PROLOGUE: THE DEAL

In a dark corner of the bar, he spoke in hushed, fearful tones as the huge black giant, who whose shoulders spanned nearly the width of their booth, nodded his smooth, bald head. His face was impassive, uncaring as the man explained to him how desperate he was to atone for what he’d done, how badly he yearned to make things up to his son. How he wanted to do all he could to help him redeem the family name, even if it had to be from the shadows…given how much his son had come to loath him over the years. How he had determined that eliminating or injuring his opponents for the coming tag-title match was the most effective means of aiding the son that wouldn’t speak to or acknowledge him in his victory.

“S-s-s-so, I picked Crimson Knights…you know, because of course, I know the most about those guys. I mean, we practically come from the same worlds…I was in Rio when KnightMask won the ADCC submission wrestling world championships…I was even in the audience at that Pan-Ams where Crimson Cobra--”

He realized then that the black giant could care less about the details of the thing.

“So anyways…here’s the money…half now…and half after--“

The giant leaned forward.

“Just remember our bargain, Shaw. The woman is mine. I don’t know shit about this KnightMask punk, but the girl used to be in Sparta City...back when her fruit was still green. She’s ripe now. And I’ve waited a long time.”

With that, the hulking, ebon-skinned man got up and walked away without a backwards glance. The man shivered as he watched him go. He had not always been a good man, but he felt as though he had just made a pact with the Devil himself.

Sparta City, Michigan, 1981

Arlan Gunder hated the baby. He hated the fact that it hadn't died when it was supposed to, that the abortionist had somehow failed to kill the damn thing when he'd paid him good money to get rid of the runt. The doctor tried to tell him that the thing had fought him and as bullshit as that story was, it had given him a sliver of hope. Maybe, just maybe, the kid was like baby Hercules, you know, how he strangled the three-headed snake or whatever the hell it was when he was still fresh from the womb?

Those hopes were dashed when he laid eyes on it. And that's when he found what he hated about the baby most of all. Even as a day old mass of vaguely shaped flesh, it looked like him. Somehow, some way, that tiny, weak, grasping, pathetic...thing...looked like him. It was as if he was looking through a fun house mirror...one that shrunk him down, shriveled away his strength and will.

It was as if he'd come face to face with his worst nightmare.

He was Arlan Gunder, damn it! 6'4, 300 pounds of pure muscle...three-time NCAA wrestling champ, All-American defensive lineman! He was strong, he was powerful! He was made of iron! The seeds he'd sown, the countless women that groveled before him, the strength of his line--each son, even the bastards, had taken home state titles in wrestling and gone on to further accolade in pro-wrestling or some other combat sport--it was all proof of his potency as a man, as a warrior!

And yet, there he was, it might as well have been him, tiny enough to fit in a f*cking hand...weak and helpless. There was no way, no chance...no possibility that he could've produced something like that. There was no way that inside of him, there was something as small, weak and frightened as that blasted child....!

A red rage surged through Arland, venting itself in a savage backhand to the face of the woman in front of him. She went sailing against a wall, ricocheting off like a ball. The baby dropped to the ground with a thump.

Arlan surveyed them, mother, laying stunned on the floor, blood trickling from her lip, infant laying on his back, his hands clutching up at something. Sure, he couldn't kill it now. As much as he wanted to stomp on it, that chance had past, thanks to that incompetent doctor. But he would never, ever acknowledge the thing. Of all his harem of women, he'd never yielded such an utter disappointment...!

Douglas and Dark Carnival, Sparta City, The Present

"You're a disappointment. I don’t like easy money."

The ebony giant's voice was deep and rumbling, as if it'd bubbled up from the recesses of some bottomless pit. There was no note of recognition in it, merely casual derision, such as one might harbor for a nick or scratch. As he bent to look down at KnightMask, his smooth bald head silhouetted against the lights of the fair ground. The black giant's huge hand came down, taking up his field of vision. With that single hand, he lifted KnightMask up into the air and began to squeeze the life from him.

He never should have come back. But he supposed it was instinct that guided him. Having lost one home—Slam Master’s gym—wasn’t it only natural that he’d returned to an earlier one? Of course, he was what he’d always been, a stranger in Sparta. And the fact was that most of the dojos and gyms were ran by family members, which meant…well, it meant they were probably cruel places where bullies fashioned and molded more bullies. He hadn’t rolled on the mat with any family members since he’d left, all those years ago, but he knew that, save for one (and he was long gone from Sparta), none of them were the sorts that you could actually train with. Not when you were playing with toys as deadly as those that KnightMask wielded.

So in the end, after driving halfway across Michigan for a new gym, he’d ended up simply training with Natalia on the floor of their hotel room. Of course, as a traditional Brazilian jiu jitsu practitioner, she’d thought that everything he did, as a pure catch-wrestler, was completely wrong. And of course, he hadn’t really argued with her, but mostly nodded his head. Apparently, his policy of appeasement had worked, because she’d suggested that they check out the travelling carnival that was passing through Sparta.

He still wasn’t sure where he stood with Natalia, whether she was still intent on killing him to avenge her family honor…or whether she wanted to be friends, lovers or what. One thing was certain. She was worried about him. It wasn’t that Natalia doubted his ability to pull off the win Saturday. She didn’t seem to find it very likely that he was going to leave the arena alive.

Well, they’d always have the carnival, or they would’ve, but for the interruption of 6’4, 300-pounds of steely muscle, apparently intent on killing him. There was no anger in his assault, only cool, determined precision. Ironically enough, given who their attacker was, it didn’t seem to be personal.

Looking over his shoulder, KnightMask saw Natalia, slumped unconscious against the wall of a carnival tent, blood tricking from the corner of her mouth. Her silken hair hung over her face like a black veil, her sleek, nimble body limp and still. The sight jolted his muscles to action. His legs swung around the massive arm that held him, at the same time hooking around his head.

"Gonna armbar me, boy?" the giant bounced him off the concrete as if he were a child's ball. Pain shot up his spine, then replaced by a tingling numbness. His mind struggled to assert itself over his body, to will himself to stand, to do something, as the giant walked towards his prone form.

Bystanders either went about their business as if nothing was happening, or stood and watched. Some of course, cheered the black Goliath on. It was no surprise to KnightMask.

After all...his father essentially owned Sparta City. Nobody stood up to Vlad the Impaler in Transylvania. Mongolians didn't raise objections to Genghis Khan. And in Sparta City, nobody messed with Arlan "The Dragon" Gunder.

Sparta City, 1988

It wasn't like Tyrone hadn't tried. He struck back, just the same way that he'd seen Batman, Spiderman and so many others do. But before he could finish his swing, Roland had jabbed his fist into his head three more times. And with each impact, those explosions of stabbing pain shot through him, overwhelming his senses. Roland had grabbed him and suddenly, for some reason, he'd gone flying through the air and landed with Roland directly on top of him, so that he could see nothing but his cousin's head. His hair was divided into corn-rows, his face twisted into a scowl.

"You ain't a Gunder! You ain't a Gunder!" the boy had chanted as he pounded on Tyrone.

That was when he'd first learned that he was weak. And it was around that time that he declared to one of his older brothers--he hadn't realized back then how unusual it was to have so many of them --that he too, wanted to be a wrestler. His Brother had looked long into his eyes, saw something and decided to help him.

Before he’d told him that, he’d always been nice to him, his Brother. He’d even played action figures and drawn with him. Where the other males in the family seemed to him like moving, marble statues, existing in world distant and unbridgeable by him, his Brother had been kind.

But then…then he’d become his tormentor. Everyday, he took him to the park, to the track. He’d chased him across the track to force him to run faster. When the youth wrestling team held races amongst themselves, his Brother would wait for him at the finish line. Before Tyrone could cross it, he would knock him down, not letting him pass.

He couldn’t finish a pull-up. He’d simply dangle from the bar, his arms hanging. He couldn’t complete what his brother called a real push-up. He’d taken hundreds of shots, doubles, singles…with no notion of what it might be like for it to finish. His Brother would yell at him, command him to do things that his body simply…couldn’t…do.

THE PRESENT

KnightMask floundered on the ground as the giant loomed over him. The giant raised up a huge foot to stomp him. Move, blast it! Move!

Somewhere in the past, a young Tyrone Gunder, alone at the park, slowly, inch by inch, pulled his body closer and closer towards the bar.

The boot came down, falling like a great anvil down towards his head.

In the darkness of a wrestling gym, Tyrone caught a single-leg and struggled, struggled to pull it in, to finish it. A guttural cry he didn’t even realize he was going to utter escaped his mouth as he lifted the leg off the ground.

The boot was close now, enough so that he could feel the wind from it on his face.

Wind whipping his face, a teenaged Tyrone sprinted towards the finish line at the annual Bull’s Run race, held to determine the team captain for the coming wrestling season. Neck and neck with him, his cousin Roland had elbowed him in the face and for a moment, overtaken him. Tyrone’s father had risen up in the stands, in anticipation of Roland’s victory. Tyrone had surged, snatched Roland and hurled him aside. And there was his Brother, standing before the finish line, blocking his way as he’d always done before. Picking up speed, he blasted into a double-leg.

The boot came crashing down with shattering impact, but only on empty pavement. KnightMask willed himself to his feet.

Arlan slammed into him with a double-leg, lifting him off the ground and smashing him against the side of one of the carnival’s structures. They tore through the flimsy material of the wall, crashing into the midst of a maze of fun house mirrors. KnightMask locked on a double wrist-lock, but was unable to move his father's even slightly. Equally futile, was his attempt to leverage the hold into a means to sweep the giant off of him and on to his back. With his free hand, Arlan pounded one sledgehammer after another into KnightMask's side and face. KnightMask realized that he could break the hold anytime he wished...he was simply toying with him, a predator reluctant to end his fun.

For a moment, KnightMask considered transitioning the hold into a short-arm scissor or arm-bar. A spasm of back pain called to mind the power-bomb he’d received in response to his last arm-bar attempt. He was running out of options…it was time to gamble. Keeping the hold, he used it as an anchor of sorts, by which he spun out from beneath Arlan and, still maintaining the lock, used it to flip himself around to the giant's back.

At last! He’d finally gained an advantageous position! Now, at last he could—His triumphant thoughts were short lived, as he suddenly he found himself swinging through the air, to come crashing into one of the funhouse mirrors. He did a kip-up to get to his feet, but once getting there, found his legs wobbly. Arlan took him by the throat and hurled him forward, to smash into another mirror. KnightMask had just regained enough equilibrium to balance on two legs and an arm when a swipe of Arlan’s backhand knocked him into yet another mirror. This time, Arlan didn’t wait for KnightMask to get back up. Grabbing him by the ankles, he slammed him into one mirror after another before finally releasing him. In his flight, KnightMask smashed into and destroying the last remaining mirrors.

And yet he still rose up…his body lined with cuts, his consciousness flickering…and his face, at last, unmasked. Somehow, when he collided with the last mirror, it had fallen off. Arlan, having grown bored with the one-sided battle, planted his feet and clenched a fist. This time, he was actually going to put some real power into the strike.

Arlan liked to look into a victim’s eyes, either before he killed them or as they died. In a universe he deemed to be accidental in its existence and void of real meaning, the only beings that could truly be elevated to godhood were murderers in the moments they carried out their kill, when their victim looked upon them with full knowledge that they and they alone held the power of life and death. And being a god was something he enjoyed. Thus, before he delivered the blow, he sought for the battered little man’s eyes.

On finding the burning red orbs that were KnightMask’s eyes, he gave up a horrified gasp. Here was a man twisted by some awful force, to wear the features of a monster. A man who had been beaten and battered pillar to post, yet refused to yield, all for the sake of what…? A woman…? One woman…? And yet still…still, still! He went on. Behind the blazing crimson fires of his eyes, there lurked nobility…a goodness that had endured through all the worst of life’s suffering…that even now, shone through, despite his monstrous aspect. And the greatest horror of all was that, twisted and bloodied though it might be…the face upon the man’s shoulders…was his own.

His face! Then, all this time…he was wrong! It wasn’t his biological nature that created inside of him irresistible, inexorable appetites that he was forever enslaved by, unable to resist. He had agency, choices….potentials! He was imbued with the ability to be as the man who stood before him, brave, noble…charitable! He had the ability, he had the choices…and he made them! For the first time, he experienced guilt, not as a distant, abstract concept, but as something wrenching, powerful and damning. There, before him, was the man he could have been. He had made himself into a monster…he had, again and again, thrown water onto the sparks of nobility within him.

As Arlan retreated back, KnightMask looked through the piles of shattered glass that covered the ground. Though it was little more than a piece of black cloth that he drew from beneath the shards, Arlan felt a sense of growing dread as he raised the mask up…and slowly, purposefully, pulled it down over his face…their face. It was the final horror…that Arlan Gunder, murderer, rapist, thief, criminal, loan shark, drug lord, fighter, wrestler and champion…could have been something more than all those things. That Arlan Gunder’s face…could have bore the mantle…of a knight.

Arlan Gunder retreated, stumbling out from the hole he’d made in the Funhouse structure earlier. He found Natalia awaiting him, three-pronged daggers in each hand. Her sharp features no longer stirred desire in him. Her beauty was now not unlike that of the blades she held within her hands. The blaze of her brown eyes burned with menace. Arlan raised a hand to strike her down when from doorway of the Funhouse catapulted the powerful form of KnightMask. Twisting as he sailed through the air, he collided, upside down, against Arlan’s knee. Upon impact, KnightMask’s legs latched around Arlan’s thigh, while his hands wrapped about his heel, pulling it the side of his head like a strange telephone.

Extending his leg into a knee-bar was like bending back steel. And yet, it did begin to bend, slowly, subtly, before Arlan scrambled out of the lock, only to find himself then entrapped in a step-over toehold. And thus it went, Arlan fighting free of one hold after another, each escape seeing to lead him into another attack. Finally, he managed to disengage with the masked wrestler, to get to his feet. But rather than finding a reprieve, he seemed to only worsen his predicament. There seemed to be no limit to the means by which the masked man could leap, flip, roll or spin his way into a submission position. One minute they were face to face, the next minute, he was upside down, wrapped about his leg, working to torque or hyperextend it. To clinch with him, to even touch him, was to find one’s self fighting out of a hold only an instant later. It was as if Arlan’s body was a jungle-gym that the masked man was intent on destroying, piece by piece.

At least that’s how it seemed to Arlan. The truth is that his son had shifted in his approach. He’d been trying to defeat Arlan. And in fighting to win, he’d submerged that which made KnightMask most dangerous. It was his mastery of the impractical, the unorthodox that stood him out from other grapplers—his determination to be a master of all that was cool, flashy and acrobatic in grappling. It was a fool’s errand, some might say. But KnightMask had pursued that fool’s errand unrelentingly, in pursuit of becoming the most exciting submission-grappler he could be. And in mastering maneuvers that so many others had discarded as useless flash, he’d gained a set of weapons that only the very few had the means to defend against. And more importantly, in focusing on being ever more dynamic and acrobatic in his grappling, he’d emancipated himself from the fear of losing and freed himself to attack and attack…and attack.

In one, single convulsive wrench, Arlan broke free from a hold KnighMask had caught him in and bounded off. Wherever he went, KnightMask did not follow. He had no interest, he realized, in battling an unwilling foe. Not even…him. The crowd of onlookers that had gathered was silent at the sight of Arlan, the legend of Sparta City, fleeing thus. And owing to the silence, the whimpering, though soft, became audible.

“Tyrone…,” Natalia got KnightMask by the shoulder and gestured to a man in his 40’s, who had the look of a once great physique weathered and decayed against the rigors of alcoholism and hardship. There was something about the man that was strangely familiar.

“That’s not…I think I know that man…he…he fought my father! I can never forget the face any of Jorge’s opponents…at least, not the faces of those few that defeated him…they’ll always haunt me…”

KnightMask tried to ignore the fact that he was among those few and focused on placing the face. Natalia must have made the connection at the same time as he did, because she gasped just as the name sprang up in his brain. Zayne Shaw…how could he forget him…? The parallels between the two of them were eerie…just as KnightMask had won the ADCC in Brazil, against Natalia’s father, Jorge, only to have the championship taken away on steroid allegations, Shaw had, on the eve of his battle against Julio Piazon, been disqualified for essentially the same reasons. The charges against KnightMask were trumped up, but he wasn’t sure about those against Shaw.

Was that really Shaw…? Wasn’t he supposed to be dead…?

“I…I…I just wanted…to help my son…to make up for everything…I had to try…to help him. I…”

His son…?

Suddenly, he realized that the man…whoever he was, didn’t merely resemble the disgraced MMA legend…but suddenly, KnightMask could see, in his high set eyes and long, narrow chin…the face of Zack Vyper!

“Hey, who was the Big Bad Leroy look-alike, man?” KnightMask turned to see Crimson Cobra at his side. Natalia wheeled on him, her eyes spitting fire. “How long have you been here…? Why didn’t you help…?”

“Relax lady. I was going to, but you know, double-teaming one guy just isn’t our style. Besides, I had faith. What, you didn’t think KnightMask could take that guy? I never doubted it for a second…well, maybe for a minute, when he was using KnightMask like a baseball bat to smash those mirrors…”

KnightMask looked back for the man, only to find him vanished from the crowd. It couldn’t have been Zayne Shaw….that was impossible. But regardless of the man’s identity, KnightMask knew, now, that the first thing he was going to do when he had a computer at hand, was to go to Sherdog’s fight finder and look up Zayne Shaw’s picture…to match it up with Zane Vyper’s.

Was he going into battle against the son of one of MMA’s greatest legends on Saturday…?

“Hey,” Crimson Cobra nudged him, “You didn’t answer me…who was that guy that you were fighting…?”

KnightMask shrugged his shoulders. He was nobody he knew...not really. His mother had been one woman among thousands...and he, one of her children. Children? No...that wasn't the right word. It was too personal...and there was nothing personal about it. He was Arlan's progeny. That was all.

“Just some stranger….?” Cobra asked. KnightMask nodded. A stranger. A stranger with my face.