Anime-Titan proudly presents:
The Perfect Lotus
Chapter 3 – Your Destiny, if you choose to accept it.
Lee felt a cool gentle breeze on parts of his face. He slowly opened his eyes to see the ceiling of a hospital room. A gentle wind was coming from an open window overlooking a garden. Lee attempted to sit up but was thrown back down when his senses started playing havoc with his equilibrium. Every part of him was still in shock from that episode with the relic, not surprising really when you consider that he almost didn't live to tell the tale. There were however a few things anomalous with this picture. First the clock on the nightstand beside his bed on the right showed that he had been sound asleep for ten days, which astounded Lee he'd never been a heavy sleeper or ever one to sleep-in. What didn't surprise him was the fact that he was almost completely covered with bandages; however that wasn't the only odd thing that surrounded him. There were solid steel braces holding his arms and legs to the bed that was bolted to the floor. The bed itself was much more solid and heavy then any hospital bed Lee had ever seen. Someone didn't want Lee to move an inch. There was also an Anbu guard outside his window to the left, perched on his windowpane, and he assumed there were more outside the door. Lee could scarcely keep his eyes open because of the fatigue, as well as the aftershocks of his experience.
Lee wanted to know what was going on but he could barely move say a word, much less call for assistance. Lee did notice that the Anbu crouched on his windowpane was now looking right at him. Lee tried to meet eyes with the dog-masked figure but couldn't stand the sunlight coming through the window. The Anbu climbed into the room and picked up the phone on the nightstand.
"Yes, he's awake. Let them know right away." The Anbu said coolly and with a hint of importance in his voice. He put the receiver down and then went back to the window to resume his post. Before he climbed out the Anbu turned to Lee and said softly, "You should go back to sleep. You're safe…for now." Then perched himself right back into the spot he was in, looking outwards as if expecting an attack. Lee certainly didn't feel safe at all, especially with all this extra security and that cryptic phone-call a moment ago. Still, it was a definite strain to even stay conscious at this point, so reluctantly Lee took the Anbu's advice and went back to sleep.
Lee wasn't the type to practice lucid or controlled dreaming, in fact it was rare that he remembered any dreams at all, however Lee was sure this dream was out of the ordinary. Lee knew he was sleeping but didn't feel any less conscious. He had heard of people who could control their dreams and he always envied them for that ability, but he never thought he'd have the opportunity to control his dreams as they did. However, even though he was conscious, he couldn't will anything to happen. He was in what looked like a large forest clearing, it was noon and the sun was strangely radiant, unobstructed by any clouds. In the middle of the clearing was a large round bed. A bed being in the middle of the forest was strange enough for Lee, but what really interested him was the design of the bed. It was suspended at least 3 feet off the ground, and it hovered in midair silently and motionless. It had five posts set in the corners of a pentagram, and each post seemed to be engraved with seals and other symbols. As Lee got close enough to clearly see the engraving, he slowly recognized the symbols as the same that adorned the dome room that held the relic scroll. Lee at that moment wanted nothing more then to get away from that bed, but found he had nowhere to go. The forest and sky had vanished and left only a stone walkway that lead to bed. Beyond was nothing but an endless black abyss, save for the sun, which seemed to be getting brighter by the second.
"What is going on here?" thought Lee, "Am I having a nightmare? The only thing I can do is either jump off into that space below or get on that bed, but if those runes are the same as those that I saw in the relic room, something terrible might happen again." The experience that he had when he came into contact with that relic scroll was still very fresh, vivid and raw in his mind. Lee wanted to wake up but had given up on trying to control this dream, and if this level of fear coursing through him wasn't going to wake him up then nothing he could do would. Finally Lee resigned to the inevitable. "Well if I gotta lye on that bed then I will, just hope I don't live to regret it. Actually, I hope I live, period."
Lee walked at a snail's pace to the bed only a few steps away and cautiously mounted it. A sense of overwhelming comfort and calm washed over him. His body couldn't help but flop down onto the utterly blissful surface and enjoy. It was as close to rapture as Lee had been since he was in his mother's womb. In fact, that's what he was reminded of when he caressed the warm softness of the sheets. Lee's body instinctively moved into the most comfortable position it could find, which just happened to be spread out with a limb and his head at each of the five posts. The posts pulsed and sent shimmering waves of light over Lee. Lee should have been terrified but whatever this was felt way too good to ignore or resist. It wasn't just the bed anymore either, the waves seemed to caress and invigorate every cell in his body. Lee's eyes locked on the sun before him, which was very bright but not blinding or painful to look at. He felt like a moth being drawn to a flame, lured to the light for no reason that he could comprehend. The more Lee peered into the light the more the sensations that were fed into him by the relic resurfaced. This time however they didn't flood in, it was more controlled, as if finally he was being given the chance to analyze what he was seeing and hearing. He saw an extremely blurry image of a figure moving. Lee hazarded a guess that it was a ninja performing a kata of some sort. Lee could make out faintly striking motions but couldn't see a target.
Lee also heard something, something coming from the void, a voice perhaps? Yes, it was calling out to Lee. Before Lee could respond to it the light faded out and everything went dark. When he opened his eyes he was back in the hospital. It was now getting close to dusk and along with the Anbu guards at the window and door, over his bed stood a doctor, nurse, Gai and Tsunade. The Hokage stood closest to him on his right side, while the doctor and Nurse stood on his left. Gai was at the foot of the bed intensely looking over Lee's charts trying to make some sense of them, probably to ease some of the anxiety that he always felt when Lee was in intensive. Tsunade motioned for the doctor and nurse to leave. On her way out the nurse yanked the charts out of Gai's hands and placed them back in the holder. Before Gai could respond she started waving her finger in front of his face as if he were a young boy who got caught stealing a cookie from the cookie jar. Lee muffled his giggle as much as he could, and he noticed Tsunade was as well. When the doctor and nurse were gone and the door was locked, Gai moved to where the doctor has last stood, on Lee's left. If Lee's vision wasn't still blurry, he would have been very worried due to the faces that Gai and Tsunade were wearing. There was an odd look of concern on their faces, not completely because of what happened to Lee or for his current physical condition, but for something they knew would come.
"How do you feel? You had us pretty worried for a while there." Said Gai, his voice slightly betraying the fact that there was something more to this conversation then just a check-up.
"I feel pretty banged up. I didn't even feel this lousy after my fight with Gaara." Lee said with a snicker, trying to lighten the mood. "Am I going to recover on my own this time or will there be another life-threatening operation involved?" Lee mused, trying to weed out the reason why Tsunade was there. He guessed it was to debrief him from their latest mission, but he wasn't sure.
Tsunade chimed in. "You'll be fine. The docs say you'll make a full recovery. In fact, they say you're rapid rate of recovery is pretty extraordinary. That's part of the reason we need to talk. You see for someone who has just gone through the experience you just did, it's amazing you're alive, much less recovering at all. That scroll has killed Anbu before that only grazed its surface for an instant."
Lee needed a few things answered. "May I ask why I'm shackled and why I'm under Anbu guard?"
Gai stepped in to answer this one. "Both are for your protection I assure you."
Lee was getting more worried by the second, and he decided to get a bit brazen. "Alright, I want to know exactly what happened to me, I think I need to know some of that need-to-know information."
Lee expected to be rejected and told nothing, and perhaps a bit scorned, but the look on Tsunade's face changed. She no-longer wore the face of a strict Hokage that was just doing her duty, she now wore the face of a person who understood exactly what Lee was feeling, and damned be the rules if they didn't permit a little piece of mind for this brave soul.
Tsunade grabbed a chair from the wall, placed it beside Lee's bed and flopped down in it with a sigh. "Ok kiddo, you deserve to know everything we know, so here it is. That relic was the last remnant from an ancient ninja clan that used psionics as a means of performing ninja acts. They were masters of information, they communicated over long-distances in real-time and since the information they were trusted with was rarely physically recorded, they were invulnerable to any kind of deciphering. They were immune to coercion and almost all types of ninjustu, genjutsu and even taijustsu, since they supposedly viewed the world on a completely different plane then everyone else.
Lee had to chime in before he got completely lost. "What exactly are psionics?"
Tsunade paused a second to word her answer, "They're the abilities that include mind-over-matter and telepathy. These ninjas used their chakra to at times purely dominate the minds of others. There are only a few advanced jutsus today, like The Sharingan's moon reader and light of the heavens, or the mind body disturbance skill that come close to the power they constantly wielded. They also used their abilities to drastically enhance their bodies, in fact it is rumoured that they perfected a single taijutsu style that perfectly fused both gouken and jyuken arts."
Lee's ears perked at that statement. Lee had always fantasized about having such power. It really made his mind flood with possibilities. Instead of jumping in and asking about those rumours specifically, Lee let Tsunade continue.
"Nobody really knows what happened to them, it's relatively understood that they controlled what we call the country of Fire when they were around, but without warning they disappeared and the only thing left of them are some vague stories from really old ninjas, and that bunker you were sent to retake. We suspect that that scroll holds all their knowledge and techniques, not written, but psionically imprinted on it and in the energies permeating that room. We've tried everything to get at it but until you ran into it nobody had ever been able to even touch it without suffering massive injuries…or worse. In fact that's what happened to that Sound ninja you pursued."
Lee suddenly felt a lot luckier then he already did. If Anbu-level ninjas couldn't survive what he did, his experience must have been one in a million. Lee had to try to figure this all out. "If Anbu had tried and failed, why am I still alive?"
Tsunade and Gai glanced at each other for a second before she answered, "Well, we suspect it has something to do with the fact that you had opened one of the inner celestial gates. Rumour has it that the key to the psionic ninjas' physical enhancement was based on secrets about the inner gates and inner coils system. Jutsu theorists have speculated that these systems hold powers that are far beyond what we can put into practice presently. Supposedly each of the gates could hold gifts that are at or above the level that we put advanced bloodline traits and other such legendary feats into."
Lee was having a hard time grasping all this. It was difficult to imagine a power like the kind that these psionics must have had. He thought he knew everything there was to know about the inner celestial gates. What really eluded him however was what he would do now, he had to ask. "So what does this all mean for me? I didn't learn anything from being in contact with that scroll and it's still there in that bunker so why not continue your research?"
Tsunade sighed. She knew why he was getting a bit antsy. "Well you see, after your incident the scroll's power seems to have disappeared. Now it's only a large scroll with nothing written in it, sitting in an empty room. We think whatever knowledge that the scroll had was transferred to you during your episode. What can you remember?"
Lee told her about the overload of senses and the extreme pain during his contact with the relic. Gai also relayed to Lee what he, Tenten and Neji saw from the outside, which had already been reported to the Hokage. Tsunade seemed to be trying to put it all together, and after a few minutes of pacing as Lee and Gai spoke, she let them in on what she was conceiving. "It seems to me that I was right, all that information that the scroll and that room contained is now locked somewhere in your mind. The only problem is that we need you to piece it all together, if that's at all possible. What you were experiencing must have been some kind of massive information feed, but what that information is won't be known until you figure it all out.
Lee was beginning to feel overwhelmed. "How can I do that when I can't remember any of it clearly?
Tsunade thought about it for a few seconds, then snapped her fingers and said, "I don't think you're supposed to remember it, something like this would have to be designed to organize itself in some fashion. If not through the conscious mind, then it would have to be subconsciously through your dreams."
Lee suddenly remembered that odd dream he was just having a little while ago. Could that be what Tsunade was talking about?
"So what happens to him now?" asked Gai.
"I'm going to put him on a training and meditation sabbatical until further notice. He'll be taken off the active agent list for now and we'll monitor his progress. Lee, you can use this time to train and meditate, but just do whatever you feel you need to in order to find the answers. Don't forcefully think about it, it'll all come to you. Let whatever has been stored in your mind move you whenever you feel it, ok?"
Lee more-or-less understood the Hokage's reasoning, but he wasn't at all sure if this would yield the results she wanted. At the very least Lee was happy to have the time to devote himself purely to his training. Gai and Tsunade released Lee from his bindings, now content that he was no danger to himself. They both said farewell to Lee and left together, still conversing about the finer points of Tsunade's plan.
As soon as they left Lee looked out the window and noticed they had been talking right into the night. The Anbu guard was still there but no longer perched on the windowpane. When the doctor and nurse left the Anbu guard must have noticed that the Hokage was requesting some privacy. Now he was on the rooftop. Lee tried to get back to sleep but found it difficult to relax. He sat up and looked into the single compartment in the nightstand. It held a clipboard with blank paper and a pen. Lee wondered about what the Hokage had said about letting his subconscious lead his actions in order to solve this puzzle and thought he might experiment. Lee had mediated before so it was relatively easy for him to put himself into some sort of trance. Lee grabbed the paper and pen. He closed his eyes and his breathing became steady and purposeful. The pen he had quivered over the paper for a few minutes and then sprang to life. Lee drew and drew at a frantic pace for hours, thought the now unconscious Lee had no idea what his subconscious was creating.
The next morning Lee awoke to the sun hitting his face. "I must have fallen asleep while meditating." Lee mumbled to himself, still half-asleep. He suddenly remembered what he had been doing and found the pen, now with far less ink in it, and the pad on the floor beside the bed. Lee grabbed it and was shocked at what he'd drawn. With artistic skill that he never had before, Lee had drawn a complete blueprint of a large dojo. Just looking at the schematics Lee could easily see that this was the dojo of his dreams. It was perfectly designed for all his needs and built large enough and sturdy enough for him to really let loose.
Lee decided then that the first thing he was going to do was build this dojo.
The Perfect Lotus
Chapter 3 – Your Destiny, if you choose to accept it.
Lee felt a cool gentle breeze on parts of his face. He slowly opened his eyes to see the ceiling of a hospital room. A gentle wind was coming from an open window overlooking a garden. Lee attempted to sit up but was thrown back down when his senses started playing havoc with his equilibrium. Every part of him was still in shock from that episode with the relic, not surprising really when you consider that he almost didn't live to tell the tale. There were however a few things anomalous with this picture. First the clock on the nightstand beside his bed on the right showed that he had been sound asleep for ten days, which astounded Lee he'd never been a heavy sleeper or ever one to sleep-in. What didn't surprise him was the fact that he was almost completely covered with bandages; however that wasn't the only odd thing that surrounded him. There were solid steel braces holding his arms and legs to the bed that was bolted to the floor. The bed itself was much more solid and heavy then any hospital bed Lee had ever seen. Someone didn't want Lee to move an inch. There was also an Anbu guard outside his window to the left, perched on his windowpane, and he assumed there were more outside the door. Lee could scarcely keep his eyes open because of the fatigue, as well as the aftershocks of his experience.
Lee wanted to know what was going on but he could barely move say a word, much less call for assistance. Lee did notice that the Anbu crouched on his windowpane was now looking right at him. Lee tried to meet eyes with the dog-masked figure but couldn't stand the sunlight coming through the window. The Anbu climbed into the room and picked up the phone on the nightstand.
"Yes, he's awake. Let them know right away." The Anbu said coolly and with a hint of importance in his voice. He put the receiver down and then went back to the window to resume his post. Before he climbed out the Anbu turned to Lee and said softly, "You should go back to sleep. You're safe…for now." Then perched himself right back into the spot he was in, looking outwards as if expecting an attack. Lee certainly didn't feel safe at all, especially with all this extra security and that cryptic phone-call a moment ago. Still, it was a definite strain to even stay conscious at this point, so reluctantly Lee took the Anbu's advice and went back to sleep.
Lee wasn't the type to practice lucid or controlled dreaming, in fact it was rare that he remembered any dreams at all, however Lee was sure this dream was out of the ordinary. Lee knew he was sleeping but didn't feel any less conscious. He had heard of people who could control their dreams and he always envied them for that ability, but he never thought he'd have the opportunity to control his dreams as they did. However, even though he was conscious, he couldn't will anything to happen. He was in what looked like a large forest clearing, it was noon and the sun was strangely radiant, unobstructed by any clouds. In the middle of the clearing was a large round bed. A bed being in the middle of the forest was strange enough for Lee, but what really interested him was the design of the bed. It was suspended at least 3 feet off the ground, and it hovered in midair silently and motionless. It had five posts set in the corners of a pentagram, and each post seemed to be engraved with seals and other symbols. As Lee got close enough to clearly see the engraving, he slowly recognized the symbols as the same that adorned the dome room that held the relic scroll. Lee at that moment wanted nothing more then to get away from that bed, but found he had nowhere to go. The forest and sky had vanished and left only a stone walkway that lead to bed. Beyond was nothing but an endless black abyss, save for the sun, which seemed to be getting brighter by the second.
"What is going on here?" thought Lee, "Am I having a nightmare? The only thing I can do is either jump off into that space below or get on that bed, but if those runes are the same as those that I saw in the relic room, something terrible might happen again." The experience that he had when he came into contact with that relic scroll was still very fresh, vivid and raw in his mind. Lee wanted to wake up but had given up on trying to control this dream, and if this level of fear coursing through him wasn't going to wake him up then nothing he could do would. Finally Lee resigned to the inevitable. "Well if I gotta lye on that bed then I will, just hope I don't live to regret it. Actually, I hope I live, period."
Lee walked at a snail's pace to the bed only a few steps away and cautiously mounted it. A sense of overwhelming comfort and calm washed over him. His body couldn't help but flop down onto the utterly blissful surface and enjoy. It was as close to rapture as Lee had been since he was in his mother's womb. In fact, that's what he was reminded of when he caressed the warm softness of the sheets. Lee's body instinctively moved into the most comfortable position it could find, which just happened to be spread out with a limb and his head at each of the five posts. The posts pulsed and sent shimmering waves of light over Lee. Lee should have been terrified but whatever this was felt way too good to ignore or resist. It wasn't just the bed anymore either, the waves seemed to caress and invigorate every cell in his body. Lee's eyes locked on the sun before him, which was very bright but not blinding or painful to look at. He felt like a moth being drawn to a flame, lured to the light for no reason that he could comprehend. The more Lee peered into the light the more the sensations that were fed into him by the relic resurfaced. This time however they didn't flood in, it was more controlled, as if finally he was being given the chance to analyze what he was seeing and hearing. He saw an extremely blurry image of a figure moving. Lee hazarded a guess that it was a ninja performing a kata of some sort. Lee could make out faintly striking motions but couldn't see a target.
Lee also heard something, something coming from the void, a voice perhaps? Yes, it was calling out to Lee. Before Lee could respond to it the light faded out and everything went dark. When he opened his eyes he was back in the hospital. It was now getting close to dusk and along with the Anbu guards at the window and door, over his bed stood a doctor, nurse, Gai and Tsunade. The Hokage stood closest to him on his right side, while the doctor and Nurse stood on his left. Gai was at the foot of the bed intensely looking over Lee's charts trying to make some sense of them, probably to ease some of the anxiety that he always felt when Lee was in intensive. Tsunade motioned for the doctor and nurse to leave. On her way out the nurse yanked the charts out of Gai's hands and placed them back in the holder. Before Gai could respond she started waving her finger in front of his face as if he were a young boy who got caught stealing a cookie from the cookie jar. Lee muffled his giggle as much as he could, and he noticed Tsunade was as well. When the doctor and nurse were gone and the door was locked, Gai moved to where the doctor has last stood, on Lee's left. If Lee's vision wasn't still blurry, he would have been very worried due to the faces that Gai and Tsunade were wearing. There was an odd look of concern on their faces, not completely because of what happened to Lee or for his current physical condition, but for something they knew would come.
"How do you feel? You had us pretty worried for a while there." Said Gai, his voice slightly betraying the fact that there was something more to this conversation then just a check-up.
"I feel pretty banged up. I didn't even feel this lousy after my fight with Gaara." Lee said with a snicker, trying to lighten the mood. "Am I going to recover on my own this time or will there be another life-threatening operation involved?" Lee mused, trying to weed out the reason why Tsunade was there. He guessed it was to debrief him from their latest mission, but he wasn't sure.
Tsunade chimed in. "You'll be fine. The docs say you'll make a full recovery. In fact, they say you're rapid rate of recovery is pretty extraordinary. That's part of the reason we need to talk. You see for someone who has just gone through the experience you just did, it's amazing you're alive, much less recovering at all. That scroll has killed Anbu before that only grazed its surface for an instant."
Lee needed a few things answered. "May I ask why I'm shackled and why I'm under Anbu guard?"
Gai stepped in to answer this one. "Both are for your protection I assure you."
Lee was getting more worried by the second, and he decided to get a bit brazen. "Alright, I want to know exactly what happened to me, I think I need to know some of that need-to-know information."
Lee expected to be rejected and told nothing, and perhaps a bit scorned, but the look on Tsunade's face changed. She no-longer wore the face of a strict Hokage that was just doing her duty, she now wore the face of a person who understood exactly what Lee was feeling, and damned be the rules if they didn't permit a little piece of mind for this brave soul.
Tsunade grabbed a chair from the wall, placed it beside Lee's bed and flopped down in it with a sigh. "Ok kiddo, you deserve to know everything we know, so here it is. That relic was the last remnant from an ancient ninja clan that used psionics as a means of performing ninja acts. They were masters of information, they communicated over long-distances in real-time and since the information they were trusted with was rarely physically recorded, they were invulnerable to any kind of deciphering. They were immune to coercion and almost all types of ninjustu, genjutsu and even taijustsu, since they supposedly viewed the world on a completely different plane then everyone else.
Lee had to chime in before he got completely lost. "What exactly are psionics?"
Tsunade paused a second to word her answer, "They're the abilities that include mind-over-matter and telepathy. These ninjas used their chakra to at times purely dominate the minds of others. There are only a few advanced jutsus today, like The Sharingan's moon reader and light of the heavens, or the mind body disturbance skill that come close to the power they constantly wielded. They also used their abilities to drastically enhance their bodies, in fact it is rumoured that they perfected a single taijutsu style that perfectly fused both gouken and jyuken arts."
Lee's ears perked at that statement. Lee had always fantasized about having such power. It really made his mind flood with possibilities. Instead of jumping in and asking about those rumours specifically, Lee let Tsunade continue.
"Nobody really knows what happened to them, it's relatively understood that they controlled what we call the country of Fire when they were around, but without warning they disappeared and the only thing left of them are some vague stories from really old ninjas, and that bunker you were sent to retake. We suspect that that scroll holds all their knowledge and techniques, not written, but psionically imprinted on it and in the energies permeating that room. We've tried everything to get at it but until you ran into it nobody had ever been able to even touch it without suffering massive injuries…or worse. In fact that's what happened to that Sound ninja you pursued."
Lee suddenly felt a lot luckier then he already did. If Anbu-level ninjas couldn't survive what he did, his experience must have been one in a million. Lee had to try to figure this all out. "If Anbu had tried and failed, why am I still alive?"
Tsunade and Gai glanced at each other for a second before she answered, "Well, we suspect it has something to do with the fact that you had opened one of the inner celestial gates. Rumour has it that the key to the psionic ninjas' physical enhancement was based on secrets about the inner gates and inner coils system. Jutsu theorists have speculated that these systems hold powers that are far beyond what we can put into practice presently. Supposedly each of the gates could hold gifts that are at or above the level that we put advanced bloodline traits and other such legendary feats into."
Lee was having a hard time grasping all this. It was difficult to imagine a power like the kind that these psionics must have had. He thought he knew everything there was to know about the inner celestial gates. What really eluded him however was what he would do now, he had to ask. "So what does this all mean for me? I didn't learn anything from being in contact with that scroll and it's still there in that bunker so why not continue your research?"
Tsunade sighed. She knew why he was getting a bit antsy. "Well you see, after your incident the scroll's power seems to have disappeared. Now it's only a large scroll with nothing written in it, sitting in an empty room. We think whatever knowledge that the scroll had was transferred to you during your episode. What can you remember?"
Lee told her about the overload of senses and the extreme pain during his contact with the relic. Gai also relayed to Lee what he, Tenten and Neji saw from the outside, which had already been reported to the Hokage. Tsunade seemed to be trying to put it all together, and after a few minutes of pacing as Lee and Gai spoke, she let them in on what she was conceiving. "It seems to me that I was right, all that information that the scroll and that room contained is now locked somewhere in your mind. The only problem is that we need you to piece it all together, if that's at all possible. What you were experiencing must have been some kind of massive information feed, but what that information is won't be known until you figure it all out.
Lee was beginning to feel overwhelmed. "How can I do that when I can't remember any of it clearly?
Tsunade thought about it for a few seconds, then snapped her fingers and said, "I don't think you're supposed to remember it, something like this would have to be designed to organize itself in some fashion. If not through the conscious mind, then it would have to be subconsciously through your dreams."
Lee suddenly remembered that odd dream he was just having a little while ago. Could that be what Tsunade was talking about?
"So what happens to him now?" asked Gai.
"I'm going to put him on a training and meditation sabbatical until further notice. He'll be taken off the active agent list for now and we'll monitor his progress. Lee, you can use this time to train and meditate, but just do whatever you feel you need to in order to find the answers. Don't forcefully think about it, it'll all come to you. Let whatever has been stored in your mind move you whenever you feel it, ok?"
Lee more-or-less understood the Hokage's reasoning, but he wasn't at all sure if this would yield the results she wanted. At the very least Lee was happy to have the time to devote himself purely to his training. Gai and Tsunade released Lee from his bindings, now content that he was no danger to himself. They both said farewell to Lee and left together, still conversing about the finer points of Tsunade's plan.
As soon as they left Lee looked out the window and noticed they had been talking right into the night. The Anbu guard was still there but no longer perched on the windowpane. When the doctor and nurse left the Anbu guard must have noticed that the Hokage was requesting some privacy. Now he was on the rooftop. Lee tried to get back to sleep but found it difficult to relax. He sat up and looked into the single compartment in the nightstand. It held a clipboard with blank paper and a pen. Lee wondered about what the Hokage had said about letting his subconscious lead his actions in order to solve this puzzle and thought he might experiment. Lee had mediated before so it was relatively easy for him to put himself into some sort of trance. Lee grabbed the paper and pen. He closed his eyes and his breathing became steady and purposeful. The pen he had quivered over the paper for a few minutes and then sprang to life. Lee drew and drew at a frantic pace for hours, thought the now unconscious Lee had no idea what his subconscious was creating.
The next morning Lee awoke to the sun hitting his face. "I must have fallen asleep while meditating." Lee mumbled to himself, still half-asleep. He suddenly remembered what he had been doing and found the pen, now with far less ink in it, and the pad on the floor beside the bed. Lee grabbed it and was shocked at what he'd drawn. With artistic skill that he never had before, Lee had drawn a complete blueprint of a large dojo. Just looking at the schematics Lee could easily see that this was the dojo of his dreams. It was perfectly designed for all his needs and built large enough and sturdy enough for him to really let loose.
Lee decided then that the first thing he was going to do was build this dojo.