บท 19: Versus Zabuza

"Just run!" Kakashi desperately yelled. "Forgot about me, you're no match for him! He's Momochi Zabuza, the Demon of the Hidden Mist! He's a survivor of the Bloody Mist; he'd butchered hundreds of his fellow students before even graduating to Genin!"

"Oh, what fun that was," Zabuza sighed. "But enough reminiscing. It's high time I ended this…"

A shuriken whistled through the air, which Zabuza easily dodged by tilting his head slightly to the right, without even having to withdraw his right hand from Kakashi's Water Prison. The shuriken continued its flight past his left ear, lodging itself in one of the trees behind him.

The first part of Sasuke's plan was complete! But to successfully bring the second part to a close, he'd need a teammate's help!

Sasuke glanced behind him; Naruto was in better shape than Sakura, but he seemed to have gone berserk. He kept summoning more Shadow Clones to fight Zabuza's whip-wielding Water Clone, but at least, he seemed to have the presence of mind to not send his main body to fight. As for Sakura, she was in the process of rising to her feet unsteadily.

Sakura caught Sasuke looking at her; he tapped a shuriken lying in the palm of his right hand with his left index meaningfully, before holding up two fingers and finally pointing to his right. He had his back turned to Zabuza, which meant that he couldn't see what Sasuke was showing her…

Sakura nodded, indicating that she had understood the plan. She extended her forefinger and her middle finger from her right hand, which was gripping her sword, before making a plus sign in front of her with the same fingers from her left hand.

"Shadow Clone Jutsu!"

A Sakura Shadow Clone appeared next to the original; the twin Sakura nodded at each other, before raising their swords and dashing past Sasuke, towards Zabuza!

Zabuza scoffed; it was quite obvious to him which one was the real one and which one was the fake one. Even though both of them looked identical, down to the blood and dirt on their clothes; the real one was taking shallow breaths, since she had got hit in the solar plexus, while the fake one was acting perfectly fine!

Right before the two Sakura reached Zabuza, they separated. The first veered to the left, visibly aiming to cut off Zabuza's right hand, which was the hand that was fuelling the Jutsu keeping Kakashi inside the bubble. The second jumped high in the air; she actually wanted to decapitate Zabuza!

Zabuza grinned under the bandages covering his mouth; the real one was actually aiming for his neck; that was some pair she had on her!

(No, really!)

In any case, the pink-haired girl's feeble attempt at deception couldn't fool him… but then, she crossed her fingers again.

"Shadow Clone Jutsu!"

A third Shadow Clone popped into existence right in front of the real one; both of them were now falling, and they were about to land on his head. But whether it was two versus one or three versus one, it wouldn't make a single difference, as long as the one was a Jōnin-level shinobi!

"Fine then, rush towards your death!" Zabuza roared. "I'll give you the death you seem to so desperately desire!"

Sakura lightly stepped off her second Clone's back and flipped backwards higher up into the air, right before Zabuza destroyed it with a swipe of his kunai. As the Shadow Clone dissipated, it produced a small poof of white smoke, obscuring his vision for a fraction of a second.

A split second later, the smoke cleared and Zabuza saw the real Sakura falling towards him, her sword poised to lop his head off. Zabuza deflected a few shuriken; the boy with the black hair had thrown a few at him in a desperate attempt to save the pink-haired girl. Throwing stars wouldn't stop him from killing the annoying girl here and now!

Zabuza frowned; where had the first of the girl's Shadow Clones gone? As far as he could see, it wasn't anywhere near him any more… Well, it wouldn't matter if he killed the original!

"You're mine!" Sakura yelled, and Zabuza smirked under his bandages. It didn't matter if her sword had longer range than his kunai; he was faster than her; he would dodge the strike, and then the girl would fall and impale herself on his kunai knife!

And that's when he felt it; a wire so thin that it could barely be seen had just snagged onto his throat. Zabuza made a choking sound as the wire bit down on his skin, drawing blood. He immediately bent backwards; if he had resisted, the razor-thin wire pulling back on his neck would have decapitated him!

Here is what had happened: Sasuke had linked two of his shuriken together with a length of wire. The first, he had thrown at Zabuza, but it had missed, flown past his left side and lodged itself in a tree behind him. Then, when Sakura and her clone had run past him, Sasuke had stuck the second shuriken to Sakura's Shadow Clone!

Zabuza had believed the Shadow Clone to be the decoy, while in fact the decoy had been Sakura herself! When Sakura had launched herself even higher by jumping off the second Shadow Clone in midair, the first Shadow Clone had taken advantage of the smoke screen created by her fellow's destruction to wrap around Zabuza's right side and hide behind the Water Prison Bubble.

Finally, just when Zabuza had been about to kill the original, the Sakura Shadow Clone had pulled on the wire, causing it to snap against Zabuza's throat, and the rest was history!

Sakura let out a war cry as she fell out of the sky and plunged her blade into Zabuza's heart…

…not!

Half a dozen senbon needles flew out of nowhere and lodged themselves into Zabuza's throat, causing him to jerk to the side and fall backwards. Sakura missed, and the Manyuu blade sank deep into the ground right under his armpit.

"Sakura, don't!"

Since Zabuza had to do the limbo in order to avoid getting decapitated by the steel wire at his throat, he had been forced to let go of the Water Prison that restrained Kakashi. Sakura had been about to throw a kunai at the masked child who'd thrown the senbon, knowing perfectly well that it was Haku, but unfortunately for her, Kakashi had stopped her by taking hold of her wrist.

"Thank you for your help," the masked boy said coolly, "but I'll take it from here. Momochi Zabuza is a missing-nin from the Hidden Mist, so it's my responsibility as a hunter-nin to hunt down and dispose of such filth."