Author's Note: Sorry for making you all wait. It's been really hectic on this side of the cord. We have some brand new fanart by me. And they are much better than the ones that were there already. Check them out, please. And if you do, would you care to leave me a comment? -clasps her hands and puts on puppy eyes-

Drunken kisses in this chappie! And, the fight with Kimimaro is going to be a long one. I couldn't believe it was 21 pages...

This chapter dedicated to.. bowserjr. Look at the fanart she did for this story! Isn't it wonderful? I lurve her so much! -Inner Fangirl glomps her-

"TSUNADE BAACHAAAAAN!"
Tsunade sighed, letting her flaxen locks shield any passer-by from her exasperated grimace as a pair of footsteps roared over the linoleum in a direct collision course with her back.

That Uzumaki brat was back. She'd recognize the high voice that suggested puberty was about fifteen years away for him anywhere. She reluctantly turned around, to address the orange-clad annoyance.

Sure enough, there came Jiraiya's little charge, running down the hallway as fast as his short legs could carry him. His whiskers were bent as he smiled idiotically, eyes wrenched shut in chibi crescents.

"TSUNADE-BAACHAN!"

"I heard you the first time." the woman said hotly. She hadn't even begun to speak to the brat and she was already sick of him. This conversation was most definitely heading downhill.

"And I thought I told you not to call me an old woman." One thin, chrome eyebrow raised in an expectant scold, one corner of her painted lip tucking inward as Naruto skidded to a stop from where he'd been running down the hallway to greet/annoy her and began dancing as though he couldn't control his body.

"How did Geyi Mayo's surgery go?" he asked, Tsunade wincing at the sheer volume of his squeaking voice.

"Ugh! Naruto. Lower your voice a few thousand decibels." she annexed , running her glossy fingernails through the blonde strands of hair that had come loose from her usual hairstyle, feeling flax textured hair slide effortlessly between her white fingers. She smiled slightly and sighed, scratching her scalp harshly with her faded red nails.

Naruto crossed his arms and stomped his foot like a three year old having about to have a tantrum, his face screwing into a pout, lower lip jutting out insanely far. He harrumphed loudly, and shrugged his shoulders up to his ears. Even Tsunade had to raise an eyebrow at the fox child's peculiar behavior.

"Well, how do you expect me to keep quiet when you won't answer my questions?" he yelled, jumping up and down uproariously.

Tsunade's eyebrows nearly met beneath the brown chakra node above her eyes as she scowled at the obnoxious and annoying genin.

"All right, you little twit." she said, bringing one rose-tipped finger to jab angrily in his face. "I have intensive care patients on this wing, and you're going to disturb them with your insanely loud squeaking. Second of all, why don't you just go see your little friend instead of bothering me?"

Naruto ceased his leaping about, before settling in front of the pea-green clad woman, arms still crossed defiantly over his brilliantly orange jacket.

"Because I can't find the Geyi Mayo, or Bigger Geyi Mayo!" he said, sounding as though he'd been searching for the pair of Green Beasts all day. He rolled his eyes and made a "Hmm!" sound to bring his point home, rocking back and forth on his heel and chewing on his lower lip as he waited for the female Sannin to remedy the situation.

"I can't even find Geyi Mayo's girlfriend, and she's here about 24/7!"

Tsunade rolled her eyes. She had patients to attend to, high risk patients, none the less, and the Kitsune Imp was demanding something a medic at the front desk could have told him twenty minutes ago.

Wait. Did he mean Rock Lee? The Bushy Browed kid who'd had the regenerative surgery?

She tapped a polished fingernail to her chin, hickory colored orbs narrowing as she recalled the events of the past few, very busy days, since her inauguration to the title of Godaime Hokage.

Yes. Gai's student had had the cells in his left arm and leg regenerated, restoring the limbs to their prior working order, after being crushed by a sand jutsu. He was supposed to be recovering for a few days, until he could be released from the hospital's care and, hopefully, lead a normal, shinobi life.

Yes. Tsunade remembered the fear in his wide, black eyes-

"Go check the bathroom. Training field. Trash compactor. I'm not holding your friend against his will anywhere. He's probably swinging himself around on those crutches. I tell you, I never saw anyone so happy just to be able to mo-"

Tsunade turned around, realizing she had lost her audience. Naruto was no where to be seen.

She blew some of the straw colored hair out of her eyes with her bottom lip. Kitsune brat. She wondered how long it would take for Jiraiya to have him spying in the women's bath house, sketching whatever he saw.

She would hand it to the old hermit. For being a jerk, an overbearing nimbskull, and an all-out pervert, he could draw what he saw excellent. While his readings may have been perverse, she could hardly believe the anatomical likeliness they held to the real human body. It was more of a shame he couldn't write anatomy books for young medic nin, instead of depraved fairy tales for old men with no sex lives.

Well, she sighed, staring at the empty space where Naruto had been standing. That was Jiraiya. Always debauching something and finding some way to deviate as far as humanly possible from normal activity.

Just what he needed. An apprentice.

"TSUNADE-SAMA!"

Oh joy. It must be 'Annoy The Hokage' Day. Why hadn't she got the memo?

A panting, sweating stack of muscles crammed into a green, form fitting jumpsuit skidded down the hallway, leg warmers flashing as two pairs of eyes spotted her and the form once more barreled down towards her, followed by a smaller presence.

Gai stopped directly in front of the woman, eyes wide in panic. His knees shook in a Charleston fashion as he clenched both hands into claw shapes and held them up imploringly, mouth parted open in beseeching.

"MY ADORABLE, PRECIOUS PRODIGY IS MISSING!", the man bawled at what must have been the top of his lungs. Tsunade winced, turning away from the tearing eyes of the pathetic excuse for a normal human male.

"I told the Uzumaki brat already. Check the bathrooms or the training field. He's somewhere around here." she reminded him, noting the small girl behind the towering green-clothed figure. That must be the "Geyi Mayo's girlfriend". Tsunade had seen Lee give her a good smack on the lips right before his surgery. She had pointed this out to Shizune, and the two had splurged on two girly squeals at the sight, clasping their hands together and smiling, their feminine sides let loose for a romp at the spectacle.

That child had the greenest eyes she had ever seen. She half wanted to examine them and make sure it was only an abundance of green pigmentation and not something serious that colored the small kunoichi's irises

Excessive color in the eyes could be a sign of drug overuse. Tsunade blinked at the two as a warning flag flashed inside her mind.

"He's not anywhere." the child added authoritatively, her eyebrows beginning to knit together beneath her forehead. Tsunade tore herself away from her half-thought of deliberation, and looked at the girl with silent question.

"He wasn't in his room, and I searched every room in this hospital, and outside, too. He's not here. I would have sensed his chakra signature. I know it like the back of my hand."

Tsunade didn't doubt her for a second. There was a Machiavellian glare in the olive eyes that suggested artful guiling came naturally to the child. Why, she hadn't quite seen eyes like that since-

Tsunade shooed the thought, reprimanding herself for such assumptions. Not every pair of calculating eyes belonged to a Yakushi or an overly self-confident snake Sannin.

Oh, dammit. That Lee kid wasn't supposed to get twenty feet from the front doors of the hospital! Great. Knowing him, he was probably going off and doing something dangerous and excessively stressing on his still-mending limbs. From what she had gathered about the teen, he hardly ever listened to medical opinions.

"Do you have any idea where he'd run off to?" she asked both of them, thinking herself where she might disappear off to if she were an over-joyful student of the Village Youthful Whore.

The liver haired girl shook her head in a negative gesture, folding her hands over one another un easily.

"Naruto was looking for him, too. He sent a Kage Bunshin around before he left on the mission to recover the Uchiha. You know, the angsty prick one?"

Tsunade kept her eyes on the girl. There was something- strangely familiar in her. Something sitting on the tip of her tongue that she couldn't quite recognize. Something- grim. Foreboding, if you may.

In his sleep, Neko-Chan winced, and began repressing his chakra signature to nearly undetectable. He could feel someone staring right through his Rian, staring directly at him. Without rumpling his mocha-colored coat, he returned to the slumber he had barely left, his chakra concealed, presence masked under a simple henge.

Kind of funny how a jutsu first graders could perform could manipulate a deadly existence to exist right underneath an entire village's noses.

Tsunade's almond eyes blinked closed. This could be serious. God. That stupid Lee kid. Gai had really done wonders on this one.

"All right. Where's his room in the Outpatient wing?"


Gai ripped the curtain that separated Lee's space with that of the half dozen other recoverees lined up in the oblong room. A hospital bed with and a table stared back from the blank, empty space. A careless lump could clearly be seen beneath the rumpled, stained blanket.

"He's smart. Had me fooled for hours." Gai said wistfully, lifting aside the mustard colored hospital blanket. A pillow and a wad of socks, sandals, and what looked like every cloth possession Lee owned was piled into a body shaped heap beneath the cheap cotton cover. It was quite evident that Lee had used the decoy of himself to distract the nurses, his girlfriend, and even his sensei into believing he was sleeping off the effects of the anesthesia.

Tsunade could have laughed, but the realization that Konoha's hospital was as stupid as to not realize a lump of clothing was not a patient recovering from a critical surgery made her about want to go slam a few officials of this infirmary's heads together. With her chakra-powered strength, of course.

Glancing around the six foot area, she blinked and set her eyes on the white, kanji-inscribed bottle on the imitation-wood table beside the wrinkled sheets of the bed.

"He must be pretty confused, too." she said, not motioning to the bottle. "He must have mistook my sake for his medicine. Look."

Gai instantly yelled at the top of his lungs, making Tsunade startle as the man screamed. He kept yelling for about a few seconds, his eyes wide. His student just stared at the off-white bottle, and then at her sensei.

Gai finally shut his mouth, and began fretting as he stood, staring at the bottle and shaking.

"This is bad." he said, hunching his shoulders up to his ears.

Tsunade looked questioningly at the jounin. His student got a hold of alcohol. Big whoop. It wasn't like he was going to kill himself with it or anything.

"Lee has some, complications with sake."

Gai sounded like a nervous therapist. Tsunade blinked at him, before placing one hand on her hip and cocking her head sideways at Gai.

"Alright. You'd better tell me what these 'complications' are." she said, reluctantly admitting that there might be some reason that Rock Lee couldn't ingest fermented rice wine.

Gai gulped, and began poking his fingers in a Hyuuga Hinata fashion, an anxious aura radiating off him.

"Rian wasn't part of the cell then." he began, his knees knocking against each other.

Rian listened with rapt attention. What had happened? Curiosity began building as she titled her head sideways at her teacher.

Gai swallowed again, as Tsunade waited for his explanation, fist knotted on her hip, head cocked at the man.

"I took my team out to eat in celebration of Lee's quick aquireation of Ura Renge skills."

His mind flashed images of Lee and Tenten fighting over the last pickled egg, Neji sipping his soda morosely, slapping ryou onto the table for the inexpensive bill.

"Lee mistook my sake for his water. He drank about a shot glass full, before I confiscated the alcohol from him. But, by than it was too late."

Tsunade's eyebrow arched up. Beside Gai, his student looked up at her sensei, thinking he was fooling around with her.

"When I came to.. The restaurant was in smithereens."

Rian blinked. What? Tsunade nodded, realizing what had occurred. Text book condition, as she knew.

"Lee was running around, trashing everything he saw. He was spinning like a top, striking and running into things. He punched Neji clear across the building."

Gai remembered staring in astonishment at the skeletal remains of the restaurant, Neji chasing after his teammate, who was no more than a flash of green and white, yelling and slamming into things, Tenten cowering behind an overturned chair, screaming patrons of the establishment fleeing out the opening where Lee had knocked the front doors from their brackets, leaving them hanging from their hinges.

"I couldn't even restrain him." he said absently.

Tsunade's eyes widened, her mouth hanging open.

"You couldn't even hold him down?" she repeated, astonished. A kid with that much strength in one sip? Good Lord. This boy really could be dangerous!

Gai finally turned to look at her. "Well, I couldn't properly keep him in one place without harming him. And I couldn't very well harm my adorable student." Tsunade saw him begin his Good Guy pose, but refrain, and slump at the waist dejectedly, arms hanging in front of him, black hair like a curtain around his face.

She sighed, hunching her shoulders up unladylike. Rian was hurriedly looking from Tsunade to Gai, eyes wide with shock and fright. What had Lee done now? Alcohol made him crazy? What was going on?

"Lee, my loveable young charge, is consequentially a natural student of Suiken." Gai said, nodding affirmatively.

"Drunken Fist." Tsunade repeated, shaking her head. Wonderful. Just what they needed. Gai's 'loveable prodigy' in a drunken rage, destroying the village.

She let a loud sigh escape her throat. Sometimes it sucked to be Hokage.

"Alright. I can send some Black Ops to search for him, if he really is that much of a threat. But, if either of you have any idea where he might have gone.."

Gai exhaled loudly, slumping as though he wished to simply disappear inside his flak jacket. The Green Beast turned to the spot where his student had been concernedly processing the current dilemma her teammate had wriggled his way into.

"Well, Rian, I don't suppose, being his teammate, you would-"

Gai's eyes alighted upon the empty space his pupil had resided moments ago. Rian tore around the corner of the main hallway, before bursting out the double doors of the front entrance into the light of the balmy June afternoon.


"I'M NOT DRUNK!"

Lee's foot flew up erratically, leg warmer just a flash of orange as the pile-driving kick drove straight towards the pale, white face of the apparent enemy.

Kimimaro dodged, nimbly sliding past the jumpy attack, spinning around to face the boy as he resumed a shaky battle stance.

A discarded white bottle, it's contents drank in less than two gulps, clacked against the Kayuga's sandal. Lee made a few grunting noises under his breath, eyes crossing, arms moving unpredictably. The entire world was spinning before Lee's onyx eyes, colors waning and bleeding together, blurry forms separating from five and returning to one- Fireworks exploded in his head, utter confusion and what must have been mild insanity initiating control as he smacked his lips, sweet rice flavoring still coated over the flesh.

"I'M UNDERAGE!" he screamed, his voice raspy as his eyes tried to distinguish if there were six Kimimaros or one. He took a chance, leaping angularly at the blurred form, yelling at the top of his lungs.

The bone Svengali side-stepped gracefully, catching Lee's flying limbs in blocks, trying to anticipate where the next flying kick or fist would come flying in the direction of.

Lee's muscled body rippled as he pored all of his stupored, mindless rage into the full-on attack, slamming a flurry of beatings onto the bone-edged limbs.

"CHILDREN CAN'T DRINK SAKE! 'SNOT LEGAL!" he affirmed, his voice slurring as he punched Kimimaro behind his back. His fingers knit through the tendrils of albino-white hair, which he ripped as he fought to regain balance in the ankle-deep, emerald green grass. The sunlight seemed blinding in intensity, glaring down across the open field they were engaged on with dazzling heat, seeming to bake the very dirt they tread on. A path of trampled turf marked where Lee had first laid drunken siege on the only remaining Kayuga, ripped patches of the low foliage scattering like confetti as flying feet tore them from their roots.

The white-haired teen leapt backwards, as Lee roared triumphantly and launched another barrage of light-speed taijutsu onto the unfeeling barricade of Kimimaro's quick blocks.

What kind of game was this? The kid was sloshed, yes. His attacks were unconnected and erratic, unpredictable in their pattern. And he was fast, too. Kimimaro was actually being challenged to even keep up with the fuselage of monstrously strong counter hits, timed uncontrollably to the point where he might as well be fighting in a darkened room with a blindfold over his eyes.

Yes, he was holding his own, but it was getting increasingly hard to do so. The boy's punches were not strong enough to snap Kimimaro's natural weapons. Had they been, Kimimaro would have been overwhelmed a long while ago. But Lee's inebriated onslaught was just beating around the proverbial bush.

They were just toying with each other now, batting the other around in an attempt to find the other's weakness, so that they could exploit it and use it to win. But, Lee wasn't moderate enough to be looking for Kimimaro's weak points. He was simply beating the offender, in his alcohol-smashed mind.

Kimimaro had never been a drinker, but he knew that alcohol clouded the senses. The hallucinogenic affect of the fermented rice created psychedelic illusions, blurred the vision, and offset the hearing, to the point where distinguishing an enemy's location would be close to impossible.

And with this, Kimimaro had found the key to defeating the "Azure Beast of Konohagakure", as the boy had so grandiosely titled himself.

The bone manipulator brainwashed himself into believing that he was actually in need of the challenge. Orochimaru's newer "maggots", Sound Nin in training, usually weren't much of a challenge, or the dummies, made with cloth and stuffed with straw. He needed to taste something new, after so long a time sitting, medications flowing through an intravenous line as he waited out his demise, playing death with every breath he took, hocking bitter sheets of blood into stained rags as Kabuto nursed him hydration through a plastic tube inserted in a thick, red vein that lay stabbed beneath his ash skin.

He had wanted, no, required, a brand new trial. And this fight was crisp with fresh promise, reaffirmation of his skill at the one thing he had been appreciated for. Fighting. Killing.

Genocide wasn't a random occurrence. It was the Kayuga nindo. Kimimaro's only way of life before Orochimaru had found him.

Lee's fist grazed his cheek. The flesh of Kimimaro's arm began to crawl with a insect's feet sensation, as a white cylinder began rising from perpendicular to his shoulder.

Polished and glinting sharply, he snatched the prepared ulna, fingers tippeting over the instantaneously knitting skin, the alien sensation making a shiver shudder up his very spine.

Whipping the sharpened, strong as steel bone in front of him, he brandished the homemade sword at the now-recovering, partially retreated Lee, who was mumbling, his slammed mind trying to stay one step ahead of Kimimaro's plan.

Kimimaro gathered himself, standing straight as a full grown fir tree, the ones that he had climbed in as a child, during his leisurely time he had been allotted to after his grueling training, until he was commanded back to his cell.

He had hated being a prisoner.

Fingers of wind threaded themselves leisurely through the meadow, making the Nile colored grass sweep in waves. The lapis blue sky hung emptily above the two figures, stretching to the farthest limits of a child's stifled imagination.

Not. So. Long. Ago.

"Tsubaki Mai." Kimimaro sliced the silence of the instant like a knife.

The moment exploded with motion. Kimimaro's arm began stabbing faster then the blink of an eye at the green-clad, intoxicated boy, who's raven, raven, raven, into the darkest depths behind prison bars eyes widened, a target for the razor-sharp point of the sword.

Kimimaro hated the dark. It was dark behind the bars of his cell, it was dark the flame-licked night of the Kayuga slaughter, it was dark underneath the blindfold and dark in that hospital room, Kabuto's knife-blade smiles behind glasses that glinted off of the small light emitting from the monitor that beeped the time of Kimimaro's heart, a steady, steady rhythm, oh Dear God, let's get this heart beating, faster, faster, faster. Anything, anything to change the tune. Bump up the tempo, strike up the band, the conductor is back in here. Come, congregation of morbid souls, let's sing it like you mean it. The repetitive metaphor of pulsing of life, metallic and detached. Lonely.

Heart. Beat. Heart. Beat.

Anything to change the beat of his heart.

Lee and Kimimaro were no more then twin flashes, streaks of hunter and hoar, chartreuse and silvery.

Kimimaro's blade flicked in a peacock fan fashion, slashing, stabbing, poking at the flash of forest and black streak atop it. Lee, in turn, used his uncanny, brutal speed to dodge every stab of the blade.

This inhuman display of Mach speed continued, until one of them began to feel weak from the speed. Nauseousness began to drip over him. He couldn't keep up with the Lotus kid's attacks much longer, he felt behind the mask of emotionless stone he kept his face locked to permanently.

Kimimaro swept the blade in an 'X' shape, breaking the cycle of uncannily rapid stabs and misses. Lee, beginning to sober, leapt backwards to avoid the slashes.

Dammit! He couldn't land a single hit on this kid! Lee slammed forward, fist drawn to slam Kimimaro backward. The Kayuga responded to the challenge by fighting Lee backwards, slashing his bone sword at the green-clothed chest.Yes. An open spot, where gravity would pull the black-haired taijutsu proficient and his drunken body could not react in time to miss the swipe.

Kimimaro slashed the sword in the arc that would end the battle. A final hit. There was no way this one could possibly miss.

This is it…

The blade cut through the electrifying atmosphere, slicing the noxious clouds of evaporated sweat and the sweet stench of alcohol. As anticipated, Lee bent forward to recover from his latest punch, before he could jerk his intoxicated body backwards, and gather the power for yet another punch. Unfortunately, the razor thin sword edge would arc directly across his diaphragm, slicing the soft underbelly skin.

He'd say that, with the chakra he was summoning into the blade, the sword would slice the annoying, one-over-eight kid right in two.

Lee's eyes shot wide, as his inebriated mind suddenly grasped the situation. Anticipating the pull on his body, there was no way he could regain his balance in time to keep himself out of the blade's path.

This was better then Kimimaro had thought. He flicked his hand with the grace of an expert fencer, allowing his jade eyes to trace the path that the bone-thin saber would follow.

The moment narrowed to the spaces between heartbeats. Lee's feet tangled in themselves, as his mouth flew open. He twisted to the side as he fell, trying a useless last resort. But, his doom was inevitable. And coming now.

Lee wrenched his eyes shut, waiting for the evening cut. His feelings could not possibly be described. His life was going to end in just a few moments. He didn't have time to think of anything other then his own fate. And how soon it was coming. Blood gushed in his ears, crimson flashing across his eyelids as gravity tugged his body downward.

The instant before his life ended, all he could hear were his final heartbeats thumping in his chest.

The blade slashed forward, white and prominent as it connected with the skin-tight green fabric clinging with sweat to a visible rib cage.

Thump. Thump. Thu-

Blood splattered across Lee's face, the sticky, metal smell overwhelming his sense of smell, taste. The warmth established itself, burning in it's intensity. Lee knew it must be his. He'd been cut in half. There was nothing from his chest.. Chest do- Oh, god. His heart would be slowing down in a few moments. He had been killed. He, Rock Lee, The Lotus of Konoha. Shinobi. Gai-sensei. His last conscious thoughts. The dark light beckoned his detaching body . He was going. Gone..

So why was he still counting heartbeats?

One inky eye popped open, fear flowing up his thin, gangly body. St-sti- still alive? But wasn't he…

His sight opened slowly, to reveal his two bandaged arms, still in a blocking posture. The white stripes of cotton were sprayed with brick colored droplets of life. What he could still comprehend as his stomach lurched.

It was his. It was his, and he would be saying farewell to life, living, love in just a second. A millisecond. He prepared himself to reach for the hands of some sort of forever after. Anything would be better then this inevitable waiting. Any, just any moment soon, so soon. Oh, Kami. He was actually going to die.

There was no denying the truth, as it rushed to meet him, in what must be a half a second's wait. It felt like a suffering, horrific wait for what would now seem merciful, even if it was a final blow in a fight on a wind-whipped field.

And yet-

Kimimaro winced as a searing pain slammed across his cheekbone, his jaw cracking as blue flooded his right eye. Blood poured out of his open mouth as his teeth shattered against the steel-solid weight. The weight against his face shifted the smallest bit, and another smash slammed against his unguarded chest.

Rian clenched a hand around Kimimaro's facial features, contorting the stunned expression as she once more, hanging off of the Kayuga's body, threw her weight around his unclothed body, and swung around to slam a kick into the small of his back.

The sword dropped from Kimimaro's hand, halting the progress of the white, slicing blade, still crackling with chakra. It fell lifelessly to the ground, sizzling as it bounced through the chopped, unkept meadow marram. Lee's body shot of it's own accord, catching him, stumbling, across the emerald grass not torn up by sandals and bones. Catching his balance drunkenly, he slipped, tripping and falling directly on his face. Damask green grass, wet with morning dew filled his vision, the smell of fresh, kicked-up earth flooding his nostrils. He clenched his pinging head, feeling explosions booming as his stupor began to recede.

Vision blurred, he pushed himself shakily up onto one arm, feeling the energy from the blur of motion that was Kimimaro and Lee's apparent savior. His trembling head raised, sable irises trying desperately to see through the fog of his aching skull. Feeling his pulse thump against his palm, blood pulsing against the solid side of his skull. Things like that, fingers knitted through the trampled, saw-like grass, were slowly helping bring him to from the alcohol-induced rage he had battled from the perch of.

Wait. Just- just, make the sky go back up and the field stop spinning for a minute or two or three, because- because.. Dammit! Why couldn't he th- th-th- thinkkkk? Ouch, ouch, ouch. Why, why did his head.. Head- Drunk! He had been drunk! … Oh, no! Gai-sensei was going to murder him!

He threw his head up, feeling bile burn at his throat lining. He was in a fight! Where was.. The oppone-

Kimimaro threw his elbow around, barely missing Rian's back as she dropped to the ground on her hands. Instantly, she pushed herself back around, twisting her body heinously, a searing pain erupting in her abdominal wall. She balanced herself, palms supporting her in the slick, razor-thin grass that reached up to her bare elbows, before rocketing back up to slam the charging Kimimaro directly in his unclothed groin.

The remaining bone manipulator slid backwards, balancing on three limbs as he coasted backwards, farther out into the literally forest of swaying green.

Lee pushed himself up more, smacking the taste of alcohol over his lips. Where was he? Why had he gotten into a fight? How had he even gotten his hands on a bottle of sake, anyway?

He covered one ear with his free hand and winced, as thundering footsteps slammed towards him, echoing in all directions and making their direction of approach uncomprehendable.

Smoke-colored stalks bled together against the cerulean and sage landscape before him, swaying tufts of grass like waves of an extremely shallow ocean. The grass crunched as two spots of bright, radiant blue appeared before his waning vision, cycling rapidly before connected solidly to what he thought must have been the ground.

He looked up, radiating confusion in his pinched face as he struggled to concentrate. Stalks of the turf tickled at his upper lip, making him wiggle his nose to rid himself of the irritating sensation on his sweaty lip.

Rian flipped across the ground, throwing her legs over her head with expert coordination, before landing directly on her feet, ankles absorbing the shock of the thud of her body weight against the hard ground. She stood, hands behind her back, scowling with a controlled blaze of rage contained, flickering, in her olive eyes.

Kimimaro stood to his full height, his expressionless face displaying no surprise. His green eyes followed up the girl's body as a wave of wind sent her oversized shirt billowing and snapping at her obviously emaciated waist.

She was sickly in appearance, small, and paper-thin. She must be the Blue Lotus, or whatever he had said he was's teammate, or friend. Maybe his girlfriend. He didn't know, or care.

Lee, arms behind him as he supported his upper body, could feel his eyes popped wide as he stared at his teammate's back. Another whip of wind sent grass waving at his sides, tapping at the creases of his jumpsuit. How on earth had Rian found him?

"Rian-San.." he whispered to her, silently imploring her for explanation. Did she have him micro-chipped? Tagged? Was he linked to a satellite by a device in his legwarmers? Had Gai-sensei sent her to retrieve him?

Or maybe, she had just come looking for him.

He watched her hands slip into the shruiken pouch bound at her beltline, only to reappear armed with the claws of her Shinobi art, pronged, serrated ends glinting maliciously in the bright, suddenly ominous sun above as they flashed at her sides, before being crossed before her face in her feral, challenging attack stance.

"Lee, are you alright?" her voice commanded, sounding stable and even, even in the midst of the challenging miasma that Lee suddenly found making a breath catch in his throat. He swallowed the lump, his eyes still locked to the curve of his female team member's back.

"I… I think so." he whispered, gasping the sweet, cool air into his suddenly burning lungs. He hadn't meant to whisper. Something, was… making it a bit hard to talk-

Lee felt a sudden bloom of feeling in him, and he clenched a hand over his heart as the sensation manifested itself in a chest pain. He looked at his sweat-soaked chest, at the heaving beginnings of a six-pack on his abdomen, before looking back up at Rian, his eyes widened with confusion.

He knew that feeling.

Kimimaro sighed, slumping his shoulders and closing his eyes to the knife blades that jutted with medieval intention from a pair of brass knuckles clenched between the small child's fingers.

"I suppose, that you want to repay the damage I've done to your 'revived student', or whatever he calls himself." he noted, nodding dolefully as his skin began to crawl with the sensation of weapons, ready to be thrown from beneath his skin, preparing themselves at his silent, commanding call to arms.

"Shinobi way." Rian said, grinning Machiavellianlly. She swept one hand behind her back, holding the other forward in Lee's summoning 'Bring it' stance.

Lee was frozen in place, his hands welded to the crushed grass beneath him, which was gradually warming with his spilt body heat, cold sweat dripping ominously over his overheated muscles as they throbbed, recovering from the excessive use.

"Rian!" he cried suddenly, the word setting his throat on fire. "Watch out! He uses bones as weapons!"

Rian paused as her weight shifted forward, processing Lee's plea. He sounded.. Desperate? Worried?

"Bones?" she said, smiling condescendingly. "It's not so hard to break bones when they're under the skin."

Rian didn't know what kind of screwed-up techniques this guy could do with bones, but by the tone of Lee's voice, they sounded more then a little dangerous.

Lee swallowed a foreshadowing lump in his throat, feeling a choking feeling clench his windpipe.

He had to get up and- Augh! His limbs laid out their insistence that he stay in one place and rest them. Dammit. The stitches on his leg stung as the surgical thread began to unknit itself from the skin. Pricks of pain tingled horrendously up his calf, through his thigh, cascading into a bowel-turning sensation in his torso, before sending his skull afire with a buzzing, murderous impression.

He stared worriedly at the unfolding fight, ignoring the synopses of pain sensors screaming throughout his body. His lip trembled, sending his scratched and dirt-crusted cheek aflame with the sensation. Black orbs locked to Rian, he tried to decipher why he was panicking so. Rian could handle herself. She was a strong, splendid shinobi. Another gust across the battleground sent Rian's brown bangs fluttering aside, shirt flapping at her thin waist. Her foot drew a circle in the dirt as she stood straight, cracking her shoulder blades in preparation for a set of grueling acrobatic feats Neko-Chan had made her practice, and practice, and practice until they were sandblasted into her memory.

Rian's lip curled as a familiar presence began settling into her senses. She felt the blending of her vision with his. She could feel the spine-tingling awareness as her hearing and smell became his as well.

Neko-Chan smirked, yellow eyes smiling prominently from his coffee colored face as he curled his tail to his shoulder. His ears flicked once, their signal that a temporary battle synergy net had been created between them.

Rian was a two man, taijutsu battling machine now.

Kimimaro charged forward, his expression betraying no feeling. Bones ejected from his skin, sabers of white from the pale, slight pink of his arms. He tucked the limbs at his side, his chest exploding as his rib cage jutted out, the bones sharpening to razor-sharp edges at Kimimaro's silent command.

The Kayuga shot forward, black sandals barely touching the ground as he flew at the small, claw-armed girl who was smirking at him the smallest bit from behind the metal knives attached to her knuckles.

Now! Rian's lip curved to reveal her right incisor, and ran straight at the approaching form. This was where her only nascent knowledge of chakra control would be tested. Neko-Chan had been urging her to train her chakra mastery since witnessing Lee's grueling defeat in the Preliminaries of the Journeyman Ninja exam. There was proof that Taijutsu wasn't always enough to win a battle, and Rian was not only gifted with her own pulsing energy, but Neko-Chan could lend some of his chakra to her, if the need arose. The temporary symbiosis that could link them in a battle allowed Neko-Chan access to her chakra reserves, making it possible for him to summon his energy into her power storage in the event of an emergency. But, he refrained from passing his energy into her, or even telling her that chakra transferring between the two was possible. Instead, he made her train day after day on increasing her barely intermediate chakra control. This work had helped her exponentially in her daily training against the chakra-implanted clones Neko-Chan had her fight against every day. Rian's familiarity with chakra molding before had been limited to a few genin-level jutsus, basic concealment techniques, and henge for tracking an enemy unnoticed.

But now, her knowledge had expanded into being able to drive a large amount of her natural power into her hands, and up her blades, making a normal swipe of the knives against an unguarded chest inertly more dangerous, with the crackling energy making the blades glow with white-hot heat, which could inflict agonizing burns when placed against bare skin, or shock impaled organs into shutting themselves down.

Thundering forward, Rian sent electrical pulses of chakra into the serrated ends of the knifes, the grip that held the weapons in place humming against her palms as they vibrated with energy.

They met barely twenty feet from their starting places, thundering towards each other with the intent to have blood splattering across the grass.

Kimimaro's bone laced arms slammed together in what would have been a morbid death embrace as he misanticipated Rian beginning her attacks directly in front of his chest.

Rian, however, skidded between Kimimaro's legs in a juvenile fashion, before zooming around and slamming a sweeping kick to the back of Kimimaro's knees.

This was the wonder of Sanken. The moves didn't require inhuman strength or much familiarity with chakra. The art only called for inhuman, animalistic flexibility and speed.

Acquiring the feline level of equilibrium needed for the feats of the taijutsu endeavor was not a task easily done. Rian had spent years training, practicing every aspect of the catlike skills required to perform the aerial stunts and liquefying herself around stabs and punches. Training to slide underneath an opponent's guard, to deliver a well-placed stab to a chest or abdomen as they realized the girl had disappeared from the path of their attack.

The art was controversial, scorned on by Kage and sensei, but at the core, Blood Fist taijutsu was just as good as any other battle skill. And, it took an amazing amount of concentration and talent to even come close to being proficient at.

Talent Neko-Chan had seen sitting on a log in the middle of a forest, tears running lines in the dirt-streaked face.

Kimimaro buckled at the knees, falling forward as the speed of the attack slipped behind his guard. His jade-colored eyes widened as he twisted, somersaulting and hopping to his feet.

Darn. The girl was fast. The bones spiked out from the skin of his arm made a tapping noise as Rian's hand gripped one of the calcium-strengthened dagger shapes and whipped herself around it, like a gymnastic bar, landing a kick directly in Kimimaro's face.

Rian could have been built for Sanken. She was small, which made slipping between attacks fairly simple. Her size also increased her speed, making it more difficult for the enemy to actually touch her with anything but a long-range attack. And Rian was quite skilled at evading long-range attacks.

Her small size also had an undesirable hitch. Rian throwing her entire weight behind a punch didn't make it any stronger. Her body mass was equal to that of a healthy third grader, even if she was thirteen. Neko-Chan had been watching what his container ate for some time, manipulating her unusually fast metabolism to shave off any excess weight that might hold them down in battle. One could clearly see Rian's ribs jutting from her sides if she wore anything besides the thick T-shirt that hid her anorexic secret. Neko-Chan had always demanded she vomit her entire meal back up if one bite more than her allotted diet went down her throat, even when she before she was old enough to enroll in Konoha's Academy.

Rian had never thought there was anything wrong with it. She had just listened to the feline's promises that it would make her faster and lighter, and much, much harder for an opponent to even try to battle against.

This lack of nourishment may have made Rian weaker strength wise, but her learning to fight and work through the hunger pains was immeasurably valuable, Neko-Chan had taught. He was turning her into a lean, mean, fighting machine, as the saying went.

So, Rian may not have been strong, or too skilled at the art of chakra mastery, the keys to being an adept ninja, but her speed and ability to keep her head in a skirmish substituted those skills pretty well, Neko-Chan thought.

And the fact that her willingness to mould herself to the skill's standards had made her flexible and her balance nearly unthrowable made up a big part of her chances of winning any battle she found herself in.

Rian pushed off of Kimimaro's face, flipping backwards and landing crouched in the grass. Kimimaro spit out a mouthful of blood. Her first kick had shattered his back teeth. A molar had been knocked from it's roots, and his incisor chipped from the sheer force of the entering kick. Blood was pouring from the severed, empty space in his jaw. He poked his tongue into the hole, putting harsh pressure on the stinging pinkness of his jaw to stop the smarting. A little ache like that wouldn't stop him from fighting back, of course. It was just a minor stinging, and wouldn't even bother him as the battle came to a finish.

It was time to end this annoying kiddie fight now.

Lee's heart was caught in his throat the entire barrage of attacks on both sides. His hands trembled, shaking the stalks of grass. His useless body was just sitting there on the ground, while Rian fought his battle for him.

Pain, electrical charges of aching, wrenched his arms. His legs were numb, as every sensor in his body cried for relief of the enormous pressure his inebriated attacks had entailed.

He couldn't move. Not even if he tried. He scowled at his own weakness, biting his lip as the metallic taste of his bitten tongue filled his mouth.

Maybe he shouldn't have even tried to catch up with the Recovery team. He had known, running to catch up with the rest of the genin, feeling the stitches in his leg loosening with every crash of his foot against the dust-covered, well traveled road, that he was weak. When, and if, he reached the rest of the group, would he be able to fight if they encountered resistance on Sasuke's part?

He probably would just be a burden, a nuisance.

He had felt like sobbing aloud as he rocketed at top speed to catch up, his legs throbbing with strain.

But each time he doubted his ability, and came instants from turning around and fleeing home, he pictured the heart-broken look on his cherry blossom's face as she watched Naruto, grinning idiotically, lead his Hokage-appointed team down the worn path away from Konohagakure, in search of her lover.

Each time he pictured her flushed face, cheeks tinted with tears, it fueled him to run a little faster, smile a little wider. Sakura was still a driving force in his life, even if there was an undercurrent of uncertainty about their relationship. In spite of his adamant, unmoving feelings for the young girl, he could feel a sensation of doubt festering inside him.

He was beginning to, even if he wouldn't admit it to his own face, retreat to the belief that, maybe, Sakura wasn't going to return his affections.

But, there was always the defying nag that perhaps he was giving up too easily. Since Gai-sensei had begun tutoring Lee in The Ways of The Green Beast, as Tenten had called her sensei and team member's sometimes outright ridiculous behaviors, the major points that Gai had drilled into him were to believe in oneself, and to never, ever give up on anything, whether it was learning a new taijutsu move or a downright mundane mission.

The self-confidence had "Gai's handiwork" written all over it. Lee had never believed in himself as a child, and he supposed old habits died hard. He still had doubts about his strength, which he believed the most important issue in his life currently. He seriously distrusted his abilities in Taijutsu to a degree never before pulverized. Gaara's fight had only hit the point on the head. Sometimes, physical techniques weren't enough to win a battle.

Or even adequately protect oneself, his swollen joints reminded him.

Tilting his head to face the blinding sun above, Lee moaned in pain. His limbs throbbed, screaming for any kind of relief from the mere sensation of the green fabric soaked to them.

He had to get back up. His teammate was fighting for him. He couldn't just sit here, recovering from his own injuries while Rian might need his he-

That was it!

Rolling on to his stomach, Lee dragged his body to face the small, white bottle. He reached out, fingertips extended, supporting his throbbing body with the opposite elbow. His eye twitched as he forced with everything in him to keep from screaming out loud at the rippling shock waves of pain smashing over him, like break waves at a beach.

Just, reach- A little more.. A little more..

Lee scowled, before throwing himself forward idiotically, landing face first in the dirt.

But, he thought, as the sweet smell of earth overwhelmed his nostrils, the grainy dirt filling his nasal cavities, his fingers closed around the white, high-necked, smooth surface of the cream-colored bottle.

He let a smile spread across his cracked lips, even as his legs protested his position with cries of pain.

Shoving himself into a sitting position, Lee cracked his back and poked the dry lip of the bottle into his mouth.

Oh please, please let there be just a drop left. This sake was the only possible way he could force his body back up and fighting. He knew that digesting even a drop of the rice wine could end the battle, saving them both. But he also acknowledged that he had no control over himself when he was drunk. He could end up injuring himself to the point of permanent damage, or even-

He refused to think of that, as his tongue searched the inside of the narrow bottle for even a drop of the alcohol. That was all it would take to have him unleashing battalions of Taijutsu on the bone manipulating bastard Rian was holding off.

Holding off. Rian was holding an enemy at bay for him.

Wrenching his eyes shut, Lee tilted his head backwards as far as it would go without sending him flat on his back. He sucked at the cold ceramic of the bottle vigorously, desperation fueling him.

Dammit! Just one drop-

Rian twisted out of the way as a bone-spiked arm crashed into the spot where she had been standing, The Kayuga's fist imbedding itself into the grass-patched ground. She placed a firm hand on Kimimaro's shoulder blades and flipped over his back, before landing on the ripped landscape and smashing a kick into her albino opponent's ribcage.

This was nuts. She couldn't keep pussyfooting around this enemy. He was too fast for her to even touch. Her energy was being strained into getting out of the way of the bones jutting from his skin. Never mind trying to land a hit on his body, between the keratin armor he'd built around his body.

She needed a plan. Now.

"We can't even touch him. How can we possibly hope to get him down long enough to get out of here, let alone dragging Drunk Ass over there away from the battle?". Rian threw the question at her neko companion as she somersaulted on her side to avoid a punch that whistled past her shoulder.

Think about it.

Rian rolled her eyes as she swiped her weapon at Kimimaro's face, her feet twisting to shift her from Kimimaro's sing-song punch.

"Great, Neko-Chan. That really hel-" Rian froze in mid sentence, an idea's roots beginning to settle in her mind.

Without bothering to explain to Neko-Chan what she was doing, she jumped directly in front of Kimimaro, who was recovering from his last attack.

As she had done before, Rian clapped one hand over the Kayuga's shoulder and jumped, using the grip of the bone ejected from his skin to force herself up, over his head.

Halfway at the climax of her leap, Rian twisted to face Kimimaro, who's bottle green eyes watched her with expressionless curiosity as he tried to anticipate her next attack.

Rian's hands flew to each other, as she moulded her chakra to release a jutsu. Her fingers formed to the Ne seal, hands clasped together in front of her chest.

Instantly, leaves began to cascade up, swirling and surrounding the two as Rian's chakra formed into the beginning signs of a genjutsu.

Rian caught herself as gravity pulled her ground wards, landing gracefully on crouched knees and one hand as the genjutsu's visible traces began to disappear, falling back to earth in a circular shape around the stock-still Kimimaro.

She smirked, whipping back into her battle stance in a trumping gesture. Neko-Chan smiled.

The genjutsu Rian used was a genin level jutsu, but she had managed to catch their enemy off guard, leaving even this minor chakra-requiring attack his downfall.

Kimimaro began to shake as the horrific visions began to appear before his eyes. The effects of the genjutsu were to paralyze the antagonist of the hex with lifelike visualizations of the victim's worst fears.

Rian smiled, and stood, eagerly awaiting the show with her feline. Paralyzing fear, and the insane pleadings of a horror-stricken victim had always been morbidly entertaining.

Kimimaro stood completely stiff, his only movements being the rise and fall of his bare chest and the trembling spasms that shook his frame as he tried to distinguish whether what he was seeing was real or not. Trying to hear himself over the desperate firings of his thought synopses.

Before him lay a corpse, riddled with shruiken and gaping gashes where rotting intestines could be seen poking out. Flies buzzed in a thick blanket around the limbless body, the stench of death filling Kimimaro's throat and making him want to gag with the intensity of the scent.

The face, still intact, even as the vermin chewed at the rotting skin, was devoid of eyes, it's mouth hanging open brokenly. A drape of black hair lay stretched from the severed scalp, red and still drenched in blood.

O-O-Oro-Or-R-R-Rochimaru-S-s-sama…

A scream issued from Kimimaro's throat, the intensity of his cry burning the lining of his esophagus. Unfelt tears flooded his eyes, blurring the cadaverous vision as he fell to his knees in the dark dirt, bowing his body over the fetid remains of his master.

Neko-Chan grinned, his fangs shining in the darkness of Rian's mind. Rian's face mimicked the neko's expression, lips curled up masochistically to reveal her incisors as she smiled, evil intention glaring at the upturned, tinted cheeks.

Kimimaro writhed, his hands balled into fists, the bones on his back quivering as he trembled, the affects of the genjutsu starting to wear off.

Alright. Finish him.

"Oh, right." So consumed had they been in observing Kimimaro's half crazed reaction to the hallucinogenic spell, she'd almost forgotten to end what Lee had started.

She strode up to the still stunned Kimimaro, stopping directly before his wide-eyed face, curtained by albino strands of messy, Kayuga-Clan-styled tresses.

Rian whipped her Sanken knives out, feeling the power over her opponent flood her arms, superheating her entire body with adrenaline.

She would make this kill fast. Lee still needed to be dragged home. Speaking of which, where was Lee?-

A long, ear drum shattering screech answered her question.

Rian spooked, startling to the side as a pile-driving force slid past her, like a first baseman sliding into home.

Lee's foot slammed into Kimimaro's face, kicking the Kayuga backwards. Lee hopped to his feet, his body a solid ripple of muscle as Kimimaro skidded backwards on his behind.

Lee swayed from side to side as he stood, his arms held angularly out in front of him in some sort of ignorant parody of the stance he usually used before going into battle.

"-hic- I ga-ga-go -hic- Got him! Rian-San! -hic-" he declared to her, his eyes crossing as his cheeks flushed a rosy fuchsia.

Rian, who had been blanching in the direction of her comrade's blush-colored face, turned to their opponent. Kimimaro had gotten his feet underneath him, and was standing at his full, now daunting height once again, his eyes narrowed at the challenging, troublesome kids who were making this day miserable for him.

Wonderful. Lee had knocked Kimimaro from the genjutsu. The idiot!

Rian shook her head, and turned to Lee, who was smiling childishly into the distance.

Keep your anger under control.

Rian commanded her twitching eye to stop throbbing, contenting herself with the only visible show of her anger being the pulsing vein on her forehead, which was covered by her protector, anyway.

"Lee.." she began, closing her eyes and tucking her shoulders up to her ears. "-You do realize that you just undid every inch of the work I just did while you were drunk out of your mind, don't you?"

Lee seemed to renotice Rian's existence, and turned his head to face her, smiling like a patient in an asylum.

His eyes shone as he recognized her, tilting his head adorably and poking his tongue out the corner of his mouth.

"Naaaw. Do-d-don't worry, Rian-San. I g-g-got it!"

Suddenly, Lee reached out and yanked Rian closer to him. Her arms were pinned to the front of his chest as he held her to him, smiling stupidly as she struggled against his grip.

"Lee! We don't have time for this!" she cried, trying to slam against his vice with her body, to loosen the hold he had around her upper back. It was no use. Lee's arms were as strong and as dense as steel beams.

She kicked at his knee, hoping to make him let go. She was now fighting a helpless drunk. Great. Why did Lee have to take that bottle of sake? Why couldn't she just have a normal teammate, who didn't wear spandex and drink underage to have another ace up his sleeve? Why did he even follow the team and try to catch up? What was he trying to prove by almost getting himself murdered?

"You're right, Rian-Than!" he yelled, his voice waning. "There isn't any time to f-f-fondle with f-formalities!"

He gazed back down at his teammate as she continued without ceasing in her pathetic wriggling.

"Rian, I love you!"

Rian froze, and looked up at Lee's face as a wide grin spread over the majority of his lower face.

What did he say? L-love? Did he say that he loved her?

Rian gazed deep into his black eyes, which to her seemed like bottomless black holes filled with the clearest, and yet the most brackish water that had ever been looked in to.

She could feel his heart beating against her neck, a comforting rhythm, the tempo of the moment, as Lee gripped her the smallest bit tighter.

Rian wasn't sure a whisper of wind could have passed between the two, as Lee's eyes half-closed drunkenly, his sweet smile directed towards the girl he held in his arms.

No.

She leaned her head against his sweat-soaked chest, feeling the impulses of his touch against her sides.

That was just the sake talking. Rian could never love anybody. Only Neko-Chan.

But, did that mean nobody could love Rian?

Lee's thumb traced a circle in her shoulder blade as he stood, his body swaying back and forth, as though Rian's weight leaning on him was about to tip him backwards. And yet strangely, Lee had never felt stronger.

Rian felt his grip slack, but did not slide from his warm arms, the heat of his sweat damp against her dirt-streaked cheeks.

Letting her eyes close, she let the feelings churning in her torso expel up, making her spine tingle with intensity of the want, the desire to stay in the comforting embrace of Lee's vice-like arms.

How long had she hungered for this simple embrace? And how long had she lusted for the feelings buzzing inside of her to be released, humming like a swarm of wasps in her ears along with pulsing blood?

Rian had never felt more secure, or as safe as she did in that minute, hour, instant, forever- felt like eternity, however much time she spent wrapped in Lee's green-swathed arms, breathing the sweet smell of the boy she called her ally, losing herself in the feelings that had suddenly been uncovered, and made her heart flutter like butterfly wings against her scarred chest.

Her stomach turned, making her nauseous. She wanted to cough. She wanted to vomit. She wanted Neko-Chan to tell her what to do, because she didn't even know what she was feeling, let alone what to do. But mostly, she wanted Lee to hold her forever, always have the desire to draw her close and embrace her.

If this was love, Rian wanted to be loved forever.

But. It was simply the alcohol talking.

Rian grabbed at Lee's spandex, pulling him closer to her, turning her head sideways and letting the knives slip from her fingers, falling to the earth with an unheard pat, bouncing and hitting the ground twice, before rolling lifelessly and sitting inanimately, waiting expectantly, silently.

Rian didn't want the moment to end. She tried to relight the embers of the dying sensation, fluttering away like sakura blossoms on a gust of wind.

Lee didn't love her.

No one did.

Not even Neko-Chan.

Kimimaro's face didn't fold or crumple at the scene before him. He had no feelings on the subject of the sight before him, the drunken boy embracing the previously claw-armed girl.

Stupid emotions.

He needed no such desires.

The time had come to finish the annoying children blocking his way to Konohagakure.

"Tsubaki Mai: Dance of the Fern Seedlings." his authoritative voice rasped, nearly a growl in it's detached intensity as it bit the silence.

The ground exploded as spikes of white, smooth dagger-sharpened bones began jutting from the ground, spiking several feet into the air as they ejected from the dark earth.

Conducting his attack from within his mind, Kimimaro commanded the ground weapons towards the two teenagers with macabre intent, waiting in his usual silence for the bone spikes to rush towards them and complete the incommodious task he not too long ago had actually lusted for.

The challenge was gone. As of late, the battle was simply two against one. The fun and thrill had been sucked right out of it, because Lotus didn't want to play fair, and called his Bitch in to fight his battle for him.

The line of bone blades shot in a jagged, uneven line towards the pair, flinging dirt and tufts of choppy grass as the deafening roar of the line of cleaver-edged bayonets set their crosshairs on the entwined figures.

"And whadabout you?"

Rian poked her head up from where she'd been leaning against Lee's chest and nearly drowning in the flood of feelings from the broken levy of her emotions. She looked at his passive face, his silly, curved smile as it wavered drunkenly, dissipating and appearing on his face sporadically.

"What do you mean?" she asked, her concentration focused on him, instead of the appearance of the impaling attack not fifty feet from the two. She had been riveted on the unfolding sensations racking her from the inside, and the all-over tepid feeling of being embraced for the first time, without asphyxiating from one of her sensei's unpredictable bear hugs.

Lee smiled a little more, his bright teeth poking slightly through his upturned lips.

"I mean, do you feel the same way about me? Ur thumbody else?" he slurred, his vision water coloring the only focus of his attention into a blur of green and mouse colored brown.

Her facial expression quickly folded into one of confusion and doubt. She leaned her head back against the support of his rising and falling chest, staring at the green crease of Lee's jumpsuit's arm, and listened to the mantra of his breath, hoping it knew the correct answer to his question.

But, she wasn't supposed to love. Was love wanting to be held like this? Was it a fluttery feeling in your stomach when you imagined the person you love smiling? Was it trying to meditate in your lonely apartment and wishing that he was there to brighten the room with the joy that seemed to radiate off of his body? Was it talking to him in your normal way, but feeling tantalizingly scared of what his reaction would be to the words? Was it watching the muscles underneath his jumpsuit ripple as he punched at a log and tried to keep his balance on a healing leg? Was it being mesmerized by the words he said, the courage and will power, the determination he was the poster child for? Was that what love was?

"What's love again, Lee?" she asked, her voice innocent, a mere whisper into the fabric stretched over his taut arms, her fingers curling intimately close to a fist against the hard skin of his chest.

What was love? Why was she asking this again? Oh, he'd better tell her, his inebriated mind pieced.

"Ri-yen," he began, slipping one bandaged arm from around her and raising it into a pointed index finger. Rian's stomach churned, the desire to snatch his hand back and place it back into the comforting grip around the small of her back that made the skin underneath her T-shirt go alive with a crawling, strangely filling sensation filling her with sharpened want.

"Rian, love is." he began once more, his mind beginning to focus as the affect of the alcohol began wearing off.

"Love, is. Tha-that feeling, you get, when you th-th-think about a person , and feel all woozy inside. And you wa-want to be around that person all of the time, because the feelings you get make you sick and happy at the same time."

He looked down at Rian, returning his arm to hold her to him, feeling Rian release the breath she had been holding into his neck, making the scars on his neck where she'd bitten him drip with feeling as her ear brushed the crook of his neck. He then realized Rian was gazing at him, her green eyes imploring with question.

"A-and.." he started again, before reaching one hand to the face in front of him. Rian felt herself shiver, both with worry and utter fright as Lee's fingers brushed the side of her face, trailing up her cheekbone to the strands of hair that weren't long enough to tuck behind her headband.

He tenderly brushed the messy strands back behind her ear. He'd seen it in some movie once, but the impulsion to place his attention on anything but the eyes that were making his skin crawl with nervous anxiety driving his hand more then anything at all.

"Ya always, just want, to touch them, and feel that they're really real, and not just some sweet fantasy your mind made up. Kind of, kind of, kind of like.."

He paused, looking at Rian's still confused face, the silver-strand eyebrows raised in comprehension as her entire body shook with a startle. Her eyes widened with realization of her plaguing sensation, her fingers gripping the textile of his suit with a feeling that made his skin crawl. Her mouth parted as she stared with horror straight ahead, into Lee's face.

He couldn't help but quell her fears.

Lee gently pressed his lips to her open mouth, closing his eyes and pulling her closer, his fingers twisting around the brown, sweat damp material of Rian's T-shirt.

Rian was in shock, her fingers trembling with the intensity of the grip on the spandex. Her airway constricted as she breathed in, getting a mouthful of the hot exhaling of Lee's breath.

Oh, dear God. He was doing it again. What did this mean? Why did he do this again?

Why did it feel so right?
Her entire body shook like a leaf as she leaned against him, wanting so badly to pull back and make the foreign exposure stop. But something in her would not let her step back. Something, the feeling rushing through her body compelling her to want this perhaps, would not let her step away.

This was so different. Neko-Chan had never told her about this. And yet, as repulsive as it was, the queer feeling of Lee's body against hers, she couldn't help but want it.

Lee's closed eyes stared back at her as she tried to ride out the wave of electrical feelings vibrating inside her heart and mind. Her figure shook within Lee's grip, her teeth wanting to chatter against each other with shivers , even though she felt stiflingly warm.

Beads of sweat began coursing down her face, rippling down her neck and soaking her collar. Her entire body felt itchy, as though a million bugs were crawling over her skin.

Oh, dear God, she groaned, when would this stop? Why was Lee doing this to her?

Why was he making her feel these things?

Then, almost as suddenly as it had begun, it was over.

Rian's head flopped limply against the comforting warmth of his chest. She wanted to cry, as she buried her face into the relaxed muscles, her hands curling from their tight grips in the indentions made by her fingernails in the spandex. And she didn't know why.

And yet, there was still something missing. She wanted something with all of her heart, but couldn't find out what it was. The burning desire was literally flaming within her, to the point that it made tears almost come into her eyes.

More. There was something, something, something more.

Lee's eyes reopened, before blinking sleepily at her, his smile indicating his contentment, even as his eyes sparkled with excitement.

"S-S-see? Like that-"

He was interrupted as Rian shoved him away, jumping as his feet touched the ground the first time to catch himself. Shining bone spikes leapt from the ground where the two had previously stood, in what would have been an impaling blow for the both of them.

Rian flipped backwards, skidding as more spikes followed her. Uneven blades began shooting up after Lee as well. Terror filling his partially-clear mind, he began jumping and dodging the rapidly-moving spears as they seemed to trail him through the remains of their section of the field's once proud and tall grass.

The chase was on. Rian zoomed back and snatched her blades from where two spikes had caught the knuckle holders. Slipping them on, a blaze of power sent her doubling back to stop the bone forest's creator.

"Oh, please keep Lee safe.." she said aloud, before her eyes bulged at the boldness of the statement. Neko-Chan glanced at her, his yellow eyes scolding for the shortest instant. She wanted to die of embarrassment.

What had made her say something like that?

Just knowing the dirty, sluttish desire of want she had felt in Lee's kiss made her blush red in shame.

Was that one of the evils of human sociality that she was not to have dipped her fingers into?

That rushing feeling that existed only in the single universe created by the caress of another's lips?

What horrors had she delved into with a single kiss, and the passionate sensations it entailed, she wondered as Kimimaro flashed in the corner of her eye. She instantly twisted her body and flew towards him.

If she or Lee didn't stop him, they'd be as good as dead. They both couldn't avoid the heinous spikes of bones covering the ground, shooting upwards, pausing to tower ominously over their heads, casting a blanket of darkness as the monstrous natural weapons clustered in a daunting canopic maze high above them.

Lee stumbled, leaping as fast as his body could to avoid the deadly sticks of bone as they zipped from the ground, like fingers reaching for him and lusting for the taste of his life.

Horror fueling him, he hopped from left to right, missing the spikes by inches.

His mind was clearing from the effects of the drop he had managed to get of sake, clear enough to realize the peril both he and his teammate were in.

The ground was splotched with the shadows of the towering bones that had already reached higher then Lee could calculate as his sandals became mere streaks of blue streamlinly blended with orange, propelling the lanky, green-clothed body to swoop and just barely sidestep the hellish attacks.

It was like a forest made of bones.

The place was so dark he could barely see in time to jump out of the way as the sticks emerged from the ground, the razor edges glittering in what light there was.

The danger of becoming impaled on one of those bones was growing steadily with every minute they spent in the forest. They seemed to be coming up faster, and faster. At this rate, if Lee managed to survive more then a few minutes in the labyrinth, he might have to open the Kaimon just to be able to miss the attacks.

He leapt to the side, barely dodging two perpendicular blades. The ground was rapidly being filled with the china-white weapons. How could that boy possibly have this many bones in his body, even with a regenerative supply this large? With the proper chakra required to do this massive attack, he could very well wreak untold amounts of destruction on small villages, or even one as large as Konohagakure.

This many weapons was just ridiculous.

Bouncing off of one acutely angled rapier, Lee started to weigh what options he had. He had to get out of here or he would rather soon be doing an impression of a shish kebob. But, his chances of survival were decreasing with every second he spent in this actual Forest Of Death, with bones twisting like unkept ivy from the dark brown earth. There were so many daggers ejecting from the ground, he hardly see the dirt and what might be left of the few brave tufts of grass not ripped from their roots.

At this rate, there wasn't going to be anywhere left on the ground to stand on-

Lee's thoughts were interrupted as a narrow-tipped bone blade snagged the leg of his jumpsuit.

He found himself being rapidly pulled upwards, hanging upside down before he had even pieced together what was happening as the bone shot up to a monstrous proportionate size.

Well, maybe this wasn't such a bad thing, he thought, flattening himself against his mode of accidental transportation to avoid a rather quickly moving weapon, which zinged so close to his face that he heard the whistle as it sliced the air.

Perhaps a better vantage point would present itself from above. He couldn't have stayed on the ground much longer anyway.

Rian was not quite as lucky. Hundreds of feet away, she was pouring every inch of her energy into evading the weaponry stabbing at her. Several stabs had already connected, manifesting themselves as skin-deep cuts where she hadn't caught herself as quickly. She was bleeding heavily from a gash in her shoulder blade, where she'd paused for an instant to catch her breath and been caught by a weapon. Bitter, ripping sensations emanated from where leaping to avoid a particularly large bayonet, she'd somehow managed to twist her groin at a bent angle, making every movement rip at the pulled muscles in her abdomen.

Kimimaro was no where to be seen.

She had been chasing him in a last attempt to finish the Kayuga for good. But bones had shot up, blocking her path, and trying to find a new route through the forest of twisted, white tree-like bones was her only option.

She was completely lost, and playing Roulette with death with every stride she maneuvered.

Twisting her body as far as it would possibly bend, she managed to miss another clump of bones.

It was like the flames of the underworld were rising up from the ground, and with the fire licking at her feet, she was attempting to dodge them. Her shoes were already pierced in several places from stepping on the pungee-stick-sharp tips of the milk white bayonets, her feet bleeding from the stab of the blades.

Her chest heaving with pants, sweat pouring over her body, which was running on terror and adrenaline. Rian sprinted in a direction. If she stood still, she might as well be throwing herself directly onto one of the emerging poleax.

The chance of her perishing, her limp body skewered on any of the bones in this entire jungle of white, by Kimimaro's attack was becoming greater, and more imminent.

She was in the middle of a forest, with no direction out, and using all of her energy to evade attacks. Her chakra level was high enough that she wouldn't die of exhaustion, but not enough for an attempt to blast her way through the webs of china-colored remnants of attacks.

And, it was becoming harder to actually get anywhere. The bones, having completely covered the ground, had no place to go. So, they erupted, layer after layer of dangerous, extremely pointed levels, like teeth, rising upwards in between the spaces unoccupied by the rest of the weapons.

Tangled webs of steel-hard bone seemed to block every direction. She couldn't begin to use her chakra to dismember them, so every advance forward was crawling between the gaps in the skeletal mold being created beneath her. Stopping moving was not an option, with the constantly shifting landscape underneath her feet. If her progress was halted for even an instant, the results could be disastrous.

She twisted to the left, skating between two bones, a gap so small anyone larger then her probably wouldn't have fit. The holes around her were getting smaller and harder to go through.

At this rate-

"Neko-Chan. We need -a plan." she said, the words hitching in her dry throat as she leapt up, using chakra to hold her sideways on a larger bone as she sidestepped a bramble of smaller spikes.

Here's my plan. Run like hell.

Rian continued to run perpendicular to the ground, her chakra dissipating even as it crackled at her feet.

"You know I can't keep this up forever! My chakra is almost gone, and I'm ru-running out of energy. I can't keep running fore-"

You'll keep running, because I said so!

Rian blinked at the anger present in Neko-Chan's tone. His yellow eyes nearly burned her with the flicker of hate as he stared emotionlessly through the blackness of his residence in her conscious.

She couldn't believe he would be angry at her. Neko-Chan? No. It was her fault, for, for being weak. Of course. He had ever right to be angry at her. It was her fault, and the cross look in the cat's sharp eyes wasn't because she was human. It was because she was weak.

She uttered a low cry, under her breath, and forced more power into her rapidly failing limbs. Evading even more weapons as the ground beneath her rumbled.

The rhyming thud of her sandals against the ground resonated in her ears like the mantra fluttering on her lips. Every footfall sent rockets of pain shooting up every inch of her numbing body, making her want to cry out, or stop, god, stop.

Her mind was being glazed over, her understanding wiped away, as her only comprehension was becoming the overpowering sensations as she mechanically leapt, dodged, twisted, jerked, and fell-

Fell. Dear God, she couldn't stop it. Her body refused to move anymore.

Feeling herself lose power over one of her limp limbs, she tipped dangerously forward, tripping until her face nearly brushed the ground.

Neko-Chan caught her loss of balance. Flattening his ears against his head, he growled.

Oh no, you don't, you little bitch!

Rian's eyes widened as she hurried to capture some sort of equilibrium, skidding across the ground before snatching her balance back. What? It was an accident. Surely he wasn't angry enough to have called her a-… But, the neko wasn't quite finished yet.

His next hurried statement cut her worse then any bone in the entire maze they were lost in could have.

I will not die because I chose a weak container, do you hear me? YOU LITTLE SON OF A BITCH! I WILL NOT DIE BECAUSE OF AN UNWORTHY LITLE BITCH LIKE YOU!

The world slowed as the words hit her ears, reverberating inside of her head, before settling into her mind and sending shockwave booming through her thoughts.

Wha-wha-what? N-N-N-N.. he'd never said.. Die? But, but she- wasn't- She was trying.. So hard- And through the pain- For him.

Neko-Chan's nostrils flared, raging breaths snorting from his upturned, dainty nose. His narrow eyes slanted shut as he forced the orgasmic outburst to expel itself.

He would not die because Rian was weak. He was of far more importance then a worthless, nose-wiping little attention whore. Why he had settled for one of the most useless, persuadable, so-easily-seduced it was sickening bodies to contain was beyond him even now. How dare she defy him! After all that he'd done for her. And now, to just up and give up. That child was useless for nothing but entertaining his sick, masochistic pleasures for any more. She couldn't so this, this one thing, for him. Her physical condition be screwed. She was his container, and nothing more. And she was to give him everything she had, and never breathe her last, if he commanded it.

Commanded. Suddenly, Neko-Chan and her's relationship had shifted from friend and companion, to master and servant.

Rian blinked. Had- he really said those words? Was she really… so useless to him?

The words continued to gnaw at her, haunting, pillaging, eating away, as they became her only attention.

If she wasn't important to Neko-Chan.

Then she wasn't important to anyone.

She skidded to a halt in a clear spot, standing as the ground rocked with tremors. Heaving gulps of sweet air into her lungs, she stood, her limp arms hanging lifelessly at her sides, head bowed.

"I can't… keep going." she rasped, hoping for a chance to further explain herself.

Neko-Chan's scowl deepened, and he opened his fang-endowed mouth to scold her, but Rian's hand flew up, shielding her face from a swipe of the suddenly blinding sunlight that peeked through from above.

"My body.. Won't let me."

The next words would continue to haunt her for the rest of her life, even after they had escaped this Forest Of Death.

I don't care.

Rian gasped, the hand that had been laying on her ribs and coaxing her chest to rise clenching the skin above her heart. She looked imploringly into the mocha face, begging the emotionless steel in his eyes to relent, and give her any reason for such words. Had Neko-Chan been spirited away, and replaced by this.. This monster?

One look into his hardened eyes spoke every word she denied and denied thousands of time in the mere instants she stood, her body battered and worn for his sake.

You serve me. And when I say jump, you say, "How high?".

Rian's olive eyes blinked closed, opening to a blurred landscape as wetness escaped the corners of them.

I gave you everything. And you will not leave this world indebted to me. You will not leave this world until I say so. I am not only your authority. I should be your God, for all that you owe me.

The two lone tears rolled down her blood-traced, dirt-encrusted cheeks, cleansing paths in the mire that covered her face, blinded her.

Rian hadn't cried in ten years.

But these tears,.

Opened her eyes.

"Neko-Chan."

His eyes slid over her, his disgust enraged by the show of emotion on her face.

The tears plitted to the ground, disappearing into the grass beneath her feet as her face shrunk into a cringe.

"I DON'T SERVE ANYONE WHO TALKS TO ME LIKE THAT!"

The ground beneath her feet erupted, as a sob pealed from her throat. From the dirt emerged a white, impaling spike, prominent against the emerald colored grass, streaking upwards towards the unlucky and completely exhausted child that happened to be standing in it's wrath.

Rian grimaced, more sweet tears overflowing from her eyes, seeing the bone shoot towards it's target at a speed in which there was no way to possibly evade it. At the angle she stood, in the instant she was, - There was only time to-

"And I die with you."

The sickening sound of blade slicing flesh echoed through the forest, reverberating off of the emptiness that hung between the virgin ivory trees of this death forest.

Ah, Kimimaro smiled. He sensed the impalation in his mind, signaling that one of the children's end had come, even though he was thousands of feet away, concealed in the depths of his created jungle of white.

Smiling, he called off the attack. His hands twisted over themselves in a moulding seal, and the forest of bones stopped tremoring with new growth.

In the field, the forest of bones, there was stillness.

Silence.

Lee flapped his arm at the caught fabric of his jumpsuit leg, curling his body up to reach the material, which was still caught on the bone.

Exhausted, he sighed, and flopped back down at gravity's pull. The world stared, upside-down, back at his exasperated gaze. His forehead, white with lack of sun, was bared as his bangs stuck towards the ground, or straight up. Ugh. His perspective was becoming skewed.

He had been hanging here like an idiot for at least a few minutes, he guessed.

He sighed, taking note of the stillness. Had the attack been stopped? Had Rian managed to stop Kimimaro?

His thoughts had been with his female teammate nearly the entire time as he struggled to escape hanging at least one hundred feet up by his pantleg. Lee had never felt more like a complete doofus in his life.

Someone should just stamp 'jackass' on his forehead. How stupid.

He groaned. Wanting to get down was not an issue. He needed to get unsnagged, get down from this damned spike, and go find Rian. The forest had stopped vibrating with shudders of new additions to it's already eyebrow-raising vastness. Damn. There was a valley of bones striking farther into the distance then Lee could see, like the remains of a great army.

Or maybe there weren't. It's not like he could see anything, hanging upside down like a kamidamned pansy!

Ooooh! He could just have a temper tantrum. Not only did he look like a complete idiot, hanging upside-down like he had the intelligence of cookie batter, but Rian might need his help down there.

Rian-San.

Well, all the blood going to his brain had some purpose. He had the time to berate himself for getting drunk and, once again, smacking her a good one across the lips.

Gawd! He was so stupid! Even if he was drunk, Rian was going to hate him forever. How could he have done that, even in a considerably intoxicated state? He'd never tried to kiss Gai-sensei when he was drunk, and he thought almost as much of Rian as he did Gai.

Wait. Yes, he did. Rian was his nearest and best friend. She had hung with him during his injuries. She had never made fun of him in public. She didn't act ashamed to be around him, despite every silly thing he did. She'd cheered him up when Sakura hadn't shown up on their date. She'd even come after him when he'd gotten his ass in trouble with this bone manipulating creepazoid.

Yes. Rian was probably his best friend in the whole wide world.

And probably would be laughing her brains out at him right now.

If she didn't want to kill him already.

Grunting, he struggled to reach for his caught leg, his fingers barely brushing the fuzzy fabric of the legwarmer that would have been covering his weights, had he been wearing them.

His grunts reverberated through the undisturbed silence, as he snorted like a pig between various indefinable noises as he struggled to reach his leg. It had suddenly become much harder to-

It was hopeless. Lee flopped back down, stretching his back to the blindingly clean surface of the bone.

He closed his eyes and drew his arms up, bending them and placing them on top of his head, rhythmically drumming at his skull with a few of his fingers.

It was so quiet here. Lonely. He hoped Rian had faired well in the trial beneath him.

"Please have kept her safe.." he prayed aloud, his voice a whisper as the wind blew the words away, tossling his black, mussed bangs with their fingers-

"Are you looking for this?"

Lee's eyes popped open at the slippery, snake-like voice. Who was-

He was instantly met with an object flying directly at him. Throwing his arms up, his mind frantically tried to figure out what was going on.

The object thudded into his chest, limply folding around him. Lee automatically gripped the warm object, unsure of what it exactly was. The thin, skeletal sack-like entity shifted into Lee, before slumping to gravity's pull as though it was going to slide between his arms and plummet downwards.

What the? Who was-

His stomach lurched.

Lee's onyx orbs widened as he recognized the brown, suddenly darkened fabric flapping loosely at a thin, only nascently curved waist.

His entire body shook, silently praying that he was mistaken as his eyes followed up the definite human form he was holding in his arms.

One of the limp arms drooped from his grip, hanging over the nothingness beneath them. Blood dripped, slowly, surely, down in a silent, crimson plitter from the stomach facing the suddenly waning ground.

A wave of nausea swept over the teen, and he came very close to letting the body slide, slick with blood, beneath his grasp.

He was holding a dead body.

Kimimaro, still bare of his shirt and rid of his bone armor, perched on top of a bone, sat crossed legged, grinning down at the scene as Lee gasped in recognition of the limp form he held.

Blood was trailing out the corner of Rian's mouth, marking her grimacing face with a nearly burgundy stripe.

Lee looked hurriedly up the form of his teammate, even as bile burned at the back of his throat.

Rian was covered in blood. Her shirt was soaked with it, almost black from the coloring.

There was an emptiness, and a sense of give where his arm supported her limp groin. Lee's bandages touched that particular spot, and blossomed crimson in less then a couple of seconds.

Her arms were scratched and bloody, purple and yellow with already-formed bruises, up her shoulders and some disappearing beneath the wide sleeves of her shredded shirt.

Her skin was ash white, her olive colored eyes closed. Her head flopped downwards limply, as though her neck had been broken. Scratches covered her from head to foot, whisker-like marks marring her cheeks.

"You!" Lee called, his voice still high with astonishment, before he hotly turned to look at the smirking Kayuga.

"What did you do to her?"
Kimimaro's smile only brightened, as Lee's teeth gritted in his mouth. He hugged his teammate closer to his heaving chest, feeling the warmth of her blood soaking through his spandex and making the skin beneath the cloth crawl with the tepid sensation.

"Heh. What does it look like I did?" he asked gleefully.

Lee growled, straining at the simple binding above him, all while clasping the bloodied body to his chest.

"I knew you would suffer more if I killed that bitch of yours. Well, now you can hold her one more time-"

The Kayuga paused, raising his forearm to his bare chest. Bones ejected from the unscratched, pale skin, daggers of even more white sharpening themselves. Kimimaro smiled wistfully, before aiming his arm, fist clenched, at Lee's scowling face.

"-before you both die."

Suddenly, tan began swirling around the Kayuga, causing the shirt at his waist to flutter. Puzzled, Kimimaro looked away, searching for the source of the strange, crunching noises.

Lee's eyes widened, as he recognized the familiar and haunting sound and smell. The metallic scent of blood filled his nose, and he hugged Rian closer in anticipation of what was coming, drawing in a sharp breath.

Kimimaro raised an eyebrow as a swirling substance made itself known, cascading around his ankles as he sat. The feeling of the element brushing his calves suddenly clicked with recognition in his mind.

Sand?

"SUBAKU KYUU!"

Lee shielded his face as much as possible as Kimimaro was crushed by the all too familiar technique.

Plittering blood began to rain in dark red, fingerprint sized droplets, tacking as they melted into the already fresh, slick blood that covered Rian from head to toe.

Lee watched in astonishment as Gaara, fluttering trench coat billowing with the wind, suddenly slid into view. The desert substance underneath his boots served as a platform, which he was somehow making levitate as he floated to a standstill, and began glaring disapprovingly down at Lee, arms crossed over his chest.

Lee blinked under the ice-sharp glare, not sure what to say. He shifted Rian in his arms, inhaling her comforting scent, even though it was sharp with the coppery smell of blood.

Gaara? Gaara of the Sand had come to his rescue? But, how- was everybody tracking him today?

And, what was with the new threads? Why, he was dressed as though he were-

"Kazekage-Sama?" he broke the silence with, on eyebrow hunching upwards in question.

Gaara nodded, tilting his head upwards to gaze at Lee's caught leg, before his gaze slid back down to the pathetic way Lee was holding his teammate's limp body.

The Sand had actually created an alliance with the Leaf. Oh, boy. Gaara hoped all of Konoha's forces weren't as stupid as this one shinobi.

Without a word, the sand quietly slipped beneath Lee's head, forming a platform as Lee questioningly eyed the swirling substance beneath him, no doubt thinking of his prior injuries due to the silt.

"Let her go." Gaara said, his voice coaxing, as though he wasn't sure if Lee would relinquish his hold on his teammate long enough for Gaara to get him down too.

Lee, having no other choice, mulled the option in his mind, before letting Rian gently drop from his arms, sliding her feet first to the temporary refuge keeping them all from certain death.

She thudded on her side to the sand, without stirring. Lee's gaze hurriedly fixed itself to Gaara.

Gaara blinked, and some of his sand busily went to work wrapping itself around Lee's leg, until it had gained enough strength on it's own to rip the fabric directly off of the bone.

The sand caught Lee firmly by the calf, and quickly deposited him on Gaara's previously created platform, gently setting him on his head.

Lee sat up, shaking his black hair from side to side as blood rushed down to his numbed arms and legs, making his torso churn with the sensation.

"Why are you helping-" he began, before Gaara's expression as the sand shadow raised his head made him freeze with the frigid intent. Gaara's eyes had terrified Lee since they had first met, and still did.

"Konoha has formed an alliance with Suna. That means, I have an obligation to not let the more idiotic ninja forces get themselves, and their teammates murdered."

Lee blinked. Ouch. Gaara had a decisive way of talking as well. No wonder he had been appointed Kazekage. And don't forget his probably being the strongest nin in all of the Sand and all.

The teal eyes beneath a blood red kanji tattoo slid over to the bent form of Lee's teammate. Rian was still where Lee had dropped her, a pinched expression on her dirt-brushed cheeks.

Lee was already at the girl's side when Gaara's eyes reopened from a lethargic blink, his black eyes taking in the depth of the injuries she had sustained.

Oh, god. One of his cotton-swathed palms covered his mouth as he drew back the blood-heavy cloth just enough to see the gaping hole in her torso. Dark blood still coursed out of the wound, ragged flesh looking as though she had been shot with a disintegrating laser ray, or hastily ripped from her impaling place.

His free, trembling hand tentatively rose towards her blood-splattered face. He gently rested his hand against her neck, almost as if she would shatter like glass at the smallest misguidance of touch.

Oh, please. In his mind, he screamed pleas to the Kami and all that was good for there to be a soft thumping against his fingers as he pressed them with the lightest touch his shaking hands were able to mold.

His mouth remained a taut, slightly trembling line as the moment of truth reached their conjoined forms-

Thump. Thump.

Blood gushed in Lee's ears, relief washing over him like a wave.

He withdrew his fingers from the surprisingly soft skin of his teammate's neck, a shaky smile gracing his face.

She was still alive. Yes. She wasn't dead.

Yet. Time was still of the essence, of course. The sooner they both got to a hospital, the better. But, one major hurdle had been passed. If she was still breathing, there might be a chance to-

"Can you get her back to Konohagakure yourself?" Gaara's voice came, causing Lee to open his eyes.

His eyelashes fluttering against his sweat-streaked cheekbones, Lee reached out, touch a little bolder this time, and lightly brushed his fingers against Rian's, suddenly angelic, despite all of the marring dirt, cuts and blood, face. He caught the twinge of her lip and the twitch of her closed eyes at his fondling, chipped fingernails.

"Yes." he said, his attention focused to the face he found captivating his attention. From the drawn palate, to the parted mouth he had not too long ago brushed with his own, he was caught in the rose-colored moment of a ravaged face and the beginning of feelings that would be forgotten in place of deeper, harsher ones not too far from then.

The gilded instant would forever be captured in some corner of his heart. As the first time he ever felt something more then friendship for the young, nascent girl he would come to love, even if it's exact positions would be lost in the shifting sands of the weakness in human memory.

Gaara nodded, and the sand slowly began lowering to set the threesome down safely away from the permanent remains of the nearly fatal fight on what was once a beautiful expanse of nature's handwork.

Lee's hand brushed behind Rian's neck, his arm snaking to support her limp neck. His other hand slid underneath her knees, sliding in the slick blood, the only anchor for his forearms being the blood-soaked, ripped pantlegs.

Gently, he heaved his body up into a crouching position, nearly falling backwards at his over anticipation of Rian's weight. He caught his balance, and rose to his feet, marveling and revolted at the matchstick-thin body encased in the vices of his arms.

God. She was so small. Why hadn't he ever noticed how tiny she was before? She couldn't be healthy at all, not the size she was. How had he never noticed how wasted she was, yellow tinted skin stretched over those sinewy muscles?

Dear, lord. It was like he wasn't holding anything at all. Just a pile of limp bones wrapped in bloody cloth.

A marionette made of hollow wood.

The sand melted into the ground as the two sets of feet touched the solid surface of the earth. As the sand skittered back into the gourd on the Sand nin's back, the two once-enemies stood, facing each other with the most casual expressions they could muster at the time.

"Thank you." Lee said, his face tippeting to a smile as Gaara shrugged off the remark, with a visible slouch of his shoulders and an uncaring expression.

Wordlessly, the young Suna nin turned his back to Lee, who was standing as straight as he could, his teammate's body draped over his arms.

Gaara's hand flew to a seal, and sand began to cascade up his body, while Lee took his last breath, and hugged Rian to his chest, before bursting at his legendary speed back towards Konoha.

What was important was what Gaara had not said.

And, as Lee looked down at what he thought were the blinking eyes of the half-conscious body in his arms, the lives he had saved.

A/N: Review, please. Review or the next chapter won't be happy in any way!