No Peace vol. 1 Ch. 3

ROUND THREE:
Burn! A Dragon’s Flame awakes!

This was it. Ashura stood before ten Tong thugs, all who were prepared to beat him to a pulp. They had no idea what they were in for: Ashura had training to fight groups of opponents but first he needed to see how to use his surroundings to his advantage.

            There were the tables, the china, the silverware, the two stories, the bamboo staffs strategically placed ten feet behind him, and the weapon still hugging the small of his back. It was safe to say the odds were in Ashura’s favor.

            Time slowed itself. Ashura always perceived the flow of combat in this vein. It felt like his own personal Spider-sense. One of the tong thugs rushed at him, or whatever he wanted to call it, but now that thug wished that he didn’t; Ashura instantly produced a chopstick from his sleight of hand and stabbed him in the eyeball with it. The eye offered nearly no resistance; it merely slid right in with minimal effort.

            The thug reeled back, hollering and wailing in pain. Ashura merely shoved him to his side and planted a swift foot to the side of the thug’s head, knocking him violently into a nearby table. This all seemed ridiculously slow to him and he nearly got bored waiting for it to pass.

            The table that the tong thug tumbled into flipped upwards, providing Ashura with a new weapon; he took a step and jumped, kicking the table forward. With a loud smack and a thud it crashed into the thugs still waiting to join the fight.

            “Sorry, but you guys are ten years too early to take me on!” Ashura boasted. He had plenty humility, but here he was merely stating a fact: they were too slow. Ten years of proper training probably would be enough to attempt to fight Ashura on equal standing.

            “Cheeky little shit!” One of the thugs picked up a chair that was within his reach and flung it with all of his might but this proved futile; Ashura kicked it out of the air with enough force to break it to splinters. He kept his leg up in the air to demonstrate his muscle control and then brought it down low enough to dust off his pant leg.

            “Try again. Try harder.”

            As if answering Ashura’s taunt, two of the tong’s thugs came forward, both running to close space between them and Ashura. Instantly Ashura put up a block and warded off one thug’s attack, unceremoniously shoving him aside. The slow motion showed him that the second opponent was tensing his leg muscle to throw a kick aimed at his head; Ashura parried it and a few more of his attacks, countering by tripping the second thug up.

            The tripped thug stumbled backwards, barely seeing Ashura use the circular motion produced by the sweep kick to turn him around until he faced the first thug. Ashura raised his leg to block the first thug’s incoming kick, and after trading blows back and forth between him and the two thugs, he put the first thug down with a jumping kick to the face.

            The second guy was hit many more times; Ashura landed a series of blinding strikes to the thug’s sternum, reducing his current air supply to nothing, then knocked him to the ground with a powerful back hand. He moved forward to continue the fight, secretly savoring every moment of it.

            “Come on! You’re making me sleepy!” the Pugilist proclaimed, holding up his hands in a taunting manner.

            At the corner of his eye, Ashura spotted movement and dodged, skillfully evading an upward hook kick aimed for his head. He rolled backwards on a table behind him, keeping a mind to control his weight and balance, and held himself up in a handstand.

            “Stinking monkey! Stay still!” one of the tongs yelled at Ashura. Melissa, who still sat in a corner watching the whole bout, merely giggled. Chow Kang looked on, clearly impressed. Luo-Lang grew angrier as each moment Ashura was not getting hit passed by.

            Ashura performed an aerial cartwheel and extended his heel a few inches, allowing it to hit the edge of the table. The tabletop sprang up, smacking the thug in the jaw and knocking him out cold. Ashura regained his footing and chuckled at what just transpired…until he felt the thud.

            He looked at the floor. There were pieces of a broken chair strewn around, prompting Ashura to look behind him. The thug that he jabbed in the eye with a chopstick was holding two broken chair legs in his hands. The chopstick was missing and the eye was oozing clear liquid from the hole. From a quick glance, the eye was now useless. The impact bore next to no pain; Master Wong taught him that pain is only brief, and in that moment the decisive blow could be dealt instead of harping on about how much the blow hurt.

            Ashura stared, deadpan, at the punk still holding the broken chair legs. Of course he was irate about losing an eye but now the thug was more concerned about his next course of action against this martial artist who was hard as a stone and as fast as a strike of lightning. He charged…

            …and inexplicably was flying out of a window. A window from the restaurant’s second story. The thug crashed headfirst into a passing truck, the last image present in his mind before he shut his eye forever was that of Ashura hitting him in the chest with a high-aimed kick.

            “Okay, that may have been overkill,” Ashura muttered under his breath. He took a quick head count: three were down and seven were left. It was at that moment that Ashura heard a boisterous chuckle and looked towards the source, a laughing Chow Kang.

            “Such skill! Such ruthlessness! A true martial artist at such a young age…what is your fighting name?”

            “Fighting name?” Ashura misunderstood. Exactly what did he mean by fighting name? Unless he meant like those idiots from American Wrestling with all of the flashy, queer costumes and flamboyant names. Oh, goodness, certainly this Triad boss had more respect for him than to compare Ashura to the scripted exhibitions of American Wrestling. “I’ve trained for nine years straight, yet I’ve never been concerned with giving myself a title, nor being granted a title. This isn’t the Three Kingdoms.”

            As Chow Kang opened his mouth to retort, Luo-Lang quickly cut in: “So you think you can scare off the White Tigers so easily?! GET IN THERE AND FINISH HIM!!”

            “Please pardon my rude comrade, but I would delight in seeing more of your skills. So please, continue.”

            As if on cue, a loud smack was heard and Melissa cried out in pain. Ashura immediately turned around; one of the thugs managed to sneak behind and slapped Melissa to the ground. He quickly raised his hand again to deliver another blow, Ashura appeared almost instantly and caught the blow tightly in his palm.

            “Being lapdogs for your boss, I have no qualms with. Yet, I draw the line at striking a woman. I told you from the start: leave her out of this!” As Ashura’s rage and adrenaline increased steadily, something else began to produce. The thug felt his fist burn and skin sizzle like it was being pressed against a hot iron; he reeled back and his hand was seared and the skin was almost missing.

            Ashura, as well as the other onlookers of the fight, looked at his palm: he was holding a plume of flame. “What the…? Is this what Sifu told me about? My Chi?” It didn’t feel hot to Ashura, not at all. It felt…like it was a part of him, like a form of synergy.

            Chow Kang smiled in approval and lifted an eyebrow, beginning a slow clap that caught Ashura’s attention once more. “You are truly a remarkable fighter, Ashura Shindo.” He spoke in Cantonese, somehow knowing that Ashura could understand him. “I am absolutely curious. Just who is your master?”

            Ashura gave a simple answer: “Wong.” Nothing more, nothing less. It was all that that needed to know.

            Chow Kang nodded his head in acknowledgement. “You must respect him greatly.”

            “He’s been my father and my teacher for a decade.” A cacophony of imagery of Master Wong caring for Ashura and teaching him flooded through his mind. He quickly took control of the sudden emotion. It was good that he didn’t allow it to overtake him, for he heard an all-too familiar sound: the clicking of a gun’s hammer. Ashura looked up and saw Chow Kang training a sight at a target in Ashura’s direction – Melissa.

            “What the hell?” Ashura shouted. He wished he had access to his throwing darts or another chopstick to try and stop the gun from being fired.

            “I merely want to see you produce your flame again, and from observation, it comes out when you’re agitated. So I’m aiming this Sig Sauer at your girlfriend’s chest, at a spot where she will certainly bleed to death. You have a simple choice: flame on, or jack off.” The last words were stinging as Ashura knew what he meant.

            Ashura growled and concentrated as he looked back at Melissa. He had to protect her at all costs; he took a single leap at Chow Kang, and his extended palm sparked a flame. The gun in Chow Kang’s hand, the gunpowder ignited and the Triad boss tossed it before it blew up in his hand. The restaurant was in shock, as well as Melissa; she was glad to be still breathing. Ashura somehow managed to key in to the gunpowder’s molecules and sparked it aflame.

            Chow Kang clapped and laughed, much louder than before. “Astonishing! I’m running out of words to describe how amazing you are, Ashura. If you joined my group, if you joined the Triads, you’d be a powerful asset to us. There’s no doubt you’d rise through the ranks in no time.”

            Ashura threw his hand down in open defiance. “Sorry, not interested.”

            Luo-Lang suddenly sprang forward, armed with a bamboo staff. “You think some puny fire is going to scare me off?”

            “You’re beginning to sound like a broken record, White Tiger!” Ashura reached for the weapon still hugging his back quickly, revealing a pair of wooden nunchaku. With ease he disarmed Luo-Lang and struck him across the face, knocking him into a row of chairs.

            One of the arts that Ashura mastered during training was Kobudo, ancient Japanese martial arts. This was shown in his usage of the nunchaku: he swung, twirled, and twisted the weapon without flaws in his form. It wasn’t until Ashura ignited the nunchaku and throttled him across the face that Luo-Lang got the point that he was clearly outclassed.

            The restaurant was in silence as Luo-Lang fell, a huge whelp of a burn mark strewn across his face. Luo-Lang was dishonored, defeated by a younger, better warrior than himself.

            Ashura came over to Melissa, who was fighting off her shock of coming close to death. “Are you alright?” Clearly shaken, she merely nodded, grabbing for him to stand herself up. “I’ll be okay. Just get me out of here.”

            Ashura took her into his arms and carried her out of the restaurant, which was still silent, save for a chuckling Chow Kang. The Triad boss watched the couple depart the restaurant, the revving of a motorcycle ringing through everyone’s ears moments later.

            “She’s found herself a fine boyfriend. I think this year’s tournament will prove to be…very interesting.”