Sand Ninjas are tougher, but Rock Lee is the toughest

Fandom: Naruto
Relationship: Gaara/Rock Lee
Characters: Rock Lee, Gaara, Kankuro, OC
Language: English

I haven’t written a fanfic in ages, and this is my first attempt in the Naruto fandom. Of course I had to start with GaaLee, my favourite ship! Just implied in this fic, but still, it’s there!
I’m not a writer, but I have so many ideas in my mind, sometimes I have to put some of them in words.
Also, English is not my first language, so you’ll probably find a lot of mistakes, because the fic is also unbetaed. Sorry!
The fic is really just a silly thing, but please let me know if I missed some tag and/or warning I should have added. Thanks!

Sand ninjas were usually serious, no-nonsense people. As many others in the shinobi world some of them were old enough to be able to remember the Ninja Wars. They survived them. And also, as it happened in many villages, they survived a lot of domestic problems, like the cruelty of the Fourth Kazekage. Most of them had also survived the years of the current Kazekage’s childhood, when he was an abused, murderous child.

Sand ninjas were, because of this, tougher than other shinobis, they had lived in Hell in their own village, they had known real fear. So, there weren’t many things that scared them anymore. Not the hideous beasts that populated the desert. Not the deadly sandstorms that periodically invaded their village. All those were normal occurrence for the sand ninjas. That’s why they were stronger, harder, sterner than any other village’s shinobis.

So, if a sand ninja told you that they witnessed something scary, well, you believed without hesitation that the thing was serious.

That is what happened to Ito, when she came back from a mission and was joined by her friend Seki to share a bottle and their latest experiences. Seki hadn’t been on a mission, but he worked in the Kazekage's Office building, so he often had some juicy gossip to tell. And when he told his friend that while she was away something scary had happened there, Ito knew he wasn’t joking, or exaggerating. She liked to tease him, to say that since he started working in the Kazekage's Office he had become a desk jockey, not even a ninja anymore. But those were precisely just jokes, Ito knew her friend’s valour, she knew he was still a strong and brave shinobi, not easily scared. So she prepared herself to give him her complete attention about what he was going to tell.

 

“It happened a couple of days ago” Seki started his story: “I was bringing some documents to the Kazekage’s Office so he could sign them, when I felt an incredible surge of chakra coming from there. I rushed to the office and opened the door. Inside there were only the Kazekage and that Leaf envoy, you know? The one with the big eyebrows? Rock Lee?”

“Yes, of course I know him, I saw hm around, he’s impossible to miss, with that green and orange outfit of his he’s as subtle as a flash bomb!”

“Yeah, that one. Well, the moment I opened the door he smiled at me and said that everything was under control and we didn’t need to worry, but the Kazekage looked furious. I asked him, very stupidly in retrospect, if everything was alright, but he didn’t answer and once again the Leaf ninja told me that there wasn’t anything to worry about: ‘The Kazekage and I just had a little argument,’ he said: ‘and he is mildly upset, but, really, everything is under control.’ But the murderous look on Lord Gaara’s face didn’t’ speak to me about ‘mildly upset’, it looked more like ‘violently homicidal’.”

“Oh my Gods! How did you menage to stay calm?” asked Ito: “No, actually, how the Leaf ninja managed that?!”

Her friend smiled mischievously: “Oh, it’s worse than that!”

“Worse?!?”

“Yeah, let me finish!” Seki said, gesturing with his hands to his friend to wait for the best part: “After a short while other people came, everyone was really worried, or more correctly we were all scared as hell, and then Kankuro-sama arrived too. He asked the Kazekage, very calmly, to stop what he was doing – I’m paraphrasing here – and the Kazekage finally spoke and said: ‘I will stop when Lee apologises to me.’”

“So it was all the Leaf’s fault?” asked Ito with disbelief: “What had he done to provoke such a reaction?!?”

“I haven’t the foggiest idea. But I’m not finished yet! Because, guess what the guy answered Lord Gaara’s statement?”

“Oh, no! Let me guess… he didn’t apologise?!?” Ito was more and more shocked by Seki’s story.

“To be precise: he laughed!”

“Laughed?!?!”

“Yeah, he laughed, like the Kazekage had just told a delightful joke!” answered Seki, with amusement in his voice: he had prepared this tale for days waiting for Ito to come back so he could tell her everything, and now he was enjoying the effects of his narrative. He continued, knowing he was getting close to the ending: “And after laughing he said: ‘I will not apologise, because I did nothing wrong, and I am sure the Kazekage-sama will agree with me if he only give me the chance to explain’, and at those words the look on Lord Gaara’s face became even more murderous!”

“I can’t believe it! Does that guy have a death wish?”

Seki laughed briefly: “Probably, because, again, I haven’t told you the worst part yet!”

“Then what are you waiting for?!?”

Very satisfied by the excitement he created with his story, and ready to deliver to Ito the last blow, Seki indulged his friend: “Ok, then brace yourself. All the time, while the Kazekage was looking at him with that frightful expression, and his chakra was terrorising the entire building, and the Leaf shinobi smiled, reassured us, laughed and refused to apologise, the sand was on him!”

“WHAT?!?!” Ito was flabbergasted.

Seki nodded: “Yes, he had the sand circling his ankles, surging to his legs, reaching his chest and arms, and he acted like it was absolutely harmless, like he didn’t even notice!”

There was a pause, in which Seki gave his friend time to recover, and himself too, because telling his story made the scene come back very vividly in his mind, and it was a dreadful memory.

After a while Ito shook her head, and eventually asked: “And then? What did you all do? How did you solve the situation?”

“Oh, we didn’t!”

“What do you mean?”

Seki shrugged: “Kankuro-san watched the two of them for a spell, then said – and I quote – ‘I’m not dealing with this shit!’. He pushed us outside, closed the door and told everyone to go back to our jobs. I thought that my documents weren’t so urgent after all, and went back to my office.”

Ito looked at her friend with open wide eyes: “And the Leaf? Is he…”

“Oh, he’s fine” explained Seki: “I saw him later that day, he looked uninjured.”

Ito shook her head again, still a little in disbelief about everything her friend had just told her.

“That Rock Lee…” she finally said: “He’s nuts!”

“Oh, yeah!” Seki agreed: “Mad as a box of frogs!”

They both remained in silence after that, thinking about that crazy leaf ninja: how he managed to survive until then was a real mystery.

THE END

The title of this fic is horrible, but I couldn't find a better one. While I was writing it the title was "Lee vs the Sand", that is not exceptional, but funnier, IMO. But just when I was posting the fic I thought it was a bit spoiler, so I changed it. What do you think?