The martial artist sat down under a large tree with a book in one hand and a pen in the other. He was tired from the stress of the last week or so, because some significant events had occurred.
It had been over a decade earlier that he’d been convinced to keep a journal of a sort. It would not be a daily thing, or even on a regular schedule of any kind, but if he ever had a certain kind of stress, he had been told putting it in words on paper might help him at some later point.
He began to write, the words flowing relatively quickly.
**Entry 37**
It’s been a year or two since the last time I felt an urge to write in this book, but I still carry it with me, and reading previous notes does seem to be a kind of release.
I have always introduced myself at the header of these entries, even though I am the only one who reads this book, and one of only a couple of people who even know it exists. I am not sure why I do this. Perhaps I think if someday this book is found by someone outside the circle, they might not grasp the point without knowing the author, so I persist.
But this entry has a purpose that I should get to, I think.
It can be somewhat inconvenient when the person you’re supposed to bury is not present for their own funeral.
My name is Terry Bogard, and I killed Geese Howard in battle five days ago.
Geese and I have fought a lot of times since we first encountered each other almost twenty years ago. Almost always our fights have been relatively even. I’ll win one; he’ll train and win the next; then I’ll train and win; then he’ll win one. We go back and forth this way.
Geese and I have a lot of history between us. He and my father, Jeff Bogard, studied under the same master. But their master didn’t want to teach Geese the final attack of the school, fearing what someone of Geese’s power might do with it. Geese did not take it well, and killed his master. He killed my father as well, because he wanted to be the only one with the power, and if he couldn’t have it, he wouldn’t allow anyone else to have it either.
I was much younger at the time, but I trained hard, and eventually defeated Geese, avenging my father and fulfilling any desire I had for revenge. I had thought Geese was dead after the fight, but he was not. Over the next many years, he and I had many battles, usually putting one or the both of us in the hospital for weeks or months. Somehow, we both managed to come back stronger from each fight. We’re warriors, that way.
Over the years, Geese and I reached an understanding. Whenever one of us wanted a real fight, we would contact the other and have it out, man to man. There are a few other fighters who could have had this, but for me Geese was the easiest to find, and for him I was the easiest to find. I live in Southtown, which for all intents and purposes is Geese’s city; virtually everyone in the city works for him in one form or another.
There’s a comic book villain to whom Geese has some remarkable similarities. Geese and Wilson Fisk, alias the Kingpin, both love to fight. Geese and Wilson Fisk are also both crime bosses and everyone knows it. And like with the Kingpin, nobody can prove it in a court of law.
Maybe Geese liked comic books when he was a child, and he decided he would model himself on the Kingpin. Maybe my entire life is straight out of a comic book. I would never know. I just live it.
A week ago I received a letter from Geese. Why he couldn’t have called or sent men to get me, I don’t know. I live across town from his tower, mailing a letter would have to be the slowest possible way of reaching me!
Sometimes the steps Geese would take to act, were just as hard to understand as the ends to which he worked.
Well, I went to his office. We talked for a while. It was just small talk. I never could see a point to it but he would always insist. Maybe he wanted to present himself as a gentleman; maybe he really did have a genuine interest.
After a while he seemed to get to the point.
“Bogard, if I were to ask you”, he said calmly, “to name any fighter you could think of, who could beat me at least”, he paused briefly, “say, two out of five times, if I were fighting all out and in the best shape of my life, who would you name?”
I knew he was serious about something, because normally Geese would never admit to being inferior to anyone in any way. And he was treading very close to that here. I thought about the question. It seemed to me that he was asking who was, roughly, on his level. If he had five fights with someone, going all out and while in top form, and his opponent could win at least two, it meant the opponent might be pretty much his equal. With both at their best and trying their hardest, either could beat the other on any given day.
I finally decided on three people: myself, his older half-brother Wolfgang Krauser, and the Modern Pirate, Rugal Bernstein.
Geese did not seem to object to any of these. He then asked me who I thought could beat me in the same conditions.
I picked Geese, Krauser, and Rugal.
He then asked me who could beat his brother. I picked myself, him, and Rugal.
Finally he asked me about Rugal. I chose him, his brother, and myself.
Geese then stared at me for a minute while I thought about this. And it dawned on me that the same names had come up each time. It dawned on me that I believed four elite fighters were basically equal. Any of them could beat any of the others, on any given day.
He asked me what I thought about that. I told him I saw it as a challenge.
He told me that he saw it as a problem. He told me that people were best motivated by change, and change was often brought about with blood.
I asked him what he was getting at.
And he leveled a piercing glare at me, as if he was trying to see through to my soul, and he said, “I want another fight.”
He then poured a glass of wine from a decanter on the far side of his desk, and sipped it slowly. “We’ve fought each other for years, Bogard. And for years there has been no clear-cut winner, no decisive answer about which of us is the better. For either of us to move onward, this must change.”
I started to nod, but he raised his hand as if to stay it.
“I don’t want this to be a simple fight, Bogard, I’m looking for something more...concrete. Something valid and valuable; something that proves, one way or another, which of us is better. I want us to fight all out, everything on the table, all techniques, all the power each of us can summon. I want nothing whatsoever to be held back and nothing left to question. One of us will win”, he sipped his wine, “and one of us will die.”
My eyes widened as he lowered the glass to his desk. I didn’t have any response for a while after that. He ended the silence at his choice. “One last, great fight between the two of us. One must kill the other. Four elites will become three, and the fighters of the world will be motivated once again.”
“One must kill the other”, I said, repeating his words.
He nodded.
Terry set the pen down for a moment to let the memories wash over him. Then they began coming explosively, and he began to write with a fury of energy. He remembered a conversation with Billy Kane on Geese’s personal jet, en route to the island on which he and Geese fought; Geese losing himself in recordings of various classical music pieces; him telling his wife Mary he might never see her again; her slapping him and then hugging him, letting him know that even death wouldn’t separate them; telling his eight year-old twin sons Andy and Jeff to keep training, no matter what; and a few other things before the fight.
The fight itself was even more of a blur. He remembered starting with a punch that could have derailed a speeding freight train, only for it to be blocked as if it were a feather. He remembered the final showdown of ki maneuvers: a full-powered Raging Storm against his own newest creation, Infinite Hurricane. He remembered seeing the first wind blast of the Infinite Hurricane slamming into Geese and throwing him five hundred yards into a rock wall. He remembered hearing a sickening thud and seeing a slight bounce before the second and larger wind burst drove Geese back into the wall of rock.
And he remembered walking up to the unmoving man and realizing that he had won. But he hadn’t wanted to win that way.
He remembered screaming to the heavens and plunging his fist into the rock face, shattering it completely; and watching the body fall into the sea.
And that had brought him to the funeral yesterday, wherein he stared for minutes into the cold eyes of Geese’s grown son Rock Howard, whom he now knew was motivated to finally bring himself to and past his late father’s level.
He couldn’t remember who else had been there. Even though he probably knew many of them, for just those moments in time nobody was familiar.
Perhaps it was better that way.
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(Posted Mon, 19 Apr 2004 02:14)
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