Dammit. I really didn't want to fight Lee. He's not going to go down easy, hell he'll get back up from just about anything. I really wish I knew some genjutsu right now, I'll have to add that to the things Orochimaru will teach me before I kill him.
...
Well, let's try and do this without ninjutsu. That way once I face Gaara I can use water release techniques. Let's be honest, Gaara is going to breeze through the competition too. Hell I won't be surprised if he wins it all, even with Sasuke and I here. We're limited and he's not. Plus he's Gaara.
"Begin!" Eito shunshins a fair distance away from us.
The exact same instant Eito said begin, Lee rockets forward with the intent of punching me in the temple. I hurriedly raise put my left arm in defense but that didn't slow down his attack at all. Instead of his fist hitting my face, both his fist and my arm hit me.
"How youthful!" Lee happily says as he expertly dances away from me. "Everyone that I spar with back home would have dodged! No one but Gai-sensei blocks my hits anymore."
"Yeah, that's because you hit like a boulder rolling down a mountain." I wanted to say freight train, but those don't exist here. I rub my face, I'm very glad my mask stayed on through that hit. Whatever it's made out of is some quality material.
He lunges in again, this time going for a swift punch in the gut. I bar both my arms in an X to intercept his hit. A loud dull thud fills the stadium and a few people wince in sympathy for me.
The idiots don't know anything.
I didn't budge. Once his hit connected, which it most certainly did, I brought out more of my Jiongu enhanced strength.
"Aw don't be like that! You don't have to hold back!" Lee says as he unleashes a flurry of quick and precise blows on me.
"Sorry kid," I'm blocking and deflecting each one, we're blurs to untrained eyes. I can hear the people in the stands starting to cheer both of us on as Lee and I fly across the field in a deadly dance of punches and kicks. "I'm not used to fighting people weaker than me. I held back for your safety."
A heavy kick slams into my chest and I'm thrown across the ground and skid to a stop near our starting point. I haul myself back up to my feet and casually dust myself off. "Right, definitely hit a pressure point there."
"I am not weak!" Lee shouts at me. "I may not be able to use ninjutsu or genjutsu, but I shall become a strong shinobi using taijutsu alone! It's my nindo, my shinobi way, to always improve myself! To push myself to reach a new level and then surpass that one too! Surely another taijutsu specialist can respect that."
"That's nice buddy, but if that's all the harder you can hit I'm going to be fine." This time I lunge at the green clad gennin, I've had enough of letting him beat me to a pulp.
We're exact opposites of earlier, I'm aiming a punch straight to his solar plexus and he is holding his arms in an X to block me. Except this time I'll be taking his advice. I won't hold back, I'm going to bring out the full force of the Jiongu.
Once my fist connects to his arms, they buckle and cave back into his chest. I don't stop my blow there, I keep pushing forward, putting as much force behind the punch as possible. It's so strong that Lee is pushed backwards five meters and leaves deep grooves in the ground from where his feet dug into it.
"So," I cockily say as I straighten up, "any chance of a surrender?"
Two insanely loud crashes drowned out all other noise. Shit.
A kick slams into the back of my head and I'm forced to eat dirt.
"Proctor, I would call the fight. He could need medical attention after that, I may have been a bit too... excited." Lee shakily tells Eito. Huh, he must not have expected me to biff it.
"Nah I'm good." I push myself up and see a suspiciously head shaped dent in the ground. That's not embarrassing at all. "Just because you got a little speed boost doesn't mean you can hit me hard enough to end the fight. Sure you hit harder now, but it still isn't enough."
"You sure kid?" Eito asks from a chair he must have unsealed while Lee and I were fighting. Lazy bastard.
"Yeah I can keep going." I hope from one foot to the other.
"Continue." Eito blandly says as he leans back deeper into the chair.
Lee blurs, but this time I'm ready for him. I can still track him now that I know how fast he's moving and what to look for. He aims three quick punches at my torso and I deflect all but one. The one that made it through didn't cause any damage, it just glanced off of my side.
Lee breaks away from me and skids to a stop. "You're right, like this I won't be able to win."
"Then surrender?" I offer. "It's not that hard to say."
"Gate of Opening: Release!"
"Well that's not good." I mutter to myself. "How many can you op-"
A foot plows into my gut, launching me up into the air. Instantly a determined Lee is right behind me with his bandages flowing behind him. In the next moment I'm bound by his bandages and he grips me in a bear hug of steel. Then he spins us both, everything around us blurs as he spins faster and faster. He rockets us both at the ground at absurd speeds and we both crater into it.
"Is he okay?" One of the spectators say.
Lee struggles to rise and pulls himself out of the new hole in the ground.
"Where's the other one?"
"That was crazy! How do you even learn how to do that?"
"Did... did he kill him?"
"Ow." My voice cuts through all of the hushed whispers coming from the stands. "Okay green boy -wow that was ironic- you can hit hard."
"Are you alright down there?" Lee says as he peers down the small indention he made in the ground. "Should I call for a medic?"
"Nah I'm good." I cheerfully call up to him.
"Kami damn it Green, why are you so nonchalant about this?" I hear Sasuke say to himself from the gazebo. "He literally put you in the ground."
Lee looks down at me with a great deal of concern. "Then why haven't you gotten up?"
"There's a pretty bird flying above us. I got distracted by it. I mean it's like a little flying rainbow! Look at it!"
"That idiot!" Sasuke rages.
"Really?" Lee looks skyward in search of the mysterious bird that I'm so fascinated by. "I don't see a bird."
I explode upwards and land a vicious uppercut to Lee's exposed gut and it throws him skyward. I leap up in the air after him and it's my turn to grab him and start spinning.
"Holy crap he's doing Lee's move against him!" Kiba shouts from the gazebo.
"You shouldn't be able to do the front lotus!" Lee exclaims as our velocity increases further. "You have to open the first gate to use it!"
"That's where you're wrong, to be capable of the front lotus you simple need to have enough strength. Did you really think that only the Eight Inner Gates granted the user inhuman strength? Besides, this isn't the front lotus."
"What?"
I'm not spinning us how Lee did, I'm spinning us parallel to the ground. Lee's spin was like a tornado, while mine is like the rotation of a windmill. "Do you think that I want to slam into the ground again? No thank you."
I release Lee and he rockets downward and slams into the ground, leaving another crater next to the first.
"Hey, those could be eyes for a smiley face from way up here. Now I just need to form a mouth and the picture is perfect! Crap how am I going to land?"
"Gate of Healing: Release!" Lee flies out of the crater and stands below me.
"That's not good at all." I'm heading right for him, we're going to run into each other.
Lee's leg muscles coil as he squats low, then he does something unexpected. He jumps straight up at me with way too much momentum.
"This is going to hurt."
...
if you want to read ahead of the public release you can join my p atreon :
p atreon.com/CarriePoppins