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The Face: Tournament of Death, Chapter Four
Deep within the heart of America, lay a desolate, crowded, corruption-plagued state penitentiary filled with shouts of loud angry, bellowing, inmates. Among the many inhabitants of the tiny, unsanitary cells within was a rather large, bulky man with a dark complexion, possessing two muscular arms with a tattoo of coiled rattlesnake on his left. An officer opened the cell to the large, brooding man sitting on his prison bench, looking downward to the ground. “Barduk Smith?” the officer asked him. The man, with a small, dark blonde mohawk upon his head, slowly looked up with a greatly wrinkled forehead, and bottomless black eyes. “That’s me…” he answered, in a gruff tone, pointing his large finger towards himself. “You been posted out on bail,” the guard remarked. Barduk thought he had misunderstood, and approached the man with his large feet shuffling across the floor. “There’s a letter for ya too,” the officer continued. Barduk swiped the small parchment from the guard and looked at it with stern, focused eyes, following every single line that could be read.
Dear Mr. Barduk,
It has come to my attention that you have displayed tremendous ability in both unarmed combat and self-defense. Such great display cannot go unrewarded, and therefore, you are cordially invited by an anonymous participant to participate in the upcoming King of Iron Clad Muscle Tournament on the Hanoi Islands off the Coast of China, with the added gift of a $2000 bail. Your ticket on Union Airlines has already been paid for in first class accommodations, and will be ready for your departure tomorrow morning on April 27 at 7:00 am. Please, do not pass up this chance, my client duly would like to arrange a meeting with you, and you yourself are able to obtain an estimated amount of $2 million if you win the tournament. See you soon, and good luck!
Sincerely,
Sheck
“Who the heck is Sheck?” Barduk wondered to himself aloud. But it was no matter. All he could do for hope of escaping life in prison was to follow the advice of the anonymous sender of the letter. So Barduk, dressed in his orange jailbird uniform, was released from his cell, and free to roam to wherever he deemed acceptable…for the time being.
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I was scheduled to leave at a relatively, secluded, unknown harbor near the ghetto slums of the Pudong district, whose name I could not pronounce, sometime at noon, in Chinese standard time.
As cars slowly tugged themselves along the streets, spouting out noxious fumes of gases into the heavily toxic air, I sat snuggly in a small richshaw, being pulled by an old Chinese man. A burst of Chinese culture enflamed my vision, as I could see various letters and characters marking large signs and billboards upon the brick buildings that scattered the roads. Chickens roamed the streets, a familiar sight to my eyes from my previous encounter with the same kind. The sanitary conditions were hardly tolerable. The streets were damp with possibly sewage, and the buildings contained cracks, seepage, and foundation crumblings.
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In a small cemetery located in the outskirts of Manchester city kneeled a young man, with a slightly husky physique about him, lightly browned skin, and dark black hair. He seemed to be an Indian of some kind, but not of the Native American kind. He wore a black sweater and blue jeans as he knelt before a gravestone, honoring the fallen before him. After minutes passed, yet another man stepped on to the scene, with a black coat and top hat, along with a briefcase, a mustache, and spectacles around his eyes. “Sir Rajan, are you ready to leave for the islands?” Rajan slowly turned his head to the man, and nodded. “Now that my mentor is gone, I have nothing to live for…everything I learned about wrestling has come to a halt at this standpoint. There is nothing left for me to do but seek new heights and a new purpose.” The other man tipped off his hat and held it to his chest. “Yes, Master Steel Jaguar was one of the greatest and most influential wrestlers of this time…” Rajan stepped up from his kneeling stance, and turned himself around. “That is why I must fight in honor of him…in honor of who he had helped me become…” He took an animal-like mask head out of his pocket which sported cat-like ears and a dark countenance, fitting it upon his face. “That is why, I must fight…as the lone Jaguar.”
The two left in a large black limousine, as the wind passed from the distance and over the hill of which the gravestone of the great Steel Jaguar resided.
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“This should be fun to watch,” Kristy said, flipping her dirty blonde hair to the back of her head. Joseph Bell watched the two fighters approach the lifeboat. “I’ll bet $200 that Larcen wins. I know he’s a bit ruthless, but hey, aggressive fighting is key to victory,” Joseph said. Kristy folded her arms to her chest, and walked over to the gambler, with her long high heel boots clanking against the wooden lugsail. “I’ll take that bet.” She put her foot up upon a crate. “Silence is deadly,” she remarked. “Alright,” Joseph agreed. The two then shook in agreement.
As the slight waves paraded against the wooden walls of the boat, Allan Larcen boarded the smaller vessel with relative ease. Sam Lee Kim took for the rope that held the lifeboat to the lugsail, and began loosening it from the rail. “Make sure to tell the cap’n to steer near that island,” Joseph reminded. Surprise and amazement crept upon the bystanders faces as they witnessed Sam Kim lengthening the rope, and letting Larcen drift off to sea. “Ey! Ey! Whadda ye doin’ mate?!” Larcen crowed in his thick accent. “Get me outta here!” Many of the half-starved sailors crowded around the side of the boat to laugh in amusement at the drifting stowaway. Sam Kim proceeded to shake the rope so that large amounts of water were able to flow into the small trap that Larcen had fallen into, submerging it slightly into the water. Allan sought for cover on the highest point and brandished his fist.
Sam Kim then gave the rope off to one of the younger sailor boys and let him take control of Larcen’s fate. “I’ll get ye for this!” Larcen cried, waving a clenched hand at the escaping Kim.
“Well how about that?” Joseph said. “Looks like it’s a draw…” Kristy soon interrupted. “Ahem,” she coughed. “I believe that you said if Larcen won, you would win the money. All other cases belonged to me,” she explained to him. Joseph looked dumbfounded. He stared blankly at D, hoping for an escape. “Don’t look at me,” D said. “The girl’s got good reason.,” he chided. Reluctantly and devastatingly, Joseph Bell took out $200 dollars from his almost empty wallet. “There goes breakfast and souvenirs for the entire week…” he complained, grumbling.
Receiving the two bills possessing the face of the well known Benjamin Franklin, Kristy sternly watched as Joseph turned around and leaned against the rail of the boat, looking out to sea. A malicious thought entered her mind. ‘Hmm, drowning this guy here wouldn’t be a bad idea…’ Kristy thought. Her smooth fingers and purple-painted fingernails stroke her contemplative chin. ‘Nah…too many witnesses,' she thought. 'Plus, I wanna enjoy this time while I can…’ she decided. ‘And maybe earn a little extra moolah by winning this tournament as well…’ She smirked nonchalantly her violet-painted lips parting from each other slicingly.
Unknown to anyone, was that there was yet a sixth passenger on the boat, a stout man with black hair, of Asian decent, with a small scar that slashed above and below his left eye. His hair was styled rigidly, with a thick black strand, brushing out to the side and folded downward over his forehead. His hair too, had a spiked layer near the center of his skull. He was wearing bandages across his fists, a blue dress shirt, and pitch black pants. He sat with legs folded and eyes closed, muttering words in a foreign language. But along the path of a slight breath of wind, and barely even heard over a small buzzing fly, were the understandable words aggressively whispered, “They can't hide you from me my son, you will be drawn out soon enough...” His opened vision revealed a red glare that surrounded his eerily black pupils, which were shaped like the seething eyes of an attacking viper.
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