Rōshi's lava armor spread across his body like a second skin. It started at his chest and rolled outward, down his arms, across his shoulders, over his legs, until every inch of the old man was coated in molten rock that glowed orange and red and gave off heat that warped the air for meters in every direction. The ground beneath his feet softened and sank. Grass within ten feet of him caught fire and burned to nothing.
Lee's water armor had already formed. The dense layer of water chakra that coated his body from head to toe shimmered blue under the battlefield smoke. The molecules were packed tight, pressurized beyond what natural water could achieve, and where Rōshi's armor burned the world around him, Lee's armor cooled the air it touched.
They looked at each other across the space between them. Fire and water. Lava and ocean. The old man wreathed in molten earth and the boy wrapped in pressurized sea.
Rōshi rushed in first. His fist came in heavy, a straight right trailing lava that dripped from his knuckles and left a burning line across the ground as the arm swung forward. Lee stepped inside the punch and caught Rōshi's wrist with his left hand. Steam erupted from the contact point, a screaming white burst where water met lava, but Lee's armor held. His right hand drew the tonfa from his belt and it was coated before it cleared the loop, the water extending along the weapon in a sheath of pressurized blue.
Lee drove the waterized tonfa into Rōshi's ribs. The lava armor cracked at the point of impact and steam billowed outward and Rōshi's body folded sideways from the force. Lee followed with a horizontal sweep aimed at Rōshi's jaw. Rōshi pulled his head back and the tonfa cut the air in front of his nose. Lee reversed direction and brought the tonfa down on Rōshi's collarbone. The lava cracked again. Rōshi staggered.
Rōshi swung wild with his left. Lee leaned away and the lava fist passed his face close enough to singe his eyebrows through the water armor. Lee switched. The tonfa went back to his belt and the nunchaku formed together from his weights, both handles wrapped in pressurized water that extended along the chains and turned the weapon into a whip of blue steel.
The nunchaku cracked across Rōshi's forearm as the old man tried to guard. The strike hit hard enough to drop his arm, exposing his center. Lee's foot drove into Rōshi's stomach and the lava there shattered like cooling rock and Rōshi skidded backward spitting blood.
Rōshi charged back in. Both fists swinging, lava dripping, the heat coming off him in waves that made the battlefield shimmer. Lee's nunchaku intercepted the first punch, the handle striking from below redirecting the force upward. The second punch came and Lee ducked it and whipped the nunchaku upward into Rōshi's chin. The old man's head snapped back. Lee followed with a spinning kick to the ribs that sent him sliding back.
Lee pressed. The nunchaku was formed into a chain whip. The longer reach let him hit Rōshi from outside the lava's heat radius. The weighted end cracked across Rōshi's shoulder, his knee, his forearm, each hit shattering the lava armor at the point of contact, each hit trailing steam. Rōshi couldn't close the distance because every time he stepped forward the chain whip caught him somewhere new.
Rōshi tried to create distance. His hands blurred and he spewed a spread of molten boulders at Lee. Lee's legs carried him laterally, weaving between the projectiles, the chain whip still moving. A boulder hit the ground behind Lee and splashed molten rock across a cluster of Stone shinobi who had been fighting a Leaf squad. They screamed as the lava ate through them.
Lee saw it happen. He saw Stone shinobi die from their own jinchuriki's missed attack. Across the field, a Konoha chunin caught a splash of lava on his arm and went down screaming, rolling in the dirt trying to put out something that wasn't fire.
The lava wasn't Lee's problem. It was everyone else's.
Lee shifted to the staff. The weights on his belt separated and linked and the weapon formed in his hands and the water coating extended across its full length. He planted his feet and swung, the waterized staff cutting a wide arc that caught Rōshi across the chest and drove him backward fifteen meters in a single hit.
Rōshi crashed through a pile of battlefield wreckage, lava armor trailing molten debris. He came out of the rubble with his hair smoking and his jaw clenched and a look on his face that said the weapons were a problem he hadn't expected.
The boy had four weapons. Each one different. Each one coated in that damn water. The fists and the lava had been an even exchange in the first phase. Now the weapons gave Lee reach advantages that Rōshi's bare fists couldn't match. The chain whip hit him from ten meters away. The staff drove him back from five. The nunchaku intercepted his attacks before they arrived. And the tonfa at close range cracked his lava armor with every hit.
Rōshi was losing.
He opened his mouth and fired the biggest Scorching Stream Rock he'd thrown yet. A single massive glob of molten rock the size of a wagon, aimed dead center at Lee's chest.
Lee planted the staff and vaulted over it. The molten mass hit the ground behind him and erupted into a pool of lava that spread across the battlefield in every direction. More screams from both sides. More shinobi caught in the splash.
Rōshi watched the lava pool spread and the screaming shinobi and his own allies melting alongside the enemy and something in his expression hardened past what it had been.
He'd been fighting a war he didn't want to fight on behalf of a village he'd temporarily abandoned. But these were still his people dying around him. The boy in the green suit was beating him with tools and water and his own lava was killing more of his own army than it was killing the enemy.
Son Gokū's chakra erupted.
The transformation was violent. Red chakra burst from Rōshi's body in a wave that knocked Lee backward and sent nearby combatants on both sides stumbling. The lava armor didn't disappear. It was consumed. Swallowed by a translucent red shroud that bubbled and boiled around Rōshi's body like liquid fire. The shroud shaped itself around him, vaguely simian, and a single tail of dense red chakra extended from his lower back and lashed the air behind him.
The heat doubled. Then tripled. The ground beneath Rōshi didn't just soften. It melted into a circle of molten earth that spread outward from his feet.
Lee's water armor evaporated.
The bijuu chakra's heat output overwhelmed it in a single second. The pressurized water that had been coating Lee's body since the fight began flashed to steam and was gone, and Lee stood in the open air without his elemental protection for the first time since the battle started.
Lee didn't hesitate. His hands found his leg warmers. The weights, all of them, came free. Thousands of pounds of chakra metal in each hand. Lee hurled them at Rōshi one after the other.
The first weight hit Rōshi in the chest. The Version 1 shroud caught it and the bijuu chakra should have deflected it but the sheer mass was something chakra couldn't argue with. Rōshi's feet left trenches in the molten ground as he slid backward. The second weight hit him in the stomach before he'd recovered from the first and drove him back another ten meters. Third, fourth, fifth, Rōshi couldn't stop himself from being forced backwards.
Rōshi looked down at the slabs of metal at his feet. Each one had sunk into the softened earth from its own weight. He kicked one experimentally and it didn't move.
He looked up at Lee.
Lee was lighter. Faster. And his hands at his side as he yelled.
"HOOOOH!!!!"
The First Gate opened.
The Second Gate.
Lee's body surged with re-energized power.
Rōshi came at him. The Version 1 shroud made the old man faster than he'd been in any previous phase. His fist came in and Lee blocked it on his forearm and the bijuu chakra burned through his sleeve and scorched the skin beneath. Lee gritted his teeth and countered with a knee to Rōshi's gut. The shroud absorbed some of the impact but not all and Rōshi folded forward. Lee's elbow came down on the back of his head and drove him into the ground.
Rōshi's hands caught the earth and he kicked upward from the pushup position. Both feet hit Lee in the chest and launched him backward. Lee flipped several times and landed and Rōshi was already on him, faster than before, the tail whipping around from behind.
Lee ducked the tail and drove a straight right into Rōshi's jaw. Rōshi's head rocked sideways but the chakra shroud cushioned the blow. Rōshi grabbed Lee's extended arm with both hands and headbutted him. Lee's nose cracked. Blood sprayed. Rōshi still had his arm and his knee came up into Lee's ribs. Once. Twice. Three times, each hit burning through Lee's suit and searing the skin beneath.
Lee ripped his arm free and jumped back. Three burns across his ribs, already healing, the pain sharp and fading.
Then something he had never seen before happened.
A limb of red chakra extended from Rōshi's shroud. A third arm, made entirely of bijuu chakra, that reached out from Rōshi's right side and stretched across the distance between them faster than Lee could react.
The chakra hand closed around Lee's ankle.
Lee looked down at it. He had one thought before it moved.
What is th-
The arm whipped upward and slammed Lee into the ground. The impact cratered the earth beneath him. Before Lee could process the pain the arm lifted him and slammed him down again. And again. And again. Left, right, center, each slam driving Lee's body into a new crater, each impact sending shockwaves through the battlefield that nearby shinobi felt in their teeth.
Seven times. Eight. Nine. The chakra arm did not tire. It did not slow down. It grabbed him by the leg and used him like a man beating dust out of a rug.
Lee's body screamed. His bones cracked and healed and cracked again. His skin split and mended and split. His Body Supremacy Jutsu was working as fast as it could but the damage was coming faster than the healing.
He had to get free.
He punched the chakra arm. His fist connected and the red chakra rippled but didn't break. He chopped at it. It didn't sever. He tried to kick it. His free leg struck the arm and it was like kicking a river. The chakra deformed and reformed around his foot and kept swinging him.
Lee couldn't break it. He couldn't cut it. He couldn't overpower it with what he had.
The Third Gate opened. More strength. More speed. He punched the arm again and the chakra shuddered but held.
The Fourth Gate. His muscles began to tear. He grabbed the chakra arm with both hands and pulled. The arm stretched but didn't snap.
The Fifth Gate. His body ached from the tearing muscles on top of the repeated slams. The arm swung him down again and his body hit the ground and the crater deepened and he felt ribs break.
The Sixth Gate.
The chakra that erupted from Lee's body was visible from a hundred meters away. Green and blazing, it poured from every tenketsu on his body in a torrent that displaced the air around him. The ground beneath the chakra arm's grip disintegrated from the pressure. That eruption of power loosened the chakra arm's grip, and Lee did not allow that miniscule moment escape as he slipped his crushed leg free.
Lee hit the ground on his feet and the impact cratered the earth beneath him and he was moving before the dust rose.
Three more chakra arms exploded from Rōshi's shroud. One from above, arcing over Lee's head. One from the left, sweeping low. One from the right, reaching for his midsection. Rōshi had identified that Lee had no real answer for the arms once caught.
Lee saw them coming. All three converging on the space he occupied, all three aiming to grab, crush, or pin.
Lee also knew he had no real answer for the arms, so he refused to be caught again. There was no guarantee that he could break free of another by opening the seventh. And didn't want to risk opening the Eighth Gate despite his Body Supremacy Jutsu…
Lee blitzed forward. Directly at Rōshi, inside the arms' reach, inside the range where they'd have to double back to catch him. The arms overshot his position and scrambled to reverse direction. Lee was already there beneath him.
His rising kick caught Rōshi under the chin. The impact lifted the jinchuriki off his feet and sent him skyward. The chakra shroud rippled from the force. Rōshi's body climbed, ten meters, twenty, thirty, forty.
Lee kicked off the air.
The compressed atmosphere beneath his foot cracked like a gunshot and Lee rocketed upward after Rōshi, seemingly stepping on the air itself. He reached the jinchuriki at the peak of the arc and his foot came around in a roundhouse that caught Rōshi across the face. The shroud deformed around the impact point and Rōshi's body changed direction, spinning horizontally now. Lee kicked the air again, changing his own trajectory, and met Rōshi's spinning body with a second kick that sent him in a new direction entirely.
Rōshi's tails came around. Four of them now, swept inward to form a guard around his body as he tumbled through the sky. Lee's next kick hit the tail guard and the impact shook both of them. Lee grabbed two of the tails and pulled them apart and drove his fist through the gap into Rōshi's face. The old man's head snapped back inside the shroud and Lee followed with a barrage, each hit faster than the last, punching through the gaps between the tails faster than Rōshi could close them.
The tails managed to shove Lee away. Rōshi started falling. His tails wrapped around his body to cushion the landing.
Lee wouldn't let him land.
He kicked off the air again, the shockwave visible as a ring of compressed white around his foot. He plummeted downward faster than Rōshi was falling and landed on the battlefield below. Exactly where Rōshi was about to crash.
Lee looked up at the falling jinchuriki, wrapped in tails and shroud and falling fast, and drove his fist upward into Rōshi's back.
The impact sent Rōshi flying horizontally across the battlefield. A blazing red comet that tore across the Stone army's position, scattering shinobi in every direction.
Lee was already running. He reached the point where Rōshi was about to hit the ground and kicked him skyward again before he could land. Rōshi's body arced. Lee appeared at the apex and kicked him laterally. Rōshi shot sideways. Lee appeared ahead of his trajectory and kicked him the other direction.
Again. And again. And again. Each kick redirecting the jinchuriki before he could recover, each impact sending shockwaves across the battlefield, each redirection too fast for anyone watching to follow. The shinobi below couldn't even see the greenish-red blur tearing across the sky. They could only feel and hear the sonic booms.
This was a battle beyond their level…
To think shinobi could reach such heights…
Rōshi is a jinchuriki… But that Rock Lee fellow… He's just a regular human like us, right…?
Lee grabbed Rōshi mid-flight. Both arms locked around the jinchuriki's body from behind. He began to spin with him. A horizontal rotation, parallel to the ground, and as the spin accelerated the friction ignited the air around them.
They tore through Stone's army.
The spinning blazing mass of green chakra and red bijuu shroud ripped across the battlefield like a horizontal tornado. Stone shinobi in their path were thrown aside like dolls. The ground beneath their spinning trajectory was carved into a trench. The heat from the friction and the bijuu chakra set everything within twenty meters on fire.
Lee released.
Rōshi flew. His body tumbled through the air, shroud flickering, tails limp, the Version 1 form losing cohesion from the accumulated damage.
Before Rōshi could fly out of range, Lee's bandages shot from his forearms. The wrappings extended across the distance and caught Rōshi around the midsection. Lee planted his feet and pulled.
Rōshi's trajectory reversed. The jinchuriki came screaming back toward Lee, dragged by the bandages, his body accelerating with every meter of distance that closed between them.
Lee cocked his right fist.
The bandages pulled Rōshi directly into the punch.
The impact was the loudest sound the Stone front had produced since the Daytime Dragon.
Rōshi's body broke the sound barrier on departure. The shockwave flattened everything within fifty meters of Lee's position. The jinchuriki rocketed across the battlefield trailing broken bandage fragments and flickering red chakra and hit the ground somewhere in the distance that Lee couldn't see because the dust cloud from the shockwave obscured everything.
Lee stood in the center of a devastated stretch of battlefield. His bandages hung in tatters from his forearms. His suit was burned through in a dozen places. His body was covered in bruises and burns that were already closing. The Sixth Gate's aura blazed around him, green and shimmering, and his breathing was hard but steady.
In the distance, where Rōshi had landed, the dust settled. A crater twice the size of anything the fight had produced sat in the middle of what had been a Stone formation. Bodies of Stone shinobi lay scattered around it, knocked aside by the impact.
In the center of the crater, something rose from the crater.
It was dark red, nearly black, a humanoid shape wrapped in chakra so dense it looked like liquid. The features of the old man were gone. The face was a white mask with burning eyes and a burning mouth. The body was larger, muscles bulging, the shape vaguely simian. Four tails, fully formed and lashing, extended from its back.
Version 2.
The thing that had been Rōshi looked across the battlefield at Lee. The burning white eyes found the green suit and the boy inside it.
Rōshi screamed and the sound made the earth shake.
Lee looked at what Rōshi had become. He looked at the four tails and the burning eyes and the miniature tailed beast standing in a crater wearing a dead man's shape.
He wiped the blood from his lip with the back of his hand.
"Alright then. Let's see how brightly my youth can burn!"