Fic: Naruto, "The Easy Part," Lee/Sakura
Title: The Easy Part
Fandom: Naruto
Pairing: Lee/Sakura
Author: Swift
Recipient: Redulet
Rating: PG
Summary: The fight really shouldn't be the easy part of the mission.
Notes: Set late in the timeskip period, after Neji becomes a jounin and Lee, Sakura, and Tenten are chuunin. And while I originally had the scene where they fight (as per your request for them kicking ass), in the end I was just not happy with it at all. So I let it fade to black on the fight, because I like it as a stopping point much better than what I had originally.
"Don't worry about them," Tenten told Sakura quietly as they watched Gai and Lee go through some arcane pre-mission ritual that seemed to involve Lee carrying a lot of very big rocks. "This is their idea of last-minute training. They'll actually stop messing around and start working when we're on the mission. Er, sort of."
Sakura was sure that Lee would actually do his job because Lee, as silly as he tended to be, was the type that wouldn't let anything get in the way of his mission. She had less confidence about Gai since she didn't know him very well, but… he was an elite jounin, as good a ninja as Kakashi was, so he must have been able to put aside his antics and work, right?
"I'm sorry, Gai-sensei!" Lee said, eyes watering with emotion as he put down his burden of rocks. "I've failed in my training!"
"It's all right, Lee!" Gai clasped his star pupil on the shoulder, looking up at the sky as if for inspiration. "Just try again next time, and don't let this setback distract you from the mission at hand!"
…or maybe he wouldn't put aside his antics and work. Sakura could see why Neji had been so eager to go on classified S-rank missions the second he was promoted to jounin, and she suddenly felt very, very sorry for Tenten. She could also see why they would probably need a medic on their missions. What she didn't see was why someone with rudimentary field medic training couldn't have done it. Like Ino… well, all right, not Ino. She would have killed them by now.
"Let's go," Tenten said loudly, shepherding her teacher and her teammate into following her and Sakura. "If we don't leave now, we won't be on the mission site in time." They were supposed to guard the wedding of a feudal lord's daughter; they didn't expect anything to happen, but the people involved were important enough that the mission was a B-rank instead of a C-rank.
"So eager to see the union of two beautiful people in the springtime of their youth! I'm so proud of you, Tenten!" Gai said, striding ahead of the group. "I'm sure it gives you dreams of your own wedding!" Tenten rolled her eyes, and Sakura laughed softly. It was very different from working on a team with Kakashi, who would have been reading his book while walked, or Tsunade, who wouldn't be doing a mission like this in the first place. Sakura spent most of her time that she wasn't training or with another team in the office, because that's where Tsunade did most of her work. "But it is not just something for a woman to think of! Lee, you should be thinking of these kinds of things, too!" Lee looked automatically at Sakura, blushed, and quickly looked away again.
It was going to be a very long trip to the feudal lord's estate.
--
Things went perfectly up until the end of the ceremony. As it turned out, the father of the bride owed a debt to a local gangster and had neglected to tell Tsunade that the gang had threatened to interrupt the wedding because it would have cost so much more to make it into an A-ranked mission (and that gave Sakura a sudden, unpleasant flashback to her very first C-ranked mission, the one where the bridge-builder had neglected to tell them that there was an S-ranked missing-nin out to get him). The gangster had apparently decided that the girl would be an appropriate restitution, and crashed the wedding.
"They went this way," Sakura said. "They're using a genjutsu to hide their tracks, but it's not a very good one." She'd never heard of doing that before, mostly because a shinobi good enough to do that was good enough to take to the trees. A pursuer good enough to follow from the trees was almost certainly good enough to break a sloppy genjutsu like this one.
"I'm glad we brought you along. We'd have never seen that without Neji." Tenten looked down at the tracks revealed when Sakura broke the genjutsu. "We… well, we kind of got sloppy, with him seeing through those things for us all the time. It looks like they're dragging something with them- a sword, I think, and a big one." If Tenten thought the drag-mark was from a big sword, Sakura would believe her- she carried so many weapons strapped to her body that she could probably identify one from even less. "If they're on foot and weighted down with equipment like that and a kidnapped girl, Lee should be able to catch up to them in no time." He and Gai had gone ahead rather unintentionally, forgetting that they were much faster than two shinobi who weren't focused on brute strength.
What they'd forgotten, of course, was that if there was one shinobi in their entire village who wouldn't see through a genjutsu it was Rock Lee. He was waiting for them a few yards ahead, perched in a tree.
"Gai-sensei went ahead," he said, no trace of embarrassment in his voice. "I couldn't spot them, so he told me to wait for you."
They went on, and another few yards ahead they ran into their first trap. Being of about the same quality as the genjutsu, it went off after they were already past it; they heat and light of the exploding tag were hidden by the trees behind them by the time it went off.
"Those traps are almost as bad as Naruto's," Sakura said. She was about to say something else, but was stopped by Tenten's arm suddenly jerking out in front of her.
"Get back," she said. "There's something up there." She motioned for Sakura and Lee to stand back and crept forward, stepping carefully around something that Sakura couldn't tell apart from the ground. "I don't know why they were doing that kind of baby stuff before, if they could make something this good. Look, if you guys go around the side here-" and she gestured to where she meant "-you should be able to get through all right. I can hear them up ahead, so this must be the last line of defense for them. Might explain why it's so much better than the others- it's probably been set up this whole time, while the others were spur of the moment. I'll stay back here and disable this, so we can get out without worrying about setting it off."
Lee and Sakura went on, and Tenten had been right. The gangsters and their hired shinobi were there with the girl in her wedding dress. But there was no sign of Gai anywhere, and no sign that there had been a fight. They were on their own.
"It doesn't look like they have any traps set up," Sakura murmured. She and Lee crouched down behind the trees, staying as far from the enemy as they could without ending up back in the possible territory of the trap, whatever it had been. "But I'm not Tenten, so I could be wrong about that."
The shinobi looked like low-level Hidden Mist thugs. Hired nin on these sorts of missions usually were, since that village was the least scrupulous about the sort of clients it took on. Kidnapping a woman from her wedding because her father owed a gangster a debt would never have cleared Tsunade's desk in Hidden Leaf, but it was standard procedure for Hidden Mist.
"Don't sell yourself short, Sakura." Lee leaned forward and put a hand on her arm. He had that look, the one that meant he was about to give some impassioned speech or turn lovestruck and go on about how he was going to someday win Sakura's heart. But he didn't say anything to that effect, which was probably a first for him- instead, he looked back out at the enemy shinobi. "If you say there are no traps there, I trust you. I would trust you with my life." It was a very Lee thing to say, and he meant every word of it. He always did.
"…thank you, Lee." It was all she could really say. After all, it hadn't been one of his ridiculous speeches with hearts and flowers that she could write off. Sakura couldn't deride something said like that, and even less so in the middle of a mission. "If you can distract them, I'll go in and get her out." Lee was the perfect distraction, loud and flashy and strong enough to take on the group.
"Of course. I won't let any of them lay a finger on you," he promised, and she sighed inwardly. That was the Lee she was used to.
She got a feeling that the fight was going to be the easiest part of this mission.
Fandom: Naruto
Pairing: Lee/Sakura
Author: Swift
Recipient: Redulet
Rating: PG
Summary: The fight really shouldn't be the easy part of the mission.
Notes: Set late in the timeskip period, after Neji becomes a jounin and Lee, Sakura, and Tenten are chuunin. And while I originally had the scene where they fight (as per your request for them kicking ass), in the end I was just not happy with it at all. So I let it fade to black on the fight, because I like it as a stopping point much better than what I had originally.
"Don't worry about them," Tenten told Sakura quietly as they watched Gai and Lee go through some arcane pre-mission ritual that seemed to involve Lee carrying a lot of very big rocks. "This is their idea of last-minute training. They'll actually stop messing around and start working when we're on the mission. Er, sort of."
Sakura was sure that Lee would actually do his job because Lee, as silly as he tended to be, was the type that wouldn't let anything get in the way of his mission. She had less confidence about Gai since she didn't know him very well, but… he was an elite jounin, as good a ninja as Kakashi was, so he must have been able to put aside his antics and work, right?
"I'm sorry, Gai-sensei!" Lee said, eyes watering with emotion as he put down his burden of rocks. "I've failed in my training!"
"It's all right, Lee!" Gai clasped his star pupil on the shoulder, looking up at the sky as if for inspiration. "Just try again next time, and don't let this setback distract you from the mission at hand!"
…or maybe he wouldn't put aside his antics and work. Sakura could see why Neji had been so eager to go on classified S-rank missions the second he was promoted to jounin, and she suddenly felt very, very sorry for Tenten. She could also see why they would probably need a medic on their missions. What she didn't see was why someone with rudimentary field medic training couldn't have done it. Like Ino… well, all right, not Ino. She would have killed them by now.
"Let's go," Tenten said loudly, shepherding her teacher and her teammate into following her and Sakura. "If we don't leave now, we won't be on the mission site in time." They were supposed to guard the wedding of a feudal lord's daughter; they didn't expect anything to happen, but the people involved were important enough that the mission was a B-rank instead of a C-rank.
"So eager to see the union of two beautiful people in the springtime of their youth! I'm so proud of you, Tenten!" Gai said, striding ahead of the group. "I'm sure it gives you dreams of your own wedding!" Tenten rolled her eyes, and Sakura laughed softly. It was very different from working on a team with Kakashi, who would have been reading his book while walked, or Tsunade, who wouldn't be doing a mission like this in the first place. Sakura spent most of her time that she wasn't training or with another team in the office, because that's where Tsunade did most of her work. "But it is not just something for a woman to think of! Lee, you should be thinking of these kinds of things, too!" Lee looked automatically at Sakura, blushed, and quickly looked away again.
It was going to be a very long trip to the feudal lord's estate.
--
Things went perfectly up until the end of the ceremony. As it turned out, the father of the bride owed a debt to a local gangster and had neglected to tell Tsunade that the gang had threatened to interrupt the wedding because it would have cost so much more to make it into an A-ranked mission (and that gave Sakura a sudden, unpleasant flashback to her very first C-ranked mission, the one where the bridge-builder had neglected to tell them that there was an S-ranked missing-nin out to get him). The gangster had apparently decided that the girl would be an appropriate restitution, and crashed the wedding.
"They went this way," Sakura said. "They're using a genjutsu to hide their tracks, but it's not a very good one." She'd never heard of doing that before, mostly because a shinobi good enough to do that was good enough to take to the trees. A pursuer good enough to follow from the trees was almost certainly good enough to break a sloppy genjutsu like this one.
"I'm glad we brought you along. We'd have never seen that without Neji." Tenten looked down at the tracks revealed when Sakura broke the genjutsu. "We… well, we kind of got sloppy, with him seeing through those things for us all the time. It looks like they're dragging something with them- a sword, I think, and a big one." If Tenten thought the drag-mark was from a big sword, Sakura would believe her- she carried so many weapons strapped to her body that she could probably identify one from even less. "If they're on foot and weighted down with equipment like that and a kidnapped girl, Lee should be able to catch up to them in no time." He and Gai had gone ahead rather unintentionally, forgetting that they were much faster than two shinobi who weren't focused on brute strength.
What they'd forgotten, of course, was that if there was one shinobi in their entire village who wouldn't see through a genjutsu it was Rock Lee. He was waiting for them a few yards ahead, perched in a tree.
"Gai-sensei went ahead," he said, no trace of embarrassment in his voice. "I couldn't spot them, so he told me to wait for you."
They went on, and another few yards ahead they ran into their first trap. Being of about the same quality as the genjutsu, it went off after they were already past it; they heat and light of the exploding tag were hidden by the trees behind them by the time it went off.
"Those traps are almost as bad as Naruto's," Sakura said. She was about to say something else, but was stopped by Tenten's arm suddenly jerking out in front of her.
"Get back," she said. "There's something up there." She motioned for Sakura and Lee to stand back and crept forward, stepping carefully around something that Sakura couldn't tell apart from the ground. "I don't know why they were doing that kind of baby stuff before, if they could make something this good. Look, if you guys go around the side here-" and she gestured to where she meant "-you should be able to get through all right. I can hear them up ahead, so this must be the last line of defense for them. Might explain why it's so much better than the others- it's probably been set up this whole time, while the others were spur of the moment. I'll stay back here and disable this, so we can get out without worrying about setting it off."
Lee and Sakura went on, and Tenten had been right. The gangsters and their hired shinobi were there with the girl in her wedding dress. But there was no sign of Gai anywhere, and no sign that there had been a fight. They were on their own.
"It doesn't look like they have any traps set up," Sakura murmured. She and Lee crouched down behind the trees, staying as far from the enemy as they could without ending up back in the possible territory of the trap, whatever it had been. "But I'm not Tenten, so I could be wrong about that."
The shinobi looked like low-level Hidden Mist thugs. Hired nin on these sorts of missions usually were, since that village was the least scrupulous about the sort of clients it took on. Kidnapping a woman from her wedding because her father owed a gangster a debt would never have cleared Tsunade's desk in Hidden Leaf, but it was standard procedure for Hidden Mist.
"Don't sell yourself short, Sakura." Lee leaned forward and put a hand on her arm. He had that look, the one that meant he was about to give some impassioned speech or turn lovestruck and go on about how he was going to someday win Sakura's heart. But he didn't say anything to that effect, which was probably a first for him- instead, he looked back out at the enemy shinobi. "If you say there are no traps there, I trust you. I would trust you with my life." It was a very Lee thing to say, and he meant every word of it. He always did.
"…thank you, Lee." It was all she could really say. After all, it hadn't been one of his ridiculous speeches with hearts and flowers that she could write off. Sakura couldn't deride something said like that, and even less so in the middle of a mission. "If you can distract them, I'll go in and get her out." Lee was the perfect distraction, loud and flashy and strong enough to take on the group.
"Of course. I won't let any of them lay a finger on you," he promised, and she sighed inwardly. That was the Lee she was used to.
She got a feeling that the fight was going to be the easiest part of this mission.