ShuraZero
patreon
Chapter 26: The Puppeteer's Dance
🕑 Added 2025-08-07 18:07:20 +0000 UTCSakura's revelation hung in the thick, misty air, more stunning than any jutsu. For a second, the only sound was Naruto's ragged breathing from the ground. The pain in his shoulder was a white-hot ember, but the smile on his face was one of pure, absolute triumph.
"You heard him!" he gasped, propping himself up on his good arm. "That's our Sakura-chan! Clever as a fox!"
Sakura pushed aside the pang of guilt. There was no time. The sight of Naruto's pained face was all the motivation she needed.
"Sasuke, Hinata, with me," she said, her voice no longer trembling but firm and precise. "We have to buy me time."
Sasuke glanced at her from across the clearing, his silhouette a dark smudge in the fog. The disbelief on his face was a mask of contained fury.
"Hn… Trust your analysis, Haruno? This had better work."
"It will," she affirmed, the certainty in her voice silencing him. "Just… don't let him get near me."
Zabuza's clone, which had watched the exchange with mocking curiosity, finally moved.
"The whispering is over. It's time to die."
"Not yet!" Naruto roared. "Team, you know what to do! Let's make so much noise he won't know what hit him!"
The plan launched not with an order, but with a synchronized movement born from shared desperation. Sasuke and Hinata converged on the Zabuza clone, not as individuals, but like the two pincers of a single tool. Naruto, in turn, created two more clones with a muffled poof, and they immediately took positions to intercept any attack aimed at Sakura.
"Hinata, watch his left knee!" Naruto yelled. "He's putting too much weight on it!"
Hinata didn't answer with words. Her Byakugan had already confirmed Naruto's observation. She slid forward, her movements fluid and bewildering. The Zabuza clone swung in a vertical slash, expecting to crush her, but she had already vanished. She reappeared at his left, fingers outstretched.
"Not that way!" Sasuke warned, having learned the hard way to trust his team's strange premonitions.
He threw a volley of shuriken, not to wound, but to force the clone to move right where Hinata was waiting for him. The clone, caught between an incoming attack and a ghostly threat, pivoted on his left foot. A mistake. Hinata's Gentle Fist strike hit the joint with surgical precision, causing the water clone to stagger.
As the distraction trio began their chaotic symphony, Sakura moved.
She didn't run. Running was for those who moved in two dimensions. Sakura, now, was thinking in three.
Her hand shot out, and a nearly invisible chakra thread stuck to the branch of a tall tree to her right. With a firm tug, she lifted off the ground, her body swinging in a silent arc through the mist. She landed on another branch without a sound, like a spider on its web.
Too open, she thought, her mind a cold calculator. I need cover. An angle. Zabuza is on the water. I need to be above him.
She cast another thread, and then another. She moved through the forest canopy not like a ninja, but like a puppeteer moving among the strings of her own stage. Each movement was deliberate, each anchor a tactical decision. The mist, which was a hindrance to the others, was a curtain for her, concealing her advance.
Below, the battle raged on.
"Sasuke, he's going to jump back!" Naruto yelled. "Give him a welcome party!"
"Shut up, dobe! I saw him!"
Sasuke wove hand signs at a blistering speed.
"Fire Style: Phoenix Flower Jutsu!"
Small fireballs shot from his mouth, lighting up the fog with orange flashes. They weren't aimed at the clone, but at the space behind him. Zabuza's clone, just as Naruto had warned, leaped back to dodge an attack from Hinata and landed right in the middle of the fiery rain.
The water of its body hissed and evaporated, its form flickering frantically as it burned through chakra to reform.
"Annoying brats!"
Enraged, the clone focused on the most obvious threat: Sasuke. It ignored Hinata and charged straight for the Uchiha, its massive sword raised.
"Sasuke-san, his guard is down!" Hinata warned.
But Sasuke didn't need the warning. With the clone focused on him, he saw the opening he needed. He didn't attack with fire. Instead, he ran toward the clone, a kunai in each hand and a wild, arrogant smirk on his face. It was an invitation, a direct challenge.
From her high perch, Sakura watched. She was almost in the perfect spot. Through a break in the mist, she could see the figure of the real Zabuza, standing on the water, his hand sunk into the spherical prison holding their sensei.
The Analytical Eye showed her the weak point like a glowing bullseye.
Suddenly, the sensory threads she had left on the battlefield vibrated with a new alert.
The Zabuza clone had changed tactics. It realized the Uchiha was just bait. Naruto's predictions were too precise, too timely. The real threat, the one orchestrating everything, wasn't on the ground. It looked up.
Its watery eyes met Sakura's through the mist.
"You," the clone growled, its voice an echo of its creator's fury.
It abandoned Sasuke mid-charge and, using a tree trunk as a launchpad, leaped upward, directly toward Sakura's branch. The Kubikiribōchō sliced through the air, ready to cut down the puppeteer.
Sakura choked back a scream. She was too high, too exposed. She tried to cast a thread to escape, but it was too late. The clone was impossibly fast.
"Got you!"
But just as the blade was about to reach her, an orange figure shot into its path.
"DON'T YOU DARE!"
Naruto, in an act of pure desperation and reflex, had ordered one of the clones protecting Tazuna to jump. The clone had no chance of winning. It didn't even try to block. It threw itself at the Zabuza clone in mid-air, a suicide tackle.
The Zabuza clone, surprised by the interception, was forced to divert its attack to get rid of the annoying clone. The sword passed through the fake Naruto, which dissipated into a cloud of smoke with a poof.
It wasn't much. Just a one-second delay.
But one second was all Sasuke needed.
He saw the opening. He saw the Zabuza clone in the air, its attention diverted. He saw Sakura, vulnerable and terrified on the branch. And the logic of teamwork finally clicked into place in his mind, not as a concept, but as an instinct.
"NOW!"
He leaped after the Zabuza clone, his own body a black projectile. He didn't use fire. He didn't use kunai. He focused his chakra into his fist, an imperfect echo of the strength he'd seen in others, but fueled by his own fury and a strange, new need to protect.
Sasuke's fist slammed into the Zabuza clone's back just as it was recovering from the clone's attack. The impact was brutal. The water clone deformed, losing cohesion, and was blasted downward, where it crashed against the forest floor and dissolved into a large puddle.
Sasuke landed on the branch next to Sakura, panting.
"Don't just stand there. Finish this," he ordered, without looking at her.
Sakura looked at him, then at the puddle of water below, and finally at the distant figure of Zabuza. Gratitude and surprise warred within her, but urgency won.
She nodded.
This was her moment.
She stood on the branch, steady and sure. The fear was gone, replaced by an icy clarity. She held out her hand, the kunai with its guide thread ready.
The battlefield fell silent for an instant. Sasuke stood beside her, acting as her bodyguard. Naruto, from the ground, watched her with an expectation that gave her strength.
I owe them this, she thought. I owe all of them.
"Here I go," she whispered.
She threw the kunai.
The small projectile flew, not with the brute force of a normal throw, but with the guided grace of a calligrapher's brush. The chakra thread kept it steady, correcting any deviation, carrying it in a perfect, silent arc through the mist.
Zabuza, on the pond, sensed the threat too late. He saw the small black dot emerge from the mist, heading not for him, but for his hand.
Shink.
The sound was almost inaudible. A click. The kunai pierced the surface of the water sphere, right at the join between his fingers and the prison. The disruption was infinitesimal, but it was enough.
The Water Prison, a marvel of chakra control, lost its structural integrity. It shattered. The sound was like a thousand glass wind chimes shattering at once.
Kakashi was free.
He landed on the water, soaked, but with his Sharingan burning with a renewed intensity.
The shock on Zabuza's face was total. His concentration broke, and with it, the last of Naruto's remaining clones dissipated.
They were alone. Kakashi Hatake, free and furious. Zabuza Momochi, exposed and bewildered. And on the shore, a team of four genin who had just done the impossible.
Kakashi moved to stand in front of them, protectively. His gaze passed over a wounded but grinning Naruto, an exhausted but steady Hinata, a panting Sasuke with a new glint of respect in his eyes, and a Sakura kneeling on a tree branch, completely spent but wearing the proudest smile of her life.
"Good work… team," Kakashi said, and every word was heavy with the weight of genuine astonishment. He turned to face his opponent. "Now then, Zabuza. Where were we? Ah, yes. I believe you were about to be taught a lesson."
Comments
travis btmb
Tftc
Ari Gómez García
Only female characters, my dear Reader, just as the title suggests. Thank you very much for your comment
Mc54322
Will Sasuke or other male characters get falls or is it only females like the titles suggest?
