After leaving the Hokage’s office, I headed home. I needed to tell my parents that I was off to do a mission. They’d be worried if I just up and left with no notice after all.

Entering the house, I saw Shikamaru and his friends still there.

“Hey sis, what did the Hokage want to see you about?” he asked.

“I have a mission. Do you know where mom or dad are?” I questioned.

“Mom is upstairs, and dad is out. What’s the mission about?” he pressed.

“All I can tell you is that it’s a rescue mission.” I explained

“Really? Who are you going with? They can’t be sending you on your own” he said, concerned

“The Hokage seems confident that I'll be able to protect myself.” I told him.

“Yeah but you’re the same age as me, I couldn’t do a mission solo.” he said, pouting slightly.

“Well maybe if you hadn’t slacked off so much, the Hokage would have faith in your skills too. And besides, I’m not going totally solo. I have Pakkun here.” I said, holding up said dog in my arms.

“Hey” he said in his deep gravelly voice.

“Oh my god, he’s so cute!” Ino said.

“Ino, he is a ninja hound, not some house pet.  But anyway, I need to be off. Gonna tell mom and get outa here” I told Shikamaru.

“Good luck on your mission” Asuma said with a smile.

“Thanks!”

After telling mom  where I was going, I needed supplies. I found the closest ninja shop and got four sets of Shuriken, several Kunai, and some explosive tags. I was intensely curious on how these things worked, but with no fuinjutsu knowledge, I was probably just going to blow myself up. I should really change that one of these days. If I could seal living beings inside a scroll, I could possibly hide Arax in one, and that would solve my issue of hiding his massive size.

After getting everything I would need, food, water, weapons, I decided there was no point in lingering and headed out within 2 hours of getting my mission. Arriving at the gate of the village, I signed out and got Pakkun to do his thing.

“Alright Pakkun, where are we going? Go as fast as you can maintain.” I told him

“Follow me, hope you can keep up, little lady.” he said.

I just smirked as I activated Chakra Reinforcement; and just like that we were off. I also caught Xorrion’s surprise at my ability. He wasn’t the only one who learned new things. Not long after we left, I got one of our messages without words from Xorrion. Turns out someone has been following us. I had no idea how he knew, but I hadn't lived this long without trusting the judgement of my demons. Considering we had just left the village, it was probably one of the Anbu sent by the Hokage. After all, what would people think of him sending a child alone on a mission like this with no backup?

At some point we passed a puddle on the ground, which I thought was odd since it hadn’t rained in quite some time. While keeping my face neutral, I had Xorrion attack the puddle. Controlling my shadow, he stealthily made his way to the puddle, it wasn’t easy since I was also moving away from him. Upon reaching the puddle, Xorrion attacked… and nothing happened. Huh. I guess it was just a puddle.

We were almost to the Land of Waves when my good luck changed. I had come across a camp of what looked to be Mist Ninja. Shit. Well I guess it was too much to hope for a smooth journey. I had two choices: Either sneak past and leave a potential enemy behind me, or kill them now and risk their bodies being found. I had to keep in mind that I was still being followed by the unknown person I suspected to be an Anbu. I didn’t want to go all out and show too much of what I could do.

I went with killing them. I was just too uncomfortable leaving an enemy behind me. Many strategies had been ruined because the commander had either captured the enemy and they had escaped, or let them live and they had brought back allies. In my case, if I let these Ninja live, they could discover my tracks and follow me to the Wave Country. Unlikely, but a possibility I couldn't ignore. I decided to try something new, and I hoped the Anbu wouldn’t notice. After telling Pakkun to stay behind, I made my move.

I sent an image of what I wanted to Xorrion, and waited to see if he could pull it off with his new powers. Slowly and quietly descending the tree, I felt what I had asked of Xorrion take effect. All the noise I made, while already quiet, dropped to almost nothing. I wasn’t entirely sure how, but I was confident he was using the shadows, void or both to deaden the sound waves coming from my movements. I got an impression from him that he could either do this, or attack. As of right now he couldn’t do both. That was fine, I just needed to get in place for my plan to work.

I surveyed their camp; it was a series of tents in a half circle with a crackling fire in the middle. I could see weapons strewn about without care. Genin then? I couldn’t see Jounin making such a boneheaded move. They must have been too tired from practice or something to put them away. The fire provided plenty of shadows for me to work with, perfect. For the first time in a while, I used my shadows to attack. 

Xorrion didn’t know what ways my shadow could be used until he saw them, so for this I would have to command my shadow myself. I decided to take out the lookout first. Quickly casting Shadow Possession with the hand seals, since the Anbu was watching me, I moved my shadow slowly and carefully to the person on guard. He was a terrible guard, being half asleep and not really paying attention to his surroundings, so it was easy to catch him with my jutsu. Next I decided to kill him quickly with shadow strangulation; no use in letting him potentially wake up his comrades.

The man died surprisingly easily. I had forgotten that up until now I had been practising this on wooden dummies, and wood had higher density most of the time than bone. My efforts to kill him quickly worked almost too well; the shadow strangulation jutsu had damn near ripped the guy's head off. Whoops. Unknown to me at the time, the Anbu in the trees facepalmed. With the guard dead, I could relax a small amount since the other ninja were asleep.

I solved the problem of the weapons strewn about by getting Xorrion to manipulate my shadow to carefully move them out of my path. I had to remain still since his silencing effect had worn off while he was doing this. It wasn’t long before all the weapons were stacked in a neat pile at the edge of the camp. I was impressed that he only clicked a couple of the weapons together, and other than that he made almost no noise. After the weapons were clear I crept up to the entrance of the other tents and carefully split my shadow to match the number of tents in the camp. 

Killing the occupants of the tent was relatively easy as well. Since I was able to remain still, Xorrion could come out of each tendril of my shadow and attack them while they slept. Suddenly I heard a scream, which meant Xorrion wasn’t able to kill someone. Hopefully it was the last enemy, and if it was, it was possible this was the leader of this little group of Ninjas.

A few seconds after the scream, someone bolted out of their tent half dressed. Dumbass. Like yes he was in friendly territory, but c’mon. Our eyes met, but before he could do anything, I had already thrown a Kunai at his heart. What was with my luck? First someone screams causing a couple people to wake up, and then I miss the dude's heart entirely and it lands right in his eye. Some god somewhere must be laughing at me.

Thankfully Xorrion had managed to kill all but two people, and the scream had only woke one person. The next person to come out of the tent was actually fully equipped. Looked to be Mist ninja like i thought, unless the headband on his forehead was a fake. I hoped this guy was a Chunin, because if he was a Jounin I was screwed.

“Well well, what do we have here? A Leaf brat. All alone it looks like” the guy sneered at me.

“Everyone, get out here and take care of this little shit” he yelled. 

After a few seconds of nothing happening, he started to panic.

“Hey what are you fucks doing?! Get out here” he continued.

“Your men are dead… It was dumb luck one managed to wake you” I said coldly. My violet eyes glowing like before with Mizuki.

“Impossible, one kid couldn’t kill all of us, it must be a trick! Hey guys it’s not funny anymore, get out here” he screamed, now in full on panic mode. So a Chunin then, thank fuck. A Jounin wouldn’t be panicking like this.

“It’s the truth, but don’t worry about it, you’ll be joining them soon enough” I told the guy.

“No wait!” whatever he said was cut off by Xorrion slipping out from my shadow and pinning the guy's arms to his waist.

“You have threatened my master, you will die” he said menacingly.

I didn’t even have to do anything this time, since Xorrion just crushed the guy where he stood. I could hear bones crunching as he started to scream. His eyes filled with blood, and as his organs ruptured from the pressure, blood started to come out of his mouth. His screams shifted to gurgles as he started drowning as his lungs filled with fluid. Finally when the guy stopped moving, Xorrion dropped him like a sack of potatoes, then promptly vanished back into my shadow.

“Good work Xorrion, fighting him would have been annoying this close up” I said to apparently no one.

I had lingered here too long; I needed to leave.The ninja had chosen both a good and bad spot. Good for me since it meant that I could burn the camp to the ground without worrying about the forest also burning down. Bad for them since they had made camp in a clearing, it was easy to spot them. Times like this I was glad I wasn't actually a kid, I could do things that needed to be done without any issues.

I wasn’t sure if killing these ninjas had been a good idea, but the letter Kakashi had sent to the Hokage said that they had been attacked by Mist Shinobi. I might not like Sasuke and Sakura, but they were still becoming friends with Naruto. So for that alone I would kill the Mist Shinobi I came across.

What the fuck? I came across two more Ninja encampments on my way to the land of Waves. Killing those ninja and burning the evidence had gone much smoother than the first. This was supposed to be a C-Rank mission turned B. But with the amount of ninjas I'd killed, it should have been an A rank. Tazuna you asshole; once I get to you I'm gonna beat the shit out of you for lying to the village on the difficulty of the mission. Those three other Genin could have been seriously injured or killed. 

Sasuke was the only competent one in that group besides Kakashi. Naruto was getting better, but he had stopped sparring with me, around the same time I suspect he let his grades drop. And Sakura was always the dead weight. I hoped soon she’d get her head out of her ass and improve, or she’s going to get those two killed. I was still mildly upset with Naruto for letting himself become the bottom of the class instead of asking for help.

During my journey I had decided to stop for a day to learn the water walking thing. I knew I had to hustle, but I was about to go into a country made of mostly water. Being able to walk on the stuff would be invaluable. It would also mean that I’d never be able to drown if I was still conscious. I had read up on the technique, and one of the books said that if you were under water, you could essentially “walk” to the surface like you were climbing stairs. Iruka had said that walking on water was basically the same as walking on trees, you just had to change the amount of chakra, and do it constantly. Sounded easy, but I'm betting it wasn’t. So after finding a river to practice on, I got to work.

The water walking was definitely harder than tree climbing, but not as much as I thought it would be. The first step was to figure out how much chakra I needed to stand on calm water. Thankfully the river had a few outcroppings that the water would flow into and be still for a bit. I ended up falling into the water countless times during my practice. Unlike falling, Xorrion couldn’t protect me from the wet. 

It took me the better part of a day to finally be able to stand on the water. I had to constantly focus on doing it, but eventually I'd get to the point where I wasn't even thinking about doing it. Like breathing. And blinking. Shit, now my tongue felt too big for my mouth now that i thought about it. Ehem. Moving on. I had spent too much time here. 

By the time I got to the Wave village where the bridge was being built, about a week had passed since Naruto and his team should have arrived here. The first thing I saw was a massive bridge, and I could faintly see people working on it. I think I saw a couple of Naruto’s clones standing guard. Now wasn’t the time to go talk to him yet though, I needed to find out where the ninja were coming from. Were they hired by someone? Was the Mist Village itself trying to stop the bridge being built for some reason?

Following the bridge back to the town, I tried my best to remain inconspicuous upon arriving. Even going so far to store my headband in my bag. I’d spent enough time with my rogue friends on Azeroth to pick up a thing or two about being incognito. Sure I was in a ninja village, but learning about infiltration and doing it were very different. I started by innocently chatting up the townspeople; trying to see who was against the building of the bridge, and who wasn’t. 

After a couple hours of asking around, discreetly of course, I found out the man responsible for most of the recent troubles here was named Gato. From there, I was on the lookout for any shady looking goons. There were many shady looking people, but most of them just looked homeless and down on their luck. Not many I'd classify as Gangster. There were a couple though, they were standing guard over the markets, making sure their boss didn’t get cut out of any profits. 

I decided to do something potentially stupid, and if I didn’t have Xorrion with me at all times, I wouldn’t have considered it. I allowed myself to be careless, and slipped up on some of my questions. Before I'd been asking generic questions, the ones no one would realise were probing for info. Questions like “oh how much is your product? Oh that much? Hasn’t the price gone up too much recently?” trying to find out if someone was causing the prices to go up. Now I was asking more direct questions, the ones that would tell anyone listening that I was looking for someone.

It wasn’t long until I caught someone other than the Anbu following me. This guy, I didn't even need Xorrion to notice, he was just bad. So entering a nearby ally, I waited for the inevitable attack.

“You should have minded your own business brat” I heard a voice say.

A knife descended on my back, but before it could even come close, a shadowy clawed hand materialized from my shadow and grabbed the hand holding the knife.

“What the fuck?” the same voice said.

“Well now, looks like this brat has you cornered huh?” I said to the guy, turning around with my eyes glowing violet.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“Just someone who wants some information” I told him

“Over my dead body” he snarled.

“That can be arranged.” I smiled coldly at the man.

“Xorrion, block the entrance and make sure no one interferes” I commanded. I sent him an image of what he had done before with the sound, but instead of me, I didn't want any sound coming from the alleyway. To everyone else, the entrance of the alleyway just looked darker than normal.

Swapping Xorrion's hand for my shadow, he did as commanded. Since the man was now trapped by my shadow possession, he could go nowhere.

“Now tell me, where might I find Gato?” I started.

“Fuck you brat” he spat.

“Why can’t you just tell me. Now I'm going to have to do things I'd rather not.” I sighed.

I moved my shadow to his hands and prepared to break his fingers. I pushed one slightly to get my point across.

“Are you sure you don’t want to talk?” I asked.

He just glared at me. 

“Very well, I tried to do this nicely.” snap

He screamed, but because of Xorrion, no sound left the alley

“How about now?” I asked after he had stopped screaming.

More glares. Snap

“Now?”

I broke all 10 of his fingers before he finally told me where Gato’s hideout was.

“Are there any surprises waiting for me there?” I continued.

“There’s a hidden mist headhunter there, and Zabuza, one of the ninja swordsmen of the mist. Gato hired him to make sure the bridge was never finished.” he confessed, sweating profusely.

“Good. Now you can die. Can't have you running back to Gato, can I?” I said with a cruel smile not at all belonging on a twelve year olds face.

“Wait no! Please don’t!” he started, but I cut him off with a Kunai to the throat.

After calling Xorrion back, I took to the rooftops, sprinting to Gatos hideout. I wanted to be long gone when the body was found, and reported to Gato. By all accounts, Gato had no ninjas in his gang other than the Sword guy and the headhunter. I hoped they wouldn’t be there. It would make my life so much easier if I just had regular thugs to deal with. It took me about an hour to find the base with the shitty directions the thug had given me.

Arriving at the base quietly, I saw two guards out front. Like I expected they were just normal humans, with no chakra training. This was almost too easy, but I wasn’t going to let my guard down. For all I know the thug had lied and didn’t mention anything about additional ninja Gato had hired. From the bushes in front of the hideout, I threw two Kunai for each guy. One to their head, and another to their heart. While all four had been hits, they didn’t hit exactly where I wanted; I still needed more practice. I ran up to the door after looking for more threats. On my way I had used my shadow to grab all four Kunai and bring them back after wiping them off on the corpses.

Taking a look at the door, it wasn’t even locked. Gato must be confident no one would dare attack him at his home base. Activating my Chakra Reinforcement I went inside, and was met with… nothing. Just a corridor with some doors here and there, presumably leading to bedrooms or something. I stopped at the first door and tried it. 

It was unlocked, however years of dungeon diving had warned me about the use of traps. I stood off to the side and used my shadow to open the door. Again, nothing happened. I looked for tripwires or something, but nothing was there. What the hell was Gato thinking? His men were no ninja, so he should at least put some traps to supplement them. Entering the room, I saw a man in bed with a naked woman, she looked to be bruised and beaten. Scum. I would kill all of the people in this place. 

Getting closer to the bed, I could tell she was awake and she had noticed me. She was about to panic when I gently put my hand over her mouth and motioned for her to be quiet. 

“Shhh, I’m a Leaf shinobi here on a mission. Get out of here. Things are about to get bad” I told the woman. Maybe it wasn’t wise to disclose who I was, but it was the only thing I could think of that would calm her down.

Taking my hand off her mouth, she gave me a fierce look.

“I want to kill all of these fuckers.” she spat.

“I know, but you aren’t trained for these sorts of things. Besides, I'm going to kill them all” I told her. I could see the lack of calluses that would be on an experienced fighter.

“Fine, but promise me not a single one will live.” she said.

“I promise, I will kill them all” I reassured her.

“Thank you, I will never forget this.” she said with some tears in her eyes, before taking off the way I had come.

After killing the dude in the bed, I made my way across the hideout. Methodically searching every room, and killing all the people I found. I’d only met a couple more women since the first, and also told them to get out of here. Eventually I found my way to a large room that could only have been a training room. They had a training room, but were so lax in their defenses? Maybe it was for the ninja Gato had hired.

There were a couple people in the training room, and thankfully they hadn’t seen me yet. I quietly snuck up on one, while sending my shadow to the other. Xorrion struck the guy from my shadow, while I stabbed the one in front me simultaneously. I gave Xorrion a thumbs up before he returned to my shadow. After making sure there were no other people in the room, I hid the bodies the best I could and moved on. 

I continued on like that for the better part of an hour. Exploring the base like a wraith and killing anyone who wasn’t the obvious victim of being someone's punching bag. I had killed probably a good hundred people. How had Gato afforded to keep all these men in his employ? The place looked like a dump, maybe that was why? He spent all his money on these goons? I was lucky it was the middle of the night, or I would have had a much harder time assaulting this place. More evidence of their arrogance and carelessness was that I hadn't seen any other guards besides the ones outside. 

So, either they really were that stupid, or something else was going on. As I had that thought, I got a shiver down my spine. Maybe this place was so empty because most of his men weren’t here? Most of the rooms had been vacant after all. At this point I had cleared the entire base of goons, and unless there were some secret rooms I didn't have the time to find, this place was now empty. I did find what had to be Gato’s room, and on his desk were some letters. One was a letter from someone that said that some Leaf Ninja had been helping the bridge builder. Another was from a couple of his goons saying they were going after some kid named Inari and his mother.

I didn’t have a clue where to find the kid, so the only thing I could do was to go to the bridge and kill the goons there who planned to ambush Naruto and the Ninja that Gato had hired. I also found the Ninjas room with a crap load of supplies in it. Included were a bunch of ninja wire and explosive tags. This room had a clock on the wall and I realized how much time I had spent here. Fuck. I had to leave. I wasn’t going to leave without leaving behind a  surprise though. I had enough tags to rig the entire building to blow, and I did just that before leaving. 

After setting the trap to go off if someone tried to enter the hideout, I took off towards the bridge. One of the letters on the desk was an order to assemble and attack the bridge near the end, where it would connect to the mainland. So I wanted to intercept them before they made it; yes they were just average goons, but Naruto and his team would be tired from fighting that Zabuza dude. It seemed I was just in time to catch the goons before they reached the bridge. There were about two hundred of them, but they were all in boats right now so they were easy pickings. 

The sun was starting to rise, and I could hear combat on the bridge. Because of the sun coming up, it was casting shadows on the boats. Perfect. There were about twenty boats with 10 people in each one. It would be hard as fuck, but with Xorrion here, I could do it. I extended a tendril to each boat, and it was a severe drain on my chakra to do this many, but I could manage it for about 10 minutes. I hoped that was enough.

I sent an image to Xorrion on what to do. He used my shadow as a bridge from me standing on the misty water, to get to the boats. He would destroy the boat so the guys would either get injured and drown, or would be forced to swim back to shore. After he destroyed the boat, I would pelt them with shuriken to injure them in such a way to make it difficult to swim. Thankfully I had plenty of Shuriken to spare from the stash of supplies I had raided. Because of the thick mist originating from the bridge, the goons couldn’t see where the attack was coming from. 

Not long after, all the boats were destroyed, and about half the men had drowned. Fuck, that still left about a hundred men for me to fight on the shore. Now more than ever I wish I had been able to get my shadow bolt up and running. I’d have to take advantage of the mist, and do some hit and run tactics. I couldn’t see through the mist entirely, but after summoning Xorrion, my vision had improved immensely, not sure why, but it was probably due to him being able to see in the dark. He was connected to my soul after all. I could see through it much better than they could at least.

Running back to the shore, I was able to stop focusing on standing on water. I was glad I had taken the time to learn that trick, even if it took a lot of concentration right now. Because of the mist, I was able to do a similar feat like back at the hideout. Xorrion would control my shadow to sneak up on people, I'd sneak up on someone else, and we’d kill in tandem. They had started to figure out where the screams were coming from, as we hadn’t been perfect, so I needed to do something differently. 

The only thing I could think of was to have Xorrion darken the area like he did back at the hokage’s office. It would make it even harder to see. The downside was that I'd be vulnerable, while outside my shadow, he couldn’t come to my defense if I slipped up somehow. But it was all I could do, since they roughly knew where we were. I sent the image to Xorrion on what to do and he left my shadow completely, it snapping back to me as he did so. Like I had wanted, the area had gotten much darker, and combined with the mist, they couldn’t see anything. To me everything just became slightly less saturated as it got darker. It had done the job though, and we were able to kill with impunity. I didn’t feel bad killing all these assholes, they were complicit to the kidnapping, beating and the rape of many women, and willingly starving a whole town. 

By the time most of the men were dead, I was exhausted. There were only about five left, and Gato, so I left the 5 to Xorrion, they couldn’t hurt him much since he was made of shadows. You’d need to hit him with a jutsu, or chakra infused weapon to deal any real damage to him. Ordinary thugs stood no chance.

“So, you’re the brat that killed all my men. Very impressive” Gato said. 

“Yeah, what of it?” I asked.

“I could use a deadly kid like you. Say, you should leave your village and be my underling” he said, like it was the best offer in the world.

“And be betrayed later on like you betrayed Zabuza? No thanks” I spat. 

“You should have taken my offer. I can tell you are tired from your fight. It’s five against one, what do you think you can do in your weakened state?” he taunted.

“You’d be surprised fat man” I taunted right back. His face went red at my insult. Don’t dish it if you can’t take it. 

“Kill her and bring me her stuff. She’s a ninja so must have nice trinkets on her.” Gato commanded.

His men didn’t get more than a few steps before Xorrion appeared and trapped them all with our shadow. 

“You were saying something about being alone?” I asked.

“M-Monster!” he screamed.

“The monster here is you Gato, for all the shit you’ve done to people” I said. 

Using most of my remaining chakra, I stabbed them all with shadow lances, or, as I had learned from my father some time ago, was called Shadow Stitching. Guess I wasn’t so original after all. Unfortunately I didn't have enough energy to go after him as he ran away. But it didn’t matter. If he ran to his hideout, like I thought he would, he’d be paste on the ground very soon.

“Master, should I go after him? He could be trouble later” Xorrion asked.

“Nah, don’t worry about it. We need to help Kakashi with Zabuza, if we can.” I replied, maybe it was against my better judgment to let him go, but I was too tired to care. 

Looking up at the bridge, the combat had gotten more intense, and I could see what looked like a dome of ice peeking out over the edge of the bridge. Right now though I had no way of making it up there. I needed a bit of rest, but if I did, one of them could die. If I did go now, what could I do? I was spent. I might just be in the way if I join. Take a short rest and do nothing? Or force myself to join them and possibly be in the way? At least Gato’s men wouldn’t be ambushing them.

My decision was made for me when I felt Naruto’s other chakra, what I had come to learn was the Nine Tails chakra sealed in him, started flaring. Shit, that wasn’t good. Asking Xorrion to carry me up the side of the bridge, the scene before me was something else. Sakura was cowering in fear next to who i presumed to be the bridge builder, Sasuke was unconscious looking like a porcupine, and Naruto was in a rage fighting who could only be Haku, based on Gato’s documents from his desk. Kakashi was engaged with Zabuza, and seemed to be winning. 

Kakashi currently had a masked dude pinned down by several Ninja Hounds. It looked like he was charging some sort of electric Jutsu. It was making an awful screeching noise that grated on my ears. I saw Haku turn their head at the noise, and I could tell what they were about to do. I could let it happen, but what was the point? Why should they die? Zabuza’s employer was a dead man, assuming he went to the hideout. There was currently no reason to fight. Funny, coming from someone who had killed three hundred people tonight. Maybe I was just tired of death for one night.

Before the worst could happen, I used shadow possession jutsu to stop Kakashi and Zabuza. It was the most I could do right now given my drained state. Xorrion knew what I needed, and did his part to hold them in place. I had made it in time for Haku to jump in front of Kakashi, but his jutsu hadn’t quite hit them .

“Kakashi, what did you do?! Why can’t I move?” Zabuza accused. 

“This isn’t me, someone is interfering, I can’t move either” he said.

“Haku, what were you thinking? Running to jump in front of Zabuza?!” Naruto yelled, 

“Naruto, get away, we are being stopped by someone’s Jutsu” Kakashi said.

“Shit sorry” Naruto said sheepishly before coming alert once again.

I decided to make my entrance. 

“Isn’t that about enough, don’t you think Kakashi?” I asked

“Kari? What are you doing here, and why have you trapped us?” Kakashi questioned.

“Hokage’s orders, aaannnddd because you don’t need to fight them anymore” I told him.

“Why don’t we need to fight him? He’s the enemy! He tried to kill us!” Naruto said angrily.

“Because he was just hired to do a job, and his employer had planned to betray him.” I explained.

“Lies! Why would Gato hire us, just to kill us?” Zabuza said in disbelief.

“Honestly, the only reason I can come up with is that you were too expensive. This letter should tell you more. I found it on Gato’s desk” I said to Zabuza.

“Wait, if Gato was going to ambush us, where are he and his men?” Kakashi asked. 

“Dead” I said simply, and as if the gods themselves were watching, there was a large explosion in the distance, shortly after a fireball appeared in the sky.

“Well that was good timing” I said with a smirk.

“What did you do?” Zabuza asked.

“Oh, this and that, but all you need to know is that you won’t be killed by Gato, here read this letter if you don’t believe me.” I said, tossing the letter to Haku. 

“Haku, why don’t you read it out to him, I don’t quite trust him yet” I said, also releasing my Jutsu. Finally able to relax somewhat, I sank to the floor as Haku read out the letter to Zabuza.

“You’ll need to explain later, Kari” Kakashi said

“Yeah yeah, but right now I'm beat. I need food and some sleep” I said.

“So I assume that letter explains things?” Kakashi asked.

“Yes, the brat was right. Fighting now is pointless, and if I were to guess, that explosion was Gato breathing his last breaths.” Zabuza said.

“Well what do we do now?” Naruto asked.

“Go get Sasuke and Sakura. Bring them to the village.” Kakashi said. 

“What about you two?” he asked again,

“We still have some things to wrap up here, we’ll catch up” Kakashi replied.

“Fine, but don’t be long!” Naruto said before running off.

“Well Zabuza, I’d like to say I’m gonna let you go, but I can't do that. Not after what you’ve done” Kakashi said.

“Sorry Kakashi, but I can't let you take him. Just know that we won’t bother you again. You’ve given us a lot to think about” Haku said, throwing a senbon at us both. Kakashi was too exhausted from his fight to dodge, and Xorrion just caught the one aimed at me.

“Fuck” Kakashi said, falling over.

Just like that, the pair was gone, and the fight was over. 

“Kakashi, are you still alive?”

“Yeah, I just can’t move,” he said.

“Well come get me up, I know you’re faking it.” I said with a smile.

“You brat, you weren’t even hit, so if anything you’re the one faking it” Kakashi retorted.

“Ugh, fair point. Give me a minute, I’m dead tired.” I said.

After asking Xorrion to grab the needle with my shadow via mental image, Kakahsi was able to stand up after several minutes.

“What happened to you?” Kakashi asked.

“Long story, tell you later, but I can barely walk. Let's get back to wherever you guys were staying” I said. 

With Kakashi helping me hobble back to the place they had, we took about half an hour to get back. Entering the house, Kakashi put me down on the couch in the living room.

“Now, care to explain how you went from failing and being sent back to the academy, to showing up here, preventing me from killing someone needlessly?” Kakashi started.

“Fine… It’s a long story, but it went like this” I started my long explanation.