Drawn by Salvamakoto
Knife-Edge Deathmatch
Summer, 1977
Brooklyn, New York City
There was a brawl on a hot and muggy day downtown in Brooklyn, and it ended with both fighters floating from the sky onto their knees. Their tails were lashing and their hair spiked and crackled with electricity. Both of them were freshly stained with each other’s blood.
Somewhere on the ground, their shirts were collecting grunge and scum. One fighter was male, the other female, and both of their bodies were webbed and crossed with old battle scars.
And the male fighter’s name was Raza, and he said, “This ain’t no fun, isn’t it? We can’t have our fun anyway.”
The female fighter was Yulaan, and she didn’t say anything. Instead, she positioned herself in a kneel with her arm over her knee.
Raza let go of a heavy breath and said, “We might as well go secular if we can’t go all out. So how ‘bout it? No more tricks.”
Yulaan smirked at him.
And Raza had this sharp grin as he said, “In that case… to use a yutakoze raider expression, let’s make it a test ‘a balls.”
Yulaan spat and said, “Tseh. I don’t even have balls, and I’ll tell you I’ve got the balls.”
These two weren’t alone. A good group of bystanders were gathered around, watching this real life kung fu movie play out like they were condemned and this was their collective last wish fulfilled.
A small group of six motioned by more helplessly than the rest. These were the people Yulaan had spent the past half year befriending to varying degrees of success. John “Jocko” Roosevelt, the son of Buck Roosevelt and a Green Beret who wore his years in Vietnam on his face. There's his best friend, fellow soldier, and war-damaged George "Elf" Kirby. Now these two were apart from the others, but were close enough to still be in the group. There's Glenn Sampson, the typical Male Chauvinist Pig of the '70s and a Brooklyn native. Squatting next to him, Glenn's close friend, Michael LaBlanc, filled with hot-blooded Black Machismo with a childhood full of James Brown and Ray Charles. And next there’s Jennifer Campbell, a forward lady of the time and a disco-loving exotic dancer. And last, there's Lori Goldwater, a funky, rough and tumble street punk chick.
Most of the apes remained rowdy, gawking more at Yulaan in the downtime than anything else. Glenn’s eyes thinned as he scanned Raza, while Jennifer and Lori both pulled their hands in.
Jennifer trembled as she asked, “What on Earth do you think they’re going to do now? They’ve been fighting so much already. Do you think they’re going to call it a draw?”
Glenn scoffed and smacked his lips. “I don’t think so.”
Jocko leaned on the hood of the taxi and chewed on tobacco, bemused and focusing his eyes on the silvery glint in Raza’s belt.
That’s where the monkey-man’s hand went.
“Let’s settle this with a knife-edge deathmatch.”
From behind her long bangs, Yulaan blinked. “Knife-edge… deathmatch?”
From afar, Michael pressed his hand against his mouth, while Glenn bit his lip.
Lori said, “Knife-edge deathmatch? That doesn’t sound good…”
Nothing she said was wrong to Glenn’s ears. Whatever violence they had seen thus far, surely it would not compare to the bloody sport to follow.
Elf found the words through his befuddlement to say, “Hey, you think we should step in?” No response. “Hey.”
Jocko spat his tobacco and passed a heavy morose glance to his comrade. “We can’t get involved. Not here. Not now.”
“You’re going to leave that girl to die? She’ll get a knife right in her chest.”
They both turned as they heard frantic footsteps. Jennifer briskly walked over to say, “Why aren’t you two doing anything? They’re going to hurt each other.”
Some surreality struck Michael as he thought about how they hadn’t taken the fight so seriously thus far when it had been mystical kung fu shlock. The flying, the high kicks, the laser beams, all that looked so fun that it tickled his inner 10-year-old who just wanted to see the strong people punch each other through walls.
The mood grounded with the fighters, and now he felt as if he was about to watch two made-men square off in a back alley. Yulaan’s softer features triggered a response in him that heightened the discomfort. Every few seconds, a pulse of shock blinded him. This was the reptilian part of his brain, the basic reinforcement he had been taught his whole life overpowering the conscious mind that struggled against it: “She’s a bolloi,” versus, “She’s a girl.” He wanted to see what made bollois so different from human dames. Now that he was about to get his wish granted, the all-American chivalrous man in him wanted to stay ignorant.
Raza spoke: “I won’t lie, my foggy little brain’s spazzing in shock right now that the Butcher of Gorta has never heard of a knife-edge deathmatch before.”
Yulaan stood and thumbed her nose. “You’re forgetting I dropped out. I didn’t get a chance to get fully immersed in taurus culture, so spare me a doubt.”
He approached and then passed Yulaan and stabbed the ground behind her. Following this, he took a single pace back and set the second knife deep into the pavement there.
“Now what’s he doing…” asked Elf under his breath.
The whole crowd had gone silent. Most were thoughtless, but the faces on several were contorted as they struggled to make sense of the scene.
Honestly, Raza said, “Take off your shoes and put your foot at the edge of the knife.”
Yulaan nodded and kicked off her boots. Raza did the same. The angle at which she set her foot against the blade caused the edge to draw blood without effort— she didn’t wince. Though she was ignorant to the game, she knew well that this was a sharpened yutakoze dagger, the kind that could cut steel. She wouldn’t be walking well after all this was done.
Both raised their fists to the other.
“The edge of that knife is the edge of our world. Nothing’s beyond it. You stumble, you run… you die. Do you think you can handle it, vroda?”
A breeze swayed Yulaan’s bangs, revealing her eyes for a brief second. “I’d be a coward if I couldn’t.”
The crowd watched on in bloody anticipation of this mixed match, placing their bets on who would emerge stronger. Yulaan didn’t have to hear much to know that the odds were stacked heavily against her in their minds. But that made sense. These were humans. Why would they believe anything else? She was a short girl— Raza was taller than her. Both were fit and muscular, but he was much moreso. Yet even if they were of equal build, humans have different standards. Bollois were never a good comparison for women in terms of strength, but visually they were almost indistinguishable. Of course they were going to expect her to be weaker. If she saw herself from their vantage, she’d have expected the same thing.
And then she heard Jennifer talking from afar. She said, “This isn’t going to end well. This is getting too dangerous. Someone has to stop them!”
Jocko stood up and started towards them, with Elf close behind. Their approach unhinged something in the crowd and brought more men to step forward and call off the tournament.
“By the way!” They all stopped. The crowd quieted. Yulaan’s ears twitch as she went onto them, “I understand.” She turned her head to meet them halfway. “You lot are humans. You don’t like seeing chicks get beaten up for fighting blokes. And that’s fine. I wouldn’t let a man and a woman fight either if the odds were this one-sided. But let me be clear here.” She spoke like thunder, each word booming: “I am not a woman. He is not a man. We’re bolloi and nagoi. This is what we do. So if any of you dare interfere in our fight, I will kill you.”
The murmuring returned as everyone got all puzzled, bewildered by the declaration. Jocko swallowed and stepped back.
“That’s right,” said Raza. “This doesn’t concern any ‘a you apes. Right now, the world ends here.”
Then Yulaan spoke again: “Somebody make the ladies scarce. They shouldn’t have to see this.”
This brought Glenn and Michael to move, assisting Jennifer and Lori away from the scene. Lori struggled, desperate to see the fight unfold, but Jennifer wept.
Thunder cracked across the sky, lightning in the distance. Yulaan looked into Raza’s eyes. He looked back. Blood dropped off their chins and chests.
A songbird flapped its wings.
He swung first, striking her chest. She returned to crash her elbow against his cheek. He returned with a heavy uppercut to her midsection, thrusting her back and cutting the heel of her foot against her knife.
She spat blood and recoiled, and used the momentum back to push herself forward for another heavy blow, dodging a hard right hook and unleashing a delirious flurry of blows against Raza’s chest.
This became the deathmatch as it deteriorated into pure raw physical brutality. Raza’s fist exploded across Yulaan’s face, sending her stumbling. She ducked and drove her fist into his chest, pushing him back and earning his foot a nasty and blood-gushing gash. They exchanged and returned light blows, throwing fists with fierceness and ferocity.
Yulaan’s heel dug into the dagger’s blade and spewed her blackened-red blood against the ground. Raza’s heel opened further as well.
A right hook shocked Raza’s face, forcing him to stumble. But he did not walk away. With less than a second to move, he reset his position, reset his foot, and elbowed Yulaan in the face.
Jennifer watched from behind a stone stairwell as Lori held her. They watched, one in horror, the other in bile and curious fascination. Some other women who had been a part of the group slowly snuck back in, behind the men’s backs at first before pushing their way to the front without resistance. No one cared to stop them. Everyone was too shaken by the brutality to bother.
Michael’s eyes boggled. In him something broke. Though he had watched the two fight in the sky just minutes prior, the paranormal distance of their abilities beguiled and amused him as if he had simply been watching a stage play. This, on the other hand, was even worse than the Sicilian alley-fight he feared it’d be. The savagery was so intense that it wrapped around into becoming surreal again to him, and he froze.
Raza backpedaled as far as he could to dodge a swing, then dislocated Yulaan’s nose and spewed blood on them both with a heavy left blow. She staggered and had her foot eviscerated further. Another fist screamed for her bloody face, threatening to knock her out. She caught the fist with her forearm, ducked under his arm, and drove her own fist into his gut. Impact! So fiercely had she struck that the entire crowd went “Oooh!!” in horror. A burst of spit erupted from the pirate’s mouth as his irises temporarily faded. Panicked, he clutched his flattened stomach. Numbness invaded his legs. Blood and saliva seeped through his teeth and dripped off his chin as he fought to catch a single breath, gasping and coughing, spraying the street.
Yulaan took the moment to pant and catch her breath.
Snarling, he gritted his teeth, bore his fangs, and tried to bear hug Yulaan to throw her onto the knife— she uppercut his chin and struck him thrice against his tendered stomach, forcing him to spit copious blood. He desperately beat her fists away and bashed his blunted hands against her face and arm, wildly flailing.
Yulaan paused. “Need a minute?”
She received a haymaker to the mouth and had her heel sliced nearly in two.
Raza chuckled darkly and said, “No mercy. This is a deathmatch.” He dropped his elbow against the back of her neck as she was stooped over, sending her nearly to the ground.
Jennifer looked up, then shoved her face back in Lori’s arms. “But why? She’s… she’s so pretty… she’s beautiful! Why is she throwing that away?”
More hits stunned Yulaan. Her face was puffy and stained with her blood as Raza’s bare knuckles crashed against her cheeks and chin.
Jocko struggled to speak as he watched the pirate take a hard left to the skull that dazed him and knocked out one of his teeth.
Both of the fighters growled and laughed, blood pooling out of their mouths, their eyes blackened and noses off-center.
Elf’s mouth was agape. “Whoa…!”
“What’s wrong?” asked Jocko.
“Are you kidding me? Look at this! This fight! Right now, nothing exists beyond those knives. The world, us, we mean nothing to them. Right now, Yulaan’s not a lady; she’s a warrior doing battle with another warrior. It’s a clash of iron wills.”
Raza and Yulaan struck each other’s fists. Raza’s pulled his back and cringed, feeling out the pain. Yulaan retracted and followed up with a strike against his face, and she earned the same back in response. The blows came heavy and deadly, and their feet ripped and squelched against the blood-soaked knives.
Elf went on, “I’m not saying I’d fight a woman. But I’d not mind a round with Yulaan. Just to see if I matched up at all.”
Jocko looked back to the fight and watched as both warriors struggled against each other’s electric aura, no longer throwing punches but instead clashing with raw physicalized will. Lightning danced in a sphere around the two, and a weak gale brushed away any debris.
“Tell me when they stop. Please. I can’t watch,” wept Jennifer.
The amazed Lori said, “Well, I’ll say this: they can’t possibly keep going on forever. One of them’s going to have to fall sooner or later. And if I had to guess…”
All the hairs on Yulaan’s tail stood on end as Raza came in with an ax-handle. She dodged and beat him back with a headbutt.
Raza’s skull cracked. His eyes glossed over. He slumped and fell. Yulaan caught him.
“U-unbelievable!!” shouted one man in the background.
“She beat him! She beat his ass!”
The crowd whooped and shouted as the watchers cheered and jeered, some celebrating, some freaking out over the possible death before them.
Yulaan kept Raza steady.
He groaned through bloody teeth. “What are you doing? This was a deathmatch. Finish me off.”
They shared a cold stare. She pulled him back to standing and let him rest.
“I’d be a grahzny bratchny if I did. How about we settle for a rematch instead? Somewhere we can both go all out.”
Raza smirked. They slapped bloody palms, spraying blood through the air.
Both limped off away from the crowd, struggling to walk on eviscerated feet.
