Chapter 087
Kakashi stared wide eyed as blood splashed across his face and clothing, his arm shoved elbow deep in the person's flesh and moving out the back. He was so shocked that he could not even think of removing his arm from said person's chest, and instead watched as blood began to stain the cloth covering his arm.
Everything seemed to stop in that single instance as Kakashi, Sakura, Tazuna and Zabuza all stared at Haku in shock, having had used herself as a shield to protect Zabuza and taken the silver haired jonins assassination technique. None were more shocked then Zabuza himself, who could only stand there with his eyes wide and Haku's blood splattered all over his face. He had known of the girl's devotion to him, having been the one to take her away from the hellish life she had been living in Mizu No Kuni. But even he had not expected or even thought she would have taken her desire to protect him this far. He was so surprised that he could not even think of using everyone else's distracted state as an opportunity to kill Kakashi.
"HAKU!"
The near animalistic scream tore everyone's attention away from Haku and towards Naruto, who had stopped running as soon as he saw his sensei's arm through Haku's chest.
"No…" He mumbled before breaking out into a run.
"Naruto…" Kakashi tried to say, only to be ignored as Naruto grabbed Haku, pulling his sensei's arm out of her and sinking to the ground and as he attempted to shake Haku awake.
"No, no, no, no, NO! HAKU! WAKE UP!" Naruto shouted; his voice frantic and his eyes looking into her now dull ones. "C'mon Haku, you need to wake up! I need you to wake up! D-Don't…" Naruto's voice chocked. "Don't leave me…" Naruto stared into Haku's eyes looking for any sign of life. Only to find them dull, lifeless, like what you would expect of a doll.
"No…oh kami no…" tears came from Naruto's eyes, even though he didn't notice. "Not like this…I never wanted this to happen to you… why? Why did this have to happen?"
"Damn it… Haku," the blonds shoulders began to shake as sobs racked his body. Heedless of the blood that was pouring out of the wound in Haku's chest and began to stain his clothes, Naruto pulled the now still Haku closer to him, and began to rock back and forth as seeking, hoping to find that warmth that he had always felt from her before.
It wasn't there. All he now felt was the fading warmth that she had held when alive, and it was soon replaced with the cold feeling of one who had just died.
"Naruto…" Sakura mumbled, completely shocked at what she was witnessing and not at all sure what she should think at seeing the sight of the person who, even after his increase in intelligent and skills, had always seemed to be an idiot to her. Naruto, who had always been fairly cheerful, even with his recent changes, the boy had still carried that near indomitable optimism and enthusiasm.
Now he seemed to be almost broken, tears were streaming down his face as he held onto the raven haired kunoichi and was seemingly ignoring the world around him. His lips moved whispering apology after apology to the girl he was holding, even though she was no longer alive to hear them. The sight of Naruto breaking down so utterly was so foreign that the young pinkette did not know what to think.
Her thoughts were broken away from the sight as she remembered someone else who had, had his own battle here on this bridge.
"Sasuke-kun," she mumbled as she stood and began her search for the Uchiha heir. Spinning around she went to search for Sasuke, and found him unconscious and heavily bleeding under the body of one of the now dead Akuma brothers.
"SASUKE-KUN!" she ran up to him and tried to push the body off of her crush, the rest of the world forgotten to her.
The two Jonin-level ninja looked over at each other, each trying to determine if there was any real point in fighting anymore. A few minutes later, which were only broken by the sounds of Naruto's cries, the stare down ended, and both nodded as a silent agreement passed between them that the battle was now over, at least for the moment. The two ninja turned their attention back to the distraught blond.
THONK! THONK! THONK!
The pair's heads snapped over to the end of the bridge to see Gato grinning at them, along with a large horde of thugs behind him wearing the same grinning expression only tinged with bloodlust, no doubt from the thought of killing the group here and then moving on to pillage the village.
"Look at you Zabuza, all beaten up and getting your ass handed to you by a bunch of brats and a scarecrow," Gato said with a smirk, feeling pretty confident now that the battle was ended and he had a large group of mercenaries behind him for back up.
"Gato…" Zabuza growled, he was already angry at the death of Haku, he did not want to deal with this fat, greedy midget. "What do you want!"
"Such a temper Zabuza…" Gato grinned that showed how much he was savoring this moment, "I forgot to mention there's been a change in plans. You see, missing ninja like yourself are simply too expensive to pay for. I never planned on actually paying you…it's always been my plan to simply get rid of you after you did the job and were too weak to do anything. It's so easy to get rid of you missing ninja, you abandoned your village and now no one will come after me after I kill you. Hell! I usually get a bonus with your bounty when I hand you over!"
Zabuza growled at the man, "I see, so that was how you always wanted to do this."
"Of course," Gato smirked, "and now you're not going to be able to do a thing to my boys. Pft, Kiri No Kijin, more like Kiri No Koinu (Puppy of the hidden mist), I doubt you could take down even one of my boys here, though I would be appreciative if you did at least try to kill a few of them. After all, while they may not be as expensive as you, they still cost me some money."
"Looks like my quarrel with you is well and truly over Kakashi," Zabuza grunted as he grabbed the handle of his sword and prepared for another battle.
"It does seem that way," Kakashi agreed, readying a kunai. He did not know how many he could take out with how exhausted he was, but he was not about to go down without a fight.
Gato laughed as they prepared themselves. However, he blinked when he saw Naruto holding onto Haku. "Oh so the kid died eh? That's too bad; I was hoping to kill him myself."
There was a spike of killing intent that went unnoticed by everyone except Kakashi and Zabuza, both of whom turned their eyes towards Naruto who had looked up sometime during the conversation and was now glaring at the man.
"Hey kid!" Gato shouted as he walked up to them, "I don't know what kind of gay circus this is, but I'm- hold on a minute…!"
The fat midget got a closer look at Haku. Despite the amount of blood covering Haku and the blond holding her form protectively close, the fat frazzle haired business man could see something that he had not seen before due to the bindings Haku had been wearing. Now that they had come undone, he noticed she had quite a nice set on her.
"Oh hoh! So he is in fact a she!" Gatou grinned lecherously, "Well now, I'm really depressed she's dead. I could have made quite the killing after I made her my bitch! Though, she is quite the looker, so maybe I'll give her over to my boys so they can at least get some fun in before her body starts to rot! So why don't you be a good little boy and hand the bitch's body over to me?"
.
.
.
🎉The novel is only available in PDF format, with more than 500 chapters, you can visit my Patreon page🎉
🎉patreon.com/Madarasama22🎉