Naruto: God of Shinobi

Chapter 45: Cost of a Dream

The alcohol was burning off.

Lee could feel it going, the warmth draining out of his limbs and leaving the cold truth of the damage behind. His arms were broken. His legs were barely holding weight. The Drunken Fist had carried him past every reasonable limit his body recognized, and now the bill was arriving.

He stood in the center of the floor and breathed.

Gaara stood across from him. His sand armour was falling from his nose and the corner of his mouth and one eye. His sand moved slower now, still circling but without the easy effortlessness it had carried at the start of the match.

"You cannot win," Gaara said. "Your arms are broken. Your legs won't hold you much longer. Your body is finished."

Lee looked at him. His eyes were clear. The pain was real and exact and he felt every part of it and he did not care.

"I'm not finished."

He closed his eyes. He breathed.

The first gate opened. The surge came up through his chest like a tide, chakra flooding pathways that had been locked since birth, and the pain in his arms and legs receded to a dull roar somewhere below conscious reach.

The second gate. His muscles swelled against his skin. The red began at his face and spread.

The third gate. His veins rose to the surface. Sweat evaporated off his body before it could bead, thin wisps of steam curling from his shoulders and arms in the cool air of the hall.

The fourth gate. The chakra exploded outward and the floor beneath him cracked in a spiderweb that spread three meters in every direction, stone dust rising in a slow cloud.

The fifth gate.

His body screamed. Not metaphorically. Every muscle fiber in his legs and back fired at once, tearing slightly and repairing and tearing again in the same instant. His bones ground against each other at the joints. Blood began to seep from his pores in a fine mist, coloring his skin darker beneath the red flush of the gates.

He opened his eyes. They were white and empty and entirely focused.

He moved.

The sand rose. It was faster than it had been all match, Gaara throwing everything at once, and it did not matter. Lee was through it before the first wall finished forming, his fist connecting with Gaara's face, the sand armor shattering on impact. Sand sprayed. Gaara flew backward.

Lee was already behind where Gaara was going to land.

His leg came up. His heel connected with Gaara's chest and Gaara flew sideways across the hall and hit the far wall and the stone cracked in a deep fracture line that ran two meters up from the point of impact.

Lee appeared behind him. His elbow drove into Gaara's back. The floor cratered.

Lee landed. He was bleeding from every visible surface, blood seeping through his skin in the particular way the gates extracted their payment, and his muscles were tearing with each movement and he knew it and he did not stop.

A punch to Gaara's face. A kick to his ribs. A knee to his stomach.

Each strike landed. Each strike drew fragments of sand. The sand grabbed at Lee each time and each time it was a half-second too slow, finding empty air where he had just been.

On the balcony, Guy's hands were on the railing. His knuckles had gone white a long time ago.

Lee did not hear him. He was somewhere the words could not reach.

Lee kicked Gaara into the air.

The bandages came unwinding from his arms in long white strips, wrapping around Gaara's body as he rose, binding his arms to his sides. Lee caught him at the apex. The spin began.

"Hidden Lotus," Lee said.

He had done this a thousand times in training. He did not need to look. He could feel the weight, the rotation, the wind, the trajectory, the impact coming up to meet them like a wall.

He opened his eyes at the last moment.

Gaara hit the ground.

The floor shattered. Not cracked. Shattered. Stone fragments flew across the hall in every direction, rattling off the walls and balcony railings like shrapnel. Dust rose in a column. The sound arrived a half-second after the impact, a deep concussive boom that people felt in their chests before they heard it with their ears.

Gaara's sand gourd had exploded on impact, the sand spreading beneath him and absorbing the last fraction of force the way it always did, the way it had kept him alive through everything. He lay in a shallow crater surrounded by loose sand, his body covered in scattered sand cracks, his face pale, his eyes wide and staring at the ceiling.

He was hurt. More hurt than he could remember being.

He stood up slowly. His sand reformed around him, less of it now, moving with effort. He walked out of the crater. Sand dripped from his chin to the stone.

Lee landed.

His legs did not hold. He went to his knees on the cracked stone and his arms hung at his sides and he could not lift them and he could not stand and he could not stop either, could not accept the floor as an ending, so he moved one hand forward. Then the other. He dragged himself across the stone, leaving a thin red trail behind him.

Gaara looked at him.

At the fragments on the floor. At the trail of it. At the boy who had hurt him, who had made him bleed, who had made him feel something in his body that he had not felt in years because his sand had always prevented it.

The blankness in his face was gone.

"You hurt me," Gaara said. His voice was still quiet. But there was something underneath it now. Something that had been sleeping. "No one hurts me. Sand Coffin."

He raised his hand. The sand gathered itself from the floor and walls, pulled from every loose surface within reach, and it coiled around Lee's left arm in a slow, deliberate spiral.

He closed his fist.

“Sand Burial!!”

The sand contracted. The bone in Lee's arm broke with a sound that was wet and wrong, a sound that had no business existing in a room full of people, and Lee screamed. Not the animal sound from before. Something past that. Something that came from a place below the gates, below the training, below every wall he had ever built.

The sand found his left leg.

Gaara closed his fist again.

The bone shattered in pieces. Lee's back arched off the floor. His mouth opened and no sound came out at all, just the shape of a scream with all the air already gone from his lungs.

Gaara raised his hand higher. The remaining sand rose with it, gathering itself into a mass above Lee's entire body.

"I will crush you completely," Gaara said. "You will be nothing but blood and sand."

The sand began to close.

In that instand, Guy was on the floor.

No one saw him leave the railing. He was simply there, between Lee and the descending sand, his hands around Lee's body, pulling him clear. The sand closed on the empty space where Lee had been, the impact hard enough to crater the stone.

Gaara looked at him. His head tilted slightly. His eyes were empty again, the anger retreating back behind the blankness.

"Why," Gaara said. Not quite a question. "Why would you risk your life for him."

Guy held Lee against his chest. Lee's body was limp. His left arm was broken in three places and sitting at angles that arms were not supposed to sit at. His left leg was shattered. Blood had soaked through his jumpsuit from collar to knee.

Guy looked at Gaara.

"Because he is precious to me."

The words were simple. They sat in the air of the hall and did not move.

Gaara stared at him. Something passed through his face, quick and unreadable, there and gone before anyone watching could have named it. He had never been precious to anyone. He knew this the way he knew his own name.

He lowered his hand. The sand fell.

Hayate raised his hand. "Winner. Gaara."

The medics reached Lee in under a minute.

They knelt around him, hands moving quickly and professionally, checking pulse and breathing and the damage to his limbs. One of them held Lee's left arm and did not move it. Another looked at the leg and went still for a moment before continuing.

"He needs surgery immediately," the first medic said. "The leg is shattered. Fragments. The arm is broken in three places."

They looked at Guy.

"He may never fight again. Even with surgery, there is a significant chance he won't walk properly."

Guy's face was still. The tears had stopped somewhere between the railing and the floor.

"Save his leg," Guy said. "He will fight again. I'll make sure of it."

They lifted Lee onto a stretcher. They carried him toward the doors.

Guy stood in the center of the cracked and bloodied floor and watched the stretcher go.

"I… I taught him how to open the gates," he said. To no one. To himself. "I taught him Primary Lotus. Hidden Lotus. I thought I was giving him the tools to reach his dream."

The stretcher disappeared through the doors.

"I didn't know I was breaking him."

He climbed the stairs. He walked to the far end of the balcony and stood with his back against the wall, arms crossed, face blank. The posture was Lee's. The stillness was Lee's. The discipline was the same. The pain underneath it was the same.

Guy stood there and did not move for a long time.

Hayate looked at his list. He coughed once, the dry persistent sound that had been following him all morning.

"Next match. Choji Akimichi vs. Dosu Kinuta."

Choji folded the chip bag and put it in his jacket. He looked at the floor below. At the blood and the cracked stone. At what the morning had cost the people who had stood on it.

"You don't have to do this," Shikamaru said.

"Yeah," Choji said. "I do."

He walked toward the stairs. Dosu uncrossed his arms and walked toward the stairs from the other side.

The match lasted five seconds. Dosu's sound waves hit Choji before Choji's feet had fully cleared the last step, and Choji fell and did not get up.

"Winner. Dosu Kinuta."

The Third Hokage stepped forward. He was old and he had seen a great deal, but something about the morning had settled into the lines of his face in a way that had not been there when it began.

"The remaining genin, to the floor."

They came down. Naruto. Sakura. Shino. Temari. Kankuro. Gaara. Shikamaru. Dosu. Neji. Lastly Sasuke who was still in the infirmary.

Ten genin. Five matches.

The Hokage held up the box. Inside, slips of paper, each with a name.

"I will draw the lots for the final tournament," he said. "The matches will be held in one month. You will use that time to prepare."

He reached into the box.

"Naruto Uzumaki."

He reached in again.

"Neji Hyuga."

The murmurs started before the Hokage had finished saying the second name. The genin looked at each other. The jonin on the balconies above exchanged glances.

Naruto smiled. It was narrow and quiet, the smile of someone who has been waiting for a specific thing and has just been told it has arrived.

Sakura looked at him. "Naruto, Neji's Byakugan sees everything. His Gentle Fist can close your chakra points from the inside. You can't just…"

"I can."

He looked across the floor at Neji. Neji was already looking at him, pale eyes steady, expression undisturbed.

"I've been wanting to test the limits of the Byakugan," Naruto said. "Now I get to."

The Hokage reached into the box.

"Gaara of the Sand. Sasuke Uchiha."

The tension in the room changed shape. Everyone present had seen what Gaara could do. They had watched the sand crush Lee's arm and leg. They had watched him stand through the Hidden Lotus and the gates and walk away with minimal damage and upright.

His hand moved to his neck and stopped just short of touching the seal beneath his collar, then dropped back to his side.

"Third match. Shino Aburame vs. Kankuro."

Shino said nothing. Kankuro shrugged.

"Fourth match. Shikamaru Nara vs. Dosu Kinuta."

Shikamaru exhaled slowly through his nose. "Troublesome."

"Fifth match. Sakura Haruno vs. Temari."

Sakura's face went pale. Across the floor, Temari looked at her with the easy, measuring attention of someone who has already done the math.

"Good luck," Temari said.

Sakura did not answer.

The Hokage lowered the box.

"One month. Train. Prepare. Heal." He looked at them. "You are dismissed."

Naruto turned and walked toward the exit.

"Naruto."

He stopped.

Dosu was standing near the base of the stairs. Beside him, Kin stood with her arms folded, her dark hair loose, watching Naruto with the same careful attention she had been directing at him since the preliminaries began. The interest in her eyes was not new. It had been building across several matches, quiet and deliberate.

"Don't forget about ramen," Kin said. "We said today."

"I remember," Naruto said.

Dosu tilted his head slightly. "You look like you're about to go do something."

"I am." He looked at him. "I'll come find you both when I'm done. Shouldn't take long."

She held his gaze for a moment. "What is it?"

"Something I needed to handle before the month starts." He did not elaborate. He did not offer more.

Kin studied him the way she had been studying him all day, reading the thing behind the thing, and she did not push. She nodded once.

"Fine," she said. "Don't be late."

Naruto turned and walked through the doors.

Outside, the sun was low. Orange light cut across the rooftops of Konoha at a long angle, the kind of light that makes ordinary things look like they are being preserved.

The scroll from Orochimaru was in his jacket. The seal on his stomach was warm. The Fox was still silent.

He walked toward the restricted archive.

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Next Time: Removing the Seal - Meet Karin Uzumaki