"You're no ordinary genin, are you?" Zabuza's voice was a low growl, his eyes fixed on Deva. "This just got a lot more interesting."
Kakashi didn't take his eye off the Demon of the Mist. His red, three-tomoe Sharingan, active since the fight began, was spinning, analyzing every twitch of the man's muscles. "Deva," he commanded, his voice sharp and tactical. "You're on interference. Harass him with ninjutsu, keep him off balance. I'll go for the kill."
"Understood," Deva replied. The horror of Tsunami and Inari's deaths had been compartmentalized, replaced by a cold, sharp focus. This was the reality of the shinobi world. Failure meant death. He would not fail again.
Zabuza, realizing his stealth was a liability against two opponents who could copy or sense it, changed his tactics. With a roar, he charged, his massive Executioner's Blade cleaving the air. The fight became a high-speed duel. Kakashi met the massive blade with a single, reinforced kunai, his Sharingan predicting the arc of each swing, sparks flying as steel met steel.
Deva kept his distance, weaving hand signs. "Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu!" He launched another massive fireball, forcing Zabuza to leap back from his assault on Kakashi to avoid the flames.
Meanwhile, the battle on the other front was becoming desperate. Naruto and Sasuke were trapped inside Haku's dome of ice mirrors, caught in a whirlwind of phantom attacks.
"Stay still, Naruto!" Sasuke yelled, his single-tomoe Sharingan spinning as he frantically tracked the senbon needles that shot from the mirrors. He moved with incredible speed, knocking away the projectiles aimed at both himself and Naruto. The Sharingan allowed him to see the attacks, but Haku was so fast that Sasuke was relegated to a desperate, reactionary defense.
"I'm trying!" Naruto grunted, his body already peppered with shallow cuts. His shadow clones were useless, dispatched the moment they appeared in the confined space. He felt powerless, relying completely on Sasuke to see the attacks he couldn't.
"It's no use," Sasuke panted, his eyes burning with the strain of his newly awakened dōjutsu. "He's just wearing us down!" But even as he said it, his mind was working, his Sharingan tracking the faint trails of chakra Haku left behind. A pattern was emerging. "Naruto, get ready," Sasuke ordered, his voice tight with concentration. "When I say so, I need you to release as much chakra as you can in every direction. Don't try to attack, just explode."
Outside, the main event escalated. Zabuza, frustrated by Deva's ranged harassment, decided to end it with overwhelming force. He disengaged from Kakashi, landing on the surface of the nearby lake.
"You want to play with jutsu, brats? Let's see you handle this!" he roared, his hands flying through the intricate forty-four hand seals for his signature technique.
Deva didn't watch his hands. His senses were locked onto Zabuza's chakra. He felt the energy being drawn, molded, compressed, and shaped into a specific, complex frequency. He wasn't learning the steps; he was sensing the final product as it was being built, reverse-engineering it in an instant.
Kakashi's Sharingan was spinning, memorizing the sequence.
"Water Style: Water Dragon Jutsu!" Zabuza bellowed. A colossal dragon of swirling water erupted from the lake, its roar a torrent of spray and power as it lunged towards Kakashi.
A split second later, Kakashi, finishing his own copied seals, slammed his palm down. "Water Style: Water Dragon Jutsu!" An identical dragon rose to meet Zabuza's.
But then, the impossible happened.
Deva, who hadn't moved a muscle, simply raised his hand. He made no signs. He spoke no words. He just focused on the frequency he had just memorized and commanded his own monstrous chakra reserves to match. From the lake beside him, a third dragon of water, perfectly formed and just as massive as the others, erupted from the surface.
Zabuza's and Kakashi's dragons crashed into each other in a stalemate of raw power. Deva's, however, was not aimed for a simple collision. He commanded it with a thought, and it weaved around the central explosion, attacking Zabuza directly while the Mist-nin was preoccupied with maintaining his own jutsu.
Zabuza's eyes widened in horror as his own technique, flawlessly replicated and commanded with superior control by a genin, turned upon him. He was forced to break his jutsu and leap away, the rogue water dragon crashing into the lake behind him.
The display had taken barely a sip from Deva's vast, ocean-like reserves. He felt no strain, only a cold, clear focus.
"You've made a grave mistake, Zabuza," Kakashi said, his voice low as he landed beside Deva, his mind reeling from the boy's monstrous talent. "You let him see your best technique."
Zabuza's shock morphed into a snarl of pure rage. His stealth was useless. His ultimate jutsu was copied and turned against him. He was being humiliated.
"ENOUGH!" he roared. [Water Style: Hidden Mist Jutsu!]
The mist instantly returned, a thousand times thicker than before. This was no mere concealment; it was a physical manifestation of his killing intent, a blinding, sensory-depriving fog designed for one purpose: Silent Killing.
He vanished.
"Kakashi-sensei," Deva said, his voice perfectly calm as he closed his eyes, filtering out the useless visual information. "The mist is saturated with his chakra. It's meant to blind sensors like me. It's a crude but effective tactic."
A cold, demonic chuckle echoed from all around them. "Crude, you say? Let's see how you handle it."
"Can you find him?" Kakashi asked, his Sharingan struggling to pierce the gloom.
"Find him? I never lost him," Deva stated. To him, Zabuza's chakra signature in the mist was as obvious as a bonfire in the dark. The problem wasn't seeing him; it was the speed at which he was about to move. "The real fight starts now."
Zabuza burst from the mist, a blur of motion aimed at Kakashi's back. "Seven o'clock, low!" Deva yelled.
Kakashi instantly ducked, Zabuza's massive blade whistling a hair's breadth over his head, an attack he never would have seen coming with his Sharingan alone.
Before Zabuza could recover, Deva spoke again, his voice sharp. "Three o'clock, high!"
Kakashi spun, his kunai coming up just in time to parry a downward slash from Zabuza, who had crossed twenty feet in the blink of an eye. The synergy was perfect: Deva was the all-seeing navigator, and Kakashi was the peerless pilot.
Zabuza leaped back into the mist, frustrated. His Silent Killing, the technique that had made him a legend, was being rendered completely useless. He couldn't land a single blow. He couldn't out-speed their combined reaction time.
A new, cold strategy formed in his mind. He couldn't take out the body while the eyes were watching. So, he would take out the eyes.
He exploded from the fog again, this time in a feint towards Kakashi. "Twelve o'clock, center!" Deva called out, tracking the trajectory perfectly.
Kakashi moved to intercept. But it was a trap.
In the split second that Kakashi committed to his defensive posture, Zabuza used an explosive burst of speed, his body flickering like a phantom. He wasn't aiming for Kakashi at all.
He reappeared instantly, not in front of Kakashi, but directly in front of Deva.
The world slowed. Deva's silver eyes widened as he saw the Executioner's Blade, massive and unstoppable, swinging down towards him. He had been the guide, the untouchable sensor. Now, he was the target. And Kakashi was too far away to stop it.