Cherry Blossoms and Chakra Strings: Parting the Mist

The mist hung oppressively on Sakura’s shoulders. She stood in the middle of her team’s formation, flanked by Hikari and Tsu as she stared out at the chakra-laden expanse of pure white surrounding them. Her wires were almost completely obscured by the mist, and those furthest away from her were completely invisible, even though she knew exactly where each and every single one of them hung in the air. She spent hours trying to figure out how to properly position her web; she wouldn’t forget where the threads had been laid…

Nor would she not take notice when one of them was disturbed. 

A tiny tang in her wires, movement that wasn’t caused by wind or the shifting of the bridge itself. Sakura’s eyes snapped open at the same moment Hikari’s head whipped to the west, and she frowned deeply.

“He broke through.”

Her teammates didn't hesitate. Tsu dropped into a low crouch, her hand white-knuckled on the hilt of her odachi, while Iwabi’s sickles slid from his belt with a deadly rasp. Hikari’s dojutsu was already active, the veins around their temples bulging as they tracked a shadow that nobody but Sakura was privy too.

She could feel the subtle shifts in her wires as Kenji moved. He danced through her maze like it wasn’t even there, grazing the occasional wire here and there but altogether remaining completely unharmed by the trap she laid. It was impressive, and extremely frightening. 

This is the power of a jonin, huh? Sakura’s right finger twitched and Teashi spung along the wires she had been anchored upon, sliding across the battlefield with the barest effort as Sakura tracked Kenji’s movements. She licked her lips, slowly turning to her right. I suppose I should have guessed this wouldn’t be easy.

Kenji materialized from the mist, landing on the edge of the bridge’s railing with a weightless grace that suggested he was made of something other than flesh and bone. He crouched across from them, separated by a wall of Sakura’s toxin-slicked wires. Just as he had in the office, he was gaunt and sickly, skin and bones wrapped in a Kiri uniform, but his eyes were bright and manic and he was smiling widely as he stared at them.

Slowly, almost lovingly, Kenji reached out and ran the sharpened edge of Nuibari along one of the taut wires. A shrill hum raced across the bridge, loud and metallic as as it rang through the foggy morning and sank into the bridge’s surface. He shivered.

“Absolutely beautiful,” The man rasped, his voice like dry leaves skittering across stone. He coughed once, a wet sound that stained the bandages on his hand crimson, but his grin didn’t waver. “This little web you’ve strung up is going to make this so much more interesting. I’m glad I let you go that day. Maybe you’ll be the one to finally finish me off.”

“If you’re in such a hurry to die, just take a couple steps forward,” Tsu snarled, eyes bright with anger, “Save us all the trouble.”

Kenji chuckled hollowly, “If I wanted the easy way out, I would have committed seppuku the moment I was diagnosed with this sickness years ago. But a man like me doesn’t deserve an easy death like that. If you want my corpse, you’ll have to work for it. Just do me one favor…”

Kenji slowly rose, giving them an unsettling smile, bloodstained teeth and all.

“Make it interesting for me. Make it hurt.”

“I plan to,” Sakura said, emerald eyes narrowing at the man across the gap. He tilted his head as she raised her left hand and forced her last two fingers closed, sending out twin pulses of chakra through the threads on her fingertips, before jerking the limb downwards.

A sharp click came from up above. Kenji glanced up just in time to watch Teashi drop into view, sliding along the impossibly-strong wires suspended all around the bridge. As it neared the swordsman, a seal lit up on its neck, crawling up the pale wood like blooming vines.

The puppet’s head snapped towards Kenji with a mechanical clack and its jaw unhinged. Before the swordsman could blink, dozens of senbon were flying through the air, scattering down upon him like a hailstorm of steel and poison. 

Kenji leaped backward, his form a blur as he dodged the hail of needles but Sakura didn't let up. With a sharp wave of her right hand and a rhythmic pulse from her left, she commanded the puppet to follow. Teashi disconnected from the first wire and latched onto another, its secondary limbs snapping shut with hydraulic force as it pursued the Kiri-nin through the air.

Kenji landed on a lower wire, the metal biting into his sandals, and immediately jumped upward with a wheezing laugh. “There we go!”

He landed on a lumber pile hanging from an overhead winch, the massive timbers swaying under his weight. Before Sakura could reposition her puppet, he launched himself off the wood, diving headlong into the orchard without a care

Sakura’s breath hitched. Kenji wasn’t daunted by the prospect of being sliced to pieces by the razor-sharp steel. He flattened his lanky body mid-air, spinning his lithe frame to slip through gaps no wider than a human head, gaps he had somehow mapped out through the very mist he created like he had been the one to prepare the playing-field instead of her.

He hit the floorboards in front of Team 3 and lunged without a moment of hesitation. Nuibari whistled through the air as he threw it, aimed directly at Hikari’s throat.

Clang!

Tsu was there in an instant, her odachi meeting the sword in a shower of sparks. The force of the impact pushed her back a step, but she didn't break and swung her blade upwards, knocking Kenji’s weapon off course and forcing him to pull it back into his hand. As Kenji backed away, Iwabi-sensei filled the space he left behind. The Jonin moved with brutal efficiency, his sickles flashing in a twin arc meant to cleave the swordsman in two.

Kenji’s eyes flashed and his hands blurred. Iwabi’s sickles were caught on Nuibari’s threads, the Kiri nin pulling them taut so the weapons couldn't bite through the metal. He leaned in, his sickly face inches from Iwabi’s. “How’s that shoulder holding up, friend?”

“Fantastic,” Iwabi grunted, channeling chakra into his arms. “I don’t even feel it.”

Footsteps echoed from behind Kenji. Hikari was running at him with lethal intent, their palms glowing with chakra.

Kenji grunted, his eyes darting to the side. Using the tension in the wires, he trapped Iwabi’s weapons and used the man’s own momentum to swing him toward Hikari, forcing the Hyuga to abort their attack to avoid colliding with their sensei.

Kenji used the opening to jump backward, flipping mid-air as Teashi’s blades flashed just underneath his face. Sakura growled as she failed to lop his head off like she planned and watched as Kenji flew backwards, landing on the deck nearby. He was breathing heavily from the short exchange, but the smile on his face hadn’t faded a bit. If anything, it had grown.

Unfortunately for him, he had once again stepped right into Sakura’s trap.

Sakura thrust a hand towards the boards at Kenji’s feet, shooting four strings of chakra into the bridge’s foundation. The floor beneath Kenji’s feet lit up with a blinding, incandescent glow as the seal she had drawn there yesterday burst to live, unraveling like a tapestry to reveal its full glory.

Kenji looked down, his sunken eyes widening in genuine surprise as the ink beneath his sandals pulsed. "Oh..."

BOOM!

A fiery explosion ripped through the center of the bridge. The shockwave was massive, sending a pillar of orange flame into the sky and blowing the surrounding mist away in a violent gale. The bridge trembled but held strong, and as the roar of the blast faded, the team stood in a defensive circle, peering into the smoking crater.

There was no body.

“Where’d he go?” Tsu asked, her voice tight as she wiped soot from her forehead. She looked toward Hikari, the only one who could truly tell and the Hyuga peered into the smoke, their Byakugan searching. After a moment, her brow furrowed in deep frustration.

“The mist is getting thicker,” Hikari whispered, turning their head in a slow circle. “There’s too much chakra in the air! I can’t see anything anymore!”

Cackling resounded through the mist, causing them all to stiffen.

“Uh-oh, it seems that Senpai finally decided to cut in. That’s too bad for you,” Kenji’s voice drifted in from all around them, carrying a manic edge. “I suppose that means I should probably stop playing around then. It wouldn’t do to have him think less of me for taking so long to kill you all.”

The temperature of the mist seemed to drop a hundred degrees in an instant and the team tensed. Sakura felt her hair stand on end and swallowed. Nearby, Tsu’s fingers cracked around her odachi and Hikari’s breathing became shallow. The sheer volume of killing intent pressing down upon their shoulders was insane!

“You haven’t been playing very far, have you? Fighting me all at once,” Kenji’s voice seemed closer now, but none of them could actually pinpoint its location, “Ah, but I guess I should have expected that. You’re Konoha, after all. Teamwork is your bread and butter. Still, it’s only fair that I even up the playing field, just a little bit.”

Sakura’s eyes darted left and right, her senses screaming as she caught a sliver of silver in the mist.

“LOOK OUT!” she shrieked.

Team 3 broke apart in a frantic explosion of movement. Two slim blades of steel came screaming from the mist from opposite directions – two different Nuibari’s, each just as deadly as the other. One whistled toward Iwabi and Tsu, while the other sliced through the space where Sakura’s head had been a second before, forcing her away from her team. 

A form coalesced in the needle’s path, locking eyes with her as he caught it in a single hand before whipping it at her again. Sakura’s sandals skidded on the slick wires of her web as she dodged again, jumping deeper into her orchard as Kenji pursued her. She glanced back, trying to catch sight of her team, but the mist had already swallowed them. She could hear the sound of two different battles progressing further along the bridge as she fled.

And worst of all, she couldn’t see Kenji.

Then, the sound of whistling metal pierced her ears. Sakura looked up in a panic and pulled out a kunai just in time to block a vicious downward strike. The impact was heavy, vibrating through her good arm and sending a jolt of pain into her shoulder, but she didn’t fight the momentum behind it, letting herself the strike push  her. She pivoted around the lanky man as he tried to follow through and jumped away, rolling on the ground and coming to a stop just inches away from a cluster of her own wires.

She scrambled to her feet, scowling as Kenji slowly turned toward her. He interposed himself between her and the area the rest of Team 3 had disappeared to. His gaunt silhouette was a looming shadow in the fog, and he seemed more like some kind of dangerous creature haunting the bridge than a human.

“You interested me the most,” Kenji smiled, twirling his sword with an effortless flick of his wrist, “You set this all up just for me! I want to see what you’re capable of with your life on the line, just like in the compound.”

Sakura didn't waste breath on words. Teashi was above them, following along on the forest of wires. She flicked her right hand, and the puppet swung down from an overhead crane, jittering in place as she landed between Sakura and her enemy.

Kenji tilted his head, observing the puppet’s movements. “You know, I’ve fought a few nin from Suna, but none of them fight like you. I don’t know how to explain it, but you’re different.”

Sakura took a deep breath, lowering herself into a stance. She was alone right now, and the odds of her getting back to her team were next to nothing. She’d have to hold out until they could help her, or finish this here. 

Against an opponent like this, the odds were laughable, yet despite the bleak situation, Sakura wasn’t afraid. This was the ultimate test of her abilities. Here, she could prove that she was still capable of achieving her goal. Her eyes sharpened, resolve settling firmly in her chest,  “I'll show you just how different I can be.”

She pulsed chakra through her left ring finger, a quick triple burst of chakra that made her threads pulse in time. At the same time, she squeezed her right thumb to her palm and jerked it back to her chest, manipulating her puppet.

Teashi’s scythes clicked open with a metallic tap, and the puppet seemed to straighten before it suddenly began to pivot. Its cloak blurred as it turned in a violet circle,the joints in its waist clicking and grinding against one another as it transformed into a wooden buzzsaw of death. Sakura flicked her hand and it launched itself, heading straight toward Kenji at a speed that caught even the swordsman off guard.

Kenji rallied quickly, bringing Nuibari up to block the first strike. Sparks skittered across the surface of the bridge as the scythe slammed into the blade, but the puppet didn't stop or falter, its joints absorbing the shock and rendering the loss of momentum negligible. Following the pre-set commands that Sakura had burned into its seals, Teashi continued to grind forward, battering down the legendary shinobi’s defenses one slice at a time.

"Good! Very good!" Kenji shouted over the screech of wood and steel. He was on the backfoot, but he didn’t seem scared in the slightest. Even though death was mere inches away, he was enjoying himself.

As he stepped backward to maintain his distance, Sakura saw her opening in the clutter behind him. She extended her right pinky, sending a miniscule thread of chakra toward a stack of crates positioned just behind the swordsman’s left shoulder, and a seal on the wood glowed to life.

A dozen shuriken, hidden within the crates and ready to loose at a moment’s notice, spun out in a tight arc toward Kenji’s back. The man’s eyes widened as his senses picked up the secondary threat, and Sakura's eyes narrowed, her fingers twitching as he let his guard down for a singe moment, just enough for her puppet to slip past.

Teashi’s sickle cut through the air toward Kenji’s neck at the exact moment the shuriken slammed into his back. Blood sprayed into the mist, and for a heartbeat, Sakura thought she saw his eyes blow wide with the shock of his own death.

And then, his body wavered like a heat mirage and faded into nothingness. A substitution.

But where’s the real one? Sakura thought, her heart hammering against her ribs. She didn't let her guard down, immediately sending Teashi back into the protective forest of wires as she scanned the white void.

Laughter spilled from around her.

“You've been very busy, haven't you?” Kenji laughed, “Seals on the floor, seals in the crates... Are you sure you picked the right profession, kid? Some villages will pay top dollar for skills like yours. You wouldn’t have to see a day of real fighting.”

Sakura didn’t respond, tightening her stance as Teashi patrolled in a circle above her. She could still hear her team fighting and further down, she was pretty sure she could hear Naruto yelling something, likely in the middle of his own battle with Zabuza.

“Ah, but you wouldn’t want that, would you?” Kenji sighed, “You’re like me. Nothing gets you going like a chance to fight and die!”

A glint of steel appeared above her and Kenji dropped the sky, Nuibari poised to pierce her through the chest. 

Sakura calmly flicked her right hand and Teashi slid across a wire with a mechanical shriek, sliding to a stop in front of the nin. The puppet’s sickles locked onto the needle-sword, the two weapons grinding together in a shower of sparks.

Growling in frustration, Kenji tried to jump back, but Teashi held fast. Sakura had triggered another seal and the puppet’s third pair of fingers clamped onto the sword's length, forcing the Swordsman into a desperate tug-of-war with his own weapon.

Kenji pulled against Nuibari’s threads, his gaunt face reddening as he grunted with the effort. He looked past the puppet, his eyes locking onto Sakura, before his gaze traveled down her left arm, lingering on the bandaged, trembling hand that was currently leaking a faint, rhythmic blue light.

“You're not getting much use out of that hand, are you?” he asked.

Sakura’s jaw tightened and a phantom throb of pain raced up her wrist, but she held her ground. “I'm doing well enough to keep you pinned, aren't I?”

Kenji laughed wetly, “I’ve seen a few puppeteers in my day, kid, but I’ve never seen one working with only one hand. You’re using seals to bypass your own nerves... aren’t ya? It’s effective for now, but you’re not going to be able to go very far like that. You’ll ruin whatever ya got left and then where will you be?”

“Exactly where I am right now,” Sakura said, her voice burning with passion. “I might be crippled, but I'm not giving up on my life’s goal just because of a setback like this. I made a promise to be the greatest, and a little nerve damage isn't going to stop me from finishing what I started!”

Kenji stared at her. For a long moment, the sounds of the bridge — the flashing of steel in the distance, Naruto’s distant yelling, the crashing of the waves – seemed to fade. The Swordsman’s gaze was piercing, searching for a lie in her emerald eyes and finding only iron-clad resolve.

Slowly, his lips split open into a wide, bloody smile.

“You’ve got guts, kid,” he wheezed. “I'll give you that. But believe me, you don’t have an easy path ahead of you. The world doesn't care about promises.”

“I never expected it to be easy,” Sakura shot back.

Kenji laughed, a genuine, delighted sound that caused more blood to leak from the corner of his mouth. “That’s the spirit! Let’s see if you can survive long enough to keep it!”

With a sudden, violent surge of chakra, he snapped the wire he had been holding. He rushed forward, using a hidden kunai to unjam his weapon from Teashi’s grip and kicking the puppet away with enough force to make it list on its wires. He dashed toward Sakura, his movements a blur of sickly grey and Kiri-green.

Sakura twitched, and Teashi’s head turned completely around with a sickening crack, its mouth sliding open to send a hail of senbon after him, but Kenji used the overhead wires as a guide, jumping up and running along them just like the puppet had been doing the entire fight. 

He threw Nuibari but Sakura was already moving. She jumped away, her right leg snapping out to kick the needle to the side as it whistled after her. She landed on the vertical surface of a bridge support, her chakra sticking her to the wood as she glared at her opponent.

Undaunted, Kenji followed her, yanking his weapon back into his grip with a single jerk. He jumped up, landing on the same pillar, but as his feet touched the stone, a bright seal lit up beneath his sandals, making Sakura grin.

Gotcha. 

Dozens of high-tension ninja wires burst from the support beam, wrapping around his legs and torso like pythons. Kenji roared, his muscles bulging as he tried to tear through the metal threads. He managed to dodge the worst of the constriction and after a moment, even managed to free himself of them completely, but Sakura had already maneuvered Teashi above him.

The puppet slammed down on top of him from the crane assembly. Kenji blocked one sickle with the hilt of Nuibari, the metal screeching, but the second sickle, guided by Sakura’s chakra, found its mark and bit deep into Kenji’s right shoulder.

The swordsman gasped as the serrated wood and steel carved through the joint. His arm went slack, falling limp and useless at his side in a mirror of the injury he gave Iwabi only a few days ago. But unlike Sakura’s sensei, he was completely alone.

Kenji stared at the dangling limb, as if he could barely believe what he was seeing, and then he began to laugh. It was a terrifying sound that quickly devolved into a violent coughing fit. He slumped against the pillar, trapped in the throes of a fit that left him leaking crimson blood down the front of his shirt.

He swayed on his feed, but forced himself to remain steady. He slowly looked up, and Sakura blinked as he looked at her with an expression that was almost peaceful.

“That’s too bad,” he whispered, wiping blood from his lips. “I guess it’s about time to wrap things up, then. It’s been a hell of a show, kid. But only one of us makes it off this bridge alive.”

Kenji blurred, disappearing in a whirl of mist that drifted all around them, and Sakura’s instincts screamed. She pivoted on her heel, her right hand pulling a kunai and using it to deflect a desperate thrust from Nuibari that appeared from the void.

The sheer force pushed Sakura off her feet, but she didn't panic as she fell back down towards the bridge. She landed in a roll, slapping her good hand onto the wet planks before flipping herself into the air. 

As her fingers left the ground, she pulsed chakra into the wood, and a massive cloud of deep purple gas erupted in her wake, filling the space where she had just been. Kenji paid it no mind and rushed straight through the toxic cloud without a second thought in order to catch up to Sakura. 

Above him, Teashi was sliding down a master wire, its jaw clacking open as the seal crawling up its neck glowed again. Kenji looked up at the hail of senbon descending upon him and growled. He leapt into the air, twisting his body to avoid the needles and utterly killing his momentum at the same time, which was exactly what Sakura had been waiting for. He was stuck in the air, focused on another threat, and his one working arm was occupied with his sword.

The ground underneath Sakura’s feet cracked as she launched herself upward to meet him in midair. She didn't reach for a kunai. She didn't reach for her puppet. Instead, Sakura pulled her left hand back behind her shoulder, muscles bulging and seal flaring as she focused as much chakra as she possibly could into her fist.

“CHA!”

Her fist connected with Kenji’s cheek just as he turned to look at her. The sound was jarring, a sharp, wet crack of bone that vibrated all the way up Sakura’s arm. She felt his jaw shatter, felt the orbital bone collapse under the pressure of her unnatural strength, and felt her own fingers crack with the effort to do it.

Kenji went shooting to the ground like a rocket, slamming into the deck thirty feet below with a sound like a thunderclap, splintering the heavy wooden planks and sending dust and wood chips flying into the air. 

Nuibari fell from his grip, clattering uselessly to the floorboards several feet away and Sakura landed on her feet, her left arm throbbing and her vision swimming from the exertion. She panted, looking down at the fallen swordsman as her flagging chakra settled inside her core.

Kenji Sojiro twitched in his self-made crater, surrounded by splintered timber. The impact had completely shattered his jaw and his eye on the side she hit him was already swollen shut. His remaining eye was unfocused, staring up at the grey sky with a distant expression. He was still breathing, but Sakura could tell it was a struggle.

Nuibari was several feet away, a thin sliver of steel stabbed into the dark wood.

Sakura stepped up to him her sandals crunching on wood chips. She looked down at him, and instantly realized that he wasn’t a threat. His other arm, the one Teashi hadn’t rendered completely useless, was shattered and broken. He probably landed on it.

Kenji’s expression twitched as Sakura knelt beside him, her shadow falling across his broken face.

“You were…” Kenji wheezed, blood leaking from his lips. He looked up at her, and a faint smile touched his face. “Interesting… until the… very end.”

Sakura looked at him, taking in his expression, “You wanted it to end like this.”

Her words went unanswered as Kenji didn't speak again. The rattle in his chest grew more pronounced and Sakura reached into her tool pouch and pulled out a single senbon. It was a mercy he had earned. 

Kenji inhaled sharply as she slid the needle into his neck, before going slack as the poison began to do its work, numbing his body and lulling him into a final slumber. His eye flickered over to her one last time, before slipping closed.

The mist around them began to clear as his hold on the jutsu went away, leaving behind a thin fog instead of the sea of clouds that was there before. As Kenji passed away,  Sakura stood up and walked over to his fallen weapon. Nuibari came up to her waist, even driven into the wood as it was, and Sakura stared at it for a long moment, before wrenching it out of the ground.

She held it up to the light, examining the pristine blade and the thin wire emerging from the eye in the back. It was a legendary weapon, and she was sure that anyone would kill to even hold it like she was, much less claim it from its former owner.  

Retrieving a storage scroll from her hip, she unfurled it and performed a one-handed seal. With a puff of smoke, the legendary sword was gone.

Giving Kenji’s body one last glance, Sakura turned back toward the center of the bridge, spotting the silhouettes of her teammates through the clearing fog. Tsu and Hikari were moving toward her, looking battered but very much alive. Iwabi-sensei followed behind them, a look of profound pride on his face.

“Sakura!” Tsu yelled, her tan face covered in soot. Tadao barked happily, though he was limping slightly and sported a gash on one of his hind legs. “We were coming to back you up, but it looks like you didn't need it. You actually took that bastard down by yourself?”

“Are you alright, Sakura?” Hikari asked, their Byakugan deactivating as they reached her side. They immediately checked her left arm, their eyes soft with concern, and Sakura hid her broken fingers from sight. No need to worry them over something so small. 

“I’m okay,” Sakura said, a tired smile finally breaking through her exhaustion. “Just a few scrapes and bruises.”

“Let’s move,” Iwabi commanded, gesturing toward the far side of the bridge. “We need to regroup with Kakashi.”

They moved in a tight formation toward the far end of the bridge. As they approached, the scene of the Team 7’s battle became clear. Ice was scattered across this section of the bridge, thick and completely solid even underneath the morning sun, and laying in the center of the circle of shards, was a familiar body.

Haku… Sakura stopped for a heartbeat, looking at the boy in the kimono. Her mind flashed back to their conversation in the forest, his words to her, kind and not, and felt a small tinge of sadness. She closed her eyes, offering a small prayer to the boy who had died as a tool, before turning away.

Sasuke stood nearby, his chest heaving. His eyes were a vibrant, pulsing red, each containing a single black comma. He was also littered with so many senbon that Sakura didn’t know how he was still standing.

A few feet away, Ami was in a similar state, though she wasn’t taking it nearly as well as Sasuke was, practically bent over at the waist as she panted with exhaustion and pain. Naruto was standing beside her, rubbing her back in small circles and sporting his own fair share of the needles. He occasionally looked back at Haku, sadness flashing over his face every time he did so. It seemed that Sakura wasn’t the only one who had encountered him before.

Further ahead, Kakashi and Zabuza were at a standstill. Zabuza was riddled with wounds, his arms hanging uselessly at his sides and surrounded by ninkin that were keeping him restrained.

“It’s over, Zabuza,” Kakashi said, and the demon glared at him with rage.

Everything seemed to be wrapping up, but their victory was interrupted by the sound of hundreds of footsteps echoing from the bridge’s entrance. A short man in a suit appeared through the last of the mist, flanked by a literal army of nearly a hundred mercenaries.

“Gato,” Sakura hissed as everyone turned to the new arrivals.

The sound of the ocean, which had been a muffled roar behind the veil of the mist, now rushed back into the clearing air. Gato’s expensive shoes clacked rhythmically against the wooden planks of the bridge, a sharp, annoying sound that grated against the heavy silence of the battlefield.

He was a small, oily man, looking entirely out of place in his sharp suit amidst the carnage. Behind him, the bridge was choked with the shadows of his pseudo-army, nearly a hundred men armed with katanas, clubs, and crossbows, their faces twisted into sneers and cruel smiles.

Gato stopped near Haku’s body, looking down at the fallen boy with a mixture of amusement and disgust.

“Well, well, well,” Gato drawled in a reedy voice. “You look pathetic, Zabuza. I spent a fortune on you, and you couldn't even clear a few brats and a bridge builder. I suppose I made the right choice in deciding not to pay you.”

He stepped forward and, with a casual cruelty that made Sakura’s blood boil, kicked Haku’s head before spitting on the boy’s corpse. “And it looks like your pet died too. Good riddance. I hate things that are pretty and useless.”

"You... you bastard!" Naruto growled, his hand flying to a kunai, but Kakashi placed a firm hand on the boy’s shoulder, his gaze fixed on Gato's army.

Gato ignored him, his eyes scanning the group, “You destroyed my compound, cost me millions in business, and now you’re helping this trash undermine my empire! That won’t do. I’m gong to make you pay in blood for every cent you cost me.” 

Gato’s cane rapped sharply on the ground, the sound ringing out in the silence. He looked over the rest of the group and something else passed through his gaze, a predatory light that grew larger as he looked at Tsu, then at Ami, and finally lingered on Hikari.

“Actually…” He said slowly, a cruel smile spreading over his face, “Why kill you all? You look healthy enough and I’ll need some stress relief after this nasty business wraps up. I’ll kill the men, but I’m sure the girls are worth something, especially that one with the pale eyes. I think I’ll keep you in chains for a while before I sell you off.”

A deadly, suffocating chill settled over Team 3. The air around them seemed to vibrate with a sudden, sharp pressure. Hikari didn't move, but their expression turned into something carved from stone and Tsu’s hand tightened on her hilt until her knuckles turned white.

Sakura didn't look at Gato or the army of mercenaries behind him. She simply turned her head slightly toward Iwabi, a single word cutting through Gato’s taunting. “Sensei?”

Iwabi stared at her for a long moment, before he gave a single, slow nod.

Sakura stepped forward and Gato blinked, his mouth opening to bark an order to his men, but the sound never left his throat as she swiped her hand upwards in a sharp movement.

Teashi  erupted from the shadows beneath the bridge’s railing, moving through the air with a chilling noise as her joints clicked against one another. There were no wires over here, but neither were their ninja, and Gato was completely unable to react as the cloaked puppet landed in front of him and a single, serrated scythe-arm snapped outward in a horizontal arc.

The man’s eyes widened, his hands flying up in a futile gesture of defense. There the wet sound of steel parting air and flesh and then a heavy silence punctuated by a dull thud.

Gato’s head rolled across the bridge, staining the damp wood a deep crimson that trailed behind it. His body remained standing for a heartbeat, blood spraying from the stump of his neck, before his knees buckled and he collapsed into a heap of expensive silk and wasted life.

Team 7 stood frozen. Naruto’s jaw was practically on the floor while Sasuke’s eyes tracked the head’s roll, his expression unreadable but his shoulders tensed in an instinctive defensive posture. Ami looked like she was about to be sick.

Team 3 on the other hand, just seemed relieved. Tsu let out a long sigh, sheathing her odachi with a sharp click, and Hikari’s shoulders relaxed as the threat was eliminated. Sakura pulled Teashi back towards her, the puppet settling just behind her like a looming shadow as she turned back to her sensei.

“Mission complete.”