The moment before a fight always felt very loud to Rock Lee.
Not in his ears—those stayed clear; he needed them—but in his blood. Pulse in his throat, in his wrists, in the soles of his feet.
Across the clearing, the three Sound-nin finished spreading out. Zaku flexed his arms, that strange metal embedded in his palms catching the light. Kin's wires gleamed faintly between her fingers, bells tiny and cruel. Dosu stood in the center, bandaged arm low, head tilted, listening.
Behind Lee, he felt Sylvie's presence like a fragile flame pressed against his back. Her chakra fluttered thin and strained, but it did not retreat. Beyond her, Naruto and Sasuke were two heavier warmths, tangled with pain and exhaustion.
Three enemies. One injured ally still awake. Two comrades down.
His sensei would have called this "excellent conditions for youth to shine."
Lee smiled.
He moved.
One instant he was in front of Sylvie, the next the ground cracked where his foot had been. The world blurred sideways; bark and root streaked past. Wind scraped his cheeks.
Zaku's eyes barely had time to widen.
Lee's foot snapped up in a tight arc, heel slamming into Zaku's crossed forearms with a meaty thud. The Sound-nin flew backward, skidding, boots plowing twin trenches in the damp earth until he crashed into a tree.
"Gh—!" Zaku's breath left him in an ugly grunt.
Lee landed light, already spinning. He did not press the advantage; Dosu still stood. Always remove the most calculating threat first—Gai-sensei's words, drilled in between laps and push-ups.
Dosu was already stepping in, bandaged arm rising.
Lee ducked under the swing. The air shivered when the wrapped fist cut through it; even that near-miss made his inner ear buzz.
So. Sound transmitted through his arm. Dangerous.
"I see!" Lee said, even as he dropped low and swept at Dosu's legs. "An attack that assaults one's hearing and balance. A clever technique!"
Dosu hopped over the sweep, calm gaze never leaving him. The metal over his ear glinted.
"You talk too much," Dosu said. "For a taijutsu specialist, rushing in is a poor choice."
Lee grinned. "For a taijutsu specialist, there is no other choice!"
He launched into a flurry—straight punches, kicks, changing angles every heartbeat. Dosu blocked with his unwrapped hand when he could, twisted away from others, the bandaged arm always held so that any contact would send that invisible shock straight into Lee's bones.
He was good. Not Gai-sensei good, not Neji good, but cunning.
A senbon hissed past Lee's cheek, close enough to nick skin.
He sprang back. Kin stood to his right now, wires running from her fingers to the trees around them, bells attached. Her smile was thin.
"Don't forget about me," she said. "I'd feel left out."
Another senbon flicked out, barely visible. Lee twisted his shoulder; it embedded in the trunk behind him instead. The attached wire thrummed. Tiny bells chimed, high and clear.
Lee's eyes narrowed. Sound again. This team liked the same vector.
Behind him, he heard Sylvie's voice—small and hoarse, but steady.
"Lee! Two o'clock, ground—"
Zaku's hand slammed down where Lee had been a heartbeat before, blasting a cone of compressed air into the earth. Dirt and rock exploded upward, shredding underbrush. One of Sylvie's tags, half-hidden near a root, went off with a sharp crack and a puff of smoke.
Zaku cursed, staggering back, splattered in his own debris.
The trap hadn't been meant for him specifically, Lee realized. They were everywhere—scattered in a messy, desperate pattern around the clearing. Some peeled off to reveal sticky, glistening ink. Others flashed and boomed.
Sylvie had turned their little patch of forest into a crude minefield.
Pride sparked hot in his chest. She had known she would be alone with two unconscious comrades…and she had fought anyway, with what she had.
Such courage…
He could not fail her.
Zaku wiped mud from his face, sneering. "Stupid glue tricks," he spat. "This whole place is a joke."
"Then tread carefully," Dosu said. He flexed his bandaged hand once, subtle. "Her seals change the terrain. Remove her, and they become irrelevant."
The words slid across Lee's nerves like ice. Remove her.
He risked a glance back.
Sylvie was pressed to the tree, knees bent slightly, kunai clutched in her burned hand. Her glasses were crooked. Ink stained her arms up to the elbows. She looked terrified.
She also looked like she would stab anyone who came near the boys, even if it broke every bone in her hand.
Lee's chest tightened.
"Stay behind me, Sylvie-san!" he called. "I will not let them lay a finger on you!"
Her mouth twitched. "That's a terrible strategy," she rasped. "But okay."
Zaku lunged again, arms sweeping. The air screamed this time, a cutting, pressurized blast aimed straight at Lee's torso.
Lee dropped under it, feeling it shear off a clump of leaves where his head had been. He sprang forward into the wake, legs pistoning, turning defense into advance.
His foot hammered into Zaku's ribs. Once. Twice. The second kick sent the Sound-nin staggering back into one of the sticky patches. His boot sank; he swore again, jerking, wrenching himself free at the cost of a sole.
"Damn it!" Zaku barked. "She's everywhere!"
He meant Sylvie's traps. Lee chose to hear it as a compliment.
"Truly," he said. "Her preparations are formidable!"
Kin's bells chimed again. Lee's head swam for a second—just a second—edges of his vision blurring. He shook it off by force.
Gai-sensei had taught him to fight through nausea, through dizziness, through screaming muscles. This was just one more weight.
Dosu stepped in during that stutter, bandaged arm coming up in a tight arc.
Lee twisted, taking the blow on his shoulder instead of his head.
Agony detonated through his bones.
It was not sharp like a cut, or hot like fire jutsu. It was an all-at-once, inside-out shaking, like someone had grabbed his skeleton and rattled it. The world spun wrong; his feet hit the ground a half-second after he thought they should.
He fell to one knee.
"Lee!" Sylvie's voice again, closer now, ragged with worry.
He forced himself upright.
No. He could not stay down. Not while those three still stood. Not while Sylvie's chakra fluttered all frayed and thin behind him, and Naruto's and Sasuke's lay vulnerable.
Dosu watched him over the edge of his high collar. "Lucky," the Sound-nin said. "That should have scrambled you more. Your tenketsu are…thick."
Lee inhaled slowly. The pain became just another sensation. He had known worse. Training with ankle weights until his legs bled had hurt more in the long run.
"I have been struck far harder than that," Lee said. "By my own sensei."
He straightened.
Gai's voice echoed in his head, bright and fierce: You are a splendid ninja, Lee! You need no ninjutsu or genjutsu. Your fists and feet will carve your own path!
He thought of Neji, always just ahead. Of Tenten rolling her eyes and tossing him bandages. Of Gai's thumbs-up, teeth sparkling.
He thought of Sylvie, shaking but unyielding, dragging her friends through the dirt last night with burned hands.
He thought of Naruto, shouting his dream to the sky. Of Sasuke, standing alone in the Academy yard, back straight as a sword, eyes looking at something far beyond all of them.
So many flames.
He could not allow these strangers to snuff them out.
Lee exhaled. "Very well," he said softly. "I did not wish to use this technique so soon… but you leave me no choice."
Dosu's eye sharpened. "What is he—"
Lee reached down. Fingers brushed the holster at his leg in automatic habit. No—he would not remove the weights here; there was no time, and he would need every scrap of stability for what came next.
Instead, he reached inward.
The first Gate—the Gate of Opening—sat like a pressure point in his mind, sealed by years of careful control. Gai had shown him where it lay, how to press it open only when there was no other option. Only when what he was protecting meant more than his own body.
He pictured Sylvie again. Naruto's grin. Sasuke's stubborn, silent defiance.
His fingers curled into a seal.
Forgive me, Gai-sensei, he thought.
The Gate opened.
Chakra flooded his coils like someone had torn down a dam. His muscles flooded with heat, fibers screaming in equal parts pain and exhilaration. Veins bulged at his temples; the world went razor-sharp.
The forest slowed around him.
Zaku's next swing became a lazy, telegraphed arc of air. Kin's senbon traced visible lines. Dosu's shoulders tensed a fraction of a second before he moved.
Lee smiled, baring his teeth.
"Lotus," he whispered.
He was in front of Dosu before the Sound-nin finished blinking.
A rising uppercut to the jaw snapped Dosu's head back, lifting his feet from the ground. Lee planted his palms and kicked up, wrapping around Dosu's torso in a tight spiral.
The world inverted.
"Front Lotus!" he shouted.
They spun. The earth became sky became earth again, blurring into a green-brown disk. Lee's legs burned, muscles tearing micro-strand by micro-strand. The centrifugal force clawed at his joints.
He drove them down.
At the last instant, Zaku thrust both hands up, screaming.
Compressed air exploded outward from his palms in a deafening shockwave. It caught Dosu first, slowing his descent, turning what should have been a lethal pile-driver into a brutal slam. Dosu still hit the ground hard enough to crater it, but not hard enough to shatter his spine.
Lee took the rest of the force.
The recoil hammered up his legs, through his knees, into his hips. Something in his left ankle made a wet, wrong sound. The ground rushed up to meet him; his arms buckled.
He crashed, rolling away from Dosu's crumpled form on instinct.
The world snapped back to normal speed all at once.
He lay there for a heartbeat, staring up at the canopy, chest heaving. Every muscle below his waist screamed. His stomach lurched.
He could hear Sylvie shouting his name, hear leaves rustling as she moved despite her exhaustion, but his body would not respond as quickly as he wanted.
Move, he ordered his legs.
They twitched. He dragged himself to one knee.
Dosu groaned, pushing himself up with his unwrapped arm. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. His visible eye burned with new anger and something like respect.
"You…monster," Dosu rasped. "That was close."
Zaku stumbled over, wild-eyed. "Idiot, do you want to die?" he snapped at Dosu. Then he glared at Lee. "Who uses a suicide move in the middle of the second exam?! Are you insane?"
Lee grinned weakly. "If my life is the price for protecting my comrades," he said, voice rough, "it is a bargain I will pay gladly."
Kin had not been idle while they exchanged words. Her hands flicked. Senbon shot into trees around Lee, embedding with dull thunks. Wires attached between them snapped taut. Bells chimed softly, a delicate, overlapping melody.
Lee flinched. The tones slid under his skin, burrowing into his already-overworked nerves.
The clearing warped.
The trees seemed to lean in, stretching taller and thinner. Zaku's silhouette doubled at the edges. Kin's smile hung in the air where her body was not. For a split second, Sylvie's small form by the tree blurred—two of her, three, all trembling.
Genjutsu.
"I will… not be distracted," Lee ground out. He dug his fingernails into his palms, anchoring himself on the sting. Gai had taught him to break illusions by disrupting his own chakra—but his chakra was already raging from the Gate. One wrong push and he might simply collapse.
"Your stance is wide open," Dosu observed. His bandaged arm rose slowly, almost lazily. "You're spent."
Lee tried to move. His left leg folded.
Dosu's fist buried itself against Lee's chest.
The sound attack detonated through his ribcage. He felt it in his teeth, his spine, the fluid in his ears. The world spun end over end. He tasted blood.
Zaku's air blast hit a heartbeat later, a gut-level punch of pressure that sent him bouncing across the ground like a discarded training dummy.
He slammed into a root and stopped.
For a few long seconds, there was only noise—bells, his own ragged breathing, the rushing of blood.
"Lee!"
Sylvie again. Closer. Her hand grabbed his sleeve, fingers shaking.
He blinked up at her. Her face hovered above his—pale, smudged with dirt and smoke, eyes blown wide behind cracked lenses. Tears glittered in the corners, stubbornly refusing to fall.
"You… mustn't cry, Sylvie-san," he murmured. "This is… nothing…"
"I'm not crying," she snapped automatically, voice breaking on the last syllable.
He wanted to reach up and pat her shoulder, to give a proper thumbs-up, to say something inspiring about youth and perseverance. His arm did not move.
His vision blurred again at the edges.
Behind Sylvie, he could see the Sound trio regrouping. Dosu stood hunched but functional, bandaged arm flexing. Zaku rolled his shoulders, air vents hissing softly. Kin reeled in her wires, mouth a hard line.
Dosu's eye flicked over Lee once, dismissing him now as a non-threat, and settled on the tree. On Naruto. On Sasuke.
On Sylvie, still kneeling in the dirt, putting her small, burned body between them and the enemy by sheer stubbornness.
"Taijutsu specialist incapacitated," Dosu said, more to his teammates than anyone else. His voice had its clinical tone again, like he was reading a chart. "Jinchūriki and Uchiha currently unable to fight. That leaves only the seal-user."
His gaze rested on Sylvie.
"Just the girl," he said. "Between us and our goal."
Lee's heart lurched. He tried to stand. His body refused.
No.
He had promised.
His fingers twitched uselessly in the dirt.
As darkness crept in from the edges of his vision, Rock Lee's last clear sight was of Sylvie pushing herself to her feet, shaking like a leaf, kunai trembling in her burned hand as she squared her shoulders and faced three enemies alone.