46 Naruto : Chapter 46

"Alright, we will continue. But once Wave Country gets back to its feet you'll have to pay the difference to the mission rank this will develop into." Kakashi told Tazuna.

"Of course, thank you so much." He said gratefully.

Naruto sealed the head of Meizu, whom he had decapitated in a scroll to collect the bounty later on. Kakashi decided that just leaving Gozu here, bound until the ANBU could collect him, was too risky.

"Naruto, do you have prisoner scrolls in your repertoire?" He asked.

"I would need to make it, but I can do the seals. I guess you don't want to risk him escaping when he can be a good source of information?" Naruto asked.

"Indeed." Kakashi said. Naruto nodded, took a blank scroll out of his backpack, took his sealing equipment and began drawing.

Sasuke and Sakura for the first time saw how good their team-mate was with fuinjutsu. They had never really seen him create a seal from scratch. To say they couldn't avoid being impressed was an understatement.

"Damn it, boy, you could think you were one of the Uzumaki of old." Tazuna said.

"I am an Uzumaki, Tazuna." Naruto answered, finishing the seal by pushing chakra into it.

"A real Uzumaki? But your hair is blond, not red." Tazuna exclaimed.

"I don't know my parents, but my mother was an Uzumaki. That much the Hokage could tell me." Naruto said.

"What is so special about the Uzumaki?" Sakura asked, clueless.

Kakashi looked at her strangely.

"Don't tell me they cut that important part of history out of the teaching plans of the academy?" Kakashi said.

"Huh? What do you mean?" Sakura asked.

"Okay, impromptu history lesson. Before the third great ninja world war Konoha had a sister village called Uzushio. It was located in the former land of whirlpools, an island nation close to Wave Country.

The leaders of the village were the Uzumakis. That clan was known all over the elemental nations for three things. Their longevity, their skills in kenjutsu and their incredible skill in fuinjutsu.

The Senju clan that founded Konoha and the Uzumaki clan that founded Uzushio were distant cousins. Konoha won the second shinobi war because we had the Uzumakis on our side.

But then, shortly before the third war started, Iwa and Kumo decided that to have a chance against Konoha in the third war, they needed to eliminate our strongest ally, Uzushio. They kept their attack plans completely secret. But they didn't expect the opposition they would have to face in Uzushio.

"All the ninjas there were exceptionally strong. The village was much smaller than Konoha, but their ninjas were all at jonin level if they had a few years of experience.

They managed to send the genin level ninjas away to evacuate the civilians. Sadly not all of those convoys managed to escape, but many did.

The united forces of Iwa and Kumo attacked relentlessly for three days. Konoha ninjas were on their way to assist Uzushio, led by Minato Namikaze, the Yellow Flash and Kushina Uzumaki, the Blood-Red Habanero or outside of Konoha the Red Devil. But they were too late.

They reached Uzushio on the fourth day when the last Uzumakis, who had held out to give the civilians a chance to get as far away as they could and hoped that Konoha would reach them to help in time, had fallen to the enemy.

But Iwa and Kumo didn't get a great win from this battle. They lost ten times the ninja Uzushio had lost.

"It was that battle where my sensei earned his name of Yellow Flash and Kushina got her name of Red Devil. They tore the remaining ninjas down. It was nothing but a bloody massacre.

The weakened ninjas from Iwa and Kumo, while still having the numeric advantage were no match for those two and the rest of the Konoha forces.

They were killed to the last member. In remembrance of our failure to reach Uzushio in time to help them, like they did for us in the past, Konoha wears the spiral of the Uzumaki clan on the back of our chunin and jonin vests.

While the crest of the Uzumaki clan is white like on Naruto's shoulder, the symbol on our vests is red to always remember that battle." Kakashi said.

'So he too is from a nearly extinct clan.' Sasuke realized.

Sakura was solemn. She hadn't known about that. And it seemed to have been a really important historic event. Why wouldn't the students at the academy learn about it? Naruto had taken in the story calmly. He had already known about it. It was a big part in both of his parents' journals. But hearing it from Kakashi sensei was still something different.

...

The journey continued without incidents until they reached the coast where Tazuna had organized for a boat to transport them over to Wave Country. The man who stirred the boat was extremely nervous, despite them having cover from the early morning fog. When they passed the bridge, Naruto couldn't help but let out a soft whistle.

"Damn it, Tazuna. That really is one impressive bridge." He said.

"Thanks. I told you I'm a super bridge builder." Tazuna answered.

Once they reached land, the fisher wished Tazuna luck to get home safely while Tazuna thanked him for his help. Naruto sent out a new batch of clones transformed into birds to scout the island.

He needed to have a good reason to know certain things after all. Identifying missing nins from a bingo book was no problem. Kakashi knew he was always over prepared.

But knowing about the political and geographical highlights of Wave Country if he didn't send out scouts wouldn't be good. And honestly, taking out a camp of five hundred thugs on his own while possible, would be much easier if his sensei helped.

"How far is your home from here, Tazuna?" Kakashi asked.

"About one and a half hours." Tazuna answered.

"Be on guard. It's probable that we will encounter opposition before we reach Tazuna's home." Kakashi warned.

His students nodded. They walked surrounding Tazuna. Naruto at point, Sasuke left, Sakura right and Kakashi behind Tazuna. Half an hour into their walk, Naruto threw a kunai into a bush, then looking into a different direction, then somewhere else.

"We have company, Kakashi sensei." Naruto stated.

"Location?" Kakashi asked.

"Changing at a fast pace." Naruto said.

Hidden in the trees Zabuza Momochi was really impressed. He wouldn't have thought that a team like this was protecting the bridge builder.

He had found the remains of Meizu, but not of Gozu. And from Meizu he could only tell that his head had been cut off cleanly. No other injuries. Probably Kakashi's work.

But the blond was definitely a sensor. That could be a problem. Otherwise he didn't look that special. The team seemed to consist of genins. He decided to introduce himself properly and hauled his giant sword through the air at the group.

"DOWN!" Kakashi shouted and pulled Tazuna to the ground.

Sasuke, Sakura and Naruto were drilled to immediately react to their sensei's orders and went down. Naruto in the position of a push-up so he jumped up again after the sword had sailed over his head, ready to defend.

"My, my. I didn't expect somebody like you here; no wonder the demon brothers couldn't fulfil the mission." Zabuza said, standing on his sword, which was stuck into a tree.

"Zabuza Momochi, Demon of the Mist." Kakashi said.

"Ah, you've heard of me. Well, I have to ask you to hand over the old man to me. I'm not after you and your brats. If you do, I'll just let all of you run home." Zabuza said.

"Sorry, can't do that. It's our mission to protect Tazuna." Kakashi said.

"A pity." Zabuza said.

Sasuke looked like he wanted to attack this new opponent, but Kakashi held him back.

"No, this one is not like the two before. Against him I need to go all out. Release your seals and protect Tazuna. Naruto, you're in command." Kakashi said and pushed up his headband, revealing the sharingan.

"Oh, the sharingan this early on, I'm honoured. I've heard about you too. When I was still in the ANBU of Kiri you were in our bingo books. You're known as the Copy Ninja. The man who has copied a thousand jutsus." Zabuza said.

Zabuza let loose a high amount of killing intent. He was really surprised when none of the genin reacted to it, but countered it. Especially the blond didn't seem bothered at all. He had taken the other two and positioned them around the old man.

"You'll have to do better than that, Zabuza. Those are my students and I've put them through harsh training. You didn't expect me to let them go on C-rank missions without being used to killing intent?" Kakashi mocked.

"Interesting. You seem to have some talented ones there. But can they really succeed in this harsh world? Were they scared when you killed Meizu?" Zabuza asked.

"Huh? What is he talking about? You killed that ninja, Naruto." Sakura asked.

"Don't give up sensitive information, Sakura." Naruto hissed back.

"Wait, the blond brat killed Meizu? No way. Meizu was a chunin and in a team with Gozu really dangerous." Zabuza exclaimed.

"Release." Naruto just quietly said, letting his resistance seals go completely.

"Ah, so these are not your normal genin? Or Meizu was just careless. Would make sense." Zabuza pondered.

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