Breaking style rules

One behind him was making seals. Zabuza did not notice. He was supremely aware of any clone that entered his hand-to-hand range, but those beyond did not concern him. They would only die in their turn. Thus, he was startled, if only momentarily inconvenienced, when all the clones around him lunged at once and grabbed his limbs, and more startled at the voice from behind him.

"Katon: goukakyuu no jutsu!"

A fireball engulfed all the clones—the twelve or so of Naruto holding on as well as the one of Zabuza that was the target. Naruto's clones disappeared immediately, leaving puffs of smoke behind. Zabuza's held out for almost a full two seconds in the fire before dissolving into another puddle of water. Sasuke's henge ended as he bent over, panting. Some five of Naruto—all that were left of the original mob of clones—gathered round him.

The original Zabuza, standing still on the surface of the river by Kakashi's prison, raised his eyebrows. "Impressive, brats." He raised his free hand again. "Mizu bunshin no jutsu." Another clone climbed out of the river, standing near the edge. Naruto glanced at Sasuke, releasing his remaining clones.

"That got us absolutely nowhere, didn't it."

"So it seems." Sasuke had recovered a little, and was standing straight. Naruto did not seem to have expended any energy at all.

Zabuza's new clone laughed. "An impressive showing! You caught me by surprise. It won't do you any good, though. You can't keep up attacks of that magnitude for as long as I can keep up making water clones."

Naruto glanced sideways at Sasuke. "Let's find out!" He crossed his fingers again, making another, though smaller, mob of clones. They all charged at Zabuza's water clone nearby. Sasuke was the only one to notice the big shuriken one of them had tossed him as it attacked. He looked it over for a moment, then raised an eyebrow.

The clones had all attacked Zabuza at once. As was more or less predictable, without one throwing heavy jutsus around, they did nothing at all. A single swipe of the big sword dispelled most of them and sent the remainder skidding away, dispersing with muted pops as they went.

Sasuke put the dots together quickly. By this time he had already gotten another shuriken from his pack. He leapt into the air, one of the two unfolded in his hand, the other behind him. "Take this, then!" A shuriken whirled and flew towards Zabuza—straight past the clone, targeting the real one still holding Kakashi prisoner. By the time Sasuke landed, his hands were empty.

Zabuza watched the incoming shuriken without any particular consternation. It was a formidable weapon, spinning at a high rate of speed, closing on him quickly, so fast that his eyes could not track its rotation. But if he moved just so, and grabbed it here... The shuriken stopped dead, abruptly, and Zabuza swung it out to one side to cancel its forward momentum. He grinned at the brats. "Good try, but..." He stopped. Another shuriken had been behind the first. This one was close, too close to grab, and his hand was out of place. It moved towards him as if in slow motion, and, with a sudden, convulsive effort, he leapt—not a leap as any self-respecting ninja would practice, but a desperate yanking of his lower body out of the way. His hand remained in the water prison, maintaining it, as he folded the rest of him up into a tiny space below his head. The shuriken passed straight underneath him, harmless, and he returned to position with a sigh of relief.

"An even better try! I might even acknowledge you as worth fighting. You still have no..." He cut himself off, again, at the sound of a henge behind him. He looked around frantically to see that the shuriken had, in fact, been a loud, annoying, blond brat with a kunai in his hand, who threw it hard at his shoulder with a cry of "Take this!"

Zabuza was faced with a choice. He could remove his hand from the water prison and dodge the kunai, which would leave him unharmed but fighting a pissed-off Sharingan no Kakashi. Or, he could take the shot, which was quite well aimed (Zabuza admitted with grudging respect) at the big, important muscles in his shoulder. The kunai would cripple his arm, and there was no way he would be able to maintain the water prison through that. That option would leave him quite emphatically harmed, and also fighting a pissed-off Sharingan no Kakashi. With one arm.

Zabuza chose the former.

That thought would have thrown him into depression, again, if there had not been important things happening to keep him distracted. Kakashi was threatening Zabuza with death. Routine enough, Sasuke supposed, and he was pissed off enough at Zabuza not to particularly care; he had taken a few hits from that clone when henged into Naruto, and they had hurt.

Zabuza was looking up, frightened. Kakashi was about to put his own sword through his neck. Zabuza was—falling over, apparently dead, of three senbon suddenly protruding from his throat. What?

Kakashi looked up, alert again, to see a shinobi in an odd, porcelain mask standing on a tree branch. Sasuke looked at—him? her? Impossible to tell—as closely as he could, but could not discern anything that was not obvious. I need my Sharingan.

The ninja was jumping down to the ground, approaching Zabuza's body. The ninja was saying something, something about being from Kirigakure and hunting down Zabuza as a traitor. The ninja was picking up Zabuza's body over his? her? shoulder. They're strong. I could probably do that, but it'd be kind of hard. The ninja was walking some distance away. The ninja disappeared, probably with a shunshin.

Kakashi looked around, seemingly caught off balance. Sasuke walked over to him. The dobe had crawled out of the river where he had landed from his henge stunt and walked over as well. Both Kakashi and the dobe were soaking wet, but that was trivial.

Kakashi looked at Sasuke. "Listen. I've overused this Sharingan. I'm going to collapse from chakra exhaustion pretty soon now. Get Tazuna home. Get me there. I'll just need to rest. You're in charge until I wake up." The dobe did not comment. Sasuke would have expected him to complain bitterly about that, but apparently he was too high on his earlier triumph to do so. Well, let him be. It had been impressive.

Kakashi reached up and pulled his hitai-ite down over his Sharingan, concealing it again. Then his visible eye rolled up in his head and he collapsed.