Host: Rock Lee
Age: 15
Rank: Chunin
Skills: Taijutsu A (36,600/1,000,000), Ninjutsu D (240/1,000), Genjutsu D (180/1,000), Shurikenjutsu C (5,150/10,000), Chakra Control B (46,102/100,000), Nunchaku Mastery B (22,370/100,000), Eight Gates B (46,670/100,000), Bojutsu B (0/100,000), Chain Mastery B (0/100,000), Tonfa Mastery C (2,900/10,000), Muscle Mimicry B (2,400/100,000), Teaching B (16,140/100,000), Leadership C (7,106/10,000), Drunken Fist B (10,651/100,000), Inspire C (2,500/10,000), Water Style C (4,150/10,000), Massage E (2/100), Spiritual Resistance F (5/10)
Unique Skills: Body Supremacy Jutsu, Chakra Enhanced Strength, Strengthened Chakra Network, Regeneration Ability, Increased Chakra Reserves
Equipment: Chakra-Metal Customized Weights, Might Suit, Shinobi Tools, flask of special medicine, Chakra-Metal Tonfas
Rock Lee crossed the village in no time, ran up the tower stairs, knocked with perfect manners, entered on command, and walked into the doorframe.
"...Lee?" Guy said, from behind the desk.
"HOKAGE-SAMA!" Lee peeled himself off the frame, snapped to attention in the middle of the office, and saluted a filing cabinet. He corrected fifteen degrees left and saluted Guy. "REPORTING AS ORDERED! AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!"
His face was still red.
Kakashi stood at the Hokage's left with a travel pack already on his shoulders and his book nowhere in sight, which meant he was actually working, and he examined Lee's face for a long moment with his one visible eye.
"Something good happen to you on the way here?" he asked, mildly.
"NOTHING HAPPENED! I AM EXTREMELY WELL!"
"Mm," Kakashi didn't push it. He could probably get the gossip from Sakura later.
Guy stood.
He came around the desk, and he was wearing the robes but he had left the hat on the desk, and he stopped in front of his student and looked at him, and for a moment he did not say anything at all.
"Rock Lee." The Hokage's voice filled the office without rising. "Six years ago, a young child who could not mold chakra stood in the rain doing push-ups because he had a dream he believed in. Every instructor in this village said that boy had no future as a shinobi. Some said it to his face. Some said it to mine." Guy's eyes were bright but he did not cry. "That boy was at the bottom of his class for many years. And he has outrun every single one of them. Genin to chunin in one exam. Chunin to this office in half a year. Two enemy nations rank you among their most dangerous enemies alive, and your own village is late." He picked up the scroll from the desk and held it out in both hands. "By recommendation of the Jonin Commander, with the unanimous consent of the council, and by the order of the Fifth Hokage: Rock Lee, you are hereby promoted to Special Jonin of Konohagakure. Effective immediately."
Lee looked at the scroll.
He took it in both hands, very carefully, and his arms began to tremble, and then his shoulders, and then the tears blasted Guy in the face.
"I," his voice cracked before he shouted, "I WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN! Everyone who believed in me, everyone who trusted me, Guy–sensei, Kakashi-san, Shikaku-san, everyone who put their name beside mine, I swear on my life and my nindo that I will never make you regret it! I VOW IT!"
"He's soaked the appointment scroll and the Hokage." Kakashi pointed out.
"The scroll will survive. That is why the ink is waterproof. I made sure." Guy smiled his widest smile, bright and white teeth on full shine while holding his hand in front of his face to block the stream of tears.
"You didn't cry. What a shame." Kakashi noted. "I had money on it with Shikaku."
"A Hokage doesn't always cry at promotions."
"Always, huh? Good to see you're maturing, I guess."
Guy clapped Lee on the shoulder hard enough to crumple a weaker shinobi. "Today I am only proud. Lee! Stand up straight! There is more, and the more is heavier than the scroll!"
The first more was an envelope, and the envelope changed Lee's life.
"Campaign wages," Guy announced, dropping it into Lee's hands. "Six months for your mission in the Land of Wind."
Lee opened the envelope. Lee looked inside the envelope. Lee held the envelope slightly further from his body, as though it might be a genjutsu.
His wallet, the flat, sad, faithful wallet was finally going to be hearty again.
"Thank you!" Lee bowed at a ninety degree angle.
"Enjoy the pay you earned. That is an order from your Hokage."
Kakashi shifted his pack, and glanced at the window, at the sun's angle over the rooftops.
"That's my cue," he said. "Tenten has an hour's head start and I'd rather catch her before the border road forks." He looked at Lee, and the one visible eye curved in what the whole village had learned to read as a smile. "Nice job, Lee. For what it's worth, I made jonin at twelve and I'd have traded most of it for what you've got now. Keep it up." He raised a hand and was at the door before Lee finished inhaling to respond, and paused there, and added over his shoulder: "And whatever it is you're EXTREMELY WELL about, my advice is cherish her."
He vanished in a swirl of leaves as Lee spluttered to explain himself.
Did he see them?! Was he watching when he and Sakura was…? How?! Shouldn't the Hokage's aide be doing something else with their time than watching a young couple?!
"He is escorting Tenten to the Land of Stone," Guy brought up. "Officially he is Tenten's sensei while she's out. Unofficially, my best friend walks beside my student the entire way into a village that has your name written in their book in red ink, Lee, and everyone in Iwagakure will know he is there, and make sure no one takes advantage of our Tenten." The grin came back, briefly ferocious.
"Tenten will hate the babysitting." Lee said, wiping his face with his forearm.
"Tenten will pretend to hate the babysitting," Guy corrected, "for exactly as long as it takes Kakashi to teach her something on the road. I give it two days. Hasn't she learned lightning chakra? He's a man known to have over a thousand jutsu. He could probably teach her something good from his bag of ninjutsu." He returned to the desk, and his hand came to rest on a slim stack of three folders, and something in the room changed weight. "Now. The heavier thing."
He did not hand them over right away.
"Lee. When I took my genin team, people told me I had drawn a hard lot. The boy who could not mold chakra. The girl with no clan. And the prodigious Hyuga. They thought you guys would fail to even become genin. Much less chunin so quickly. It was the greatest fortune of my life to have been gifted you three. I am telling you this now, before you open these, because the village is about to tell you the same thing about your own lot." He held out the folders.
My own lot? Lee questioned inside his head. He was confused.
"Team assignment. Three academy students, your responsibility, effective upon their passing of a final assessment which you will design and administer. All three failed last year's genin examination. This spring's attempt is their last. The program permits no third. They'll be sent to the Genin Corp."
Lee took the folders with both hands and opened the first one standing right there in the middle of the office.
Ami Tanaka. The photograph showed a girl with purple hair in an asymmetrical cut and a proud look on her face. Beneath it, the academy's report card, six lines and a teacher's hand.
Ninjutsu: B. Taijutsu: C. Genjutsu: B. Cooperation: F. Positivity: A. Classroom Attitude: B.
Teacher's comments: "Confident, well-spoken, and quick to organize her classmates; she gets others to follow her lead. The trouble is that following is all she permits them. She commands rather than cooperates, and the moment she is separated from her friends her performance collapses completely. In six years I have never once seen her attempt anything alone."
Fuki Sato. Short spiky red hair, a grin at the camera that the camera had clearly not asked for.
Ninjutsu: C. Taijutsu: A. Genjutsu: C. Cooperation: F. Positivity: A. Classroom Attitude: F.
Teacher's comments: "Genuine physical talent, near the top of her class, attached to a girl who will not follow a single instruction. Eleven detentions. Abandons any assigned role the moment a fight starts, wins her half of it, and loses the exercise for everyone. Fights beside no one but Watanabe and Tanaka. If she ever gets her act together, it'll be beneficial to her future growth."
Kasumi Watanabe. Ginger hair in a round style with a shuriken-shaped mark cut into the front of it, eyes aimed slightly away from the lens.
Ninjutsu: B. Taijutsu: B. Genjutsu: B. Cooperation: F. Positivity: F. Classroom Attitude: A.
Teacher's comments: "In an empty classroom she can do everything I ask, cleanly, on the first attempt. Under examination she freezes, and under pressure she will fail. Her groups forget she is present. I am concerned she has begun to agree with them."
Lee went back through the cards once more, slower.
Three different girls. Three different columns of letters, high marks and low ones scattered in three different patterns, and one letter identical on every card, on the same line, in the same place.
Cooperation: F. Cooperation: F. Cooperation: F.
Lee knew the academy's report cards. He had carried one home for six years, and his own had held two F's of its own. But there wasn't anything he could do about those two F's. So he stopped worrying about them.
And stamped across the summary page of all three, the same conclusion in the same examiner's hand: Recommend against advancement. Candidates are individually salvageable but collectively unworkable. They rarely if ever work with others outside their group.
"So this is their last attempt before being sent to the Genin Corps?" Lee asked.
"Their last attempt." Guy nodded.
"Then it is perfect!" Lee was fired up. "It is the perfect opportunity for them to show everyone exactly how wrong they were! Guy-sensei, I was the hard lot! I was the wrong bet! Every person in this village has already been incorrect about somebody in this room once before, and I will make them incorrect three more times! I can do this! With the power of youth on my side, I will help these young lotuses bloom without fail!"
Guy gave a soft smile as he patted Lee's shoulder. "I believe in you, Lee! Go give them everything you got, Lee-sensei." He showed his teeth and flashed him a thumbs up.
"I must prepare! Sorry, Guy-sensei! I have to go!" Lee was already vibrating toward the door, folders clamped under one arm, envelope and scroll under the other. "Guy-sensei! Thank you! For the rank, for the trust, for… for… EVERYTHING! I will never be able to repay you for everything you've done!"
"Lee." Guy said it in his serious voice, and it stopped the boy at the door.
The Hokage stood by the window with the evening coming in gold behind him, and for one moment he was not the Hokage at all.
"When it gets heavy," Guy said, "and it will get heavy, in ways the vest does not warn you about, my door is one desk away. I had a teacher who knew exactly how it felt. Now so do you." The grin returned, full brightness. "NOW GO! Your springtime as a sensei begins TONIGHT!"
"YES GUY-SENSEI!" Lee vanished from the office.
The Fifth Hokage sat back down at his desk, allowed himself, at last and in private, to be nothing but proud for the second time in three days, and got back to work.
…
Rock Lee went home dashing through the streets with an appointment scroll and three folders and a refilled wallet under his arms.
"Special Jonin Rock Lee! Lee-sensei! Ami-chan! Fuki-chan! Kasumi-chan!" He tried the names in different orders, tasting them. "Team Lee! No, too soon, they gotta pass the test first. I also gotta design the test. It has to be fair and properly target their weaknesses noted by their instructors… And I must tell Sakura-chan too or she'll be upset." he went redder at the thought of their recent goodbye, ran faster to focus on his current duties. "TOMORROW, I will tell Sakura-chan tomorrow, tonight I have to prepare for the girls and then do my training, YOSH!!! Training first to clear my mind and then the planning!"
Host: Rock Lee
Age: 15
Rank: Special Jonin
Skills: Taijutsu A (36,600/1,000,000), Ninjutsu D (240/1,000), Genjutsu D (180/1,000), Shurikenjutsu C (5,150/10,000), Chakra Control B (46,102/100,000), Nunchaku Mastery B (22,370/100,000), Eight Gates B (46,670/100,000), Bojutsu B (0/100,000), Chain Mastery B (0/100,000), Tonfa Mastery C (2,900/10,000), Muscle Mimicry B (2,400/100,000), Teaching B (16,140/100,000), Leadership C (7,106/10,000), Drunken Fist B (10,651/100,000), Inspire C (2,500/10,000), Water Style C (4,150/10,000), Massage E (2/100), Spiritual Resistance F (5/10)
Unique Skills: Body Supremacy Jutsu, Chakra Enhanced Strength, Strengthened Chakra Network, Regeneration Ability, Increased Chakra Reserves
Equipment: Chakra-Metal Customized Weights, Might Suit, Shinobi Tools, flask of special medicine, Chakra-Metal Tonfas
The notice reached three doors that evening.
Behind the first door, a girl with purple hair with one side longer than the other read the summons twice and then held it up in triumph to an audience of nobody. "Ha! HA! I told you both they'd come to their senses! A final assessment, under a jonin instructor, OBVIOUSLY they realized failing us was a mistake, they probably fought over who gets us."
Behind the second door, a girl with short spiky red hair read it upside down first, turned it over, read it again, and screamed in joy at being given another chance.
Behind the third door, a girl with a shuriken-shaped mark cut into her orange afro read it silently, and pressed it flat against her chest, and looked out her window toward the academy, and simply hoped.
The name of the instructor was printed at the bottom of all three.
Jonin sensei: Rock Lee, Special Jonin.
"Rock Lee…" Ami read aloud, and frowned. "Lee? Wait, wait, wait." The frown fell off a cliff. "THE WEIRDO WHO CHEATED AGAINST SASUKE-KUN IN THE FINALS?!"
Across the village, Fuki stopped mid-word. "...The Devil," Fuki said, to her empty room. "They gave me the Devil as my sensei?! This is gonna be so freaking sweet!"
And in the third house, Kasumi read the name once more, and froze in terror at the realization of what that name represented as her possible new sensei. Falling over back first to the concern of her siblings and parents.