A/N: LEE LIVES. ALL HAIL THE BEAUTIFUL GREEN BEAST OF KONOHA.
"There is a beast in man that needs to be exercised, not exorcised."
-Anton LaVey
"Neji," Lee's boyish voice resounded off the tan-stone walls. "What do you see?"
White on shadow and dripping night. The wind howls razor-fingered against elder-forged steel. A boy leaping through the static-tinged night, rush of air over the Sprawl of Spikes. Coattails of moonsilver and midnight. A breath, following him, pulse of air and roses, blossom-pink. Hair stretching silver-touched in the soar of her leap.
They land, claw and chakra-string, and lion-bristles swarm as the bandages fall.
Hyuuga Neji, reclining on a chakra-supported Bend Cocoon, retracted his Byakugan. He attempted to move and winced, biting the inside of his lip as pain shot up his back. Blood was a crushed flower on his lower left side, leaking through the carefully wrapped bandages. He looked at his hand, noted the thin paleness of it, the blue in his veins.
"They…are here."
Lee nodded, a smile like daybreak blooming across his simple features. "At last! How long I have waited to test myself. Fear not, Neji, I shall avenge your wound!"
The noble cracked a feeble smile. "Don't kill me by accident. We know how you are when you get excited."
Lee raked a hand through his shiny bowl cut and flashed a Nice Guy Pose, which would have blinded Neji had the Hyuuga not snapped his eyes shut at that exact moment. The Nice Guy Pose was an attack that could be easily anticipated, but to ultra-sensitive Byakugan eyes it was excruciating.
"How will we deal with them?" Tenten uncrossed her legs and stood, hefting the mirrorswords on her back. Her smooth white thighs, swarmed by tattoos, moved swanlike across the atrium. "Shall we attack them together or split up?"
Neji spoke immediately. "We must definitely isolate them. We cannot allow the Demon's regeneration to be paired with a medic-nin's skills. He'd be effectively immortal. And Lee might kill you if you fight alongside him, since your close-range dodging still isn't very effective."
She pouted, rubbing a hand against the kanji drawn in black over her arm. "I guess I'll have to fight the medic-nin, then. How lame! Kunoichi are never going to be respected if all we do is fight other kunoichi."
The Hyuuga shrugged, supremely insensitive. "Get stronger, then."
Tenten's piquied response was cut off by a groan from their prisoner. Yamanaka Ino, tied securely to a wooden chair, moaned low in her throat, and Neji felt a shiver crawl up his spine. She slumped forward, silken brown dress hanging forward to reveal lightly tanned cleavage...and a small circular mark just under her neck.
Kabuto chose that moment to come in, wiping his hands with a towel. "I've got to check on Gai soon. How is the prisoner?"
"Alive." Neji glared suspiciously at the medic-nin. "We'd appreciate some inkling of whatever's going on. She has an extremely high fever."
"Worried for your fellow noble, Neji? Don't be. She's a strong girl; Orochimaru-sama is sure she'll pull through. You should really be worrying more about yourself – how are you holding up? Has the Liver Regrowth serum taken hold yet?"
Neji turned back around and rested his head on the inner lining of the Cocoon. "I'm fine. How was Gai-sensei, the last time you checked?"
Kabuto shrugged cheerfully. "Oh, I don't know. I mean, he did get impaled through the shoulder right after using the Morning Peacock…his internal organs aren't in the best shape right now, not to mention he's missing a giant slab of muscle from his left arm. Also, the nerves in that arm are totally wrecked – that Uchiha boy packs a nasty Chidori! On the other hand, Kakashi is faring much, much worse."
"I don't want to know."
Twenty-seven bones shattered, forty-three broken; hemorrhage of the intestines, severe internal trauma, a black eye, a broken jaw, two dislocated joints, internal bleeding, irregular heartbeat, and seventeen first- to third-degree burns. It's amazing that the Hero of the Sharingan is still alive.
Smiling, Kabuto turned to Lee.
"I assume I can trust you to keep our…prize safe?"
Lee flashed a somewhat halfhearted Nice Guy Pose. "Ossu! The power of youth shall protect her!"
"Good, very good. Orochimaru-sama will be pleased. Neji, do tell Hiashi-sama that Orochimaru-sama will be visiting next Thursday."
Neji took a page from Sasuke's book.
"Hn."
Their faces were dim and shadowed in the glare from above and around. Here, the moonlight was cut apart, dispersed. The Sprawl was one hundred feet from the ground and worlds away from Sasuke's estate. This was the territory of drug lords and chakra-jackers, where the hyperadvanced technology of Sannin research met the grim angles of harsh reality. People were disappeared daily for Orochimaru's experiments; some came back, and usually their friends and relatives wished they hadn't.
Digital display boards destroyed the night, blanketing the area in a sullen hum of too-cheery advertisements and garish lighting. Sinuous, sinister rhythms beat from the strip of nightclubs below, giving a pulse to this festering urban sore. The air smelled black, charcoal and oil and blood.
Naruto growled and adjusted his overcoat, while Sakura, stuck horizontal to the building, slid a folding knife out of her skintight stealthsuit. Behind the neosilk mask, she smiled grimly, one emerald-grass eye winking at him.
He nodded and burst through the wall, bloom of dust and firing muscle.
Sakura ran vertically up the outside of the building, then performed a double backflip over to a ventilation grille. In a sliver of motion she was in, slipping silently into the lungs of the building...
Neji started.
"It's begun. Sectors C25 and A12, breached."
Lee cracked his back. "This will be fun."
Tenten flashed upwards and away, drawing her mirrorswords.
Naruto barreled down the corridor, smashing through wood and stone, killing intent like a crashing wave. He stopped, sniffed the air, then erupted through another blockade of stone. In front: a long hall, leading to an enormous atrium.
Three humans.
The Demon from the Cauls grinned, nicking his own lip for a drop bright-sweet blood. He exploded out of the hall in one thunderous leap, foot leaving a hole three feet deep as he cleared the threshold and bared his claws.
Lee took a step back. He's fast. He chuckled and made a beckoning gesture with his opened palm.
"Nice to meet you. I am Rock-"
"DIE!" Killing intent surged forth, crushing and red, a hurled hurricane. But Lee had released his own, a mountain falling, and irresistible force met immovable object.
Power flared, buzzed, and ripped through the room, and the rocks trembled and flaked as Naruto stared down his foe. This guy…he's not affected by my ki at all.
And then like a stone serpent Naruto was coiling forward, hair trailing behind him in a wake of flame. "Hari Jizo no Jutsu!"
His mane grew to twice its already formidable length, and the blonde spikes shined as they became iron-hard and fang-sharp. He whipped the wash of yellow spines forwards as he struck, claws like gouging mouths as they clenched forward.
Rock Lee stepped to the side.
A rising knee intercepted the Demon's savage velocity, and Naruto choked as blood spewed from his mouth. Lee stepped back, and as his foe floated in midair, the taijutsu master unleashed a storm of blows that ruptured organs and shattered bone, following with a gruesome hook to the jaw that sent the muscled Demon seven feet flying.
A circle of dust marked Lee's ascent as he whirled forth with a liver-destroying right shin, launching his foe back, back- but then his arm lashed out, grabbing Naruto by the steel-jagged hair, and pulled him upright, setting him up for a haymaker to the face. The blow connected like a meteor into water and sent the Demon sprawling, skipping, and crashing into the far wall, leaving a foot-deep indentation in the spiderwebbed stone.
Caul marks heaving, the feral shinobi gagged another splash of blood as his organs and ribs knitted themselves back together. He pulled himself up, off the floor, and cracked open a healing eye.
Holy shit. Sasuke wasn't kidding when he warned me this guy was going to be strong. His taijutsu is better than Kakashi's!
But Demons did not know fear. All Naruto felt was excitement, bubbling like a broth deep in his gut, as he surveyed the jounin known as Rock Lee.
The prisoner's on that chair, off to the side. Wonder what's up with that empty Bend Cocoon? Smells like nobleman – the Hyuuga abandon it or something?
Lee himself was dressed in a traditional cheongsam of black silk, with a white tabard-line down the back and arms which depicted a dragon ascending. A long, single plait of hair traveled down his back, and his hands were hidden in the sleeves of his uniform. Behind the shiny bowl cut were enormous, formidable eyebrows and eyes like black water.
"That was disappointing. I had hoped that my opponent would be stronger. It seems I will not be able to truly stretch my limbs this fight." Lee sounded bored as he adopted a strange fighting stance – left shoulder turned towards Naruto, chin tucked down, elbows close to his sides, hands at cheek level and left foot forward. He seemed to sink into the ground, movements smooth and low.
What a weird fighting style.
He couldn't afford to hold anything back. "Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"
A sirocco of slashing claws stormed Lee, gold-on-blue and tresses twining. The martial artist darted backwards, then lashed out with a flurry of jabs destroying seven, before pivoting on his back foot to loose a right hook that painted twelve against the wall. Still, three thousand swarmed him, a blot of fury and sinew that descended from the skies, burst from the floor, and tore at his legs.
Lee twisted, spun, and danced around their blows, maintaining his boxing form as he methodically took out dozens at a time. Roaring, he lunged forward and grabbed one's ankle, then ducked back and around, flailing the shadow clone at its comrades, slicing away an entire company of frustrated warriors.
They pounced as one, seeking to bury him, but Lee was too fast, rising now into the air, hop-skipping along their heads, smashing high and low with fists that blurred like striking hammers. He landed especially hard on one, legs bending, then bounded upwards, twirling another around his head. He twisted, slipped by a jumping clone, and spun to bring down hundreds with a devastating heel drop.
There was thunder and broken stone, and Lee stood up in the crater he had made.
The dust cleared, and then the last four clones appeared around him, shocking-fast, and Naruto formed a ferocious Ram Seal, fangs bared in terrible mirth.
"Bushin Dabakuha!"
Chakra pulsed outwards from the clones, and for the merest fraction of a second they glowed brilliant blue. Then the eruption came, stars bursting and bubbling fire, and all was cast into blood-red relief. Shadows span and twisted as the shockwave struck the room, a searing boil of wind that nearly shattered the floor and sent Ino flying backwards. A fragment of broken stone savaged his face as it flew by, and he hissed as his flesh grew back...
There was a reason Naruto wore his heavy, clinking, burdensome overcoat to every mission. It wasn't just that he wanted to look cool; Kimimaro would never had allowed that. Then again, Kimimaro hadn't been pleased with the practical function of Naruto's coat either, insisting that, one day, it would get the demon shinobi killed.
After all, two hundred A-ranked explosive tags were stitched into its lining, each of which packed enough power to reduce a Jounin to ash.
Sakura gritted her teeth as she faced off against the white-clad kunoichi who had intercepted her.
"Who hired you? Why did you kidnap Yamanaka-san?"
Her opponened scoffed, drawing a pair of finely balanced straight swords from her back. They glinted as they refracted the light, nearly humming with sharpness. Her hands held the ivory grips lightly, fingers poised.
Tenten entered a forward stance, her mirror-bright blades perfectly reflecting each other. "I heard there was a kenjutsu user on your team – Uchiha Sasuke, wasn't it? I would rather have fought him, but you'll have to do."
Sakura's eyes narrowed as the other kunoichi darted forward, blades held in a reverse grip.
Kami, what a bitch.
" 'I'll have to do?' Just who do you think you're talking to, slut?"
Sakura pressed her hands together, glaring. "Kokuangyou no Jutsu!"
And Tenten stopped, eyes vacant as ink spilled across her vision. "What?"
This girl wouldn't be a match for Sasuke-kun. Sakura unraveled three meters of silk and flung them outwards, lashing her foe's arms and legs together.
This is over.
A torrent of chakra surged down the bandages, and they became as hard as steel, binding Tenten in a vise of cloth.
"I suggest you surrender." Sakura closed, chakra needles forming on her fingertips.
The brunette closed her eyes and murmured something to herself, then bit her lip. Mirrorswords burst from the bindings as they flashed and skimmed and cut the cloth to ribbons. Freed, Tenten sprang to the side, grinning.
"Was that the best you could do?"
And the weaponsmistress pulled a huge, double-headed axe from her back, blade scything downwards like a hawk plunging. Sakura gasped and tumbled to the side, head-over-heels and dancing backwards.
That's what those tattoos are! She has summoning and storage seals placed over her entire body. What a freak.
With a sneer, the brown-eyed kunoichi placed the axe back and rushed Sakura, drawing a long, slender chain from the top of her forearm. The shivering steel took tiles off the floor as it struck, crack of splitting stone as Sakura leapt backwards in her dark blue skinsuit and let her hair down.
Looks like I'm going to have to use 'that' jutsu.
"Running away? I won't let you!" Tenten whirled to the side and pulled out a scroll – summoning scrolls inside summoning seals? – facing Sakura with eyes like molten amber.
"Souryuu Tensakai!" A tracer-blue flood of blades cleaved the air, enough steel to bury her under kunai and shaft. They hummed and whined as they approached her, lethal fast.
Sakura inhaled as strands of newly loosened hair fell over her face, and then her eyes snapped open, dilating green as she forced chakra up, up…
"Kattojotei no Jutsu!" (Slashing Empress Technique!)
Her head came around, and now the petal locks were a shining slippery slashing stream of monofilament strands that flowed forward, infinitely graceful. As the crescent of her cut met the barrage of blades, there was a sound like a knife through water.
And then, pinging on the tiles, a rain of shredded swords fell from the sky. Sakura smiled as she flipped her hair back over her shoulder.
Who's running now?
Engulfed by the explosion, Lee had crouched down, shielding himself with his limbs. Nonetheless his clothing was in tatters, his eyebrows singed.
Wonderful! What a powerful opponent.
Lee stood, tearing off the remnants of his traditional garb, leaving him in bandages and green spandex.
Across the room, Naruto's eyes widened in disbelief before he burst into laughter.
"Damn, Bushy Brows, you are strong! This is going to be fun!"
"Bushy Brows? Sorry, but as I said before, please call me Rock-"
"Lee!" Naruto performed a crude Nice Guy pose. "I know, I know. And you don't really have eyebrows anymore…" he snickered.
The boxer smiled as well, stretching his limbs. "Well, Naruto, it seems like I was wrong about you. You are a worthy foe, indeed. Therefore, I will show you the source of my power."
"Huh?" Inquisitive blue eyes stared at him.
Lee raised a hand to his face and pulled the skin-mask off, then ripped off his bandages with a single swipe. He stepped out of his leg warmers, adjusted the spandex, and grinned, metal creasing along his face.
Naruto stared in open-mouthed shock. The entire left side of his opponent's face was made out of a metal alloy, his eye a red-green lens. Lee's limbs, freed from their bindings, glinted coolly in the light.
Prosthetics? All of them?
"Four years ago my body was shattered by Gaara of the Desert. They told me I could never be a shinobi again…"
Naruto sniffed the air. Yes, without the sweaty cloth to mask its scent, the acrid tang of chakra-infused steel was clear in the air.
Lee's eyes narrowed. "My sensei, Maito Guy, spent his entire life's savings having these custom-designed especially for me. Each holds over three million shitan of chakra."
WHAT?
Though Naruto had never needed a limb replaced, Kimimaro had taught him a good bit about current ninja technology. He had assured him that creating cyborg shinobi which were stronger than their human counterparts was impossible.
Prosthetics were highly advanced in the Land of Fire, as ninja lost limbs every day, but they were very rarely made stronger than the arm or leg they replaced. Because the nervous system could only process a certain level of information, and because nerves themselves were extremely difficult to create or replace, wielding prosthetics that were twice as strong required twice as much fine motor control. The body was unused to possessing such power, and amplified movements proportional to the level of strength exerted.
All human bodies experienced some degree of random twitches and ticks. Only in deepest meditation could the best taijutsu masters remain absolutely still.
For someone like Rock Lee, whose limbs were over ten thousand times stronger than the average Jounin's, the merest hint of a twitch could result in leveled buildings or slain comrades. The sheer control he could exihibit was unthinkable – to develop and maintain nerves that thick he'd need to practice for over sixteen hours a day!
"You…you…"
Naruto recovered from his shock and smiled. "You really are some kind of beast."
"Ossu! I am the Beautiful Green Beast of Konoha. Now you will feel the true power of youth!" Lee's eyes shined along with his haircut.
"This…is one percent."
Lee disappeared.
The first punch sent Naruto back through the wall. The second sent him out of the building.
A/N: On technology in the Break the World universe
The tech level of this civilization is at once more and less advanced than that of canon Konoha. Shortwave radio exists; cars do not. Massive chakra-powered ships and chakra-levitated ricksaws provide most of the rapid transport; the Cauls had made an indelible mark on technological growth. As the elite fighting force of the city consists of a few thousand Jounin who are not easily replaced, biotechnology, genetics, and prosthetics research are far, far more advanced than even our own. Television and forms of broadcast media are extremely rare, limited mostly to line-in advertisement boards. Munitions are not as advanced as our world's; they're about WWII level, though no atom bomb exists. Architecture is, obviously, very advanced.
Most advanced research is performed by black market freelancers who sell to Orochimaru. Hospitals contain the highest concentration of advanced technology. Astrophysics is sorely neglected, as is non-Newtonian physics in general. Chemistry and biology have surpassed our level, as shinobi tend to employ lots of poisons and summons. Daily life is relatively free of technology; mp3 players are reserved for the upper middle class and cell phones for the highest classes (or chakra-jackers in the Sprawl).
Technological innovation has its bleeding edge in two places: the underworld of the Sprawl, the level one hundred feet above the Pit, and the Pane, an ultrahightech megalopolis-type level four hundred feet from the surface. Statistics is a somewhat neglected science; scientific journals almost do not exist, and most scientists are practical inventors that earn their jade on the practical value of their inventions.
You may want to wikipedia "cheongsam" if you don't know what they are.
If you don't get why Lee has it so tough: every movement his brain thinks of make is magnified ten thousand times by his limbs. Thus, if his brain tells his finger to move a millimeter, his finger will move ten meters, or thirty feet.
Want the next chapter tomorrow? You know what to do.