Daiki stared at the spot where the One-Tail Jinchuuriki had been standing in before he departed for a few moments.
Hopefully that didn't come back to bite him in the ass.
'Why can't they just be like Fu?' he groaned inwardly. Besides himself and Killer Bee, she was the most well adjusted Jinchuuriki by far, having none of the hang ups and angst Naruto, Gaara and the like had.
…Actually, considering Killer Bee's obsession with rap and his own…everything. Fu was probably the most well adjusted Jinchuuriki of all now that she had gotten a little bit of freedom from her village with the shadow clone jutsu he'd taught her.
'Lucky number seven, indeed.' Isobu piped in, 'How envious, to have a host that isn't a complete basket case. While I get stuck with you.'
'Shut up bitch, you love it,' Daiki snorted back, 'Besides, you can leave at anytime, remember?'
'After I've finally managed to bring your pitiful chakra reserves up to a level where I can comfortably submerge in them and got my pond built the way I like it?' Isobu snorted right back at him in return, 'Fat chance, this is my house now kid. Ride or die, I go down with my ships like a true captain, you get me?'
Daiki's gaze turned dry and he said nothing in response.
In his minds eye, he saw Isobu shrug unashamedly, 'Bijuu get bored too y'know. And I can see your memories better even than you can.' he defended himself.
Rolling his eyes, Daiki turned around and paused, "…Speaking of basket cases that need to become well adjusted people." he mused to himself and looked directly at Rock Lee, still training himself.
With his eye sight he could see the way his body shook, how sweat formed in his pores and dripped out from his face onto the tiled floor of the hospital, and how his arm and leg, both in a thick casting while they healed from being crushed by Gaara's sand, trembled with pain.
He should leave. He should walk away and leave the idiot that couldn't take a moment to rub two brain cells together even after being given advice to save his life and spare himself a useless, fruitless fight.
'But you won't.' Isobu mused.
'Fucking Rock Lee.' Daiki ground his teeth together and moved, disappearing in a blur of speed.
He touched down a blink later, atop the ledge of the open window, not a sound being made from his feet as he landed.
Rock Lee, face angled towards the ground, did not react and continued his way through a struggling one handed vertical push up, "One thousand, eight hundred and thirty…seven!"
He really needed to work on his sensory abilities. And that was coming from him, the laughing stock of the Chameleon clan for his atrocious sensory abilities in comparison to them.
"You really can't help yourself, huh?" Daiki commented after he finished the push up.
Lee flinched and gave a cry of surprise, tipping forward in his surprise and would have smashed his back into the wall if not for Daiki putting his hand out and stopping him, holding him in place.
"D-Daiki-kun!?" Lee, exhaustion evident on his face and slick with sweat tilted his head back to look up at him from below.
"That's the name, don't wear it out b-, " he stopped himself before he called the older bud, he was mad at him after all, "So what's this then? Shouldn't you be resting?"
"I…I cannot!" Lee shook his head, "The longer I lay around, the further behind I fall!"
Daiki shook his head, "This would just make things worse, you can't train your other side after all, you'll be lopsided," he pointed out, "Not that it matters, your career as a shinobi, is over."
Lee's eyes widened and his whole body stilled, his face scrunching up with something close to despair, and only barely stopping from reaching that tipping point by sheer will. The boy did not want to show such a thing to him after all.
Daiki didn't blame him for that. He would be the same, his pride could never allow it.
"You…found out?" Lee asked, a tremble shaking his body that was not at all related to the training he had been forcing himself through.
"I knew before anybody," Daiki told, levelling him with a serious gaze, "With these eyes, I could literally see your bones breaking down the second things went serious."
"Ah…yes…." Lee trailed off and ducked his head down to avoid his scarlet gaze, "Gaara-san, truly…was not merciful at all."
"You did this to yourself," Daiki replied bluntly and without any mercy, he wasn't going to let him evade, "You were stupid, ignorant, arrogant and did I mention stupid? Because you were stupid."
Just thinking about it again was riling him up the point where his vocabulary was failing him.
He saw Lee's hand below clench into a fist atop the tile, but Daiki wasn't about to stop right now, otherwise he'd just repeat the same mistake in the future without learning anything.
"Sure, Gaara crushed your arm and leg into paste, but given enough time, with help from medic ninja, they'd heal," he continued, "The real problem is what you did to yourself. You weren't ready for the gates, your body wasn't strong enough. And the strain of the gates, cracked your entirely skeletal structure, including your spine. You have fragments of bone across your entire body, and most importantly, a bunch of it lodged in your spine. We don't have a single medical ninja capable of fixing you. Even Tsunade herself, the greatest medical jutsu user in the world, couldn't fix you without you dying on the operating table."
"…s..p…" he heard a bare whisper come from Lee below him, "Stop…please Daiki-kun." the older boy looked back up at him, his resolve and brave face having faded away and in its place, were tears.
The words he wanted to say, were lodged in his throat. In response to the boys tears, he couldn't bring himself to continue lambasting him.
"I know…I know, it's all my fault, I know I was stupid Daiki-kun!" the boy cried out in despair, "But…but if I gave up, if I retreated, I would have lost something important, how could I continue to believe I could be a splendid shinobi using only taijutsu if I bowed then?"
Daiki sighed, "You were already a splendid shinobi."
"W-what?" Lee's crying sob stopped abruptly, but the tears didn't stop flowing as he stared at the younger boy, gobsmacked.
"You were," Daiki shrugged and admitted, "Despite your lack of talent, you kept on going, you worked hard, you put yourself and your body through hell and dedicated everything to the grind and getting strong enough to become a splendid shinobi. And you became one. Being a splendid shinobi doesn't mean you have to be the strongest. The fact you're only sixteen and could beat tons of jonin in a straight up taijutsu battle, shows how hard you worked. But you threw that away Lee."
"I….threw it away?" he whispered, struck. The strength in his arm gave out and he almost fell directly down.
Daiki caught him by the back of his shirt and threw him up, spinning the boy through the air, orienting him around and catching him by the collar a second later, holding him aloft in the air so he could stare directly into his eyes.
"You are a shinobi of Konoha. Promoting the interests of the village and protecting the village, you were already on that path, and you were already on the path to becoming a powerhouse like Gai," he told him, "But you threw that away for a pissing contest. You turned your back on your dream of being a splendid shinobi, to feel strong and impress everyone watching, nothing more, nothing less."
"I…I just wanted to show that I could do it, that I deserved to be there, that I was strong too…" Lee bit his lip, and did not resist, just hung there in his grasp.
The defeat radiating from his form, was palpable.
"To who? Gai? He already knows how strong you are? Sakura, because you took a liking to her? She already knows how strong you are as well, you showed her after all. Me? The Hokage? No, we both know you deserved to be there," Daiki replied, eyes narrowing, "No it was about none us. Well, maybe a bit of you wanting to show off to Sakura, I mean, who doesn't like to show off for the girls? No, in the end, you did it all to show off to Neji, your big time rival. You wanted validation from him."
He got right to the true meat of the issue.
Lee said nothing, but the way his face scrunched up and he looked away, told him all he needed to hear.
"You wanted to prove that hard work can surpass a genius' innate talent. The problem being, you seem to be under the impression that these genius' don't work had too," he told him straight up, "I respect your dedication to the grind Lee, nobody in this village gets it like you and Gai do. But do you think you're the only ones that work hard? Do you think you're the only ones that suffer with not being talented at everything? Here's a newsflash for you Lee, you're not. But you overcame that, at least physically. Suffering and disappointment aren't enough Lee. You can't just be strong, you have to be smart, you can't just hope others will think you deserve it, you have to make yourself worthy and full heartedly believe in it. But all you could think about in that moment even though your future was as vast and as wide as the planet itself, was proving a point to a jackass that believes in nothing but an arbitrary pre-destined fate and put everything, your life, your effort, your dreams, the bitter tears you cried and used as motivation, on the LINE!"
He got so worked up, that by the end, Daiki actually found himself panting as if he'd sprinted through the night and traversed hundreds of miles.
For a few moments, there was silence in the hospital room, only interrupted at all by Daiki's panting.
It didn't take long for him to get himself back under control, a sigh leaving him as he did.
"…Sorry," he apologised with a grimace, realising he'd let his emotions get the better of him again, "I'm just angry at you for doing this to yourself."
"No…it's okay," Lee sniffed, shaking his head as he turned back around to look Daiki in the face, giving him a watery smile, "You…are right after all Daiki-kun. I…was stupid, I did not think things through. Harsh as you were, I am…happy to have heard them, it means a lot to me that you thought I was a splendid shinobi in the end. Even if I can no long-"
"Yeah, I'm gonna cut you off there bud," Daiki sighed, "This isn't the end for your dreams yet."
"…Ah?" Rock Lee gave him a confused look.
Daiki said nothing in response and instead, drew upon some of the stored chakra within his Heavenly Star Seal and made a single hand seal. The hand holding Lee, lit up with a soft green aura, that turned into a shimmering white as he directed the stored chakra into it with his eyes and amplified it.
"Ah!" Lee's eyes widened as the white aura spread from Daiki's hand until it covered his whole body. The bowl-cut haired boy looking to his arm in the cast in something akin to awe, "The pain…it's fading away?"
Within moments, it was done and Daiki lowered the boy he was holding up to the ground. His feet, one in a massive cast just like his arm touched the ground, and beyond hunching over slightly because of the bone fragments lodged in his spine, he stayed on his feet.
"…My leg and arm…you healed them?" Lee stared at him, mouth agape.
"I healed everything I could," Daiki nodded, it had taken a not so small chunk of the stored chakra to do so, but it was not all that much in the grand scheme of things, conversion wise, about a year or so of life force, "I can't do anything about the fragments of bone in you. If I could, I would have already."
"…Yes, I suppose you would, you are kind after all Daiki-kun," Lee replied, hiding the disappointment, "Even if I cannot continue the path of being a shinobi, this act and your words, mean a lot to me."
"Look, I know this will sound weird after everything I just said, but you'll be a shinobi again, I promise," Daiki declared, "I don't have the skill to heal you fully, and Tsunade doesn't have the ability to keep you alive without a doubt during a surgery, not to mention she isn't even in the village anymore. But, I'll get her back here to fix you up, and I'll use my jutsu to keep you alive and make sure you don't die in the process." he promised.
"Daiki-kun….?" Rock Lee's eyes filled with tears, and the boy spread his arms wide, cast and all and absolutely bawled as he hugged Daiki.
Daiki grimaced at the contact, but did let him cry it out, "There….there?" he awkwardly pat him on the back.