Chapter 80: Teammates!

Tenten found Lee on Training Ground Nine at six in the morning, because what other time would Rock Lee be training? At a reasonable time? Ha!

He was doing vertical push-ups on one finger with his weights on when she walked out of the treeline, and she stood there for a moment just watching him, because it had been weeks since she'd seen him and the vest on her shoulders felt like something she needed to present properly.

"Lee."

He flipped to his feet, turned, and saw her.

He saw the vest first. His eyes locked onto the green fabric and the scroll pouches and his whole face opened up into something so bright it could have replaced the sunrise.

"TENTEN!" He was in front of her in a blur. "YOU DID IT! I KNEW YOU WOULD! I KNEW IT!"

"Obviously." She flipped her hair with a smugness she had been rehearsing for three countries. "Was there ever any doubt?"

"NEVER! Not for one single moment!" Lee was circling her, examining the vest from every angle, his eyes sparkling. "It fits perfectly! You look incredible! A true chunin of the Hidden Leaf!"

"Thanks." She grinned. Then she looked at his vest. Then at his face. Then back at his vest.

"Lee."

"Yes?"

"When I left, you were a chunin."

"Yes!"

"And now you're a Special Jonin."

"...Yes!"

The grin inverted. "Are you kidding me?!"

"Tenten, I wasn't expecti-"

"I leave the village for a few weeks, I go to an enemy nation, I fight through a gauntlet of boulderheads, I EARN this vest, and I come home thinking FINALLY, finally I've caught up to you, and you're already a Special Jonin?!"

"It happened while you were away! I did not plan the timing!"

"AND you have STUDENTS?!"

"Three of them! They are wonderful!"

"Rock Lee has genin students." Tenten said it to the sky, as if appealing to a higher authority. "Rock Lee is teaching children." And the messed up thing was… Tenten couldn't even find an argument against it!

Rock Lee was a guy that would take a mission leading a bunch of baby ducks seriously ensuring each and every chick made it back home to their mama safely. He was the perfect man to put in charge of children. He cared about everyone, would give them a hundred and ten percent of effort and care and kindness.

Tenten sighed. "How?!" She grabbed the front of his vest. "How did you become a Special Jonin? Is there an exam? Tell me so I can go take it!"

"It was by recommendation! The Jonin Commander and the council approved it!"

"So I can't even take a test for it?! I just have to wait for someone to NOTICE me?!"

"You were noticed, Tenten! You won a Chunin Exam in enemy territory! That is incredibly impressive!"

"It's not SPECIAL JONIN impressive though, is it?!" She released his vest and crossed her arms and pouted, and the pout lasted about four seconds before the corner of her mouth betrayed her.

She wasn't seriously angry. She could never be seriously angry at Lee. But the frustration was real, the same frustration she'd carried since getting on the same team as him, since the day she realized that no matter how hard she trained, the green blur beside her was always going to be one step ahead. Two steps. Five. A mile. It wasn't jealousy. It was the particular ache of loving someone's success and hating that you couldn't match it.

"Spar with me." Tenten said.

Lee blinked.

"Right now. No holding back. I want to see where I stand."

"Tenten, you just got back from-"

"I've been resting enough. I'm fine. I'm better than fine. You've never seen what I can do now, Lee."

"Kakashi-san must have taught you a lot, huh?"

She cracked her knuckles with a grin. "Are we doing this or not?"

Lee set his feet and smiled. "Whenever you are ready."

Tenten unfurled her giant scroll and the sky filled with steel. Sword Rain, hundreds of weapons erupting upward and hanging for one breathless instant before driving point-first into the training ground in a spreading forest of planted weapons.

Lee avoided the falling blades without even looking upward, his body swaying and moving in place. The blades stood around him in every direction, a maze of steel, and Tenten was already inside it.

She pulled a katana from the ground and came at him.

The first slash was deadly. He avoided the blade numerous times as Tenten unleashed a flurry of slashes. When he was forced to block by kicking, she released the katana and pulled a shorter blade from the ground on his left and came again from the new angle.

Lee countered. She released. Grabbed another. Swung. Released. Grabbed. Every weapon used for a single beat, a single cut, a single moment of contact before she moved to the next, and the planted field gave her an infinite supply.

He started moving through the forest, pulling planted blades out of the ground as he passed them and throwing them to clear space. But for every blade he pulled, she had three more, and the throws she returned were faster.

"You've gotten much faster, Tenten!" Lee called, genuinely impressed.

"You haven't seen anything yet."

She grabbed a planted halberd, channeled wind through the blade, and the cutting edge sharpened into something more. Lee's eyes widened. The swing came at Lee's midsection and he was forced to bend over backwards, not sure if his weights could block that!

He disengaged, flipping backward, and his weights came off his legs. The bars locked together and the nunchaku were in his hands, and the fight's pace changed.

Tenten answered with two swords drawn simultaneously. She came at him with both blades working in alternating arcs, high and low, left and right, and Lee's nunchaku whipped between them, deflecting, redirecting, the iron bars ringing against her steel in a rapid exchange that scattered sparks across the training ground.

This new fighting style of hers made her entire arsenal feel like one continuous attack! Every transition was seamless. Every swap was faster than the last. If he allowed her to keep her momentum he doubted she would ever stop!

Lee folded the nunchaku into a staff and swept low. Tenten jumped it, planted both feet on the shaft mid-sweep, and used the momentum to launch herself over his head. She threw three kunai straight down at his skull and Lee spun the staff overhead to deflect all three, and by the time the last kunai ricocheted away she had landed behind him with a new weapon in each hand.

"Tenten, you're like a whole new kunoichi!" Lee smiled.

"Stop complimenting me and fight harder!"

He fought harder. The nunchaku came alive in his hands, the weighted bars whipping through figure-eights that created a circle of force nothing crossed safely. Tenten's blades met the circle and bounced, met it again and shattered, met it a third time and she abandoned the swords entirely and leaped back to pull the heavy chain whip from a sealed storage scroll.

The chain caught the nunchaku mid-swing and wrapped. For one instant they were locked, chain against chain, steel against steel, and they pulled in opposite directions and the ground beneath both of them cracked.

"Lightning Style!" Tenten shouted.

Lightning crackled down the chain from her end toward Lee's hands. He released the nunchaku and threw himself sideways as the electrical charge reached the point where his fingers had been, and the nunchaku fell to the ground sparking.

Lee came up empty-handed. Tenten pressed the advantage. She reeled the chain back and threw a fuma shuriken from her hip scroll, formed a single hand sign mid-throw, and the shuriken tripled in size.

Lee's widened at the size change and dropped flat. The massive shuriken passed over him and split a massive tree trunk behind him.

He rolled to his feet and Tenten was already on him with two axes and the Third Gate open.

The change was visible. Her skin flushed red, the veins at her temples standing proud, and her speed and strength were beyond the five times boost of the first gate. The axes came at Lee in combinations that would have overwhelmed most jonin, high-low-high, reverse grip to standard, pommel strike to axe slash, every attack flowing into the next without pause or breath.

"Ow! Ow! Ow!" Lee blocked barehanded. His palms caught blades, shredded. His forearms deflected edges, nearly severed in half. His feet shifted in patterns that kept him just inside the reach of her swings where the steel couldn't build momentum. She was much faster with the Third Gate. Stronger. But Lee was reading every movement.

"I need space! Sorry!" He kicked her with both feet, causing her to slide backward.

Tenten's response was to pull a massive war hammer from the ground, channel lightning through its head, and swing it at his chest with everything the Third Gate gave her.

Lee crossed both arms and took the hit. He was sent flying through multiple trees. When he finally stopped carving through the earth several meters away, he couldn't help but laugh as his arms were completely mangled and messed up. Bone and blood were horrifically visible. With a grunt of pain, Lee shook his arms straight as they healed rapidly.

"That one really hurt, Tenten!" he admitted with a smile. "It could've killed me if my arms were a little bit weaker!"

"I doubt it!" Tenten was right in front of him swinging that lethal hammer once more.

Lee ducked low to the ground with a spinning low kick. Tenten went rolling over his head, the hammer dropping with a sizable impact in the ground. Tenten caught herself by rolling back to her feet. Only for her eyes to widen in shock.

"Catch!" Lee tossed her hammer back at her.

"Thanks!" Tenten did indeed catch her hammer back before spinning and tossing it toward Lee at an even faster speed.

"Whoa!" Lee barely managed to grab hold of the handle as he went spinning several meters out.

Tenten dropped out of the Third Gate as she tossed several shuriken, all homing in on the spinning Lee from several directions. "Take a look at my other new trick. Ninja Art: Shuriken Shadow Clone Jutsu!" The dozens of shurikens suddenly turned into hundreds upon hundreds of shuriken.

Lee shouted as he entered the Third Gate himself. Instead of trying to stop himself from spinning, he increased his speed with the hammer in an effort to deflect the omni-directional shuriken swarm about to close in on him.

Clang-clang-clang!

Lee leaned into the spin instead of fighting it. The Third Gate's chakra flooded his muscles as he widened his arc, turning himself into a spinning dome with the war hammer's massive head carving a circle of displaced air around him. The first wave of shuriken hit that wall of spinning steel and shattered apart, broken blades spraying outward in every direction. The sound was deafening; hundreds of impacts ringing against the hammer's head in a continuous metallic roar.

Tenten watched from across the clearing, closely looking for an opening.

They came from above, from the sides, curving in at angles that no single thrown volley could achieve. Tenten's control over their trajectories was obvious. Each wave arrived a half-beat after the last, timed to catch the gaps between the hammer's rotations.

Lee gritted his teeth and kept spinning.

The hammer caught most of them. Most. But the sheer volume was suffocating, and no arc of steel, no matter how fast, could cover every inch of his body at once. The first one slipped through on a low angle and sliced across his calf. Another found his thigh, punching in deep enough to stick. Then one hit him in the ribs.

He kept spinning.

Two more buried into his stomach, one high and one low. His forearms caught a handful, blades biting through muscle and scraping against bone as he held his grip on the handle. One sank into the outside of his knee and his whole leg screamed, but the Third Gate held him upright and the hammer kept swinging. Another lodged between his ribs on the opposite side. His left hip. His right shoulder.

He kept spinning.

The last of the shuriken broke against the hammer's head and scattered into the dirt. The air cleared. The roar of impact faded into silence, and the only sound left was the whistle of the hammer still cutting through empty air.

Lee slowed. The spin wound down, his feet dragging shallow furrows in the earth until he came to a stop. He stood there for a moment, breathing in sharp, shallow pulls, the hammer still in both hands.

Then he let it drop.

It hit the ground with a heavy thud and his arms fell to his sides. Blood ran in dozens of thin streams from his torso down to his shins, soaking through his jumpsuit and pooling in his sandals. A shuriken was buried so deep in his right thigh that only two of the four blades were still visible. His stomach, his ribs, his shoulder, his knee; he bristled with embedded steel like something out of a nightmare.

He looked down at himself and let out a breath that was half-laugh, half-wheeze.

"Okay," he managed. "That one... got me."

"I'm not done yet!" Tenten briefly opened the Third Gate as she appeared underneath Lee with a rising kick.

Lee blocked with both his forearms but he was still sent flying high into the air. Tenten closed the Third Gate immediately as she pulled out a special weapon from her scroll. A full-bodied metallic marlin harpoon. She tossed it directly toward Lee as she rapidly weaved through hand signs.

Ox. Dog. Dragon. Rat. Dog. Boar. Snake. Tiger. "Ninja Art: Shuriken Shadow Clone Jutsu!"

Tiger. "Ninja Art: Shuriken Giant Body Jutsu!"

Marlin harpoons. Massive and numerous swam toward Lee with vicious hunger. Dozens of them. They swam toward Lee in a sphere, points inward, every angle covered, above, below, left, right, behind, in front. A cage of chakra-draining steel with one boy falling toward them.

Lee looked at the harpoons. He looked at Tenten, standing outside the sphere with her hand raised, controlling the formation.

"Oh man… Tenten, you've really gotten stronger…"

Lee's skin flushed red, deeper than Tenten's Third Gate, the green aura rising from his body, the veins standing proud across his entire frame. The pressure rolled outward and Tenten felt it.

The Fourth Gate. The Fifth. The Sixth.

The training ground trembled. The planted blades still standing in the earth rattled in their holes. The air around Lee bent and shimmered.

Dozens of chakra-draining spears screaming inward from every direction, a collapsing sphere of steel aimed at the single point where Lee stood.

Lee acted.

He didn't dodge. There was nowhere to dodge. Instead he became several, afterimages of Lee splitting off from his body in every direction as his speed exceeded what a single pair of eyes could track. Each afterimage met a harpoon. Palms pushed the sides of harpoon tips and deflected them. Feet kicked the sides of them sideways. The sphere of converging steel met a sphere of expanding force and the two cancelled each other in a detonation of redirected iron and shattered air.

The harpoons scattered. Some buried in the ground. Some flew into the treeline. Some broke apart in midair from the force of Lee's strikes.

And Lee, the real Lee, shot out of the collapsing sphere directly at Tenten.

"DYNAMIC ENTRY!"

He came at her like a green comet, his right leg extended, the force behind the kick compressing the air ahead of it into a visible shockwave that flattened the grass and cracked the earth and carried enough power behind it to level a mountain.

Tenten saw death.

Actual, physical, certain death in the form of a foot traveling at a speed her eyes could barely register, aimed at her face, carrying force that would reduce her skull to a memory.

For one instant, her heart stopped. Her body locked. Every survival instinct she owned screamed at once and was immediately overridden by the simple fact that there was nothing she could do about it.

The foot somehow stopped.

One inch from her nose. Close enough that she could feel the displaced air push her hair back from her forehead. Close enough that the pressure made her eyes water. The grass, trees, and weapons uprooted from the ground and flew away in the distance.

Lee was suddenly standing in front of her, no longer in the air, his leg extended, the Sixth Gate still blazing, and his face split into the warmest smile in the world.

Then, gently, he reached out with the back of his hand and slapped her on the forehead. Bringing her back to reality.

"I'm hungry. Let's go get something to eat."

Tenten did not move. Her brain had left the building and was taking its time coming back. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was open and her heart was restarting one beat at a time.

"H-Huh?" she managed.

"Eat! Let's go eat."

"Oh." She blinked. "Okay."

Lee closed the Gates. The red drained from his skin. The pressure vanished. The training ground, which had been trembling for the last thirty seconds, went still. He landed on his feet and looked down at himself.

He still had shuriken in him.

"Oh." He said, looking at the metal stars buried in his body. "I forgot about those."

"Sit down, you idiot." Tenten was already walking over, her legs still shaky but her hands steady. "You can't just walk around with shuriken sticking out of you."

"It’s not that many! I don’t think…"

"You’re gonna give someone a heart attack if they saw you like this."

Lee sat. Tenten knelt beside him and gripped the first shuriken, the one buried deepest in his thigh, and pulled. It came out with a spray of blood and the wound started closing before she'd set the blade aside.

"That is so gross." Tenten muttered, watching the skin knit shut.

"It’s very helpful!" Lee offered.

"I bet it is. It’s still gross as heck though." She pulled the second one from his ribs. Then the third from his stomach. Each extraction made Lee wince and each wound sealed itself within seconds. Tenten worked quickly, having foundational knowledge of first-aid, pulling each shuriken at the angle it had entered so the exit was clean.

When the last one came free, Lee let out a breath through his teeth.

"Thank you, Tenten."

"Don't thank me, just stop getting stabbed." She wiped her hands on the grass. "Or at least stop getting stabbed by my weapons. That's embarrassing for both of us."

“I didn’t get hit on purpose!” Lee laughed and stood, rolling his shoulders, testing the healed spots. Everything was at full power.

"Now help me clean up." Tenten said, gesturing at the disaster that was once Training Ground Nine. Hundreds of weapons were scattered across the field. Swords planted in the ground, kunai embedded in tree stumps, shuriken littering every surface, harpoons jutting from the earth at odd angles, the war hammer sitting in its own crater.

"Of course!" Lee was already moving, plucking blades out of the ground and carrying armfuls of them back to where Tenten sat with her massive scroll unfurled. She took them from him, sorted them by type, and sealed them back into the scroll.

Lee picked up his weights and started strapping them back on.

"You've really gotten stronger, Tenten!" Lee said, strapping his second weight on. "I don't know how many other shinobi could have handled those chakra-draining harpoons. Even jinchuriki and tailed beasts wouldn't be safe against you!"

"Still wasn't enough against you though." She pouted from the grass.

"Comparison is the thief of joy, Tenten." Lee said with a brief shift of seriousness.

"What does that even mean?"

"True joy comes from sprinting down your own ninja way, being completely grateful for the chance to work hard, and striving only to be stronger than the person you were yesterday!"

Tenten sighed. But she knew what Lee was getting at and that he was only trying to cheer her up. He always was. That was the thing about Lee that had never changed, not since they were genin, not since the Chunin Exams, not since he killed a tailed beast. He still looked at the people he cared about and wanted them to feel good about themselves, even when, especially when, he was the reason they felt small.

"You're paying for this dinner, Mr. Special Jonin." She smirked.

"It's the least I can do."

"You can tell me all about those little students of yours over dinner. Maybe I can drop by one of these days and give them a couple lessons myself." Tenten perked up as she stood and dusted off.

"That would be incredible! Ami-chan is learning how to master the chain whip. Fuki loves my nunchaku. Kasumi has an interest in my tonfas." Lee's eyes lit up. "They could definitely learn some things from you, Tenten!"

"From the girl who just filled a training ground with a hundred weapons? Yeah, I think I've got a few things to offer." She grinned. "Come on. I want something expensive and I want to hear everything. Start from the beginning. What are they like? Are they terrible? Please tell me they're terrible, I need to feel better about something today."

"They are wonderful!" Lee declared as they started walking. "They are loud and stubborn and one of them stabbed herself in the leg during their genin test and another one almost passed out from fear and the third one understood the entire purpose of the test before either of her teammates! They are the most excellent genin I have ever had!"

"So they're terrible."

"I wouldn't say that…" Lee rubbed the back of his head with a faint blush. "One of them even started wearing my jumpsuit! Can you believe it! I inspired another person just like Guy-sensei inspired me!"

Tenten laughed warmly. "No way, really? A girl? I guess you really are an amazing sensei… To convince someone to wear that outfit."

"I didn't even convince her! She did it all on her own!" Lee corrected her.

"Even more unfathomable." Tenten shook her head as they walked back into the village.

[Taijutsu Proficiency +3,000 points!]

[Eight Gates Proficiency +1,520 points!]

[Nunchaku Mastery Proficiency +380 points!]

[Bojutsu Proficiency +310 points!]

[Chakra Control Proficiency +860 points!]

[Inspire Proficiency +680 points!]

[Teaching Proficiency +2,000]