A green figure was running out of the dust toward the battlefield, alone, the distance shrinking until the details resolved: the suit, the bandages, the vest, the run of a boy who had just fought a tailed beast and won and was coming back to see what else needed a dealing with.
No giant red gorilla behind him. No lava. No roaring. Just the boy.
The word traveled through the Stone ranks faster than any jutsu. It passed from one mouth to the next in fragments that didn't need completing.
"Our jinchuriki is gone… No… No way…"
"The Green Savage Devil is still standing… Our jinchuriki meant nothing to him…"
"WE'RE GOING TO DIE! WE'RE DEAD!!!"
The first group broke. A squad of Stone who had been fighting against a team of Leaf shinobi simply stopped fighting, turned, and ran while screaming. The Leaf shinobi in front of them stared for half a second before giving chase.
Then the next group broke. And the next. The retreat spread through Stone's line like a crack through ice, one unit after another pulling away, disengaging, turning their backs on the battlefield and running northwest toward the border. Some threw down their weapons to move faster. Some didn't, clutching weapons as they fled, too afraid to let go of the only thing between them and whatever was behind them.
Konoha's shinobi chased. Some of them had been fighting since the battle started, bruised and bleeding and furious, and the sight of an enemy's back was an invitation their exhaustion couldn't refuse. They ran down the stragglers at the edges. Many bodies dropped in the dirt.
The chase went on for several kilometers before the squad leaders started calling their people back. The enemy was broken but not destroyed. Chasing a retreating army toward their own border was how you walked into an ambush. The order went out through hand signals and shouts.
Lee walked through the aftermath. Past the craters and the scorched earth and the bodies from both sides lying where they had fallen. Past a cluster of Leaf medics working on a ninja who was missing most of his left arm. Past a team of genin, someone else's genin, sitting against a shattered boulder with the blank faces of people whose day had contained more death than their training had prepared them for.
He walked until he reached the command area, and then he walked into the tent where Neji's uncle, Hiashi Hyuga was waiting.
…
The command tent was a wide canvas structure held up by poles driven into the earth, lit up even though it was still daylight because the canvas blocked whatever sun the dust hadn't already swallowed. Maps covered the central table. Markers indicated positions that had been accurate six hours ago and were not accurate now.
Hiashi stood at the table with three jonin, two of whom Lee knew by sight but not by name, and one who was Ebisu, who looked like he hadn't slept in a week and had the chakra reserves to match.
"Lee, glad to see you are alright." Hiashi acknowledged him.
"Hiashi-sama." Lee bowed. "Reporting on the jinchuriki situation."
"Go ahead."
"Rōshi, the host of the Four-Tails, lost control of his tailed beast during our fight. Son Gokū, the Four-Tails, broke free of Rōshi's hold and left the battlefield on its own. Both are gone. The beast headed west into the mountains." Lee paused. "I don't believe it has any interest in returning to the battlefield. Son Gokū told me it wanted nothing to do with the war or with any human village."
The tent was quiet for a moment.
"The tailed beast told you that itself?" Hiashi asked.
"Yes, sir. After it broke free. It was... not hostile. It said it had been fighting Rōshi from the inside and was tired of being used as a weapon." Lee hesitated. "I believed it."
"So the Four-Tails is off the board." One of the jonin Lee didn't know spoke. "That leaves Han. The Five-Tails."
"Han has not engaged yet." Hiashi confirmed. "We have not spotted him." He looked at Lee. "He likely knows what happened to Rōshi. If not, he will soon."
"If Han engages, I can fight him." Lee said.
"You've done enough for one day." Hiashi said it firmly. "The Five-Tails is a concern for another day. Today is about holding what we've gained and counting what we've lost before we make a further offensive into the Land of Earth."
He turned to Ebisu. "The numbers."
Ebisu started reading what he had so far. "As of the last field report, thirty minutes ago. Confirmed dead: two hundred and twelve. Wounded, still fighting capable: three hundred and forty-one. Wounded, not fighting capable: one hundred and eight. Missing, presumed captured or dead: forty-seven."
Two hundred and twelve confirmed dead. On a day they had won. On a day Lee had taken out a jinchuriki and sent Stone running.
"Stone's losses?" Hiashi asked.
"Our scouts estimate between three thousand and thirty-five hundred, including the initial strike." Ebisu adjusted his glasses. "They are badly hurt, but they are not finished."
"Neither are we." Hiashi looked down at the map. "And no one is coming to replace who we lost today. We push while Stone is still running, before they remember how many of them there are."
Hiashi nodded once. "Lee. Get some rest. This is only the beginning."
"Yes, sir." Lee bowed again and turned to leave.
"Lee."
He stopped at the tent flap.
Hiashi was looking at the map.
"Well done today. The number of losses may sound high, but without you, that number would be far worse."
Lee bowed a third time and left.
…
He found his friends in the mess area, which was a generous name for a stretch of cleared ground behind the medical tents where someone had set up cooking fires and was serving rice and grilled fish to anyone who sat down with a bowl.
Tenten saw him first. She was sitting on a supply crate with his three students around her, and she waved him over when he walked into the firelight.
"There he is." Tenten said. "Our big bad monkey-butt-kicking Lee."
"SENSEI!" Fuki was on her feet and in his face before the word finished. "Sensei, I took out like a hundred enemies! Hundred! A bunch of them were chunin! One of them tried to use an earth wall and I punched through it! Right through it! My fist went through the wall and hit him in the face on the other side!"
"She didn't kill a hundred enemies. We had the same number of kills which was actually around a dozen or something." Ami was still seated, arms crossed, but her eyes were bright and her voice was faster than she'd admit. "Two of them tried to rush me together and I whipped one into the other and they both went down. Then a third one came from behind and Kasumi..."
She stopped. Glanced at Kasumi. Then back at Lee.
"handled it, I suppose." Ami finished.
Kasumi was sitting beside Tenten, eating rice. She looked up at Lee and gave him a small smile. She was scuffed, a bandage on her forearm, dirt on her green jumpsuit, but her eyes were clear and her posture was upright and she was eating.
"I am relieved you are all okay." Lee smiled.
"Okay?!" Fuki grabbed his arm. "Sensei, we were AMAZING! Ask Tenten! She'll tell you!"
"They were pretty good." Tenten confirmed. She wore a proud-aunt grin. "From what I heard Fuki had enough sense to keep herself from recklessly overextending. Ami could work well with these two and strangers on the battlefield. And Kasumi didn't throw up until after the fighting was over." She looked at the quiet girl eating her rice.
Kasumi's cheeks went pink. "War is really scary…" She continued eating.
"War is really disgusting you mean." Ami corrected her. "I think I still smell like other people's insides…"
"Come on, sensei, sit down!" Fuki pulled him toward the fire. "You have to eat! You look terrible!"
"I feel better than I look, I promise!" Lee protested.
He sat. Someone put a bowl of rice in his hands. He ate.
As he did, shinobi passed by. Some of them paused. A chunin with a bandaged head stopped and said, "Thank you for what you did out there, Lee-san. My squad was pinned down near the eastern part of the battlefield when you took that thing off the field. We'd be dead without you." He bowed and kept walking.
A medic stopped long enough to say, "The burns from the lava, they would have been worse if you hadn't drawn the jinchuriki away when you did."
A genin from another squad, a boy Lee didn't recognize, stood at the edge of the firelight for a while before working up the nerve to say, "My friend told me you killed a tailed beast when you were our age. I didn't believe him until today." Then he left quickly.
Lee accepted each one with a nod and quiet thanks and a deflection toward the shinobi who had fought alongside him. Fuki grinned through every one of them. Ami's chin lifted a little higher each time. Kasumi's eyes sparkled.
"See?" Fuki punched Lee's shoulder. "You're a hero, sensei!"
"I am just a shinobi who did his job." Lee said. "The same as everyone else here."
"You punched a giant monkey into the sky."
"That is also part of the job sometimes."
"I can't wait to punch my first giant animal into the sky!" Fuki rapidly punched the air.
Tenten laughed as the others joined them, Kiba already mid-sentence when he came over and sat down. "...and then Akamaru caught the guy by the ankle and I came in with the Fang Over Fang and the dude just flew! Like, thirty meters. Hit a ton of his buddies and didn't get up."
"You've told this story twice now." Shino observed, from behind his collar.
"Because it was twice as cool as anything you did!"
"I incapacitated several dozen opponents using my insects. They did not see me. They did not hear me. Several of them never learned what killed them." Shino adjusted his glasses. "That is because my methods are not designed for storytelling. They are designed for winning."
"Yeah, well, nobody's gonna write a book about bugs, Shino."
"Their loss."
Choji was eating. He had been eating since he sat down and he was still eating and the pile of empty bowls beside him suggested he had no intention of stopping. He looked over to Lee when he sat down and gave him a messy smile.
Hinata was beside her teammate, her hands wrapped around a cup of tea. She looked at Lee and something in her face softened.
"Lee-kun. I'm glad you're safe."
"Thank you, Hinata-chan. I am glad you are safe as well."
They ate together. The conversation moved between stories from the day, some loud and boastful (Kiba), some quiet and factual (Shino), some told entirely through eating speed (Choji). Fuki immediately inserted herself into Kiba's story with her own version of a similar event, and the two of them started competing over kill counts while Ami picked the seat farthest from Shino. Shino said nothing. Lee apologized to him for her.
Kasumi sat beside Hinata. Neither of them spoke much. They didn't need to. Two quiet girls sitting side by side in the firelight, both carrying the day in their own way, both glad to be sitting rather than fighting.
Lee looked at the faces around the fire. His squad. His students. His friends. All of them here. All of them just fine.
Then his eyes moved to a spot at the far end of the mess area where a team of three was sitting in silence. Two of them were eating. The space between them, where a third person should have been sitting, was empty.
Lee looked at the empty space for a moment.
Then he looked back at the faces around his fire, and he was grateful for every single one.