The sun was barely up when Lee arrived at Training Ground Nine carrying three boxes.
They crashed onto the grass with a heavy thud as he sat down cross-legged in front of them, and waited. He had gotten up at three to run his own morning routine so that his students would get his full attention from five onward. He had also prepared a speech. He had rehearsed the speech in the mirror. Twice.
Fuki arrived first, twelve minutes early, hands in her pockets, knuckle wrappings still on from two days ago. She looked at Lee, looked at the boxes, and sat down without a word.
Kasumi arrived second, eight minutes early, walking at the pace of someone who had given herself an enormous margin for error and was now unsure what to do with the remaining time. She sat beside Fuki and folded her hands in her lap.
Ami arrived third, exactly on time, not one second early and not one second late, because Ami Tanaka understood how to make an entrance.
"Good morning, Lee-sensei." She had changed outfits again. Clean blouse, hair freshly washed, posture broadcast.
"Good morning, everyone!" Lee beamed at all three of them. "Before we begin, I have something for each of you."
He opened the first box and held up what was inside.
Weights. Heavy, dark, wrapped in canvas with leather straps, sized for ankles and forearms. On the side of each one, stamped into the fabric, was the same kanji that Lee used to have: 根性. Guts.
"These are your training weights! You will wear them from this point forward during every training session and every waking hour that I am your sensei!" Lee presented them with pride. "These should be more than enough to challenge fresh genin. Over time, as your bodies adapt, I will increase the load. This is the foundation of everything I will teach you. Before you become strong, you must first become strong even when weak!"
Fuki's eyes lit up. She grabbed her set before Lee finished the sentence, sat down on the grass, and started strapping them onto her ankles. "Heavy." She grinned. "Awesome..."
Kasumi took hers carefully, barely able to hold it for more than a few seconds. She began strapping them on while crying on the inside.
Ami held hers at arm's length.
"Sensei."
"Yes, Ami-chan?"
"These are hideous."
Lee temporarily froze. Out of all the statements and questions he expected about the weights, their appearance was definitely not one of the questions he prepared beforehand.
He looked at the weights. He looked at his own weights. He looked at Ami's disgusted face.
"I..." Lee rubbed the back of his head. "I admit I did not consider the aesthetic element."
"They're bland, average, and boring. White doesn't look good on me either. It clashes with my aesthetics and beauty."
"You are free to color or decorate them however you like!" Lee recovered. "But you must wear them. Fashion and function can coexist, Ami-chan! Guy-sensei once told me that the Might Suit is the most fashionable piece of clothing in all of Konoha, and I believed him with my whole heart!"
Fuki snorted from the ground. "That explains a lot."
"Put them on, Ami." Lee said it warmly, but it was not a suggestion.
Ami put them on. It looked like it physically pained her to do so.
When all three had their weights secured, Lee told them to stand. They stood. Their legs adjusted to the new load, bodies dipping slightly, finding new balance points.
"Walk for me." Lee said.
They walked. Their pace had halved. Their steps were heavy, unnatural, each one requiring effort that used to be automatic. Fuki adapted fastest since she was probably the strongest out of the three, physically. Kasumi moved with severe difficulty, the weights weighing her down significantly. Ami walked like she was trying to ignore the weights entirely, which was respectable if not a failing effort.
"Wonderful!" Lee clapped once. "You are at roughly one quarter of your normal speed and output. That is perfect. Now, we begin."
He dropped to his hands. His legs rose into the air, weights and all, and he started walking on his palms toward the training ground's exit.
"Follow me. We are jogging one lap around the village."
"On our... on our feet, right?" Kasumi needed clarification.
"Unless you would like to try it on your hands!"
"Feet!" She squeaked. "Feet is fine."
"One lap around the entire village?!" Ami's voice climbed. "Sensei, do you know how big Konoha is?"
"I run five laps before breakfast every morning!" Lee called back over his shoulder, still walking on his hands. "One is a mercy! Let us go, Team Lee! Let's show everyone in Konoha our evergrowing youth!"
They jogged. Lee hand-walked.
The first twenty minutes were tolerable. The weights made every stride heavier, every hill steeper, every flat stretch longer than it had any right to be. Fuki set the pace, too fast at first, burning through energy she didn't have to spare. Ami matched her out of pride and regretted it by the market district. Kasumi fell behind both of them within ten minutes and stayed there, her face in clear agony.
By the halfway mark, all three girls had stopped jogging and started something closer to a determined stagger. Fuki's breathing was ragged and loud. Ami's perfect posture had collapsed into a forward hunch, arms swinging limp. Kasumi's face was white and her steps had shortened to the length of a hand.
Lee hand-walked beside them, upside down, weights dragging his legs toward the earth, and he was not breathing hard. He was humming.
"You are doing great!" he called. "Only half to go!"
"I'm going... to croak..." Fuki gasped.
"You are not going to croak! Your body is simply learning where its current limits are so that it can surpass them! That is the entire point!"
"I hate... surpassing my limits..." Ami murmured.
They finished. It took over an hour. When the three girls crossed back onto Training Ground Nine, not one of them was capable of standing. Fuki went down first, flat on her back, arms spread, chest heaving. Ami made it two steps further before her knees buckled and she crumpled sideways into the grass. Kasumi sat down, very slowly, very carefully, and then gravity took the rest of her, and she lay curled on her side with her eyes closed and her mouth open and her limbs arranged in a way that would have horrified her mother.
Lee flipped off his hands and landed on his feet. He walked to his pack, retrieved three canteens, and set one beside each girl.
"Drink. Small sips. I am very proud of all three of you." He crouched beside them. "You finished. That is what matters. Most people would have stopped. Some people would have sat down and refused. You kept going. That is the foundation of everything I will teach you going forward."
Fuki's hand found the canteen without her eyes opening. She drank like a woman rescued from a desert.
"You have a ten minute break." Lee told them. "After that, we continue."
Ami made a sound that might have been a word in a language none of them spoke.
Lee looked at the three of them, sprawled on the grass, their muscles already beginning the slow revolt that would turn soreness into agony by tomorrow. He could see it in the way Fuki's calves were tightening, the way Kasumi's shoulders had drawn up toward her ears, the way Ami's hands kept opening and closing as cramps ghosted through her forearms.
"Your muscles are going to lock up if we don't address them now," Lee said. "I can help with that. I know how the body works and I know how to help it recover after training. If any of you would like a massage to loosen the worst of the knots before we continue, I'm offering."
Fuki's hand shot up from the ground. It was the weakest, most exhausted raised hand in the history of raised hands.
"Please." she said into the grass.
"Alright. Roll onto your front and tell me where it hurts most."
"Everywhere."
Lee knelt beside her and went to work. His hands found the first knot in her right calf, a fist-sized ball of seized muscle where the weight strap had been pulling all morning, and his thumbs pressed in on either side of it and pushed the fibers apart. He knew where the knots formed after weighted running because he had running with weights for years. Calves first, where the load sat. Then the quads, where the body compensated. Then the lower back, where both compensations met and fought.
Fuki's face went through several stages as Lee worked. Discomfort. Sharper discomfort. Then the knot released and the sound that came out of her was involuntary and completely without shame.
"Ohhhh my god..."
Lee's face went red. He kept working.
"That's... sensei, that's..." Another knot released. Another sound. Louder. "Oh god, that's amazing, that's the best thing that's ever happened to me..."
Across the grass, Ami and Kasumi both turned their heads to watch.
Lee moved to her other calf. His thumbs found the matching knot and pressed, and Fuki made a noise that belonged in a very different context, and Lee's face went redder, and he kept working because he was a professional and he had a girlfriend and this was simply a sensei helping his student recover and nothing else.
"Sensei..." Fuki's voice was muffled by the grass. "You can't ever stop doing this. I'll do ten laps. I'll do fifty. Just promise me this happens after."
"It is important for recovery…" Lee managed, his ears now matching his face.
By the time he finished, Fuki sat up looking like a different person. She rolled her shoulders. Flexed her calves. The tightness was gone, the seized muscles loose and warm, and she stared at Lee with genuine awe.
"That felt amazing!" she said, with absolute sincerity. "Like all the pain just got whisked away!"
Kasumi's hand rose. Barely. Just her fingers, really, lifted a few inches off the grass.
"Could I... please... go next?" Her voice was small, but the pain was winning over the shyness.
"Of course, Kasumi-chan."
Lee moved to her and began the same process. Kasumi had enough decorum not to vocalize, but her face told the whole story. Her jaw unclenched. Her shoulders dropped from her ears. Her breathing, which had been shallow and tight, deepened and slowed. Her body had taken the run harder than either of the other two since her physical development was the least and everything had seized proportionally worse. Lee spent longer on her than on Fuki, finding smaller, deeper knots, working them with careful pressure.
When he finished, Kasumi sat up slowly and blinked several times, as if readjusting to a world that contained significantly less pain than it had five minutes ago.
"Thank you, sensei..." she whispered, and meant it completely.
Ami was last.
She had been watching the whole time. Watching Lee's hands on Fuki's calves, on Kasumi's shoulders. She had heard the sounds, seen the results, watched two girls go from wrecked to functional in minutes. And something in Ami's head had clicked.
She lay down on her front and rested her chin on her folded arms and said, "I'm ready, sensei."
Lee knelt beside her and found the first knot. His thumbs pressed in.
Ami had planned to overplay it. The sounds Fuki made had clearly flustered Lee, and a flustered sensei was a sensei you could move, and if she could move him, if she could get under his skin just enough to make him see her differently...
This is just smart, she told herself. If sensei likes me more than the other two, I'll get better training, better missions, better everything. That's just how the world works. People who are liked get ahead. So get liked.
She opened her mouth and let out a moan that would have made Fuki blush.
"Ohhhhh, sensei, that's so good..."
Lee's hands paused for exactly one second. His face went a deeper red.
A rock hit Ami in the back of the head.
"OW!"
Fuki was sitting fifteen feet away with another rock already in her hand. "Knock it off. We have more training and you're wasting our break on whatever the hell that was."
"YOU THREW A ROCK AT MY HEAD!"
"And I'll throw another one. Shut up and let him finish so we can move on."
"YOU INTERRUPTED MY-" Ami caught herself a syllable too late.
"YOUR WHAT!?" Fuki's eyes narrowed.
"Nothing! My relaxation! You interrupted my relaxation, you violent monkey!"
"Oh shut up! I have to become the strongest kunoichi in Konoha and I don't have time to waste with your schemes like in the academy."
Ami's face went scarlet for reasons entirely separate from the massage.
Lee quietly resumed working on her back, his eyes fixed firmly on the muscle groups and nowhere else, and he did not acknowledge any part of what had just happened. Lee finished up, stood, and clapped his hands once.
"Break is over! On your feet!"
Three groans answered him. Three girls stood up anyway.
What followed was simple in design and brutal in execution.
Pull-ups on a pull-up bar he purchased and brought from home. Lee demonstrated first with one hundred reps with the weights on while holding a conversation about proper grip placement and stance. The girls were asked for ten. Fuki managed eight before her arms gave out and she fell. Ami managed six through sheer refusal to be beaten by Fuki and also fell on the seventh attempt. Kasumi managed four, her face clenched, her arms shaking badly.
Push-ups. Twenty requested. Fuki ground out fourteen. Ami reached twelve. Kasumi hit nine and stayed on the ground, forehead in the dirt, breathing.
Sit-ups. Thirty requested. Fuki finished. Ami finished, barely, with her jaw locked and tears she would deny existed forming at the corners of her eyes. Kasumi reached twenty-two before her stomach muscles simply refused to contract again.
Lee praised every attempt. Every rep completed was acknowledged. Every failure was met with "good effort, try one more next time." He did not compare them to each other. He did not compare them to himself. He tracked their numbers in a small notebook he produced from his pouch, the same book he wrote in when he was a genin on Guy-sensei's team, and he recorded each result.
"Now," Lee said, closing the notebook. "Sparring."
Fuki's head came up. Even destroyed, even running on fumes, the word "sparring" reached something in Fuki that nothing else could.
"The rules are simple. Two fight, one sits out. Winner stays, loser rotates. Taijutsu only. Stop when I say stop. When all three rotations are done, you will face me together."
He pointed at Ami and Kasumi first. "Begin."
It was not pretty. Both girls were exhausted, weighted, sore, and running on whatever reserves pride and stubbornness could manufacture. Ami came in with a straight punch that would have been passable in a classroom and was sad in a field. Kasumi blocked it with her forearm and the impact made both of them wince. They traded sloppy strikes for thirty seconds before Ami caught Kasumi with a kick to the side that was more of a heavy lean than an actual technique, and Kasumi was knocked away.
"Kasumi out, Fuki in."
Fuki came in swinging. Even dead tired, Fuki fought like a girl who had never been taught to hold back. She hit Ami twice in the body before Ami could adjust, but the third swing was wide and Ami ducked under it and tripped her with a leg sweep that sent Fuki crashing down.
"Fuki out, Kasumi in."
Kasumi lasted ten seconds. Ami was too tired to finish it quickly and Kasumi was too tired to defend, and the whole thing ended with both of them on the ground after Ami's push sent Kasumi stumbling and Kasumi grabbing her sent her stumbling into the same heap.
Lee watched all of it with his arms folded and his notebook in his hand. He saw everything. Their flaws, strengths, and habits..
"Good, you have a ten minute break before you have to face me."
They stared at him.
"Sensei," Ami said flatly. "I can barely lift my arms."
"Then use your legs."
"I can barely lift those either."
"The point of the exercise isn't to win against me." Lee reminded them.
They drank from their canteens, stretched, and tried to get as much mobility and control over their bodies again.
Then after ten minutes was up and they were better than moving corpses, they attacked together. Three very sore and tired girls running at a man who simply could handle everything they could throw even on their best day. Fuki leapt from the front with a spinning kick. Ami followed up underneath her with a sliding kick to take out Lee's legs. Kasumi ran from the side while tossing multiple shuriken from the side aimed at Lee's back and waist, forcing him to either take on Ami and Fuki or take some shuriken in the back.
Lee blocked Fuki's kick before realizing she wasn't done yet, two more spinning kicks followed after, or at least that's what she attempted. By the second kick on Lee's forearm, he reached out with his hand and spun her away at a faster speed than she came toward him while screaming. Ami's sliding kick stopped directly on Lee's shin, not moving him an inch. An awkward look appeared on her face when he looked down at her and raised his other leg. Ami screamed as she locked both legs around Lee's single leg and twisted with her entire body.
Lee went tumbling to the ground with Ami locked around his leg. Shuriken going flying over his head as he immediately reversed the leg hold and sat on top of Ami's back. Kasumi and Fuki ran in together to save the screaming and flailing Ami under their sensei's butt.
The two of them weaved through hand signs before multiple clones of them appeared in the training field. Lee smiled at the two's plan before getting up to his feet and tossing Ami directly at the real versions. The three girls went tumbling and rolling across the field.
Lee stood over the three of them and smiled.
"That was excellent, girls." He told them.
"We were freaking awful." Fuki said from the ground.
"It was a hundred times better than when you first fought me." Lee replied. "You are exhausted, weighted, sore, running on nothing, and not a single one of you stopped. Some of you complained, cursed, cried, threw up, but guess what?"
"I wasn't crying." Ami corrected him with embarrassment and frustration.
"But you kept going. All three of you. And that is the only thing that matters to me." Lee crouched beside them. "May I?"
He gestured at his hands. Massage. They all understood now what the gesture meant.
Fuki's hand went up immediately. Kasumi nodded. Even Ami, her scheme from earlier thoroughly destroyed, accepted without any drama this time, because the pain was real and the relief was real and whatever she was planning could wait until her shoulders worked again.
Lee worked on each of them in turn. Quicker this time, focused on the new damage, loosening what had seized during the sparring. By the time he finished, the three of them could stand and move again.
"I really am proud of you." Lee said. He meant it with his entire body. "If you maintain this effort, this spirit, this willingness to endure even when it feels impossible, you will all become splendid shinobi. I guarantee it."
He flashed a thumbs up with a wide bright smile.
The three girls groaned in unison, and it was the most unified they had been all morning.
"Now." Lee straightened. "We have somewhere to be. Follow me to the Mission Assignment Desk. It is time for your first mission as shinobi of the Hidden Leaf!"
They walked behind him through the streets of Konoha, three battered girls trailing a green legend, every step heavy with weights and exhaustion, looking more like punished refugees than ninjas. Civilians glanced at them. A few smiled, remembering their own genin days or the genin days of their children. One old woman handed Kasumi a rice ball as she passed, and Kasumi accepted it gratefully.
The Mission Assignment Desk sat inside the Ninja Academy in a wide open room with high ceilings and the kanji for "shinobi" printed across the top. A long table stretched across the front, staffed by chunin who processed mission scrolls with the steady rhythm of people who did this every day. Above the desk hung a banner that read "Everybody, Do Your Best."
Lee walked in like the room was made of sunlight. His spine was straight, his vest was clean, his grin was incandescent. Behind him, three girls shuffled in like the walking dead.
Then Lee stopped.
Because sitting at the center of the desk, behind the mission scrolls, wearing the Hokage's hat and the Hokage's robes over a frame that was unmistakably built for combat rather than paperwork, was Might Guy.
"Lee!" The Fifth Hokage's voice filled the room. He rose from his seat, and the chunin on either side of him already had a small smile on their faces. "And these must be your students!"
"Hokage-sama! Yes! This is Team Lee, reporting for our first mission!" Lee's salute was flawless.
Guy looked at the three girls behind his student. He saw the weights on their legs. He saw the exhaustion in their faces. He saw the way they held themselves, sore and beaten and still standing, and his expression softened with utmost pride and joy.
Look at you, my boy… Guy thought, watching Lee present his team. Look at what you've become. The boy who couldn't mold a single jutsu, already standing before me with students of his own. You don't know how proud of you I am, Lee…
Ami was staring. Her eyes went from Guy to Lee and back to Guy. The bowl cut. The eyebrows. The green underneath the Hokage robes. The jawline. The posture. The volume. The identical, absolutely identical energy coming off both of them like heat from a furnace.
Fuki's hand rose slowly and pointed at Guy. Then at Lee. Then at Guy. Then at Lee. Her mouth opened. No words came out. The hand kept pointing.
Kasumi's eyes had gone very wide.
"Is..." Ami started. "Lee-sensei, is the Hokage your...?"
"Father?" Guy finished, and his grin was a mirror of Lee's. "We do get that a lot."
The chunin at the desk were smiling. They had seen this exact scene play out a dozen times with a dozen different people, and it never got less entertaining.
"I am not physically related to the Hokage." Lee said it like someone who had delivered this exact sentence hundreds of times. "Guy-sensei is my sensei. He trained me from the time I was a genin. I am his student, not his son."
Fuki's hand was still pointing. Back and forth. Back and forth. Her mouth was still open.
"Fuki-chan." Lee said gently. "You can stop pointing now."
Fuki put her hand down.
"Although," Guy said, and his voice dropped into something warmer, something that the chunin heard even less often, "I could not be more proud if he were."
Lee's eyes got bright. He blinked hard, twice, and his jaw tightened, and for a moment the fifteen-year-old Special Jonin with the S-rank bingo book entry was just a boy hearing his father figure say he was proud.
"Thank you, Guy-sensei." Lee managed. His voice was steady. His eyes were not.
The girls watched this without understanding the depth of it. Whatever these two men were to each other, it seemed like something deeper than sensei and student.
Kasumi wondered if they were going to be that close with Lee-sensei after they weren't his students anymore.
Fuki wondered if the Hokage trained their sensei like he was training them.
Ami refused to believe these two were not related. There's no way. Did the Hokage give birth by himself? With all the miraculous jutsus in the world, there has to be like a jutsu that can do that, right? I refuse to believe two almost entirely identical individuals are not related in the slightest just because. She shook her head. The chances were just too low.
"Now then!" Guy recovered first, because a Hokage must, and he sat back down and picked up a mission scroll with dramatic flair. "Team Lee. Your first mission as shinobi of the Hidden Leaf Village. This is a momentous occasion! A tradition that stretches back through every generation of Konoha's history!" He held the scroll up. His eyes burned with significance. "Your first official mission is..."
He paused. The pause stretched. He was savoring it. The chunin on either side of him had stopped working to watch.
"To assist a farmer with his harvest and general farm work on a property outside the gate!"
The pause that followed was different.
"...A farm?" Ami questioned. She must not have heard correctly.
"A FARM!" Guy confirmed.
"We're... ninjas. Helping on a farm."
"D-rank! The backbone of every genin's development! Building character, forging bonds, and contributing to the prosperity of the Land of Fire's agricultural community!"
Fuki's disbelief found its voice. "Shouldn't we be protecting a princess of a foreign country or beating up bad guys?!"
Guy laughed. "Not until you three work hard enough to be as strong as your sensei was when he was a genin."
They looked at Lee. Their Special Jonin sensei. One year older than them.
"It's much harder than what you went through this morning." Lee told them. "If you'd prefer, I can model tomorrow's training after what my schedule looked like at your age instead of keeping it easy like today."
"THAT WAS EASY?!" Ami's composure shattered.
"Sensei isn't normal..." Kasumi said it quietly, as she now understood. Trying to match him or surpass him was an impossible effort. It was best to move at her own pace. For her sanity and her precious aching body's sake.
"Was that really easy, sensei...?" Fuki couldn't believe it. She wanted to, almost. But she couldn't.
Lee nodded at her with a smile. "While the weights are not something my teammates had to deal with, I reduced the number of reps significantly from what I was doing at your level. I wasn't sure where your limits were, so I prepared for any result!" He patted the teaching book in his pouch.
The girls didn't know how to feel about that.
So they walked behind Lee as he led them out of the Academy and toward the gate.
The farm sat on a wide stretch of land outside Konoha's wall, and the farmer was a broad, sun-browned man named Takeshi who greeted Lee with a handshake and the three girls.
"The irrigation ditch needs clearing. Fence on the east side's down. Weeds in the southern field." Takeshi pointed as he spoke. "Animals need feeding. If there's time, the hay needs moving from the barn to the upper loft." He ignored the weights on the girls' legs.
"Understood!" Lee answered.
"Hai…" The girls responded.
Takeshi nodded, ninjas were weird. He'd learned not to ask too many questions about them at a young age.
They worked. The irrigation ditch was knee-deep mud and rocks and roots that had to be pulled by hand. The fence required lifting posts that were heavy without weights and murderous with them. The weeds didn't fight back but there were thousands of them, and pulling them required bending and squatting and standing, over and over, with bodies that were already begging for mercy.
Ami complained. Fuki complained louder. The two of them made a chorus of misery that followed the breeze across the field.
"This is stupid." Ami yanked a weed and threw it into the pile with more force than necessary. "We didn't go through all that academy training to pull weeds."
"I signed up to be a ninja, not a gardener." Fuki kicked a fence post into place and winced when the impact traveled up through her weighted legs.
Lee was working beside them. He pulled weeds. He cleared the ditch. He lifted fence posts. He did his fair share, no more and no less, keeping pace with them rather than lapping them, because this was their mission and their experience, not his showcase.
"You can complain all you want." Lee said, pulling a root out of the ditch. "I will never tell you not to feel what you feel or not to say what you think. But remember one thing." He looked at both of them. "That man hired us. He is our employer. He trusted Konoha with his livelihood. Complain to me, complain to each other, complain to the sky, but never disrespect the person who put their faith and money in us."
Fuki shut up. Not because she agreed with her sensei, but because the way he said it made it clear that this was important and should not be tested.
Ami shut up because Fuki did, and because the thought of Lee looking at her the way he'd looked at her across the dinner table the night before, that quiet disappointed gaze, was worse than any weed in any field.
Kasumi hadn't complained out loud once. Everything she felt, the soreness, the exhaustion, the creeping despair that this was what being a ninja actually meant, she kept inside. She pulled weeds beside the other two, slower than both, her smaller frame struggling more with every bend and lift, and she said nothing.
They worked through the afternoon. The sun moved. The shadows grew. The hay got moved, and the animals got fed, and the irrigation ditch ran clear for the first time in weeks, and Takeshi nodded at the work and handed Lee the mission completion stamp without a word of complaint.
On the road back, Fuki finally asked the question that had been sitting in her since the morning.
"Lee-sensei."
"Yes, Fuki-chan?"
"Why?" She gestured behind her at the farm, at the whole day, at everything. "Why are ninjas doing this? We can use jutsu. We can throw kunai. We can sneak around. Why are we pulling weeds for some farmers?"
Lee stopped walking. The girls stopped behind him.
He picked up a stick from the side of the road. He crouched and began drawing in the dirt, and the three of them watched silently.
He drew a single character in the dirt. 忍. Shinobi.
"What is this?" he asked.
"Shinobi." Kasumi said.
"What does it mean? Not the word. The character."
Silence. Then Kasumi's eyes moved over the strokes.
"It's... two parts." she said slowly. "Blade on top. Heart on the bottom."
Lee nodded. "Blade and heart. A shinobi is one who endures." He drew a line under the character. "We are not just fighters. We are not mercenaries or weapons. We are the ones who endure. Pain. Hardship. Boredom. The work that nobody else wants to do and the burdens that nobody else can carry. We endure them so that the people we protect do not have to."
He pointed back toward the farm with the stick.
"That farmer feeds the village. The food you eat, the rice in your bowl, someone grew it. Someone planted it, watered it, pulled the weeds, fixed the fences, and brought it to market. And today, three shinobi of the Hidden Leaf made sure he could keep doing that. It is not glamorous. You will not get famous for it. Nobody will tell stories about the day you cleared an irrigation ditch." He paused. "But his family eats tonight because of your hands. His harvest comes in because of your backs. That is what shinobi endure for. Not for glory. For the people who cannot do it alone."
The road was quiet. The evening insects had started.
Ami looked at the character in the dirt and stayed silent as she thought about his words.
Fuki looked at it and crossed her arms and said nothing with a frustrated look on her face as she tried to comprehend it in her own way.
Kasumi looked at it the longest. She traced the strokes with her eyes. Blade and heart. Endurance. She did not understand it yet, not fully. But one day, she had a feeling she would.
"Now." Lee stood and tossed the stick. "Go home. Rest. Eat. Be with your families." He was smiling again. "Tomorrow, five o'clock. Training Ground Nine. And I promise you, today was the easy day!"
Three groans answered him. Three girls turned and walked toward Konoha's gate, weighted legs heavy, muscles screaming, dignity thoroughly abandoned. Fuki threw an arm over Kasumi's shoulder because walking alone was harder than walking together. Ami walked slightly ahead, chin up, posture maintained by will alone, but when Kasumi's free hand brushed hers, she didn't pull away.
Lee watched them go.
They are going to be something special, Guy-sensei, he thought. I know it. I can feel it.
He waited until they rounded the corner. Then he dropped to his hands and started walking home. He still had some training to catch up on.
[Taijutsu Proficiency +80 points!]
[Teaching Proficiency +1,100 points!]
[Leadership Proficiency +500 points!]
[Inspire Proficiency +350 points!]
[Massage has reached the next level!]