Chapter 18 – 'The Preliminaries, Part III'

Come on people, is it too much to ask for a review? I'm getting a couple of thousand of hits on each on the new chapters and only 18 reviews between the two of them :/

Even with his two-tomoed Sharingan eyes blazing, Sasuke was still hard-pressed to wage a battle against Kurotsuchi. He had expected to be able to track her movements with ease once the battle started: as she wore a tight-fitting outfit, there was nothing to hide the muscle movements of the kunoichi. What he had not expected was for her to come out right from the start, throwing senbon at him right from the start.

He had managed to jump away quickly, but the pressed attack had set the tone for the fight. The black-haired soldier of the Iwa village seemed to have an endless amount of the senbon needles, and Kurotsuchi knew better than to stay in one place while keeping her opponent moving. While Sasuke had to accelerate backwards, however, she had more natural movements in moving forward, allowing her to continue to dictate the flow of the battle.

Another spray of senbon shot out from her right hand, and then a second set was sent to pepper the spot she predicted the Uchiha heir would move to in order to dodge the first handful. Like clockwork, she had managed to goad the Sharingan-eyed menace into her trap, and she was rewarded with a delightful grunt as several senbon connected with the black-haired boy. Some of them only scraped skin or clothes due to faulty angles made worse by their flight paths, but a few had flown true. Pausing the offensive for only a half a second, Kurotsuchi treated herself to a sight of a should-be pincushion with the first few needles in already, as Sasuke had been struck mainly in the legs.

She knew she couldn't kill her opponent: that had been something Ōnoki had strictly forbidden the nine genin that had come to Konoha from doing. Uchiha Sasuke was reserved for Orochimaru. She could almost pity the boy, were it not for his membership in the loathsome Village Hidden Among Tree Leaves, having heard about Orochimaru's experiments with humans. She could, however, still cause him a deal of pain. Kurotsuchi was not a sadist, but she had been bred with a hatred for the shinobi of Fire Country, and was a stock raised to be the best of the best. She would win this match, and devastate the morale of the Leaf populace as their favoured Uchiha heir was eliminated in a preliminary match of all things.

Her little meandering and self-gloating cost the kunoichi precious seconds, however: these were ticks on the clock that Sasuke used to regroup, quickly pulling out the senbon in his legs. He had not felt any extreme sensations when pierced by the pointed projectiles: hence, he knew they had not struck any nerve clusters, and he could tear them out with abandon. Chancing a look behind his position, he saw that he had been pressed into the junction where two walls met, a corner on the far side of the room opposite the Hokage's viewing area and the regular audience chamber.

Were he not a ninja, Sasuke might have been 'trapped' by Kurotsuchi's advance. However, he was a ninja, and so he channelled chakra into his feet, hopping up onto the wall. Kurotsuchi had by then snapped out of her reminiscing, and realised how much of a mistake she had made. Quickly, she tossed out another flurry of senbon. As the needles were now working against gravity, however, she had to put more force behind them, and as a result the direction of the needles suffered for it. The wall walker easily dodged them, before putting his hands together in a quick seven-seal sequence, ending on Tora. Two-tomoed Sharingan eyes blazing wildly, Sasuke could feel the build-up of heat that threatened to sear his lungs should it be kept locked away, with only a thin line of chakra coating his alveoli and lung walls protecting against the possibility of a backfired technique. With a quick cry of "Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu", he opened his mouth to expel a red-orange fireball. Exposed to fresh oxygen, the mixture of heated gases continued to rise in temperature as it made a bee-line for the surprised Kurotsuchi.

The female half of the fight had already committed to throwing another handful of senbon, and as such found herself moving right into the path of the fire. With a superhuman amount of effort, she managed to twist her body and turn around such that she barely evaded the brunt of the attack. However, the edge of the flame tickled her left arm, and she instinctively put her right hand up at the sensation of the heat, and to press down on the reddening skin. It was not a lethal mistake, but still a big one as she had left her back exposed long enough for the Uchiha heir to slam his feet into her back, sending her reeling.

Thanks to chakra, most ninja fights would end as soon as one ninja landed a solid hit on his or her opponent. In Sasuke's case, however, he had not had the time to reinforce his blow with chakra, and so his attack on Kurotsuchi had caused the black-haired kunoichi a great deal of pain and temporarily fazed her, but nothing more than that. He had thrown his weight behind the attack, and so had to regain his balance when he finally touched the floor. Kurotsuchi used that time to shake off the pain she was feeling, and had backed away from Sasuke again, pupil-less violet eyes observing him warily, like a predator that has found its prey might not be so easy to kill. It had been her patriotic duty to advance to the finals, and she would still do it: she just had to be more careful from now on.

It was a graceful dance that followed, as she stuck to her tried-and-true method of senbon needles, while Sasuke flipped, twisted, and dodged as well as he could, all while growling. He had thought the match over once he had managed to knock her over, but all it had done was to make his opponent more cautious in her attack. Let not a wildcat be cornered lest it fight its hardest, a lesson she had picked up quickly and refused to do again.

Frustration morphed into panic, as he felt the sharp piercing of a pair of needles into his right arm. Although nothing vital had been hit or punctured yet, he was losing feeling in his arm, which could be fatal to him. And all he could do so far was to continue dodging and pulling out senbon needles. He needed something to win, but what? Neurological synapses firing at maximum frequency, he quickly tried to come up with something to win.

For her own part, Kurotsuchi had to fight off her feeling of boredom, lest she be lulled into complacency again. But now that her opponent wasn't being backed up against a wall like she had attempted before, he was nowhere as able to spring a surprise on her like the crouching tiger he had been before.

Quickly, she divided part of her attention between summoning up another handful of the thousands of senbon she held underneath her sleeves, in seals and in other hidden locations on her body, while she turned the main portion of her conscious to analysing her opponent's strengths and weaknesses. He seemed to be one-dimensional in this sort of scenario: hence, he apparently seemed to lack in defensive jutsu, particularly any sort of Earth-style ninjutsu. Nor did he seemingly possess any genjutsu at all. She had little knowledge of his taijutsu, as he had not had the chance to really attack her out of that one lone blow, but it seemed he lacked the speed to possibly outmanoeuvre her and get on her backside.

What was his strength that kept him in the fight so far? His eyes.

A small grin finally crossed her face. She had several weapons hidden across her tight-fitting uniform, but two of them would be the most useful. She stopped throwing needles all of a sudden, confusing the Uchiha heir across her, who stopped dodging and wondered what Kurotsuchi was doing. The kunoichi quickly backed away from Sasuke, until she came to the spot where she had been hit with his fireball technique.

When one used a ninjutsu, they inadvertently 'leaked' some of their own chakra from the jutsu in the process into the surroundings, which left a 'stain' of sorts. For Kurotsuchi, this was a grand opportunity, as while she was no chakra sensor, she had something that could still feed off the chakra stain and locate the owner of the chakra.

Quickly, she took out her first weapon, and threw it at the floor. The bomb exploded, giving off little energy but plenty of smoke, causing some in the audience to groan as the fighting arena was once again blocked off from sight. She then took out a scroll, opened it up, and fused her own chakra with it along with the Uchiha's leftover chakra from the fireball, before throwing it up in the air. After a second, the scroll began to glow, before hundreds of senbon needle began to fly out.

He nearly choked on the smoke created by the bomb, before his ears pricked up at what he could best call thousands of simultaneous small whistles. Eyes widening, he quickly backed up, but even then the needles seemed to be following him wherever he moved.

His Sharingan eyes allowed him to see through the smoke somewhat, but he needed to be able to better. He needed to be faster, he needed to be able to see the senbon more quickly, he needed to be able to react at a much faster speed!

Unbeknownst to him, the frantic firing of electricity through his neurons and the adrenaline pumping through his arteries had finally achieved a beneficial side-effect, as slowly a black tomoe formed in each of his eyes.

Kurotsuchi couldn't help but let a grin occupy her face. She had a similar technique to that one kunoichi of the Leaf (Tenten, she idly thought), but whereas the other girl simply threw several weapons at her opponent and attempted to make one connect, Kurotsuchi had gone for thousands of senbon needle at once, all while impairing the target's vision at the exact same time. Meanwhile, she had locked onto the target's chakra emission so she would not be similarly impaired by the smoke at the same time.

So caught up in her gloating over her self-assured victory she was, the violet-eyed ninja had no time to react as Sasuke blew through the smoke, delivering a powerful blow with his knee to her stomach. She exhaled sharply, bending over from the loss of air in her lungs, exposing her to a quick punch that sent her sailing onto the ground, skipping back a metre after impact, before her head took a hard knock against an uprooted piece of stone.

Groaning, she looked up at her opponent, as she heard gasps from the sharper-eyed in the audience. She quickly saw why they had gasped: in her opponent's eyes were three-tomed Sharingan eyes.

Kurotsuchi considered her options, looking at the menacing Sharingan-eyed genin walking towards her. Picking up her right hand, she turned the palm towards her, and opened it with what strength she had left. A hole opened up in the middle of her palm, revealing a 'mouth' of sorts, as a 'tongue' poked out, making for a scene that would have been disturbing were she not used to it by now. Looking back at her opponent, she decided against it. It would not do well for anybody in Konoha to know what she could truly do ahead of time. Her body was also aching heavily, with a possible concussion, and it would impair her if she were to try to fight further.

She opened her mouth, and the second it took for her to enunciate those three wretched words felt like an eternity. "Proctor, I forfeit."

Watching the fight between Sasuke and Kurotsuchi had been rather entertaining, though now Naruto would have a few words to write to a certain blond-haired member of the Akatuski on his little sister's progress over the years. It was nice to see at least one of his teammates had made it to the finals, even if he still merely considered them 'teammates' and not 'friends'.

An annoying burst of wild noise cut in from the background, and so the cerulean-eyed shinobi craned his head to find the shinobi from earlier who wore green spandex, Rock Lee, hugging his sensei and declaring something about not wanting to fight next. Looking back to the arena, he noted wryly that the screen now read Rock Lee vs. Sabaku no Kankuro. Changing his focus back to the student-sensei duo, he dropped his jaw at the display they were exhibiting, as Rock Lee declared with tears streaming down his cheek that his attempt at reverse psychology had worked, and he was now fighting next.

Unbelievable, was all Naruto had to think. Are Konoha's ninjas really so undisciplined that they do stuff like this?

Of course, the fight was rather disappointing. He had assumed Lee to be a taijutsu user, and as he eavesdropped in on a conversation between Sakura and Lee's sensei, Maito Gai, he was proven right. However, Lee was also far too reckless. Right when the battle had started, he had moved in at a breakneck speed and attempted to knock out Kankuro with a kick right underneath the diaphragm. Unfortunately for the taijutsu user, the Kankuro he had attacked was a lifelike puppet of the real Kankuro, one that had released a green gas. Lee was unable to stop himself from breathing it in, having just come in with a heavy kick, and within moments fell asleep.

Clearly neither student nor sensei really understood that 'honour' would get them nowhere in the shinobi world. One could not straight-up attack an opponent, and in Lee's case he had easily fallen to a sleeping gas hidden in a puppet compartment.

But that left three participants to fight in the chunin exam preliminaries, and so everyone was eager to see which two were to fight the final battle. It was with great anticipation that the screen finally displayed Hamakaze Tatsumaki vs. Yogore Shirotsuchi.

With the Suna procession, Yattoko was quietly whispering to his female teammate as soon as he saw the names on the board. "Be careful, Tatsu-chan," He warned the blonde, who had been toting her fan around. "I get the feeling your opponent is stronger than what the other two Iwa genin have shown so far."

His companion nodded back, emerald green eyes open wide. "I will try my best, Yatto-kun." She looked at the team's other member out of the corner of her eye. "Not counting Kojote's match, which was against Gaara anyways, every Suna genin here has made it into the finals. I won't let that streak be snapped." Tossing her long, wavy hair around, she winked at her teammate, before flipping her fan open. Quickly hopping onto the fan, she sailed down to the floor, her battle kimono floating slightly in the currents, going to where her opponent waited.

Yattoko just palmed his face. "You say that, and then you go and show what your specialty is right before the fight even begins."

Green eyes met coal-black as the last remaining member of the Iwa and Suna processions carefully analysed his or her opponent. Although Akasuna no Sasori had killed hundreds of Iwagakure shinobi in the last Great Shinobi War, neither of the villages held much hatred for each other: no, Iwa reserved their vitriol for one man, and that had been Namikaze Minato, the Yondaime Hokage. With the Yellow Flash's death at the paws of the Kyuubi, the seething hatred had been redirected onto the village that he hailed from. While Tatsumaki and Shirotsuchi would fight, there would be little cold rage behind their actions.

Shirotsuchi's bleached blond hair contrasted sharply with his eyes, and he dominated all the chunin hopefuls in height, reaching over five and a half feet. Tatsumaki could not help but feel slightly intimidated, as she was petite in comparison to him. It did not help, either, that his gaunt features made his appearance even more imposing.

Shirotsuchi spoke, and to her wonder his voice was fairly smooth, not rough at all like she had expected. "May the best one of us win."

Tatsumaki merely nodded. Raika, seeing this as the initiative to start the fight, backed away. After a quick standard "Fighter's ready?", he swung his hand down and shouted "Begin!"

The kunoichi from Suna began the fight, swinging her folded-up fan in a left-to-right motion, quickly shouting out "Futon: Kaze no Yaiba (Blade of Wind)!" Although her fan was nowhere near as efficient at cutting with the wind as channelling with the fingers, which Baki no Yaiba could do, it was still a useful medium for sending a single horizontal cut through the air.

Shirotsuchi reacted quickly, dropping low onto the ground before quickly putting his hands together in a seven-seal sequence, stringing his words together quickly before he could be decapitated, "Doton: Doryūheki (Mud Wall)!" The efforts of earlier battles had broken up the floor significantly, allowing him to use the soft earth below as well as the stone fragments to create an earthy wall in front of him.

The wall rose up in time to stop Tatsumaki's jutsu, though he quickly put his hands up to his ears as asharp shriek of a sharp cut against solid stone was emitted. Tatsumaki, being further away from the stone wall, had no compunctions about needing to protect her ears, and quickly began to go through another sequence of hand seals. She broke off from performing her jutsu as she saw a glint from behind the wall, and managed to swing her fan in front of her in time, sending a kunai ricocheting off the wall of stone and mud.

With a sharp eye, she noted the dust that suddenly had begun to be kicked up from the ground, and pondered about it for a half second, before deciding that she could not let her opponent do whatever he was planning with bringing all the dust particles up into the air. Finally unfolding her battle fan, she swung the open weapon forward, creating a wind current in the room. With the power of her wind-natured chakra behind her, the debris particles in the air were blown about, rendering whatever Shirotsuchi had had planned unable to be completed.

It was only a split second warning of a slight tremble underneath her feet that saved her from an earthen wall that quickly pounced above ground. Only a back-flip prevented her from being knocked out by the sheer force of the sprouting structure of mud and stone, and the adrenaline quickly pumped through her body at how close she had come to losing. Idly, she added her opponent's ability to summon up a Doryūheki from long range as one of his talents.

She would have to be careful if he was this good at Earth manipulation. Tatsumaki had some idea of what strong Earth users could do, such as being able to bury oneself under the ground, and in some rare cases, even move through the ground.

That brought a rather chilling observation, that she was vulnerable anywhere on the ground, particularly with the mouldable shape of the heavily damaged floor. There was only one place she was safe. Turning around, she quickly moved away from her current position, and ran up the wall. Reaching over twenty metres above the ground, Tatsumaki jumped off, in the same motion snapping open her battle fan fully and gliding over the battle arena, looking for her opponent. She grimaced when she couldn't spot Shirotsuchi from up high.

So, he had gone underground, had he?

Well, he had the advantage in that case. She was a female, so her chakra pool was nowhere as deep as it could be had she been born a male, and she needed to use chakra to keep her fan sinking at a very slow rate. Additionally, Tatsumaki was currently fighting indoors, meaning she had to work doubly hard with the lack of a natural wind flow. She couldn't keep this up forever: she would need to land sometime, and when that happened, she would be vulnerable again to attack.

It was looking like she had been put in a bad match-up here. While Wind and Earth were not diametrically opposite elements in the cycle of nature, given what Shirotsuchi had already shown, she was at the disadvantage in this fight. So long as she was in the air, she had time to think about what to do, but once she touched down she would have to move instantly.

For one, Tatsumaki couldn't use her fan anymore, as those annoying walls of earth could block both cutting winds and blowing winds. She would have to use jutsu without her fan as an intermediary, simply because the battle weapon's weight would be a detriment to her, both in carrying it around and in preparation time to hit her opponent. Using her hands or mouth to send a ball of concentrated winds was less powerful than with her fan, but it also didn't cost the precious seconds that the Suna kunoichi's opponent might exploit.

Right. So she would lower herself, ditch her fan, and move around and dodge whatever attacks her opponent might hit her with from underground. If she could get him to resurface, then there was potential for her to hit him point-blank with something.

She used her remaining seconds in the air eying the once smooth-stone battlefield, now damaged with the ground dug up in places, a couple of fissures, large pieces of rock lying all over the place, and two mud-and-stone walls. To Tatsumaki's disappointment, she could not even identify a spot where he might have submerged into the ground below. This would have been a really good time for her to suddenly unlock some sort of chakra sensor skill (Privately, Tatsumaki decided to lay off the fantasising, because unlike the Uchiha who already had the Sharingan eyes but lacked the maximum tomoes, she had no 'family background with a super secret kekkei genkai', at least not to her knowledge)!

Sighing, Tatsumaki finally let her fan sink at a quicker pace than it had before, gliding down, before she stood up, and put one foot on top of the mud wall that Shirotsuchi had initially put up to block her Kaze no Yaiba from earlier. Satisfied that it was solid enough, the wind mistress put her other foot down, standing on top of the wall. At least up here, she felt marginally safer than on the ground. Taking her fan, she tossed it aside, hoping her opponent would not actually try to break her precious fan after she had temporarily discarded it.

This time, however, the blonde had no tremor to alert her to Shirotsuchi's next move, as she was immediately thrown off balance when the wall she was on 'shifted'. Outside of her observation range, a hole had opened up in the ground near the wall, and all the debris in the room was being sucked towards it as the ground began to decline towards the sinkhole. Among that debris included one Tatsumaki, who had been hit by a flying rock when she fell, and was unable to stop herself from being sunk into the hole.

Once she had gone underground, the rubble stopped, and fell to the ground, before another hole opened up. A nearly-pristine Shirotsuchi emerged, only slightly the worse for wear. The audience above quieted down, waiting to see if Tatsumaki would somehow emerge and the fight continue. A few minutes passed, before Shirotsuchi walked to the sinkhole near the centre of the room. Reaching in deep, he pulled out the blonde kunoichi by the hem of her battle kimono. It was plain for all to see that she was unconscious.

"Like an antlion," the bleach-haired boy said lightly, before turning his head to Raika. "Proctor, the match?"

The elder Uchiha in the room nodded. "Right. As Hamakaze Tatsumaki is unable to compete any further, Yogore Shirotsuchi is the victor in this battle." He grimaced as he realised just how much work it would be for whoever had to repair the floor in this room. Fissures, cracks, two earth walls, and now a sinkhole. It would probably be some of the newly-graduated genin who would have to do it after an exercise of making it through Training Ground 44.

"Well then," Raika said, already putting the last match behind him, "That leaves Hyuga Neji of Konohagakure as the final participant, who will receive an automatic bye." The young genin in question merely nodded, forgoing any verbal acknowledgement. He had seen some of the monsters in the exam so far, and was just glad that he managed to evade being chosen. It would not be good if he had to show off his trump card now and let somebody expect it a month later.

Five minutes later saw the eight genin who had made it to the finals standing on the arena floor, facing Sarutobi. The Sandaime Hokage stood up, cleared his throat, and then began to speak. "You eight here today have made it to the finals, which are due to take place in a month in Konoha's stadium. The finals will be similar to the preliminaries, but it will not end after one round: instead, it will run as an elimination tournament, up until one genin survives." Clearing his throat again, he began anew. "Chunin will be decided not through who wins and who loses, but through the tactics and strategy that one shows during a fight. As a result, somebody who forfeits their first match may become a chunin, while the tournament winner could remain a genin."

Raika moved back into the eight genins' range of vision, having momentarily disappeared, this time with a box in his hand. "Genins, please come and pick a ball out of this box. This will help us determine who your opponent will be." Slowly, the procession moved forward, each picking that person's own individual ball.

"Two," Neji said, holding up his number for all to verify. While calm on the inside, he was brimming with energy. He would be able to make an impact by having the first match, when the audience would be fresh and wide awake to watching a fight.

"Three," said the black-and-red-clothed Naruto, his face dirty and his shaggy hair dried out with sweat from his own battle.

"Five," intoned the pale-skinned Gaara, indifferent to his positioning.

"One," this came from Yattoko, a hint of anticipation present at the thought of being able to fight a Hyuga, who might be the perfect antithesis to his own techniques.

"Eight," said Sasuke, annoyed at having to fight last when the finals came. That meant if he won, only one match would separate his first and his second match, while the victors of the first three matches would have at least a two-match cushion to regain energy.

"Six," said Temari, glancing over at her brother. She wasn't afraid of him personally, so she would give it her all in the fight. She doubted she would actually beat him, but if the two could choreograph a good enough match, then spectators at the finals might feel more inclined to hire Suna in the future for various services.

"Four," said Kankuro. The Kazekage had debriefed his team slightly on Naruto, informing the Sabaku trio that Naruto existed as a spy, so Kankuro would have to be sure not to blow the Konoha genin's cover.

"That leaves me with the lucky number seven, then," Shirosuna said with a grim grin as he picked the last ball out of the box. He had had to show off far too much in his battle with Tatsumaki: the only saving grace that he had was that he still had the advantage in the finals with the soft earth present at Konoha's stadium.

"Very well then!" Raika exclaimed, having drawn up the matches. "The first match will be Awai Yattoko vs. Hyuga Neji. The second match-up will comprise of Uzumaki Naruto vs. Sabaku no Kankuro. The third fight shall be Sabaku no Gaara vs. Sabaku no Temari, and the final battle will be Yogore Shirotsuchi vs. Uchiha Sasuke." Looking behind the genin at the team senseis, he finally ended the convention with a flat "Dismissed." He watched as the fifteen genin went to talk to their senseis, figuring out what they should do next.

Sarutobi stroked his beard, pondering over the events that had just happened in the last few hours. Maito Gai's team had been a bust, and while he could forgive the performance of Tenten against an obviously superior opponent, the other match-up was nowhere near what could be called 'lopsided'. Gai still understood little that honour meant nothing in the shinobi world. Up until now, Sarutobi had tolerated it because the man was a beast at taijustu, but passing the attitude on to his genin was rather sloppy.

It had been rather intriguing to see both Uchiha Sasuke and Uzumaki Naruto pass, and both fighting against Iwa genin. The former he had been expecting to win, but the latter had been a bit of a toss-up. He had briefly had a panic when Jiraiya had reported to him about the Hakubo organisation, as their plan to keep Naruto's skills repressed was then broken. He had assigned Yamato to teach Team 7 in hopes to quickly reverse the damage, but seeing how far Naruto had come along, he was impressed. Yamato had received prior instructions on what each of his students were to do should they win or lose: with Naruto's win, he would be coaxed into finding Sarutobi's own student and learning from him. Jiraiya would take over reaffirming Naruto's loyalty to the village from there.

Of course, with the last match, Iwa had a ticket to bring some of its own shinobi into the village. That was a bit of a problem. He had so been hoping for the Hamakaze girl to win, for a variety of reasons, but preventing Iwa from publicly bringing in powerful figures was the main one.

The monkey summoner sighed, and was about to stand up, when his motion was cut short by an ANBU teleporting in with a usage of the Shunshin. He was unworried: he had long ago memorised the chakra signatures of ANBU Squad 12. The squad was his finest, with such a reputation that it had operated for over fifteen years without a single change in the membership, and it was also notorious for being his own personal guard squad. "What is it, Taka?" This member in particular was the squad's scouting expert.

"Hokage-sama," Taka bowed briefly to his leader, before beginning his report. "We swept through the Forest of Death as you ordered. There's something you should know..."

Ah, the fates of all the teams that had not made it in. Were they dead, or merely lost and unable to make it to the tower on time with two scrolls? Something seemed off in Taka's tone, so there must be something worrisome going on. Sarutobi finally stood up, working out the kinks that had developed in his body while sitting down. "Let us speak of this in my office." Taka nodded, and the two warped warped away, the air shimmering behind them.

I always felt the whole idea of Sasuke being able to suddenly dodge all the senbon just from having a one-tomoe and two-tomoed Sharingan was a bit of crock, particularly when he still couldn't read Haku's movements in canon because he was in the mirrors. So Sasuke has trouble dodging senbon here until he gets three-tomoed Sharingan.

Kankuro is seriously underrated in most fanfictions from what I've seen (and is often made into a butt monkey). I can see any sort of poison being dangerous to a user of the Eight Gates technique simply because using the Eight Gates spreads nutrients out to the individual cells much faster, and I don't think the body is focused to filtering out poisons at that point in time. Lee is pretty much a straight-up attacker so just poison him (or in this story's case, hit him with sleeping gas) and unless he can get away before the poison affects him it's a big blow. Yeah, it was a short fight, but that was sort of the point.

That said, I formulated up a minor plot twist over the last couple of weeks that would fit perfectly into this story, but small amounts of text might be edited from previous chapters. Key word is might, depending on how I work out the plot twist.

Work is progressing on a Rise of a Kitsune rewrite, slowly. Up to about 7k words, I'd like to get a lot pre-written before I publish it though.