Lee trained alone today.
He had been at Training Ground Three since before dawn.
Five hundred punches on each arm. Then a thousand. Then he lost count, which was the point. If he counted, he had room left over to think, and if he had room to think, he thought about a closed casket with his best friend inside it and a grave at the village outskirts with a name carved into the stone that should not have been there yet.
So he did not count. He just hit the post until his knuckles split and the splitting gave him something else to feel.
The funeral was four days ago.
Four days, and Lee had not gone back to the cemetery, because he did not trust himself to leave once he arrived. He had made a promise in a hospital room. We're going to find a way to remove that seal. I'll figure it out, however long it takes. He had meant it with everything he was. And the person he had promised it to was in the ground, and the promise had nowhere left to go, and it sat in Lee's chest like a stone that no amount of training could break apart.
"You're going to take that post's head off."
Lee's fist stopped an inch from the wood.
Sakura Haruno was standing at the edge of the training ground. Pink hair pulled back. Training clothes, not her usual outfit, with a sheen of sweat that said she had been working at something before she wandered over. Her knuckles, Lee noticed, were wrapped in bandages that had spots of red soaking through.
"Sakura-chan." Lee lowered his fist. "Good morning."
"It's almost noon, Lee."
He looked up. The sun was high. He had been at this longer than he realized.
"I have been training," he said.
Sakura walked closer. She looked at the post, which had a fist-shaped dent driven deep into it. She looked at his hands, which were worse. She looked at his face, and something in her expression shifted, the brightness dimming by a fraction the way it did when she was reading beneath the surface of something.
"You okay?"
"I am perfectly fine!"
"Lee."
"I am training for the finals. There is no time to waste. I intend to-"
"Lee." She said it again, softer. "You don't need to lie to me."
He went silent.
Lee tried to open his mouth. The word was sitting right there. Fine. I'm fine.
Sakura was looking at him. Not pushing. Just waiting.
"Come here," she said, before he could decide. "I want to show you something. I've been wanting to show someone for a week and there's nobody left to show."
She grabbed his wrist. Her fingers were warm and stronger than they looked. Lee let himself be pulled because Sakura Haruno was looking at him like he was the first person she'd been glad to see in days.
She led him to the next clearing over. Training Ground Seven. Flat ground, three battered wooden posts in the center, a line of trees at the edge.
One of the trees was missing a chunk of its trunk.
Lee stopped. The bark had shattered outward. The wood beneath was caved in around a single point of impact, splintered in a pattern that was from a punch. A fist-shaped crater driven into solid wood.
"You did that?" Lee asked.
Sakura was bouncing on her heels. "Watch."
She walked to a thicker tree, planted her feet, squared her hips, and drew her fist back. Sakura punched the tree.
The trunk cracked. A fissure tore up the bark from the point of impact, and chunks of wood blew outward, and the tree groaned and leaned and held, barely.
The timing was still a beat early. The release came a fraction before her knuckles met the bark. But she was getting it. It was a lot better than the first time he showed her.
Sakura spun around, eyes shining, knuckles red through the tape.
"I figured it out! It's not about strength, it's about where you put the chakra and when you let it go. I couldn't even crack bark when we started. Look at me now!"
Lee clapped. Loud, full-palmed, echoing across the empty ground.
"Sakura-chan, that is incredible! The timing needs a little work, but the foundation is perfect. You are going to be incredible once you master the timing!"
Her whole face lit up, and it had nothing to do with the sun.
She crossed the distance and hugged him.
It was sudden and fierce and completely unselfconscious, her arms around his neck, her face in his shoulder. Lee felt the warmth of her and the smell of her hair, sweat and something faintly floral, and for a moment he forgot everything but this moment.
"Thank you," she said into his shoulder. "For actually being impressed. I know it's not killing a tailed beast. But I worked so hard on it and I just wanted somebody to see."
"It is impressive," Lee said. His arms had found her back without asking him first. "You should be proud of yourself."
She pulled back. Her hands stayed on his shoulders. Her green eyes searched his face again, and this time the brightness faded for real.
"Okay. Now tell me what's actually wrong."
Lee looked at her.
"And don't say fine. I can tell something is eating you. So tell me."
He exhaled the hesitation.
"My teammate died," Lee said. "Four days ago. We buried him at the outskirts."
Sakura's expression dropped. Whatever she had braced for, it had not been that.
"Lee. Oh my god. I didn't,"
"You could not have known."
"Who,"
"Neji." He said the name and it came out steadier than he expected. "Neji Hyuga."
A pause. "The one who fought Hinata in the preliminaries?"
"Yes." Lee sat down in the grass. "He did a terrible thing to her. I will not pretend he didn't. But he was more than that one moment, and almost nobody in this village will ever know it, and now he is gone and there is no one left to tell it to."
Sakura sat down beside him. Close. Close enough that he could feel the warmth off her skin in the cooling air.
"Tell me," she said.
Lee looked at her.
"You said he was more than that. So tell me. What was he like, when he wasn't, you know." She gestured vaguely. "Trying to kill his cousin."
Lee let out a breath that was almost a laugh.
"We grew up together. Same Academy class. He hated me from the first time we sparred." He pulled a blade of grass and turned it in his fingers. "He was everything I was not. A genius. Born with a bloodline. Top of the class. And I was the boy who could not perform a single jutsu, who got laughed at every time I said out loud that I wanted to be a shinobi."
"Mm." Sakura listened closely.
"Every single day." A small smile, aimed at the grass. "I kept count, Sakura. Three thousand, five hundred and twenty-six times. That is how many times Neji beat me before we graduated. I lost every one."
Sakura stared. "Three thousand?"
"Give or take."
"Lee, that's insane."
"Probably." The smile widened. "But here is the thing. He noticed. Somewhere around the two-thousandth loss, he started activating his Byakugan the moment I walked up to him. Gentle Fist stance. Total focus. He was taking me seriously, even though he would have died before admitting it." His voice softened. "That was all I ever wanted. For someone like him to look at someone like me and see a real opponent instead of a joke."
The sun had started its slide toward the treeline, stretching the shadows of the posts across the ground.
"I climbed his clan's wall once," Lee said. "Snuck into the Hyuga compound. I just wanted to spend time with him. Like friends normally do."
"What did he do?"
"He told me he despised me in every way and did not want to hang out with me." Lee smiled at the memory.
Sakura winced. "Ouch."
"And do you know what I said back?"
"What?"
"That his words hurt worse than his taijutsu."
Sakura's hand flew to her mouth. The laugh got out anyway, muffled and bright. "You did not."
"I did. He wanted to kill me where I stood. I could tell." Lee was grinning now, the real one. "But I meant it as a compliment. His taijutsu was so painful that the only thing in the world that could hurt more was his personality."
Sakura laughed and it rang across the empty training ground, and Lee thought it was one of the better sounds he had heard in four days.
"He sounds awful. I'm not gonna lie, Lee." she said, still smiling.
"He wasn't the greatest friend. Maybe to him, I wasn't ever his friend. Maybe just a nuisance. But to me, he was my first real friend." The quiet came back into his voice. "And he was changing, Sakura. Right at the end. He sat in a hospital bed and told us things he had never told anyone. About his father. About the seal they put on his forehead when he was four years old. About all the anger he had been dragging behind him since before he was old enough to know what it was." Lee set the grass blade down. "He said he was finished believing he had no say in his own life. He said he wanted to choose his own path."
The crickets had begun somewhere in the trees.
"And then he was gone," Lee said. "And I keep thinking there should have been something I could do. There is always something I can do. Train harder. Hit something. Stand back up. But not this time. This time the only thing anyone could do was nothing, and I have never in my life been any good at doing nothing."
Sakura did not try to think of a solution. She knew better. She kind of knew what it felt like to have someone you cared about gone and no way to reach them, because she had been sitting on this training ground alone for almost a month with that same feeling, punching trees because the alternative was thinking.
So she did the only thing that helped. She stayed.
"I didn't know him. I don't know anything that would help. But I can sit here. If you want to keep talking, I'm not going anywhere. Nobody's waiting for me either." she said quietly
Lee talked.
He told her about the moonlit spar before graduation, where he had pushed Neji so hard the prodigy was forced to use ninjutsu to win, and how Lee had woke up grinning in the hospital because making Neji use ninjutsu meant Neji could not beat him with taijutsu alone. He told her about the missions where he got caught in a genjutsu one time and put the safety at everyone at risk and Neji was the one who caught it and broke him out of in time and was very frustrated. He told her about the time Neji was willing to save him from enemy shinobi killing him. Saying that right was for himself and no one else.
He painted Neji Hyuga in a light no one else in the village would ever paint him. Not the prodigy who nearly killed his cousin. Not the genius who looked down on the world. A boy with a seal on his forehead and a dead father and a cage he had been trying to escape since before he understood it was a cage.
Sakura listened. Chin on her knees. Eyes on him.
At some point her hand moved. It found his on the grass between them and settled over his knuckles, warm and light, and stayed.
Neither of them said anything about it.
Lee's fingers opened. Hers settled between them. Not laced. Just resting.
The sky had gone violet. The first stars came out, faint and uncertain.
"Somewhere, he probably knows you're still talking about him like that." She squeezed his hand once. "That counts for something. It has to."
Lee turned his head. She was right there, the last of the light catching the green of her eyes.
"Thank you, Sakura-chan."
"For what?"
"For being here."
"Anytime." Her thumb moved against the back of his hand, small and almost unconscious. Then she seemed to remember something, and the brightness came back into her face, gentler this time. "Hey. The festival's tonight. The one before the finals. I was going to skip it, because, you know, nobody to go with." She bumped his shoulder with hers. "But you look like a person who could use a night that isn't this training ground. Wanna come with me?"
Lee looked at her. At the girl who had punched a tree apart to have something to be proud of, who had sat in the dark with him instead of leaving, who was still holding his hand.
"I would like that," Lee said. "Very much."
Sakura smiled and pulled him to his feet.
…
The lanterns had been strung between the rooftops in overlapping arcs, red and orange paper glowing against the dark sky. Stalls lined both sides of the street. The smell of grilled fish and sweet fried dough and hot oil traveled between them in a rolling cloud that thickened every few meters when someone passed another vendor. Somewhere down the street a taiko drum was being struck in a rhythm that the crowd moved to without noticing they were moving to it.
The color and the noise hit Lee all at once when they turned onto the main street, the lanterns and the drums and the crowd, and for a moment it was too much in the opposite direction. An hour ago he had been sitting in the dirt of a training ground talking about his dead friend. Now there was music and fried dough and a girl in a pink kimono at his side, and the gap between those two things was wide enough that some part of him stumbled crossing it. It made him feel a little bit guilty.
Sakura felt his hand go still in hers.
She did not say anything about it. She just tightened her grip, once, and bumped his shoulder with hers, and tipped her chin toward a stall where someone was pulling sweet dough out of hot oil in golden ropes.
"Come on," she said. "You can grief-train tomorrow. Tonight you're buying me something fried."
It was not subtle. It was not meant to be.
"Two things fried," Lee said. "I am also hungry."
"That's the spirit."
"Lee, are you sure you want to spend the night before the exam with me instead of training or being home?" Sakura lectured. "I know you're strong. But you shouldn't look down on Sasuke-kun."
Lee had grilled squid on a stick in one hand. His kimono was leaf green, cut simple, a color he had pointed to without hesitation the moment the shopkeeper had shown him the rack. Sakura's was a pale summer pink, the obi a darker shade at her waist. She had cotton candy in her free hand that matched her hair. Lee was currently in the eight gates, with the third gate opened. His looks drew quite a few stares as they traveled through the festival together.
"I wouldn't want to be anywhere but here." He said it casually.
Sakura elbowed his shoulder. "Shut up. You're just saying that."
She flicked her hair back.
"I am many things, Sakura-chan. A liar is not one of them."
"But come on. Seriously. Tell me."
"The truth is I have done everything I can to prepare for my fight with Sasuke-kun. And resting is an important part of a shinobi's training."
"So going on a date with me counts as resting."
"Absolutely. The best kind."
"You have got to stop saying things like that so casually!"
"I am being honest."
"That makes it worse!"
She bit into the cotton candy with the kind of force usually reserved for punching something. A pink cloud vanished in a single motion. Her ears were red. She was pretending they were not.
Lee took a bite of his squid and watched her from the side with the quiet satisfaction of a boy who did not know what he was doing to her.
"I am also training, by the way." He gestured vaguely at himself. "Have you not noticed my appearance?"
"I noticed, Lee. Gosh." The laugh escaped before she could catch it. "I just didn't know walking around and eating with me counted as training. Does it?"
"The Eight Gates strain every part of my body. The higher the gate, the greater the strain. Even holding the third one open while I eat and talk and walk is making my body work twice as hard as it looks like it is. So yes. Training."
"You are hurting yourself before the finals?!" Her voice climbed. "Isn't that stupid?!"
"Thank you for worrying about me, Sakura-chan."
He turned his smile on her. She was caught by it before she could pull her eyes away.
"That's not, I mean, we're friends, so of course I would, but that's not the point!" The words came out in a tangle. "You said you were resting but you're training at the same time. Which is it?!"
"Both."
"Lee."
"I will be fine tomorrow. I promise."
He reached for her hand.
Sakura let him take it.
Their eyes held for a moment that neither of them knew how to end. The festival went on around them. A group of children tore between a stall and the street, shrieking. Somewhere a bell rang for a prize won at a game.
"You mean it?" she asked.
"Of course. I am not stupid."
He did not let go. They began walking again, fingers laced.
Sakura did not pull away.
"Thank you," he said after a while. "Your concern means a lot to me."
"Well, someone has to." She hid her face in the cotton candy with a dedication that suggested she was trying to physically merge with it. "Boys are reckless. Without a girl around to keep you guys in check, you'd all fall apart."
"I wouldn't want any other girl by my side but you, Sakura-chan."
A silence.
"…Shut up, Lee." It came out soft. "What the hell is a girl supposed to say to something like that…"
Lee laughed and tugged her gently by the hand toward a stall where water caught the lantern light in rippling gold. He was laying it on thick and he knew it. A distraction would not hurt right about now.
"Did I ever tell you I have a pet snake?"
"Snake?!" Sakura yanked her hand halfway back before remembering she was still holding his. "I am not a fan of snakes lately."
"His name is Kagerou. He is much nicer than most snakes." Lee paid the booth man and was handed two paper paddles. He passed one to Sakura.
They knelt at the edge of the tub. Orange flashes darted beneath the surface. Lee lowered his paddle carefully.
The paper split apart the instant it touched the water.
Sakura stared at the shreds floating on the surface.
"Lee. You didn't even try yet."
"I did try."
"You just put it in the water."
"I was trying a strategy."
Keeping his strength in check while holding the gate open was proving to be its own kind of battle. Everything his body did was amplified. The paddle was wet paper in the hands of something that could snap multiple trees in half. Gentleness was a skill. He was not, currently, a gentle person. It was a shock to him that he could hold Sakura-chan's hand with such gentleness.
He bought another paddle. Then another. A small graveyard of ruined rice paper accumulated on the mat beside him.
"CHA! FIRST TRY!"
Sakura's paddle came up with a goldfish thrashing in the middle of it. She transferred it to the plastic bag the booth man held out with a polite smile.
Lee clapped. Genuinely.
"Amazing, Sakura-chan!"
"I am the queen of chakra control." She tied the bag with a flourish. The goldfish bumped against the plastic wall, unbothered.
The booth man looked at Lee's pile of destroyed paddles, at the goldfish still happily swimming in the tub, and said nothing. A wise man.
…
The street that led to Sakura's house was quieter. Most of the festival traffic had stayed in the main quarter. By the time they reached her door the drums and the stall noise were a distant wash behind them, and the crickets had taken back the run of the evening.
They stood outside the door for a beat.
Lee could hear breathing behind it. Two sets. One was deeper, the kind that belonged to a curious parent. The other was lighter and more silent, the breathing of someone pretending very hard not to be listening at the door.
"I had fun tonight, Lee. I hope you had fun too." Sakura was looking at her feet. She scuffed one sandal against the dirt. "Thank you for coming along with me tonight."
"I am glad. It was my pleasure, Sakura-chan."
"You always say that." She did not look up. "Don't you ever get bored of spending time with me? There are plenty of girls more interesting than me. Sasuke, Naruto, and Kakashi-sensei haven't even bothered to see me once this month either."
"You are the most interesting girl in the world to me. I am never bored when we are together."
"You have got to stop saying things like that out of the blue!"
"I am just answering your question."
"I know, but still! Gosh! Good night, Lee! Thank you!"
She turned toward the door.
She stopped.
She turned back.
Sakura pushed up onto her toes and pressed her lips against his cheek, quick, and then she was through the door before he could do anything about it.
The door shut.
Lee did not move.
He stood on the path in front of her house. The squid stick, long finished, was still in his hand. The crickets carried on about their business.
A moment passed.
Several more passed.
Then the red the gate had put in his skin was suddenly and completely outmatched by a different kind of red, rising from his feet to his hairline like something had ignited under the surface.
"YOSSSSHH!!!"
His fist punched the air. His feet left the ground. The gate, still running, amplified the leap into something that cleared the rooftops.
"TRUE EFFORT NEVER LETS YOU DOWN! THE POWER OF YOUTH IS ETERNAL! LOVE CONQUERS ALL!"
"SHUT UP, KID! SOME OF US ARE TRYING TO SLEEP!" A window across the street had flown open. An older man in a sleeping cap was glaring at him over the sill.
"Sorry!" Lee whispered at regular volume.
The window slammed shut.
Lee walked home at a pace closer to flying than walking. The gate closed somewhere along the way, the red draining from his skin, the strain releasing itself into the night air. His body felt lighter than usual.
And for half a step, in the middle of all of it, a thought surfaced that he had no one to say out loud.
Neji would have had something rude to say about this. About the squid, the goldfish he failed to catch, the girl, the kiss, all of it. Some flat, dry remark. Lee could hear it. He could hear exactly the tone of it.
He wished, with a sharpness that caught him off guard on an empty street, that he could go tell his rival about the best night of his life.
He could not.
The grief was still there. It had been there all night, underneath the lanterns and the laughing and the warmth of her hand. It would be there tomorrow. It would be there for a long time.
But tonight, for the first time since the funeral, it was not the loudest thing for him.
Tonight the loudest thing was a girl on her toes pressing her lips to his cheek, and the memory of it carried him the rest of the way home through the dark.
His efforts had not failed him.
They never had.
And if one day they did, he would simply keep trying until they could not.
[Eight Gates Proficiency +2,491 points!]
In Sunagakure, the wind never stopped.
It scraped against the curved walls of the Kazekage's office the way it always did, carrying sand from the desert in thin streams that hissed against the stone. The office was lit by oil lamps. The windows were narrow slits designed to keep the sand out and the heat in, and the shadows they cast were long and still.
Baki knelt on the floor before the Kazekage's desk. His face was half-covered, his single visible eye fixed on the ground. He had been summoned an hour ago. He had arrived in four minutes.
"The plan of attack." The Kazekage's fingers laced on the desk. "Report."
Baki reached into his vest and produced a scroll. He unrolled it across the desk, revealing a detailed layout of Konoha's arena, its surrounding streets, and the placement of key buildings within a half-mile radius.
"Here is the finalized plan, sir. Two of our three genin have advanced to the final rounds as intended. Temari and Kankuro are in position and aware of their roles."
A pause sat in the room.
"And the third," the Kazekage said.
Baki's jaw tightened beneath his face covering.
"Gaara is dead, Lord Kazekage. Killed during the preliminary round by a Leaf genin named Rock Lee."
The words had been spoken before, in the initial report that Baki had sent by hawk the day it happened. But saying them again, here, in the Kazekage's office, gave them a weight that a written message could not carry. The One-Tail jinchuriki. The village's living weapon. The boy who had been created for the express purpose of being Sunagakure's ultimate deterrent. Dead at fourteen, killed by another fourteen-year-old who could not use ninjutsu.
The Kazekage did not visibly react.
"The plan changes," the Kazekage said. "The mission does not."
Baki looked up. "Sir, without Gaara, the centerpiece of the operation is gone. The tailed beast transformation was supposed to be our primary attack. It was the reason Sound agreed to the alliance in the first place. Without Shukaku-"
"Sound's commitment is not contingent on the One-Tail." The Kazekage's voice cut through Baki's concern without raising in volume. "Otogakure has its own forces. The genjutsu to incapacitate the arena will proceed as planned. Our shinobi will infiltrate during the confusion."
"With all due respect, Lord Kazekage, the Konoha shinobi are no fools. If we try to dispatch troops to the border with the Land of Fire under the guise of drills, their scouts will catch it. Their black ops teams have been patrolling everywhere. And the forces they're allowing into the village for the exams have been severely restricted. Since there are just three of us, including myself-"
"That is precisely why we sent Gaara." The Kazekage's fingers unfolded. "One jinchuriki was worth a battalion. His loss is... significant."
The lamp on the desk flickered. The wind outside pressed against the walls.
"However." The Kazekage leaned forward. "Konoha does not know we are coming. They believe we are allies. They believe the treaty of alliance has made us partners. And that belief is their weakness."
From the corner of the room, a sound. Temari uncrossed her arms and stepped forward from where she had been standing against the wall. Kankuro was beside her, leaning on the doorframe with his puppet case on his back and his war paint freshly applied.
Neither of them had spoken since entering the room.
"Temari. Kankuro." The Kazekage acknowledged them. "You know what is expected of you tomorrow."
Temari's green eyes were steady. "We know."
Kankuro said nothing. His fingers were tight around the strap of his puppet case.
"Lord Kazekage." Temari's voice was level but there was something underneath it that she was holding down. "You sent Gaara to those exams knowing what he was. Knowing what he could do. And a Leaf genin killed him."
Temari looked at her brother. Kankuro's expression had not changed. It had been locked in the same hard line since the day they learned Gaara was dead. Not grief, exactly. Gaara had terrified both of them their entire lives. He had threatened to kill them more times than either could count. He had been a weapon first and a brother somewhere distant behind that. But he had been their brother. And he was gone, and the emptiness where he had been was more disorienting than either of them had expected.
"You genin may not know all the details." The Kazekage's eye moved to Temari. "But you've seen what the alliance has done to our village. The treaty caused the Wind Daimyo to put his trust in Konoha and forward the requests to them that he should have been sending to us. Claiming that Konoha's services were cheaper, he slashed the flow of funds to Sunagakure. Our village had no choice but to downsize, to stretch fewer people across more missions. The strength of Sand has been bleeding out for years."
He paused.
"The treaty of alliance itself is a threat to our existence. Shinobi are instruments of conflict. When the head is a fool, it is the hands and feet who suffer."
Temari knew this. She had grown up watching the village get thinner. Fewer genin graduating each year. Fewer missions coming through the gate. The academy shrinking. Veteran jonin being sent out alone on assignments that should have required full squads because there weren't enough people left to fill them.
And now they had lost their jinchuriki on top of everything else.
"Right now, the very existence of the Hidden Sand Village is in peril." The Kazekage stood from his desk. "Lord Kazekage, who sensed the impending crisis of Sunagakure's decline, decided to join forces with Otogakure to show our idiot Daimyo the consequences of his choices."
Baki stiffened at the Kazekage referring to himself in the third person but said nothing.
"All the strength of Sand will be utterly drained if we wait any longer. Our ability to fight Konoha or anyone else, totally lost." The Kazekage moved to the window. The desert stretched beyond it, pale under the stars. "We will crush Konoha and restore our home to prosperity."
The room was quiet.
"And Gaara's death," the Kazekage continued, his back to the room, "makes this more necessary, not less. Konoha killed your brother during a peace examination. Your baby brother, killed on their soil, while they watched and celebrated."
Temari's hands curled into fists.
"They treated your brother's death as entertainment." The Kazekage did not turn around. "That is what Konoha's alliance looks like. That is the village you have been told to trust. Think about that when you step into their arena."
Kankuro spoke for the first time.
"I don't need a speech." His voice was low and flat. "Just tell me when."
"During the finals. You'll know the signal." The Kazekage turned from the window. His eye passed over all three of them. "Gaara, this mission... its success was supposed to depend heavily on him."
The words hung in the air, aimed at a dead boy who would never hear them.
"It doesn't anymore." The Kazekage returned to his desk and sat. "We adapt. Temari. Kankuro. Baki. The plan proceeds. Dismissed."
Baki stood, bowed, and exited.
Temari followed. Kankuro was last. He stopped at the door.
"Father."
"Yes?"
"Did you care? About Gaara."
The Kazekage's lamp flickered. His face was hidden beneath the hat's shadow.
"Gaara was a failure."
Kankuro stood in the doorway for three seconds. Then he turned and walked out.
The door closed.
In the Kazekage's office, alone, the man behind the desk allowed himself a smile that did not belong to the Kazekage. It belonged to someone else entirely. Someone who had spent decades learning to wear other people's faces.
Gaara's death was inconvenient. The One-Tail's power would have made tomorrow far simpler. But simplicity had never been necessary. Orochimaru had not survived this long by relying on a single variable.
The boy who had killed Gaara, though. Rock Lee.
That was annoying...