NOTE: THE EVENTS DETAILED HEREIN OCCUR PRIOR TO LAST WEEK’S INSTALLMENT OF WARFARE

Their fortunes had been reversed with dizzying speed.

KnightMask had gone from dominating a gauntlet of exhausted sparring partners as Natalia looked on, to standing back to back with the Japanese-Brazilian lady ninja, in pitched combat with those very same sparring partners. An inhuman vitality had replaced their former weariness as they stabbed and cut at the pair with weapons produced from innumerable hiding places throughout the dojo, including the folds of clothing or even in their very hair.

A panel in one of the dojo walls opened up, revealing a screen displaying the smug, smiling face of Big Bad Leroy...one of the most villainous of all the XWF wrestlers.

"KnightMask, KnightMask...you deluded anachronism. Did you really think I would let my plans be disrupted by a primitive such as yourself? Your confused notions of morality do enough harm to yourself and those idiotic enough to allow you in their presence. The notion that I would let it interfere with the enlightened work of a superior intellect such as myself is absurdity itself."

In between dodging dagger thrusts, Natalia cried out, "But it was Eric Rex that abducted Lacey Witasick...not you!"

A formerly friendly training partner, now in the throes of Leroy’s brain-washing device, stabbed out at KnightMask with a three-pronged sai. The blade sought the masked grappler’s flesh, but found only empty air. In a single motion, KnightMask dodged to the side, slipped behind the mind-controlled man, locked up by the waist and heaved him headlong into his companions.

“Ah, Natalia. And to think, I wasn’t considered you worthy of serving as one of my pawns. Amidst the teeming morass of mediocrity that peoples the cesspool that is the XWF…there are two men that stand above it all, giants in comparison to the rest…and as near equals to me. Two men who do not see life through the dark, murky glass of morality and sentiment but face to face, in full clarity. Of course, I mean Eric Rex and Sal Valencia. Rather than allow you to interfere in their affairs, I’d prefer to kill you both…and watch of course. Besides, the brave manner in which they dare to trample upon these things which society has arbetrarily deem to be sacred…such as a young girl’s life…I cannot help but immensely appreciate. Certainly, I cannot allow their important work to be undone for the sake of some primitive notions of chivalry.”

Leroy’s wicked laugh echoed off the walls of the dojo as the martial artists, in the thrall of his mind-control, continued to swarm over KnightMask and Natalia.

“Back to back, then,” declared Natalia, deflecting with her palm a kicked intended for KnightMask’s head, “Live or die, we meet our fates together!”

A man bore down headlong for KnightMask, full of momentum the tag-team champion was glad to transfer into a throw, sending the man hurtling into the glass storefront of the dojo, shattering it apart upon impact. Leroy had planned well; he saw that already, a thin steel barrier was rising up to replace it.

Though he knew he’d regret it later, KnightMask seized Natalia by the wrist and flung her through what remained of the opening. She landed easily on the sidewalk in front of the dojo and sprang towards the opening. Yet in the time it took for her to leap, the barrier had sealed…and she found herself leaping in futility at a wall of steel. Relief flooded into him. In spite of the danger of his circumstances, at least Natalia was safe.

“Tyrone Gunder….!” She cried in a rage, “You stubborn, pig-headed fool!”
Meanwhile, inside the dojo’s walls, the battle had begun in earnest, pitting the steel-trap speed, strength and courage of a single unarmed man against the mindless, murderous rage of twenty attackers, each wielding a deadly weapon. All the while, Big Bad Leroy watched on with the glee of a true sadist, his laughter echoing off the walls.

KnightMask spent nearly more time in the air than on his feet, launching his compact frame into leaps and somersaults that had his attackers kicking and punching time and again into empty air. Owing to an uncanny knack for dodging and twisting away from blows in mid-air, even those among the multitude of assailants that could time his movements were unable to lay hand or weapon upon him.

Eventually, a desperate tactic emerged for the masked warrior. Over a man he would bound. Before the man could wheel around to face him, KnightMask would lock their waists and send them careening headlong into their fellows, so that by a single attack, he felled many. Those that did manage to turn about to face him succeeded in that alone, being soon after subjected to the throttling impact of double-leg slams and spine-busters.

A towering, bronze-skinned man charged towards KnightMask with wolfish speed that belied his enormous size, baring a weapon that sat its blade in front of the knuckles, rendering each punch a potentially deadly stab. The masked man sidestepped the blow and caught the attacker's arm in a Kimura lock. Using the hold as a lever of sorts, he hefted the man into the air and set him flying head over heels into a man who had been stealing up on KnightMask from behind.
Stepping back for a moment, the masked warrior scanned across the room. Of all the combatants, he alone remained standing. And yet, his enemies—to a man—were rising up, shaking off his blows as a man shakes off water. The realization fell upon him, then, that for all his efforts, he had done them no damage whatsoever. At best, his throws and slams had inconvenienced them with the task of getting back up.

Somehow, some way, Leroy’s mind control had granted them an inhuman vitality, verging on invulnerability. And as the battle stretched on, their strength seemed only to grow, even as his faded.

“Impressive, is it not…?” asked Leroy through the video screen on the wall. “They do not even realize that they are no more than zombie pawns in my army. In their normal lives, they grow ever weaker and more docile…which is why, in spite of their skill, you were able to so easily overpower them during your sparring sessions. And yet, even as they grow weaker as persons, so too do they grow ever stronger as zombies. Their wills and individual personalities fade more and more with each passing day, until at last they will be no more than slaves to my every whim. Its interesting, how something so utterly useless as these martial artists, rendered impotent by their ethos of bushido, can be given utility by one such as me…? Under my mind control, they are freed from the shackles of their honor…and finally able to live truly productive lives…in servitude to me!”

With the speed of a leaping panther, a bearded, wild-maned fighter had bounded into the air towards KnightMask, his black hair floating out behind him, a katana blade raised over his head for a deadly downward strike. Behind him, he heard the whisper of another blade, making a deadly arch towards his ribs. The tall, powerful jiu jitsu practitioner he’d felled earlier with the Kimura throw was bearing down on him from the side. A maelstrom of flashing steel enveloped the unarmed wrestler as his enemies attacked him from all sides. There was no room to dodge. To parry a blow would mean leaving himself to the fate of certain impalement or decapitation by another blade.

At the last possible instant, he leaped high, tucked into a somersault and landed, cat-like, several feet away from the scrum of bodies meant to entrap him and deal him steel-edged death.

“Witness their power, KnightMask…! See what man is truly capable of, unfettered at last by all the backward illusions inherited by his ignorant, savage ancestors…! They are the wave of the future… Let them be the last thing you glimpse…before your long overdue death…!”

The warriors closed in on KnightMask, entrapping him in a corner of the dojo. This time, there was nowhere to run. A desperate gamble suddenly played across KnightMask’s mind. He fell down to his knees and dropped his arms to his sides.

Leroy had implied that the member of Black Belt Legacies, who even now raised up their weapons to strike him down, were unaware of Leroy’s mind-control. Whatever fiendish craft he’d worked upon them to bring them under his thrall, he’d done in secret. He’d also implied that, when they weren’t in their zombified state, their minds, their actions, were still their own. That meant that the kindness…the charity…the open arms with which they’d let in him and Natalia…had all been real.

Somewhere, inside of the mind-controlled zombies that were poised to chop him to pieces, burned the souls of noble warriors. What could be greater anathema to those souls, to the code of bushido to which they'd devoted themselves...than the slaughter of one man, unresisting, unarmed...? Leroy had derided chivalry and bushido as shackles...it was time to test just how strong those shackles were.

The hilt of a sword smote KnightMask on the chin, knocking him onto his back. A katana came down, striking the flat of its blade against KnightMask's rib-cage.

He wouldn't believe that the core of a man's soul could be conscripted so easily, even by the technology of someone as smart as Leroy constantly claimed to be.

From all sides, kicks and stomps reigned down upon him.

Such a gift from God was beyond the hands of man to steal away. Men weren't just robots, to be so easily reprogrammed, as Leroy seemed to believe he'd done.

"What are you waiting for, you fools? Destroy him! I command it!" Leroy bellowed from the video screen.

An elbow drop stabbed into his solar plexus. A punch snapped his head back. Still, KnightMask raised not a hand in his own defense.

"Your weapons! Use your blades! Your blades!" Leroy was now screaming, his voice fraught with the high-pitch of frustration.

One of the martial artists leaped high into the air for a head stomp. His foot came crashing down, just short of KnightMask.

Just then, the doors to the front of the dojo fell off their hinges and Natalia sailed through the air, propelled by her powerful legs into a jump that spanned nearly the length of the gym. A murderous rage burned in her eyes.

The accumulation of blows having took their toll, the mute XWF star at last passed out.



LATER...

Natalia awaited him in the passenger side of his Trans-Am as KnightMask exchanged final goodbyes to the members of Black Belt Legacies gym, their wills once again their own.

An older man, with battered cauliflower ears and a nose flattened from a lifetime of abuse, stepped forward and clasped KnightMask's hand.

"All this time, training in the martial arts...I've lived in the gym, on the mat. My whole life was devoted to physical discipline. I really never even realized, before today..." the man thumped a fist on his chest, "What was down there. I do now...thanks to you...thanks to your faith in us. The soul...its a helluva thing to imbue a bunch of hairless monkeys like us with, isn't it? Guess somebody up there likes me."

He grabbed KnightMask's hand and gave it a squeeze, before stepping back into the crowd of his fellow Black Belt Legacies members. Natalia reached around from the passenger's side to open the car for KnightMask. They still hadn't exactly figured out how Big Bad Leroy had managed pull his trick, but they were no longer afraid. If he came back, they would be ready. They knew now, what they were made of. And they knew that whatever technology he brought to bear against them, their souls were prepared.

As they drove off into the sunset, Natalia looked over to him, her statuesque face awash in the crimson glow of the setting sun.

"What a thing...honor," she said with a long sigh. And he knew then that she was thinking of her father, who had died in KnightMask's arms, and of the war declared on him by her clan.

They rode on into the night in silence. Between him on the driver's side and her in the passenger's seat, there was both scant distance...and a yawning chasm. Reaching across the chasm, he took her hand in his.