Host: Rock Lee
Age: 14
Rank: Chunin
Skills: Taijutsu A (27,400/1,000,000), Ninjutsu F (0.290/10), Genjutsu F (0.290/10), Shurikenjutsu C (5,150/10,000), Chakra Control B (41,800/100,000), Nunchaku Mastery B (21,200/100,000), Eight Gates B (39,600/100,000), Bojutsu C (7,100/10,000), Chain Mastery C (6,300/10,000), Tonfa Mastery C (2,900/10,000), Muscle Mimicry B (0/100,000), Teaching B (11,400/100,000), Leadership C (5,321/10,000), Drunken Fist B (10,651/100,000), Inspire D (180/1,000), Water Style D (160/1,000)
Unique Skills: Body Supremacy Jutsu, Chakra Enhanced Strength, Strengthened Chakra Network, Regeneration Ability, Increased Chakra Reserves
Equipment: Customized Weights, Might Suit, Shinobi Tools, flask of special medicine, Tonfas
"Shikamaru-kun. You can't be down like this." Lee told him, sitting across from him in the hospital. "We had psychological training before we became chunin. Every mission has the possibility of things going wrong." Lee tried to cheer him up.
Shikamaru looked up at him. "There's a difference between training and doing. I've been on missions before. I thought I knew what it was to be a shinobi. I… This was the first time I was named squad lead. It helped me realize… I'm not fit to be a shinobi." Shikamaru declared.
Lee's smile froze before erasing. "Shikamaru, don't be crazy. If you aren't fit to be a shinobi, no one is. You're intelligent, clever, caring, loyal, responsible, and one of the most upstanding leaf shinobi I know. Sure, you may be a little lazy, misogynistic, and rude from time to time. But no mission can go perfectly even if every decision made was the correct one."
"..." Shikamaru really thought about Lee's words. "Do you really believe I made the right decisions…?"
"Shikamaru-kun." Lee stared into his eyes. "I don't know what orders you gave exactly. But as one of my friends and as someone who was chosen to become a chunin alongside me by the Fifth Hokage, I know for sure you made the best decisions possible given your circumstances and the information available."
"Your friend is right, Shikamaru." Shikaku appeared from around the corner. "You made it back. Reflect on what happened this time and learn from the experience. Then your next mission will be far better. If you really care about your friends and the outcome of this mission, set your mind to further improving yourself."
The door to the emergency room opened.
"He's okay now." Tsunade said with a smile before taking a seat on the bench. "His medication had a side effect that was eating away at his healthy cells but I found an antidote that worked. I gotta thank you, Shikaku. The Nara clan's Medical Encyclopaedia was a big help. It took tremendous effort to put it together. It's the sweet fruit of all your daily labor."
"It wasn't an issue." Shikaku nodded at her.
"Kiba and Akamaru are out of the danger zone." Shizune soon came out next, sweating and heaving.
The corridor had been busy for the better part of an hour, and not with hospital business.
A pair of nurses had come down it twice to report nothing in particular. An orderly had wheeled the same empty gurney past three times. A genin runner had arrived with a message that could have waited a week, and an old woman with a bandaged arm had shuffled the whole length of the hall just to bow, because word had gone through the building the moment he arrived, and everyone wanted a look, and most of them wanted more than a look.
The Fifth Hokage stood at the end of the corridor in the white and red of his office, and he had not moved from that spot since the emergency room doors first closed.
"Lord Hokage, thank you for the new shift rotations, the night staff can finally-"
"Lord Hokage, my son says your speech is why he enrolled in the academy, I just wanted-"
"Lord Hokage, it's an honor, truly-"
Guy took every one of them. A crushing handshake for the medic. Both hands and a bow for the old woman. A blinding grin and a thumbs up for the runner, who left glowing. He gave each person the whole of his attention for exactly as long as they needed it, and not once, not for a single second, did the larger part of him leave the doors at the end of the hall.
Further down the corridor, Kakashi leaned against the wall with the little orange book open, and he was actually reading it, turning pages and everything, because at that moment in the Hokage's tower two of him were working through the day's paperwork and none of them was the real one, and the real one had discovered, after a lifetime of searching, the rarest jutsu of all: free time.
When Shizune gave her report, Guy finally crossed the hall to them, and the corridor quieted around him.
"The mission failed." He said it plainly, without softening it, because his students had taught him that softening a truth only made it heavier. "And every single one of you came home alive. I signed that order. I have been standing in this hallway since the first stretcher came through those doors." His voice wasn't loud. "I'm happy to see that all of you survived even if the mission may have failed. I couldn't ask for more."
"Next time… The mission will be perfect! I swear it!" Shikamaru cried tears as he made a promise. Not just to his Hokage, but to himself.
…
"So then… everyone survived. That's a relief…" Naruto muttered.
"Sasuke…" Shikamaru mentioned.
"No. He's gone…" Naruto revealed.
Lee heard someone behind the door as Naruto shared this information. Sasuke willingly left Konoha for Orochimaru. For the village that attacked their home. For the man who attacked their home. Lee inwardly shook his head. Sasuke-kun defected from their village for some reason for the man who attacked it. Lee couldn't extend the same type of forgiveness that Naruto-kun had for him.
He tried thinking of what if Neji left the village and betrayed it. Sure, he'd demand to hear him out first, but from what Naruto-kun told him about their fight. He was more than willing to kill him and leave for Orochimaru. Yet, Sasuke didn't kill Naruto. He left him alive. Which meant to Lee that Sasuke wouldn't become a kill-on-sight enemy if he ever encountered him going forward.
"Are you here to visit the patient, Sakura?" Tsunade's voice was behind the door. "News travels fast." She had a small smile on her face.
Tsunade and Sakura entered Naruto's room. A look of shock and guilt appeared on Naruto's face.
"Naruto… Lee…" Her eyes traveled to the two of them. Naruto wrapped up like a mummy and Lee totally fine.
"I hear you were badly wounded but you look well enough to me." Tsunade mentioned.
"Sakura. I'm… I'm sorry." Naruto couldn't meet her eyes.
"What are you apologizing for?" A false smile appeared on Sakura's face as she went over to the window blinds, opening them up and letting some sun in. "You and your silly antics! What will we do with you? Man, you look like a mummy." Sakura forced herself to have a positive tone. Even Lee could hear it.
"I'm sorry…" Naruto repeated.
"You know, you really should keep the curtain open. See how gorgeous it is out there?" Sakura couldn't look at Naruto either.
"Sakura! I… I will keep my promise! It's… my promise of a lifetime. I meant what I said." Naruto shouted.
"It's okay, Naruto. Forget it." Sakura told him, staring outside the window.
"You remember… It's like I always say, I never go back on my word. 'Cause that's my ninja way." Naruto smiled.
Tsunade inspected his wounds as Sakura giggled. "Naruto… I'm sorry. You'll need to wait for a while, but next time, I'm coming with you."
Lee secretly thought about if he ever encountered Sasuke, he could never let him return back to the village. All his hard work with Sakura-chan would vanish to nothing! Then he shook his head. That was the thinking of a coward. Was he scared of Sasuke-kun returning and snatching Sakura-chan's heart from him? Never! If he ever returned, he would have to look at him in envy with Sakura-chan by his side!
He's already received a kiss on the cheek! There's nowhere but up from here! Especially with Sasuke gone completely! YOOOOSSSHHHH!
…
The shop was half-empty and smelled of charcoal and soy, and the three of them took the corner table.
Guy had come straight from the tower, robes and all, and the wide hat sat on his knee, and the shopkeeper had bowed so deeply on their way in that his forehead smashed the counter, and two separate customers had already found excuses to walk past the corner table very slowly.
"Should you even be here?" Tenten asked, dropping into her seat. "Doesn't the village need, you know. Running?"
"Kakashi is covering it!" Guy declared with no guilt whatsoever.
"So I fought this bone guy on the Sasuke mission," Lee was saying, chopsticks pointed at the grill like a sword, "He could rip his own bones out and use them like weapons! He was really tough! I never seen someone who could use their own bones as a way to fight. If someone can fight with their bones, it makes me wonder what else can people use chakra with. It's so miraculous…"
"Maybe blood, maybe snot." Tenten was already laughing. "Oh my god! Could you imagine having to fight a freaking booger ninja?! It'd be so gross! Oh my god, I'd have to give up on the mission. That's so disgusting."
"Booger Style: Infinite Snot Jutsu!" Lee laughed harder with Tenten and Guy-sensei joining him.
"Lee!" Guy had his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands and the grin of a man watching the sun come up. "You used the Drunken Fist. In a real fight. Against an opponent."
"I nearly beat him with it before I even opened a gate, Guy-sensei." Lee said it fast, the words tripping over each other. "You always said it could not be mastered. That no one could train it, that it only came to a man by accident. And I have been working at it in secret, because I wanted to be the one who proved it. And it would've worked. If he didn't have like two transformations!"
"It doesn't sound like it to me, Lee." Guy shook his head firmly.
"What do you mean, Guy-sensei?" Lee wondered.
"If that Kaguya clan member wasn't strong enough to force you to use the Eight Inner Gates. How were you going to sober yourself?" Guy asked.
"I've reached a point in my training where I'm a little bit conscious while drunk, Guy-sensei!" Lee revealed.
"Really?!" Guy exclaimed.
"Yes!"
"That's my student!" Guy smacked him on the back with love before turning his attention to Tenten next. "And you." He turned the beam on Tenten. "I have not even heard half of yours yet."
"Mine's even better." Tenten flipped a piece of meat off the grill with the tip of a senbon, smug as a cat. "YOUTH worked. In the field. First real test." She leaned back. "I ran it from a distance up a tree without one of them ever finding me. They thought they were fighting me at first!" Her grin widened. "Then they tried to use some strange jutsu on me and got a pummeling of a lifetime!"
"Two of them?" Lee said, reverent.
"Two of Orochimaru's men. By myself." She said it proudly. "I put them in a crater with the Primary Lotus and carried Kiba and Akamaru home and neither of them will ever know who did it." A beat. "Which, you know. Story of my life." She flicked her hair.
"I know who did it." Guy said.
"I know you do, sensei."
"Both of you." Guy put a hand flat on the table, and his voice did the thing it did when the loudness drained out of it and left only the man underneath. "When I took the three of you, people told me I had drawn a hard lot. The boy who could not mold chakra. The girl with no clan. And the…"
He stopped.
It was a small stop. His mouth had been moving toward a third name naturally, and the sentence simply stopped.
"...I wish he could see this," Guy said quietly. "Neji. I wish he could see the two of you right now."
The table went still.
Lee looked at the grill. "I wish he could be here too," he said. "He would tell us we were being annoying and loud."
"We are being a little bit annoying and loud." Tenten smiled softly.
"He would be right, usually. That's what was annoying about it." Lee's smile came back small. "He was mostly right."
"He'd have made chunin." Tenten turned her cup in her hands and said it like a thing she was certain of, like a fact about the weather. "Easy. Probably the same time as Lee. He'd be sitting here in the vest right now being insufferable about it." She chuckled.
"He was not an easy person to be friends with." Guy said gently.
"No. He really wasn't." Tenten agreed.
"We loved him anyway." Lee said.
"Yeah." Tenten nodded. "We did."
It was quiet for a moment. The grill ticked. Somewhere across the shop someone laughed at something, a whole life happening that had nothing to do with theirs.
Then Guy cleared his throat hard and slapped both hands on the table loud enough to rattle the dishes, and the smile came back onto his face, because he was the adult, and couldn't let things be so down. Facing death was a normal part of a shinobi's life. And learning how to handle it correctly was just as important as anything else.
"He would also," Guy declared, "want you both to finish eating before it gets cold. So. Tenten. Tell me about the other sound-nin. The six-armed one. All of it. Leave nothing out."
"Okay, so," Tenten sat forward, lit up again, "you have to understand the look on his face first."
And they were loud again, the three of them, in the corner, at the table with the empty chair…