Chapter 76: First Blood.
The cave mouth sat at the base of a hill, half-hidden by overgrowth and a rotting timber frame left over from whatever company had abandoned it years ago. A fire burned at the entrance. Two men sat around it, passing a bottle back and forth, weapons leaning against the rock behind them.
Lee held up a fist. Three girls stopped behind him in the brush, crouched, silent.
He turned to them.
"Fifteen men inside. One shinobi, probably deeper in the cave. The two at the entrance are sentries." He kept his voice barely above a breath. "Here is the plan. You three take the camp. Every bandit in there is your responsibility. Work together. Watch each other. Use everything I have taught you." He looked at each of them. "I will handle the shinobi if he becomes a problem. But the bandits are yours. All of them."
"All fifteen?" Kasumi whispered.
Lee smiled. "You have trained for this. You are ready. I believe in you."
Fuki was already rolling her neck. The grin on her face was the grin of someone who had been pulling weeds and catching cats for weeks and could finally enjoy a ninja mission.
"On my signal," Lee told them. "Fuki, the two at the fire. Ami, the entrance. Kasumi, anyone who tries to run past them."
He raised three fingers. Two. One.
Fuki exploded out of the brush.
She crossed the distance to the fire in three bounding strides, and the first sentry looked up from his bottle just in time to see a red-haired girl descending on him with her leg already chambered.
"Leaf Hurricane!"
Her spinning kick caught him across the jaw and the sound of it was brutal. His head snapped sideways and he left his seat and hit the rock wall. The second sentry grabbed his sword-spear and started to rise and Fuki's follow-through came around in the same rotation, her other leg catching him in the ribs. She heard something crack under her foot. He hunched around the kick and went down wheezing, and Fuki stomped once on the back of his head, and that was that.
"Two down!" She shouted in excitement.
The noise brought the others.
They came pouring out of the cave mouth like rats from a kicked nest, half-dressed, half-armed, some carrying blades, some carrying clubs, one carrying a bow and arrow. Thirteen men who had been living fat off stolen goods for months and had never once had to fight anyone who fought back.
Ami was waiting at the entrance.
Her chain whip shot out in a horizontal arc that caught the first three to emerge. The weighted tip took the lead man across the throat and he went down clutching his now-closed throat. The chain wrapped around the second man's sword arm, and Ami yanked, and the arm broke, and before he could process the pain by screaming she whipped the chain back around and the weighted end crunched into his temple. The third ducked under the chain and lunged at her with a knife, and Ami sidestepped, caught his wrist with her free hand, and drove her knee into his stomach. When he doubled over, the chain came down on the back of his skull.
"Three!" Ami called, rewinding the chain with a flick of her wrist.
The rest scattered into the clearing in front of the cave, spreading out, shouting, trying to form something that resembled a coordinated defense and failing completely because none of them had ever needed to coordinate against anything more dangerous than regular humans or wild animals.
Why are they counting…? Kasumi wondered to herself.
Kasumi met the ones who tried to circle around.
Two of them came at her together, one with a club, one with a short sword. The club came first, a wild overhead swing with everything the man had behind it. Kasumi spun into it, redirecting the force of the man’s blow straight into his chin, sending him flying into the air with a shattered jaw. The swordsman slashed at her from the side and Kasumi avoided the blade by ducking and she hit him with a rising elbow to the chest that cracked something behind his ribs and sent him staggering backward into Fuki, who was already there.
"Leaf Gale!"
Fuki's low sweeping kick took his legs out from under him and he hit the ground flat on his back, and Fuki's heel came down on his chest before he could roll. Shattering his rib cage for good.
They worked through the camp together, subtly competing against one another. But the stakes were real and nobody had the time to think about who said what in a clearing an hour ago.
Fuki was everywhere. She moved through the bandits like someone who had found the thing she was born to do. A Leaf Whirlwind sent one man spinning into a tree trunk. A Leaf Hurricane dropped another flat. She performed a diving spinning headbutt into a man’s face. She was laughing. Overjoyed at the fact that she could finally use everything she’s been training for.
Kasumi moved calmly through the bandits. She didn't chase. She waited for them to come to her, and when they came, she turned them. A punch redirected into empty air before a counter dropped him. A charging body guided past her and was finished with a shuriken to the back of the skull. A man who grabbed her shoulder found his own arm twisted behind his back and his face pressed into the dirt before a kunai was pushed into his brain. She was quiet. She looked the weakest. And every man who underestimated her for it ended up dead wondering how.
A bandit came at Ami from behind with a hatchet raised over his head. Kasumi saw him before Ami did. She moved without thinking, stepped between them, pushed the man's descending arm, and struck his jaw after his swing hit nothing.
Ami spun around, saw the man slumped against the ground, saw Kasumi standing where the attack had been.
"I didn't need your help, Kasumi." Ami told her.
Then she whipped her chain into a man who was charging at Kasumi from the right. The weighted end smashed into his gut and he was sent flying into a nearby wall. Ami looked at Kasumi with a sneer.
"Looks like you need to look out for yourself more than me."
Kasumi rolled her eyes. Then she turned back to the remaining bandits.
Neither of them considered the actions as apologies.
The last few bandits broke and ran for the tree line, and Fuki chased two of them down and dropped them with kicks before they reached the brush, and Ami's chain caught a third by the ankle and dragged him back across the dirt, and Kasumi intercepted the fourth with a Dynamic Entry to the gut that folded him and left him face-first in a pile of his own vomit.
Fifteen bandits. Finished.
The girls stood in the clearing in front of the ruined camp, breathing hard, splattered with blood that was not theirs, and looked at each other. Fuki was grinning. Ami was rewinding her chain with pride and satisfaction. Kasumi was wiping her palms on her pants and trying to slow her heartbeat.
They had done better than Lee expected. He had packed rope in case they couldn't bring themselves to go through with it. He hadn't needed the rope. Even Kasumi, the one he worried about most, had killed without hesitation.
They did a lot better than his team did on their first bandit mission. That thought made him proud and a little embarrassed at the same time. Were they softer back then compared to the academy students nowadays?
The missing-nin had heard everything from deeper in the cave.
He was already packing when the screaming started. A leather satchel, the money, the good sword, the scroll with the fence's contact information. He had known this day would come eventually. You didn't rob trade roads in the Land of Fire forever without someone sending ninja after you. Three genin from the sound of it, young, probably on their first real mission. Which meant there was a jonin somewhere behind them, because genin never traveled alone, and a jonin meant this job was over.
Time to call it quits. Start over somewhere else. New cave, new crew, new road.
He slung the satchel over his shoulder and turned for the cave's back exit.
A finger tapped his shoulder.
The missing-nin's body reacted before his brain did. His fist swung backward in a wild strike aimed at whoever was behind him, and his legs launched him forward, putting distance between himself and the unknown threat. He landed in a crouch six meters away, knife drawn, eyes wide.
A boy in green stood where he had been. Smiling.
The missing-nin's blood went cold. He hadn't heard a thing. Not a footstep, not a breath, not the displacement of air. This boy had walked up behind him in a cave with loose gravel on the floor and tapped his shoulder like they were friends.
This was the jonin. Had to be. Too young for the rank but too fast for anything else. Getting out was the only option.
"You cannot run from me." Lee said it conversationally. "I'm not sure if there are many people who can run from me. But I know for a fact that you are not one of them."
The missing-nin formed the hand sign and flickered.
Body Flicker. The cave blurred and the back exit rushed toward him and freedom was ten meters away and he was going to make it.
Lee was already there.
Standing in the exit, same smile, same posture, as if he had been waiting for hours. His foot swung into the missing-nin's gut and launched him backward through the cave. The man hit the ground, bounced, rolled, and came to a stop back where he had started, curled around his stomach, crying out in pain.
Lee walked back to him and crouched.
The missing-nin looked up through watering eyes and understood several things at once. This boy was indeed worse than a regular jonin. The gap between them was so large that he couldn’t imagine escaping after seeing how fast he was.
"I'll give you a chance to escape." Lee told him. "If you can beat my students, I will allow you to leave. Use whatever tricks or skills you need to win."
The man narrowed his eyes. "Is this a trick?"
"I don’t think I need tricks to deal with you." Lee smiled slightly confused.
The man knew he didn't.
"Alright... I'm trusting you, Rock Lee of Konoha..." The man recognized the boy at first sight. And it seems he really did live up to the rumors after all… Just his fucking luck…
"I am one of the most honest shinobi in Konoha!" Lee proudly proclaimed.
The missing-nin looked at the boy, at the smile, at the absolute sincerity of a statement that should have been ridiculous but somehow was not, and he turned and walked toward the cave mouth and the clearing beyond it where three girls were standing over his killed men.
The girls saw their sensei first. He was standing to the side of the clearing with his arms folded, and next to the clearing's edge, a man they hadn't seen before was staring at them. Dark clothes, a sword in his hand, a satchel on his back, and a crossed out forehead protector. The missing-nin.
Lee flashed a thumbs up. "Do your best!"
Fuki didn't need to be told twice. She dashed forward, straight at the man, closing the distance in the aggressive rush. Kasumi peeled off to the right, circling wide to cut off his retreat. Ami hung back, chain whip unspooling, eyes reading the field.
The missing-nin dropped into a stance. He watched the red-haired girl charge and prepared to meet her in close combat.
Fuki leaped. Her kick came down at his face from above, a dropping axe kick with everything she had behind it.
At the same time, Ami's chain whip sang through the air toward Fuki, or what looked like Fuki. The chain passed beneath the airborne girl and redirected toward the missing-nin's midsection, the weighted end screaming in from an angle he hadn't expected because his eyes had been on the kick above him.
Both attacks hit at once. Fuki's foot connected with his raised guard and drove him down. Ami's chain cracked across his ribs.
The man shattered into a log.
Substitution.
Kasumi felt him appear behind her before she heard him. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and her body, began to move.
His fist caught her across the cheek with enough force to snap her head sideways, and for one frozen instant she looked exactly like a girl who had just been knocked unconscious by a blow she didn't see coming.
She turned with the punch.
Her whole body followed the rotation of the impact, channeling it, riding it, and her leg came around in a spinning roundhouse kick that used the momentum he had given her and gave it back with interest. Her foot connected with the side of his face and the crack of it carried across the clearing. The missing-nin left his feet, spiraling through the air.
Blood leaked down Kasumi's lip. She didn't wipe it. The battle wasn’t over yet.
Ami was already moving. The chain whip came down from above in a vertical strike that caught the spinning man mid-air and smashed him into the ground. The impact cratered the dirt and the man bounced once and the final genin of Team Lee followed up from there.
"NOW, FUKI!" Ami shouted.
Fuki was already in the air.
"I’M ALREADY DOING IT!” She shouted. “LEAF DROP!"
She came down on top of him with a falling kick that drove both feet into his back and the crater deepened with a shrill scream. The ground cracked outward in small lines from the point of impact, and when Fuki stepped off, the man, if you could still call him that, did not move.
The clearing was silent.
Three girls stood over his body.
They were breathing hard. Blood was leaking from Kasumi’s lip. Fuki's knuckles were bloodied raw from the earlier bandit fight. Ami's arms ached from swinging the weighted chain all evening. None of them were unscathed, and all of them were standing.
They turned to their sensei.
Lee was smiling. He raised his thumb.
"Astonishing work, Team Lee!"
Fuki pumped both fists in the air and screamed victory into the night sky. Kasumi exhaled and sat down in the grass and pressed her sleeve to her bleeding lip. Ami wound her chain back into its coil and placed her hands on her hips proudly.
Lee looked at the three of them and saw what Guy must have seen, all those years ago, looking at his team. He wasn’t looking at what they were at the time but what they were going to become.
[Taijutsu Proficiency +120 points!]
[Teaching Proficiency +1,600 points!]
[Leadership Proficiency +700 points!]
[Inspire Proficiency +450 points!]
[Chakra Control Proficiency +80 points!]