The sound of Zabuza hitting the water should've been huge.
Instead, it was three quiet splashes: body, sword, pride.
He floated there for a heartbeat, face down, blood from the senbon spreading in thin red threads before the lake started to claim him.
The masked ninja on the branch watched him sink, then leapt lightly to the shoreline. Their feet barely made a sound when they landed.
Up close, they were smaller than I'd expected. Cloak a bit too big, mask smooth and unreadable, chakra pulled in tight like layers of folded cloth. Nothing jagged. Nothing showy.
If Zabuza was a storm, this one was a needle.
Kakashi stood a little ways out on the water, arm still half-raised from the blow he hadn't delivered. His Sharingan tracked every movement, even as his normal chakra flickered, already thin from the fight.
The masked ninja bowed slightly in his direction.
"Momochi Zabuza," they said, voice light and oddly gentle behind the porcelain. "Vital points struck. Target neutralized."
Naruto stared. "Just like that?" he blurted. "He's… that's it? After all that?!"
"Neutralized is good," I said automatically, because my mouth panics sideways. "Neutralized is my favorite adjective right now."
Tazuna made a weak noise that might have been agreement.
The hunter-nin's attention slid over us, cataloguing: exhausted jōnin, three bedraggled genin, one very breakable civilian. When their gaze brushed me, their chakra pulsed—surprise, then gone.
They already knew exactly which of us mattered.
Kakashi stepped off the water and onto the bank with deliberate care, like he was negotiating terms with his own legs.
"That was quite a throw," he said mildly, nodding toward the senbon still lodged in Zabuza's neck. "From that distance, in this fog? Impressive."
"Thank you," the hunter-nin replied. "I've… practiced."
The hesitation on the word tugged at something in my ribs.
Naruto planted his hands on his hips, still bristling. "You couldn't have shown up five minutes earlier? We almost died like, four times."
"Four and a half," I muttered.
The mask tilted toward him. "Your struggle made my work easier," they said simply. "It is more efficient to strike when the prey is already weakened."
"Great," Naruto said. "Happy to be free labor."
"Enough," Kakashi cut in, voice quiet but edged. "You're from Kirigakure's hunter-nin division, I assume?"
"Yes." Another small bow. "Assigned to track and erase this traitor, along with his secrets. You've saved me considerable trouble, Copy Ninja Kakashi."
The title made Naruto's chest puff a little despite himself.
I was only half listening. The rest of me was tuned to the way the hunter-nin's chakra changed when they turned back to Zabuza.
It sharpened.
Not like a predator eying meat.
Like a hand reaching for something precious.
They stepped into the shallows beside the floating body, water lapping at their sandals, and touched two fingers lightly to the senbon in his neck. A thin thread of chakra slipped into him, mapping… something. Pulse, breath, patterns.
This wasn't the neat finality of a professional making sure the job was done.
This was someone wrapping a shield around a dying spark.
My stomach twisted.
"I will handle disposal," the hunter-nin said. "We cannot allow his body to be examined. The techniques he carries must remain buried with him."
"Disposal," I repeated under my breath. "Sure."
Naruto's brows knit. "Wait, wait. You're just gonna take him? After we risked—"
"Naruto," Kakashi warned.
"What?!" Naruto rounded on him. "He tried to kill us! You nearly died! And now some weirdo in a mask drops in, pokes him full of needles, and just… walks off with the Demon of the Hidden Mist as a party favor?"
"Standard hunter-nin protocol," Kakashi said calmly, though his chakra throbbed with fatigue. "They retrieve the body and destroy it somewhere safe. Nothing unusual about this."
"Unusual," I thought, watching the careful way the hunter-nin looped rope under Zabuza's arms, avoiding the wounds. "Right."
Naruto folded his arms, still fuming. "At least tell us who you are," he demanded. "Under the mask, I mean. Name. Face. Something."
The hunter-nin paused.
"A tool doesn't require a name," they said at last. "Only a purpose."
The words landed like a rock in my chest.
Zabuza's chakra—faint as it was, down somewhere under the water—quivered at the word tool, as if even unconscious he'd heard it a thousand times before.
Naruto's face twisted. "That's stupid," he said flatly. "You're a person, not a kunai. You helped. You can't just be—"
"Enough, Naruto," Kakashi said again, softer this time. "Different villages. Different training."
Naruto's chakra flared hot and unhappy but he bit his tongue, jaw working.
The hunter-nin cocked their head, watching him, something unreadable in the angle. Then they hefted Zabuza's limp weight with surprising ease, his massive sword left abandoned in the shallows.
"I appreciate your assistance," they said. "You should tend to your wounded and leave this area. There may be other enemies."
The real warning was unspoken: don't follow.
Kakashi inclined his head, the movement smaller than usual. "Understood."
The hunter-nin's chakra fluttered once more—like a curtain lifting and dropping—and then they were gone, leaping into the mist-heavy trees with their "corpse" over their shoulder.
I watched them vanish until even my chakra sense lost the thread.
"…I don't like them," Naruto muttered at last. "Acting all cool, saying creepy stuff about being a tool, walking off with our bad guy."
Sasuke, who'd been silent this whole time, finally spoke. "We barely scratched Zabuza," he said quietly. "You saw the fight. If Kakashi hadn't—"
"Yeah, yeah, I know," Naruto said, kicking at a rock. His aura ping-ponged between wounded pride and raw relief. "Still don't like them."
"Hunter-nin aren't the friendly type," Kakashi said. "And they're very dangerous. Treat them like you would a loaded trap. Don't poke them just because you're curious."
He sounded like he wanted to lie down.
The Sharingan finally closed, his headband sliding back into place with a shaky hand. As soon as it did, the strain he'd been holding off hit all at once. His chakra sagged like a tent with the poles kicked out.
"Kakashi-sensei," I said, moving closer. "Sit down before gravity does it for you."
"I'm fine," he said.
His knees buckled.
Sasuke darted in on one side, I grabbed the other, and Naruto flailed forward to grab whatever sleeve he could reach. Between the three of us, we managed to keep him from eating dirt.
"See?" Kakashi said weakly. "Perfectly in control."
"Sure," I said. "If the goal was 'fall slowly.'"
I eased him back against a tree and dropped into a crouch in front of him, letting my chakra slide along his coils. The diagnostic technique I'd learned buzzed faintly in my fingers.
He felt… wrecked. Not torn or poisoned, just scraped down to the dregs. The Sharingan, the water dragons, the prison—all of it had chewed through him.
"Reserves are basically soup," I said. "Thick soup, but still. You're done for the day."
"Soup," Kakashi repeated. "That's the technical term?"
"Medically speaking, you're a hot mess," I said. "But you'll live."
Naruto hovered like an anxious puppy. "You are gonna live, right? You can't just copy a hundred jutsu and then keel over, that's false advertising."
Kakashi managed the tiniest eye-crease. "Planning on sticking around," he said. "I still have to make sure you all survive long enough to be my retirement plan."
Naruto's shoulders dropped in relief. Sasuke exhaled slowly, tension bleeding out of his posture even as his eyes stayed on the lake, where Zabuza's sword still jutted from the shallows like a gravestone.
Tazuna shuffled closer, hat in hand. "I… I don't understand half of what just happened," he admitted. "But… thank you. All of you."
"You hired one suicidal team," I said. "You got your money's worth."
Kakashi pushed himself a little straighter against the tree, then gave up and leaned back again. "We're heading to Tazuna's," he decided. "I need a day or two to recover. You three watch the client and each other in the meantime."
"You're not walking there on your own," I said. "You'd trip over a leaf and die of embarrassment."
"I resent that," he said mildly. "I'd trip over at least a branch."
Naruto snorted. "We've got him, dattebayo. I'm super strong now, remember?"
"You also almost drowned," Sasuke said.
"You stabbed your own hand," Naruto shot back.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Congratulations," I said. "You're both disasters. Help me get sensei on his feet, disasters."
Between the three of us, we hauled Kakashi upright. He slung one arm over Naruto's shoulders, the other over Sasuke's, doing his best not to be dead weight. I stayed close to his side, fingers lightly on his sleeve, tracking the slow, uneven thrum of his chakra.
Tazuna fell into step behind me, still shaking, still very much aware that his choice to build a bridge had just nearly taken out four Leaf ninja.
As we started down the path away from the lake, the mist closed in behind us, swallowing the battlefield. Zabuza's sword disappeared from view. So did the spot where the hunter-nin had stood.
Naruto trudged along, muttering, "Next time I'll be strong enough that some rando in a mask doesn't have to finish my fight for me."
Sasuke didn't say anything, but his chakra burned low and tight—anger at himself, hunger for power, frustration at how wide the gap still was.
I couldn't stop replaying the hunter-nin's chakra in my head. Soft. Layered. Fierce when it touched Zabuza.
"Still thinking?" Naruto asked eventually, eyeing me over Kakashi's shoulder. "You've got your 'I smell a conspiracy' face."
"I don't have a conspiracy face," I said.
"You do," he insisted. "You squint."
"I always squint," I said. "Glasses, remember?"
Sasuke made a noise that absolutely wasn't a laugh and definitely was.
I hesitated, then let the words out. "Their chakra didn't feel like someone who'd just killed an enemy," I said. "It felt like… someone putting themselves between him and the world."
Naruto frowned. "So you think he's not dead?"
"Think?" I said. "No. I don't have proof. It's just… a pattern. The way they checked him. That 'tool' line. The way they lifted him like he was—"
"Important," Kakashi supplied quietly.
I glanced at him. His visible eye was half-lidded, but sharp. "You noticed too," I said.
"Hard not to," he replied. "Hunter-nin usually sever the head and burn the body on the spot. Taking him somewhere? Possible. Odd."
"So we should go after them?" Naruto said, immediately.
"No," Kakashi said, and the iron in his voice cut through the fatigue. "You're exhausted. I'm worse. We have a client to protect and no guarantee Zabuza's even still breathing. We log it, we stay alert, and we don't assume this mission is over."
I nodded, throat tight. That, at least, we could do.
Naruto scowled at the road. "Still don't like them," he muttered. "Who even says stuff like 'a tool doesn't need a name'?"
"Someone who's been told that a lot," I said before I could stop myself.
The words hung there, heavy.
Naruto made a quiet, angry sound. Sasuke's jaw clenched.
We walked on.
Behind us, somewhere in the mist, a masked figure was carrying a not-quite-corpse through the trees, chakra wrapped around him like silk.
Everyone else wanted to stamp this as "boss defeated, quest complete."
My skin itched.
No evidence. No rank. Just an ink-stained nobody with too much chakra sensitivity and a bad habit of noticing when stories didn't tie off clean.
So I did the only thing I could.
I remembered.
The feel of that soft, folded chakra. The way it sharpened when it touched Zabuza. The word tool spoken like an old bruise.
And I filed it away under:
Things That Are Definitely Going To Be A Problem Later.
Because missions don't end just because someone says "target neutralized."
Not in a world where devotion can hit sharper than senbon.