Host: Rock Lee
Age: 12
Rank: Academy Student
Skills: Taijutsu B (3,000/100,000), Ninjutsu F (0.090/10), Genjutsu F (0.090/10), Shurikenjutsu C (750/10,000), Chakra Control B (1,000/100,000), Nunchaku Mastery C (570/10,000)
Unique Skills: None
Equipment: Nunchaku
Seven years.
Seven years of sweat and blood. Seven years of broken bones that healed stronger. Seven years of defeats that taught more than victories ever could. Seven years of relentless, grinding progress that transformed a five-year-old failure into something else entirely.
Rock Lee stood in the moonlit clearing where it had all begun, wooden nunchaku spinning lazily in his grip. The weapon's familiar weight was an extension of his body now, its movements as natural as breathing. Silver light filtered through the area and pooled across the moss-covered ground, casting the small pond at the clearing's center into a mirror of stars. The trees stood as they always had: ancient, patient, indifferent to the battles fought beneath their boughs. They'd watched two boys clash here dozens of times over the years, had absorbed the sounds of fists striking flesh and bodies hitting earth, and they would watch again tonight.
Across the clearing, Hyuga Neji approached with measured steps.
Lee felt his heart quicken. Not with fear, but with anticipation so intense it bordered on euphoria. This was it. Their final battle as academy students. Tomorrow, they would graduate, or at least, Neji would. Lee's graduation was still uncertain, contingent on proving that a ninja could succeed through taijutsu alone. But that uncertainty didn't matter right now. What mattered was the boy walking toward him with hatred burning in those pearl-white eyes.
The years had reshaped them both. Neji had grown taller. His skill as a shinobi had been refined into something that transcended mere prodigy: his Byakugan sharper, his Gentle Fist more devastating, his name whispered with reverence throughout the academy. At twelve, he was already being compared to jonin-level taijutsu specialists, a comparison that would have seemed absurd for anyone else his age.
But Lee had changed too. The chubby-cheeked five-year-old who could barely throw a punch had been burned away, replaced by lean muscle layered over dense bone. Every fiber of his body had been conditioned through training that would have broken lesser students. His long hair fastened in a braid and thick eyebrows remained but beneath those familiar features lived someone fundamentally different from the boy who'd first stumbled into this clearing with nothing but a smile and a dream.
They locked eyes. Seven years of history passed between them in that look: every ambush on the walk home from the academy, every beating in moonlit clearings just like this one, every incremental improvement that had shaved seconds off Lee's defeat time until seconds became minutes and minutes became something Neji couldn't ignore. Lee could see it all reflected in the Hyuga's expression: the fury, the hatred, the desperate need to prove that fate was real and Rock Lee was wrong.
Neji's hands rose into the Gentle Fist stance. His fingers formed the precise spear-shape that had closed so many of Lee's chakra points over the years. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Lee had lost count somewhere around the hundredth beating. Each one had left him broken in a hospital bed or collapsed in the street, and each one had taught him something new about reading attacks, about timing, about the microsecond windows where defense became possible against a style designed to be indefensible.
This wasn't practice anymore. This wasn't the controlled violence of the academy sparring circle where instructors stood ready to intervene. The killing intent radiating from Neji was real, a pressure that settled over the clearing like a physical weight. Most genin would have hesitated. Most chunin would have taken a step back to reassess.
Lee felt it wash over him like a familiar tide and began twirling his nunchaku in a slow, hypnotic pattern.
"Don't underestimate me, Neji-kun." His voice carried across the clearing with quiet authority, steady as stone. "Thanks to you, I've grown to levels I never would have been able to reach on my own." The nunchaku's rotation accelerated, the weapon becoming a blur of dark wood against moonlight. "As thanks, I will face you with everything I have. As the man I consider my mentor, rival, and someone I respect dearly." The spinning stopped. Lee caught both ends of the nunchaku and held them rigid at his side. "Take this seriously."
For the first time in seven years of fighting Neji, Rock Lee wasn't smiling.
The absence seemed to disturb Neji more than any taunt could have. For seven years, that grin had been a constant: infuriating, unbreakable, a symbol of everything Neji couldn't comprehend about the talentless boy who refused to stay down. Seeing Lee's face set in grim determination instead was like watching the sun rise in the west. It violated the natural order.
"I refuse to ever acknowledge a failure like you." The words came out harsh, forced through clenched teeth. Neji's Byakugan flared to life, veins bulging at his temples as he focused every ounce of his bloodline's power on Lee's chakra network. The world exploded into three-hundred-and-fifty-nine degrees of perfect perception, and Neji could see everything: the chakra flowing through Lee's coils, the tension in his muscles, the micro-movements that telegraphed intent. He could see it all.
But Lee had learned something important over seven years of fighting the Byakugan: seeing and reacting were two very different things.
…
Lee exploded forward.
His nunchaku whirled in patterns he'd drilled ten thousand times: figure eights that transitioned into lateral sweeps, overhead arcs that collapsed into tight defensive rotations. The weapon sang through the air, a continuous hum of displaced wind that filled the clearing with sound.
Neji's eyes tracked every movement with utmost precision. The Byakugan could see the nunchaku's trajectory before Lee even completed the swing, could calculate the angle of impact and the force behind it with near-perfect accuracy. When Lee entered striking range, Neji's response was immediate and practiced. His hand shot out to intercept, fingers aimed at the weapon's shaft to knock it aside before countering with a palm strike to Lee's exposed chest.
It was the same pattern they'd followed countless times before. Attack, intercept, counter, defeat. The rhythm of their rivalry, as predictable as the tides. Neji could execute it in his sleep.
Which was exactly why Lee threw his nunchaku directly at Neji's face.
The weapon left his hand with a sharp snap of the wrist, spinning end-over-end toward the Hyuga's head. Neji's eyes widened, a fractional movement, barely perceptible, but Lee had spent seven years learning to read those pearl-white eyes and he caught it. Surprise. Real, genuine surprise. Another crack in seven years of certainty.
Neji's hand adjusted automatically, his training overriding his shock. His palm struck the spinning nunchaku out of the air with a sharp crack, sending the wooden weapon tumbling into the darkness above the trees. The deflection was clean, exactly what any competent fighter would do when a projectile aimed at their face.
And for one perfect, beautiful moment, Neji thought he'd won. Without his weapon, Lee was just...
The world tilted.
Lee's spinning low kick connected with Neji's ankles before the Hyuga's brain could process what his eyes were showing him. Lee had dropped into a crouch the instant the nunchaku left his fingers, using the throw as a feint, a bright, obvious distraction that demanded attention while he slipped beneath Neji's line of sight. The Byakugan saw in all directions, yes, but the human mind behind those eyes could only focus on so many things at once.
Neji's feet left the ground. The clearing spun around him: trees, moon, pond, all blurring into streaks of silver and shadow as his body rotated through the air. His Byakugan showed him every angle of his helpless tumble in perfect, useless detail.
Lee rose with the spin. His body uncoiled from the crouch like a spring, converting the rotational energy of the sweep into upward force. His rising knee drove into Neji's stomach at the apex of the Hyuga's involuntary flight, and the impact was solid. A deep, meaty thud that Lee felt all the way up to his hip. The force launched Neji backward, air rushing from his lungs in a strangled gasp.
But Neji was still a genius. Even winded, even shocked, his body responded to seven years of clan training. His hand found the ground mid-tumble and he pushed off with one arm, converting the chaotic momentum into a controlled aerial recovery. He flipped once, twice, and landed on his feet in a defensive stance fifteen meters away. His breathing was labored. His stomach throbbed. A thin line of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth where he'd bitten his own tongue.
Lee's nunchaku dropped from the sky above and he caught it without looking, the weapon settling into his grip like it had never left. The familiar weight completed him, and the smile that finally appeared on Lee's face wasn't the cheerful grin of their early years, not the bright, unshakable sunshine that had infuriated Neji for the better part of a decade.
This was something else. Something sharper. The smile of a man who'd finally cornered prey that had been eluding him for seven years.
______________________________________________
This couldn't be happening.
Neji's mind raced as he stared at Lee across the clearing, trying to reconcile what he'd just experienced with everything he believed about the world. His stomach ached where the knee had connected, a deep bruise already forming beneath the skin. The taste of blood sat metallic and wrong on his tongue.
It was a fluke. It had to be. Seven years of demonstrated superiority, seven years of proving the absolute gap between talent and effort. They couldn't be undone by one lucky exchange. Lee had surprised him, nothing more.
But the denial rang hollow even inside his own head. Lee's movements replayed in Neji's memory with the crystalline clarity of the Byakugan's recall: the throw, the drop, the sweep, the knee, the catch. Each motion had flowed into the next like water finding its course downhill, not the stumbling improvisation of luck, but the seamless execution of something practiced until it lived in the bones. That was mastery. That was the product of drilling a single combination until it could be performed without conscious thought, until the body simply knew.
No. Neji's jaw tightened until his teeth creaked. NO. He refused. Fate had determined their places in the world from birth. Neji was gifted and Lee was not. That was absolute. That was immutable. That was the only thing holding the universe together in any way that made sense, because if it wasn't true, if effort could bridge the gap that blood and breeding had established, then what was the point of any of it? What was the point of the Hyuga clan's centuries of selective breeding? What was the point of the cage seal on his forehead? What was the point of his father's sacrifice?
If a talentless nobody could choose his own destiny, then Neji's suffering had no meaning. And that was unacceptable.
He charged.
His mind surrendered to rage and his body moved on pure killing instinct. Gentle Fist strikes flowed from his hands in a lethal torrent, not the measured, surgical precision of a sparring match but the wild, overwhelming violence of someone trying to destroy a truth they couldn't accept. Every strike was aimed at vital points. Every movement was designed to shut down Lee's chakra network permanently. No more games. No more holding back. No more allowing this anomaly to persist.
This ended now.
______________________________________________
Lee watched Neji's charge with the clarity that seven years of fighting the same opponent had burned into his nervous system. He knew every tell: the slight forward lean that preceded a rush, the way Neji's left shoulder dipped a fraction of a degree before his right hand struck, the tempo of his footwork that accelerated in predictable intervals. Reading Neji had become second nature, a skill honed through countless beatings that had mapped the Hyuga's combat style into Lee's muscle memory with the intimacy of a dance partner.
But reading and surviving were different things.
"I don't know why you hate me, Neji-kun." Lee swayed left and a spear-hand passed close enough to ruffle his hair. He could feel the displaced air on his ear, could smell the faint medicinal scent of the training salve Neji used on his hands. "I have a feeling that it's not me you hate but something about me." He ducked under a palm strike and felt Neji's fingers graze the top of his scalp. The proximity was razor-thin; a centimeter lower and his tenketsu would have sealed. "All I ask is that you look at me as a person and not someone to project your issues onto." Another strike. Another dodge. The margin grew thinner with each exchange as Neji's fury accelerated his tempo beyond what practice had taught him. "The same way I do to you, Hyuga Neji."
The words needed to be said. They had needed to be said for years, building up behind Lee's smile like water behind a dam. Neji wasn't his enemy. Neji was his greatest teacher, the whetstone against which Lee had sharpened himself into something approaching a real shinobi. Every beating, every broken bone, every night spent in the hospital staring at the ceiling and replaying his mistakes. All of it had been a gift, even if the giver didn't know it. Even if the giver would be furious to hear it described that way.
But the hatred, that poisonous, all-consuming hatred that had nothing to do with Lee and everything to do with whatever cage Neji had built around himself, couldn't be left unaddressed any longer. Not on the last night they'd face each other as academy students. Not when tomorrow might scatter them to different teams, different paths, different futures.
Even if Neji wouldn't listen. Even if the words bounced off him like rain off stone. Lee owed it to both of them to try.
His smile turned somber as another palm strike whispered past his jaw.
"Shut up!"
The blow came faster than anything Neji had thrown before, not a practiced technique but a raw expression of fury that bypassed form entirely and struck with pure intent. Neji's palm connected with the center of Lee's chest, and the impact was immediate and devastating.
Lee felt the Gentle Fist's signature disruption tear through his chakra network like lightning through a conductor. Points along his chest and shoulders seized, the chakra pathways collapsing inward as Neji's energy invaded and shut them down. The physical force was almost secondary; his feet left the ground, his body rocketing backward across the clearing. But it was the chakra damage that truly hurt. His chakra enhancement flickered like a candle in a storm, the reinforcement that kept his muscles operating beyond normal human limits stuttering and failing.
A tree stopped his flight. The thick trunk absorbed the impact with a groan of stressed wood, bark splintering against Lee's back. White light filled his vision. The air drove from his lungs in a single explosive gasp, and for a terrible moment he couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't do anything except hang there against the tree like something discarded.
Neji was already there.
The follow-up palm strike hit before Lee's feet touched the ground, before he could raise his guard or turn his body to minimize the impact. Neji's hand drove into Lee's solar plexus with enough force to blow him through the tree entirely. The trunk exploded outward in a shower of splinters and pulverized bark, fragments spinning through the moonlight like wooden shrapnel. Lee's body tumbled through the wreckage, rolling across dirt and moss and exposed roots with the limp, boneless quality of someone whose muscles had stopped cooperating.
Blood filled Lee's mouth. The coppery taste was familiar, almost comforting in its constancy, a flavor that had accompanied every major fight of his life since the age of five. He spat, and the dark stain on the moss looked black in the moonlight.
His chakra control was in ruins. He could feel the sealed points like knots in a rope, each one a node of disruption that degraded the flow downstream. His strength had dropped to maybe thirty percent of its normal output. His strikes would be weaker. His speed would be slower. His ability to absorb damage without breaking had been cut by more than half.
This was bad. In a real fight, against a real enemy, an injury like this would be the beginning of the end.
But Lee had been here before. Not quite this badly, perhaps, but close enough. Seven years of fighting Neji meant seven years of learning to function with a damaged chakra network, of training his body to compensate when his chakra couldn't. It was just another form of adversity, just another wall to climb. And Rock Lee had never met a wall he didn't try to scale.
His hands pressed against the ground. His arms trembled, actually trembled, the muscles protesting the simple act of pushing his own weight upward. He ignored them. Pushed harder. Felt something in his shoulder grind in a way that shoulders weren't supposed to grind, and ignored that too.
By the time his feet were under him, Neji was already moving in for the kill. The Hyuga closed the distance in three rapid strides, fingers extended in that lethal spear-shape, aimed at Lee's throat with the precision of a surgeon and the mercy of a guillotine.
Lee's nunchaku came up.
The wooden shaft intercepted Neji's fingers with a sharp, ringing crack: hardwood against bone. Neji hissed through his teeth, pain lancing up his hand and into his wrist. The sound was small, involuntary, the kind of noise that a proud man would be furious at himself for making.
Lee didn't give him time to recover. The nunchaku reversed direction, sweeping toward Neji's other hand as it came around for a follow-up strike. Another crack. Another hiss. Lee pressed forward, his weapon maintaining a constant, circling harassment of Neji's fingers and wrists, the Gentle Fist's primary instruments, the precision tools that made the style lethal.
It was a calculated strategy, one Lee had developed over years of fighting an opponent whose hands were his deadliest weapons. You didn't try to outfight the Gentle Fist. You couldn't block it, couldn't tank it, couldn't power through it the way you might with a conventional taijutsu style. The chakra disruption bypassed physical defense entirely. So instead, you attacked the delivery system. You made the hands themselves too damaged to function with the precision the style demanded.
Each impact of nunchaku against flesh and bone sent a small jolt of satisfaction through Lee's chest. He could see the strategy working in real time: Neji's attacks growing sloppier, his strikes losing the surgical precision that made them devastating. Where once his fingers found tenketsu with unerring accuracy, now they wavered, hesitated, struck a centimeter off-target. A centimeter was nothing in most fighting styles. In Gentle Fist, it was the difference between shutting down a chakra point and merely bruising skin.
"Why aren't you using ninjutsu, Neji-kun?" Lee's grin returned, not the sober, serious expression of the battle's opening, but something wilder, slightly manic, fueled by pain and adrenaline and the intoxicating knowledge that he was winning this exchange. "Isn't that one of the things that make me a failure in your eyes? Show me what's so great about ninjutsu." He deflected another palm strike, his nunchaku catching Neji's wrist and redirecting the blow into empty air. "Because I don't think your taijutsu is that much better than mine."
The taunt was deliberate. Exact, even. Neji's pride in his clan's legendary fighting style was the deepest well Lee could draw from, and the implication that the Gentle Fist, the Hyuga Clan's Gentle Fist, might be insufficient against a boy who couldn't mold chakra was precisely the kind of challenge that Neji's ego wouldn't allow him to answer with anything other than pure taijutsu.
It worked. Neji's face contorted, fury and wounded pride warring across his features in a display that would have horrified his clan elders. A Hyuga was supposed to be composed. Unreadable. Above the petty emotions that governed lesser people. But there was nothing composed about Neji right now.
"I don't need to use ninjutsu to show a loser that he's nothing more than a loser!" Each word shook with barely contained rage. "The famous Hyuga Clan's Gentle Fist shall put you in your place."
…
They rushed toward each other again, two academy students pushing themselves beyond the limits of what twelve-year-old bodies were meant to endure.
Neji's upper body wove through the nunchaku's arc with the fluid grace of a reed in wind, his Byakugan tracking the weapon's trajectory with microscopic accuracy. Even damaged, even furious, the Hyuga's evasive technique was flawless, a lifetime of training so deeply ingrained that emotion couldn't override it. His body knew how to move independent of his mind's turmoil.
Lee adjusted. His nunchaku feinted high, then reversed low, then snapped back to center in a rapid three-beat combination that tested Neji's reaction from different angles. The Hyuga dodged all three, but the third forced him to lean further than was comfortable, his weight shifting a fraction too far onto his back foot.
Lee pounced on the opening. His roundhouse kick came in fast and low, aimed at the side of Neji's head. Not a feint this time but a genuine attack, the full rotational power of his hips behind it. The kick was fast enough that even Neji's eyes couldn't dismiss it.
Neji's fingers stabbed forward, finding the tenketsu on the inside of Lee's thigh with the precision of a needle. The pain was immediate: a sharp, electric shock that raced down Lee's leg and seized the muscles below the knee. His chakra flow to the limb stuttered, the chakra reinforcement that kept his kick powerful and controlled faltering at the worst possible moment.
But Lee had expected this. Had planned for it. Seven years of having his tenketsu sealed had taught him what the Gentle Fist could and couldn't do. It could shut down chakra points. It could disrupt the flow of energy through his limbs. What it couldn't do was stop the physical momentum of a leg that was already in motion.
Lee reversed the kick's direction mid-arc. The blocked tenketsu actually helped; the sudden loss of controlled deceleration meant his leg whipped around with raw mechanical force instead of the innate precision he'd intended. The heel came back around in a vicious reverse crescent aimed at the crown of Neji's skull.
Neji's hands came up to block. It was instinct, pure, unthinking self-preservation, and it cost him. Both palms caught Lee's heel, absorbing the impact with a bone-deep thud that sent shockwaves through his already-damaged fingers. For one critical heartbeat, both of Neji's hands were occupied. Committed. Unable to strike.
Lee hopped off the ground with his one remaining good leg and drove his freed foot forward in a straight kick that split Neji's guard like a wedge through timber. His heel caught the Hyuga square in the sternum, and the impact was deeply, viscerally satisfying, the kind of clean hit that Lee felt in his bones, the kind that he'd replay in his memory for years.
Neji ground his teeth and slid backward, his feet carving furrows in the moss. Lee's landing was far less graceful. With one leg compromised by sealed tenketsu and the other having just been used as a launching pad, he had no stable base to return to. His hands hit the ground first, catching his weight in an awkward push-up position that left his back exposed and his legs scrambling for purchase.
It was a vulnerable position. Lee knew it the instant he felt his palms touch earth.
Neji knew it too.
The Hyuga surged forward, covering the distance between them in two explosive strides. His fingers formed the spear-hand, aimed directly at the base of Lee's spine, a strike that, delivered with enough force and precision, could sever the connection between brain and body permanently. There was nothing doubtful about it. Nothing restrained. This was a killing blow, aimed at the most vulnerable target Lee had ever presented.
Lee's foot shot backward and up in a desperate, ugly counter, a donkey kick with none of the grace or technique that characterized his usual fighting style. Pure survival instinct, the body's refusal to die quietly.
His heel met Neji's thrusting fingers head-on. The collision sent agony screaming through Lee's foot as another tenketsu sealed on impact, the chakra point collapsing under Neji's touch even as the physical force of the kick drove the Hyuga's fingers backward against their joints. Lee heard the sound before he felt its meaning register: a wet, grinding crunch that spoke of bones stressed past their tolerance.
Neji's breath caught. Not a hiss this time, not a small involuntary noise, but a genuine gasp of pain that he couldn't suppress. His fingers, the instruments of the Gentle Fist, the weapons that made his clan's style the most feared taijutsu in Konoha, were reaching their breaking point.
They separated. Both breathing hard. Both damaged. The clearing around them bore the evidence of their battle: a shattered tree, gouges in the moss, scattered splinters catching moonlight like tiny blades. The pond's surface had gone still again, reflecting two boys who looked far older than twelve.
Lee's chakra network was a constellation of sealed points, each one a dim star where energy should have flowed freely. His control had degraded to maybe fifteen percent of its normal capacity. His muscles burned with the effort of compensating for what chakra could no longer provide. Every movement cost more than it should have, every breath came harder than the last.
Neji's hands trembled at his sides. The fingers that were his primary weapons, the delicate, precise instruments that required perfect bone alignment and nerve sensitivity to function, shook with a fine, continuous vibration that he couldn't stop. Several of them were visibly swollen, the joints puffy and discolored even in the forgiving moonlight.
This was it. The next exchange would decide everything.
Lee's smile bloomed across his bloody face, wide and genuine and incandescent. Because just by reaching this moment, just by pushing Neji to this state, hands damaged, breathing ragged, the pristine Hyuga genius covered in dirt and sweat and showing signs of actual fatigue, Lee had already accomplished something that no one believed was possible.
He'd made it a fight.
Not a beating. Not an execution. Not a demonstration of the natural order. A fight. Between two people who both had a chance of winning.
But what kind of man would Rock Lee be if he didn't finish what he'd started? Seven years of blood and sweat and broken bones and hospital ceilings and the smell of antiseptic and the sound of his classmates laughing and the quiet, steady voice inside his head that said get up, get up, get up. All of it had led to this clearing, this moment, this final exchange under a moon that didn't care about talent or fate or any of the other lies people told themselves to justify giving up.
Lee flipped onto his feet.
Neji appeared before him.
…
The Hyuga's offense came in waves. Even damaged, even pushed beyond what should have been his limit, Neji's assault was relentless strikes and even kicks flowing in patterns that his clan had refined over generations. Each blow was aimed to disable. Each movement was backed by the weight of centuries of shinobi tradition.
Lee's nunchaku absorbed the worst of it. Wood met flesh again and again, the familiar rhythm of impact-deflect-redirect playing out at a tempo that pushed both boys to the razor edge of their reflexes. And with each strike that connected with the nunchaku's shaft instead of Lee's body, Neji flinched. The damage to his hands was cumulative now, each new impact building on the injuries that preceded it, compound interest paid in pain.
There.
The flinch lasted a fraction of a second longer than the last one. Neji's right hand pulled back after striking the nunchaku and stayed back, not retreating into a guard position but simply pausing, the fingers curling inward protectively in a way that the Gentle Fist stance never allowed for. An opening. Small. Brief. The kind of window that would close before most fighters even recognized it existed.
Lee's nunchaku struck Neji across the left cheek. The wooden shaft connected with a crack that echoed off the surrounding trees, snapping the Hyuga's head to the right. Before Neji could recover, before his eyes could refocus, before his feet could adjust, before his mind could process what had just happened, the other end of the nunchaku was already coming around.
It caught Neji's face from the opposite direction, whipping his head to the left with equal force. Blood sprayed from the Hyuga's lip in a fine mist that caught the moonlight and looked, for one surreal instant, like scattered rubies.
Lee didn't stop. Couldn't stop. The nunchaku had found its rhythm now, the deep, flowing pattern that he'd drilled for years, the one that used each strike's momentum to power the next in an endless, accelerating loop. Left side, right side, overhead, rising diagonal, reverse: the weapon blurred into a continuous wall of spinning hardwood that crashed against Neji from every angle.
The Hyuga prodigy couldn't defend. His hands were too damaged, his fingers too swollen and broken to form the precise shapes that the Gentle Fist required. He tried to raise his arms and pain shot through them like fire. He tried to duck and the nunchaku followed him down. He tried to step back and Lee stepped forward, maintaining the killing distance with the instinct of someone who understood that giving a wounded opponent space was the same as giving them hope.
Lee watched Neji's eyes begin to glaze. The sharp, hateful focus that had characterized every one of their fights was softening, consciousness threatening to slip away under the accumulated punishment. Neji's legs wobbled. His guard dropped to his waist. His mouth hung open, blood and saliva stringing between his lips.
One more. One more strike to end it.
Lee planted his back foot and drove forward with everything his broken body had left to give. His leg extended in a straight kick aimed at Neji's abdomen, the same target he'd been hitting all night, the same spot that was already bruised and tender from multiple impacts. The kick wasn't elegant. It wasn't the kind of technique that would appear in any taijutsu manual. It was raw, brutal, desperate, and it carried behind it seven years of being told he wasn't enough.
His foot connected. The impact traveled up his leg and into his hip and he felt every newton of it, felt Neji's body fold around his shin like a closing book. The Hyuga launched backward, actually left the ground entirely, his feet trailing behind him as his body followed the trajectory that Lee's kick had dictated.
A laugh escaped Lee's chest. Not his usual exuberant shout of youthful enthusiasm, but something quieter, more personal. A sound that came from a place deeper than joy. Relief. Vindication. The simple, overwhelming gratitude of a man who'd been climbing a mountain for seven years and could finally, finally see the summit.
He'd done it. He'd actually...
Smoke.
Neji's body burst into white smoke at the moment of impact and Lee's foot passed through empty air where a body should have been. The smoke swirled and dissipated in the moonlight, carrying with it the sharp ozone scent of expended chakra, and where Neji had been there was now only a shattered log rolling harmlessly across the moss.
The Substitution Jutsu.
Lee's smile didn't falter. If anything, it widened. It grew until it threatened to crack his face in half, until his bloody teeth gleamed in the moonlight, until his eyes stung with something that might have been tears if he'd been willing to let them fall.
He heard movement behind him. Felt the displacement of air that preceded a strike. Sensed the killing intent that radiated from Neji's position like heat from a forge.
"So, you've finally acknowledged me..."
The words came out quiet. Almost reverent. Because Neji had used ninjutsu. The Hyuga genius, the prodigy who had spent seven years insisting that the Gentle Fist alone was enough to keep Lee in his place, who had just said, minutes ago, that he didn't need ninjutsu to prove a loser was a loser, had been forced to abandon his pride and use every tool available just to survive.
That was acknowledgment. Not the verbal kind, not the kind you could put into words or write on a certificate. Something deeper. Something that lived in the body's honest assessment of a threat, the primal recognition that said this person can hurt me, this person is dangerous, this person is real.
Hyuga Neji had looked at Rock Lee and seen a real opponent. After seven years, that was all Lee had ever wanted.
Twin palm strikes slammed into Lee's back.
The impact was catastrophic. Lee felt his body lift off the ground, felt gravity release him as Neji's Gentle Fist launched him skyward with the force of a catapult. Multiple vital points sealed simultaneously, a cascading failure that rippled through his already-damaged network and shut down what little chakra reinforcement he had left. His arms went numb. His legs went numb. His vision strobed between clarity and darkness as his brain struggled to maintain consciousness against the systemic shock of having its chakra supply effectively severed.
More strikes followed. Neji was beneath him, above him, beside him, everywhere at once, or so it seemed through the haze of pain and failing senses. Each blow carried lethal intent, each one designed not to disable but to destroy. Eight strikes. Sixteen. Thirty-two. Lee counted them distantly, the way one might count raindrops in a storm. An exercise in futility that the mind performed anyway because it needed something to hold onto.
His body rose higher with each impact, a puppet jerked upward on strings of violence. Individual leaves became visible against the night sky, each one edged in silver moonlight, each one beautiful in a way that Lee had never noticed before. Strange, the things you saw when the world was ending.
He wasn't afraid. The realization surprised him, distantly, in the part of his mind that was still capable of surprise. He'd expected to be afraid of dying, had assumed that when the moment came, his body would rebel against it the way bodies were supposed to. But there was no rebellion. No panic. Just a deep, quiet satisfaction that settled into his chest like warm water.
He'd done it. Not won; he was under no illusions about the outcome of this battle. But he'd forced a genius from one of Konoha's most prestigious clans to fight him with everything. A complete nobody. A talentless boy who couldn't shape chakra into the simplest jutsu. Someone who every instructor, every classmate, every whispered conversation in the academy hallways had written off as a failure and a joke.
That boy had made Hyuga Neji go all out. Had made him bleed. Had made him flinch. Had made him substitute.
From nothing to this. That was enough. That was more than enough.
"Once a loser, always a loser!" Neji's voice reached him from somewhere below, raw and ragged and nothing like the cold, composed monotone of their earlier years. "Know your place, fool!"
Lee smiled in the face of the palm hurtling toward his heart. It's a shame, he thought, and the thought was gentle, almost fond. It's a shame I couldn't become a splendid ninja known across the world for his taijutsu. But dying here, acknowledged by my rival...
The fatal blow never landed.
"Geez! You two are the epitome of overflowing youth!"
A hand caught Neji's strike the way an adult might catch a ball tossed by a child, effortlessly, casually, with a kind of offhand power that made the lethal blow seem almost quaint by comparison. Lee found himself cradled in another arm, held against a chest that radiated warmth and a presence so vast it felt like standing next to the sun.
The man wore a green jumpsuit. His thick eyebrows were eerily, impossibly similar to Lee's own features, as if someone had taken Lee's face and aged it forward twenty years while adding about a hundred kilograms of pure muscle. He stood in a pose that should have been ridiculous, one hand holding Neji's fist, the other cradling Lee's broken body, one leg kicked out at an angle with his thumb raised and his teeth gleaming in a smile that could have powered the village's electrical grid.
It was, simultaneously, the most absurd and most impressive thing Lee had ever seen.
"Who are you!?" Neji's Byakugan blazed, veins bulging with the effort of trying to read this stranger who had appeared from nowhere and stopped a killing blow like it was nothing.
"I'm Konoha's Sublime Blue Beast of Prey, Might Guy!" The smile intensified somehow, crossing the threshold from merely blinding into something that might legitimately cause retinal damage. "This awesome battle between two fierce rivals is now over! You've won again, Neji. Congratulations." He gave the Hyuga a thumbs up with the hand that still held Neji's fist, a casual flex of power that communicated, without words, exactly how little effort it had taken to stop the boy's strongest attack.
Then he vanished.
Not disappeared. Not jumped away. Vanished. One frame he was there, solid and grinning and impossibly real, and the next he simply wasn't. The space he'd occupied held nothing but settling air and the faintest afterimage of green.
Neji's Byakugan, the all-seeing eye, the bloodline limit that perceived three hundred and sixty degrees of reality with perfect clarity, hadn't tracked a single step.
______________________________________________
The clearing fell silent.
Neji stood alone in the moonlight, his arms hanging at his sides like things that no longer belonged to him. The bones in his hands and forearms were a ruin: fractures layered on fractures, joints swollen beyond recognition, fingers bent at angles that fingers weren't designed to accommodate. The pain hadn't fully arrived yet; his body was still running on adrenaline and rage, still operating under the assumption that the fight continued. When the chemicals faded and the nerves caught up, the agony would be extraordinary.
"Damn it..."
The words came out weak. Barely more than a breath, lost in the quiet of the forest. Neji's right hand clenched, or tried to. The damaged fingers curled partway and stopped, the bones grinding against each other in a way that sent white light flashing behind his eyes.
"Damn it!"
Louder now. His left hand clenched too, and the pain was worse on this side. Lee's nunchaku had done more damage to the left, had struck the knuckles and wrist repeatedly in those final exchanges. Neji felt something shift inside his hand that shouldn't have been able to shift, and the sensation almost made him vomit.
"DAMN IT!!!"
The shout ripped itself from his throat and echoed through the forest, startling birds from their roosts. Small animals fled through the underbrush, their rustling passage the only answer the night offered. Neji stood in the center of the ruined clearing, the shattered tree, the gouged earth, the scattered splinters, and felt his frustration crest like a wave that had been building for seven years.
He'd won. The man in the green jumpsuit had said so. By every objective measure, Neji had demonstrated his superiority once again. He'd sealed more chakra points, dealt more damage, landed more decisive blows. He'd reduced Lee to a broken, bloody mess and finished the fight with his clan's most devastating combination.
So why did it feel like losing?
The walk home was long and unsteady. Neji's usually perfect posture had crumbled along with his certainty, his shoulders hunched, his gait favoring the left side where Lee's final kick had bruised his ribs before the substitution. The streets of Konoha were empty at this hour, the good citizens of the village long since retired to their beds, and Neji was grateful for the absence of witnesses.
He didn't want anyone to see him like this. Beaten, because that's what he was, regardless of the official outcome. A Hyuga genius, forced to use Substitution against a boy who couldn't mold chakra. Forced to resort to ninjutsu against a person who could only use taijutsu. Someone who everyone agreed was talentless. Forced to fight for his life against someone whose place in the world was supposed to be beneath him.
The medical team at the clan compound would fix his hands. The Hyuga had access to the best medical nin in the village; within a few weeks, the bones would knit and the swelling would subside and his fingers would regain their use. The physical damage was temporary.
But the questions that followed him through the dark streets, persistent, gnawing, unanswerable, those wouldn't heal so easily.
If fate was real, how had a talentless failure forced him to use substitution?
If destiny was absolute, why had Neji needed ninjutsu to survive?
If effort couldn't overcome talent, then what had happened tonight?
Neji reached the Hyuga compound gates and paused, staring at the clan symbol carved into the stone above the entrance. The same symbol that decorated his headband. The same symbol that marked his cage seal. The symbol of a destiny he'd been told was inescapable.
He didn't have answers. He didn't want answers. Answers would mean confronting the possibility that everything he believed was wrong, and if everything he believed was wrong.
Neji walked through the gates and did not look back.
He didn't feel like a winner. Not one bit.
______________________________________________
[Taijutsu Proficiency +515 points!]
[Nunchaku Mastery Proficiency +564 points!]
[Chakra Control Proficiency +532 points!]
Host: Rock Lee
Age: 12
Rank: Academy Student
Skills: Taijutsu B (3,515/100,000), Ninjutsu F (0.090/10), Genjutsu F (0.090/10), Shurikenjutsu C (750/10,000), Chakra Control B (1,532/100,000), Nunchaku Mastery C (1,134/10,000)
Unique Skills: None
Equipment: Nunchaku
Lee woke to the smell of antiseptic and the steady, rhythmic beeping of a heart monitor.
His body registered damage the way a building might register an earthquake: comprehensively, structurally, with the kind of deep systemic protest that suggested something fundamental had been rearranged. Every muscle ached. His chakra network throbbed at each sealed point, the blocked tenketsu pulsing like small, angry hearts. His ribs complained when he breathed. His back, where Neji's killing combination had landed, felt like someone had used it as an anvil.
But he was alive. The heart monitor confirmed it with each green blip across its screen. Alive, breathing, and lying in what his nose and the quality of the ceiling told him was Konoha General Hospital.
That was more than he'd expected when Neji's palm had thrust toward his heart.
"Easy there, kid." The voice came from Lee's left, warm and rich and carrying an undercurrent of barely contained energy. "You put on quite an impressive show tonight."
Lee turned his head, slowly, painfully, his neck muscles protesting the movement, and found the man who saved him sitting beside his hospital bed.
"Did I... did I lose?" The words came out as a croak, his throat raw and dry.
Guy's expression shifted. The megawatt smile dimmed, not extinguished, never extinguished, but modulated into something more thoughtful, more considered. He leaned back in his chair and regarded Lee with eyes that were far more perceptive than his flamboyant exterior suggested.
"That depends on what you were fighting for." Guy's voice was gentle, almost philosophical, a jarring contrast with the man who'd been doing a thumbs-up pose while holding a dying boy twenty minutes earlier. "If you wanted to beat Neji into the ground, then yes, you lost. But if you wanted him to acknowledge you as a real opponent..." His eyes twinkled with something warm and knowing. "Well, let's just say that boy used Substitution against you. A young man who can only do Taijutsu forced a Hyuga genius to rely on ninjutsu. What does that tell you?"
Lee's smile returned. It hurt, his split lip reopened, fresh blood mixing with the taste of hospital-grade mouthwash, but it was genuine. Radiant. The kind of smile that made the fluorescent lights above seem dim by comparison.
Acknowledgment. After seven years, he'd finally gotten what he'd been fighting for.
"Get some rest," Guy said, standing. The chair creaked with relief as his considerable weight left it. He paused at the door, one hand on the frame, and looked back at Lee with an expression that held something Lee hadn't seen directed at him before. Not pity. Not amusement. Not the patronizing encouragement of someone humoring a lost cause.
Respect.
"We'll talk more tomorrow. I think you and I have a lot to discuss about the power of youth and hard work."
The door closed softly behind him. The heart monitor beeped its steady rhythm. Somewhere in the hospital, a night nurse made her rounds, her soft footsteps a metronome counting out the small hours before dawn.
Lee stared at the ceiling and let the events of the night replay behind his eyes. The clearing. The moonlight. The first exchange: the throw, the sweep, the knee, the catch. Lee's words about hatred and projection. Neji's devastating counter. The long, grinding middle of the fight where both of them broke each other down piece by piece. The nunchaku assault. The substitution.
The substitution.
He played that moment again. And again. The smoke. The log. The sound of movement behind him. The smile on his own face when he understood what it meant.
Tomorrow was graduation. Tomorrow, he'd prove to the entire academy that a shinobi that can only use taijutsu could succeed. Tomorrow marked the beginning of everything he'd been working toward for seven years, the first step on a journey that would take him from this hospital bed to the ranks of Konoha's shinobi.
But tonight, he'd rest. He'd earned it.
The heart monitor beeped. Lee's eyes closed. And for the first time in seven years, Rock Lee fell asleep without planning tomorrow's training regimen.
There would be time for that later. Tonight, he was enough.