Chapter 82: Devil’s Students.

The mission was a C-rank. Escort a textile merchant named Goemon from Konoha to Houki Town, a trading post three days east along the main road through the Land of Fire. The man sold dyed fabrics to the border markets and had enough money to hire shinobi but not enough to stop complaining about the price.

"Four of you," Goemon shook his head, looking at the team assembled at the village gate. He was a thick man with sun-darkened skin and a cart pulled by a mule that looked as tired as he did. "I'm paying for four shinobi to walk me down a road I've walked a hundred times."

"You are paying for protection, Goemon-san!" Lee told him with a thumbs up and a grin. "And you are getting the finest protection in all of Konoha!"

Goemon looked at the three girls. One had purple hair and was adjusting a chain whip at her hip. One had spiky red hair and was cracking her knuckles. One had a ginger afro and was giving him a nervous thumbs up while wearing something he would never allow his daughter to wear.

"Man, I really hope this isn’t a waste of money…" Goemon said.

"Your safety is never a waste of money, sir!" Lee reminded him.

Goemon looked at the boy in the green suit. Looked at the vest. Looked at the eyes, which were kind and absolutely certain.

"Whatever, kid. Let's get going." He chuckled. Ninjas were such freaks…

They started moving.

The first day was nothing. Road dust, birdsong, Goemon's mule plodding along at a pace that made Fuki visibly restless within the first hour. Lee set the formation: Ami in front, Kasumi on the left, Fuki on the right, Lee at the rear. The girls rotated every two hours so that each of them spent time in every position.

"Why do we rotate?" Lee asked them during the first switch.

"So we learn to watch from every angle." Ami answered.

"So nobody gets bored in one spot." Fuki said.

"So we learn what each position needs." Kasumi said quietly.

Lee smiled. "All correct."

By midday, Goemon had warmed up enough to share dried persimmons from his cart and complain about the state of the roads. By evening, they made camp off the main road in a clearing ringed by old oaks. Lee showed the girls how to set a watch rotation and took the midnight shift himself.

The second day started the same. Road. Dust. Mule. Goemon talking about fabric dyes and how indigo had gotten more expensive since the trade routes through the Land of Rivers closed. The girls walked their positions with little correction needed from Lee.

It happened two hours past noon on the second day.

The forest went quiet.

Lee noticed it first. The birds suddenly stopped singing.

Then the genjutsu hit.

It was a layered technique cast by multiple users simultaneously. The road blurred. The trees bent. The sky took on a color that wasn't quite right, a shade of blue that was too perfect, the kind of sky that only existed in novels.

Lee’s chakra network registered the foreign intrusion immediately.

He broke it immediately before looking toward his students.

Kasumi's eyes had gone unfocused for a moment. Then they sharpened. Her hands came together, breaking the genjutsu. The sky snapped back to its real color in her vision. She blinked, looked around, and found Lee watching her. He gave the slightest nod.

Ami took two seconds longer, her chakra surged and the genjutsu cracked and fell.

Fuki didn't notice.

She was still walking. Still keeping an eye out while bored out of her mind. Still doing her job, oblivious to the fact that the world she was looking at didn't exist.

Lee's eyes moved to the trees. To the shapes in the trees that the genjutsu was supposed to hide.

Eight.

Eight shinobi, spread in a loose arc through the forest on both sides of the road. Their headbands were scratched or absent.

Lee also caught the moment the missing-nin realized the genjutsu hadn't worked on three of them. They leaped from the trees. Five came at Lee. They came from three directions, two from the left, two from the right, one dropping from the treetops directly above. The one from above threw a spread of poisoned senbon on the way down. The pair from the left led with a combined Fire Style jutsu released a sea of flames. The pair from the right came in close with short blades and a chain that whipped toward Lee's ankles.

Five-on-one was the minimum they were willing to commit and the fact that they committed five out of eight told Lee exactly how seriously they were taking him and exactly how unseriously they were taking his students.

Lee sidestepped the senbon spread without looking at it, the needles passing through the space his head had occupied a quarter-second before. The fire jutsu washed over the road where he'd been standing and scorched the dirt black. Lee already sped through it, inside the guard of the first blade user, and his fist struck the man's chest with enough force to send him skidding backward through the undergrowth and through a tree trunk.

The chain caught his ankle. Lee let it. The shinobi on the other end yanked, expecting to pull him off balance, and Lee yanked back. The missing-nin came flying toward him like a fish on a line and Lee's foot met his face at the midpoint. Teeth scattered.

Three left on him. They adjusted. They spread wider, trying to keep distance, using ninjutsu from range. An Earth Style wall cut the road in half. A wind technique shredded the air above it. Poison smoke bombs hit the ground around Lee's feet, purple clouds billowing upward.

Lee held his breath and moved through the smoke. He came out the other side with his eyes watering and his skin tingling where the poison had touched it, and the shinobi who'd thrown the smoke bombs had exactly enough time to see the green suit emerge from the purple cloud before Lee's fist uppercutted him into the sky.

Two left.

But Lee couldn't break away. The remaining two were smart enough to keep him engaged, throwing everything they had from range, cycling through techniques, never letting him close the gap cleanly.

Lee heard the fighting start behind him.

One missing-nin for each girl. That was all they'd spared. One apiece for three genin who shouldn't have been worth the effort.

Fuki didn't see hers coming.

The genjutsu still had her. The world she was standing in was the wrong world, and the missing-nin who appeared in front of her appeared from nowhere because in her version of reality, the forest was empty.

His knee hit her in the stomach. Fuki doubled over, the air blasting out of her lungs, and the genjutsu shattered on impact because it did not match the reality she was seeing. The real world crashed back into her senses, the taste of blood in her mouth from biting her tongue.

The missing-nin was already swinging a short sword at her head.

Fuki dropped under it on instinct. She drove a punch upward into the man's elbow joint as the blade passed over her. The missing-nin grunted and switched the sword to his other hand and kicked her in the ribs hard enough to send her rolling.

She came up spitting. He was faster than her. Stronger than her. He wasn't playing with her.

Fuki fought. She threw everything Lee had taught her but it wasn’t enough. The gap in their experience and strength was visible. She caught a backhand across the jaw that made her vision white out for a full second and came back swinging before her eyesight returned.

The missing-nin caught her wrist and twisted. Fuki's shoulder screamed. He drove her face-first into the ground and his knee landed on her spine and pinned her flat. His free hand grabbed her hair, yanked her head back, and the short sword came around to her throat.

She felt the steel touch her skin and the man's weight was on her back and his grip was in her hair and she couldn't move and she couldn't breathe and the sword was going to open her throat in the next half-second.

Fuki grinned despite the situation.

Devil-sensei's rules were absolute and the rules said: only when you're about to die, or someone important is.

She was about to die.

The First Gate opened in her brain, and the world changed.

Everything got faster. Her muscles unlocked past their normal limits. The weight on her back went from immovable to nothing. She exploded off the ground and the missing-nin's grip tore free of her hair with a fistful of red strands still in his fingers, and Fuki's rising kick caught him under the chin and sent him straight up.

Fuki followed him into the air. Her arms pulled the bandages from her forearms and she wound them around his body the way Lee had shown her a dozens of times on the training dummy, locking his arms against his sides. At the peak of the arc, she started spinning. The ground was below them and getting closer and the spin was fast enough that the wind screamed.

She released at the last second and kicked off. The missing-nin hit the road headfirst. The impact cratered the earth as Fuki landed five feet away. Her legs buckled. She went to one knee and every muscle in her body was aching something fierce.

Ami saw it.

She was fighting her own opponent, a kunoichi with two tanto and a speed she could barely keep up with. The fight had been close, Ami's chain whip keeping range while the kunoichi tried to get inside it. Ami was bleeding from several cuts but she was holding. She was managing.

Then she saw Fuki's Gate open. Saw the kick. Saw the spin. Saw the impact.

If Fuki activated it, Fuki had been about to die. That meant these people were on a different level. Ami's opponent wasn't any different. The kunoichi was pressing harder with every exchange, trying to get inside the chain whip's range where the tanto could reach Ami's body, and every time she got close, Ami nearly died.

She got inside one more time.

Both tanto came at Ami from angles she couldn't block. She caught one with the chain whip but the second slipped past and the blade punched through the fabric of her shirt and bit into her side. Ami stumbled and the kunoichi followed, reversing the grip on both blades, driving forward for the throat.

Ami opened the First Gate with a roar.

Her uppercut sent the kunoichi skyward. Ami spun her chain whip around in the air, leaping from chain to chain before she was completely above the kunoichi. Then she tightened the chain whip around the woman's body in three tight loops, the metal links biting into her arms and torso and locking everything in place. Ami grabbed the end of the chain and spun. The rotation was vicious, the chain tightening with every revolution, and when Ami smashed down, the kunoichi hit the ground still wrapped in metal. The impact drove the chain links into the earth on either side of her body like anchors.

Ami landed. Her legs didn't buckle. She stood for two full seconds through sheer refusal to fall, and then her knees gave out and she sat down hard in the dirt and couldn't get back up.

Kasumi had already opened hers.

The shy girl who was now wearing a green jumpsuit. Her opponent was a tall man with a bo staff and reach that made her tonfas almost useless. He'd been batting her around for the better part of a minute, using the staff's length to keep her outside her effective range. She'd taken hits to her arms, her ribs, her left thigh. She was bruised and bleeding from a split lip and her Soft Fist form was holding but barely.

She heard Fuki's impact. She heard Ami scream as she opened up the Eight Inner Gates. She couldn't look because the staff was coming at her again and again, driving her backward, and the tall man was done being patient. He feinted high and reversed low and the staff swept her legs out from under her. Kasumi hit the ground on her back. The man stepped over her and raised the staff overhead with both hands, point-down, piercing toward her chest like a spear.

Kasumi opened the first gate and vanished before the staff could stab through her.

Her rising strike took the tall man under the jaw and sent him flying into the sky. Kasumi leapt into the air as she got behind him, both tonfas pressing crosswise against his chest in a rigid X, the hard edges digging into his body and pinning his arms flat. She locked him in place with her strength and the tonfas and began to spin rapidly.

At the apex, she released the tonfas and kicked off. The man fell with his head buried in the earth as her tonfas clattered to the ground next to him.

Kasumi landed in a crouch. Her legs were shaking. Her arms were shaking. Everything was shaking.

Lee finished his last two opponents in the time it took Kasumi to stand back up. He came through the tree line with dust on his suit and not a scratch on him and his eyes went to his students.

Fuki was on one knee in the road, breathing through her teeth, both arms hanging at her sides. Her missing-nin was face-down in a crater.

Ami was sitting in the dirt, legs splayed out in front of her, the chain whip still trailing from her hand. Her missing-nin was embedded in the ground wrapped in metal.

Kasumi was standing. Barely. Her tonfas were on the ground because her hands couldn't grip them anymore. Her missing-nin wasn't moving.

Goemon was behind the mule with his hands over his head.

Lee looked at the three girls. He looked at the three bodies. He looked at the aftermath of three genin using the Eight Inner Gates who had been under his instruction for less than half a year.

"Goemon-san." Lee walked to the merchant and offered him a hand. "Are you alright?"

Goemon took the hand. He stood. He looked at the three girls and at the destroyed missing-nin and at the scorched and cratered road that had been a normal path twenty minutes ago.

"Even kid shinobi… Are something, huh…?" Goemon asked.

Lee smiled.

"Are you three able to keep going?" Lee asked his students.

Fuki forced herself to both feet. It took her three tries. "Yeah... I'm good. Just gimme a second."

She was not fine. Her legs were visibly trembling and the color had drained from her face and she looked like she might throw up. But she was standing.

Ami got up slower. She pulled her chain whip back to her hip with hands that shook and brushed the dirt off her clothes.

"I can walk." Ami said. Which was not the same thing as fine and she knew it.

Kasumi picked up her tonfas. She slid them into the loops on her belt and gave Lee a thumbs up. Her body was trembling so badly it looked like she was shivering from the cold.

Lee looked at them. All three. Standing on legs that didn't want to hold them and not one of them asked to stop. Not one of them asked to go home. Not one of them sat back down.

"Excellent." Lee picked up the mule's lead rope where Goemon had dropped it and handed it back to the merchant. "We still have a mission to finish. Let's keep going."

They continued onward.

It was slow. It was painful. Fuki's stride had shortened to half its normal length. Ami kept her hand on the cart for support when she thought nobody was looking. Kasumi's footsteps were unsteady and her breathing was loud.

But they didn’t give up.

Lee got in front. He put the girls around the cart in a tighter formation than before, close enough that they could lean on it if they needed to, far enough that they maintained the appearance of a functional escort. He didn't carry anyone. He didn't offer to. They were shinobi, and shinobi completed their missions.

The road stretched ahead of them. Goemon's mule plodded forward. Houki Town was another day's walk.

[Taijutsu Proficiency +200 points!]

[Chakra Control Proficiency +179!]

[Teaching Proficiency +3,200 points!]

[Leadership Proficiency +600 points!]

[Spiritual Resistance has reached the next level!]