Lee crossed the village from east to west at blurring speeds.
The Fifth Gate was still open. His skin was holding a deep red that no normal shinobi's body should sustain for more than a minute without organ damage. His pupils had not returned. His hair stood straight up off his scalp in a vertical line that rippled only when the wind of his own passage caught it.
Every street he crossed left bodies.
Lee did not have the time to think about the many lives he's taken so far. His village was burning in three places he could see and at least five he could not see from this angle, and the smoke from the arena behind him was climbing high enough that he could track his own starting point by it.
A block ahead, a squad of Sound nin had cornered a Konoha civilian family in the space between a noodle stand and a residential wall. The father was trying to shield two children with his body. A woman was on the ground behind them with her leg broken. The Sound squad had raised their blades for the slaughter.
Lee went through the squad without touching the ground.
His first kick took a head off at the shoulders. His second kick shattered a spine. His third kick drove a Sound nin sideways into the wall hard enough that the two combined into one. The fourth member of the squad had the presence to turn, raising his hands in a seal that might have gotten a technique out if he had been given a full second.
He was given a third of that.
Lee's fist struck his jaw from below at an upward angle. His head went flying into the air before Lee vanished to continue on.
The father's eyes found empty street where the Sound squad had been. He did not see the blur. He did not see the face.
He saw, for one frozen instant, a green jumpsuit cresting the far rooftop against the sky.
"Run," his wife croaked. "Tanzo, we need to run."
He picked up his daughter in one arm, reached for his son with the other, and ran.
…
Lee reached the hospital from the southern approach.
The building had a ring of smoke around it at the upper floors. Three windows had been blown outward. Leaf shinobi in medical white were standing in the main entrance with kunai drawn, and one of them had blood running down his face from a scalp wound.
Sound shinobi were still going in.
A line of them was breaching the east service entrance, a full squad of eight in the standard Oto grey, spearheaded by what looked like a jonin-rank woman with a kusari-gama strapped across her back. Two Leaf ninja were engaging them in the doorway and losing the doorway one step at a time.
Lee arrived like a lightning bolt.
The jonin was the only one who saw him coming. Her head turned. Her eyes barely tracked the red-green shape that had appeared at the far end of the service corridor, and her hand was already moving for the weapon on her back when Lee reached her.
Her weapon did not clear the sheath.
Lee's fist entered her sternum, continued through her sternum, and emerged from her back carrying fragments of spine. Her body stayed upright for one moment longer because her brain didn't realize she was dead, and then she folded forward onto Lee's arm and slid off it.
The seven Sound ninjas behind her were still processing what had happened to their team leader when Lee was already among them.
One of them lost his throat to a knife-hand strike. Another was driven head-first through a wooden crate full of hospital linens so hard that the crate exploded outward in a ring of splinters. Another was kicked upward into the concrete lip of the door frame with such force that his spine couldn't take it. Another tried to leap back and was caught by a backfist that crushed his ribs into his heart.
Four Sound nin made the decision to run in the same instant.
They did not make it around the corner.
Lee stood in the service corridor with his chest moving in steady deep breaths and eight Sound corpses arranged around him near the doorway. Blood was on his hands. Blood was on his forearms to the elbow. Blood was across the front of his jumpsuit. None of it was his own.
He went out the window after briefly listening and making sure that the hospital was clear.
Lee saw each clan was defending the section of the village they lived closest to, and the gaps between clan sections were being held by ANBU squads that Lee caught glimpses of.
He passed over the Akimichi district first.
Three Akimichi in full armor had expanded to the size of small giants and were crushing everything in their path that was wearing Sound grey or Sand tan. Whole enemy squads were pulping beneath the enlarged staffs. Behind them, standard-size Akimichi clan members in support positions were handling stragglers with expansion-technique fists that came down like wrecking balls.
One of the rolling Akimichi members caught a glimpse of the reddish green blur crossing the rooftops above the district and lost his rhythm for a moment.
Was that a kid?
He got back to rolling. He would think about it later.
…
Lee crossed the Yamanaka district next.
Here the fighting was quieter and much worse.
Sound and Sand shinobi were turning on each other in the middle of the streets. Full squads were cutting down their own squadmates. A Sand ninja who had just driven a blade through his own captain's throat was standing over the body with an expression of total horror, trying to understand what had happened to his body and why it had not listened to him, and a Yamanaka in the window three stories above him was standing with her fingers in the mind transfer seal and her eyes open.
She released the seal. The Sand nin below realized what he had done and screamed and frantically looked around for who was controlling him.
Lee did not slow down passing through.
The Yamanaka were doing work that no other clan could do, and they were doing it at a level that would make the Sand and Sound forces wonder in the afterlife, why their own comrades had betrayed them in the middle of the invasion.
He caught the eye of the Yamanaka in the window. She was a middle-aged woman with her hair in the clan's trademark ponytail. She saw the blur of him as he passed the edge of her peripheral vision and her eyes tracked him for the half-second he was visible.
…
Lee reached the Academy district and found a different problem.
The Academy had not been a primary target. The enemy had not planned for it, and the enemy had not sent a squad there. But two Sound ninjas had peeled off from the main assault and had made it to the inner Academy yard, where the younger children, the ones not yet old enough for the evacuation plan, were being held by two chunin-rank instructors.
One of the instructors was already down.
The other was standing between the Sound ninja and the kids with a kunai in each hand and blood running from a wound in her thigh.
The Sound shinobi were smiling.
"Hand over the kids," the lead one said. "We get bonus pay for young ones."
Lee arrived.
He did not speak this time. There was nothing to say. The first Sound ninja lost his head from a straight chop that came from above and behind him at a speed his ears had not even registered. The second turned, drawing a blade, and Lee's forearm muscles closed on the blade before the Sound-nin's wrist could complete its extension, and Lee's other hand drove into the man's throat and kept driving until it came out the back of his neck.
The two bodies hit the yard dirt together.
The instructor with the kunai raised hers in continued readiness.
She had not processed what had just happened fast enough to understand that the help had arrived.
"Instructor-san." Lee's voice came through the Gate's haze, still his voice, but deeper than his voice should have been. "The children are safe. How many of you are left?"
"Just me." Her voice cracked. "And Taro. He is… he is on the ground."
Lee looked.
Taro was on the ground, and Taro was still breathing, but Taro would not be breathing for much longer without a medic, and the medics were at the hospital.
Lee crossed to Taro in one step. He placed both palms on Taro's chest. His chakra enhancement came through his palms, not to strike, but to compress the wound beneath the jumpsuit and keep the worst of the bleeding under control until a medic could arrive. It wasn't medical ninjutsu but crude effective first-aid.
"Can you carry him to the hospital?" Lee asked the instructor.
"The kids-"
"I will hold the Academy until someone else arrives. Go."
The instructor did not argue. She sheathed her kunai, scooped Taro across her shoulders in the fireman's carry and ran.
The children, fifteen of them, ranging from five to eight years old, stared at Lee.
Lee stood in the middle of the Academy yard with the two Sound bodies at his feet and his clothing stained with the blood of, at this point, somewhere between forty and sixty enemy shinobi. His skin was red. His hair stood up. His pupils were absent.
A five-year-old girl at the front of the group said, in a small clear voice: "Are you okay?"
Lee smiled at her.
"I am burning brightly, young lady! I hope you all are okay. Sorry about the scary sight."
"I'm scared."
"You don't have to be afraid. I'm here to protect you." Lee gave them a thumbs up and a smile.
"Who are you?"
"Rock Lee. Konoha's Youthful Green Noble Beast." He answered. "I will be right here. I am not going anywhere."
The girl considered this too.
"Okay," she said. Then, because she was five and the math of fear was simple at that age: "Are the bad guys going to come back?"
"If they come back, I will take care of them with my awesome taijutsu skills." Lee shadow boxed the air while keeping his senses sharp and alert.
A seven-year-old boy at the back of the group raised his hand.
Lee looked at him.
"Are you a shinobi?"
"I am."
"How old are you?"
"Fourteen."
"Cool," the boy said.
"Super cool, right?" Lee nodded in agreement. He didn't have people telling him he was cool normally, so it was nice to see these kids thinking so.
"Super cool…" Others agreed.
"When you all become ninjas I hope you too will protect the innocent people of Konoha the same way, I am protecting you."
The fifteen children nodded.
"I'm going to protect my mom and dad and even my stupid brother!"
"When I become ninja, I'm going to have awesome taijutsu skills too and beat up bad guys!"
"When I graduate, I will protect everyone in the village! And then become Hokage with even awesomer taijutsu skills."
"Taijutsu?" Lee looked confused. "Did you guys hear about how I can only use taijutsu and can't use ninjutsu or genjutsu?"
Their little eyes lit up like fireworks.
"WHAT?!"
"How did you even graduate?!"
"Is that even possible? I thought you had to learn the clone jutsu, substitution jutsu, and the transformation jutsu to graduate…"
"Mr. Funny Brows, tell us how you became a ninja!"
Lee coughed with a small blush on his face. It probably wasn't visible underneath the effects of the Eight Gates but still. Lee began retailing his story in hopes of keeping the kids focused on him and his story. Instead of being scared, crying, and fearful.
Eventually a Konoha jonin arrived at the yard gate after the kids were fully sucked into his inspirational and heart-breaking story. They were crying yes, but not out of tears of fright this time.
The jonin found the Academy yard held by a single genin in a blood-soaked green jumpsuit telling a story to fifteen children. The jonin recognized him. There was only two people that wore an outfit like that in Konoha. And considering his size, he knew this had to be the famous protege that Guy couldn't shut up about.
"Rock Lee."
"Yes, sir."
"Are there enemies still present, why are you still utilizing that forbidden jutsu?"
"Oh! Uhm? It's nothing to worry about, sir!" Lee couldn't exactly explain that he hit a breakthrough in his self-made jutsu that rapidly increased his natural healing.
He nodded, "I am relieving you. Go. Find somewhere else that needs you."
"Yes, sir!"
Lee was gone.
The jonin watched the cracked earth around the spot where Lee had been standing, and the two Sound bodies, and the fifteen children still staring at the place the blur had vanished from.
"Guy. What the hell have you been teaching that boy?"
Across the village, in pockets that would not connect their stories for another week, the reports were already starting.
A father on the eastern fringe told his wife about the green blur that had torn apart the Sound squad that cornered them.
An Akimichi jonin, sweating and exhausted in a noodle stand an hour after the last enemy in his district had gone down, told his team about the bowl-cut kid who had cleared a rooftop of Oto-nin while the Akimichi were still rolling down the main street.
An Academy instructor carrying a wounded colleague arrived at the hospital and told the triage nurse that Rock Lee had saved the yard, and the triage nurse repeated it to the next medic, and the next medic repeated it to a chunin who had come in bleeding, and the chunin, sitting with his head bandaged in a waiting room, told the three other chunin sitting with him.
"Guy's student."
"The one who killed a jinchuriki?"
"Yeah, that one. I still find it hard to believe though. I heard the kid couldn't do ninjutsu or genjutsu."
"Is he still out there?"
"Yep."
"I thought the Eight Inner Gates were like forbidden for a reason."
"Not for him, apparently." He chuckled.
One of the four chunin stood up.
"Where are you going?" another asked.
"Back out."
"You can barely walk."
"Some genin brat is out there burning his body down to protect the village. I can't be sitting in this chair when some kid is doing that. I wouldn't be able to look at myself in the mirror in the morning."
He walked out.
The second chunin stood up thirty seconds later and followed him.
The third did not stand up, because the third's leg had been broken in two places and could not be stood on. The third sat in the chair and felt ashamed that he couldn't do more to protect his village.
The fourth chunin handed him a handkerchief for the tears pooling in his eyes.
They didn't speak as the sounds of combat were dying down.