Origin **Rewrite**

1

THE END OF MY life began on a Wednesday. Looking back, the day itself was rather unremarkable. There was no terrible weather signifying my impending doom, nor any natural disasters indicative of the beginning of the end. Nevertheless, this Wednesday was undeniably the beginning of it all.

I left my apartment bright and early toward 7th and Main, where an abandoned athletic center sat crooked and crumbling on the edge of downtown. The old gym equipment inside had long since rusted and was coated in a fine layer graffiti, but despite its condition, the center still served its basic function. Most of the kids and young adults in my hometown who couldn't afford a gym subscription frequently made use of the punching bags and cracked benches.

I personally preferred a more hands-on routine and spent most of my time at the pool practicing mixed martial arts with some of the other downtown inhabitants. I wasn't very good at fighting—adequate was being generous—but I enjoyed the workout and the company, even if the regulars tended to be involved in things I wanted no part of.

I descended the stairs to the pool area and tossed my bag beneath a bench, approaching a familiar figure waiting at the bottom of the wide basin, long since drained of water with faded sparring mats neatly arranged every few meters.

"Cobra, long time no see," I hopped in and bumped my fist against his. He grunted and offered a nod, backing up a few steps and raising his fists. His snakeskin facemask covered the lower half of his face and neck, rendering his slanted, hazel eyes his only distinguishable feature. Everyone in the group covered their faces in one way or another and had been since I'd first come here. I asked one of the guys about it once, and he said it started after a nasty flu outbreak that was getting lots of little kids dangerously sick. The nicknames came naturally after that, and the names and masks unofficially became the new uniform.

I had a sneaking suspicion it was also for the people who got in trouble on the streets, but I wasn't really one to ask questions. Some things were best left alone.

Cobra rolled his shoulder and cracked his neck, waiting for me to make the first move. It was always discouraging having a two-hundred-and-forty-pound man for a first match. His upper body was so broad he had to come through narrow doorways one shoulder at a time, and it didn't look like he'd been slacking off since I'd last fought him.

I swung, weakly. I hated starting first.

He ducked easily, his cloth-wrapped fist nearly grazing my collar bone. I aimed a solid kick at his shins, still weak. It took a few seconds for me to take spars seriously, some arbitrary inner voice always muttering that we shouldn't be fighting unless there was a good reason. Cobra liked to take advantage of that voice. He grabbed my ankle before it connected and I twisted, whipping my other leg around. Instead of kicking him in the jaw like they did in all the movies, he dropped my leg and I lost my leverage. I fell on the mat, hard. I swore under my breath, wincing as I stood.

"What was that?" Another man walked over, dark hair sticking up behind a mask with jagged teeth imprinted from ear to ear. "You think you're Cobra Kai or something, Moony? That's how you end up dead."

I made a face, annoyed.

"You have bedhead, Venom," I stood tenderly, rubbing my hip.

"Si, pero I'm not losing, so nobody cares."

I muttered something rude under my breath. He calmly responded with the finger and returned his attention to his own spar.

Moony was short for Moonshine, the nickname I'd been blessed with after a not-so-pleasant fight I'd gotten into one of my first times coming down to the center. The first spar I'd ever won had been against a drunk who tried to break an empty bottle of Moonshine over my head. Venom had run over to intervene, but not before I kicked him in the gut hard enough to make him vomit all over my favorite jacket. The nickname had stuck since, and I learned a valuable lesson about blows to the stomach.