Chapter Text
"I would recommend for you to learn it full time, but if you want to stay a ninja then you should at least work at the hospital two days a week to build up the experience. You may not become as powerful as your teammates when it comes to fighting, but you will be useful or you could become even stronger than them when you are as talented as Tsunade."
The week passed rather uneventfully as the genin continued to train and taught the rest how to bandage wounds and stuff.
He was sitting on the bridge that their client was building as he taught Sakura, Shikamaru, and Sasuke how to see if a bone was broken or fractured when mist came out of nowhere.
"Well, well, haven't you recovered a little bit too good?" A chilling voice said as a man with a giant sword came out of the mist, beside him a smaller boy in their age group.
He knew that Kakashi still wasn’t at 100% of his power, so that meant the genin would be fighting the smaller man.
"Stay back with the client, we will protect you" Shikamaru said as his shadow already moved to capture the smaller foe. But the shinobi already dodged and threw a few senbons at Shikamaru who had to release his shadow possession jutsu to dodge.
From there the fight was intense. Kakashi was going toe to toe with the bigger swordsman, Zabuza seemed to be his name. It was the first time he had seen a fight between high-ranking ninjas and he was impressed.
They both had perfect control over their bodies and also precision to handle their chakra as they fired jutsu after jutsu against each other. The water dragon bomb was very impressive, would he be able to do that with wind as well?
Sasuke's fight against the smaller opponent wasn't going that well, Sakura while incredibly talented in chakra control and studying wasn't good at fighting at all, she was scared easily. Something that he could understand since it was the same with him.
Shikamaru tried to help the boy but he was just not the right person, their opponent had ice release and was just way too fast to be caught with Shikamaru's shadow possession skill. And they weren't strong enough to destroy the ice blocks.
Sasuke was in a defensive position as he tried to deflect as many senbons as possible. It was clear that their opponent didn't want to kill them, he only threw their senbons on harmless places.
He continued to watch as he saw something that let his heart stop for a second, these eyes, these beautiful red eyes. Sasuke was an Uchiha? He thought they had all died during the massacre. But these eyes were genuine, they tracked all movements even if his body wasn't able to keep up with it.
But that didn't matter, his body was already on the move. He didn't care about his own safety anymore, an Uchiha had helped him and he had a debt to repay.
He channeled as much lighting chakra through his veins as he could. With one wave of his hand, a strong gust of wind picked up as he propelled himself into the ice structure to block four incoming senbons. He hissed as one had gotten past his wind barrier and hit him in the stomach.
More and more senbons were thrown at them but he wasn't trained for this, he tried to command the wind around to form a protective barrier but some senbons still went through it, hitting his back and legs.
Come on, he had to think of something, coming out of here alone would be easy but he had someone to protect. Think, there has to be something to destroy these ice blocks, to slice .......
Yeah, he could slice them, he rotated as the wind around him picked up and became a tornado. He controlled the wind as it got stronger and stronger and then he made it sharp. Hundreds of small wind blades were cutting away at the ice so that the enemy had to flee backward.
"Hey, are you okay?" He asked for the first time as he tried to see if Sasuke was still conscious.
"Fine" The boy replied as he ripped the senbons out as if it was nothing. He applied healing chakra to the boy's wounds as he tried to find the enemy, it seemed that Shikamaru now used the time to cover them.
"Hold still, how am I gonna heal you when you move like this" He scolded as the genin gave him a weird look.
"Sensei!!!" Sakura's scream let him look up as he saw Kakashi thrown back to them with a kunai in his stomach. sh*t, sh*t, sh*t. Where the hell is Asuma?
"Oii, aren't you a medic? Since when does Konoha have medics that fight?" Zabuza asked as he came nearer, his sword already ready to slash Kakashi. No, if that man died then they would all die, well he would be safe, but he had to protect these people if he could.
He formed a small sword out of lightning chakra and moved to block Zabuza's sword, his bones cracked from just one block, sh*t he wouldn't be able to block a second attack like this.
"Impressive for your age" Zabuza commented as he was already moving to attack again.
Naruto didn't think as he inhaled as much as he could before he blew it out at once. Out came a gigantic wind gust that hit Zabuza face-first and threw the man backward for at least 20 meters before he hit the ground painfully.
"Cover me" He said as Sasuke and Shikamaru moved before him, he pulled the kunai out of Kakashi and applied healing chakra, that man had a lot of internal wounds.
"It's no use to heal me now, you have to defend until Asuma arrives and then heal me" Kakashi said and it made sense, healing him would take too much time, so he healed himself as he watched how Zabuza stood up and his face screamed bloody murder.
"Oh you will not have an easy death" The man said with a grin but he didn't react as he already shot lightning at his opponent.
Zabuza dodged four of his lightning attacks before he was hit in the stomach by a smaller wind attack. He didn't need to win, he just needed to buy time for them.
He was about to throw a few more attacks when he saw a senbon just a few inches from his eye, he was just about to dissolve himself as Sakura tanked the attack with her hand.
"You focus on Zabuza, we will keep you safe from him" She told him and so he did.
He didn't know how long he had exchanged blows with the man, how many of his bones had broken or how much he was bleeding but he was slowly losing this fight.
He had to end this, he couldn't summon his Sensei since she wouldn't be of much help right now. No, he had an idea but it was once again a little suicidal. But it was better than not trying and dying, so he did.
He went straight up at Zabuza as he charged his hands with his maximum capacity of lightning. Zabuza slashed at him, his eyes already tracking where he would dodge. He saw the eyes of the man widen as he realized that he wouldn't dodge.
Sasuke saw it clearly with his Sharingan, that medic Ken had given up on a stamina fight they would lose and instead chose to end it in one go. They all stopped for a second as they heard how lightning was charging in both his hands.
They saw how a boy their age was fighting an A-rank shinobi, but even more, they saw a suicidal idiot as the boy had gone head-first at their opponent. They saw how the blade came from the side and cut Ken in half as his lower body hit the ground and his upper body went flying past .....
"NOOOO" Sakura's scream was cut short as Ken's upper body changed direction while midair and touched Zabuza's head. Now this was what you called a scream of pain as Ken fried Zabuza's entire body as the man's skin turned black.
Zabuza's friend was so shocked that he didn't dodge Shikamaru's shadow possession jutsu as it trapped him. Zabuza fell lifelessly to the ground as Ken's upper body was also falling, but Asuma-sensei appeared out of nowhere as he caught that half.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry" Asuma whispered as Ken turned to dust? They all stared as both his halfs dissolved into dust until nothing was left of Ken.
"What happened?" Ino asked as she and the rest of the genin came to the bridge a little after Asuma.
"Ken died? I don't know, I haven’t seen someone turn into dust before" Kakashi answered.
"I'm not dead" All their heads turned to Ken as he came out of the forest, he was still bloody and super wounded as Sakura and Sasuke helped him over.
"We just saw how you got cut in half" Asuma said but his tone had changed into a more calmer one now.
"I switched myself out with doppelganger at the last moment" Ken lied, it was a rather plausible explanation and wouldn't give away his best ability.
"Thank god, I thought you died" Sakura confessed as she cried.
"I'm about to die when I don't heal myself" He confessed as they hurriedly put him down Asuma helped Shikamaru detain Zabuza's partner.
He healed himself internally as best as he could but his sensei was right, he needed to figure out how to improve so that his wounds healed on their own. He switched between healing himself and Kakashi. Sasuke was getting bandaged up by Sakura.
It was strange he could have sworn that he saw a mod of thugs coming their way, did they leave? Doesn't matter, he was just so exhausted.
