The weights had been sitting in the corner of his apartment for three days before he put them on.
He had bought them the morning after Kasumi mentioned it, a set of leg weights, arm weights, and a vest, the kind of thing worn under clothing, designed to be invisible from the outside. He had picked the heaviest configuration available. The man at the supply stall had raised an eyebrow and said something about starting light. Naruto had paid and left.
Now, at a quarter before dawn, standing in the open field at the edge of the training grounds with no one else around, he strapped them on one piece at a time. First the legs. Then the arms. Then the vest. He stood straight, adjusted the straps, and tried to take a step.
It was like his feet had been filled with wet sand.
He lifted his arm. The weight pulled against the motion, not painfully, just constantly. Like gravity had opinions.
He took another step. Then another. His breathing adjusted. His posture shifted. Something in his lower back tensed to compensate.
He began to run.
Kasumi had said the weights would help with stamina. Strength. Speed, eventually, once the body adapted. She had said she outgrew hers. He turned that over in his mind as he ran, his feet hitting the soft earth with more force than usual, each step sinking a little deeper.
He would not outgrow his. He would master them and then find heavier ones. That was the whole point.
He ran. Sweat came fast in the humid morning air.
The sun had started to come up by the time he noticed the other figure.
He was halfway through a lap when he saw movement at the far end of the field. He slowed slightly, tilting his head. Something was moving across the grass, but the shape was wrong. Too low. And upside down.
He jogged closer.
A boy. His age, maybe slightly younger, wearing a green bodysuit that left nothing to the imagination about his physique and everything to the imagination about whoever had designed it. Dark bowl-cut hair, perfectly geometric. Eyebrows that could have their own biography.
He was walking on his hands. Across the entire field. Legs straight up in the air, perfectly vertical, not wobbling at all.
Naruto stopped running. He stood and watched for a long moment.
The boy completed his lap, planted his palms, swung his legs forward, and landed on his feet with a soft thud. He looked up, noticed Naruto, and smiled so wide it looked structural.
"Good morning! I am Rock Lee! You are training very early!"
Naruto looked at him. Then at the tracks his hands had left in the grass. Then back at him.
"You were walking on your hands."
"Yes! It strengthens the arms and the core and improves balance and concentration! It also builds mental fortitude because it requires constant focus! Would you like to try?"
A pause.
"No."
Lee laughed. A big, unguarded sound. "You are honest! I like that! Most people say maybe and then do not try. You just said no. That is respectable!"
Naruto studied him. No team emblem visible. No headband either, now that he looked closer. Just the green suit and the eyebrows and the grin.
"Which team are you on?"
"Team Guy! Under Might Guy-sensei! He is the best teacher in all of Konoha, and one day I will surpass even him!"
Naruto had no idea who Might Guy was. He filed it away.
"Why hands? For training, I mean."
Lee tilted his head, like he had never really been asked that before. "Because it is hard," he said, and that seemed to be the whole answer as far as he was concerned.
Naruto considered that. It was not a bad answer.
The spar was Lee's idea. Naruto agreed before the question was fully out of his mouth.
He wanted to see how this boy moved in actual combat. The handstand-walk was a training exercise. Interesting, but controlled. Naruto wanted to see the mechanics under pressure.
Lee's eyes dropped to Naruto's arms and legs as he shrugged off his outer jacket. The weights were fully visible now, strapped and buckled, the vest visible beneath his shirt.
"You are training with weights! That is excellent! The path of hard work is the only true path to strength!"
Naruto did not respond. He settled into a stance.
Lee came in first.
Fast. Genuinely fast, not academy-drill fast, not I-practiced-the-same-kick-a-thousand-times fast. This was momentum-built, body-committed speed, the kind that came from someone who had done so many repetitions that the nervous system no longer needed to ask permission. His leg was already mid-arc before Naruto consciously registered the launch.
Naruto got his forearm up. The block landed and the impact rolled up through his elbow into his shoulder. His back foot slid two inches in the dirt.
He countered immediately. A punch at Lee's sternum, driving forward. Lee pivoted out of the way by inches. Naruto's fist passed close enough to feel the friction of the air. He swept low at Lee's knee. Lee hopped over it, a neat little jump, and came down spinning.
They traded. Back and forth, no words, just movement. Lee was not hitting full force and neither was Naruto, but neither of them was holding back on technique either. A kick to the ribs. An elbow deflected. A grab attempt that Lee slipped through like water.
Naruto landed a few. Lee landed a few. Both of them absorbed the hits without flinching.
But Naruto noticed something at the two-minute mark.
Lee was not sweating.
Not breathing hard. Not adjusting his stance to compensate for fatigue. His face was the same as when they had started, calm, interested, even slightly bored in the way that highly competent people sometimes looked when they were operating comfortably within their limits.
Naruto was sweating through his clothes. His lungs burned. The weights on his legs made every extension a small act of will. His arms were beginning to slow.
Lee stepped back. He raised one hand.
"That is enough for now! You are very good!"
Naruto dropped his guard. He was breathing in long, deliberate pulls, managing his recovery.
Lee was not breathing hard at all. He had his hands on his hips and he was smiling like they had just discussed the weather.
"You have natural talent. But talent is not enough. You must train your body until it moves without thinking, until the right response comes before the thought does. You are on the right path! The weights show that. But the path to mastering taijutsu is very long. You need more than strength. You need a foundation."
Naruto looked at him.
He said nothing.
Lee waited, like he was expecting a response. When none came, he nodded, apparently satisfied.
Lee announced he had five hundred more punches to complete before noon and then jogged off.
On his hands.
Naruto watched him go, a shrinking green shape moving across the far end of the field, perfectly steady, disappearing into the morning haze.
He sat down in the grass. His chest was still heaving. His arms were trembling at the elbows in the specific way that meant the muscles had been worked past their comfortable range. He looked down at his hands. Knuckles bruised along the ridge. Palms already thickening with callouses.
"Huh."
He thought about Lee's face during the spar. That calm. That slightly detached focus, like he had a surplus of ability and was choosing which portion to deploy. Naruto had fought people who were scared and people who were angry. He had not fought many people who were simply comfortable.
"Interesting person to meet."
He sat with that for a moment.
He made the cross sign.
Two shadow clones appeared in the grass beside him, one on either side, both blinking in the morning light with his face and his weights and his bruised knuckles.
"I need to see myself fight," he told them. "Not from the inside. From out here. Stand up and go."
The clones stood. They turned to face each other. Naruto watched from the ground.
They began to spar.
It was not pretty.
From outside his own body, the problems were obvious in a way they never were when he was inside the motion. His punches were wide, telegraphed at the shoulder before the arm extended. His kicks were poorly aimed, aimed at approximately the right place rather than precisely the right place. He left gaps on his left side every time he committed to a right-handed combination. He used too much movement to cover too little distance. He reset too slowly after a block.
Mostly he just pushed. Aggression and strength, no architecture underneath.
The clones continued. One landed a clean hit to the other's cheek. The other stumbled, reset, came back harder but no cleaner. Same patterns. Same sloppiness. Different angle, same problem.
Naruto watched and made a list in his head.
Too much wasted motion. No finesse. No particular style. Just brawling with better chakra behind it.
He dismissed them.
The memory arrived in two channels simultaneously, being clone one and being clone two, both perspectives folding into his. He remembered throwing that wide punch. He remembered receiving it. He remembered the opening he had created and not noticed.
He sat in silence for a moment.
Physical training was not enough. Strength without structure was just a heavier version of the same problem. He needed something that would hold up against someone like Kakashi, someone with the Sharingan, someone who could read a technique the moment they saw it. A style with enough complexity to be unpredictable. Something he could build on.
He stood up. His legs were shaking. The weights sat on him like a promise.
One thing at a time.
He resumed training.
Punches. Kicks. Sprints across the field and back. The weights still on.
He was not faster yet. Not cleaner yet. Not anything yet, really. But his mind was moving now, cataloguing, sorting, deciding what he needed next and in what order.
He threw a punch at the empty air. His form was still sloppy. His elbow flared out. His shoulder telegraphed.
He noticed.
He threw it again.
"Tomorrow," he said to no one in particular. "I'll try again."
The sun was fully up. The field was quiet. Somewhere across the grass, Lee was doing his five hundred punches, and Naruto had absolutely no doubt he would finish every single one.
Next Time: Lee has a Crush on Sakura