Nothing satisfied the adrenaline more than winning a contest in front of people; it helps even more when that contest is at the other person’s home. Defeating David in front of his own gym had put a smile back on Crimson Cobra’s face. He was able to walk the streets free of demons and actually be happy. Cobra was going over the fight in his head as he always does



Crimson was surprised that a purple belt who was training every day couldn’t beat him when he hadn’t trained in years. There was some skill left in him like when he had fought KnightMask in the cage.

Cobra had only started down the road before he stopped recognizing he had gained a mild head ache. His eyes closed and his hand held his head as he attempts to shade his eyes from the sun, possibly some sort of sun head ache? Cobra shook his head and only intensified it. The warm sunlight felt as if it was growing hotter and hotter, slowly melting the clothes and body of Cobra but he just stands still waiting for the intense pains to remove themselves from his body.

A small voice can be heard. It is calling his name and he squints his eyes so that he could see out of them. Crimson Cobra looks around but the nearest person is in the parking lot across the street. Whoever the person a parking lot over was is in a hurry, they are sprinting. Dressed in all black, Crimson can’t see the person clearly but he doesn’t think anything of it knowing that they were too far away to make the whispering sound.

Again Dakota can hear his name being called from what sounds like an elder man. The sound of his name gives him the chills and the hairs on the back of his neck are standing up. Crimson Cobra can barely open his eyes and he doesn’t want to move while he is in this type of state.

The calling for a third time makes him take in a deep breath but this time the voice doesn’t stop at his name. It continues with the eerie talking that only Crimson Cobra can hear.

“You thought you got rid of me. You were mistaken, the demon you sent after me was only temporary time saver for you. I promise you soon son, I will have your head.”

Cobra is confused but just as he opens his eyes his face is greeted with a foot! Cobra goes flying backwards to the ground. When he is able to open his eyes again, the head ache now gone, he looks up from the ground to see a person is standing over him. He arranges his head so that the shadow of the person blocks the sun from his eyes and he is shocked to see that someone is standing over him in a full black ninja outfit. Crimson Cobra laughs a little bit but realizes he just took a kick to the head.

Cobra gets back up and looks very angry, he starts towards the ninja only to receive various kicks and punches making him fall to the ground again.

The swarm of masked warriors massed over Crimson Cobra. A female voice commanded them,


Sometimes, fate has a strange sense of humor. Just as his masked assailants were about to begin the work of reducing Crimson Cobra into a crimson stain on the asphalt, the balance was swung back in the XWF star's favor by the arrival of yet another masked combatant...although unlike the others his mask bore a golden framed visor. He wore no shirt, only wrestling pants and hand wraps..

And in a more important distinction, he was heavily opposed to Cobra making the career switch from professional wrestler to asphalt stain. After all, he was his tag-team partner...KnightMask! Moving lightning speed, laser precision and the terrible grace of a great jungle cat, he suplexed one masked assailant, cartwheeled to his feet while with the same motion kicking another in the face, then wheeling around to meet a ninja that was intending to steal upon him from behind with a double-leg, a heave into the air and a violent slam upon the pavement.

Suddenly, the two men were fighting side by side, back to back. There was a strange synchronicity to their motions; where KnightMask failed to parry an attack, Crimson Cobra was there to waylay his attacker. Like water seeping through cracked walls, one seemed to naturally fill whatever openings were left by the other in their defense. No words passed between Crimson Cobra and his mute rescuer, and yet no words were needed.

Together, they made for a violent, physical poetry...the two demon-haunted men. Together, they seemed to make one another invincible...until finally, one of the masked ninjas tackled KnightMask from behind and the two suddenly became interlocked in a whirl of attacks and counters.

Twirling, twisting, pushing, and pulling KnightMask just as always eventually gains the leg of his attacker. He feels as the bone begins to crack and knows that he would be able to put away this man… But he chooses not to, he knows the pain of suffering in a wheel chair and wouldn’t wish this upon even these attackers.

Still on his feet Crimson Cobra is attempting to fight off the leading ninja dressed attacker with the female voice. Her movements are difficult to time and place Crimson Cobra on his back, forcing him to use his background of the martial arts to defend himself.

The interlock of attacks and counters was finally put to a halt when KnightMask let go of the knee bar and stood to his feet. The intense pain would keep the attacker down, but in this case it is the only thing that allowed the man to get back up and charger KnightMask like a bull to the matador. No red cape for KnightMask though making it harder for the bull to miss, the attacker springs onto the shirtless savior and brings him down to the ground again. But with this blindsided take down KnightMask was able to pull off the ninja’s mask.

David! The man that Crimson Cobra had defeated only moments ago. He was attacking KnightMask relentlessly trying to get him to flee and leave Cobra to become a crimson stain on the face of the earth.

The flow of the female ninja was something that Crimson Cobra had never experienced before. Her speed, agility, every single movement was so crisp, so perfect. It was getting harder and harder to land a move of his own opposed to defending the onslaught of attacks. Cobra was growing tired, slowly losing his strength, he had already been attacked by multiple people, now he must defend and hope for another rescue from the masked man!

Again fighting from his back, KnightMask has a fluid movement going, running like the open water out of a mountain spring. Back control, to mount, neither positions that the masked wonder would want to keep. He favors the legs and in so goes for another leg maneuver. A straight ankle lock is tightly weaved onto the purple belt that has dressed as a ninja. David knows the escape but his leg has been torn, pain shooting up and down the entire body, but he still continues on.

He must have his revenge!

Eventually, realizing that Crimson Cobra’s life might hang in the balance of his decision of whether or not to finish the hold, KnightMask shut his eyes. Isolating David’s ankle, he channeled every muscle in his body against the small joint, hyper extending it back, back and back until finally it gave with a sickening pop. David writhed on the ground, consumed with pain. And yet, nonetheless, he managed to stand, hobbling on his single good leg.

Misguided, ruthless…David seemed to be all of these things. But KnightMask couldn’t help but admire his will. Almost reluctantly, he raised his fist to finish off the one-legged combatant. Then suddenly, as he was about to strike, he saw in David’s mad eyes a dark reflection of himself—the same single-minded, all-consuming sense of purpose—or what he might become, if he allowed himself to give into his growing lust for XWF gold all that it demanded of him. Filled suddenly with a violent revulsion, KnightMask struck out savagely, sending David flying backwards, to land in a broken, unconscious heap.

Coming to his senses, KnightMask looked on in horror at what he’d done. His reflections were halted, however, by the onslaught of more black garbed assailants. Leaping over the foremost of them, he somersaulted over head, grasping him in a waist-lock while he was still upside down and heaving him up into the air at the same time he landed, to slam him directly in his partner, like a makeshift human club. Looking down the road, he saw that the female ninja that had come to blows with Crimson Cobra was swiftly gaining the edge over his new tag-team partner. There was something familiar about the way she moved…but he couldn’t quite place it. It didn’t matter anyways. His tag-team partner was in trouble…and he had to give him hand...he was nearly upon the two combatants when suddenly another ninja latched himself onto his back, garroting him with a steel chord.

Meanwhile, the lady ninja’s balletic offense was breaking through Crimson Cobra’s defense more and more frequently.

She closed into finish him with a spear hand to the throat, only to impale nothing but empty air. Moving with all the speed of his namesake, Crimson Cobra slithered around behind her, to administer upon her an Abdominal Stretch…known in some circles…as a Cobra Twist. The female shinobi probed desperately for openings, but none were to be found. Crimson Cobra held her as fast and secure as were she bound and chained. But she was not yet out of options. Blowing into Cobra’s mouth, she temporarily blinded him with a green mist and then finally wriggled free of his clutches.

It wasn’t the first time the veteran wrestler had been hit with green mist, and so his eyes adjusted after a quick rub. He saw that the lady ninja’s mask had come lose, revealing a dark, sharply featured face, flanked on either side by a waterfall of silken hair, as jet black as her ninja uniform. Her almond eyes stared at him determinedly. She lashed out with a middle kick, then shifted in mid-strike to a high kick. The move, known as the Brazilian kick, could catch nearly anyone off guard, if delivered properly. And the woman’s execution was perfect. But Crimson Cobra…was not just anyone. Catching her slender ankle right before the moment of impact, Cobra spun the woman’s supple body around and fastened upon her a cross-face chicken wing.

Just as he was cinching on the hold, he realized he recognized the woman’s face; she was Natalia Rodrigo, the same woman whose father, Jorge Rodrigo, had been beaten and critically injured by KnightMask in the finals of the ADCC submission wrestling world championships. He remembered something vaguely about her blaming KnightMask for her father’s injury…and maybe even for his subsequent death. But there were other rumors about the two as well, he dimly remembered. Strange rumors, about people spotting them sparring not only in gyms but across rooftops and in back alleyways. Didn’t TapOut Magazine also speculate that they’d were--?

“You crippled him…you put him in a wheel chair…! He’s all that’s left to me…and you nearly destroyed him! And yet, now he fights by your side…tell me…are you friend to Tyrone Gunder?”

Tyrone...Gunder? The name didn’t ring a bell.

“Tyrone Gunder….KnightMask!” she nearly spat as she said the second name, as if she hated to speak it, “Are you friend to him or not…?”

“He’s my tag-team partner, yeah, of course!”

Crimson Cobra, following an instinct that the threat of the woman had ended, released his hold. She turned to face him, staring at him with borrowing, passionate eyes.

“Promise me…promise me you’ll protect him.”

Cobra nodded. There was something about the intensity of her plea.

“He’s all I have…and to kill him…is my work alone.”

A smoke bomb exploded at her feet and then she was gone. Cobra heard the sound of bodies hitting the pavement and turned to see KnightMask standing over the last of their ninja assailants. KnightMask looked at him and gestured around, then shrugged his shoulders. Eventually, Crimson realized that the mute wrestler was asking where the lady ninja went.

“You know ninjas, man…bunch of chickens. Guess she ran while she could.”

The two former opponents and current tag partners set off back down the road, leaving behind them a trail of unconscious ninja. A strong wind blew against them as they walked on and a small Hispanic boy, running for the cover of a nearby gas station, yelled out to them in a warning, “There’s a storm gathering…”

“I know,” replied Crimson Cobra, nearly as terse as his mute partner. Lightning flashed in the distance as the sky darkened.

Actually, the kid was wrong.

Behind both of them lay old grudges and feuds…ninjas that wanted them dead, jiu jitsu players that sought revenge. The feuds simmered, boiled and reached up to pull them back if they let them. Ahead of them, were Zane Vyper, Bryce…and the reigning tag-team champions…Peter Gilmour and that brutal monster that not even 100,000 volts of electricity could slow down…Mister Mystery. And inside of them were raging demons, natural and otherwise.

Feuds behind them, monsters ahead of them…and demons inside of them. The storm wasn’t coming. The storm had it…and KnightMask and Crimson Cobra were living in the eye of it. Every day.

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The backpack's straps will be cut, the luggage will fall to the ground and the unknown carrier of the sac will be gone with the wind. On to bigger and better things he will be where he deserves to be while the trash lies there motionless, beaten, never to move again. The taste of gold, never to be placed anywhere near its useless self again as the previous carrier can hold all of the gold he needs by himself.

The wild wolfs will be found ripping and tearing the abandon backpack to shreds to earn its contents, their reward being the gold, unearned by its previous holder but has now moved on to new blood. The wolfs will watch over their prize with the eyes of a night hawk and the temper of a cobra.

Even when tested by animals that think they can win the prize for themselves the wolfs will prove victorious! Nothing shall separate the bond of the two as they test each other every day improving their strengths and weaknesses soon to become an unbeatable pack of two.

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