The first needle hit like a wasp sting.
Then about thirty more followed.
"GAAAH—!"
Naruto jerked sideways as senbon slammed into his arm, shoulder, thigh—anywhere he wasn't quick enough to cover. Cold bit deeper than the metal. It felt like the air itself had turned mean.
Mist curled around them, thick and white, eating the bridge. Somewhere behind him, Tazuna yelled. Somewhere farther, Kakashi-sensei and Zabuza were breaking the world with water and steel.
Right here, though?
It was just him, Sasuke, and the prison.
The mirrors had come out of nowhere—one second, it was fog and the masked freak standing in front of them; the next, a circle of perfect ice panels shot up, ringing them in. Each one reflected Haku's porcelain mask, the hunter-nin's slim body and long hair, over and over, like they were trapped in a kunai pouch full of him.
"Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals," the hunter-nin said calmly, voice echoing from everywhere. "Within this dome, I am unbeatable."
"Yeah?" Naruto spat, blood in his teeth. "We'll see about that!"
He launched himself at the nearest mirror, kunai out, chakra surging to his legs. The glassy surface glittered, perfect and smooth.
"RAAAAH!"
He swung.
The kunai bounced.
Of course it did.
The impact jolted up his arm. He gritted his teeth, turned it into another slash, anything, but the ice just… didn't care. Not a crack. Not even a scratch. It was like trying to stab a mountain.
A blur of motion flickered at the edge of his vision.
"Naruto, behind—!"
Sasuke's shout hit him half a second before the hailstorm.
Senbon rained down from everywhere at once, silver lines cutting the air. Naruto barely got his arms up over his face. Cold pain threaded through his skin, needle after needle digging in.
He hit the ground on his knees, breath punching out of him.
"Dammit," he wheezed.
Sasuke landed beside him in a low crouch, eyes narrowed. A few senbon stuck in his clothes and arms, but way fewer than Naruto. He'd moved through them somehow, body twisting just enough to make everything miss anything important.
Show-off.
"You're getting shredded," Sasuke said flatly.
"Yeah, thanks, I noticed!"
The mirrors pulsed faintly, light rippling across them like they were breathing. In each one, Haku's reflection looked identical. Naruto couldn't tell which was real. Maybe they all were. That was cheating.
Okay. Fine. Overwhelming force, then.
He staggered back to his feet, shook his arms out, and slammed his hands together.
"Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
With a pop of chakra and smoke, a mess of Narutos filled the dome. Some of them were already wobbling—his chakra was all over the place from the needles—but he grit his teeth and held it.
"GO!" he yelled. "Swarm him!"
The clones exploded into motion, charging different mirrors, throwing kunai in every direction.
For a heartbeat, it almost looked like it might work.
Then Haku moved.
He became a streak of pale color, a smear of mask and hair flickering from mirror to mirror faster than Naruto could track. Every time one of them got close, needles flared out, precise and cruel.
One clone took a spray of senbon to the chest and vanished in smoke. Another got clipped in the throat. Another tripped over Naruto's own stupid feet and faceplanted before getting erased by a barrage.
Inside the dome, it was chaos—Naruto's chaos—but Haku danced through it like he'd practiced for this exact mess.
Sasuke slid forward, weaving between clones. His movements were sharp, precise, like all the academy drills had just clicked into something meaner.
"Naruto!" he barked. "You're wasting chakra. You're too slow to track him. Pull the clones back!"
"Shut up! You think I'm just gonna sit here and—"
A senbon caught Naruto in the side of the neck.
The world tilted.
He crashed down, hand going instinctively to the spot. His fingers came away slick.
Haku's voice rang from everywhere at once.
"Surrender," he said, totally calm. "Your bodies are already reaching their limits. This jutsu will only become more painful from here."
Something hot flared in Naruto's chest.
"Screw you!" he shouted hoarsely. "I'm not… I'm not giving up!"
More needles flashed. Two clones caught them instead of him, bursting into smoke in unison.
Sasuke was moving before they cleared, feet light on the broken concrete, breath steady. His eyes tracked the blur of Haku in the mirrors with this laser focus that made Naruto's teeth itch.
He was seeing something Naruto wasn't.
The dome glittered around them, cold blue-white. Every breath burned.
"Why?" Naruto yelled at the reflections, furious and shaking. "Why are you even helping that jerk? You saw what Gato's men did to this place! You think he deserves all this loyalty or something?"
Haku paused.
Just for a fraction, the blur in the mirrors stuttered. The mask tilted, ever so slightly.
"Because I am useful to him," he said quietly. "That is all I need."
Something in that voice made the hair on Naruto's arms stand up. It wasn't angry. It wasn't proud. It was… gentle. Like he'd just said the nicest thing in the world.
Naruto didn't get it.
"You're crazy," he snapped. "You don't have to be his tool—"
A spray of senbon shut him up, slamming into his shoulder hard enough to send him spinning.
"Naruto!" Sasuke snarled.
He darted between Naruto and the next volley, fingertips brushing the ground as he pivoted. His kunai flashed, knocking a cluster of needles out of the air.
More slipped through.
Small red flowers bloomed on Sasuke's arm.
The bridge shook under another distant impact—Kakashi and Zabuza still trying to murder each other with entire lakes. Everything was too loud and too far and too close at once.
Naruto's chest heaved. His clones were gone. His legs trembled.
Sasuke sidestepped another barrage, eyes narrowed in concentration.
His pupils were different.
For a second, Naruto thought it was just the light. Then Sasuke turned his head, and Naruto saw it clearly: black irises ringed by a flicker of red, a single tomoe swirling into existence.
The air around Sasuke changed.
He moved again, this time faster, smoother. Not as fast as Haku, but close enough to be annoying. His kunai whipped up, hand snapping to just the right spot to slap a needle away a breath before it hit Naruto's face.
He clicked his tongue.
"I can see it now," he muttered. "He's moving between the mirrors. The reflections are just… echoes."
Of course he could see it. Stupid prodigy eyes.
"Then hit him!" Naruto grunted, forcing himself up again. "If you can see him, take him out!"
Sasuke shot him a look like he'd just suggested he sprout wings.
"You really think it's that easy?" he snapped. "He's still faster than us. And you—"
Another volley of senbon shredded the ground between them.
Naruto flung himself sideways, shoulder screaming. Sasuke spun, kunai blurring, batting away what he could. Three slipped through and buried themselves in his leg.
He hissed, staggering.
The dome hummed around them, every mirror glinting. Haku's presence was everywhere. Calm. Focused. Unshakable.
And yet…
Underneath the precision, there was something weird.
Every time a needle thudded into flesh—Naruto's, Sasuke's—there was this faint… stutter. A flicker in the rhythm of Haku's movements. Like it hurt him too.
"Why aren't you going for the kill?" Naruto yelled, panting. "You could've hit our necks a dozen times already!"
Silence.
The mask in the mirrors watched them quietly.
"Because my task," Haku said at last, "is to stop you. Not to waste your lives."
Naruto stared, throat burning.
What kind of enemy talked about not wasting their lives while turning them into pincushions?
Behind him, Sasuke shifted his weight, favoring his uninjured leg. His eyes glowed faintly red.
"Moron," Sasuke muttered under his breath. "You really know how to pick fights."
"Like you're any better!"
He didn't answer that. He didn't need to. They both knew he'd chosen to stand here with Naruto instead of hanging back like a smart, emotionally detached avenger.
Senbon drifted down, tinkling as they hit the ground.
Naruto's breath came in ragged bursts. His chakra felt thin, stretched, like old ramen noodles.
"Sasuke," he said.
"What."
"You're not allowed to die here," Naruto forced out through clenched teeth. "Okay? That's a rule."
Sasuke snorted, eyes fixed on the mirrors.
"Shut up and stay behind me," he said.
So Naruto did.
For once.
I knew something was wrong the second my breath fogged white.
It wasn't the weather. Wave was always damp and chilly, sure, but this was different. The air itself felt like it had gone brittle.
I skidded to a stop on the bridge, boots scraping stone, and looked up.
The world had turned into a horror snow globe.
A dome of ice stood ahead, clear and glittering even in the thick mist. Shards of it curved up from the shattered bridge, forming a sphere big enough to swallow the entire lane.
Inside, faint shapes moved—orange blur, blue blur, silver flashes.
Naruto. Sasuke. Haku.
My stomach dropped.
"Okay," I told nobody, because nobody had stuck close enough for this conversation. "That's… not great."
Behind me, Tazuna wheezed, struggling to keep up. I jogged back two steps, grabbed his arm, and yanked him behind a chunk of half-built concrete barrier.
"Stay down," I said. "If you get turned into ice-art, I'm charging extra."
His eyes were wide, face pale under the scruffy beard. "W-what about—"
"I've got eyes on them," I lied, because technically I had… something on them.
My skin buzzed with tags.
Before we'd left the house, I'd slapped quick Pulse marks on Naruto and Sasuke. Simple spirals inked on scraps of bandage under their sleeves. When I pushed a trickle of chakra into the matching mark on my wrist, I could feel them both—two distinct hums in the background noise.
Naruto: loud, chaotic, like a drum smashed by someone with more enthusiasm than rhythm.
Sasuke: tight, hot, like a coal hidden in a fist.
Now both threads spiked and dipped erratically, pinging sharp in my head.
I set my palm against the concrete and took a breath.
"Okay," I muttered. "Tags first, panic later."
The ice dome hummed faintly, a low, eerie sound like someone running a wet finger around the rim of a glass. Cold bled out from it in waves. Every exhale hung in the air like a ghost.
Kakashi and Zabuza's fight rumbled somewhere off to the side—big crashes of water, the grind of blade on blade, that suffocating, suffocating killing intent. I deliberately did not look that way. One crisis at a time.
I dug into my pouch, pulling out a handful of prepared slips.
The seals etched on them were simple disruption marks. Tiny loops and jagged lines meant to destabilize chakra in a small radius, like static shocks: enough to kick someone out of a genjutsu, not powerful enough to blow a hole in reality.
Probably.
I crouched near the base of the dome, pressed one tag to the ground, and slapped my palm over it.
"Come on, come on…"
Chakra trickled out of me into the ink. The lines flared a dim purple, then sank into the stone, little veins spreading.
The ice above did not crack open in obedient, gratifying fashion.
Rude.
I grimaced, moved three paces to the right, and did it again.
Tag, flare, nothing.
The dome thrummed back at me, its own chakra lines dense and interlocking. This wasn't just ice. It was architecture. A technique way out of my league.
"Okay," I muttered, "so this is what 'above my pay grade' feels like."
I kept going anyway.
Even if I couldn't shatter the jutsu, maybe I could make it wobble. A flicker at the wrong time could mean the difference between "Sasuke walks away with bruises" and "Sasuke walks away at all."
Naruto's pulse-mark jerked suddenly under my skin.
I flinched, nearly dropping the next tag.
"Stop doing that," I hissed at the distant dome. "It's rude."
I pressed my hand to my wrist, feeding a careful thread of chakra into my own seal.
The world narrowed.
I didn't get images—not yet, not with this crude version—but I got impressions, colors without sight.
Naruto was a swirl of hot orange and sickly green, bright edges dripping. Pain, anger, fear, stubbornness. The sense of him being everywhere at once, splattered across the ice like graffiti.
Sasuke was a tighter knot—sharp red around a dark core, brittle and blazing. His focus felt like being stared at by a predator who hadn't realized he was just as trapped as the prey.
And around them—
Cold.
Not the clean, empty cold of snow, but something intricate. Haku's chakra wound through the dome like embroidery. Fine threads connecting each mirror, each reflection, each angle. Smooth, controlled, complicated.
Every time a needle sank into flesh, a little spike of pain flashed across my sense.
Not just theirs.
His.
I blinked, thrown.
What?
I pressed harder, fingertips digging into my own skin. The Pulse mark burned faintly, protesting the strain.
There—again.
Senbon hit Naruto. His presence flared, a flare of white-hot hurt.
At the same time, Haku's chakra pulsed on the edge of my awareness, a tiny, sharp sting. Not big enough to be physical damage. More like… a sympathetic ache.
"Idiot," I breathed. "You really are doing this with your heart wide open, aren't you?"
Behind me, Tazuna shifted.
"Girl?" he whispered. "Is—"
"Still working on it," I snapped, then winced. "…Sorry. Just—don't move. Please."
He shut up. Points for cooperation.
I slapped another tag down, fingers shaking.
Disruption seals weren't meant for this. They were designed to jolt individual people, not unravel the geometry of a complex jutsu. But I didn't have anything better. No massive explosive tags, no super-secret village techniques. Just my little handmade band-aids on reality.
The bridge under my hand vibrated with the latest clash between Kakashi and Zabuza. That killing intent crawled over my skin, making the hairs on my arms rise.
If either of those monsters decided to redirect their attention over here, we were all dead.
"Naruto, Sasuke, please hurry up and do something stupidly heroic," I muttered. "I am rapidly running out of adult supervision."
The dome flashed.
Not visually—chakra-wise.
Sasuke's thread flared sharp and bright, then narrowed, sharpening like a blade. In my mind's eye, his presence shifted, something red and spinning unfurling with terrible, inevitable grace.
Sharingan, I thought, even though I'd never seen it in action before. Some instincts came pre-packaged with this world.
He and Naruto moved in sync for a few precious seconds—anger and focus dovetailing. Haku's chakra flickered in response, pressed.
Then the pattern inside the dome stuttered.
A spray of pain stabbed across my senses. Naruto's thread bucked; Sasuke's blazed, then—
Dropped.
I gasped, clutching my wrist.
No. No no no—
He wasn't gone. Not completely. I could still feel him. But the hot, sharp presence that was Sasuke had dimmed, dimmed, dimmed until it was just a flicker.
Naruto's chakra surged, bright panic spiking.
"Dammit," I whispered. My vision prickled, edges fuzzing. I shoved the sensation down. No time.
"HEY!" I yelled, cupping my hands around my mouth like that would help. "Naruto! Sasuke! Can you hear me?!"
The dome didn't answer.
Mist swallowed my words, but sound still traveled. Maybe. Hopefully.
I took a breath that felt like knives and screamed louder.
"HE DOESN'T WANT TO KILL YOU!"
My voice cracked halfway through the sentence, but I didn't stop.
"He's holding back! Every time he hits you, he hesitates—this isn't just a job to him, he's fighting for someone else!"
If Haku could hear me, he'd probably be thrilled I was narrating his feelings to his enemies. Sorry, emotionally compromised ice boy, but your aura is public property.
Naruto's chakra flared, confusion and anger roiling together.
For a second, the pattern inside the dome… shifted. Not the ice; that stayed perfect. But the emotional weather changed.
Haku's presence twisted, a sudden flare of something tight and painful.
Good. Let it hurt.
"If you're going to act like a tool," I muttered under my breath, "you don't get to be surprised when people try to use you."
Another volley exploded inside. I felt Naruto take the hits, Sasuke's dim flicker sheltering him with what little strength was left.
My heart hammered.
I moved again, circling the dome as best I could without losing sight of Tazuna, dropping tags like breadcrumbs. My chakra reserve screamed, but I kept going. Thin lines of ink glowed and sank into the stone, little pockets of static lining the ground.
"Come on," I whispered. "Give me anything. Cracks, frostbite, a tiny shiver—"
The air changed.
It wasn't temperature this time. It was… pressure.
Naruto's presence inside the dome spiked, higher than I'd ever felt it. Not the usual hurricane of "I will headbutt destiny." This was deeper. Hotter. A wound instead of a fire.
Fear, grief, rage, something old and jagged forced open.
For a heartbeat, the world held its breath.
Then his chakra tore.
It didn't surge so much as rupture, red flooding through every thread I could feel. The Pulse mark on my wrist seared, sending a shock up my arm.
I stumbled back with a shout, dropping to one knee.
"Naruto…"
It didn't feel like him.
It did, but magnified, distorted. All the parts I knew—the stubborn joy, the furious loneliness, the desperate hunger to be seen—boiled over, wrapped in something ancient and furious and vast.
Predator, my instincts whispered. Predator predator predator—
I squeezed my eyes shut, fought the urge to crawl under the nearest non-metaphorical rock.
He wasn't alone in there. Sasuke's dim ember flared weakly in response, like someone shielding their face from a furnace.
The dome reacted last.
Hairline fractures spiderwebbed across the ice, lines of white racing out from a central point. I opened my eyes in time to see the nearest mirror shudder.
"Naruto," I breathed, half-prayer, half-swear, "if you blow yourself up before I finish these tags, I am going to haunt you."
Red chakra licked along the inside of the dome, wild and angry. It pressed against the ice like a living thing, roaring without sound.
Haku's presence trembled.
For the first time, I felt fear from him—not steady, resolved fear, but the sharp, personal kind. Not "I might fail my mission." More "I might not be enough."
The mirrors shattered.
It was almost beautiful.
The dome went from perfect, curved panels to a storm of glittering shards in an instant. Ice exploded outward, catching the weak light and scattering it in lethal rain. I threw my arms over my head and ducked, chakra snapping to the tags at my feet on instinct.
"Disrupt!" I hissed, flushing the marks with energy.
A ripple of static shot through the stone, up into the air around me. The nearest shards hit that field and veered just enough to miss anything vital. One clipped my sleeve, slicing fabric and nicking skin.
"OW—okay, rude—"
When the world stopped chiming, I peeked up.
The prison was gone.
In its place, the bridge was a rubble-strewn mess. Ice fragments littered the ground like diamond dust. Frost crept along cracks in the stone.
In the middle of it all stood Naruto.
Or… something wearing his shape.
His clothes were torn, skin a patchwork of senbon and bruises. Red chakra crawled around him like fire boiling under water, tails of it flicking in the air. His whisker marks stood out darker, eyes glowing a bright, feral orange.
He snarled—actually snarled—and lunged at Haku.
Haku, mask cracked, clothes disheveled, met him with raised arms and precise, desperate steps. His movements were still graceful, but they lacked the earlier effortless glide. Every block looked like it hurt.
Naruto slammed into him like a thrown boulder.
I winced.
"Okay," I whispered, throat tight, "note to self: Naruto rage mode is… a lot."
I pushed my palm to my wrist again, just for a moment.
Under the fox-fire and fury, Naruto was still there. Buried, but present. His chakra screamed grief, fear, protect protect protect.
He wasn't gone.
Not yet.
"Don't let it eat you," I murmured, fingers pressed to cold skin. "Don't you dare."
Haku flew backward, smashed into a broken railing, dropped to one knee. His mask finally shattered, pieces falling away to reveal the soft, pretty face I'd seen by the lake.
Even from here, I could feel the moment Naruto recognized him.
Naruto's chakra twisted, the red surge faltering.
Good.
Horrible.
Necessary.
I swallowed hard against the lump in my throat.
This was never going to be a clean fight.
I dragged myself upright, legs shaking, and took stock.
Naruto: alive, feral, dangerously close to burning himself out.
Sasuke: on the ground nearby, pale and still, senbon bristling from his body like broken wings—but his Pulse thread still flickered in my senses. It was faint, faint, but there.
Haku: battered, bleeding, mascara-levels of emotional mess hidden under that calm face. Still fighting.
Kakashi and Zabuza: silhouettes in the mist, moving slower now. The waves they were throwing around were smaller. More controlled. Both of them were nearing their limits.
Tazuna: still crouched behind the barrier, clutching his head. Good.
Me: chakra reserves at "please sit down before you faceplant," fingers numb, brain doing that thing where you're weirdly calm because all the panic circuits already blew.
Right.
I couldn't stop what was coming next. Naruto and Haku's clash was theirs. Kakashi and Zabuza's tragedy was theirs.
But I could make sure nobody bled out on the way to their big emotional revelations.
My feet moved before my brain fully caught up.
I sprinted toward Sasuke.
Every step sent little shocks up my legs; every breath hurt. I dropped to my knees beside him anyway, skidding on frost.
He looked dead.
Too pale, lips tinged blue, chest barely moving under the lattice of needles. Senbon protruded from his arms, legs, torso—a dozen precise strikes that should've wrecked him.
Up close, though, my diagnostic training kicked in.
Some of them were shallow. Some hit muscle. A few were nastily placed, but not quite where they'd need to be for instant kill shots.
Haku hadn't missed.
He'd chosen.
"You stupid boys," I whispered, hands hovering over Sasuke's chest. "Risking your lives for each other and somehow apologizing via murder attempts."
His Pulse tag fluttered against my awareness, a tiny, stubborn heartbeat.
"He's not gone," I called hoarsely, not sure if Naruto could hear me over the roaring in his head. "Naruto! He's not dead!"
Haku's eyes snapped to me. Naruto's followed, wild and unfocused.
The red chakra around him seethed.
For a second, I thought he might turn that rage on me for interfering with his grief.
Then his gaze dragged back to Sasuke, to Haku, to the needles in both their bodies.
I felt it, like a pressure loosening: the fox's grip easing, just a fraction, under the weight of Naruto's own feelings.
Good.
I pressed my hands to Sasuke's chest, chakra flaring in a shaky green glow.
I couldn't pull the senbon yet—not here, not now, not without risking hitting something crucial. But I could stabilize. Slow bleeding. Keep his pulse from dropping any lower until Kakashi was free, until Tsunami had a chance to see him, until—
Until.
"Stay," I told his faint, sharp little ember of a presence. "You don't get to bail on this story yet."
Under my palms, his heartbeat stuttered, then thumped a little stronger.
Naruto roared and lunged again, Nine-Tails cloak flaring.
Haku stepped in to meet him, eyes soft and sad even as his body moved with lethal intent.
The bridge became a battlefield and a confession booth all at once.
I kept my hands where they were, ink-stained fingers pressed to a boy who refused to die, and did the only thing I could:
I made sure they all got the chance to finish breaking each other's hearts.