Zabuza's clone turned slowly. The amusement had evaporated from its watery eyes, replaced by a wary curiosity. The blond boy lay curled in a ball on the ground, bleeding, neutralized. But the game wasn't over. Something else had happened in that instant of violence.

A pressure.

It wasn't the killing intent of the real Zabuza, nor the dense chakra of the mist. It was something new, a force emanating from the center of the team's formation. The mist itself seemed to retreat a few feet around them, pushed back by an invisible, furious will. The source was the Hyuga girl.

She had been there the whole time, a ghostly and evasive presence, but now she was the epicenter of a silent earthquake. Her face, once a mask of timid concentration, was now one of terrifying impassiveness. Her shoulders were relaxed, but the energy vibrating from her was so palpable it made the air crackle.

And her eyes… her lavender eyes, once gentle, now burned with a cold, white light.

"And what's this now?" the clone growled, feeling a dangerous instinct its watery programming shouldn't have allowed. "A new trick?"

From the ground, Sakura watched the scene, her mind blank. The cry of "NARUTO!" still echoed in her ears. The sound of the blow, dull and brutal, replayed in her head. And the image of the blood, so red against the orange fabric, had left her empty. Guilt was a cold claw tightening around her chest, stealing her breath. Because of me, she thought, over and over. He got hurt because of me.

Sasuke, for his part, was frozen in place. He had seen the dobe's sacrifice with a mix of disdain and a strange, uncomfortable pang of respect. But what he was seeing now defied his understanding of the world. The chakra radiating from Hinata wasn't that of a genin. It was dense, overwhelming, and charged with a fury so pure it gave him goosebumps. It wasn't possible. Weakness didn't just turn into power like that. It was a violation of the natural laws that governed his universe of elites and bloodlines.

Hinata didn't answer the clone's question. She didn't look at it as an opponent. She looked at it as a thing to be eliminated.

She took a step.

And the world broke.

Her Fluid Step, supercharged by the fury of the Lioness's Heart, made her vanish from sight. The clone, preparing for a frontal assault, found itself striking empty air.

Before it could process the failure, a current of air swirled to its right.

Hinata was there, her palm open.

The Gentle Fist strike was not subtle. It impacted the clone's side with the force of a sledgehammer. The water that formed its body burst outward, and the copy staggered, its form flickering violently.

"Damn you!" it roared, swinging the Kubikiribōchō in a desperate arc, more to create space than to attack.

But the blade only cut through the mist.

Hinata's Predictive Vision, now functioning at a near-precognitive level, didn't just show her the clone's movements; it showed her the intent behind them. She saw the contraction of muscles, the flow of chakra to the sword. She was so far ahead of it that the fight was an insult.

She appeared behind it, ducking under the swing of the blade. Her two fingers, imbued with a furious chakra, jabbed into the clone's lower back. The impact was precise, devastating.

The water clone convulsed. The lower half of its body began to dissolve, unable to maintain cohesion.

"This is impossible!" the watery voice shouted, now tinged with a very real panic. "No genin can move like that!"

It leaned on its sword to keep from falling, using the weapon as a makeshift staff. It turned, dragging the blade across the ground, trying to block Hinata's legs.

She leaped. Not a great, athletic jump, but a small, efficient hop that placed her right above the blade as it passed under her. She landed without a sound, already inside the clone's guard.

Her hand moved again, this time toward the wrist holding the weapon. Another Gentle Fist strike.

The clone felt its chakra in that arm get completely blocked. The watery fingers opened, losing their strength. The giant Kubikiribōchō slipped from its grasp and fell to the ground with a dull, metallic thud, sinking into the damp earth.

The clone was disarmed.

From his prison, the real Zabuza watched through his copy's eyes, his mind a whirlwind of disbelief. She's not reacting. She's anticipating. She's reading my every move before I even order it. Her Byakugan… it's not a normal Byakugan. It's something more. Kakashi, what kind

of monster have you been hiding?

The clone, now unarmed and unstable, attempted one last desperate open-palmed strike, but the Hyuga gave it no quarter. She became a storm of precise strikes. Palm, fist, fingers. Each impact vibrated against the chakra-contained water, sending the clone stumbling backward, again and again. It was no longer attacking, only defending, uselessly trying to block the barrage of attacks that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

"Naruto-kun..."

Sakura's voice was a broken whisper. The adrenaline from the fight faded, and reality came crashing back down on her. She ran to Naruto, stumbling, and fell to her knees beside him.

"Naruto, are you okay? Answer me, you idiot!"

Tears streamed freely down her cheeks, mixing with the dirt. Guilt was a poison burning her from the inside.

Naruto shuddered, a groan of pain escaping his lips. He opened his eyes. They were glassy, unfocused.

"Sakura-chan…" he managed to say. His right hand moved weakly, trying to grab his injured shoulder. "Hurts… like hell..."

"Don't talk," she sobbed. "Save your energy. I… I don't know what to do. I'm not a medical-nin." Her helplessness was a new form of torture. She had perfect chakra control, but she didn't have the knowledge to use it, to heal, to help.

"Don't… don't worry about me…" Naruto gasped, forcing his eyes to focus. He saw the clone falling back, unable to defend itself from Hinata's fury. "The clone… is busy..."

"Yeah," Sakura said, her voice choked. "Hinata… she's..."

"Good..." he cut her off. The pain was a fog threatening to consume him.

"Sakura-chan!" His voice, though weak, regained a spark of its usual urgency, a thread of steel that cut through Sakura's self-pity. "There's no time for this! Focus! Did you manage to find a weakness?"

The question hit her like a slap. A weakness? How could she think about that now? Naruto was bleeding beside her because of her.

"What? Naruto, you're hurt, we have to—"

"NO!" he shouted, and the effort brought a grimace of agony to his face. "Kakashi-sensei… is still trapped. Zabuza… can make another clone at any moment. We have… seconds! You're the smartest one here! Your brain is our best weapon! USE IT! Find a weak point!"

His words, desperate and filled with an unshakable faith in her, were the anchor she needed. Guilt wouldn't save anyone. Panic wouldn't free their sensei. Only logic could.

He trusts me

, she realized. Even now, hurt and semi-conscious, he trusts my intelligence.

Sakura closed her eyes, forcing the image of blood away. She made herself take a deep breath, feel the flow of her own chakra, and remember the power she had discovered. She activated her ability, the Analytical Eye.

The world of mist and fear dissolved. In its place, a landscape of blue lines and energy flows appeared. She saw the chakra of the clone Hinata was battering and noticed the unstable "knot" at its center, a focal point struggling to maintain its form. A distraction, she thought, just as Naruto had warned it would be.

Her analytical gaze swept across the battlefield, ignoring the trees and the dirt, seeing only the underlying structure of reality. It settled on the distant figure of Zabuza, standing on the water, his hand plunged into the sphere containing Kakashi.

And there it was.

It wasn't a perfect sphere of energy. It was a construct, a scaffold of chakra. And like any construct, it had a support point, a keystone. Zabuza's hand. It wasn't just maintaining the prison; it was feeding it with a constant flow of chakra. The point of contact wasn't a defense; it was a conduit, a vital connection. If that connection were broken, the entire structure would collapse.

"I have it..." she whispered, with an astonishment that overcame her fear. "I HAVE IT!"

Her cry boomed across the clearing, sharp and filled with absolute certainty. She stood up, her finger pointing not at the retreating clone, but directly at the real Zabuza through the mist.

"The clone is unstable, but the real weakness is the prison! The point where Zabuza's hand touches it! It's not a defense, it's a connection! A strong, precise impact there could break it!"

The revelation changed everything.

Sasuke looked at her, the fury in his eyes replaced by a cold, calculating understanding. The logic was flawless. The annoying girl, the fan-girl, had just designed a winning strategy.

Hinata stopped her assault, leaving the misshapen water clone barely standing. She turned, the fury in her eyes giving way to intense concentration. She heard Sakura's words and her Byakugan focused on the distance, confirming the analysis.

On the ground, Naruto heard the plan. The pain was still there, a fire in his shoulder, but it was now covered by a layer of pride so immense it nearly choked him. She did it. She saw through the trick. She's incredible.

A smile, pained but radiant, spread across Naruto's blood-and-dirt-stained face.

"Alright, team," he said, his voice hoarse but filled with a confidence that was contagious, a confidence that united the three of them in a single will.

"Let's go free him."