Chapter 1-The Aftermath
'Desert Coffin!' Gaara snarled, as, despite his near-paralysis, his hand contracted into a fist. Pain like Lee had never known before, not even during his most intense training, lanced through his left arm and leg as they were brutally crushed by the sand, and he screamed in agony as he flew through the air and slammed into the ground with a bone-shaking impact, landing amidst the rubble of his own furious battle with the sand-user.
As he slid to the ground before the horrified gaze of the onlookers, there was only one thought running through his mind as he was pulled into unconsciousness: 'I cannot lose here'....
A steady beeping.
Murmuring voices.
And the pain – a constant ache, all over his body, in every breath he took, searing through his left arm and leg.
Rock Lee opened his eyes.
The room was dim, but it still hurt his eyes. Blinking rapidly, the blurs gradually resolved into people... people bearing the uniform of the Konoha Medical Corps. The murmur of voices tailed off as the assembled doctors realised their patient had returned to the land of the living.
Just.
What was he doing here, surrounded by doctors...?
Then he remembered, the preliminary fight, the dropping of his leg weights, the lotuses, the sand, the wild, insane look in his opponent's eyes as he commanded the sand to engulf him, the pain, the... darkness.
And Lee remembered the despair that had filled him, the horror that he could not be ranked among the other geniuses, the fact that, despite his speed, despite his hard work, despite his relentless, gruelling training, he had failed.
Lee realised he was lying down on a bed, and the entire left half of his body seemed to linked up to a pulsing, humming medical machine. He realised it was the sound of the beeping which had pulled him to wakefulness.
Just like the sound of the stopwatch he had used to help him train...
The air was thick with tension; Lee could tell that even with the pain. As he slowly looked around the room, his throat thick with words that he could not form, one of the onlookers stepped forward.
Despite his pain, Lee's mouth curled in an automatic smile; it was his beloved Gai-sensei, the greatest ninja alive!
Gai smiled at Lee, but Lee could see the weariness in his walk, the tension in his eyes; even his smile lacked its usual amazingness....
'Lee'. Gai seemed to hesitate, and then gave Lee his amazing thumbs-up, the one reserved for when an absolute, unbreakable promise was being made....or when Gai was trying to inspire and uplift Lee to just break through one more barrier.
Gai hesitated for another moment, then visibly pulled himself together.
Lee stared at Gai anxiously....what could be so terrible that Sensei could barely even say it?
A moment later his question was answered.
Gai looked him straight in the eye.
'Lee, you...your injuries were too severe'.
'You cannot be a ninja anymore'.