"Mei, is it?" Zabuza's bass rang out, tinged with mockery and way too loud for the exhausted camp. "Now that those hypocrites from Konoha have cleared out, let's have a proper talk about the revolution. Just so you know, I categorically did not like what just went down. Right now I want to take your head off for pissing away what belongs to Water!" He cut himself off for a moment, choking back a surge of rage. "But first, report. Who are you and what exactly do you do? Then, who's this ninja in black, Mittei. Then, about Natsuo. The rest I already know."
He folded his arms across his chest and stared at her expectantly. Somewhere off to the side, Chojuro audibly gulped. The premonition of disaster that had been gnawing at him all this time suddenly became almost tangible.
Mei's delicate-looking body slowly turned.
"Re... port..." She separated each syllable with deliberate precision. "You think I should be answering to you?"
An instant, and suffocating killing intent crashed down on the clearing. The world darkened for a second. From the woman's body surged a thick, almost viscous wave of chakra, colored deep purple.
Zabuza merely raised his eyebrows in surprise. He had his grievances with her, sure, but he hadn't expected she'd have any with him.
"You think because thousands of people in the east of Water won't starve to death, we 'don't owe anyone anything'?" Her voice cut through the air. "We're not bandits who choose war over dialogue!"
Josame didn't hesitate for a single second. Grabbing Chojuro by the scruff, he bolted toward the forest. Ao, freezing for only a moment, shot off in the opposite direction, leaving a smeared trail in the grass. The shinobi hidden in the thicket scattered in all directions.
Only one young shinobi in a mask remained beside Mei and Zabuza. He stood firm, though his trembling fingers betrayed just how hard it was to stay upright under the weight of her aura.
"You're a nobody who ran the second Yagura ground your pawns to dust." Terumi was really on a roll now, her eyes glowing with excess chakra.
Zabuza's hand moved almost reflexively to his sword's hilt.
"And after that, you come here. You dare disrespect my guests. You address me like I'm your pathetic subordinate."
With each word, the dark aura around her grew denser, heavier.
"A stray mutt who doesn't know what honor means, trash..." She took a step forward, and even the swordsman was taken aback. "I'll show you where you belong."
The earth under her foot shuddered. The next instant, Mei launched herself forward.
Close combat? Against a swordsman? Momochi let out a contemptuous snort. From him erupted an equally terrifying aura of a killer whose victims were beyond counting. Like a massive colossus, he didn't budge from his spot, aiming to cleave the overconfident kunoichi in two with a single swing of his blade.
Mei flashed past like a shadow, but just a couple of meters before Zabuza she jerked sharply to the side, dodging the rising sword. Spinning on her heel, she immediately exhaled a roaring torrent of superheated steam at him.
Momochi hadn't expected that attack trajectory.
"So she wasn't going for taijutsu from the start?"
He couldn't pull back the heavy blade in time, so he simply released the hilt and poured everything into a leap, throwing himself out of the kill zone. His instincts were screaming danger.
Landing on a thick branch several dozen meters away, Zabuza looked back. The massive cloud of steam was slowly dissipating, and through it he could make out the silhouette of a woman. The air around her trembled with heat, but it didn't seem to touch her. Steam still billowed from her body.
She leaned down and unhurriedly picked up the blade from the ground. The metal hissed, sending fresh clouds of steam into the air.
"Kubikiribōchō... shame." Lifting the giant sword one-handed with a slight strain, she seemed to weigh it. "That I can't do to it what I did to Josame's paired blades."
In her grip, the sword began rapidly heating up. The edge turned red, gray smoke drifted off the blade. Now Momochi wouldn't be able to use it for some time.
"A swordsman without a sword." The corners of her lips lifted. "What a joke."
Hearing those words, Zabuza grimaced as if he'd been kicked full speed in the crotch. The memories were still fresh of how, briefly, he'd been turned into a laughingstock... and now it was happening again.
Haku, just like his master, had leapt away. Having barely stayed on his feet under the crushing pressure of Terumi's aura, unable to find the right moment to act, he finally let out a focused exhale.
A cold halo of chakra erupted from his body. Ice senbon instantly formed in his hands. He launched a full fan of them at the future Mizukage and vanished into the forest in the same instant.
A casual swing of the superheated blade, and the senbon, touching the steel, exploded into hissing spray. The water fell to the ground in boiling drops.
Another moment, and the white haze on the clearing began to rapidly thicken.
While the games with the sword distracted his opponent, Zabuza flew through a familiar sequence of hand seals. Cold mist crept from his feet, filling the space faster and faster.
"Naive," Mei's voice came from somewhere inside the white veil. "I've mastered our country's signature jutsu too."
Enclosed in the impenetrable haze, the combatants became incredibly dynamic! The smaller shinobi silhouette, having hidden off to the side earlier, immediately moved toward the woman, weaving hand seals on the run. A second later, he tried to impale his opponent on a barrage of ice spears that shot up before him. But the kunoichi, simply planting the sword in the ground, wove her seals even faster, and a flood of lava burst from her mouth! It reached the ice just as it was forming, then blew the whole thing to hell. The ice ninja immediately fell back.
At the same time, moving silently, Zabuza tried to reach Mei. But the woman, continuing her technique, snapped her head toward the new target, forcing the man to immediately pull back. Lava flooded dozens of meters ahead, turning the battlefield into a nightmare to cross.
Meanwhile, Yuki had already regrouped. Pulling out ordinary metal senbon, he returned to the fight, launching the projectiles. But Terumi, cutting off the lava, deflected them with a single sharp, curved sweep of a drawn kunai. Then she immediately moved toward the weaker target.
The woman again feigned trying to force a close-quarters fight. This time it even looked far more convincing; the fragile Haku was a target well within her reach. And she gave a satisfied smirk when Zabuza, understanding this perfectly, abandoned the idea of going for his sword and dealing with things through Suiton, and instead bolted after her at full speed.
A fresh volley of senbon flew toward Mei, which she deflected without trouble. As she closed in, she, to Yuki's surprised look, instead of engaging, took a deep breath and made a powerful leap forward and upward, ending up in the air upside down.
From her mouth, aimed right at where Zabuza and Haku stood nearly side by side, burst a massive, wide stream of lava!
But before it could land, the viscous liquid splashed against a dome of ice that materialized right then and there.
"You think we'd fall for the same trick twice?" Zabuza said from inside. Yuki, straining, fought to hold the defense while lava streamed down its surface, blocking their view.
"She can't hear you, Zabuza-sama," the boy pointed out, just in case. The swordsman without a sword, realizing it, grimaced at his own blunder.
Thu-u-u-m, the sound rolled through the air as Haku tensed up, wincing from a large blast of scalding steam that washed over his dome.
"Trapped," Momochi noted with displeasure. Then a vicious snarl settled across his face beneath the bandages. "But that bastard from Konoha taught me a thing or two... Hold on a bit longer, Haku. I'll lead her away."
After that, Zabuza formed a seal, concentrated, then used the Substitution Jutsu on his own sword! Inside the dome came the clang of the superheated Kubikiribōchō hitting the ground, while Momochi himself, back in the impenetrable mist, advanced on Terumi.
But both were masters of the haze. So when Mei sensed her opponent appear, she immediately left two clones to continue her work. Turning around, she unleashed a wide stream of steam from her mouth, instantly boiling the mist over a huge area and forcing the swordsman to retreat.
Crack, the sound came from the dome as the kunoichi's two clones sealed it with superheated lava from both sides. And just before the molten rock tore inward and burned the occupant alive, the dome exploded at the last second, scattering lava in all directions and blowing away the mist, after which Haku's figure darted away.
The clones, instead of pursuing their target, instantly swapped places with their creator. Mei herself went after Haku, while her doubles held back Momochi.
And soon Terumi caught her prey. Running through the misty forest, she overtook Yuki and immediately exhaled steam, a technique that came much easier in these conditions. Haku immediately had to change his trajectory, leaping to the side. But through the steam he didn't notice a trio of kunai flying toward his already-turned back, burying themselves in him.
After that it was just a matter of technique. Terumi quickly caught up to the exhausted, wounded shinobi and, closing in for hand-to-hand, swiftly disarmed him of his drawn kunai, then finished it with a particularly tricky combination of sweeps and a powerful kick to the head.
The ice ninja was sent flying like a broken doll.
But the fight wasn't over yet. Having dealt with the clones, swordless as he was, Zabuza was already charging at the woman who'd dared to take out his "tool." His face wore an expression far more vicious than usual.
Mei immediately had to dodge, weaving through the forest herself while she prepared another technique.
Terumi was undoubtedly a strong kunoichi physically too. But not strong enough to match Momochi in that department.
Chasing his opponent, after a few seconds Zabuza's face stretched into a contemptuous grin beneath his bandages. They were running back toward the clearing where the kunoichi had used her kekkei genkai the first time, where the cooling lava still covered a large area.
"Running into a dead end? Apparently she doesn't navigate the mist as well as I thought."
The kunoichi could resist the heat of steam and hot objects, sure, but everything had its limits. A sea of lava would be a barrier for her too.
Zabuza accelerated, trying to catch Terumi before she realized where she was heading and veered off.
But when the woman was mere steps from the lava and Momochi had almost caught her, she slammed her hands into a seal and vanished in a puff of smoke!
"A Substitution?!" Zabuza understood instantly, skidding to a halt at the edge of the scorching earth.
And of course, they were on revolutionary territory! The rebels would have prepared the field in case of a fight with the Konoha shinobi. But... perhaps a rage, greater than he'd care to admit, at Haku being brutally knocked out of the fight, combined with the thrill of chasing near-dead prey, had made Momochi forget that for a second.
Now it was time to pay for his mistake.
Mei, not above getting dirty, literally burst out of the ground behind him, where a prepared setup for her technique had been waiting. In the second she'd bought herself, she wove the seals and unleashed a wide wall of steam from her mouth.
Zabuza, caught between the lava and the advancing wall, could only click his tongue, then, forming his own hand seal, encase himself in a sphere of water.
But, alas. For the swordsman, this was no way out.
The sphere immediately began vibrating, hissing and releasing an even denser stream of steam. Inside, it became unbearable in an instant; the swordsman's skin turned red. The tightly wound bandages on his face grew soggy and slipped, baring a grimace of agony.
Concentrating her technique and approaching, Mei began boiling her opponent alive, like he was a bag of dumplings.
The mist, no longer maintained by anyone and evaporated by the steam, began to clear, revealing only the single, unrelenting stream of steam from the woman's mouth.
Finally the sphere collapsed, and with it the stream of steam ceased. The water, bubbling, spilled onto the ground.
Zabuza, red as a boiled lobster, had been hunched over but now straightened up, barely staying on his feet.
"...I underestimated you," he rasped, gasping for air. "Haaa..."
"Don't humiliate yourself... more than necessary. You showed something too," Mei, covered in dirt, began breathing heavily, showing this fight hadn't come easy for her either. She pointed at the ground in front of her, at the damp earth. "You'll debase yourself only on my command. Get on your knees. I want to see your submission."
"Ha... haaa..." Breaking into heavy breaths every other word, Momochi grinned, baring his shark teeth. "You said... I don't know... what honor is..."
"Leading the last revolution, did you even understand what path you were on?" Mei moved closer, not dropping her gaze. "A leader, even more than a subordinate, must understand his mistakes. Correct them. Bear responsibility for them. What did you do? Condemning people to death, you brushed them off like tools that lost their usefulness. What honor are you even talking about?!"
"Ha-ha..." Zabuza chuckled quietly, gradually building into unhinged laughter. "That's exactly... what I did. And I don't regret a thing!" One look at that was enough for Mei's face to twist. "That's how the shinobi world works! We're divided into those who use and those who are used! I wanted to be on top, to change it! The shortest path to power is the bloodiest slaughter! To save as many lives as possible, you have to start the bloodiest war! In the end... everything could have been different..."
"Could have," Mei agreed firmly, then shook her head. "But how unlikely that was."
She looked at him and saw not the legendary Demon of the Mist, but a cornered animal. That same boy from the academy ten years ago, who'd thrown himself at his peers with a kunai. She'd been a bit younger, but she was at the academy and remembered the person in front of her perfectly well, along with the stories about him...
Rows of children, the smell of blood, screams and groaning. A boy throwing himself at everything that moved, as if in the faces of his classmates he saw those he despised and feared the most.
"Know who I see in front of me right now?" she said quietly. "That same one. The boy from the academy. You staged another massacre. Because that's the only thing you're actually good at."
The chakra around her trembled as killing intent surged from her again. The crushing aura crashed down once more on the barely standing swordsman, forcing his head down. The air literally hummed with tension.
"Your past is horrific. And as much as I'd love to kill you right now, for the revolution's sake I have to say this. Either you forget who you were and completely submit to the rebellion. Or..."
Zabuza's head felt like it was being squeezed in a vise. Crimson scenes, drenched in blood, flashed before his eyes. Only they didn't belong to him.
He tried to straighten up. Failed. His consciousness was unraveling, thoughts turning sluggish, but he still found enough strength to answer:
"Go... fuck... yourself."
Mei's face twitched. This time she didn't hesitate.
An instant lunge, and a kick to the chest drove Zabuza flat on his back into the ground. Forming a concentration seal, she stared down. The soil beneath his body, just like the ground nearby, swelled, turned viscous and crimson with heat.
Then a scream pierced the forest.
"AAAAAAAAHHHH!!!"
The man convulsed, weakly, as much as he could now, thrashing against the foot pinning him down, but achieved nothing. His voice slowly faded to a rasp. Magma burned through skin, flesh, seeped into bone.
Mei, lost within herself, stopped hearing the sound. Before her eyes, scenes from the past flashed again.
She is a nine-year-old girl, with shaking hands driving a tantō to the hilt into the chest of a slightly older girl. Eyes full of horror cling to the blade. Trembling fingers grab the hilt, try to pull it out. But they can't. And before death, she lets out that same, desperate wail that drowns out everything else.
Mei didn't even notice the moment Zabuza's screaming actually stopped.
But right then, from behind the trees, staggering, a young ninja emerged. The mask on his face was shattered, showing a blood-smeared chin and a visible eye, with the beautiful, even in this state, half of his face. Almost like a girl's...
He dragged his legs, spending his last strength to reach the body lying in the magma.
Three meters from his target, he collapsed onto the scorched ground. But still stretched a hand forward.
"Za... bu... za... sa... ma..." The words barely passed through the blood filling his mouth. Breathing hard, he strained to turn his head toward Mei. A trail of tears ran down the visible, dirt-smeared part of his face. "Please... don't..."
Mei's heart clenched. As if something snapped both inside and outside. In his eyes she saw not so much Haku as her first victim.
Her nails dug into her palms. Inside her, hatred for who Zabuza was and remained tore against pity for those who followed him.
After a few seconds, the scales tipped one way.
She stepped back. Then with a kick, Mei sent Zabuza's body sliding across the charred earth until it stopped side by side with Haku, face to face.
"You know what happens for disobedience," she said quietly.
Then, turning, Mei vanished beyond the already-visible treetops in a single leap.
Those left behind couldn't move for almost a full minute. All Haku could do was place his palm on Zabuza's burned cheek.
A couple of minutes later, rustling sounded over the clearing again.
First one shinobi landed, then several more.
Nearby, the sounds of water techniques immediately erupted. The lava was slowly setting the surrounding forest on fire, and the blaze needed to be put out before it reached the tent with documents on the clearing.
The first to approach was wrapped in a familiar black cloak.
"Hah, kid, you two are some damn lucky bastards," Mittei drawled cheerfully, peering at the bodies. "Looks like Mei-sama was in a real bad mood. But you're alive, heh-heh..."
He crouched down, studying the two mangled bodies. Haku struggled to look up at him. Wanting to show off, Mittei dramatically thrust out his left hand. In it he held the severed head of a man with coarse features.
"This Stone shinobi had it way worse! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!"
The ninja who approached next flinched at the unhinged laughter.
"Leader... I need to work."
"Huh?" Mittei swiveled toward him and immediately stood up. "Yeah, yeah, go ahead. They'll croak at this rate."
The medic-nin dropped to his knees between Zabuza and Haku. His palms lit up with a soft green glow.
The smaller shinobi wasn't too bad. But the swordsman would have to walk around wrapped head to toe in bandages for a while, looking like a parody of the late Tsuchikage Mu.
Well, nothing terrible. At least the revolution in Kiri had its roles clearly sorted again, and everyone knew their place.
A certain swordsman with paired blades, of course, still had his reckoning coming. But Terumi had the procedure down pat by now. So the revolution could hold out peacefully until support from Konoha arrived.
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