By the time we hit the bridge, the whole world felt like a held breath.
Mist clung to everything—ropes, scaffolding, the half-finished span stretching out over empty air. The water below was just… gone. Replaced with blank white that swallowed sound and color and common sense.
My "chakra weather" sense was screaming quietly in the back of my head. The air here didn't just feel damp; it felt pressed on, the way old bruises ache before the rain.
Naruto did not care about any of that.
"This is it!" he said, grinning, hands laced behind his head like this was a walk to the ramen stand. "Our big showdown! I bet when we beat this Gato guy, they'll make a statue of me at the end of the bridge."
Tazuna snorted. "Just finish the bridge first, brat. Then maybe I'll name it after you."
"You heard him!" Naruto pointed at himself with his thumb. "Great Naruto Bridge, here we come!"
His chakra flared bright and gold, cutting through the fog. Hopeful. Loud. Stupid in a way that made my ribs hurt.
Sasuke walked a step ahead, eyes narrowed, looking like he'd rather chew glass than listen to Naruto brag. His chakra spun tighter than usual, though. Coiled. Expectant. Like a storm waiting for someone to lay down a lightning rod.
I walked on Tazuna's other side, hand resting on my pouch. The paper slips inside were all neatly stacked—smoke tags, a couple of sticky ink seals, one shaky disruption tag I really hoped wouldn't blow up in my face.
I could have sworn the bridge itself was watching us.
We passed abandoned tools half-buried in damp. A bucket overturned with its handle snapped. A smear of something dark on the stone that was definitely not paint.
"Where is everyone?" I asked softly.
Tazuna slowed. "They should've been working. Even with Gato's men lurking… they wouldn't leave the bridge."
Kakashi, at the front, raised one hand. "Stop."
Naruto's foot kept going for one more step before his brain caught up. He froze mid-complaint. "What now—"
"Quiet," Kakashi said.
His chakra sharpened, that lazy background buzz pulling tight. Under the mask and slouch was someone who had absolutely been here before: walking into bad fog with worse memories for company.
I swallowed, trying to breathe past the pressure building in my chest. The mist around us thickened in a way that wasn't weather. It crawled along my skin, cold and deliberate.
Then it hit.
Killing intent slammed into us like a wave.
My knees almost folded. The world lurched sideways. My hands flew out for balance and landed on rough stone and Naruto's sleeve at the same time.
For a heartbeat, I wasn't on a bridge. I was eight again, in the wrong forest, staring at too much red and knowing no one was coming.
I yanked myself back, teeth clenched, fingers digging into Naruto's jacket.
Naruto shivered under my grip, pupils blown wide. "W-what the hell—"
"That," Kakashi said quietly, "is killing intent."
A shape rose out of the mist ahead.
At first it was just a darker shadow. Then the fog peeled back, and there he was: standing on the rail like gravity didn't apply, massive sword slung over one shoulder.
Zabuza Momochi.
Up close, he looked worse and better than before. Rougher around the edges, bandages damp from the mist, aura like a shark that'd tasted blood and wanted more. His chakra rolled cold and thick, slicing through the air like his sword did the mist.
"Yo," he said, voice low and amused. "We meet again, Copy Ninja."
I had to consciously unclench my jaw. The last time we'd seen this man, Kakashi had almost drowned. We'd thought—or pretended to think—he was dead.
Naruto's chakra spiked—fear, anger, something hot and wild. He took half a step forward. "You're supposed to be dead!"
Zabuza laughed. It was not a friendly sound.
"Kids," he said, eyes flicking over us. "They really let anyone wear headbands these days."
My fingers tingled. I slid my free hand into my pouch with slow, careful movements. One by one, I brushed the edges of three small tags until my chakra lit them up with a faint warmth. Pulse marks. Naruto, Sasuke, Kakashi. Little anchors in the sensory noise.
If one of them suddenly felt like "empty," I wanted to know in advance.
"Kakashi," Zabuza went on, hefting the sword with one hand, "you look like hell."
"Occupational hazard," Kakashi said lightly. He didn't move his eye from Zabuza. "I see the hunter-nin's disposal work was… temporary."
"Oh?" Zabuza's eyes narrowed just a fraction. "So you noticed."
The mist thickened again. It slid between us and the sky, down around our ankles, turning the half-built bridge into a floating island in a world of white.
My chest squeezed tighter. I swallowed bile and forced myself to move.
One step back, closer to Tazuna. One thumb brushing the edge of a smoke tag, ready to fling it if anything got too close.
If Kakashi fell, this went from "terrifying" to "unwinnable."
Kakashi hadn't expected this mission to get a sequel boss fight.
He should have, he thought. Gato was the type to squeeze every coin until it screamed; a hired swordsman like Zabuza was too valuable to throw away. A convenient hunter-nin, a fake execution, a quiet recovery period… the pattern was obvious in hindsight.
That was the problem with hindsight.
He rolled his shoulder once, feeling the faint ache of chakra overuse from the last fight. The Sharingan under his hitai-ate pulsed like a dull headache waiting to be born.
His team stood clustered around Tazuna: Naruto bristling, Sylvie pale but functional, Sasuke measuring distance like he could carve the gap into pieces. Three kids who had absolutely no business being this deep into a blood-soaked mess—and were here anyway because he'd let the mission continue.
Zabuza's sword glinted as he rested it on the bridge railing. "You look tired, Copy Ninja," he said. "Think you can still dance?"
Kakashi gave him a lazy eye-smile that didn't touch the steel underneath. "I'll let you know when I sit down."
He shifted his weight just enough that his squad would see, if they were paying attention. Threat level: maximum. Joke level: purely cosmetic.
"Stay close to Tazuna," he said, voice low enough for the kids but not for Zabuza. "Form up."
Naruto opened his mouth—probably to yell something about not needing protection. Sylvie's hand tightened on his sleeve like a clamp. Naruto glanced back, caught the rare, sharp look in her eyes, and actually shut up.
Progress.
Zabuza's chakra swelled. The mist responded, thinning just enough to make room for a second presence.
Fine needles of ice shattered against the stone at Kakashi's feet.
Kakashi didn't flinch. He turned his head slightly.
From the fog to their right, a masked figure stepped into view—light, balanced, moving like water. The hunter-nin from before, porcelain mask painted with familiar marks, long dark hair tied back.
"So," Kakashi said, "the tool returns with its master."
Hunter-nin.
No. Not quite. The chakra signature was wrong for ANBU. Too… personal.
Naruto bristled. "That guy—!"
"I'll handle Zabuza," Kakashi cut in. "You three focus on the hunter-nin. Protect Tazuna. Do not get separated."
Zabuza chuckled. "You're assuming they'll get a choice."
He moved. One moment he was standing. The next he was gone, a blur of bandages and steel diving into the mist.
Kakashi's body followed before thought caught up, kunai flashing into his hand.
Mist closed around him like a curtain. His world narrowed to chakra signatures and the faint, familiar pull of the Sharingan waking up behind the cloth.
Time to work.
The second Kakashi vanished into the fog, everything got worse.
The killing intent didn't fade; it just split. One heavy, monstrous presence colliding with Kakashi's signature somewhere in the mist. Another, sharper one sliding toward us like a knife.
Ice needles rattled across the stones, biting into the bridge around our feet. One nicked my calf. Cold burned hot under my skin for half a second. I hissed and jerked back.
"Stay behind me!" Naruto shouted at Tazuna, jumping in front of the old man with his arms spread wide like he could physically block senbon with stubbornness.
"In front of you is a terrible place," I said, already moving.
I slapped a smoke tag down at our feet and sent chakra into the ink. It responded with a muffled bang and a billow of dark, crackling smoke—thicker and clingier than regular fog, smelling like burnt paper.
For a moment, it blurred the outline of Tazuna's terrified chakra and Naruto's blazing one.
Sasuke didn't wait. He flickered forward, one hand already full of shuriken. His eyes were sharp, tracking the direction the senbon had come from.
The hunter-nin stepped through my smoke like it was a curtain, unbothered.
Up close, the mask was expressionless. The eyes behind it were not. They were calm. Sad, almost.
"I won't let you interfere with Zabuza-sama," the hunter-nin said. Voice high and soft under the distortion. "Please surrender. I don't wish to kill you."
My chakra sense screamed about the sincerity in those words.
Naruto snarled. "Yeah? Well, I kinda wish to punch you in the face!"
He lunged.
"Wait—!" I started.
Too late.
The hunter-nin moved like my seals wished they could. One step, one twist, and Naruto's punch met air; the masked figure flowed around him and flicked a handful of senbon in a glittering arc.
Naruto yelped as two blades bit into his shoulder and thigh. He staggered back, more insulted than injured, chakra flaring with fury.
Sasuke darted in to cover him, shuriken singing. "Don't rush in without a plan, dobe."
"Shut up, bastard!"
Their chakra tangled in front of me—fire-hot and storm-sharp, clashing, syncing, clashing again. The hunter-nin's presence slid between them like thread through cloth, not quite hitting as hard as they could have.
He really didn't want to kill us.
Great. I'd file that under "ethical complications" later.
Right now, I moved.
I dragged Tazuna back behind a chunk of unfinished railing, heart hammering. "Stay low. If you see anything that isn't Kakashi-sensei or one of us, yell."
"You think I'm not going to yell?!" he hissed. "We're all going to die out here!"
"Not helpful," I said, and slapped a small sticky ink seal on the stone just ahead of us. If the hunter-nin tried to flank, maybe I could at least make him trip.
I risked a glance up.
Naruto and Sasuke were flanking now, circling the hunter-nin without even needing to talk about it. Naruto's movements were big, obvious, too fast to predict cleanly; Sasuke's were compact, precise, sliding into the gaps Naruto opened up.
They shouted over each other, insult layered on insult, but their chakra rhythm was starting to align.
Huh.
Something about the way their energy bounced off each other… shifted. The space between them felt less like open air and more like a drawn bowstring. Taut. Ready.
"She sees it too," a treacherous little voice in my head whispered. "If she pulls just right, she can make them hit harder."
Not now. Later. When I had more seals and more time and less murderous fog.
The hunter-nin leapt back from a flurry of kicks, landing lightly on one of the bridge's support pillars. His hands blurred through signs.
I felt the chakra gather a split second before it happened—cold and sharp, blooming out in a circle.
"Move!" I shouted. "Naruto, Sasuke, move!"
Too slow.
Mirrors of ice erupted around them—beautiful, horrible, each one reflecting a masked figure. A dome of frozen glass snapped shut, catching Naruto and Sasuke inside.
"Naruto!"
"Sasuke!"
Their pulses slammed against my tags, pain and shock spiking bright. My knees hit stone before I realized I'd dropped.
Through the half-transparent dome, I caught a glimpse of Naruto's face, pale and furious, and Sasuke's jaw clenched so hard it had to hurt.
The hunter-nin's voice floated out from everywhere and nowhere at once. "This is my technique," he said. "Within this space… you cannot win."
Behind me, Tazuna whimpered. In the distance, drowned in mist, I could feel Kakashi and Zabuza's clash like tectonic plates grinding.
I pressed my shaking hand flat against the ice, tags buzzing under my skin, and forced myself to breathe.
"Okay," I whispered, more to myself than anyone. "Fine. You take your pretty death-box. We'll just have to break the rules again."
The bridge of ghosts creaked under us.
Somewhere inside that dome, Naruto's chakra flared like a shout:
I'm not losing here.