Salamangka: 12SS 2020

Bareknuckle

Zee was breathing hard though his mouth, blood dripping from a cut on his upper lip. He stared through his two raised fists at the six-foot-tall bald giant looming several feet in front of him, bouncing on his feet, in and out of punching and kicking range.

One-two came the bareknuckle jab and cross from his opponent, between his raised fists. Zee might as well have had no guard up. His head whipped back as the cross slammed into his face, the bridge of his nose breaking into a crooked line on his brown, square-jawed face.

The roar of the crowd around them filled Zee's ears, amplified by the acoustics of the large warehouse space around them.

Shit. This Mike Troyson was every bit of a monster he'd been hyped up to be. The guy was a 6-foot-tall giant, and built like a massive bodybuilder, but moved like a lightning-fast, agile flyweight. What was Zee thinking, going up against Troyson in the Manila Underground Fighting League's open weight division? Zee's short 5' 7" ass didn't stand a chance!

No. Zee steeled himself. He needed the money from this fight to support his parents and siblings.

Troyson's right leg lifted forwards from the rear, threatening a front push kick. Zee lowered his hands to block, but as Troyson's knee came up, his entire leg turned along the thigh's axis, his lower leg whipping sideways to the right. His foot then blurred upwards in a wide arc towards Zee's head.

Question-mark kick! The front kick turned into a high roundhouse kick, Zee realized too late, as Troyson's shin connected to the side of his head.

The whole world became a slow-motion blur as Zee staggered backwards and to the right.

Troyson's blur resolved into a clear dark-skinned muscle-bound figure leaping through the air in a superman punch.

Zee shut his eyes and braced for impact.

One whole second passed, an eternity in an all-out, no-holds-barred, full-contact fight.

Zee opened his eyes and found Troyson frozen in mid-air.

What the hell –? Zee wanted to duck and get out of the way but found that he couldn't move. He rotated his eyeballs and looked around. The entire crowd were likewise frozen in place, like a living, three-dimensional snapshot.

He looked at Troyson hanging in the air in his frozen superman punch. A serpentine shadow seemed to shimmer and flicker around Troyson, winding around his arm, his neck, and the rest of his body. Zee blinked several times and narrowed his eyes as he focused on Troyson.

The shadow coalesced into a black snake-like dragon, its head over Troyson's arm, his fist protruding like a stubby tongue in the middle of the dragon's wide-open, dagger-toothed jaws.

"Bakunawa," a voice boomed in the still silence of the warehouse.

"What?" Zee asked out loud, suddenly able to move. "Who said that?"

"I did," a voice came from behind.

Zee turned around and found himself looking at his own body, standing in the middle of the makeshift warehouse arena, hands raised in a dazed guard before Troyson's incoming superman punch.

"Holy sh –!" Zee staggered backwards from his own body. He then remembered the dragon and stumbled away from Troyson as well.

"Peace," a man stepped out from behind Zee's body. The man had long, shoulder-length hair, tied around the forehead with a golden sash, gold-trimmed black vest, and a gold-trimmed loincloth hanging in a panel in front, down from his waist. The man looked like an Igorot, or any one of those indigenous people in northern Philippines. Standing at six feet tall, though, Zee reckoned this guy was taller than any native Igorot from Baguio, Philippines.