Chapter 10: Discord
"Let go, Lee."
"No."
Tenten glares and Lee stares back steadfastly as only Lee can. Two needles clatter to the ground behind her as Karin frees herself and rapidly disappears in a puff of smoke. Tenten hisses in irritation, snatching her hand free of Lee's grip. He makes no move to pursue, choosing instead to remain standing between her and the only exit to the room. She jerks her head to one side, indicating the outside.
"Are there more coming?" she asks, prying her paired blade free of the table. She holds it in a loose grip along with her first, trying to appear nonthreatening while maintaining a ready stance. There is a lengthy silence as Lee regards her quietly with opaque black eyes before he shakes his head in the negative. Tenten breathes a sigh of relief.
"Let's go, then," she says, sheathing her weapons. Lee doesn't budge. She frowns. The thought occurs to her that perhaps he is not here strictly to aid her retrieval efforts. She is reluctant to put herself in immediate range of him when his intentions are still unclear and settles back just a hair, watching him warily.
"The Black Ops team caught up to Neji," Lee says stiffly. Tenten's eyebrows migrate upward. This is certainly news, though her teammate seems less than happy about the affair. She crosses her arms, awaiting an explanation for the non sequitur response. His mouth works for a moment and he looks down in regret as he explains, "All three of them are in the hospital now. Neji is still on the move."
"So let's go after him," Tenten grates angrily, impatience sparking a fire in her, "What're you waiting for?"
"Tenten, he took out a team of Konoha's elite by himself. What makes you think you can stop him?"
"'You can stop him'?" Tenten echoes, her eyes narrowing dangerously, "Not we? You're not coming with me? What are you doing here, then?"
"To stop you from getting hurt."
Before his explanation even finishes, Tenten's swords have snapped out of their holsters again. She sees him tense ever so slightly, but still refuses to make any sort of larger movement.
"I do not want to fight you, Tenten."
"Then get out of my way."
"You know I cannot do that. You cannot stop him. You will be lucky to come out of an encounter with him alive, Tenten."
Again with that sentiment. Tenten bares her teeth and crouches low, her blades flashing in the dim light. She has never seen Lee this serious before. Gone are the speeches about youth, the ridiculous antics and the flashing smiles. In her heart of hearts, she knows that he will not let her pass while he is still able to stand, out of concern for her well-being, but she doesn't have time to waste. If Neji has gone to a port town, he could move from there to almost anywhere else, by sea or by land. She has to find him before he reaches that base, or else she'll risk losing him for good. Taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, she tries to appeal to Lee one more time.
"Please, Lee," she says in a hushed voice, "He is our teammate. We have to try, at least."
Lee reaches into his pouch and withdraws a small clay bottle. He sighs and uncorks it. The acrid scent of alcohol hits Tenten's nose, wrinkling it unconsciously and her eyes widen. She has seen the destruction he has wreaked with his Drunken Fist once before.
"Please reconsider, Tenten. I do not want to fight you."
His readiness is belied by his stoic posture and he snatches his bottle out of the way of Tenten's blurring slash without spilling a drop. He drains it in one gulp, pulling a face as he does so. Tenten reverses her cut, but the damage is done. He spins languidly around to her back, pressing down the weight of his body against her as she tries to straighten again. She kicks off of the ground hard, breaking free, but receives a heavy hammerfist to the shoulder that nearly tumbles her to the earth as she moves away.
Damn, that one hurt.
She rolls her arm, trying to reduce the rapid swelling from the blow and winces. Lee staggers towards her, swaying erratically. She knows that the basis of the Drunken Fist is unpredictability and a series of unorthodox feints: the exact opposite of her systematic and precise fighting style. He leans forward and she swipes instinctively at him, but he is already rolling under her arc. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she remembers Neji's advice and relaxes, exhaling as Lee's foot pistons into her stomach. It hurts, but not as much as it normally would.
Her feet skid backward and she pinwheels her arms to keep balanced, managing somehow to retain her wind. Lee stumbles drunkenly at her, his back turned, and only instinct saves her as she raises an arm to block a clubbing backfist. He rebounds, pivoting and attacking her open flank and she jolts to one side as his forearm wings her, sending her crashing into the table. She leans on it for support momentarily, trying to collect her thoughts and formulate a strategy.
Red pain lances through her. Not good. The shot to her abdomen must have done more damage than she thought, even with Neji's mitigation technique. No time to nurse her wounds. She vaults over just as Lee's jackknifing body obliterates the oaken surface, sending splinters every which way.
His leg, she decides. She'll have to take out his leg. Lee may be the fastest of their class, but even he won't be able to catch her while inebriated and with only one good leg. She'll have to be surgically accurate. One wrong move and she could hit an artery and end up killing him.
She lunges forward, stabbing out with both swords, only to find herself stopped by Lee's upraised knee. Undaunted, she slices inward, but he drops under her crossing blades and she finds herself falling toward him. Her descending chin is abruptly halted by the point of his elbow, rattling her senses. She struggles to right herself through the dizziness, but another kick sends her flying into a nearby cabinet.
Tenten wipes blood away from her lips and unleashes a string of swear words under her breath. He's far too fast for her to intercept normally. Her jaw sets in resolve as she makes the inevitable conclusion: she'll have to take a hit intentionally to get a debilitating one in on him. She moves forward deliberately, ignoring Lee's unsteady feints and wobbling steps. Just take the hit and strike back hard, she chants to herself like a grim mantra.
She doesn't see exactly what he uses, but it lands like a ton of bricks, and the world flashes white before her eyes. Tenten grits her teeth, resisting the urge to cry out and the humming lull of unconsciousness, lashing out hard with her sword at his right ankle. Her triumphant relief is replaced by horror as her blade skips off something hard and is ripped out of her hand by the reverberant force. A solid left straight to her torso, and this time, she hears her ribs crack.
His leg weights. Of course. Dammit, how could she have forgotten? She sees Lee coming in again, but has not the breath to dodge. Tenten braces for the end.
Without warning, he falls over. She blinks, trying to clear her pain-blurred vision and tries to focus her sight. By some miracle, she has shorn off one of his absurdly heavy sets of iron weights, and the imbalance between his limbs has thrown him off completely. Already, he is trying to remove the other set, but his fingers have been made clumsy by the intoxicating effects of the alcohol. She is on him in a flash, ignoring the shooting agony that accompanies each breath, beating him relentlessly to the ground with hilt and hand and restraining him securely with braided steel cords.
Tenten stands and nearly vomits from the wave of nauseating pain that threatens to overwhelm her. She has at least one broken rib, for sure. Her eyes fall on the cabinet Lee opened with her body and she crawls over, rifling through it. Poisons. Reports. Bandages. Fat lot of good those will do her. Just as she is about to give up, her hand falls on a small, locked metal box. She smashes the padlock off, nearly screaming as her fractured bone flares up again, reminding her of its presence.
There is a small syringe inside, the kind used in the field to deliver medicines. Through the transparent cap, she can see two hypodermic needles, instead of one. Odd. She doesn't have the luxury of questioning it, though, and pockets it for later inspection. For now, she has to keep moving. Tenten limps around Lee's bound form, murmuring an apology to her teammate in passing.
Feedback is welcome.