Notice: I do not own Naruto, and make no claims of copyright on the
characters who are not my property. Original characters, however, are mine.
Author's Notes: And now for Gosain's fight, which is the whole chapter. Hopefully people will enjoy it.
Thanks to all reviewers, and encouragements for more!
Two Storms
Neji looked over at Gosain almost the moment Kana fell. His match is next. I wonder. The last time his teammates had fought in an exam both had failed, though Neji had expected a victory from each of them. I underestimated the Sand then, but what is this situation?
"Good luck, Gosain." Shiren whispered to the older ninja. He nodded in response, eyes set terribly grim, and his knuckles stretched taught gripping his pole.
"Remember the overall goal." Neji said quietly, his voice still stern. "This is still an exam."
"I know." Gosain turned to them both. "Thanks. When I get back up here it will be your turn."
He did not march down the steps to the field as the participants in the first two matches had, but vaulted over the wall to land in front of the examiner. Yilosi Nemari, long spear in hand, followed.
They faced each other with the examiner in between, Acade looking rather uncomfortable to be between the two ninja.
Nemari stuck the butt end of his spear into the churned earth, a remnant of the previous fights. "Any last words?" He hissed at Gosain.
Gosain's eyes narrowed, and anger rose within him, but he crushed it down between the iron will he had developed long ago. He pushed everything away but his sense of the enemy, blotting out the rest of the world as he had long ago learned to do, to keep going after everything else had been destroyed. He still knew everything he knew about Nemari, all the bits and pieces that he hated about this ninja, a young man almost exactly the same age, but they were distant. The prominent family that protected him as a child, the incidents of bullying, the specialized teachers, the best equipment, the excuses he was allowed, the malice he showed, the many others he had killed, Gosain pushed all of that away. He even managed to ignore the event three years ago, when Nemari had killed his teammate in the second stage of the chuunin exam, a girl who had survived everything else and who had not considered Gosain cursed. It was all gone behind the older ninja's eyes, which focused all about Nemari, measuring the other ninja, ready to fight.
I am cursed to survive when others fall. Gosain had long known this. But that means I will not lose to you today.
Each ninja held his weapon with two hands, and the observers sensed the tense atmosphere. The crowd went silent. The barest flutter of winds through leafless boughs could be heard now.
Special Jounin Acade dared a glance up to the high vista where the two Kages watched. He caught something in their gazes and raised his hand high.
"Begin!"
The examiner was suddenly gone, falling back all the way to the stadium wall. Gosain and Nemari exhaled as one, and then charged.
Steel pole met spear with a viscous clang, and then the weapons and the ninja who wielded them spun, striking again and again, but each blow was always blocked as they grunted and spat, feet moving and eyes dark. Gosain's eyes with the cold fury of the arctic storm that freezes everything beneath an icy coat. Nemari, the tropical fury, feral and raw, ripping all apart.
Then Nemari spun the haft of his spear above Gosain's guard and tapped in hard at his chest.
Gosain flew backward, breath driven from his lungs and skidding to a stop some distance away. He was hardly hurt though; his chains had dissipated the force of the blow.
"Stop fooling around Gosain!" Nemari barked. "Fight with your true weapons!"
"Heh." Gosain's mouth twisted a tiny bit. "You've gotten better, but it won't be enough."
Nemari set his spear to his right side, held in the solid stance of a pikeman. "I'll run you down then." His face contorted in fury.
"First Stroke!" Nemari's feet moved with a frightful suddenness in a single motion that launched him skidding level on his charge, set to impale Gosain directly with terrible strength and speed. Wind hissed around the spearhead as he moved.
Gosain reached around with his pole, striking the hooks buried beneath his false flak jacket. They attached with practiced precision, and he ripped the long chains free. "Stormfront Lash!"
The whirling barrage of chains came forward, striking the spearhead again and again, crawling up the shaft, until Nemari broke backwards, spinning his spear to ward off additional strikes.
"Good." He grinned. "You're serious now Gosain. Time to really start fighting."
Nemari struck his spear into the ground, wrapping his hands round it. "Lightning Element: Shocking Spears no jutsu!"
Energy surged up from the ground to envelop the spear, and spread out around Nemari's hands, which he drew back from the spear itself. The electrical power followed, forming into four different spear shapes positioned around the physical spears. Four spears made of lightning.
Laughing, Nemari jumped high into the air, arching above Gosain. "Got you!" He shouted, and hurled his spears downward.
Four fearful blasts of energy rushed forward faster than any thrown weapon to impale the ninja.
Gosain's chains whirled around wide. "Hurricane blast!"
The first chain stroke came across, sweeping the bolts of power down and into the ground to dissipate into nothing. Then came the other chain, the second threat of the hurricane, arching in on a long armed sweep to reach past Nemari's defenses.
At the final instant Nemari blocked out with his spear tip and dropped down under the chain's sweep. His face was twisted in anger. "Well. It seems this won't end so quickly. Fine." He laid his spear in the pikeman's stance once again. "Lightning lance!"
Electrical energy shivered down from Nemari's hands and into the weapon, creating a crackling spear of chakra that was over twenty feet in length, but moved with the physical weapon. The reaches were now even.
If that hits, I will be shocked. Gosain recognized the threat from this, a simple but tremendously effective technique for Nemari's style. However, I have a counter.
Gosain placed one hand on his pole and one hand on his chains and stood ready for Nemari's attack.
The other ninja leapt up and forward to skewer him from the right side.
"Cloudedge whip!" A single chain snaked out as Gosain let his pole fly forward and manipulated the whole length of the weapon from one end. A long viscous snake of metal with a wicked kunai at the tip and a solid rod in the center slashed in under Nemari and came upwards to drive him back.
The initial moves were thus countered, but these two were not done. Chains ripped through the air as crackling lightning followed, and the two ninja spun and countered, shoving their weapons and chakra forward and back. They moved right, rolling, seeking an opening, any way to strike the other without being slashed apart in return.
Strokes split the ground with wide gashes and holes, and the air sparked and ripped with the energy unleashed. Many could see nothing inside that torment of energy as it passed, but the eyes of Gosain and Nemari remained focused totally on the other, even as Neji watched in awe through the storm at his teammate's true strength.
Many moves of taijutsu spattered against each other until at last there was a change.
Nemari struck down with his lance from above, drawing Gosain's chains up in response.
Yet the spear wielding ninja had let his blast of electrical power travel onward on its own, and now dashed in over the open ground, spear raised with viscous metal tip to skewer Gosain.
"No where to dodge, no way to block!" Nemari screamed in triumph. "Die!"
Gosain's left hand pulled down hard on his chains. "Self storm binding!" He shouted as the metal links wrapped around his own body in a protective shield even as Nemari's spear came in.
The foot and a half of sharp metal head struck into a chain link and caught there, even as Gosain reached out his right hand to grasp the pole at the center of the chains, holding it next to the spear haft. Gosain's left hand grabbed the chain links down low, and then pulled.
Nemari saw the trap and tried to pull back, but too late.
Chains pulled taught and spearhead moved, cutting a thin runnel of blood along Gosain's flesh, but bringing the spearhead far to the side of the shaft, head solidly against that steel pole.
It snapped in two with a horrendous crack, and Nemari's face fell apart in a single image of shock and horror.
"Whirling Stormfront!" Chains ripped free of Gosain's body and blasted Nemari back with blow after blow.
Nemari's body was struck repeatedly, but the other ninja's eyes simply gathered a viscously feral gleam. He grabbed the chains as they thumped into his flesh, taking great bruises, and then threw them back at Gosain, forcing a pause.
A good distance separated the two now, as Gosain stood gasping for breath. Not much chakra left. He noted. But I broke his spear. He can't do anything now, so why do his eyes have that look? Inside, Gosain knew it was not over, indeed he expected Nemari would soon do something, but he took a single moment to pause, and give his opponent a last chance. "Give up now, Nemari. It's over."
"You've gotten better, Gosain." Nemari spat out blood from behind a bruised face. "But it's not over at all. I may not get to skewer you, but at least you can burn." The look on his face was raw and beyond reason, an inhuman glare of predation.
Nemari's hands flashed through seals, and his face contorted in suddenly agony as every portion of his body spasmed. Even as he spoke, lighting, not blue, but a hideous orange energy, caroused over his body. "Self-Scourging Stroke!" He growled. Voice lost of all reason.
"That is a forbidden technique!" Came the strong and clear voice of Raikage, standing up in front of his chair, sword drawn.
The examiner, Acade, looked about to intervene, hearing the Raikage's words, indeed, Raikage seemed ready to demand it.
"Don't interfere." Gosain forced the words from between clenched teeth. "No matter what happens, this fight is mine." His eyes dared the examiner to advance.
Acade didn't move.
"Good Gosain, then you can die easily." Nemari took a step forward.
"Go to hell you bastard!" Gosain shouted, leaping into the air, chains whirling behind him.
Nemari held his hands up, slowly forming a seal. His face twisted into a mad grin of destructive glee.
Chains whirled wide. "Chain Lightning energy!" Chakra blasted down the length of each chain, turning to electrical power. Then Gosain's arm reached back, and he hurled his pole forward to the ground at Nemari's feet.
"Feel the power of the Lightning of Hell's Storms!" Nemari shrieked as his seal completed and power surged to the ends of his arms.
Gosain's pole slammed into the ground in front of Nemari, and each chain's kunai struck into the ground at the end. "Lightning Chain Leech!" Gosain called.
"What?" A vision of absolute horror took over Nemari's face. The two kunai glowed, one bright, one dark. Opposite charges.
Orange lightning ripped out of Nemari's body, burning great waving marks as it went, striking the chains and sinking into the ground. The lightning ninja screamed a single scream as if he was being tortured in the most viscous dungeons of the world.
Gosain landed behind Nemari, a kunai already in his right hand. He spun around and with a single motion stabbed the weapon into his opponent's back.
Nemari's body went suddenly limp, and he collapsed immediately, breath coming in terribly wrong wheezes.
Acade came over in seconds, trying to respond to the shocked silence of the crowd.
The examiner put his hand to Yilosi Nemari's body, and then looked up, eyes dark. He turned to Gosain as the other ninja pulled his chains up from the ground. "You broke his neck." Acade said, voice shocked and soft. "He'll be paralyzed for the rest of his life." It was an accusation.
"I had to do it." Gosain replied. "No one else would have." He walked off in silence.
Acade called for a medic, and then turned back to face the crowd and the Kages. "Winner: Kabure Gosain!" His tone was far from joyous.
Neji stood next to Shiren as they waited for Gosain to come up and meet them in the waiting room. Neji found the fight to be strange to think on. I did not expect that from Gosain. Those skills, and that creativity, to use his chains as a current to draw out the lightning. That was quick thinking, or did he expect it? Further, Neji was troubled by what had happened. Was that necessary? It seemed a terribly cruel thing to do, to deliberately cripple an opponent, even one you hated. Would I have done that to Hinata? Or to Naruto? In some dark corner of his mind Neji suspected that he would have, and he also suspected that he did not have Gosain's reasons.
The older ninja walked up the stairs to meet them slowly. "Hey." He said to both Neji and Shiren as he approached. Many of the other ninja looked at him fearfully. As well they should, Neji noted. None of those who have fought so far could match that display.
"A good match, Gosain." Shiren told him quietly.
"I'm still in the tournament, that's what matters." Gosain replied, not smiling. He looked at Neji.
"You've gotten better." Neji told him. "Perhaps we'll meet in the third round."
"I'll aim for that." Gosain replied. "It's a whole lot better to lose to a teammate than to anyone else out here. Now finish this boy quickly so we can take a break already." The exhaustion of his past fight showed beneath that remark, as much as Gosain automatically hid it beneath his sturdy veneer.
"Ah." Neji replied, and began his walk down.
High up in the stands the stone ninja next to Xi broke the long silence of the match. "The cursed genin is stronger than I think everyone suspected, including your Raikage. I wonder if there will be a fight to equal that."
"You should know the answer to that." Xi told him while the examiner announced the next match.
"Ah." He replied. "That boy out there, Draci Neji. I see him. He's stronger than me for certain, probably stronger than any chuunin here. I suppose I should go place a bet on him breaking the shortest match record. I could use the money."
"You had best hurry in doing that if you truly intend to, Kataishi Dar." Xi responded, finally revealing the chuunin's name.
Dar recoiled slightly. "I dislike having my name trumpeted around by foreign ninja, Draci Xi." He said coldly.
"Yes, well, I felt that I should mention the name, since it's your record that Neji will be breaking here." Xi gave the young chuunin a half- smile.
"You know entirely too much for someone who has only just spent a month here." Dar replied angrily.
"Not really." Xi said quietly, with the slightest hint of sadness in his voice. "I simply seem to have a habit of learning about the outcast and accursed."
Author's Notes: And now for Gosain's fight, which is the whole chapter. Hopefully people will enjoy it.
Thanks to all reviewers, and encouragements for more!
Two Storms
Neji looked over at Gosain almost the moment Kana fell. His match is next. I wonder. The last time his teammates had fought in an exam both had failed, though Neji had expected a victory from each of them. I underestimated the Sand then, but what is this situation?
"Good luck, Gosain." Shiren whispered to the older ninja. He nodded in response, eyes set terribly grim, and his knuckles stretched taught gripping his pole.
"Remember the overall goal." Neji said quietly, his voice still stern. "This is still an exam."
"I know." Gosain turned to them both. "Thanks. When I get back up here it will be your turn."
He did not march down the steps to the field as the participants in the first two matches had, but vaulted over the wall to land in front of the examiner. Yilosi Nemari, long spear in hand, followed.
They faced each other with the examiner in between, Acade looking rather uncomfortable to be between the two ninja.
Nemari stuck the butt end of his spear into the churned earth, a remnant of the previous fights. "Any last words?" He hissed at Gosain.
Gosain's eyes narrowed, and anger rose within him, but he crushed it down between the iron will he had developed long ago. He pushed everything away but his sense of the enemy, blotting out the rest of the world as he had long ago learned to do, to keep going after everything else had been destroyed. He still knew everything he knew about Nemari, all the bits and pieces that he hated about this ninja, a young man almost exactly the same age, but they were distant. The prominent family that protected him as a child, the incidents of bullying, the specialized teachers, the best equipment, the excuses he was allowed, the malice he showed, the many others he had killed, Gosain pushed all of that away. He even managed to ignore the event three years ago, when Nemari had killed his teammate in the second stage of the chuunin exam, a girl who had survived everything else and who had not considered Gosain cursed. It was all gone behind the older ninja's eyes, which focused all about Nemari, measuring the other ninja, ready to fight.
I am cursed to survive when others fall. Gosain had long known this. But that means I will not lose to you today.
Each ninja held his weapon with two hands, and the observers sensed the tense atmosphere. The crowd went silent. The barest flutter of winds through leafless boughs could be heard now.
Special Jounin Acade dared a glance up to the high vista where the two Kages watched. He caught something in their gazes and raised his hand high.
"Begin!"
The examiner was suddenly gone, falling back all the way to the stadium wall. Gosain and Nemari exhaled as one, and then charged.
Steel pole met spear with a viscous clang, and then the weapons and the ninja who wielded them spun, striking again and again, but each blow was always blocked as they grunted and spat, feet moving and eyes dark. Gosain's eyes with the cold fury of the arctic storm that freezes everything beneath an icy coat. Nemari, the tropical fury, feral and raw, ripping all apart.
Then Nemari spun the haft of his spear above Gosain's guard and tapped in hard at his chest.
Gosain flew backward, breath driven from his lungs and skidding to a stop some distance away. He was hardly hurt though; his chains had dissipated the force of the blow.
"Stop fooling around Gosain!" Nemari barked. "Fight with your true weapons!"
"Heh." Gosain's mouth twisted a tiny bit. "You've gotten better, but it won't be enough."
Nemari set his spear to his right side, held in the solid stance of a pikeman. "I'll run you down then." His face contorted in fury.
"First Stroke!" Nemari's feet moved with a frightful suddenness in a single motion that launched him skidding level on his charge, set to impale Gosain directly with terrible strength and speed. Wind hissed around the spearhead as he moved.
Gosain reached around with his pole, striking the hooks buried beneath his false flak jacket. They attached with practiced precision, and he ripped the long chains free. "Stormfront Lash!"
The whirling barrage of chains came forward, striking the spearhead again and again, crawling up the shaft, until Nemari broke backwards, spinning his spear to ward off additional strikes.
"Good." He grinned. "You're serious now Gosain. Time to really start fighting."
Nemari struck his spear into the ground, wrapping his hands round it. "Lightning Element: Shocking Spears no jutsu!"
Energy surged up from the ground to envelop the spear, and spread out around Nemari's hands, which he drew back from the spear itself. The electrical power followed, forming into four different spear shapes positioned around the physical spears. Four spears made of lightning.
Laughing, Nemari jumped high into the air, arching above Gosain. "Got you!" He shouted, and hurled his spears downward.
Four fearful blasts of energy rushed forward faster than any thrown weapon to impale the ninja.
Gosain's chains whirled around wide. "Hurricane blast!"
The first chain stroke came across, sweeping the bolts of power down and into the ground to dissipate into nothing. Then came the other chain, the second threat of the hurricane, arching in on a long armed sweep to reach past Nemari's defenses.
At the final instant Nemari blocked out with his spear tip and dropped down under the chain's sweep. His face was twisted in anger. "Well. It seems this won't end so quickly. Fine." He laid his spear in the pikeman's stance once again. "Lightning lance!"
Electrical energy shivered down from Nemari's hands and into the weapon, creating a crackling spear of chakra that was over twenty feet in length, but moved with the physical weapon. The reaches were now even.
If that hits, I will be shocked. Gosain recognized the threat from this, a simple but tremendously effective technique for Nemari's style. However, I have a counter.
Gosain placed one hand on his pole and one hand on his chains and stood ready for Nemari's attack.
The other ninja leapt up and forward to skewer him from the right side.
"Cloudedge whip!" A single chain snaked out as Gosain let his pole fly forward and manipulated the whole length of the weapon from one end. A long viscous snake of metal with a wicked kunai at the tip and a solid rod in the center slashed in under Nemari and came upwards to drive him back.
The initial moves were thus countered, but these two were not done. Chains ripped through the air as crackling lightning followed, and the two ninja spun and countered, shoving their weapons and chakra forward and back. They moved right, rolling, seeking an opening, any way to strike the other without being slashed apart in return.
Strokes split the ground with wide gashes and holes, and the air sparked and ripped with the energy unleashed. Many could see nothing inside that torment of energy as it passed, but the eyes of Gosain and Nemari remained focused totally on the other, even as Neji watched in awe through the storm at his teammate's true strength.
Many moves of taijutsu spattered against each other until at last there was a change.
Nemari struck down with his lance from above, drawing Gosain's chains up in response.
Yet the spear wielding ninja had let his blast of electrical power travel onward on its own, and now dashed in over the open ground, spear raised with viscous metal tip to skewer Gosain.
"No where to dodge, no way to block!" Nemari screamed in triumph. "Die!"
Gosain's left hand pulled down hard on his chains. "Self storm binding!" He shouted as the metal links wrapped around his own body in a protective shield even as Nemari's spear came in.
The foot and a half of sharp metal head struck into a chain link and caught there, even as Gosain reached out his right hand to grasp the pole at the center of the chains, holding it next to the spear haft. Gosain's left hand grabbed the chain links down low, and then pulled.
Nemari saw the trap and tried to pull back, but too late.
Chains pulled taught and spearhead moved, cutting a thin runnel of blood along Gosain's flesh, but bringing the spearhead far to the side of the shaft, head solidly against that steel pole.
It snapped in two with a horrendous crack, and Nemari's face fell apart in a single image of shock and horror.
"Whirling Stormfront!" Chains ripped free of Gosain's body and blasted Nemari back with blow after blow.
Nemari's body was struck repeatedly, but the other ninja's eyes simply gathered a viscously feral gleam. He grabbed the chains as they thumped into his flesh, taking great bruises, and then threw them back at Gosain, forcing a pause.
A good distance separated the two now, as Gosain stood gasping for breath. Not much chakra left. He noted. But I broke his spear. He can't do anything now, so why do his eyes have that look? Inside, Gosain knew it was not over, indeed he expected Nemari would soon do something, but he took a single moment to pause, and give his opponent a last chance. "Give up now, Nemari. It's over."
"You've gotten better, Gosain." Nemari spat out blood from behind a bruised face. "But it's not over at all. I may not get to skewer you, but at least you can burn." The look on his face was raw and beyond reason, an inhuman glare of predation.
Nemari's hands flashed through seals, and his face contorted in suddenly agony as every portion of his body spasmed. Even as he spoke, lighting, not blue, but a hideous orange energy, caroused over his body. "Self-Scourging Stroke!" He growled. Voice lost of all reason.
"That is a forbidden technique!" Came the strong and clear voice of Raikage, standing up in front of his chair, sword drawn.
The examiner, Acade, looked about to intervene, hearing the Raikage's words, indeed, Raikage seemed ready to demand it.
"Don't interfere." Gosain forced the words from between clenched teeth. "No matter what happens, this fight is mine." His eyes dared the examiner to advance.
Acade didn't move.
"Good Gosain, then you can die easily." Nemari took a step forward.
"Go to hell you bastard!" Gosain shouted, leaping into the air, chains whirling behind him.
Nemari held his hands up, slowly forming a seal. His face twisted into a mad grin of destructive glee.
Chains whirled wide. "Chain Lightning energy!" Chakra blasted down the length of each chain, turning to electrical power. Then Gosain's arm reached back, and he hurled his pole forward to the ground at Nemari's feet.
"Feel the power of the Lightning of Hell's Storms!" Nemari shrieked as his seal completed and power surged to the ends of his arms.
Gosain's pole slammed into the ground in front of Nemari, and each chain's kunai struck into the ground at the end. "Lightning Chain Leech!" Gosain called.
"What?" A vision of absolute horror took over Nemari's face. The two kunai glowed, one bright, one dark. Opposite charges.
Orange lightning ripped out of Nemari's body, burning great waving marks as it went, striking the chains and sinking into the ground. The lightning ninja screamed a single scream as if he was being tortured in the most viscous dungeons of the world.
Gosain landed behind Nemari, a kunai already in his right hand. He spun around and with a single motion stabbed the weapon into his opponent's back.
Nemari's body went suddenly limp, and he collapsed immediately, breath coming in terribly wrong wheezes.
Acade came over in seconds, trying to respond to the shocked silence of the crowd.
The examiner put his hand to Yilosi Nemari's body, and then looked up, eyes dark. He turned to Gosain as the other ninja pulled his chains up from the ground. "You broke his neck." Acade said, voice shocked and soft. "He'll be paralyzed for the rest of his life." It was an accusation.
"I had to do it." Gosain replied. "No one else would have." He walked off in silence.
Acade called for a medic, and then turned back to face the crowd and the Kages. "Winner: Kabure Gosain!" His tone was far from joyous.
Neji stood next to Shiren as they waited for Gosain to come up and meet them in the waiting room. Neji found the fight to be strange to think on. I did not expect that from Gosain. Those skills, and that creativity, to use his chains as a current to draw out the lightning. That was quick thinking, or did he expect it? Further, Neji was troubled by what had happened. Was that necessary? It seemed a terribly cruel thing to do, to deliberately cripple an opponent, even one you hated. Would I have done that to Hinata? Or to Naruto? In some dark corner of his mind Neji suspected that he would have, and he also suspected that he did not have Gosain's reasons.
The older ninja walked up the stairs to meet them slowly. "Hey." He said to both Neji and Shiren as he approached. Many of the other ninja looked at him fearfully. As well they should, Neji noted. None of those who have fought so far could match that display.
"A good match, Gosain." Shiren told him quietly.
"I'm still in the tournament, that's what matters." Gosain replied, not smiling. He looked at Neji.
"You've gotten better." Neji told him. "Perhaps we'll meet in the third round."
"I'll aim for that." Gosain replied. "It's a whole lot better to lose to a teammate than to anyone else out here. Now finish this boy quickly so we can take a break already." The exhaustion of his past fight showed beneath that remark, as much as Gosain automatically hid it beneath his sturdy veneer.
"Ah." Neji replied, and began his walk down.
High up in the stands the stone ninja next to Xi broke the long silence of the match. "The cursed genin is stronger than I think everyone suspected, including your Raikage. I wonder if there will be a fight to equal that."
"You should know the answer to that." Xi told him while the examiner announced the next match.
"Ah." He replied. "That boy out there, Draci Neji. I see him. He's stronger than me for certain, probably stronger than any chuunin here. I suppose I should go place a bet on him breaking the shortest match record. I could use the money."
"You had best hurry in doing that if you truly intend to, Kataishi Dar." Xi responded, finally revealing the chuunin's name.
Dar recoiled slightly. "I dislike having my name trumpeted around by foreign ninja, Draci Xi." He said coldly.
"Yes, well, I felt that I should mention the name, since it's your record that Neji will be breaking here." Xi gave the young chuunin a half- smile.
"You know entirely too much for someone who has only just spent a month here." Dar replied angrily.
"Not really." Xi said quietly, with the slightest hint of sadness in his voice. "I simply seem to have a habit of learning about the outcast and accursed."