Land Of Waves Arc (11) : A Death Or Two.

Following his guiding stick Tachibana looked at the village that he'd walked up to. It was eerily silent with no people walking around, the hawker's stalls were mostly closed and even the ones that remained open were empty.

It looked like a ghost town. And if not for the loud sounds of metal clashing against each other and the occasional explosions that Tachibana heard he was ready to believe it.

Tachibana used his acrobatic skills to walk over walls and reach the top of houses to scout the situation better.

Three fights were taking place at the point where the bridge began from the land of waves. One was between the villagers and Gato's men inside the village borders. The second fight was between Haku and Team Seven taking place very near the bridge.

The third and last fight was between Kakashi, Maruboshi six ANBU and a mix of seven Chinuns and Jonins along with Zabuza which was taking place on the bridge itself. The enemy was a mix of Kumo and Kiri shinobi.

'The Kumo shinobi can all proficiently use the lightning cloak jutsu.'

Kakashi, Maruboshi and the ANBU worked overtime to prevent the Jonins from slipping by and attacking the normal crowd of villagers and Team Seven.

While the shinobi from Konoha focused on saving and conserving their chakra for sure-hit attacks, the Kumo and Kiri shinobi focused on giving everything they had to end the fight faster, because once the jonin and ANBU fell, the kids wouldn't be hard to defeat.

'If only there was a long-range attack jutsu I could've sniped and helped them out without interfering with the fight.'

'Come to think of it, why don't shinobi use bows and arrows? Or Guns?'

'I get not many jonin shinobi would be affected by it, but most genin and chunin? They'd probably topple like dominos. And if caught off guard I'm pretty sure even Jonins would have difficulty saving their lives.'

Performing divination once again, Tachibana spotted Inari running in one of the streets. He was running towards a fight between the villagers and Gato's men.

'Does he want to kill Gato because he killed his father?'

Tachibana frowned and immediately used the Body flicker jutsus to chase after Inari.

Sakura looked at the ice mirror dome that had surrounded her and her two teammates.

In the mirrors was the man who had sacrificed an arm to save Zabuza who Tachibana had tricked into confusion last time to use explosive tags to escape from.

Sakura had explosive tags this time too, she'd bought them from Kakashi out of precaution, but using them now without knowing which mirror of the icy dome held the real body of the man was risky.

Not only would doing so reveal her plan, but it would also reduce the amount of explosive tags she had.

"Come out and fight like a man you coward!" Naruto shouted in exasperation while Sasuke did his best to pay all his attention to Haku's movements.

He'd already unlocked a single tomoe Sharinigan during the earlier senbon barrage when he sacrificed his body to protect Sakura.

"Sasuke-kun, I have a plan." Sakura whispered causing Sasuke's ears to twitch.

Using a signal Sasuke informed Naruto to keep Haku distracted so he did the only thing he could, Naruto used the 'Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu.' to spawn tens of clones inside the mirror.

Haku immediately attacked using senbon but the few seconds Naruto bought for Sasuke and Sakura was enough for them to exchange the plan.

Sasuke went back to focusing on Haku's movements while Sakura pulled out a few plain kunai.

Naruto began to attack the mirrors once again while making sure to protect Sakura and Sasuke using clones so that they could carry out the plan.

Tachibana caught Inari's hand just as he was going to enter the fray with the other villagers who were standing up against Gato and his lackeys.

Inari quickly became scared of being caught by the enemy but when he saw Tachibana dragging him away from the villagers and Gato, he shouted as loudly as he could, "Let me go!!!"

But before the words could escape his mouth, Tachibana stuffed the muffler he was holding into it.

Inari quickly tried to spit out the muffler and bite Tachibana's hand but Tachibana simply held the boy upside down before using the Body flicker jutsu to run away.

'Well now I just have to waste time running to and from this point to the boat and I'm sure everything would've concluded by the time I'm back.'

As Sasuke did his best to track Haku, Naruto had his own idea.

"If I can't defeat you by breaking one mirror, I'll break all the mirrors!!!!" Naruto shouted before performing the hand seals for Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu again as he made enough to spare ten of himself for every mirror in the dome.

The first five jumped at their respective Haku who just tossed out a few senbon and blew them up, but the real deal was when the remaining five who were hidden behind the first forcefully punched outward!

"This is useless. You can't do anything to me. Just die peacefully. It's the least I can do to unprincipled shinobi like yourselves from Konoha." Haku stated plainly, before shooting more senbon that dispelled the clones.

The moment Naruto forced Haku to perform a large-scale attack, Sasuke with his Sharingan picked up on which mirror Haku actually was inside of. He then quickly used hand signs to point to a particular mirror.

Sakura's eyes firmed as she formed a simple hand seal and threw out a kunai attached with a lit explosive seal.

While in Sasuke and Naruto's vision, the kunai was alone with a burning explosive tag in it, in Haku's vision there was a kunai with a burning explosive tag dedicated to each mirror.

She'd used genjutsu to make Haku think so.

"CRAZY GIRL!!" Haku shouted in a hurry as he dispelled the ice dome technique to escape quickly from what looked like a kamikaze attempt.

As soon as the dome vanished, Sakura pulled a thin string attached to the kunai and directed it at Haku whose body was now out in the open.

*BBBBBBBBOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMM*

The explosive seal burst but that wasn't all that Sakura had planned.

As soon as the first seal exploded, Sakura tossed in two more kunai with explosive seals burning on it.

Haku quickly created an ice wall to block the attack but after the two explosive tags burst, a third plain kunai penetrated through the cloud of steam and smoke before it lodged right into Haku's neck.

Choking on his own blood, Haku collapsed onto the floor as he looked one last time at Zabuza before collapsing onto the bridge and dying.

Seeing Haku die, Zabuza froze for a second which Kakashi expertly used to slice off an arm but before he could do anything else, Zabuza exploded with unbelievable speed towards Team Seven.

Kakashi followed, but he was one step behind.

Zabuza's killing intent had frozen the entirety of Team Seven.

Maruboshi on the other hand was becoming more burdened while handling the fully powered-up Kumo and Kiri shinobi who used Kakashi's absence to double down on their attacks.

Just as Kakashi caught up to Zabuza in an attempt to stop him, he froze and a head rolled down onto the bridge, spilling blood everywhere and causing the hearts of several people to sink.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

A/N : What happened?