Of the crowd of fighters, there were many who were looking to show off - whether this was to boost their egos, to intimidate the opposition, to pick up dates of appropriately athletic nature, to secure almost-literally last minute sponsorship deals, it was as good of a place to do it as any.  You had an audience from the world over, plenty of fresh faces, and few of them could place [i]everyone's[/i] faces to names.  A blank slate of impressionable peers to make a good show for.

Yazhu Kuang, the unranked, unheard of, generally unimportant fighter from China was one of those looking to make an impression at such a late point.

It began earlier in the day, shortly after arriving in this city of combat, that she found herself with a conundrum.  Early on, one of the locals stopped her to ask her why she was wearing such a weird hat.  This was a simple answer, as she said: [b]"Is this not the garb of a Taoist hermit?"[/b]  The local simply replied, without much thought, "What the heck is a Taoist hermit?"

The meat of the issue was that she then spent the next 15 minutes trying to explain the ideals, practices, philosophy, aesthetics and belief system of the practitioners of the Tao, and no matter how detailed she got, the man simply stared at her blankly.  Pointing at the symbol on her hat got a flat "I thought that was the symbol for kung fu", after which Yazhu felt a part of her soul break off and dissolve.

Taoism was a secretive practice, its history in her time characterized by the majority of its applicants being scholars with a reason to keep their teachings to themselves, or otherwise living in the mountains and only coming down every century or so to fuck with people for fun.  Despite this, the idea that it had seemingly either not spread to this far off land of Brazil or simply did it so furtively that no one noticed was quite frightening to Yazhu.  Her credibility as a sorcerer and a fighter was at stake...

Then, she had a brilliant idea.  She walked on air like two feet upwards.

The reaction she got out of the local man was enough to bring her there and then, to the gathering hall of the world's greatest, and try the same thing.  After talking to the only reporter who cared about her at all, Ben Mankiewicz of Milford, Connecticut and owner of fightinfreakznewz.org, she demonstrated her gift by again walking around the air of the hall.

[b]"Look!  This is the potential all followers of the Way can achieve,"[/b] she shouted down at Mr. Mankiewicz and the few fellow fighters who bothered to look her way.  [b]"And this sort of thing is simply the easy stuff for people like me - all the [i]cool stuff[/i], I'll save for the actual tourney!"[/b]

"Wow," said the independent reporter with a readership of several hundred with genuine appreciation, "that's incredible!  You're going to have an upper hand if you can pull this stunt off mid-fi--"

"Pish-posh," said an older man who stepped from the crowd and took a seat upon the carpet.  Vasunanda was his name, and he was a Buddhist master from the distant land of India.  "That is a simple trick, good sir.  I learned this from my master whereabouts I was her age."  Sitting cross-legged, he suddenly rose into the air and hovered with no effort at all.  "She is learned, but not that learned."

"She knows nothing," said a second man.  Andrei Dukhopski, of the Modern Khlystsi, was a severe-looking man who wore no clothes beyond a thin waistcloth and a crude rosary.  "A simple witch can perform things imitating miracles, but does she know anything of the Lord?  Watch what one of His followers can do!"  He then took a leather strap out and proceeded to whip his own backside while spinning around, and in doing so also floated about the room.

Now, she was hardly [i]upstaged[/i] by these two, but the next time that Mr. Mankiewicz turned to look at her, she could tell that something had changed.  A certain spark in his eye had departed.  She went from a wonder that he had only ever heard about, to one of a group of many who apparently just treated flying as something you do in front of strangers.

Yazhu crossed her arms and grumbled, remaining above the increasingly strange religious-ascetic air show.