and incoming sharp things.
I slapped a crude disruption tag onto the trunk of a nearby tree—a tangled mess of kanji and spirals that was barely more than a chakra tripwire—and pushed energy into it, leaving it smoldering and dormant.
"Backup," I whispered to it. "Please cooperate."
On the lake, Zabuza watched Naruto and Sasuke move with lazy interest. "Kids," he said. "You try anything cute, your teacher's lungs pop."
Kakashi's chakra was fraying around the edges, but the core of it stayed steady. He believed in something here—either in us, or in his own ability to capitalize on a split second.
I wasn't sure which was scarier.
Sasuke stepped into the open, lips pressed thin, a giant windmill shuriken already unfolded in his hand. Another rested in the grass beside him.
"Kakashi-sensei," he called without looking back. "Don't die yet."
Naruto snorted. "Yeah, we're not done with you."
The prison shivered. Kakashi didn't answer.
Sasuke grabbed the second shuriken by the cord and, with a smooth spin, hurled both across the water. Their blades cut through the mist, twin arcs of steel singing over the lake.
"Big toy," Zabuza said, unimpressed.
He shifted his weight and caught the lead shuriken between two fingers, stopping it with casual precision inches from his neck.
"Predictable."
The second shuriken skimmed the surface, angling low. Zabuza barely glanced at it, already adjusting his stance to avoid it.
Sasuke's chakra tightened. "Naruto!" he shouted.
The low-flying shuriken exploded into smoke.
Naruto tore out of the cloud, mid-spin, grinning like a maniac. "Bet you didn't see this coming!"
Of course he yelled his surprise attack.
He twisted in the air, kunai slashing toward the arm Zabuza had sunk in the prison. If he severed contact, even for a heartbeat—
The killing intent spiked.
Zabuza's free hand snapped the captured shuriken up between him and Naruto. Steel shrieked as kunai met blade. Naruto's arm jarred; his eyes went wide.
The prison shuddered, the surface rippling wildly as Zabuza's focus split.
Now, I thought. Come on, come on—
Zabuza snarled and drove more chakra into the prison. The water steadied.
Naruto hung there for a fraction of a second, completely exposed.
Sasuke didn't waste it.
A third shuriken—smaller, masked by the arc of the first pair—whipped in along a different line, the razor edge cutting toward Zabuza's blind spot.
He registered it just in time to move the shuriken he was already holding, redirecting his block to protect his neck.
For one heartbeat, his attention left the prison.
The water sphere buckled.
Kakashi's chakra flared like someone had ripped the lid off a boiling pot. The prison exploded in a rush of lake water, dumping him unceremoniously into the shallows.
Zabuza's eyes went wide. "What—?"
Kakashi hit the surface hands-first, already molding chakra. He landed on the water instead of in it, skidding slightly before regaining balance.
He touched his hitai-ate with two fingers and flipped the cloth up.
The Sharingan stared out at the world, bright red and hungry.
I'd seen it once before, but it still scraped along my nerves. The three tomoe spun lazily, tracking chakra, motion, future, everything.
Zabuza's chakra flared with real alarm for the first time. "So that's your game," he growled. "A Sharingan user."
Kakashi glanced at Naruto, still half-falling toward the water, and moved.
One moment Naruto was about to get backhanded into oblivion by Zabuza. The next, Kakashi's hand was wrapped in the back of his jacket, yanking him clear as he slid between them.
"Thanks," Naruto wheezed.
"Good distraction," Kakashi said lightly, even as his eye never left Zabuza. "I'll take it from here."
He set Naruto down on the water's surface like it was solid ground and stepped forward.
What followed wasn't a fight so much as a demonstration.
Every swing of Zabuza's massive sword, Kakashi matched. Every seal Zabuza flashed, Kakashi copied beat for beat, his Sharingan whirling. Their voices overlapped as they called out techniques, water surging, spraying, roaring.
Zabuza spat out, "Water Style: Water Dragon—"
"—Jutsu," Kakashi finished with him, the same dragon coiling from his side of the lake like a mirror image.
Twin dragons rose and collided in mid-air, crashing together with the sound of a tsunami trying to tear itself in half. The lake heaved. Mist exploded outward.
Tazuna yelped. I shoved him further behind the rock and clung to it myself, boots skidding in the mud.
"You seeing this?" Naruto yelled, equal parts awe and envy.
"Trying not to feel it," I shouted back, teeth rattling.
Inside the boiling blur of water and chakra, Kakashi never lost rhythm. It was like watching someone play a game who already knew every move the boss could make. Zabuza's raw strength and experience met a copy that stole his tricks in real time.
The thought hit me hard and stupid: My seals are doodles on paper, and this man's eyeball is a built-in plagiarism engine.
The clash finally broke.
Zabuza staggered, chest heaving, water streaming off him. His chakra, once this towering, suffocating presence, wobbled around the edges.
Kakashi, still standing on the surface of the lake, raised one hand. Lightning crawled along his palm, crackling blue-white, chakra compressed to a screaming point.
The air itself winced.
He closed the distance between them in a blink, Sharingan tomoe spinning, lightning-hand aimed straight for Zabuza's heart.
"This is the end," Kakashi said, voice flat.
He drove his arm forward—
—and a sharp whistle sliced through the mist.
Three slivers of metal flashed out of nowhere and buried themselves in Zabuza's exposed neck with quiet, efficient ticks.
The lightning in Kakashi's hand guttered out as he jerked back, eyes widening.
Zabuza made a strangled sound. His chakra spasmed, then went slack, dropping out of my senses like someone had yanked a cord.
The Demon of the Hidden Mist crumpled forward, that ridiculous sword slipping from nerveless fingers. He hit the lake face-first and bobbed once before starting to sink.
For a second, none of us moved.
Then I felt it: a new chakra signature, faint and folded in on itself, perched at the edge of my perception like a brushstroke at the corner of a page.
I looked up.
A slim figure stood on a low branch above the water, cloaked, face hidden behind blank porcelain painted with simple markings.
A hunter-nin mask.
Of course this day wasn't over.
The masked ninja inclined their head slightly toward Kakashi, posture almost polite.
"I'll handle the rest," they said.
And just like that, the battlefield had a new player.