Malicious red chakra swirled violently around a boy covered in cuts and needles who kneeled over his fallen comrade in a dome of ice mirrors. The chakra violently whipped around and tore at the ground. He shook as he placed his hands on his friend's arm.Hidden within the mirrors, a masked boy watched him in surprise. Never before had he felt such evil chakra erupt from a person before. This chakra... he thought somewhat shaken by it. Suddenly, the trapped boy began to stand as the senbon in his back and legs were pushed out. Standing up fully, a larger burst of the evil chakra came from him and began to take on the shape of a horrifying canine face. That's impossible! For chakra to change like this, and in such a short amount of time! thought the boy in the ice mirrors. And it's such an evil chakra... Shocked, he watched as all the visible wounds on the other boy rapidly healed right before his eyes. The wounds on his body! They are completely healing themselves! What is this boy truly?!

The boy on the ground suddenly turned his head and looked at the other. His orange hair had grown wild, and a feral look controlled his features. For a moment the two just stared before he began to growl and charged the ice mirrors. The boy in the mirrors prepped himself with senbon in each hand, and flew at the other boy to hit him. The feral boy spun rapidly out of range of the attack. The masked kid turned to quickly hide in another mirror, but was slammed by the feral boy's clawed hands, being tossed backwards.

The feral boy screamed and slammed down his fist. Chakra erupted from his fist and slowly began thinning the ice with its heat. Standing, the masked child tried to jump back as he suddenly found his hand grasped by the other boy. Looking up with more hate than the masked boy thought possible, the feral child smashed his fist into his face.

Flying backwards, the masked boy flew through his now weakened ice mirrors as his mask cracked down the middle. As he slid across the ground of the bridge they were on his dome of ice mirrors fell to pieces. The feral boy growled as he noticed the other boy was beginning to stand up after he stopped sliding. Zabuza-san... The boy charged the other as he stood there motionless. I cannot... defeat this boy... Half of his mask falls to the ground as the boy comes closer and jumped into the sky with his hair lengthening and flowing freely behind him with a red ribbon floating away from it. Zabuza-san... I'm sorry... The boy closed his eyes as the last of his mask falls away. Awaiting an impact that never came. Opening his eyes, he found the other boys fist stopped just inches from his face. "Why did you stop..." he whispered solemnly. The oppressive energy from the other child slowly faded away. "I killed your precious friend, yet you can't kill me? Why?"

Sighing, the boy slowly pulled back his fist. He looked into the other kids face as he stood straight up, his voice becoming surprisingly feminine. "Truthfully... I feel no anger over Sasuke dying. I was more angry over how weak I felt when you did killed him." The boy looked over at his fallen comrade full of needles from the boy before him. "He is a friend of sorts... but he isn't one of the few precious people to me. Not truly anyway." He looked into the boy's eyes that had no fight left in them. "Zabuza is your precious person right Haku. Why is that?"

The beaten boy, now known as Haku, looked back into the other boy's eyes. He told his story of how life was for him in Kiri. Explaining how his Kekkei Genkai made him a monster in the eyes of his village due to the civil war that broke out. How he one day ended up having to kill his own father to escape with his own life. He smiled when he told how Zabuza found him, a useless broken child with no reason to live. "He gave me a reason to live. To live for him. To help him fight his battles to the end. No matter what the cost or reason. That is what makes him so precious to me. So please… kill me."

The boy tilted his head as he looked at Haku. "Why would you want me to do that?" he questioned. "I thought you wanted to live for that man. What good would killing you do?"

Haku shook his head. "I do wish to live for Zabuza-san, but I am nothing more than his pawn. His tool to use as he sees fit. My only purpose is to fulfil his will as best as I can until I am no longer needed by him. Now though, now I am broken. He has no purpose for a broken tool, thus I have no purpose to continue living. Even if I wasn't his tool, he is like a father to me. Someone I will always stand beside. So please, kill me here and now."

The boy looked at him sadly. "That is sad to hear Haku, but I won't kill you. If you want to die then kill yourself, but I won't be your killer." A sound suddenly filled the air like a thousand birds were for some reason chirping making Haku look towards the sounds direction of origin. "I know you won't be here much longer, but I trust you ya know. You are purer than anyone else I have ever known in my entire life. You are so honest with yourself and others. I just wanted to let you know that." Haku looked at the boy before disappearing into an ice mirror he made suddenly.

The boy was left standing alone as he looked into the thick mist aimlessly. The sound of the birds quickly disappeared with a bursting sound that soon brought a stale silence. For a moment nothing happened as he stood there motionlessly until a scent hit him. Blood. The strong scent of copper filled the air as he reached up to his hair and ran a hand all the way down it to the small of his back. He went so far as to even die for that one precious person in his life. Would I do that for anyone on this team? Could I really take a certain death attack for either Sasuke or Sakura so that they could live on to fight again? No. No I couldn't do something like that. Ayame-neechan, Old Man Teuchi, Iruka-sensei, and Old Man Hokage yes. Maybe even Kakashi-sensei, but not the other two people on this team. "I wonder... where the ribbon holding up my hair go off to?"

Slowly the mist began to thin out as a clapping sound could be heard at the unfinished end of the bridge. As the mist cleared, the boy could see his sensei Kakashi standing before Zabuza who's back was turned to him. Further back towards the beginning of the bridge, his teammate Sakura stood in front of Tazuna, the bridge builder, and the entire reason everyone was there. Sakura could be heard gasping in horror as she noticed Sasuke's downed body surrounded by melted water, broken ice shards, and needles. She quickly ran over to his body with Tazuna following her, and steadily cried over Sasuke's body as Tazuna got a good look at the life a shinobi and kunoichi lived.

Down at the unfinished end of the bridge, a short man in a business suit with gray hair, a scrunchy face, and glasses on stood with a large group of bandits behind him. He was clapping with a comical smile on his face, and a cane tucked under his arm. "Well, well, well. They call you a demon, but all I see is pathetic excuse for a missing nin. You let some scarecrow and a bunch of snot nosed brats beat you like this. A complete waste of my money. Well, at least I never planned to pay you in the first place."

Zabuza's eyes narrowed in anger as he turned his head slightly to Kakashi. "It seems our business with each other is done Kakashi. I should have known that a snake in the grass like Gato would betray me whenever he saw the perfect opportunity for it to happen." Kakashi nodded his understanding.

The clack of Gato's cane snapped out on the bridge as he walked over to Haku's lifeless body. A bloody hole the size of a fist was in the left side of his chest. "Hm, this is the kid that damn near broke my wrist last time we met. I owe you for that little stunt still. Too bad you won't be able to feel this." Spitting onto the blank face of Haku, Gato proceeded to viciously kick and stomp on the boy's corpse. He laughed with each strike as Kakashi clenched his fist and Zabuza held back tears of loss and anger as he did the same.

Just as the man was about to stomp down on the boy's head, several shuriken lodged their way into his chest as a kunai struck his throat. Gato gurgled and spat out blood as he fell to the ground clutching his throat. Everyone watched as he struggled and kicked about before an explosive tag went off. Gato's head tore away from his body as his chest ripped apart in a shower of red. The sight made many of the bandits lose their lunch, and made Tazuna and Sakura, who screamed, pass out from the horrific display. Those who could stomach the sight couldn't actually believe it. While the bandits continued to look at the spot their former employer's maimed body occupied, Kakashi and Zabuza turned to the boy who's hand was still out in a throwing motion. "No one... should disrespect the dead like that," he said to no one in particular.

Zabuza walked over to Haku's body as Kakashi quickly moved to the boy's side. "Your hair," he said, "you should put it back up before Sakura wakes and notices. I don't think you want her to get curious and start asking you questions about it or anything." He placed a hand on the young boy's shoulder as he looked back at his other two students. One of them was beginning to stir and it wasn't Sakura. "Not Sasuke either for that matter."

The boy looked back at his teammates and sighed with a tiny bit of relief that he hadn't actually caused the Uchiha to die. "Let them see. If they ask, I will confess to not being a boy, but a girl. No one can hide behind a mask forever. Also, I lost my ribbon. If you happen to see it, I'd like it back ya know." Kakashi nodded as the newly revealed girl walked over to Haku and Zabuza. She kneeled down next to them as the bandits began yelling about having lost their pay. The two kneeled silently beside the fallen boy.

"You know," Zabuza suddenly said, "Haku didn't deserve this kind of life or death. He was too kind at the heart to be what I tried to mold him into." Looking at the girl next to him, he clenched his fist in sadness. "His death is my blame to take."

Standing, the girl grabbed the hilt of Zabuza's sword and pulled it away from the grieving, and now surprised, missing nin. "Haku-san became my friend in a matter of minutes some time ago," she whispered sadly. "I felt I could truly trust him. That isn't something I can say for many others around me. Not even my own two teammates have my true friendship let alone trust." Dragging the large weapon behind her, the girl walked towards the agitated group of bandits as her body began to be surrounded by the evil red chakra once again. "He saw you as a father. No matter what you did. The day you found him, you became his one and only purpose. That boy would fight for you harder than he would even fight for his own life. That's why... I'm going to kill all these bastards right now." The red chakra burst from her in a wave knocking many of the bandits down.

Wide eyed and fascinated, Zabuza watched as the girl grabbed his sword by both hands and rushed her enemies with incredible speed for her level. She swung the weapon with the authority of a master sword wielder, and decimated any who dared come near her. Those at a distance were no safer from the swings as the red chakra fused into the blade and extended its reach. Their screams filled the air, and the smell of blood was all that could be picked out from the entire area. Any who tried to escape were stopped by clones she had made and surrounded them with. Those who somehow got off the bridge were picked off by kunai with explosive tags on them in the water. It wasn't long before the girl was the only living soul at the end of the bridge.

Kakashi and Zabuza were in awe at how easily she had decided and went about killing the hired hands of Gato. The blood of the bandits drenched her jumpsuit to the point you could hardly believe that it had ever been any color other than red. Her normally blue eyes were now a bright red with vertical slits for pupils. Her blonde hair seemed to have darkened, and was in a messy array with blood splotches all over it. The canines in her teeth were more pronounced in her cheeks with her fingernails having sharpened and lengthened. All and all, with her dragging the large sword behind as she slowly returned to stand in front of Zabuza, the girl looked like a true demon.

She held out the weapon to Zabuza who shook his head. "I have no use for it anymore. Kakashi was able to still partly hit me with that jutsu of his. The bleeding inside me... I can feel it slowly draining my life away. It's time this sword is past down like it is supposed to be. Just so I can know my successor's, tell me your name first... or are you actually named Naruto after all?"

The girl shook her head as her features slowly reverted themselves. "My name, my real name, is Kamiko Uzumaki, Konoha's Kyūbi jinchūriki," she whispered.

Zabuza nodded. "I suspected that you were one from the feel of your chakra." He pulled out a scroll from his pocket and wrote down a few directions before handing it to Kamiko. "This will tell you where to find my hideout. It holds all sorts of information you might and will need. Some of it will be jutsus, others will be more of an informative sort for you, and others still will have what you need to know to handle that sword. Will you take this as part of my dying wish?"

Kamiko held onto the scroll for a moment without moving. She looked into the eyes of the Demon of the Mist and saw something that made her nod her head. "Yes, I will. What is this other part to your dying wish that you apparently have?"

Smiling, Zabuza pulled down his mask to reveal that all of his teeth were sharpened as he laid down. "I want you to have Haku buried somewhere nice. He deserves that. Also, take my body and turn it in for the bounty on my head. I'm pretty sure you would like the amount of ryo you could get off of it."

Shaking her head, Kamiko knelt down and placed her hand on the side of Haku's face. "I will bury Haku like you asked, but I'm going to bury you too. Right next to him. I think he would really like that." Zabuza looked at her and nodded knowing he wouldn't be able to change the girl's mind. He looked over at Haku as renewed tears began to fill his eyes.

Kamiko left him and Haku as he spoke his final words to the boy. She stood next to her sensei and looked down at the sword in her hand that was now hers. "Never thought I would end up holding the sword of one of the legendary Seven Swords Men, let alone have it passed down to me." She gripped the handle while looking at it. "It's kind of cool if we're to really think about it."

Kakashi placed his hand on the girl's shoulder before looking over to his other two, now awake, students. "Do you want help burying them Kamiko-chan? I wouldn't mind if you liked." The girl nodded her head as she watched Zabuza breathe his last with a resigned smile on his face.

Sakura, who was supporting the injured Sasuke, and Tazuna walked over to the pair and looked at the mess about the bridge. "Sensei, what happened? I remember Gato's body exploding, but one person couldn't have done all this." In the distance, the villagers of the Wave Village could be heard revolting against what little of the bandits that were still around in the town.

Kakashi placed a hand on her head and ruffled her hair. "No need to worry about that my dear student. Why don't you and Tazuna go back to the house with Sasuke now? The danger in the mission should be all but gone by now, and everyone deserves to rest now after all of this. You've all earned it." He looked at the fallen bodies of the two Kiri nin and frowned. "Even those two have earned their right to rest from all of this."

Nodding, Sakura began to leave with Tazuna and Sasuke in tow before the injured boy asked a question. "Hey Kakashi. Where is the dobe, and who is that person standing next to you with Zabuza's sword?" Sakura suddenly noticed that she didn't see the blonde knuckled head and felt ashamed at just noticing the presence of the other person, though after looking at her she wished she hadn't. The blood all over her body and hair nearly made her sick.

Just as Kakashi was about to answer, Kamiko cut in. "Who I am, is not any of your business right now. Your friend Naruto... he didn't survive the battle." Sakura gasped as tears instantly refilled her eyes, and Sasuke clenched his fist as they suddenly realized how much the blonde had meant to the both of them. "Go on like you sensei told you to. I have to bury Haku-san and Zabuza now if you don't mind." Getting a nod from Kakashi, the two Genin left, after a slight moment of hesitation, with their charge following close behind them.

Kamiko watched her two teammates walk away with an emotionless stare before moving on to the two dead Kiri nin. Kamiko and Kakashi picked up Haku and Zabuza respectively and made their way down the bridge, and hopped down to make their way across the water. They walked the entire way across the water without saying even a single word to each other. Not even when Kamiko's feet began to tremble from how little strength she had left to support herself and Haku with. They eventually made it to where the unfinished bridge was going to end with little to no strength left in either of them.

There was a slope far off to the side of the ridge that Kamiko noticed, and led Kakashi over to it. "This is a good spot. I think Haku would like the scene this place provides." Kakashi nodded as the two dug the graves for the two Kiri nin and buried them. The girl pulled out the scroll she was given and shook it a little. "I'm going to go get that stuff from that hideout place. Don't tell Sakura or Sasuke anything until I get back. I want to tell them as much as possible myself. Well, not really, but you know what I mean."

"Are you sure about that Kamiko?" Kakashi asked worriedly as he looked on to the sad girl. "We could just say you are a random girl who found out she was related to Naruto. You don't have to reveal who you are to them."

The girl shook her head slowly as she walked away. "Reality. Can't hide behind a mask from it Kakashi-sensei. Just can't hide behind one. At least, not forever that is." The silver haired man watched as his student walked off into the distance. He sighed before turning to look at the bridge in the distance. It would stand for many things to the villagers. For Kamiko, it would be a mark of reality. As she walked away from Kakashi, Kamiko looked up into the sky. Haku. I promise, that like you, when I find that person that is more precious to me than the most valuable gem, I will defend them with my life. The same way you defended Zabuza til the bitter end.