Through the holes of the porcelain mask, his dark eyes glanced over the Uchiha as if he were a stone in the road. They fixed on the pink-haired girl standing a few steps behind.
The masked figure moved. A blink later, he reappeared. He was inches from Sakura's face, so close she could see her own terrified reflection in the mask's polished surface.
A wave of wounded pride washed over Sasuke. To be ignored. To be dismissed so completely was an insult. There was no time for strategy, only for action.
"Sakura, move!" he yelled, his own voice sounding distant.
He lunged forward. The kunai in his hand aimed straight for the enemy's jugular.
Haku didn't even turn his head. He bent backward from the waist. Sasuke's kunai sliced through the empty air where his throat had been a split second before. The momentum carried Sasuke a step past his target. It was a fatal mistake.
A side kick, so fast it was barely visible, slammed into Sasuke's ribs. He managed to raise his forearm to block at the last instant, but the force of the impact knocked the wind out of him. A sharp, vibrating pain shot through his entire side, making his teeth grind together.
"Your speed isn't bad," Haku said. The voice was soft, almost melodic, muffled by the mask. It sounded young. "But that's all it is. Speed without purpose. You run in a straight line hoping your enemy is stupid enough to stand still."
Sasuke stumbled back, barely regaining his balance. His arm hung numb at his side. The enemy's calmness, his didactic tone, was like adding fuel to the fire of his fury.
"What do you know?" he growled, refusing to show the pain. He forced his arm up again, into his fighting stance.
"I know what I see," Haku replied simply. "You think speed is a weapon when it's just a tool. And you're using it without thinking."
"Shut up!"
Sasuke lunged again. This time it wasn't a direct attack. It was a feint, followed by a low sweep meant to break his ankles, then an upward thrust with the kunai. A combination he had perfected, one that no Konoha genin had been able to anticipate.
Every one of Sasuke's strikes met only air.
"It's useless," Kakashi whispered from his prison. "Sasuke, his speed is superior! Don't attack, hold your ground! It's a trap!"
But Sasuke couldn't hear him. He could only hear Haku's calm voice continuing to dismantle his technique.
"Predictable feints," Haku commented, dodging another slash. "You give yourself away with your shoulders. You leave your left flank open every time you attack from the right."
"I'm going to wipe that smirk off your face!" Sasuke spat, though he couldn't see any smirk.
"I'm not smirking," Haku said, and his voice held a hint of what might have been sadness. "This brings me no joy. It is simply necessary." Suddenly, he stopped.
The change was instantaneous. The passive, defensive demeanor vanished.
"You are an obstacle," Haku said, "and obstacles must be removed."
In the blink of an eye, Haku leaped back, landing softly several meters away. His hands met, but only one moved, weaving a series of hand signs at a speed Sasuke could barely follow.
"Hijutsu: Sensatsu Suishō."
The air around Haku seemed to shimmer. The moisture from the mist condensed, forming dozens upon dozens of sharp needles, senbon made of icy, lethal water that floated around him. With a simple gesture of his hand, the rain of death shot toward Sasuke.
He reacted on pure instinct, deflecting what he could with his kunai, but there were too many.
A sharp, piercing pain blossomed in his right shoulder. Another in his left thigh. A third in his calf. The impact wasn't the worst part; it was the immediate effect. His muscles seized instantly, a feeling of paralysis spreading from the wounds.
He fell to the ground with a choked grunt. Sasuke was out of commission. Just like that. That fast. That humiliating.
With Sasuke neutralized, Haku turned slowly. The expressionless mask, a blank porcelain face, fixed on his original target once more.
Sakura stood frozen. The prodigy, Sasuke Uchiha, had been defeated in less than a minute. Kakashi-sensei was trapped. Naruto… Naruto wasn't there.
She was alone.
Behind her, Tazuna let out a low groan. "It's over… We're dead."
That sound, that lament from a helpless man who had placed his life in their hands, was the needle that popped the bubble of her panic. Seeing Sasuke on the ground, awake, his teeth gritted in a grimace of pain and helpless fury, ignited something inside her. The fear didn't leave. It was still there, but now it was joined by courage and the will not to give up.
"No…" she whispered, the word barely audible. Then, louder, with a conviction she didn't know she possessed, "You won't get near him."
She got into a fighting stance. Her knees were shaking, her hands, clenched into fists, wouldn't stop trembling. But her green eyes, normally full of doubt, now burned with a fierce determination.
Haku tilted his head, a curious gesture. "Admirable," his soft voice said. "But futile. You don't have to die. Step aside."
"Make me!" Sakura yelled.
"As you wish."
He lunged at her.
Sakura reacted. She threw herself forward and swung a punch.
It was a terrible move. Her form was a mess, her balance precarious, her guard completely open. Haku could have killed her in ten different ways before her fist completed its trajectory. He dodged it with a simple side-step, almost looking bored. Sakura's fist sailed past, cutting through the air.
But then she remembered. Naruto's words. The feeling on the rock. The focus. At the last second, just as her fist was about to stop, she released her chakra.
BOOM!
Sakura's fist hit nothing, but the air in front of it distorted. An invisible shockwave erupted forward. It didn't touch Haku, who was already at a safe distance, but it slammed into the wooden bridge.
A circular section of the floor, the size of a large dinner plate, shot into the sky, disintegrating into a shower of splinters. The shockwave continued and struck one of the bridge's metal railings with a loud, metallic CLANG! that echoed across the entire structure. A deep dent was left in the thick metal.
The silence that followed was absolute.
Haku stopped dead, his body frozen. He turned slowly and looked at the destruction. He looked at the hole in the bridge. He looked at the dented railing. Then, he looked at Sakura's small fist.
From the other side of the bridge, Zabuza's laughter cut off abruptly. "What the hell was that?"
Inside his water dome, Kakashi's eyes were wide. "That chakra control…" he murmured to himself.
Sakura stared at her own fist, panting, her chest rising and falling erratically. She had done it. It had worked. But it had been… too much. She had put too much chakra into it. She felt her arm tingling all the way to her shoulder, an uncomfortable sensation, different from what she felt when she pulverized the rock the day before.
"Well now…" Haku said, and for the first time, there was a hint of genuine interest. "How unexpected. You aren't just a scared little girl, after all. What kind of jutsu is that?"
"It's not a jutsu," Sakura panted, more to herself than to him. "It's… just a punch."
"A bridge-destroying punch," Haku corrected. "Very interesting."
Sakura didn't answer. The fear was still there, but now it was joined by something new: the awareness of the chaotic and terrifying power running through her veins.
She lunged again. This time, Haku didn't stand still. The battle, if you could call it that, began in earnest.
Haku was a whirlwind of fluid movements, a phantom of deadly precision. He appeared and disappeared, throwing senbon from angles Sakura never saw coming.
Sakura was the complete opposite. She was clumsy, slow, and her movements were desperate. She lacked technique, form, training. But every one of her movements held the potential for catastrophic destruction.
She soon realized she couldn't keep up with Haku's speed. It was impossible. So she stopped trying. When a volley of needles flew toward her, she didn't try to block or dodge them. Instead, she punched the ground in front of her. Another blast of force created a curtain of debris, dust, and wood splinters that intercepted most of the projectiles.
Haku appeared at her left, a needle in hand, ready for a precise strike. She spun and threw a kick. The movement was so slow that Haku could have dodged it. But at the last instant, just before the point of impact, Sakura released chakra from the tip of her foot. The shockwave forced him to leap back to avoid being thrown through the air.
"Too much chakra!" Sakura thought, nearly falling over from the imbalance of her own attack. Her leg stung with the same tingling sensation as her arm. She was burning through her energy at an alarming rate.
"Control, Sakura, control!" Kakashi's voice, louder now as he tried to project it through the water. "Don't force it all at once! Release only what you need! Focus!"
She tried to listen. The next time Haku attacked from the front, a simple feint, Sakura tried to release just a little chakra into her fist. The result was a small, harmless puff of air that wouldn't have ruffled a cat's fur. Haku ignored it and dealt her a quick blow to the shoulder with the back of his hand, sending a jolt of pain down her arm. She had to drop to the ground to dodge the needles that followed, and one grazed her cheek, leaving a thin, burning cut.
"Damn it!" she yelled, slamming the ground in frustration.
This was impossible. There was no middle ground. It was all or nothing.
The frustration was consuming her. She was just reacting, creating chaotic explosions in the hope of keeping her enemy at bay. Each massive blast cost her more than the last. Her pants grew deeper, and sweat pasted her pink hair to her forehead.
From the ground, Sasuke watched everything.
The pain from the senbon was a constant agony, but the wound to his pride was far, far worse. He forced his head up, his vision blurred by pain and humiliation.
And he saw her.
He saw Sakura. Panting, sweating, a bleeding cut on her cheek, but standing. He saw her punch the bridge and send wood flying. He saw her create explosions out of thin air. He saw how she forced that unbelievably fast enemy to keep his distance.
A part of his mind was confused. What was that ability? Was it a bloodline? Chakra control so precise it looked imprecise? How did it work? What was its limit?
But another part of him was screaming.
How?
The thought drove itself into his mind.
How is this possible? I was defeated in seconds. And she… she, the one who's always crying, the one who's always watching from the sidelines… she's still fighting.
He saw Haku move. And he saw her, clumsy and desperate, but answering again and again with brute force.
While I'm bleeding on the ground, defeated by my lack of speed, she's standing, fighting a battle that should be mine.
A fury directed not only at the enemy, but at her. At his own weakness.
That power should be mine!
The final thought was so intense, so pure in its desire, that it echoed in his skull. And with it, something changed.
A fire ignited behind his eyes. It was a physical burning, a real pain. The stabbing pain from the senbon in his body faded, drowned out by this new, overwhelming sensation. He gritted his teeth as a growl rumbled from his throat.
Haku, seeing Sakura's breathing become more and more erratic and her movements slower, decided it was time to end the game.
"You've been entertaining," he said, his voice returning to its calm, distant tone. "But this is over."
He performed a new series of one-handed seals, at a speed that turned his fingers into a blur. "Hijutsu: Makyō Hyōshō!"
The water vapor in the air, the dense mist that enveloped them, froze instantly. Thin, black plates of ice emerged from the ground and the air. They rose around Sakura, perfect rectangles that joined at the edges, forming a dome of twenty-one mirrors with her trapped in the center.
"Sakura, break the mirrors! Use your strength now!" Kakashi yelled, his voice filled with desperate urgency.
Sakura didn't think twice. She spun and punched the nearest mirror with every ounce of strength and chakra she had left. The explosion was immense, the biggest one yet. The mirror cracked, a spiderweb of fissures spreading from the point of impact. But it didn't shatter. And the next instant, Haku's image appeared in every one of the twenty-one mirrors, looking at her from all directions.
"Now," Haku's voice resonated, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, "you will see what true speed is."
And the assault began.
Haku's figure shot out of a mirror to her right, throwing a shower of senbon, and entered the mirror on her left before Sakura could even begin to turn. Pain blossomed in her arm, then her leg. She spun, trying to hit the reflections, but her fist only met solid ice while the real Haku was already somewhere else, attacking from another angle. It was a storm of needles and pain. She couldn't follow him.
Sasuke watched, and the fire in his eyes intensified. He blinked, the movement slow and deliberate. The blurry, painful world around him suddenly came into focus with an unnatural clarity.
He looked at the dome of mirrors. Before, he would have only seen confusing reflections. Now, he saw more. He saw the subtle flow of chakra connecting Haku to each of the mirrors. He saw the blur of his movement between the mirrors, but it was no longer an incomprehensible chaos. He could follow it. He could see the trajectory, the pattern, predict the exit point a fraction of a second before it happened.
In the reflection of a fallen kunai near him, he saw his own face. His eyes were no longer black. They were a deep red, a blood red. And in each pupil, a single black tomoe spun slowly.
The Sharingan. It had awakened.
Inside the dome, Sakura cried out in pain and frustration. She fell to her knees, multiple senbon stuck in her arms and legs, the paralyzing poison beginning to take effect. Haku appeared in the mirror directly in front of her, this time without moving. He held several needles between his fingers, aimed directly at her neck.
"Game over."
Time seemed to stretch. Sasuke saw Haku begin to emerge from the mirror, a fluid transition from reflection to reality. He saw the needles fly through the air. He saw the look of terror and resignation on Sakura's face.
Sasuke moved. Ignoring the muscles screaming in protest, the agony of his wounds, he shot to his feet in one explosive motion. His hand closed around the kunai on the ground. His arm tensed and moved with absolute precision.
He threw the kunai.
The weapon spun through the air, heading toward a seemingly empty spot.
CLINK!
The sound was sharp, clear, and piercing. Sasuke's kunai struck Haku's main needle, the one aimed at Sakura's neck, deflecting it by mere millimeters. The needle embedded itself harmlessly in the surface of the mirror behind her. The other needles missed their mark.
Haku paused, halfway out of the mirror. His masked head turned slowly to look at the kunai vibrating in the ice surface. Then, his gaze shifted outside the dome.
Sasuke was standing. Bleeding from half a dozen wounds. But he was standing. And his eyes… they were locked directly onto the one mirror that concealed the real Haku, with absolute certainty.
"Now… I see you."