IT'S FINALLY TIME...TO MAIM THE OC! -blows on pocket-sized trumpet-

Seriously. You do not know how fun it was to write this chapter, or Kon's response and how it defines her. She's amazing, I'll give her that.

... But I still take pleasure in harming her. Heehee.

"Shut your face!" had been her favorite saying; my name, when she was angry but not read to murder me, was "Little Shit". I grew up swearing, and I was letting a whole torrent of them loose as I sat clamped to the fuzzy top of the toilet seat: I'd had a sticker-burr stuck in my foot for the entire day, and was on the verge of hysterics each time my mother approached with the tweezers to remove it.

"Oye, little shit!" she shrieked back, matching my five year-old wails. "Just shut your face! You wanna talk about pain? You think you're so special, you don't have to ever be in it? Just shut up! Shut up!"

She knew enough about the science of pain herself. If only I had realized...

"You're gonna be fine," was the only thing the nice medic-lady said to me; the others had clustered around Kiba and the silent forms of dead competitors, and were giggling in a far-off dialect about, I supposed, my match. The woman, calm, bespectacled and aged, with ginger hair poking out from under her uniform hat, sat me up as if I were a child and helped me put my shirt back on. Embarassingly enough, my nipple had nearly been severed by one of the shuriken; a bit of healing chakra had reattached it, but she'd said I was looking at decreased sensitivity in it (she then added that this was a boon when breastfeeding, and giggled a sadistic, old lady chuckle that would make Chiyo sound benign). Looking for mindsoap distracted me from the immediate knowledge of Lee's impending doom for a few moments… I was free to return and watch the Exams, which I did, trying desperately to keep from scratching my wounds to death (they itch as much as stitches, mind you).

Hinata was drawing up a strong stance; there's no way I could have survived against Neji, someone who had come to display his full tapestry of strengths. She would fall by an enemy ten times stronger and more bitter than one handicapped Kabuto, and the bravery resplendent in her thin arms as she draped forth the diadem of her family crest was, in short, one of the most humbling things I had ever seen. All I could hope was that Naruto would grow up enough to be worthy of her, someday.

My face burned with shame, for the first time; what did one victory mean, any way, if I couldn't be as brave as even the shyest kunoichi?

I couldn't move, watching her evade and do the goddamn best she could, watched her be mowed down by a mantis of hatred, who had scorned me and debased the person I loved the most to his face. Neji was a pale ghost of the Hyuuga's tipped-scale past, and this was how things had to work out; Neji had to prove himself, just as Hinata and Naruto and every person here would have to. With every mistake, we must surely be learning; every trauma and hurt, every ache we endured was surely for the eventual accummulation of our character- and I knew just what kind of souls these children would grow up to have. They would be heroes, masters of their own fates.

But even knowing this, it was difficult to watch what Hinata and Lee went through, that day.

Time passes.

I woke up on the concrete steps of a building that I had walked past every morning on my way to training; it was a closed-off building façade that hid the entrance to the Chuunin Exam Preliminary Arena. That was some city-planning department; nobody would have guessed in a million years, least of all me.

I bolted up, and swooned just as Gai gently brushed my temple against a bean-filled hospital pillow. He'd taken me out into the fresh night air; the sky was suddenly mauve, and there was a cavern of time that I couldn't account for, I realized. Gai was seated on the step beside me, his mighty legs coiled and trembling like springs bent against their will. I thought the pain in my head was making the world shake so, but it turned out to be just his leg. The horizon, burnished indigo, was completely, utterly the only solid thing in the universe. I reached over to clutch at the fold of his legwarmer, and didn't notice that my right arm didn't move because I was too busy noticing that my huge, hulking brute of a Green Beast sensei was weeping his heart out, face cupped between his big, flat hands.

"Sensei-" I asked; my throat was so dry, I sounded like some sort of under-the-bed-monster. Lee; the last thing I remembered was his match beginning- Gaara looming, the waves of sand pounding and scraping his green body, tossing him like a sea of wicked intention and Gaara's eyes, the lye shine in them as he licked his lips-

"Sensei! Sensei- Lee, where's Lee!" my voice cracked.

Gai had been staring at me, his eyes still brimming, since I first spoke; he seemed shell-shocked. Oh, god- what could have happened to Lee to make Gai cry like this? What had happened while I was asleep? How long had that been, and why-

"He's fine, sweetheart." He said, much too gently. "He's going to be okay. His leg and arm are badly hurt, but… he's…"

"Can he be a ninja ever again!" I blurted out, trying to lean over. He stopped me, caught my thin shoulder. Why was I so light?

"He'll be okay, sweetheart, but we need to worry about you right now, okay?"

"WHERE IS HE, SENSEI? WHAT THE FUCK IS-" And it was then that I realized:

Gai wasn't crying about just Lee. He was crying about me too, because I no longer had a right arm from the elbow down. I was looking down at where my hand should have been stabilizing my body, against the rough stone step, and only Gai was holding me up.

My arm was entirely gone. I could only stare, only hear half of what he said.

"Oh, Kon-chan… Your heart was in the right place, honey… Lee's okay now, there's nothing else for you to do, so you just rest now… Let's go back inside the hospital, I had them put you two in the same room for the first few days…"

I couldn't leave well enough alone.

I had been a screaming wreck; Gai had had to drag me out into the hall, where the sound of Lee's body ricocheting off of the walls only echoed and stabbed deeper. He couldn't calm me down, said something that I couldn't hear as Ura Renge rent the halls and Lee shot into heaven faster than the eye could follow. He was living his dreams in there; he was giving his all to lose everything, and I couldn't do a thing. I couldn't even hold it together for him as his limbs and his will to live were being obliterated-

His limbs. Oh, god, Gai had to jump down and save him- Gai had to save him from the final blow!-

I tore from Sensei, shouting as I ran; it couldn't be too late, I couldn't have killed- Lee, no, not him, not the boy who had drowned me and saved me, the one who had clapped, who had made this semi-life worth it… I couldn't have stolen Gai in the one moment that he needed him most.

Gai never would have made it; I wasn't thinking, and if I had it to do over, I wouldn't have thought again. I skipped up onto the railing and flew out into the openness of the arena, aiming for the shattered sand visage of the demon of Sunagakure. He was lying there, so pathetic and despicable, so entitled-

Gaara diverted the attack at the last second, sending the wave of sand to swallow me instead. I was Sabaku Kyuued; Sand Burial-ed. Lee lost the match, and I cemented it by leaping in to save him, just as Gai was supposed to have. My arm was so crushed, they'd had no choice- the sand in it would lead to infection, gangrene- they had to amputate it.

I would have taken a bullet for Lee; instead, all I had to give up was my writing hand...

BOOM! TAKE THAT, MARY SUES EVERYWHERE!