The stillness on the bridge was absolute. The cold, damp air wouldn't move, trapping the metallic sound of Sasuke's kunai as it vibrated millimeters from Sakura's neck. Its tip was embedded in a disk of ice that had stopped a killing blow.
Haku, halfway out of the ice mirror, had frozen in place. His Anbu hunter mask, with its red lines and empty smile, revealed nothing, but the tension in his shoulders was evident. His attack had been interrupted in a way he hadn't anticipated.
Sakura trembled on the ground, her breath caught in her throat. She looked at the kunai, then at the mirror from which Haku had emerged, and finally at the one responsible for saving her. Sasuke was standing, his body covered in wounds and blood dripping from his arm, but his posture was firm. And his eyes... his eyes were different.
"Those eyes..." Zabuza muttered from the other end of the bridge. His voice, usually arrogant and mocking, now held a note of caution. He leaned forward slightly, trying to see better through the mist. "What the hell?"
Trapped inside the water prison, Kakashi felt a knot form in his stomach. He saw the tomoe spinning slowly in his student's bloodshot eyes. Initial astonishment gave way to a deep concern. So soon... It's forced him to awaken. All this hatred, this fear... this isn't how it was supposed to be.
Haku slowly withdrew the hand that held the senbon. He didn't spare Sakura a second glance. He emerged from the mirror with silent fluidity and focused all his attention on the bloodied figure challenging him. On the Uchiha.
"How?" Haku asked. His voice was as flat and emotionless as ever, but the question hung in the air, heavy and insistent. Something fundamental in the fight had just changed.
Sasuke didn't bother to answer. The pain from his wounds was a dull, constant ache that his newly cleared mind could ignore. For the first time since the fight began, everything was incredibly sharp. The world around him seemed to move slower. He could see Haku's chakra as a pale blue outline and how it connected him to each of the twenty-one mirrors, as if they were extensions of his own body. He saw the slight tremor in Haku's muscles, the way he shifted his weight, preparing to move.
"Now..." Sasuke growled, and his own voice sounded strange to him. It was lower, rougher, laced with a cold, cutting confidence he had never felt before. "...I see you."
Zabuza's warning came a second too late, a shout that cut through the mist.
"Haku, be careful! It's the Sharingan!"
Haku tensed at the name, but battle instinct took over. The fight resumed in an instant.
He vanished into the mirror behind him and, a fraction of a second later, shot out of another to Sasuke's right, his hand already a blur as he threw a dozen senbon in a perfect arc. Before, Sasuke wouldn't have even had time to process the movement. It would have been a blur, followed by sharp pain.
Now, it was different.
He saw the muscles in Haku's shoulder contract before the arm moved. He saw the trajectory of each needle as if it were drawn in the air.
Sasuke ducked, so low that his hair brushed the bridge's floor. A needle whistled right where his head had been. He pivoted on his heels, and the kunai in his hand moved almost on its own, a flash of steel that deflected two more needles with a sharp "clink-clink!" His body moved with an efficiency that wasn't his own, a brutal precision born from overwhelming perception. He wasn't any faster than Haku, but it no longer mattered. He was no longer reacting to Haku's actions; he was anticipating his thoughts.
"Impossible," Haku whispered to himself, his voice lost in the wind.
He slipped back into another mirror, bewilderment beginning to crack his cold composure. He launched another attack, a feint this time. He emerged from a mirror to the left, throwing needles, but his real self was already moving to emerge from one directly above Sasuke.
Sasuke didn't even glance at the feint. His red eyes were already locked on the mirror above, tracking the flow of chakra. The instant Haku began to materialize, Sasuke had already leaped backward, out of the attack zone. The needles embedded themselves harmlessly in the wooden planks of the bridge.
"What's happening?" Sakura asked aloud, though no one was listening. She scrambled backward, trying to get away from the center of the fight.
"The kid..." Zabuza growled. The disbelief in his voice was palpable. "He shouldn't be able to use it like that from the start. It's supposed to take training, years of practice..." He turned toward the water prison. "What kind of monsters are you training, Kakashi?!"
Kakashi didn't answer. He could only watch, his heart sinking.
Haku appeared behind Sasuke, this time at point-blank range, a needle aimed directly at the base of his skull. It was a killing blow, perfectly executed.
But Sasuke's eyes saw it coming. He saw the chakra gather behind him. Without even turning, he dropped to the ground and rolled over his injured shoulder. A flash of sharp pain shot through his arm, but he ignored it. Mid-roll, with a fluid motion, he threw his kunai backward, aiming low.
The attack forced Haku to react. He had to fully materialize and jump back to keep the kunai from embedding in his foot. For a fraction of a second, his mirror technique was broken.
For the first time, Haku was on the defensive.
Meanwhile, in the swamp, the situation was chaos.
"There are too many of them!" Meizu snarled, his poisoned claw tearing through another of Naruto's clones. The orange figure vanished in a puff of smoke. "They just keep coming!"
"Stop playing and crush the real one!" Kageri ordered with a hiss. She moved with unnatural agility, dodging a kunai thrown by Kurenai without even looking at it. "I'll handle the Jounin."
Kurenai gritted her teeth in frustration. She was in serious trouble. Kageri's style perfectly countered her own. She never fought head-on. She used the environment, pulling on nearly invisible tripwires to trigger bamboo traps that shot up from the ground. She threw shuriken from the trees, using angles that forced Kurenai to stay in constant motion. And most importantly, she never looked her directly in the eyes. She fought by sound, by the movement of the air, by the vibrations in the ground. Every attempt Kurenai made to catch her in a genjutsu was useless.
"Your eye tricks are useless on me, woman," Kageri mocked, throwing a small smoke bomb to the ground. "I don't need to see to kill."
Visibility dropped to almost nothing. Kurenai instinctively leaped back, and a weighted chain swept through the spot where she had been standing. The heavy metal left a deep gouge in the mud.
"Naruto, there's too much pressure!" she yelled, trying to locate Kageri in the smoke. "I can't hold off all three of them at once!"
Naruto narrowly dodged a clumsy but brutal swing from Gozu's clawed arm. The metal fist smashed into a nearby tree, splintering it. Sweat stung his eyes, and his lungs burned. His clones were being destroyed almost as fast as he could make them. Gozu and Meizu were slow, but they were like tanks. He couldn't afford to take a single hit. He had to think of something, fast.
Trust your team... he remembered Kurenai's words from their training. I need to give her an opening.
He looked at the two demon brothers. They were big, strong, and above all, arrogant. They laughed every time a clone disappeared.
A stupid, risky idea began to form in his head.
"Hey, you, with the scrap metal arm!" he shouted, pointing at Meizu. "Does that claw look secondhand? Did you pull it out of a dumpster?"
Meizu's head snapped toward him. "What did you say, runt?"
"I said it looks like it's about to fall apart!" Naruto continued with a cheeky grin. "I bet it rusts in the rain!"
"Insolent brat!" Meizu roared, losing interest in the clones and charging directly at the real Naruto.
Gozu laughed. "Finish him, brother. I'll take care of the others."
Naruto smirked. "Gotcha!"
He created three more clones. One ran straight at the furious Meizu. The other two split up and charged Gozu from different angles. Gozu snorted and prepared to crush them.
But it was all a feint.
The clone running at Meizu didn't attack. Just before the claw could reach it, it dissolved into smoke. The real Naruto, who had been perfectly hidden behind it, slid through the mud and swept his ankles. The big man, charging forward with all his weight, wasn't expecting it and lost his balance with a cry of surprise.
At the same time, the two clones heading for Gozu didn't attack either. At the last second, they jumped on top of each other. The first clone served as a platform for the second, who launched himself to the side, out of Gozu's reach. Gozu, expecting a simple frontal assault, turned his head, confused by the movement.
That fraction of a second was all Naruto needed.
"Take this!"
The real Naruto, after tripping Meizu, used his momentum to spin and deliver a kick with all the force he could muster. He aimed for the side of Gozu's knee.
There was the unmistakable crack of bone.
Gozu howled, a high-pitched sound of pure pain. His leg bent at an unnatural angle and he staggered, falling heavily onto his brother, who was trying to get up. The two Demon Brothers ended up in a tangle of limbs, metal, and mud, yelling at each other.
They weren't defeated, but they were out of the fight for a few crucial seconds.
"Kurenai-sensei, now!" Naruto yelled, breathless but grinning in triumph.
Kurenai didn't waste the opportunity. As soon as she heard Gozu's howl, she knew Naruto had done it. With the brothers neutralized, she could focus completely on her opponent. She emerged from the smoke, her eyes fixed on Kageri's silhouette.
"The game is over," Kurenai said, and this time, there was no trace of strain in her voice. Her red eyes gleamed with renewed intensity.
Kageri felt a chill. She no longer heard the heavy footsteps of the brothers. Only the dripping water and the light steps of the Jounin approaching.
Back on the bridge, the tables had also turned completely.
Haku was panting inside his dome of ice mirrors. The air inside was freezing, but beads of sweat ran down his forehead beneath the mask. Every movement cost him more chakra than the last. The Sharingan wasn't just predicting his attacks; it seemed the boy was learning and understanding the flow of his technique with every passing second.
I can't win, Haku thought, a raw and cold admission. My speed is useless against those eyes. My precision strikes are predictable. There's only one option left.
He stopped. His twenty-one reflections in the mirrors stood still. The temperature inside the dome dropped sharply.
"I admire your determination," Haku's voice seemed to come from all directions at once. "You've awakened a great power to protect your friends. It's admirable."
Sasuke said nothing. He stood his ground, kunai in hand, his red eyes darting from one reflection to another, trying to find the real one.
"But I also have someone to protect," the voice continued. "Zabuza-sama gave me a purpose when I had nothing. I am his tool. And a tool must fulfill its function. If precision won't work..."
Haku appeared in all twenty-one mirrors simultaneously.
"...then I will overwhelm you with volume."
From every mirror, a shower of ice senbon began to materialize. They weren't just aimed at Sasuke. They were aimed at every square inch inside the dome. It was an attack designed to annihilate everything within.
Sasuke saw the storm coming. His red eyes tracked it all, every glittering needle, every deadly trajectory. He could see there was no escape. If he stayed put, he would die. If he tried to run, he would die.
His gaze shifted for a fraction of a second. It moved past the oncoming ice storm and locked onto Sakura. She was still on the ground, several feet away, paralyzed by fear and defenseless, right in the center of the kill zone.