"Sir!" reported the Missing-nin. "I was in my cover identity as Sanuin the Plague, a missing-nin mercenary. I was approached by a chunin who had a blank forehead protector."
"Which village?" asked Ibiki, writing details down.
"Iwa," said the spy. "Trace accent they couldn't conceal totally."
"If one assassin is being hired, a dozen more wouldn't be unexpected," mused Ibiki. "Fine. I shall inform the Hokage. You may return to the field."
"Sir!" said the spy, before disappearing in a blur of movement.
"So," said Zabuza of the Bloody Mist. "Konohagakure."
"Is it wise to infiltrate a Hidden Village, Zabuza-sama? We normally avoid them."
"Wise? No. Unfortunately, the job offers aren't coming in that much right now," admitted Zabuza. "Still, just in and out and then full speed with the genin's head towards the border. Let's split up here."
[Warning! Intruders detected. Two intruders. Chakra level analyzed as jonin class for primary, high chunin for secondary.]
Ibiki sighed as he regarded the little box on the table. One of Naruto's little gadgets, but it only seemed to activate at the most inopportune times. "Anko? Is that your snake reporting?"
"No sir. This is Cat. She's one of my cats."
"Okay," said Ibiki, flicking a toggle to [General] and making sure the [Encrypted] light was lit. "Dog. Hare. Badger. Move to support Cat. Ratel, Mantis, Tazmanian Devil - keep an eye out in case this is a feint."
Zabuza's eyes narrowed and his hand went to the hilt of his sword Kubikiribocho. The Decapitating Carving Knife fitted into his hands easily as he stopped from a light run.
"Well, that pretty much settles the identity issue," said a woman's voice as a figure settled into a crouch on a nearby roof.
"Maybe I'm just in town for supplies," suggested Zabuza. "That way I can just come in and pick up stuff and leave, and you won't have a lot of dead bodies later."
"I'm a little skeptical of that, Zabuza of the Seven Swords Of The Mist," said the woman with the cat-mask.
Zabuza frowned a little behind his own mask. He'd seen, and killed, ANBU operative before. They'd changed the masks slightly. Instead of small holes, there were large lenses in place. Instead of the "porcelain festival mask" look, there were armored bits.
"You can stop with the mist," said the ANBU as a fog gathered. "It won't help."
"Well, I wouldn't want to bore you," said Zabuza easily, accelerating the fog's development.
As the fog thickened to the point where he couldn't see his hands if he extended his arms, Zabuza smiled at the mistake the ANBU had made. Now he could easily form water clones and-
Zabuza blocked with his sword as another sword was abruptly slashing in from the side.
What happened when the two blades met was something odd to Zabuza's experience. Not only was there a large notch in his sword, but it had felt as if the blade had been twisted in his hand. "I'm intrigued. That's a sword I'm not familiar with."
"She's still working on the name," said another voice though this one then broke off into an awful coughing spasm.
"All this damp air isn't good for you," said a third voice.
Zabuza's eyes narrowed. They're all at the same range now that the girl's retreated. Which means they know at least approximately where I am. There's four of them. There's other things moving through the fog, but there's something off about them.
Zabuza continued shifting his position every few moments, then made three water clones and sent them off. Within two heartbeats he felt them being broken. Okay. Sitrep:not good. They can tell the difference between me and my clones and have some heavy hitters among them. Where's Haku?
"You know, you can go ahead and drop the fog. We're able to mark your position fairly accurately even with it in place."
Zabuza noticed something moving nearby in the fog and struck out. There was a loud clang as he hit something metal instead of flesh.
Whatever it had been had been hard and unyielding from the feel of it. Something that could block his strike - therefore something pretty tough.
Zabuza considered and moved again, forming another three water clones that he sent off in different directions as he dashed in a fourth direction. They wouldn't be able to simply let his clones go as there was a civilian population he could attack. So that cut the number of his pursuers down to...
Dogs suddenly dogpiled on him, their jaws locking down to hold him in place.
His fog cleared against his will, revealing that he had four masked ANBU members surrounding him. The one in front was pulling off his Dog-mask to reveal...
"Sharingan Kakashi? I'm honored to have such a famous nin as my opponent," said Zabuza, not wanting to give off any indication of how screwed he considered his current position. This was a bit nerve-wracking, to the point where he felt an unpleasant crawling sensation on his back.
"What about his partner?" asked the woman in the cat-mask.
"He had some weird ice jutsu, probably a kekkei genkai, but it proved to be vulnerable to sonic attacks," said an ANBU in a badger mask.
They weren't really distracted, but Zabuza judged this was about as good as he thought he'd get. He began to move, twisting and flaring his chakra to throw the dogs off, then stumbled as the crawling sensation gained severely in intensity.
Bugs? realized Zabuza Momochi as the amount of skin showing on his body rapidly decreased as he was swarmed.
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(Posted Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:11)
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