DOJO WARS - A FISTFUL OF NAPKINS

1995. In the Battlefield Mall, a war is brewing. Two karate dojos, alike in indignity, battle to see who is truly worthy to call themselves the inheritors of Juan Matus Castaña, himself an inheritor to the mysterious and possibly fictional Chung Fu, Master of the Ten Thousand Year Egg Posture.

Any similarity to actual malls, living or dead, is not coincidental. 

Our heroes are the OPEN CHAKRA FIGHTING SOCIETY, consisting of:

• Me as Hannibal Rex, who runs the dojo. A fifty-something ex-con with a buzz cut, a rhinestone jacket (OPEN CHAKRA) emblazened on the shoulders, and a big scar on his neck from where a guy tried to shank him. He knows karate, voodoo too.
• Magnificentophat as Nathan Churchland, a muscular young lad with a fondness for karate and low-rent Japanese women's professional wrestling promotions. Learned the art of Culteurgy from a wrestling videotape, going above and beyond nature in the pursuit of strength. Unfailingly kind.
• Mellonbread as Ascrobius "ASCII" Pahlavi, the byronic inventor of aspergilloma chic and an evil Daoist. Considers himself a mere vessel to forces beyond his control, which is true- because his magic comes from a clump of unnatural Aspergillus mold infesting his body.

Our enemies are the JUAN MATUS CASTAÑA IRON TIGER KARATE CENTER, consisting of:

Alamo Carvin, self-styled greatest fighter of all time. His "record" consists mainly of random people he beat the shit out of at the gym, like he's grinding for XP in a video game. Looks like an idiot because he does karate in boxing gloves, and possibly is an idiot, but fights incredibly well.

• Kyle Clerkin the Coin Guy, a nebbish little man who hangs around the mall fountain dumping coins in it all day. Seems to possess incredible powers over probability, and may be the most powerful of his dojo. Maybe.

• Three Buddhist Nuns with Nirvana Merch. An enigma.

We set our scene in front of the Open Chakra Fighting Society, where Hannibal Rex stands out front straightening up an advertisement poster. On it, Juan Matus Castaña strikes a raging bull in the head with his deadly poison hand, killing it with not but a touch. Text above promises "LEARN THE KILLING ARTS". Across the aisle, a toy store clamors with yelling kids and a display of obnoxious laughing dolls. Hannibal turns his head, distracted- and ducks a sucker punch from Alamo Carvin, who is out for something better than blood: numbers. Forgetting formal karate and recalling prison brawls, Hannibal grabs Carvin by the belt and yanks him to the floor, but the two hit the tile together as a fight breaks out.

Meanwhile, ASCII shows up for work at the Sbarro in the food court, and by "shows up for work", I mean he stops by the Juan Matus Castaña Iron Tiger Karate Center and never actually clocks in at the mall pizza place. On the way, he cuts through a jeweler but is intercepted by a survey-taker, who ASCII gives the Iron Tiger Karate Center's email address along with a request for as many newsletters and alerts as possible, and to maybe forward it to the prince of Nigeria while he's at it. The thing about Ascrobius is that he's like a cat: mostly agreeable until he decides to knock shit over for no reason, which is why he takes the opportunity to gesture obscenely at one of the Nirvana Nuns at the Iron Tiger Karate Center and knock over the cardboard cutouts of Alamo Carvin and Juan Matus Castaña out front. In the reflection of the glass, he sees the nun somehow fail to hawk a loogie at him, which seems to briefly catch fire as it dribbles down her shirt. Paying it as much mind as he pays anything, ASCII leaves.

Nathan Churchland passes by the fountain when he arrives at the mall, spotting Kyle Clerkin the Coin Guy doing his usual shtick of dumping coins into the fountain by the bag. When Nathan tries to ask him what he's doing, Kyle simply hands him a soggy, crumpled piece of paper that reads "WET". Before Nathan can get any more info from the coin freak, he sees a couple of teenage delinquents running out from the Radioshack with stolen answering machines, pursued by the breathless manager. In most cases, Nathan wouldn't care about shoplifting, but he finds the manager to be sympathetic and so tries to trip one of the teen thieves. In any other series of events, Nathan's foot would have missed the thief's ankle, but the teen just so happens to slip on a puddle right into Nathan's waiting leg. Answering machines go flying, some hitting the floor and one hitting the fountain, splashing Nathan with water just as the prophecy foretold. Nathan catches one, hands it off to the manager, and keeps running to catch the rest of the delinquents.

Alamo and Hannibal continue brawling on the floor in front of the Open Chakra Fighting Society. When Alamo raises the trophy he was inexplicably carrying to beat Hannibal's teeth in with it, Hannibal tears it from his hands and throws it aside, where it lands on the tile floor with an unnaturally heavy thud, so impossibly heavy that it may as well be immobile. The two exchange swings and grabs with little effect, just as ASCII shows up on the scene. Letting the fungus take just a little more out of him, Ascrobius sacrifices his ability to fight to curse Alamo with the same by spitting some black gunk into his mouth, leaving the brutish boxer unable to muster a proper swing when Hannibal twists around to firmly plant a knee in his liver. ASCII feels a flash of heat by his ear, enough to burn his skin; behind him, one of the Nirvana Nuns has just glanced him with a burst of fire from her palm. Unable to fight, the mold man opts for something he's better at anyways: making people uncomfortable. He likes the burn, could she get the other one too, and smell the burning flesh? Imagine the burning of Joan of Arc, when the fire took her clothes but not her body, yet. The creep approach works- she's excited to burn him again, then realizes she shouldn't be, then decides to flee. Seeing that he's lost his greatest strength and one of his allies, Alamo disengages as well, taking his strange trophy with him, but not before turning towards Hannibal, momentarily seeming to loom ten feet high like some terrible giant, and saying:

"DON'T FORGET THE ALAMO."

Hannibal, who has taken far worse beatings from far worse people, simply brushes this off and tells him:

"It's remember the Alamo, you dumb bastard. And I won't."

Before Alamo can leave, Hannibal snatches one of the boxing gloves from his wrist. This is a special tool he will use later.

In the parking lot, Nathan keeps chasing the thieves in spite of his unimpressive cardio. The kids aren't much better shape, themselves; the first Nathan catches easily, earning a bit of magical power from having beaten him in a contest of speed, while the second teen stops paying attention and ends up folding himself in half on the hood of a parked sedan. Now toting an armful of answering machines, Nathan returns to the Radioshack and manages to land himself a job, having impressed the manager with his mighty thews. With all this done, Hannibal, ASCII, and Nathan convene in the Open Chakra Fighting Society to discuss what must be done about their rivals, with Ascrobius trying and failing to do katas thanks to the fungus fucking up his brain. This used to be a petty fight over who better represented Juan Matus Castaña's karate style, but this cold war has quickly gone hot, and the time for action is now. Hannibal's idea is a ritual, using trophies gained from the encounters with the members of the Iron Tiger Karate Center: Alamo's boxing glove, Kyle's slip of paper, and ASCII contributes by peeling off some of the skin on his face where the nun burned it. Hannibal picked up a bit of the Voodoo in prison, you see, and he knows all about how to call on the loas to ride his body and get things done in the material world. All he needs is a sacrifice, and he knows just the guy to ask...

So the three mighty warriors of the Open Chakra Fighting Society go to the mall food court to meet Saint John Lawrence, an employee at the Chic-fil-A who goes for the Jesus look with his long hair, beard, and sandals, but really just kind of looks like a goat that got turned into a man. His palms are bandaged to keep his stigmata from bleeding into the food, except when he wants to. Hannibal orders a special chicken sandwich with a little wine for a spiritual matter, conveniently not specifying what kind of spirit he's talking about. Nathan gets a chicken sandwich, the normal kind, in spite of Saint John trying to upsell him on the protein content of stigmata blood. ASCII gets some waffle fries, and comments on how gross it is that Saint John bleeds in the food, all the while weeping black mold fluid from the burn blisters on the side of his face. When Hannibal tells him to maybe clean his wound a bit, Ascrobius just grabs himself a fistful of napkins. 

On the way back to the Open Chakra dojo, ASCII bites into his waffle fries and finds something unexpectedly hard inside: a few bones from a human pinkie finger. For some reason, this doesn't disturb him or any of his companions, but there are more pressing matters at hand. The trio are beset by a truly devilish trap, one so terrible that Hannibal has to grab Nathan by the collar to keep him from plundering into it. The whole aisle has been blocked off by unfolded ladders, forcing anyone who wants to pass to walk beneath them- bad luck! While Hannibal eagerly informs Nathan about the dangers of ladders, ASCII just shoves one over and keeps on going. Thinking it will be handy for later, Hannibal takes the ladder. From the shadows behind the Morrow's Nut House, the dread sorcerer Kyle Clerkin the Coin Guy clenches his fist and exclaims:

"Rats."

Truly, they are lucky to have survived him.

In the Open Chakra Fighting Society dojo, the ritual commences. In front of the benefiting gaze of the massive mural of Chung Fu painted on the wall, Hannibal punches the cinderblocks until his knuckles bleed, then draws a complicated veve on the floor in his blood. Above it, he sets up the folding latter, and in igs center he places Alamo Carvin's boxing glove, stuffed with a bloody chicken sandwich, a wet piece of paper, and some of ASCII's dead skin. On one end of the ladder, Hannibal does Katas while Nathan mirrors him, symbolizing conflict and the very nature of fortune itself: good, bad, they're both sides of the same coin. It all caps off with Hannibal stepping forward to take a bite out of the glove-paper-skin-sandwich, taking the sacrifice on behalf of forces from outside and thus being opened to him. On the wall, the mural of Chung Fu wavers and blurs, revealing a vast field of giant mushrooms from which the spirit of Chung Fu alights on Hannibal's shoulders, light yet heavy, wizened yet young. A lifetime of experiences burn through his mind in an instant, too much for any one man to handle: training, fighting the Japanese in Hong Kong, meeting Juan Matus Castaña and seeing potential, and all of it condensed into one singular, all-consuming urge. Nathan and Ascrobius watch this happen, but manage to keep their cool. ASCII isn't disturbed by the experience, but the fungus inside him is; a materialistic thing by nature, a literal parasite, it has just witnessed numinous things beyond fungal comprehension.

Hannibal stands transfixed, but he knows what he must do to master the Ten Thousand Year Egg Posture. He knows it as naturally as the flag knows the way to move in the wind. 

Special thanks to David Tormsen for running this game.