Note: Going forward, please assume that the ninjas-both squads- know why Inari doesn't believe in heroes, assume that they found out at some point in the last month that they had been staying there.

About a week after the Teru squad had captured the Zabuza and Haku, Gatou gave the order to attack. Just like Haku had said, they attacked while Naruto, Fu, Gaara, and Yagura were guarding the bridge and the team from Konoha were guarding the bridge builder's family.

Zabuza and Haku suddenly appeared out of nowhere as a dense cloud of fog surrounded the entire bridge.

"I'm fighting Zabuza! You guys can figure out fighting Haku by yourselves!" Yagura shouted, jumping away from Naruto, Fu, and Gaara and pulling Zabuza with him by catching the back of the bandages that hung loosely around his neck with the smaller hook on his staff and trapping his arms with the bandages wrapped around his own wrist. Even though it only took Zabuza a few seconds to free himself, they were already on the other side of the bridge and clear of the thick fog surrounding the others by the time he broke out of the bandages and dropped to the ground. Zabuza quickly pulled up more fog, but Yagura blew it away as soon as Zabuza was able to call it up, so Zabuza resigned himself to a fight without his fog obscuring his form from his opponents. As such, the two of them began to fight each other at each other with their weapons raised.

On the other side of the bridge, Gaara threw up a dome of sand to prevent Haku from rushing over to help Zabuza and a smaller one to guard the bridge builder before saying "You guys can fight him yourselves, I'll just watch this time, Shusaku and I need practice maintaining these domes anyway."

"I call dibs!" Naruto shouted out, leaving Fu behind as he suddenly charged at Haku.

"No fair! I want to fight too! Naruto you jerk! get back here! I want to fight him!" Fu yelled after him, stomping her foot and pouting a bit when Narut showed no sign of listening to her.

"Just fight them together, you need to learn how to share anyway," Garra called after them, as he sat down to watch the fight.

"First one to land a hit on him gets to take him down!" Fu suggested.

"Fine."

With that The two of them started to try to attack Haku, who made a wall of ice mirrors that was just smaller than Gaara's sand dome. (He didn't have much sand with him so the dome wasn't really all that big.) Gaara was on the very edge of the ice mirror's reach, and Haku tried to attack him, but the sand dome just shrank a bit, and gave up a little bit of it's sand to defend Gaara. After many unsuccessful attempts to hit him, Haku gave up in favor of dodging a kunai from Naruto who, like Fu, had stopped to see if Gaara would get the first hit on Haku. Seeing that Gaara was just sitting there not really interested in fighting, Naruto decided to force Haku to fight either him or Fu instead.

Fu likewise decided to attack and speeded infront of Naruto, purposefully cutting off the path and successfully landing a blow to Haku's shoulder. Haku seemingly melted into on of his mirrors and started attacking from there with his acupuncture needles.

Naruto, a bit disgruntled that Fu landed the first hit, plopped down next to Gaara with a huff. Laying his head on Gaara's shoulder and watching Fu fight Haku sulking all the while.

Fu was doing her best to take Haku down, but she was having a hard time. Haku was really fast, she couldn't keep up with him, and Haku kept melting into his mirrors, at which point it was impossible for Fu to attack him. Every time he left his mirrors to attack, Fu tried to grab him with the wrappings that were always around her wrist, but she fell just barely short every time. She was getting frustrated, loosing control of her chakra which made the bindings that she was manipulating with her chakra even harder to control, making it miss Haku by an even larger margin.

Her chakra was steadily getting more and more agitated, getting hotter and making the air hot and stifling. Haku shuddered a bit, unsettled, but he decided that this was a good thing, being so agitated that the very air changed meant that she wasn't thinking clearly and would probably not be able to find a way to defeat him even if she originally had the ability to do so. Haku just kept trying to attack without killing these kids.

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Meanwhile Team 7 from Konoha were watch the bridge builder's house. Both Tsunami and Inari had stayed in that day and were cooking together in the kitchen. Kakashi and Sasuke were out in the forest doing chakra control training. Sakura, who had already walked up the tree, was with Iruka in a different room, listening to Inari and Tsunami. Iruka was trying to discuss different training ideas with Sakura, but she kept getting distracted with thought of Sasuke. Iruka just sighed as Sakura started squeeling for the umpteenth time.

Iruka decided to leave and check on Sasuke's training and hopefully come up with a way to get Sakura to focus, trusting that Sakura could handle anything that came up and figuring that nothing would happen since nothing has happened in the last month that they had been guarding the bridge builder's family. Sakura just kept squealing and giggling, messing with her hair and trying to find a style that would impress her precious Sasuke.

A scream pierced the air, shattering the Sakura's delusions before it was becoming muffled. Sakura got up swiftly as Inari started shouting for the man attacking them to let go his mother. Sakura hurried into the kitchen to find a mercenary with beady eyes, and a cruel smirk on his face, with his arm hooked around Tsunami's neck in a choke hold. Inari was standing between them and Sakura, shakily pointing a knife at the mercenary, desperately trying to keep his eyes open through his tears. Sakura quickly pulled a kunai from the kunai sheathe strapped around her thigh, and lunged at the mercenary, trying to make him let go of Tsunami, but the bandit tightened his grip on Tsunami and shifted to grab the sword resting at his waist, which he held up against Tsunami's throat, cutting into her throat enough to draw blood but not enough to kill her, forcing Sakura to retreat for fear of making him slit Tsunami's throat.

She watched the mercenary carefully, searching for any opening so that she could save Tsunami and hopefully get the mercenary away from the house. Before she could though, a mercenary came up from behind her and attacked her with his cudgel. He caught her off guard, but didn't manage to take her out on the first hit. He was aiming for her head, but she was much shorter than he had anticipated, especially with her a bit shorter than usual, crouched in her fighting stance. As it was, he only managed to stun her, the blow glancing off her shoulder before hitting her head as he had originally intended.

Sakura quickly jumped to the side to avoid getting hit again, and watched both mercenaries apprehensively, knowing that she wouldn't be able to take on two of them at once, not if she was trying to get back a hostage on top of trying to keep Inari from getting captured as well. She might've stood a chance when there was just one of them, but she didn't really have any fighting experience outside of the academy, and even among her class, she wasn't exactly the best fighter, really only average for her class, and with no fighting experience outside of it.

She stared at them, motioning for Inari to get behind her, trying to, at the very least protect him. "Inari, you have to listen to me, you have to run, I'll keep them off your back and help your mom, but I can't do as well, while trying to protect you as well. Run and get help, Inari."

Inari hesitated for a moment, but took off towards the woods where he knew that Sasuke would be training, yelling for help the whole way. Just as he reached the edge of the clearing though, more mercenaries came out from among the trees and intercepted him. Inari swerved to try to avoid them, but was caught, even though he went as far as driving the kitchen knife at the leg of the one who grabbed him, only getting free for a moment before getting grabbed by another mercenary. No one will come save us, heroes don't exist after all. He thought, giving up just as a voice came out of nowhere "Hey! what do you think you're doing!"