Title: Armory
Series: Naruto
Disclaimer: Naruto and its characters do not belong to me.
Notes: Just a drabble.
They were just hands. After he peeled back the sticking layer of crisscrossed gauze—just hands. It made sense: five fingers each, his tendons pulling at the muscles as they twitched.
When he moved into the melee of shinobi with Mist hitai-ate, they evolved into something else. A hammer of justice, as a fist cracked ribs. An ax as he swung around, flattened palm chopping a windpipe. A flail, when momentum carried his knuckles into a man's kidneys, over and over.
Lee spun to meet the fourth opponent, anticipating a blow as he emerged from a cartwheel, his arms crossed high to block—an immovable anvil.
Tenten was shrieking at him, her voice crossing into a high-pitched timbre he'd never heard before. Neji, even Neji-san was yelling. Yelling. Something was wrong. As Neji swiftly dispatched the remaining shinobi (his fight was a dance, not an exchange of bludgeoning parries and feints), he watched, curiously, as Tenten dropped to her knees. Gagging. It registered then, the slow burn of pain like embers banking, and he numbly followed the too-wide gaze of Neji's white eyes.
Lee had not foreseen the graceful, downward arc of his enemy's katana.
They were just hands, five fingers each, his tendons pulling at the muscles as they twitched. And like the hail of kunai that lay scattered in a circle around Tenten, as weapons, they were just as easily discarded.