Kas had a small home gym in his basement and a decent backyard, but neither were suited for a serious duel. I was here today to experience his signature move, the Six Star Meteor Kick, which involved launching your opponent into the air, juggling them, then sending them crashing down with crater-making force. I didn't think his ceilings or neighbors would think highly of the display.
We walked instead to Kas's private gym, not far from his home in a nearby turn-of-the-century warehouse. Health Haus was a contender for the best gym in the city. A sports megaplex, it had three floors and a roof deck sectioned off into virtually every athletic training facility a man could need. There were two Olympic swimming pools, a rock climbing gym, basketball, tennis, and squash courts, and more. I'd actually been pretty envious watching the commercials and tours of the gym when it had first opened eight or nine years ago. Nowadays I found the neutral aesthetic bland and uninteresting, and the clientele bougie and annoying.
I scoffed at a sign for the 'Redlight Therapy' room in the lobby. We'd passed multiple supercars lined up for the valet service outside the entrance. Health Haus was for people with more money than sense.
"You would come to a gym like this." I said, teasing Kas.
He pointedly ignored a couple in matching branded fitness clothing walking in with selfie-sticks and tripods. "What, not enough bamboo for your kung fu sensibilities? I'm sure we can find some bricks for you to balance on for a few hours if we ask."
"You sure you want to go down that route, Karate Man? They got your signature punching trees here?"
Kas led us past the front desk to a room labeled 'Membership Services'. Inside were a few cubicles with workers handling clients both in person and on the phone. There was a sudden silence as we walked into the room. People's eyes flickered to the entrance and froze as they landed on me, glances becoming surprised and appreciative stares. It only took me making eye-contact with a few for everyone to snap back into what they had been doing, their faces a bit redder. This was the cost of being arrestingly handsome.
A man waved us over and had me sit for a picture, clearly ready for us to arrive. He and Kas made small talk all the while, chatting about sports. I didn't fully understand what was happening until I was holding a warm, freshly made member ID card with my face on it and an expiration date set for next year.
"Wait a minute, I'm not trying to sign up for this place. I thought this was for a guest pass."
"Second surprise! It's too late, I already paid for and signed the contract on the membership."
I groaned. "I really wish you'd asked. How much is this? Now I'm going to feel bad if I don't visit here."
The employee, a visible bodybuilding enthusiast, looked at me confused. "Why wouldn't you want to use Health Haus? We're easily the best gym south of the Beagle. I basically took this job for the free membership. This is Meathead Mecca."
Kas waved him off. "Ah, don't mind him. He would rather train by doing backflips in a floorless unfinished apartment building than go to a professional gym."
I opened then closed my mouth.
"See. He can't even say anything because that's his literal position."
"Are we going to duel or not?"
Health Haus's designers had taken the century old steel shell of a warehouse and built it out with all the modern trappings of a high end luxury gym. The first floor around the entrance was a sprawl of machines and free weights, meant to be equal parts utility and spectacle. It was basically impossible to work out here and not be on camera, with at least a handful of people recording their sets at any given time.
Kas took me past the weights to where a large open space was split between sprinting turf on one side and boxing rings on another. There were fewer gym-goers here, all six of the rings were unoccupied and less than a dozen people were sprinting or resting, but enough were passing by that I was sure some footage of our fight would make it out. I should have known Kas would pick somewhere with an audience. Black Harbor wasn't so overly full that we couldn't have found a private space to fight, if he'd wanted that.
"Bit out in the open," I said.
"It's not the same if you can't show-off. Besides, they don't have a fighting pit here – liability, I assume. And if we fight in a squash court and ruin the floor, we'll be the assholes, but if I kick you through the ring because their equipment couldn't handle it, then they'll be the assholes."
Kas climbed into a ring and began stretching. "It's been a while since I did any tournament fighting. Forgive me if I'm rusty."
I leapt up and over the ropes, taking advantage of the jumping ability I'd copied from Annie, and bowed, right fist forward and held in my hand in the traditional sign of respect. "I'm in your care. Thanks for agreeing to this."
He smirked. "Thank me after we fight. You're good, kid, but I still don't buy that you can learn the Six Star Meteor just from a single duel."
I glanced at how much Experience I had saved. If I wasn't pretty sure that you couldn't kick a spirit, I could probably learn the technique immediately after seeing it once. But unfortunately, impressing Kas wasn't worth dying to the Hungry Ghost tomorrow. That said, I did have enough to spend a good chunk during the spar if I wanted.
"How do we start."
Kas stepped into a forward stance, weight mostly on his leading leg, poised to snap a kick with the back leg. "Normally there would be a countdown. For now, just go when you're ready."
I wasted no time, dashing forward to test the old man's readiness. The instant our ranges overlapped, I felt the mental click and clack of dice determining who moved first. As Kas seemed to be setting up for a low roundhouse, I leapt up and torqued my entire body into a tornado kick, a hair faster than the karateka – or so I thought.
Kas circle stepped around me and into my side palms first the moment my body was fully in the air, and pushed. Surprised and defenseless, I flew out of the ring with a blast of air, rolling to a stop on the sprinting turf, nearly tripping the woman using it.
"I win," called a smug Kas from the ring.
The sprinter, a toned black woman in her late 20's, stumbled to a stop, and leant over my prone form. "Oh my god, are you okay?"
Kas had used a specialized feat for feinting that required specifically an Acting related Performance Skill to learn. "Brilliant!" I said cheerily from the ground. Ignoring the startled woman, I kipped up to my feet. "I'm totally stealing your feints for Black City Style."
"I'd be honored! What did you think about that push, though? I learned it from a Sumo."
I hopped back onto the raised ring, front flipping over the ropes. "Neat, but I'm not sure I'm going to specialize in pushing people just to get past pools."
The Qualifier was fought on raised stages up until the final bracket, top-16 in this case, at which point the action was moved to either a fighting pit or a cage. No one was tuning into mixed Sports Fighting to watch an Out-of-Bounds win. It was boring, and boring was antithetical to my whole vibe.
Kas shook his head. "Trust me, you're going to have to. The Qualifiers are going to have pools of forty people this year, and the Round Robin always takes place in a single day, no matter how many are signed up. Now the chances of you having to fight all thirty-nine matches is low, since a few will be injured out by then but it's still going to be a grueling slog. And you're going to want a firm lead at the end. A tie-breaker match at the end of thirty-plus fights is how a guy died of over-exertion at my first Qualifier."
I frowned, thinking back on my disappointment as a child watching Qualifier pools for the first time. Beyond the fact that watching two fighters try to push each other out of a ring while desperately conserving energy made for a boring watch, it flew in the face of what my mother had drilled into me about Sports Fighting. To her, it existed as a way to quell the cycle of violence. There were no weight classes or sex divisions, you were allowed to use any non-metal blunted weapon, and there were barely any rules beyond 'don't kill or maim your opponent'. But this all served an ultimate purpose, to let warriors settle disputes and test themselves outside of the Martial World, where even friendly relationships could be fraught with peril. To fight for technical knock-outs was an insult to an otherwise noble pursuit.
Still, thirty-nine honest fights in one day wasn't happening, and definitely not in time for the Qualifier. Plus, I wasn't bound by the rigor of my mother's martial path anymore. If Black City Kung Fu had to be cheap and annoying to make it into the finals, then that was how it had to be. The losers could chirp all they wanted.
There was still the issue of entertainment value though. As impressive as the Sumo push Kas had used was, it was too simplistic to spam in a tournament without growing dull. I needed something more versatile.
The Telekinesis tree was the obvious solution. There was a plethora of options for moving an opponent in battle naturally, and one immediately caught my eye. The only problem was that it required me to buy up the skill twice, which would put me way past what I'd originally budgeted for what was supposed to be a relatively slow day. The point of this spar was to see Kas in action so I could dissect his moves. Ideally, I could push my mentor into showing off more than he intended without either of us getting injured.
Actually, come to think of it, this was the sort of stunt that was sure to rile up the old man. Besides, the feat looked like way more fun than any of the sensible options, like buying my Martial Arts to 10 for the same amount of Experience.
"I guess you're right," I said, spending the 95 EXP. "Your push is too boring though." I smirked, "I'll have to come up with something better."
[Major Feat (Telekinesis)] Lance Pressure
You are a tightly contained ball of incredible force. You can leverage much more power and speed the closer you are to something you are pushing away. In addition, you may use an extra Success on an unarmed attack to launch your target away from you. How fast something is sent flying in this manner depends on the mass of the target and your total number of Aura Dice, with each additional Success spent multiplying the force. If this would make the target collide with something, then they make another Defense roll against taking damage.
Kas clutched his chest and winced. "Oof. Boring, huh? Careful, kid. Sumo's my favorite sport, you know?"
"The short matches let you bet more?"
He shook his head and smiled. "I know what you're doing, James."
"Is it working?"
Kas answered with a rapid, long step straight at me and a hard uppercut through my relaxed guard. I tucked my chin in and leaned to the side and would have dodged, except at the last second, Kas appeared to slide horizontally two inches without any tells. The fact that I couldn't see how he'd moved like that meant that the technique was localized to his feet, which had been obscured by his attack. Luckily, it was close enough that my Force Armor absorbed it completely.
He parried away my answering knife hand to the throat as though expecting it with a textbook example of Karate's iron circle defense. Kas's next roundhouse appeared to be faster, stronger, and more precise than his last attack, and as it collided with my ribs I got my first taste of the feats which had initially made him famous.
Kassem 'Combo' Kahn pulled his kick ever so slightly to redirect his momentum into an overhead fist before I could respond. In system terms, he'd used two of the extra Successes to make an immediate extra attack with a reduced dice pool using his Master feat, Follow-Up. Unfortunately for me, his other Master feat, Follow-Through, gave him an additional die for every prior attack he'd landed in a fight without missing, canceling out the penalty.
I staggered back, blinking off the skull shaking punch. Kas laughed and hopped from one foot to the other and rolled his shoulders. He backed off a bit to let me catch my breath.
"Ah, feels good to dust off the old techniques! We got to spar more often. What do you think of me so far?"
To tell the truth, I felt humbled. My style was meant to be used in urban or enclosed environments with plenty of things to kick off or to use as distraction. In a straight up fight against a true master of martial arts, I stood no chance.
That didn't mean I was going to make it easy on him.
"Think you should have kept up the pressure."
I had tricks too. As I circle stepped in and lifted my back leg for a front kick, I rolled an Agility + Performance (Stunts). He parried the kick with a downward chop, instincts honed from years of practicing the iron circle techniques – I'd been counting on that. I stumbled, my Successes on the performance making it seem as though I'd lost my balance. Kas bought it, making no attempt to move as my hand reflexively snapped out to use him to catch myself from falling. He was smiling as I reached out.
With my target unassuming and therefore defenseless, I rolled an Aura + Telekinesis uncontested as my palm made contact with the shorter man's chest. Twelve Successes due to the lucky Silver Dollar in my wallet – poor bastard.
Kas did have an Acrobatics related feat that let him try to correct his course when launched off his feet, but it was for nought against the outrageous result. He started to tuck his body and try to spin backwards with the blow, but that only led to him failing to fly over the ring and instead back-first into one of the ring's corner posts.
The heavily padded wood snapped, breaking the tension in the ropes with a loud sound and rocking the entire ring off its base for a moment. A heavy thud as it slammed back down echoed through the gym. Kas hit the post dead on its center and instead of tumbling off and down, bounced forward, landing on his knees and hands. The back of his shirt was quickly reddening. There were gasps of horror from the now growing crowd of voyeurs.
"Holy shit!" I said, genuinely shocked at the double critical I rolled. "Are you alright?"
He let out a wet, rattling chuckle. I could have sworn I heard his ribs clattering as he did. "Forgive me," he said, rising shakily to his feet. "That's my bad. I forgot I was standing across from the master of Black City Kung Fu. I ought to be showing you more respect." Kas snapped a traditional Japanese bow, arms at his side, and returned to his stance. "Let's do this properly, shall we?"
I contemplated talking him down to take a breather, but it was a fool's endeavor. He was committed now, the look in his eyes said it all. I returned Kas's bow with the kung fu equivalent, fist in palm out.
"Thanks, I appreciate you taking the time to help."
"Thank me after." He gave a toothy grin. "So far I've been sticking with what I used to qualify for the Black Harbor Martial Arts Tournament. This time I'll show you what I've been up to since I quit sports fighting."
"Oh boy. Lucky me."
He chuckled. "Relax. I'll make it quick."
We'd gathered a decent crowd at this point, all of whom were about to watch me get my ass beat. Ah well, that could be good for me at least. Maybe it would bring the heat down a bit. Plus, it would help Kas build up some modern day street cred, something he more than deserved.
Kas's approach was much jerkier and more strained this time, a clear sign that I'd taken him past at least one Injury Threshold. Judging by his tight breathing, he must have cracked a few ribs against the post. I switched to fighting purely defensively until I could get a feel for whatever tricks he was about to pull.
Fighting defensively meant that instead of attacking on my turn I would roll a Martial Arts check to get ready for an attack and then add those Successes to my Defense roll. It made it all but impossible for a sole attacker of similar or even slightly greater skill level to land a hit without some kind of help.
Unfortunately for me, Kas moved an instant before me, taking his 'turn' first. He stepped in diagonally and tried to mask a gut punch by loading his legs as if he was about to throw a low kick to my calf. His injuries slowed him just enough for me to turn his wrist away before his fist could make impact with my diaphragm.
Then, simultaneously, I felt a glancing kick to my temple and the image and sensation of Kas in front of me vanished. The smell of his deodorant, his body heat, even the feeling of his wrist in my palm ceased to exist and instead I saw him slightly behind me out of the corner of my eye. I had no idea what happened – even Style Maker was flummoxed.
Thankfully the attack was light enough that he couldn't immediately tee off on me with a combo. I stepped away and held my arms up and ready for his next move. My preparatory Martial Arts roll was somewhat hampered though, normally it was an uncontested check, but against Kas I rolled against his ability to feint. That was another solid, affordable feat that I added to the growing list of ones I wanted to add into Black City Style.
Smiling broadly, my mentor took a quick, short step and then launched into a mirror of the tornado kick I'd thrown at the beginning of the match. I moved to try and catch his leg between my upper chest and arm with the intent of redirecting his attack into a brutal throw. I felt the reduced impact on my upper ribs as I checked the kicj, his body heat against me, and the texture of his sweatpants in my grip – then, like before, the sensations disappeared, and I was taking a hard kick to the ankles that swept me off my feet and into the air.
At least I'd caught enough of his movements this time to see what had happened, though it wasn't about to matter much.
The human brain is constantly predicting its environment. The senses after all, take time for the brain to process into perceptions. Without the brain filling in the blanks for us, we'd be stumbling around, perpetually seeing a fraction of a second behind what was actually in front of us. You may have noticed this effect when particularly tired for instance, when the light switch on your wall appeared to move up an inch or two all of a sudden. That was your brain in real time adjusting where the light switch actually was versus where it, in its exhaustion, thought it would be.
Kas had managed to feint so flawlessly that my brain completely failed to predict his movements. It had instead filled in the milliseconds between my senses and my perceptions with a completely false image of reality. He couldn't keep it up, eventually my nervous system would adjust to his shenanigans, but like I said, that didn't matter at this point.
Another follow-up kick to my ribs lifted me into the air several more feet. I tried to curl my body into a ball to minimize the damage, but my Defense was ineffective. Kas kicked me again, sending us both up a few more feet. In the chaos of it all, I saw that old man was putting enough power into his attacks that he was fully airborne, held aloft by only raw skill in the martial arts. Each attack traced a rising vortex, with me caught in the middle as he battered me upward with the might of his signature move, the Six Star Meteor Kick.
I had enough time between the fifth kick and the final to catch how high I was and reevaluate the decisions that had led to this moment. Was this truly worth the 5 Experience discount on buying Kas's techniques?
The final, eponymous Meteor Kick was an axe kick from above. It landed squarely between my shoulder blades and sent me to ground with cratering force through the canvas covered plywood floor of the boxing ring, the wooden joists below, the hard concrete underneath, and into the blackness of unconsciousness.
I came to lying on my back on the sprinting turf with Kas slapping my cheeks and splashing water onto me. Outside of his extremely amused expression, I was ringed by a circle of anxious and/or annoyed faces. The latter worn by gym employees. I turned my head to look at the pile of rubble that was the ring we'd fought in.
"Whoops," I said.
Kas offered me a hand. I let him pull me to my feet, still extremely injured. "You good?"
"I'll be fine." I gestured with my head to the ring. "What kind of cheap ass gym did you sign me up for?"
He shook his head dramatically. "The rest of its alright. Definitely something wrong with that ring though; couldn't even handle a light spar. Maybe we just head to a park next time. Want to try out the sauna? I need to meditate these ribs unbroken."
We shuffled off, cheerfully ignoring the stunned expressions of the employees as we went. Maybe I would train here more.