Rudraya had been to a few martial arts gyms since arriving
in Novum Aurora. He had mistakenly thought that they would have the same
passion for learning and sharing that his teacher had instilled in him. The
number of times he had sat him down and explained that martial arts is about
conquering yourself, “if you do not know yourself how can you ever know anyone
else?” Martial arts was a way of life not just a set of physical movements, it
was making you take the difficult path, recognising when you were wrong, and
having the self confidence to work out when others are wrong. One of the
hardest things in life he said was “to not live in illusion, the illusion that
you are right AND the illusion that you are wrong, allow your ego to be
destroyed over time, no one learns from being right all the time. Also trust in
your knowledge and instinct.”
The first class he had gone to for realistic self
defence had been full of muscle bound idiots. The master had demonstrated some
knife defence and had told the class to grab the hand of the attacker. Rudraya
started to get up and leave but the master had called him back asking why he
was leaving, to which he replied “I don’t feel this
defence would work,” the master had then asked him to demonstrate with
him and Rudraya declined not wanting to potentially embarrass him in front of
his class, but the master insisted. Rudraya, who was starting to loose his
temper did as he asked and had shown him the error of his way “you see if you ever try to grab the had of a man who is
intent on cutting you and killing you, you won’t last 2 seconds.” Other classes he went to had stressed
the emphasis of staying soft relaxed to defeat an attacker which was utter
bullshit in his opinion. But sometimes you needed a bit of comedy so with this
in mind he had decided to attend the “Harmonic Fists of the Empty Winds” event.
He needed some amusement and possibly if it was true he might be able to learn
something besides if anyone gave such a name to their martial art then they had
some serious identity issues.
It was a cloudy day, a little still perhaps, as Rudraya
walked to the exposition, there was a sort of tension in the air he couldn’t
describe...or maybe it was just a bank of high pressure, maybe it was going to
rain. He was dressed in mostly black with brown boots and a brown ¾ length
coat. When he arrived there were bouncers at all the exits patrolling the
venue, people milling about to get in. The building was a large sports hall
with corrugated iron covering the walls. It smelled of that musty odour that
these kind of places get, today it was mixed in with a healthy bit of fawning
and people worship as the “Master” Larsa Weber had come to town, after all
there was money to be made from this noble art! As usual he stayed as
inconspicuous as he could keeping to the corners, but of course there were
people sizing him up everywhere, he could feel the pricking as his as of yet
uncontrollable power on his mind. He took a deep breath and tried to filter
them out. The irony that an art that is meant to destroy your ego causes it to
inflate for most people was not lost on him as he tried to calm his mind. He
had to one day be able to block out the unwanted signals, there was only one
way to improve sometime and that was to throw yourself in the deep end.
He
walked around the various stalls, there were a lot of bruce lee clones and
pretty high kicks. How many people knew that the base of martial are came from
south India? How many people knew that if you tried to use a pretty kick in a
fight someone who knew what they were doing would put you on the ground and
stamp on your face? There were also some muscular women that look that they
could bend iron, that was impressive.....and a little bit freaky. There were
some beautiful women there that Rudraya couldn’t keep his eyes off but he
believed that the right person would come into his life at the right time and
there had been no one so far so he dismissed these thoughts. The pain of his
life up to now was still raw and he was not sure he wanted to let anyone in
yet.
He realised he was starting to brood, so he made his way
through the muscles, muscle supplements and self important pricks that were
wading around. There were a lot of these people in Novum Aurora in all walks of
life.
Now came the part he had been waiting for, the display by
Larsa Webers students, each one in their uniforms with their belts displaying
‘perfect’ synchronised movements. Even Rudraya had to admit that it must have
taken a lot of training to make everyone make synchronously, Just like dancers....except
they were not dancers they were meant to be martial artists. Finally Larsa
Weber himself walked onto the stage in what he probably thought was a majestic
fashion, to Rudraya he seemed like a self important arse-hole but who was he to
judge? He then proceeded to do the same movement with something thrown in here
and there to impress the general public but Rudraya wasn’t fooled, he had no
presence and his movements were devoid of power. But before he was too harsh on
the man Rudraya reasoned that he may just be doing some movements and not
revealing what he really knew so he kept on watching.
The announcer started to speak, “Ladies and gentlemen!
Today, you are very lucky to be here and I am very pleased that you have all
come…”, then Larsa spoke to the crowd in an equally passionate tone. Rudraya
thought ,”if there was a such a thing as Mastery
over passionate speeches, this guy has it, ” after he proceeded to pick
people out of the audience to demonstrate his ‘Harmonic Fist of the Empty
Winds’ on. Predictably as the people ran at him they fell to the ground as if
paralysed by an imperceptible force! Then came the weapons, but Rudraya had has
just about enough by this point, unless the Master tried his ‘power’ on him he
was not impressed, unlike the hundreds of applauding onlookers. “I wonder how many new subscription he will get from
this?” he thought. There was only one thing for it then, to find
‘Grandmaster’ Weber and ask him to try the power on him. As the crowd dispersed
he made his way slowly towards Weber, wending his way through the crowd.
Sometime it’s really useful being an average height, you just don’t stick out
like a sore thumb.
Finally he spotted him approaching a young women, no doubt
extolling the virtues of his Harmonic Fist or whatever he called it, trust a
Grandmaster of considerable skill to be enticing young women. The
predictability of the situation was not lost or Rudraya, martial arts fame
certainly had its ‘other’ benefits, “lets see what
happens,” he whispered to himself.
He was just close enough to hear Larsa asking the women if
she was interested in his art. When she firmly rebuffed him on his offer saying
she was not interested, Larsa’s face fell and Rudraya started laughing. She
then went on to tell him that she thought his demonstrations were fake and that
he was a fraud. “I like this women” Rudraya
thought as he enjoyed the best part of the show so far.
Then it happened, in the blink of an eye the women was
replaced by a 6 foot man who had grabbed Larsa’s collar and had thrown him to
the ground. There was a commotion around the pair as the stunned Larsa looked
up at the man, Rudraya himself was stunned but was determined to see them, he
smoothly and subconsciously edged his way through the crowd.
His mind had exploded with possibilities, did other people
have powers? Or was it some new technology, maybe government technology. Either
way he was going to find out, he had nothing to loose.
