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.
The air didn't just thicken; it curdled. That same freezing, oily pressure from the lake slammed into us, only this time it felt sharper—honed by a week of recovery and a thirst for a rematch.
My knees buckled. I didn't fall, but only because my brain recognized the "weather" before my body could panic. This wasn't a surprise anymore; it was the inevitable storm Kakashi-sensei had warned us about every morning during tree-climbing drills.
Naruto shivered beside me, his fingers curling into claws. "He's here," he hissed, his voice dropping into a low, jagged register. "That same creepy feeling..."
"Stay focused," Kakashi said, his voice cutting through the pressure like a blade. "You knew this was coming. Don't let the pressure win."
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, the Demon of the Mist looked like a man who had spent the last week sewing himself back together out of spite. His bandages appeared fresh, but his chakra rolled off him in cold, heavy waves that tasted of iron and stagnant water.
"Yo," Zabuza said, his voice a low, amused grate. "We meet again, Copy Ninja."
I forced my jaw to remain unclenched. We had spent every hour since the lake preparing for this moment, yet the physical reality of him standing there—massive sword slung over his shoulder like a toothpick—still made the bridge feel like it was swaying.
"Kakashi," Zabuza went on, his eyes tracking the silver-haired man. "I see you didn't take my advice and go back to the Academy."
"I'm a slow learner," Kakashi said lightly. His lazy posture didn't change, but his chakra pulled into a tight, expectant coil. He had predicted this return with clinical accuracy, and seeing the 'hunter-nin' standing silently in the mist behind Zabuza confirmed every suspicion we'd whispered in the safety of Tazuna's house.
The fake execution. The retrieval. The quiet recovery. The game was finally out in the open.
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, his gaze shifting to the masked figure. "The 'disposal team' finally clocks in for the real shift."
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.