Kakashi moved first.
He crossed the distance between himself and Zabuza in the space between one heartbeat and the next, his kunai already drawn, his Sharingan already spinning, his body already committed to the first strike. The blade came down in an arc that would have opened Zabuza from shoulder to hip if the larger man had been slower, but Zabuza was not slower. He brought his sword up one handed, the massive blade catching the kunai with a sound that rang across the water like a bell being struck with a hammer, and the force of the impact sent ripples through the mist and cracks through the wet sand beneath their feet.
The fight was too fast for the genin to track.
Naruto watched and saw nothing but blurs, nothing but movement, nothing but the occasional flash of metal or the sudden spray of water where a strike had gone wide. He could hear them, the grunts of effort and the sharp hiss of breath and the constant scrape of kunai against sword, but he could not follow the details. The Sharingan was copying every move Zabuza made, and Zabuza was adapting to the Sharingan, and the two of them were locked in something that looked less like a fight and more like a conversation conducted entirely in violence.
Kakashi blocked a downward swing that would have split his skull. Zabuza dodged a kick that would have cracked his ribs. They circled each other in the shallows, the water splashing around their ankles, their eyes locked, neither willing to look away first.
"The twins," Sasuke said. His voice was tight. "Where are the twins?"
The wolf mask and the fox mask appeared behind them.
Zuro and Juro attacked without warning, without ceremony, without anything as polite as a challenge or a declaration of intent. They simply moved, fast, faster than the chuunin from before, much faster, their blades already in their hands and already swinging. Sasuke blocked one, his kunai meeting the wolf mask's sword in a shower of sparks, but Sakura tried to block the other and was thrown back like a doll thrown by an angry child.
Her body hit a tree. The impact was loud. Her head snapped back against the trunk. She slumped to the ground and did not move.
Sakura was down.
Sasuke fought both twins alone.
He was good. Better than good. He had been training for this his entire life, had been preparing for the moment when he would need to defend himself against enemies stronger and faster and more experienced than he was. He landed a hit on the fox mask, a shallow cut across the forearm, and the twin hissed in pain and surprise. But they landed three hits on him. A slash across his shoulder. A cut along his ribs. A deep puncture in his thigh that made his leg buckle and his vision blur and his breath come in ragged gasps.
He could not keep up.
The wolf mask raised his blade over Sasuke's prone body. The fox mask raised his over Sakura's unconscious form. The blades caught the grey light of the overcast sky and held it like mirrors holding the memory of a sun that had long since disappeared.
Naruto's hands came together.
The signs were fast, precise, automatic, the same signs he had practiced in the archive and perfected in the training ground and used to kill a man whose head was still lying somewhere on the road behind them. "Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu."
The smoke came in waves, not one burst but many, each one adding to the last until the clearing was filled with the white haze of summoned chakra and the sound of bodies hitting the ground. Two hundred shadow clones stood between the twins and the wounded genin, two hundred orange jackets and two hundred blank faces and two hundred pairs of hands that were already reaching for weapons.
Zuro and Juro were buried under a tide of orange and blond. They fought back, cutting down clone after clone, but for every clone they killed, three more took its place. The wolf mask cracked against a tree branch. The fox mask dented under a hail of kunai. Their synchronized movements broke apart under the sheer weight of numbers, and they retreated, back to back, surrounded on all sides by enemies that kept coming and did not stop and could not be reasoned with.
Their masks were cracked. Their breathing was heavy. Blood dripped from somewhere beneath the wolf mask, black against the white paint.
Naruto stumbled.
Two hundred clones. The chakra cost was enormous. Even with the Fox's reserves, even with his Uzumaki vitality, even with the months of training and the head injury that had changed the way his mind processed the world, he was reaching his limit. The clones flickered. Some dispersed. The swarm thinned.
Zuro and Juro saw the opening. They charged at Naruto, blades raised, killing intent rolling off them in waves that made the air feel thick and hot and wrong. He could not defend himself. He could not create more clones. He could not even lift his arms.
Kakashi moved.
He created two shadow clones, one on each side, the smoke from their summoning barely dissipating before they began the hand signs. The same sequence. The same seals. The same final gesture. The original and the copies moved as one, their hands cutting through the air in perfect synchronization, their chakra rising and merging and becoming something larger than the sum of its parts.
"Water Style: Water Dragon Jutsu."
Water rose from the river behind them. Not in one column but three, spiraling upward side by side, twisting and turning, each taking shape as it climbed. Three snouts. Three jaws. Six eyes made of foam and fury. The dragons were massive, each one larger than any jutsu Naruto had ever seen, and they roared together with a sound that was not quite water and not quite wind and not quite anything he had a name for, a chorus of destruction that echoed off the trees and the water and the grey sky above.
The three dragons slammed into Zuro, Juro, and Zabuza.
The force was incredible. The wolf mask and the fox mask were thrown across the clearing like leaves in a hurricane. They bounced off trees and rolled through mud and came to rest against a boulder that cracked from the impact of their bodies. Zabuza dug his sword into the ground and held on, his feet carving trenches in the earth, but even he could not stand against the full force of three dragons. The water pushed him back, meter by meter, until he was pressed against the trunk of an ancient tree with the breath forced from his lungs and the blood vessels in his eyes burst from the pressure.
The water receded. The dragon dissolved into spray and foam and ordinary river water that soaked into the ground and disappeared as if it had never been there at all.
A figure emerged from the mist.
Another ninja in an animal mask, this one different from the twins, the mask shaped like a weasel or a ferret or something else with sharp teeth and sharper eyes. He moved fast, faster than the twins had moved, and he grabbed Zabuza with one hand and the twins with the other, lifting them as if they weighed nothing at all. He disappeared back into the mist, and the mist swallowed them, and the clearing was quiet except for the sound of water dripping from broken branches and the heavy breathing of exhausted shinobi.
Kakashi dropped to one knee. His shadow clones dispersed. The Sharingan was still active, the three tomoe spinning slower now, but his breathing was ragged and his arm was shaking and he looked, for the first time since Naruto had met him, genuinely tired.
The clearing was destroyed. Trees that had stood for decades were snapped in half. The ground was torn and gouged, trenches cut by water and blades and the bodies of men who had been thrown across it like stones across a frozen lake. Naruto was on his knees, his chest heaving, his vision swimming. Sasuke was bleeding on the ground beside Sakura's unconscious body, his leg soaked red, his shoulder dark with blood.
Kakashi looked at his students. He looked at the destruction. He looked at Naruto, who had killed a man without blinking and then summoned two hundred clones to save his teammates and then collapsed from the effort of it.
"We need to get off this island."
Next Time: Tazuna's Home Introducing Inari and Tsunami