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The large battlefield sitting before the fighters was custom designed for this battle. The entire battlefield is actually built into a giant bridge over a large spiked pit. The spikes themselves are poisoned and many rats litter the bottom of it looking for a meal. The bridge itself is made out of solid stone and is nicely decorated with statues at both ends. The statues are of Chaos standing on top of Masamune, engraved within the base of the statue it reads "This arena brought to you by Masamune's check book."

This being a Jounin exam lethal force is not authorized however throwing your opponent over the side of the bridge is permitted.

Westly surveyed the battlefield, as he began formulating one of his inscrutable plans. He whistled, impressed with the scenery.

So, the committee finally caved after that complaint I filed. And that, uh, incident I caused....

Westly had always hated the plain, packed-earth arena floor. The most important aspect of being a ninja was using the terrain to one's advantage. He'd said as much to the arena committee, but they complained that setting up a decent battleground was too expensive. So Westly had walked into the arena, jumped into the stands, and used the spectators as human shields. "I'm just using the terrain to my advantage," he'd said. And so, somehow, since then, they'd managed to find a little more funding. It was just a trick of making a custom battlefield less expensive than the legal fees of the spectators.

Westly nodded to Tougura. He'd been hoping to face off against Shin in the first round, but facing Tougura wasn't so bad. After all, Shin was a known friend and associate of Westly, and Harou a known rival. With Westly facing off against Tougura, that put Shin and Harou in a ring somewhere by default. Westly had slipped Shin an enormous amount of intel on Harou before their fight had started....

"It's not a bad matchup," said Westly. "I hope there's no hard feelings, though. You seem a decent fellow. I'd hate to ruin a perfectly good chance at friendship by causing you serious injury." He blinked. "You know, they've never been quite clear about this point: do we wait for a signal from the judges, or do we just go?"

Wind User. He's an Ichijin, goes without saying. Not laying down any mist anyway, he'd just blow it away.

Westly made a pair of handseals. A very simply technique, partly genjutsu but mostly taijutsu. "Eyes on me! Hitomi!" he shouted gleefully, his grin widening to nigh-manic proportions. Grinning manically was a great stress-reliever, a known intimidation tactic, and so long as you knew how to keep your wits about you while doing it, had no downsides.

Anyway.

Hitomi. It was part flashstep, part charge, part optical illusion, and part actual illusion. The breakdown went as follows:

1. Flashstep. Westly was not a Taijutsu specialist. He wasn't quite up to Leaf Shadow Dance levels when flashstepping. He was still bound by momentum. In other words, he could only flashstep in a straight line. Which meant that, unlike Leaf Shadow Dance, he couldn't flashstep behind someone. But flashstepping in a straight line made for a decent

2. Charge. It's intimidating, it's a great way to close distance between oneself and a ranged attacker, and it's very good at knocking people off cliffs. But unfortunately, there are a number of martial arts moves that allow the person being charged to grab you right when you connect and toss you a sizable distance using your own momentum against you. That's why you need a bit of

3. Optical Illusion. According to Wikipedia, "Motion camouflage is a dynamic type of camouflage by which an object can approach a target while appearing to remain stationary from the perspective of the target." It's a trick dragonflies use. Of course, just to seal the deal, you can also throw in

4. Actual Illusion. Forcing the issue, it makes the optical illusion work and then some.

So... yeah. From Tougura's perspective, Westly took a step and then collided with him at a ridiculous speed. It was like he'd covered all twenty or so feet of the intervening distance in a single step, and barreled into Tougura with an enormous amount of momentum.

From Westly's perspective, he ran past the clones before they could react, and dashed under the flying bomb before it landed. It was a trick he often used: run inside your opponent's reach. Usually, the opponent used a sword, but really, a spread-out formation made of an airborne bomb and a quartet of clones had more openings than a length of solid steel.

Oh, and for the sake of interest, to a third party perspective, they just saw Westly run very quickly toward Tougura. In other words, they saw the flashstep but not the illusion, optical or otherwise. The illusion was for Tougura alone.

Westly began a set of handseals almost as soon as he collided. It was a jutsu in three parts--a three jutsu combo, really--and the third was the hardest and the least practiced. He managed to get through the first two parts, only a couple handseals, but he had to put the last part on hold while he dealt with the incoming explosive. He swatted the bomb to one side, and rolled in the other direction, trying to put as much distance as possible between him and it before it detonated.

When he came up, there was a swarm of pixies surrounding him in a shimmering blue glow. They were making it hard to see Westly, but that was probably just a side effect of them clustering around him rather than the "point" of the jutsu. A brief flick of Westly's eyes took in the number of them. Ohh... I think a couple of them got singed off. That was mean of him. A brief flick in the other direction. Getting uncomfortably close to the edge.... He didn't have time for a glance behind him, but he was a little concerned about what happened to the clones. Oh dear gods, what the HELL is that whistling sound....

The first two parts of the jutsu: one, summon up some mist, and two, shape the mist into creatures with illusion. Mist Awakening and Mist Summons. Together, they were Westly's trademarks. He knew them better and practiced them more than any other jutsu in his repertoire. He could chain them, and only them, together in the amount of time it took him to perform a single more difficult jutsu.

"You don't need strength," Westly riposted, "you just need to be smart enough to know where to apply it."

Westly couldn't quite fathom what Tougura was doing. It seemed like an unrelated series of combos with no overreaching stratagem. Tactically clever, though, even they kept leaving openings for him to escape. Still, until Westly figured out Hideki-san's plan, any attempts to counter it would be too dangerous to attempt quite yet. So, for the moment at least, Westly stuck to his own plan.

He kept his eyes fixed firmly on Tougura--or rather, on Tougura's hands. It was a grifter's habit that translated well to a ninja's career. Eye contact was pointless and left one open to genjutsu. By keeping his eyes on Tougura's hands, he was looking at what jutsus he was performing, what weapons he was wielding, and otherwise was staring roughly at Tougura's center of mass, a prime ranged target.

While thusly watching Tougura's hands, Westly started performing the last part of his lovely combo. He'd only just finished when Tougura leapt into the air at him. Again, he dashed forward and rolled, escaping underneath and past Tougura. When he rolled back up into a crouch to face Tougura once more, the pixies were pinkish purple instead of blue.

Now I just need a bloody opening where he can't blow the damn projectile out of bloody skies.

He grinned. "You trying to wreck this thing?" He sounded almost excited at the thought.

The pinkish purple mist was a dead giveaway to what was coming... or it would have been, had Tougura been there for the one previous time Westly had performed the jutsu publicly. Or not, actually, since it caused some memory loss that time.

Oberon's Grail. It was a hopped up version of Westly's earlier jutsu "Bacchus's Sigh". When the mist contacted... there was more to it, medically, but let's just say that when the mist contacted Tougura's face, Tougura would become very, very drunk. And, as a genjutsu, that drunkenness affected everyone roughly equally. A strong stamina or a tolerance for alcohol did nothing; it affected the mind directly.

Unfortunately, as a Wind-nin who knew a little bit about Westly's fighting style, Tougura would've blown away any suspicious-looking mist immediately. Animating the mist into a swarm of pixies let Westly store the attack as something of a homing projectile. It would hit, eventually, he just needed an opening where Tougura couldn't air blast it out of the sky.

* Interrupt Attack *

"Oh, I'll help, then," Tougura heard faintly as he drifted over the side. As he was summoning the wolves, he looked up to see a pair of lit fireworks flying after him, rigged to explode in midair around where Westly had last seen Tougura, which was dangerous close to where Tougura was still standing. Floating?

"I'm a helper!" Westly called after him. He left a quick illusion of himself there, just a simple decoy, fairies included, and then ran to the other side of the bridge... and kept running. Westly's chakra strength was garbage, which meant that, on the flipside, his chakra control was one of the best in the village. Although Westly didn't know Tougura's exact position, he was precisely opposite his opponent, perched on the other side of the bridge, over the edge.

(( OOC: Yes, fireworks. They're a lot like bombs, except much, much prettier. ))

(( Westly's fireworks use something similar to an explosive tag as a fuse, which lets him light them in an instant. He tosses them as one of his standard thrown weapons. It takes no more time than it would to toss a rock after Tougura. Tougura went out of sight, so Westly tossed a rock after him. That rock happened to be of the sort that explodes in mid-air in a cascade of sparkliness. Also, I was more leaning towards the explosion preventing Tougura from successfully completing the wolf jutsu. If he managed to get it off, they're getting one as well. Assuming they don't attack the decoy.

I frequently change my posts within the first ten minutes or so after I post them. ))