The bend in the road was perfect.
The trees crowded close on both sides, old growth with thick trunks and low branches that turned the road into a tunnel of shadow. The slope dropped off to the left into a ravine choked with brush, and the right side rose steeply into a ridge of exposed root and rock. One way in, one way out, and anyone walking through it would be looking at the road ahead, not the treetops above or the brush below.
They got positioned in seconds. Fuki in the brush on the left. Ami on the right behind a trunk with her chain whip already unspooled, one end in her hand, the weighted tip resting on the ground. Kasumi up the slope behind a boulder where she could see the approach and signal.
Lee stood in the center of the road with his arms folded and waited.
They came seven minutes later. Two men, civilian clothes, average builds, walking at a cautious but moderate pace. They rounded the bend and saw the road ahead, empty, shadowed, quiet, and the boy in green standing in the middle of it looking directly at them.
They stopped.
"Good evening!" Lee smiled. "You two have been following my students and I since we entered the town." He tilted his head. "Would you like to explain why?"
The dark-haired one immediately turned to run back the way they came.
"Dynamic Entry!" Fuki came out of the brush like a launched stone. Her leg drove forward and her foot connected with the side of his face in a full-force kick that snapped his head sideways and dropped him to the road in a heap. He did not get up.
The second man turned to run the other direction and made it two steps before something wrapped around his torso and yanked him off his feet. Ami's chain whip coiled around him once, twice, three times, pinning his arms to his sides, and she pulled the chain tight and planted her feet and the man hit the dirt face-first with oomph.
"Got him." Ami smirked.
Kasumi came down from the ridge.
Lee was still smiling.
"Excellent work everyone!" He crouched beside the conscious one, who was struggling against the chain and cursing. "Now. We need information."
They propped the two men against a tree, side by side, wrists bound behind them with rope from Kasumi's pack. The unconscious one came around after Fuki slapped him twice, which she did with more enthusiasm than was strictly necessary.
Lee crouched in front of them. He was still smiling. And it was the most unsettling thing either man had ever seen directed at them by someone who had just ambushed them.
"My name is Rock Lee, which you know already. I am a Special Jonin of Konohagakure. These are my students. We are here about the bandit attacks on the southern trade road." He spoke pleasantly, as if introducing himself at a dinner party. "I would very much appreciate it if you could tell me where your base is located, how many people are there, and who is in charge."
"Go to hell, Leaf scum." The dark-haired one spat.
Lee picked up a rock from the road beside him. It was about the size of a fist.
He squeezed it.
The rock crumbled to powder in his hand. Fine grey dust that sifted through his fingers and drifted to the ground in a small cloud.
Lee opened his hand, dusted his palm on his pants, and looked at them with the same polite expression.
"I will ask again. Where is your base located, how many people are there, and who is in charge?"
Both men were sweating. The dark-haired one's jaw was opening and closing without sound. The other one, the skewer man, had gone pale. Neither spoke.
Lee said nothing. He simply waited.
"We ain't telling you nothing." The dark-haired one said, but his voice had climbed half an octave from where it started.
Fuki stepped forward. She cracked her knuckles, one hand and then the other, and the grin that spread across her face was pure, uncut malice. "Why don't we just beat the hell out of them until they fess up?" She popped another knuckle. "If these guys are so loyal, let's see if they stay so loyal with a few broken bones."
The two men looked at Fuki. They looked at her fists. They looked at the expression on her face, which was the expression of a girl who was going to enjoy every second of this and was not going to stop until someone made her.
They looked at Lee.
Lee looked at them for a long moment. Then he turned around and began walking away.
"Rock-sama?!" The dark-haired one's voice cracked. "Wait, where are you going?!"
Lee kept walking. Behind him, Fuki started rolling up her sleeves.
"HEY! ROCK-SAMA! HEY, COME BACK! CALL HER OFF!"
Lee stopped walking. His back was still turned.
"OKAY! OKAY! WE'LL TALK! Just keep that little red-haired monkey away from us!"
Fuki's grin fell into something visibly disappointed. "Already? Seriously?"
"Go ahead." Lee said, not turning around. "Speak."
They spoke.
The base was in the hills south of the trade road, about four kilometers from the town, in an old mining cave that had been abandoned years ago. There were roughly fifteen men, most of them bandits, no shinobi training, armed with whatever they stole off the caravans. They had a fence in the next town over who bought the stolen goods and sent a cut back.
And then the dark-haired one said the thing that changed everything.
"And the boss. He's the one who set the whole thing up. He's a shinobi. Missing-nin. Don't know where from. He doesn't talk about it. But he uses ninja stuff, and none of us would dare cross him."
Lee turned around.
"A shinobi?" he repeated.
"Yeah. That's why none of the local militia or the town guard could ever do anything. They sent a couple guys out there once, early on, and the boss killed them, only sending back their heads."
Lee was quiet for a moment. The girls watched his face and saw that he was thinking.
A missing-nin leading the bandits changed the mission parameters. A C-rank mission involved little to no chance of combat against other ninja. The moment an enemy shinobi entered the picture, the mission was no longer C-rank. It was B-rank at minimum, possibly higher depending on what the missing-nin could do.
Genin were not assigned B-rank missions. Genin were trained for D-rank and C-rank work. His students had been genin for weeks. They had fought each other in sparring, they had run laps, they had climbed trees, they had pulled weeds and moved hay and caught a cat three times. They had not fought a trained shinobi who was trying to kill them.
The employer had paid for a C-rank. The mission scroll said C-rank. The parameters had changed.
"Girls." Lee's voice was steady. "We need to head back to Konoha. There's an enemy ninja involved, which raises the mission's ranking to B-rank. This is beyond the scope of what we were assigned."
The silence lasted one second.
"WHAT?!" Fuki exploded. "No way! We're not running away!"
"I'm not scared of some cowardly missing-nin!" Ami's arms crossed. "He's leading a bunch of losers and had to run away from his own village. He can't be that dangerous."
Kasumi was quiet. Her hands had folded together in her lap, her face was pale, and her tone was soft.
"We should stick to proper protocol..." She muttered.
Ami and Fuki turned on her with a glare so unified and so intense that Kasumi flinched. But she did not take it back.
Lee scratched the back of his head. "This is difficult..."
"Aren't you always going on about the Power of Youth, sensei?!" Fuki was in his face, fist raised. "How can we be lacking in youth just from some punk loser ninja who got ran out of his own village and has to resort to leading a bunch of even bigger losers?!"
"I don't see why we have to run." Ami said. "You trained us. And you're here to protect us if anything goes wrong. Who can defeat Konoha's Green Savage Devil?"
"Yeah! We aren't that weak!" Fuki doubled down. "Otherwise what's the point of our training when the first time things don't go perfectly, we have to run!"
A conflicted look crossed Lee's face. They were using his own words and philosophy against him, and the worst part was they weren't entirely wrong.
"Our youth is burning brightly, sensei!" Fuki's fist was still up. "You can't let it die by having us run away!"
Ami's face turned a shade of red. "Yeah... our youth or whatever is really freaking burning..." She looked like she wanted the ground to swallow her for saying that out loud.
Lee exhaled. Then he looked at Kasumi.
"Kasumi. If you agree with continuing the mission, we will continue despite my thoughts on the matter. If you disagree, we head straight back to Konoha."
Before Fuki could turn the full force of her glare on Kasumi, Ami grabbed Fuki's head and wrenched it sideways, leaning in close to whisper something fierce in her ear. Fuki's jaw clenched but she didn't turn back.
"Sensei, do you mind if us girls have a private chat?" Ami asked, her voice suddenly, suspiciously kind.
"Alright." Lee picked up both bound bandits, one under each arm, and began walking away. "But do not try to force Kasumi into agreeing with you just because you want to continue the mission."
"Of course not, we just want to have a proper discussion together." Ami said kindly.
He walked until the trees put a wall between them. Then he set the bandits down, sat on a rock.
His hearing picked up everything.
"What's your problem, Kasumi?" Fuki was in her face before Lee's green suit disappeared into the trees. "Why are you trying to screw things up for us?"
"I'm not trying to screw anything up." Kasumi's voice was small but it was not backing down. "I think it's safer for us to handle missions that are assigned for us. C-rank and D-rank. Why do we have to try something dangerous and risky? We finally just graduated not to long ago. Why should we risk our lives when we don't have to?"
"Quit being so selfish and think about us instead of yourself!" Fuki pointed at her. "If we complete a B-rank mission as genin, think about how much faster that'll help us become chunin! And Ami's right, you've really gotten arrogant ever since we became Devil-sensei's students. Back in the academy you would never talk back to us like this."
"Well maybe I want to change too." Kasumi's voice found something it hadn't had before. "Maybe a life just listening and following others isn't a life worth living. Lee-sensei said if I work hard enough I can achieve my dreams. He achieved his dream of becoming a splendid ninja despite not being able to use ninjutsu or genjutsu. I want to work hard too. I want to become a splendid shinobi that people admire and respect too!"
Ami's face twisted.
Her hand moved.
The slap cracked across the quiet hillside like a branch breaking.
Kasumi's head snapped sideways. A red mark bloomed across her cheek and her eyes went wide, shock and pain and something else, something that had been there for years and was only now reaching the surface.
"Get your attitude in check and understand your place." Ami's voice was cold. The voice she had used in the academy and during flower picking class and in every space where she was the biggest thing in the room. "I was the one who took you in when you had nothing. If it wasn't for me, you would've stayed the plain ugly bullied ginger girl with nothing and no one. You were useless. And without me, you'd go back to the useless ugly girl you always wer-"
"Leaf Whirlwind!"
Kasumi's leg came around in a spinning kick that caught Ami across the face.
Ami left her feet. She spun through the air and hit the ground on her back and lay there staring at the sky and the pain didn't even register for a full second because the shock was bigger than the pain.
Kasumi hit me.
Kasumi disobeyed me. Kasumi lashed out at me. My Kasumi. The Kasumi who listened to my every word. The follower whose only purpose was to follow my directions.
She hit me.
Kasumi was standing with her fists shaking and tears running down her face and the red mark of Ami's slap still burning on her cheek.
"I am not useless!" Her voice broke. "I am not ugly! Even without you, Ami, I can be better! I can be someone! I'm done listening to you!"
She turned to Fuki.
Fuki raised both hands, palms out. "You got it, Kasumi. Damn." She whispered. "Didn't think you had it in you."
"I'LL KILL YOU!" Ami shot up from the ground and charged, face red, eyes wild, every shred of composure gone, the bully inside her burning through everything Lee had ever tried to build over it.
Kasumi didn't run. She set her feet. Her hands came up in the Soft Fist stance Lee had taught her. She was shaking, tears still falling, but her feet were planted and she was not moving.
Lee appeared between them.
One finger on Ami's forehead, stopping her mid-sprint. One finger in front of Kasumi.
He looked at Ami. He looked at Kasumi. He looked at Fuki, who was standing off to the side with her hands still raised and the expression of someone who was enjoying every moment of this chaos.
"Let's go cool our heads for a bit." He said with a small smile that wasn't friendly.
He walked back to where the bandits were, picked them both up again, and started walking. The three girls followed. Fuki walked in the middle. Ami was on one side, silent, her cheek swelling, her eyes on the ground. Kasumi was on the other side, equally silent, her own cheek still red, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
Nobody spoke.
Lee led them back toward the town, toward the lights and the distant music of the festival that was still going, and found a small tea shop on a quiet side street where the lanterns were soft and the owner didn't ask questions about why a young man in green had two bound men under his arms and three girls behind him who looked like they had been in a fight. They had ninja headbands. That was enough explanation.
He ordered four teas. He set the bandits against the wall outside where he could hear them if they tried to escape. He sat down across from his three students.
The tea came. Steam rose between them.
Nothing in his teaching book had prepared him for this and Guy-sensei was very far away. Like him and Neji had their fights of course. Sometimes they nearly came to blows on missions and outside of missions they nearly killed each other. But he didn't think it was anything similar to this.
Sure, Neji thought he was better than Lee. But he never tried to force him into listening to him like he was his superior or anything. Because he knew that Lee wouldn't just submit and listen to him. But his students' situation is different. It appears that Kasumi previously listened and followed Ami. And now she was refusing to do so. Finally standing up for herself.
Lee sipped his tea and looked at his team, and thought about what to do next.
The festival music played softly through the walls. The tea was warm. The mission was unresolved. And three girls who had been a team this morning were something else now.
Lee drank his tea and searched for the right words for this situation.