Even with the situation stacked horribly against him, Momochi Zabuza showed no fear at all. He had already dissected Kakashi's strategy, and even the body the Copy Ninja had been fighting was only a water clone.
In a flash, he appeared behind Kakashi and kicked him straight into the lake.
Kakashi surfaced, trying to scramble back onto solid ground, but Zabuza trapped him inside the Water Prison Technique.
"This is a special kind of cell you can't break. If you could move at all, I'd have a harder time killing you." Zabuza's smirk echoed coldly across the water.
In this duel between jonin, he had used preparation against carelessness and successfully locked Kakashi down.
Then he created a water clone and sent it charging toward the three genin.
"You really think wearing a forehead protector makes you a ninja?"
"A true ninja is someone who's survived real life-and-death battles."
"That means only the people written in my handbook deserve to be called shinobi."
"You brats aren't even close."
"Just a bunch of kids."
He threw out taunts without restraint. He didn't see any of the three as threats. A water clone alone was more than enough to crush a squad of genin.
Inside the Water Prison, Kakashi shouted for the others to grab Tazuna and run.
"You three, get Tazuna out of here now! You can't win against him. As long as I'm trapped in this Water Prison, he can't leave. If his clone gets too far from his real body, it'll lose its strength. Go, while you still can!"
But in that moment of crisis, the same Sasuke who had been terrified moments ago spoke in an icy voice.
"Run? Don't joke around. From the moment you got caught, we lost that option."
"Even if we did run, without you, Zabuza would hunt us down anyway. We'd all die eventually."
In a high-pressure moment, Sasuke made a calm, brutally accurate assessment.
"Correct."
Outside the video, Kakashi nodded. Sasuke had read the situation exactly right. If the Kakashi in the footage died, none of the genin stood a chance against a jonin. Splitting up wouldn't help. The speed gap was too big.
Their only hope was to free him.
But how?
Because he'd already seen Kaede Kitahara's earlier videos, the Kakashi watching knew he must have won this fight. That meant the Water Prison Technique ultimately failed to hold him.
The real question was, how had they managed it?
Since he already knew the outcome, Kakashi didn't feel any anxiety. Instead, he found himself analyzing everything with unexpected detachment.
Sasuke was doing well. As expected of an Uchiha. As expected of that man's brother.
By contrast, Naruto and the pink-haired girl whose name he didn't know yet were far less impressive.
On the screen, Sasuke hurled himself at Zabuza's water clone with desperate determination. He was knocked away instantly.
Naruto shook with fear, trembling uncontrollably and barely resisting the urge to run. It was instinct. This was the first time in his life a jonin-level killer had directed true bloodlust at him.
"I'm… I'm really gonna die."
But just as Naruto turned to flee, his fingers brushed the wound on his hand. He remembered the vow he'd made with that pain, the one where he swore he'd never rely on others to save him again. He wouldn't run. He wouldn't retreat.
That thought snapped into place.
Naruto dashed forward, only to get punched across the clearing just as hard as Sasuke had.
But what stunned everyone—both on-screen and off—was that Naruto had charged in not to fight, but to reclaim his fallen forehead protector. Even knowing how hopeless the situation was, he didn't give up. He picked up his courage as a shinobi and wore it on his forehead again.
"Hey! Eyebrows! Add one more name to that handbook of yours! I'm Naruto Uzumaki, a Leaf ninja, and the man who's gonna become Hokage someday!"
He tied his forehead protector back in place. His voice startled everyone.
"Heh. That personality… he takes after my sensei's wife more than the sensei," Kakashi muttered outside the video, unable to keep from smiling. Unexpectedly bold for a kid from the academy.
Maybe this team wasn't so bad after all. Two out of the three were promising. Facing a jonin for the first time and still daring to act took guts.
You could train ability, but if someone lacked courage from the start, they could never become a great shinobi.
The thought made Kakashi laugh quietly to himself.
"That dead last…"
Sasuke watched Naruto revive the entire team's morale with just a few lines, and even he had to admit it. Naruto had surprised him.
On-screen, Naruto even called Sasuke over with a plan.
In a situation this dangerous, Naruto's sudden reliability left everyone stunned. Until now, whether it was Sasuke, Sakura, or Tazuna, all of them had thought Naruto was useless. No one expected him to think up a strategy at a time like this.
Zabuza only laughed, his sneer constant.
"How long are you brats planning to play ninja games?"
"When I was your age, my hands were already stained with blood."
"Demon of the Hidden Mist," Kakashi said, staring at Zabuza.
"Oh? So you've heard the stories," Zabuza answered.
Only then did the three children learn about Kirigakure's old graduation system.
To graduate from the academy, you had to kill a friend. Only the last survivor became a genin.
The brutality of it left the Leaf's sheltered students stunned. Even the Sasuke outside the video felt a chill.
What kind of monster village had tests like that? It was pure cruelty. No humanity at all.
And what was even more horrifying was that Zabuza had killed every single other student in his year, forcing the Mist to abandon its Blood Mist era.
A demon raised in that kind of hell would never take Sasuke or Naruto seriously. To him, they were just kids playing pretend.
He crushed Sasuke again with a single blow.
"Multi-Shadow Clone Technique!"
At the critical moment, Naruto unleashed his ace, the forbidden Multi-Shadow Clone Technique.