<strong>Location:</strong>Onogoro-Jima Dock<br/><strong>Tagging:</strong>Tian Lei<br/><br/>The monkey just grinned, and soon enough, the battle began.<br/><br/>Tian Lei held his own well enough to get a few hits in, demonstrating his knowledge, proving that he was no mere amateur with a weapon.  He was not, however, the equal of the Handsome Monkey King.  It soon became obvious that the GReat Sage Equal to Heaven was just playing with him, testing him, seeing what he could do.<br/><br/>After several blows were exchanged, many striking the dock between them and doing more damage to hard wood than one would expect, Sun Wukong began to strike back in turn.  With every strike, he gave a command in Mandarin, and part of Tian Lei’s body that was struck became stone.  Not stone the way that a Medusa might petrify someone; this was living stone, like how Sun Wukong had started out as stone himself.<br/><br/>The parts of his body could still move, but he couldn’t speak after his head was struck.  That he could still see and breathe was astonishing in and of itself, or…maybe he just didn’t have to breathe.  The process was certainly no less excruciating as each part of his body changed, until nothing left of him was flesh.  It did nothing to harm or hamper his abilities if one didn’t count the agony of the process; if anything he was better.<br/><br/>Ultimately, the true loser of the fight was the dock, which wasn’t built to withstand the blows of the Victorious Fighting Buddha nor the added weight of living stone.  As the entire dock started collapsing around them, Sun Wukong grabbed Tian Lei and<em>jumped</em>in his famous cloud somersault.<br/><br/>Common knowledge stated that his jumping limit was 108,000 li, but that kind of distance was difficult for the human mind to visualize.  The circumference of the Earth itself was only 80,150 li.  With the Clever Stone Monkey taking them westward, Sun Wukong got a very brief look at Heaven from above, with China farther yet below.  Then Sun Wukong jumped again and continued further up, off of a satellite, off of an asteroid, and again and again the impossible distance until they landed on the moon itself, next to Guanghan Palace.<br/><br/>The impressive view showed Africa some significant distance away, but through the stone, Tian Lei felt only a gentle chill.  That he should be dead in space was academic, especially without a spacesuit, yet he wasn’t.  “Holy Goddess Chang’e,” Sun Wukong called when on the lunar surface.  “You still owe me for sparing your servant the Jade Rabbit.  Teach my son!”  With that, he leapt once more to bounce from asteroid to asteroid and return to Earth.<br/><br/>An astonishingly beautiful Han Chinese woman wearing billowing traditional robes rushed out from the castle as best she could to scream, “I have already repaid-“ but he was already gone.  Sighing, she looked to Luke, then smiled.  “Oh!  Tian Lei!  I got your incense.”  Giving a formal bow, she explained, “I’ll send you back to Kiele street when your friends get there.  For now, let’s get all that excess stone off of you.”  She gestured to welcome him into the palace.<br/><br/>If he followed, she would take him to her great mortar and pestle, using it to grind off the rock from his body until flesh returned to…not normal, something better.  Once more he could speak, and it seemed the moon itself was somehow set up to allow for breathing so that guests could survive.