Zabuza hated fighting generalists …
Normally, fighters that didn't specialize in any single art belonged to the mediocre category, no danger to their betters, no big tricks up their sleeves, plain filler to an army, the kind that you learn nothing after slaughtering them …
But then … those few that are actually good … they start to become a problem …
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Zabuza had to use the side of his sword as a shield to deflect a hail of projectiles mixed with illusions …
***
It was the kind of thing you couldn't prepare for, because their whole stick was always having an answer for everything you threw at them …
Generally some of your own tricks …
***
Zabuza sneaked a few handseals behind the sword … a clump of mist gaining mass and form until a water clone was made, already mid swing …
‘Kakashi’ got hit and ripped in half, but Zabuza was already on the move, fighting genjutsu users was always a pain …
Zabuza was already purging his chakra before ‘Kakashi’ halves turned to water, and the illusion broke, making Zabuza finally pay attention to the water below him …
Zabuza burst chakra out of his feet, launching him in a jump fast and high enough so he wouldn't get caught in the water prison jutsu that just slammed below …
***
The worst was that you never felt like the generalist was better than you … losing never felt like an honest loss because their whole game was always keeping you out of balance with their bag of tricks …
***
Zabuza focused his chakra through the pure chakra conducive metal of kubikiribocho and into the mist around him … the water condensing around the sword as he swung it around, an enormous water whip swung down at where Zabuza assumed Kakashi was, all the while also changing his momentum mid air before a flash of metal and sparks passed close to him …
Zabuza had only a moment to close his eyes as the lightning enhanced Kunai that Kakashi threw exploded in a bright light …
Zabuza was already making handseals before his vision even cleared, water circling around him in a bubble like shield that stopped an almost invisible wind blade that came right after the flash …
***
The worst part was when the generalist acted like he was going to meet you at your own game …
***
Zabuza made the water shield burst behind him, pushing him back down, sword high, finally closing in the distance …
Kakashi moved his own sword to parry the strike … big mistake …
… Zabuza was one of the seven swordsmen of the mist, he was the wielder of kubikiribocho, the gore drinker … the heavy lump of metal made of corpses gave Zabuza undying strength and stamina that few could challenge …
Zabuza's sword blew through Kakashi's block, burying itself halfway through his torso …
Zabuza was already yanking his sword back and jumping away before ‘Kakashi’ even revealed itself to be a water clone …
Kakashi was getting quicker with his water clones …
Zabuza felt the chakra building up … the mist alerting him with a flash of light before the sound of a thousand birds reached his ears …
Zabuza turned, the massive kubikiribocho once more used as a shield to deflect Kakashi’s signature jutsu … The screeching sound of metal being pierced and then shattering made Zabuza smile …
Kakashi’s hand brushed against Zabuza’s sides, the concentrated lightning burning away his flesh in an instant … But what Kakashi thought was a clean hit, Zabuza turned into an exchange …
And between the both of them, Zabuza was much, much more suited to take a trade like that …
***
Zabuza hated fighting generalists, but he loved getting the better out of them.
*** *** ***
Kakashi’s eyes widened as his chidori pierced through the sword as he expected …
What Konoha’s killer hound didn’t expect was for a piece of the sword to shatter like an explosive shrapnel …
With the burst of speed from the chidori already spent, Kakashi could only watch with his enhanced perception the pieces of shrapnel flying towards his arm … His sharingan tracking the most dangerous fragments and predicting where they would hit …
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Kakashi turned his body slightly in the time he had, chakra at the sole of his feet giving him enough grip so Kakashi could fold into himself and let the Jounin body vest do it’s job, taking the brunt of the shrapnel … unfortunately the few he missed pierced through Kakashi’s thinner arm protection and lodged into his muscles …
The effect was immediate … the metal pieces of the legendary gore drinker did what they were made to do, sap away life …
The minor puncture wounds felt like hemorrhages, the metal lodged inside growing with the life force it drank, all the while some of it went towards the wielder of the sword, renewing their strength …
Kakashi narrowed his eyes slightly at the legendary sword …
[Kakashi] “So it's true, the shrapnel is no accident, the weapon can fragment itself for extra offensive power … “
Kakashi confirmed the extra piece of information from the legendary sword and didn’t think twice. He jumped back while burrowing his fingers into the wound, chakra threads forming in moments to grab the metal fragments and yank them out in a fluid motion, Kakashi cycled a bit of fire chakra to cauterise the wound …
Taking a small moment to breathe, Kakashi popped a blood pill into his mouth and began gathering chakra for his next assault …
***
Zabuza felt part of his burnt flesh regenerating before the connection was cut … Kakashi probably removed the shrapnel, but that was fine …
Kubikiribocho regained some of the lost mass, the cracks caused by Kakashi’s chidori closing slightly, just like Zabuza’s wound …
Having weathered Kakashi’s assault, Zabuza decided that it was his turn to get back into the offensive …
Zabuza moved his body and contracted his muscles in a way that mimicked the effect of handseals, chakra molded and folded, condensing into his sword that absorbed, letting even more chakra build ... Water churned and frothed around the sword like an angry beast struggling to get out and devour …
Zabuza closed his eyes momentarily to feel for Kakashi using the mist before swinging his sword down …
A wave burst forward and the water opened like a chasm filled with countless maws ready to drag anything inside and chew on it … like a waterfall dragging rocks against rocks until all became pebbles and sand …
***
Kakashi felt the build-up of chakra, he could try another chirori to interrupt the jutsu and cut down Zabuza in the middle of it … but the muscles of his legs screamed at him that it might be too soon for another one …
For the sake of conserving energy, Kakashi decided to not challenge the jutsu, opting instead to trust his weird apprentice with even weirder visions … Kakashi fished in his pocket, the new addition to his arsenal … Kakashi's very own prototype, courtesy of his cute little apprentice …
… Jay did make a compelling argument to Kakashi in favor of fuinscript … there is very little a big enough boom can't solve …
*** *** ***
Sasuke and Sakura readied themselves for the plan …
Jay was doing his best to protect them from the constant hail of ice needles being shot from varying directions …
Sasuke could see that even Jay's seemingly unlimited stamina was having problems.
Jay was almost wrestling with the hunk of metal trying to move it around as fast as the Ice ninja was jumping between the ice mirrors that were getting ever closer …
Sasuke's sharingan could track the ninja jumping between the mirrors, he kept at hand on Jay's back, helping guide Jay's movements as the hunk of battered metal sometimes blocked his vision …
But Sasuke himself was feeling the drain on his chakra … he didn't want to say anything at the start but now Sasuke felt like an idiot for trying to be proud …
Kakashi's fight with Zabuza picked up, they could hear the roar of water and the screeching sound of lightning … probably Kakashi using that jutsu he used at the start of the battle again …
Sasuke knew the battle must have picked up because the cold came back almost immediately … whatever Kakashi did to isolate them from the freezing mist, he was no longer keeping attention to it …
Sasuke tried to shoulder that burden with his own fire chakra, but it was starting to take its toll …
[Sasuke] - How long ? … -
Sasuke asked, a beat of sweat forming on his forehead from keeping the constant flow of fire chakra around them …
[Sakura] - He is getting closer and closer, faster and faster … One … two, three … four … next hail … Sasuke now ! … JAY ! -
Sakura, who was counting the rhythm, suddenly gave the signal and launched a handful of illusory wire-shurikens … Sasuke followed with more of the real ones …
Genjutsu and actual razor sharp ninja-wire spread outward from their spot, like a net ready to catch and cut anything passing through …
Jay on the other hand grabbed the second of two storage scrolls he prepared in the week leading up to this confrontation … one for himself and one for Kakashi …
Jay focused a burst of chakra into the scroll that greedily sucked it …The scroll tossed into the air spun out, paper unrolling to reveal fuinscript …
It was a simple storage scrolls … not all that much different from what any weapon throwing master might use … but the little differences mattered …
[Jay] - GRAB ME, FOX, I NEED A BOOST -
*** *** ***
Zabuza felt through the mist the fact that Kakashi wasn't contesting his water devouring wave …
Zabuza waited for the right moment to throw a bigger jutsu, waiting for the moment Kakashi circled back in front of his genins that were fighting Haku at the back …
Zabuza could feel that Haku had deployed his mirrors so the brats were stuck … and with Haku wailing on them, they would be none the wiser against Zabuza's jutsu …
Two birds, one stone and all that …
Zabuza was sure Kakashi knew that, and so, Zabuza was sure Kakashi would dig into his reserves to contest his jutsu once more … and Zabuza was confident that he had more stamina then the Konoha's Hound …
But instead, Zabuza didn't feel the build up of chakra for a counter jutsu … and for a brief moment Zabuza thought that Kakashi would actually dodge the jutsu and leave his genins exposed …
***
Kakashi took Jay's prototype scroll with a steady hand, feeding the greedy thing with chakra before throwing it at the offending chakra made tsunami coming his way …
Kakashi was already making handseals and flexing his chakra for a counter jutsu to deflect the wave, in case the prototype failed. It would consume a lot of chakra and force Kakashi into popping a soldier pill, but extra risk for extra reward …
***
Haku watched as his targets threw a net of shurikens with ninja-wire up in the air to slow him down …
Not wanting to be tangled or even expend the extra chakra needed to blow through the wires, Haku opted to take the save round and go around, still pelting his targets with ice needles … as long as they weren't able to retaliate, Haku was confident he could outlast them with superior stamina and reserves …
Instead, without warning, Haku felt the blond one’s chakra exploding outwards … with a strange dense and caustic feel to it …
As expected, the ninja-wire net was a cover for their retreat, but it wouldn't matter …
[Haku] “ … they are escaping … they won't be able to help Hatake Kakashi against my master … -
Haku thought to himself, deciding that instead of pursuing the genins, he would help his master against Konoha's Hound …
Haku focused his chakra on his mirrors and started moving them towards the battle happening behind him …
A scroll tumbling through the air escaped Haku's attention as he focused on dodging the ninja-wire on his way …
*** *** ***
Storage scrolls always connected to an actual place where the things were stored … generally, a storage room with marked shelves …
The scroll connected with the place and items, it was, in theory, just like a summoning jutsu …
In practice it was much more limited … the objects and the place where the objects would be stored needed to be marked in the scroll, like a signature for the place of storage and the mark needed cover the space, not just a surface, that means a closed room of some kind, a storage room … to make a storage scrolls it wasn't as simple as JUST making the scroll, you had to prepare a place, you had to prepare a different marks, you had to prepare the objects …
It was a lot of work, so when Jay said he thought he could make one that didn't require the ‘Place’ part, only the scroll plus object part … Kakashi was quite interested …
***
Kakashi watched as the scroll made its way through the air …
The thing was connected to the explosive junk Jay prepared over the week … pieces of wood, rocks … anything that could do extra damage when it blows up was marked with explosive tags and then marked on the scroll before being placed on a pile outside Tazuna's backyard …
It was a fair accessement, explosive tags had this tendency to go off if stored in bulk … but Jay assured him that his tags were more stable than that …
Kakashi knew his way around Fuinjutsu, Minato was his teacher after all … but whatever language Jay was writing his fuinscript in, it wasn't anything like Kakashi had ever seen … another reason to believe Jay's visions …
Though his seals were very chakra hungry …
***
Kakashi saw the scroll abruptly burst into chakra smoke with the crack of a small explosion …
The contents flung out as they were summoned almost at the same time … Rocks, wood, bricks …
The junk was engulfed by the water jutsu that surrounded it …
In less than a blink of an eye those innocuous objects exploded practically at the same time …
The pressure wave and debris shook the water jutsu enough to disrupt the chakra keeping it together … Making Zabuza lose control of it …
Kakashi prepared for the opportunity and flexed his own chakra over the fading jutsu, the handseals he made for a counter jutsu now completed to turn it back to sender, diminished in power but still deadly …
***
Haku heard the explosion ahead of him …
[Haku] - MASTER !? -
Haku cried out in surprise before making a panel of ice behind himself to dash faster towards Zabuza.
At the back of his neck, he felt a pulse of chakra that he missed over the noise of the blond boy’s dense and caustic chakra …
Haku reinforced the ice panel into an actual barrier and that saved him as the scroll Haku didn't pay attention to suddenly exploded the same way, only this time there was no water to contain the sharpenel …
Haku felt the pressure wave wash over him, making his lungs lose air and his ears ring … The explosion was almost deafening, but not lethal by itself … too bad the explosion wasn't the actual danger …
Shards of brick, stone and wood collided against Haku's ice shield, shattering parts of it … the debris flung at high velocity made Haku turtle behind his makeshift ice barrier, no longer sustaining himself into the air …
Some pieces pierced Haku's flesh but the pain was secondary in his mind …
[Haku] - Zabuza-sama !! -
Haku grit his teeth, freezing over some of the wounds he suffered before forcing his body to move towards his master, he had to see, he had to see for himself if he was alright …
***
