Guy and Lee stood thirty meters apart on Training Ground Six. Lee's eyes were locked on Guy-sensei's feet. The placement of his toes. The distribution of weight between heel and ball. The angle of his ankles. Everything above the shins was gone from his vision, voluntarily surrendered, and the world had become a narrow band of ground-level information that his brain was learning to read as fluently as a face.
Guy stared directly at Lee's eyes. Watching for the cheat. Watching for the instinct to glance up, the pull that every fighter felt when an attack came toward their head. If Lee looked up even once, Guy would know.
They moved at the same time.
The ground cracked where they'd been standing. Thirty meters collapsed to zero in the time it took the dust to rise from the first step.
"Leaf!" They both shouted.
"Coiling Whirlwind!" Guy's leg scythed in from a sharp angle, the kick curving around Lee's guard from the outside with the kind of rotational force that would tore straight through a tree trunk.
Lee saw the plant foot pivot. Saw the standing ankle torque. Read the arc of the incoming kick from nothing but how the ground received the force of the standing leg and his sensei's shadow.
"Cross block!" His knee and elbow snapped together at the point of interception, nearly catching Guy's whole ankle in the joint between them like a vice. The impact rang up both their bones. Lee squeezed. Another inch and the ankle would have been trapped completely.
Guy pulled his leg free a heartbeat before the trap closed. His foot touched down and his fists came forward, three punches in the space of a single breath. Punch. Punch. Punch. Each one aimed at Lee's head, each one designed to force the eyes upward.
Lee's eyes stayed on the feet.
He could feel the punches coming through the way they pierced through the air, through the shifts in Guy's footing that preceded every strike. The left foot braced meant a right cross was coming. The heel lifting meant the hook was already in motion. He brought his forearms up in a rolling guard, absorbing the jab on his left arm, deflecting the cross with his right, and slipping the hook by tucking his chin behind his shoulder.
But defense was a losing game against Guy-sensei. Lee knew that better than most shinobi.
He fired back.
The exchange opened up like a door being kicked in. Fists and feet traded between them at a speed that compressed individual techniques into a single continuous stream of violence. Lee threw a straight right. Guy parried it and countered with a knee. Lee checked the knee with his shin and whipped a hook toward Guy's ribs. Guy caught the hook on his elbow and drove forward with a palm strike that Lee swatted aside, stepping into Guy's space instead of away from it.
Close range. Where the feet told you everything.
Lee grabbed Guy by the waist, hoisted him overhead, and drove him downward toward the earth headfirst. The ground rushed up. Guy's palms hit the dirt at the last possible instant, fingers splayed, arms absorbing the momentum. He pushed off with enough force to launch both of them skyward, twisting in the air, his arms reaching for Lee's torso.
Front Lotus grip. Lee recognized it before the arms closed.
He threw his own arms wide, breaking the hold before it could lock, and drove his knee upward toward Guy's stomach. Guy caught it on his forearm, the impact sending a shockwave through the air between them. And then they were trading in freefall, suspended above the training ground with nothing beneath them but gravity and hard ground. Fists cracked against forearms. Shins met shins. A spinning kick passed close enough to Lee's jaw that he felt the displaced air on his teeth.
They hit the ground simultaneously, both feet finding earth at the same instant, and the air around them changed.
Lee felt the First Gate open. Then the Second. Then the Third. His skin flushed red. His pupils vanished. His hair stood on end. The veins across his body swelled with pressure that would have ruptured a normal person's circulatory system. Across from him, Guy's body underwent the same transformation, his already considerable frame turning the color of heated iron, his own veins standing up across his neck and arms.
Lee's eyes still never left Guy's feet.
The ground between them cratered before either of them visibly moved. Just the pressure of their chakra bearing down on the earth was enough to fracture it. Then they were gone. Past the point where speed could be described in a logical sense.
Green blurs. That was all a bystander would have seen. Two green streaks crashing into each other across the length of the training ground, the points of contact marked by explosions of displaced air and ground. A tree along the perimeter snapped at the trunk and toppled sideways, hit by nothing but the shockwave of a missed kick. A boulder embedded in the hillside fractured down the center from the impact of a body redirected into it. Craters bloomed across the field in pairs, one from the strike, one from the landing.
Lee read the feet. He read them through the Third Gate's speed, through the blur, through the chaos of ground breaking apart beneath them. He read them because he had to, because his eyes were forbidden from going anywhere else, because the entire point of this exercise was to make this second nature before he stood across from a boy whose red eyes could end the fight the instant Lee looked into them.
A fist connected with the side of his face.
A proper straight that caught him on the cheekbone with the full weight of Guy-sensei's Third Gate behind it. Lee left the ground sideways, spinning once, and carved a trench in the dirt with his feet as he slowed himself to a stop fifteen meters away.
"Enough!" Guy called out.
Lee stood. Blood from a split on his cheek ran down to his jaw. Both of them let the gates close, the red draining from their skin, the veins receding, their hair settling flat. The training ground around them looked like it had been shelled. Fallen trees. Craters. A long gouge in the earth where Lee had been skidding.
Lee raised his eyes from the ground.
For the first time in the entire spar, he looked at Guy-sensei's face.
Guy was smiling.
Lee smiled wider.
[Taijutsu Proficiency +1,113 points!]
[Chakra Control Proficiency +500 points!]
[Eight Gates Proficiency +879 points!]
Host: Rock Lee
Age: 14
Rank: Experienced Genin
Skills:
Taijutsu A (5,241/1,000,000), Ninjutsu F (0.290/10), Genjutsu F (0.290/10), Shurikenjutsu C (4,300/10,000), Chakra Control B (25,300/100,000), Nunchaku Mastery B (12,800/100,000), Eight Gates B (3,879/100,000), Bojutsu C (5,723/10,000), Chain Mastery C (4,749/10,000), Muscle Mimicry B (0/100,000), Teaching C (387/10,000), Drunken Fist C (849/10,000), Inspire F (0/10)
Unique Skills: Body Supremacy Jutsu, Chakra Enhanced Strength, Strengthened Chakra Network, Regeneration Ability
Equipment: Customized Weights, Might Suit, Shinobi Tools
"YOSH!!! THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING, GUY-SENSEI!" Lee bowed with his spine straight.
"It couldn't be done if you didn't have the will and the heart to learn." Guy walked over and placed his palm on Lee's shoulder. "You don't know how proud I am of you..." Tears flowed freely from his eyes.
"I wouldn't be half the person I am now if it wasn't for you, Guy-sensei!" Lee's tears flowed just as freely.
"LEE!"
"SENSEI!"
The two embraced.
"Enough sappy stuff." Tenten was leaning against a tree at the edge of the ruined training ground with her arms crossed. How long she'd been watching, neither of them knew. "You two done? Because I need someone to test my puppet on."
"Puppet?" Lee turned to her.
"Yeah! That puppet guy from the Sand. I kept wondering why Konoha didn't have any puppet users when it looked like all you needed was chakra strings to control them. Turns out nobody here ever bothered to try." Tenten shrugged. "So I did."
"Hmm..." Guy rubbed his chin. "I've fought a couple of puppet users in my time. Tricky opponents. The puppets themselves are only half the danger. The real threat is the poison. Every puppet master worth anything coats their weapons in something nasty. Blades, needles, hidden compartments, all laced. Fight a puppet too long and you're gambling on whether something nicked you."
"Poison?!" Tenten's eyes widened. She hadn't considered that at all.
"If the puppets and their hidden tricks are one half of what makes a puppeteer dangerous, the poison is the other." Guy nodded. "My approach was always to bypass the puppet entirely and go straight for the puppeteer. Cut the strings at the source."
"So did I waste my time building this thing?!" Tenten pulled a summoning scroll from her back. A cloud of smoke erupted and cleared to reveal Konoha's very first puppet.
It was made entirely of wood, painted green, standing nearly two meters tall. It had three heads, six arms, and bore an unmistakable resemblance to two very specific people.
Lee and Guy looked at the puppet. Then at each other. Then back at the puppet. Identical grins spread across their faces.
"Shut it! I already know what you're going to say." Tenten's cheeks flushed. "Yes, I used you two as inspiration. I can't think of anyone stronger right now, so why wouldn't I model it after the toughest ninjas I know?"
"Tenten!" Lee and Guy called out simultaneously, arms already open wide, tears already forming.
"No hugs!"
Chakra strings flickered from Tenten's fingertips. The puppet lurched forward and drove all six of its six fists into their faces before they could close the distance.
They laughed through the impact.
"Ouch! That is pretty strong, Tenten." Lee rubbed his cheek where a visible bruise was already forming. And already fading, his accelerated healing pulled it back before anyone noticed.
"Of course it is. If it couldn't even hurt you, what would be the point?" She flexed the strings and the puppet's arms retracted to its sides. "So, Sensei, now that Lee's done with his training, can you help me improve this thing? I need to test its taijutsu and how useful the tricks I added are."
"Of course!" Guy smiled wide. "You know, if you keep developing this, the Hokage might take serious notice. You could be the founder of Konoha's first puppet master corps. Imagine that! The Leaf's very own feared puppet division, led by none other than Tenten!"
"You really think so?!" Her eyes lit up.
"As long as you're willing to put in the work, I believe you can do anything you set your mind to." Guy ruffled her hair.
"Lee, you want to stick around and help too?" Tenten offered.
"Sorry, Tenten. I have plans with Sakura-chan." Lee's hand went to the back of his head.
"Again?" Tenten raised an eyebrow. "I'm starting to think I was wrong about her." She waved him off. "Whatever. Go have fun with your little girlfriend."
"She is not my girlfriend!" Lee called back as he was already running.
Not yet, anyway.