Chapter 97: Half-Truths.

Tenten woke up to the sound of someone counting.

"...four hundred and eleven. Four hundred and twelve. Four hundred and thirteen..."

The voice was quiet. They were trying very hard not to wake someone. She knew the voice before she opened her eyes.

Upon opening her eyes she saw a canvas ceiling. This was a medical tent. Lanterns hanging from the support poles. The smell of antiseptic and blood and the herbal paste the medics smeared over torn muscle. Somewhere to her left, someone was groaning in their sleep. Somewhere to her right, someone was snoring.

And beside her cot, upside down, balanced on one finger with his legs pointed straight at the ceiling, was Rock Lee.

"...four hundred and fourteen. Four hundred and fifteen..."

His body lowered until his nose nearly touched the dirt floor. Then it rose again, smooth and slow, his whole body held rigid on the single finger of his right hand. His hair hung down. His face was red from the blood rushing to it.

Tenten stared at him.

"Lee."

He flipped. One moment he was upside down and the next he was sitting on the stool beside her cot with his hands on his knees and his eyes wide, and she hadn't seen the part in between.

"Tenten! You are awake!"

"Keep your voice down." She winced. "There's people sleeping."

"Tenten, you are awake.” Lee whispered, with exactly the same amount of enthusiasm.

She laughed. It hurt. Everything hurt. Her ribs, her shoulders, the long muscles of her thighs, the backs of her calves where the Sixth Gate had torn the fibers loose from each other. The medics had done their work, but healing chakra could only rush the body along so fast. The rest was going to take time.

"How long was I out?"

"Several days!" Lee pulled the stool closer. "The medics said your body shut itself down to recover. That is normal after opening the Sixth Gate for the first time in battle." He paused. "They also said you are very lucky to be alive."

"Did they say it like that?"

"Kind of."

"How long have you been here?"

"Since this morning." Lee rubbed the back of his head. "We returned from clearing the camps in the north last night. Ebisu-san told me what happened. That a kunoichi had fought the Five-Tails." He looked at her. "I was shocked to hear that it was you!"

"You’re not the only one capable of fighting jinchūriki and tailed beasts…" She giggled.

"The Power of Youth never grows stagnant and burns endlessly!"

"I guess our youth did burn pretty brightly..." Tenten thought back.

“Yes!” Lee’s fist shot into the air. “Wait, our?”

"Our, as in Konoha’s! There were a lot of us out there, you know?”

She almost told him right then.

But she remembered the ANBU mask. Dead men didn’t get handed masks. Someone had buried a body that wasn’t his and let all of them cry over it. Someone in their own village. She didn’t know who. And if Lee knew, he’d walk off this front tonight and tear the Land of Earth apart looking for him, war or no war.

No. Neji owed them answers. She’d make him give them himself.

He grinned at her.

“When did you manage to unlock the Sixth Gate?”

"It kind of just happened in the moment."

"I feel guilty for not being there to help."

“You can’t be everywhere Mr. Tailed Beast Killer. Some of us gotta learn to stand on our own feet.” Tenten chuckled.

Lee reached over and put a hand on her shoulder.

"You are a hero now, you know? They are calling you Konoha's Blossoming Weapon Mistress of Youth!"

Her stomach dropped.

"No they are not!" She gasped.

“Okay, they aren’t, but wouldn’t it be cool if they were?” Lee asked.

“No! That name sucks! I do like Weapon Mistress but of youth!? Blossoming?! That’s you and Guy-sensei’s shtick!”

“Come on… We are a team. We have to share everything. Even nicknames.” Lee stared into her eyes with those big ole eyes of his.

“Nope. You and sensei can share similar nicknames but I will have my own separate from you two!” Tenten decided.

“I don’t think our enemies care about that…” Lee giggled before pulling out a bingo book with her picture in it. He got it this morning from a Stone messenger retreating back to Iwagakure. “Tenten. Crimson Demoness, Tenten of the Endless Weapons, and The Crimson Rain.”

Tenten snatched the book as she pored over every entry in it. Her ability to use the Eight Inner Gates. Her harpoon that could drain chakra. That she can multiply ninja tools and enlarge them. Fighting her should be avoided at all costs unless sufficiently prepared and with number advantages.

A smile slowly formed on her face. “Hmm, they got a good picture of me. This was after I won the chunin exams in Iwagakure. I wonder if they already planned to make a bingo book entry on me by then…”

“I would not be surprised if they did! You are amazing, Tenten!” Lee told her.

“I guess the whole world finally knows now.” Tenten laughed.

“I always knew it would happen…” Lee smiled.

“Whatever dork. Go get me some food or something. I’m starving.” Tenten playfully requested.

“Yes ma’am!” Lee left immediately.

The cave was forty kilometers north, cut into the side of a ravine where the wind couldn't reach and the smoke from a small fire would scatter against the rock before it rose high enough for anyone to see.

Sai was sitting beside the fire when Neji came in. He had a scroll open across his knees and a brush in his hand and he didn't look up.

"You're late," Sai said. "You said you would be back before nightfall. It is now the following nightfall."

Neji didn't answer. He pulled off the bird mask and set it on a flat rock and sat down on the other side of the fire.

Sai looked up then. His dark eyes moved over Neji's face.

"Did something happen?" Sai said.

"Yes."

"What happened?"

"I ran into the Five-Tails."

Sai's brush paused over the scroll.

"The jinchūriki?"

“There’s only one Five-Tails.” Neji began writing. The report was short. ROOT reports were always short. Location. Time. Target. Engagement. Outcome. Five-Tails jinchūriki engaged near the southern camp after full transformation. Jinchūriki withdrew northwest toward Iwagakure.

He gave the scroll to Sai. Sai painted a small bird on the scroll's outer edge. Three strokes. A wing, a body, a beak. The ink pulled itself up off the paper and became a bird, black and glistening, and it took the rolled scroll in its feet and flew out of the cave mouth and into the dark.

The reply came the next evening.

The ink bird dropped out of the night and landed on Sai's knee and dissolved, and a small rolled paper fell into his lap. Sai opened it, read it, and handed it across the fire without a word.

The Tsuchikage's granddaughter has awakened Particle Style. She is being trained by Ōnoki personally. She must not be permitted to mature. An opening will present itself soon. When it does, be ready. Retrieve if possible. Eliminate if not.

Neji read it and then burned the paper until it was ash.

In the command tent, Hiashi stood at the map table with his arms folded into his sleeves. Ebisu stood to his left with a stack of reports tucked under one arm. Two other jonin, a Nara and an older Aburame, stood across the table. The markers on the map had moved since Lee last saw it. Most of the red ones, the Stone ones, had pulled back. They were clustered now in a rough line along the mountain passes northwest of the camp, and behind them, far up in the corner of the map where the paper had been folded so many times it was starting to tear, was a single black mark.

Iwagakure.

"Lee." Hiashi didn't look up. "Come in."

Lee came in and bowed.

"How is she?" Hiashi asked.

"Doing excellent despite her injuries." Lee straightened. "The head medic says weeks before she can fight."

"Good to know." Hiashi unfolded his arms. "Ebisu."

Ebisu adjusted his glasses and drew a paper from his stack. "Current field estimates. Stone's shinobi have withdrawn across the entire line. They've abandoned four of their camps in the north. Two of those were already destroyed," he nodded toward Lee, "and the other two were emptied before our scouts arrived. They are pulling back toward their homeland."

"Their jinchūriki?" the Nara jonin asked.

"The Four-Tails is still missing. The Five-Tails was last seen walking northwest in human form. Our scouts lost him in the passes." Ebisu turned the paper over.

"How are our losses?" Hiashi asked.

Ebisu drew another paper. He didn't read it aloud right away. "Three hundred and eighty-four confirmed dead on this front since the war began. Two hundred and sixty wounded unable to return to the line. Most of the shinobi there..." He lowered the paper. "We have roughly thirteen hundred who can fight."

The tent was quiet.

"Stone has more than that." Kishi Aburame said. His voice was dry. "Even now."

"Stone does have more than that." Hiashi agreed. "Stone currently has no jinchūriki on this front and soldiers who run when they see a green jumpsuit." He looked at Lee when he said it. Then back at the map. "There's something else."

He nodded to Ebisu. Ebisu drew a folded paper from the very bottom of his stack. The seal on the outside was plain black wax with no symbol pressed into it.

"This arrived this morning. From Konoha. Lord Danzo's spy network," Ebisu said. "Kitsuchi, the Tsuchikage's son, was killed during the fighting a few days ago. The report does not specify how or by whom. Since his death, the Tsuchikage has not left Iwagakure. Not once."

Lee frowned. "His son..."

"Ōnoki is old," Hiashi said. "He has lost his son. He has lost one of his jinchūriki. His army is falling back toward his gates. He is sitting in his village, and as long as he sits in his village, this war goes on, because nobody in Stone is going to surrender while the Tsuchikage still breathes." His finger slid up the map, across the mountain passes, to the torn corner and the single black mark. "Shikaku wants this front closed. Konoha cannot fight three wars forever. To close it, we need Ōnoki to come out. And he will not come out for thirteen hundred shinobi."

"He would come out for me." Lee said.

Every head in the tent turned toward him.

Lee looked at the black mark on the map.

"The Stone shinobi call me Konoha’s Green Savage Devil," he said. "I have heard them say it. They are afraid of me. If the Tsuchikage hears that the Green Savage Devil is walking toward his village with an army behind him, he cannot sit and wait. His people would never forgive him." He looked up at Hiashi. "Let him see me coming. I will walk in front. I will make sure every scout between here and Iwagakure knows exactly who is at the head of the march."

The Nara jonin let out a breath through his nose. "You'd be putting yourself in front of a Kage. This man in particular can erase people from existence."

"Yes," Lee said. "That is why it should be me and not a squad."

Hiashi looked at him for a long time.

"It is a sound plan, albeit risky." He said finally. "I had reached the same conclusion. I wanted to hear if you would reach it too." He turned to the table. "Ebisu. Prepare the order of march. Lee at the head. Our men behind him. We leave in eight days. That gives the wounded time to recover and gives our scouts time to make sure Stone knows we're coming."

"Eight days, huh…" Ebisu repeated, writing.

"One more thing." Hiashi reached for a second message, this one tied with the plain red cord of Konoha command. "From Shikaku, by way of the Mist front. Kakashi's message." He unrolled it and read the relevant line aloud. "Stalemate holding. Attrition on both sides. Mist is resupplying by sea and we cannot stop it. Request one shinobi capable of breaking the line."

Lee wondered who he was going to send but it looked like that decision would not be made in his presence as they continued to discuss more about the upcoming march in eight days.

Iwagakure was cold in the evenings.

The training ground on the eastern cliff was a flat shelf of rock the size of a courtyard, open to the sky, with a drop of three hundred meters on one side and the mountain wall on the other. There was a boulder at the far end of the shelf the size of a house. There had been three of them this morning.

Kurotsuchi stood in the center of the shelf with her hands raised in front of her and sweat running down her face. Between her palms, a small shape of white light was trying to become a cube. It flickered. Its edges bent inward and outward, refusing to hold, and the air around it crackled with a sound like cloth tearing very slowly.

"Don't force it." Ōnoki said.

He was floating a meter off the ground with his hands folded behind his back. His voice was patient. It had been patient for nine hours.

"I'm not forcing it."

"You're forcing it. It seems your chakra control isn’t ready for this technique yet."

"I can already walk on trees and water! What more do I need to do for my chakra control?" The cube collapsed. The light snapped out of existence and the recoil threw Kurotsuchi's hands apart. She staggered back two steps and caught herself and stood there panting, her hands shaking, glaring at the empty air between them.

"Take a break." Ōnoki ordered.

“I can keep going…” She clenched her shaking fist.

"Tsuchikage-sama." A Stone shinobi had appeared at the edge of the shelf, kneeling, head bowed. 

Behind him, walking up the narrow cliff path was a tall figure in red armor. The furnace on his back was cracked. Steam leaked from the crack in slow thin wisps. The armor itself was dented and scored and punched through in half a dozen places, and dark stains had dried around each hole.

Ōnoki floated down until his sandals touched stone.

"Han."

Han stopped a few meters away. He didn't kneel. He never did.

"You’re back." Ōnoki said.

"I am."

"Why?"

Han was quiet for a moment. Steam curled out from under his visor.

"The girl from the exams," he said. "The Hokage's student. The one with the weapons." He turned his head slightly, and the dark visor seemed to find the bare patches on his armor where the metal had been punctured. "She has a weapon that eats chakra."

Kurotsuchi lowered her hands.

"And then," Han said, "a second one came."

"Who?"

"I don't know. ANBU mask. A bird. Long hair." Han's voice didn't change. "He spun. A dome of chakra that sends back the attacker’s power at them even stronger. He had a jutsu that drained chakra like the girl's weapon." He paused. "He was a Hyuga."

Kurotsuchi's hands had curled into fists at her sides. Her voice came out very quiet. "It was him..."

Nobody heard her.

Ōnoki looked southeast. Past the edge of the cliff and the dark spires of the village below and the jagged teeth of the mountains beyond them, toward where the sky was going dark over a country he could not see from here.

"The two of them together," Han said, "could not beat Kokuō. But I could not beat them either. The longer I stayed, the more likely it was that Rock Lee would come." He turned and began walking back toward the cliff path. "Next time, I kill the girl first. Before the Hyuga. Before Rock Lee. Before anything else."

He walked away.

Ōnoki received that information before he turned back to his granddaughter.

"Let’s keep going." he said.

Kurotsuchi raised her hands. Between her palms, the white light flickered, bent, and folded itself into a small, perfect cube.

It held.