The sun was already close to the horizon, and she started to fear being too late. She was still afraid, as she felt that she probably wouldn’t be able to keep Travis from doing this. Also the whole situation reminded her of something.

It was the feeling of powerlessness in the face of an overwhelming situation, not unlike as in her crumbling family. The difference here was that this situation wasn’t beyond hope, that it could take a turn for the better, however small that chance was.

She spotted who she was looking for at the pier. It was Travis, and he appeared against the backlight of the setting sun like a part of the environment of stone and sea.



Travis stood there and took his surroundings in with great care.

That was part of his ritual. When facing what could be expected to be an unusual challenging encounter, he paid especially much attention to the place. He also felt in a similar way into his own body, his current condition, his state of energy.

There was always the possibility of calling off the encounter for physical reasons. Most, if not all, members of the system would accept that. The ambition in them wouldn’t allow for a fight with an opponent who wasn’t at the top of his game.

And yet that possibility didn’t cross his mind for longer than a second. The moment he saw Ayumu Fukui in person he knew he wanted this encounter. When Travis had gotten close to his whereabouts in the past he had never been sure if he would’ve been up to the task.

But those doubts were gone now. It seemed to be an act of providence that they had met right here. His ambition was burning by now, with the same juvenile and uncontrollable fire as in his youth. It had never really left him.

By that he closed his eyes, began breathing exercises, and entered the last stage of preparation for this fight. It consisted of one of the katas he had learned from Bill Wallace, years ago. Not because there was anything in it that might have helped him, or even reflected his current style, but besides warming up his muscles and tendons, it had a nostalgic sense to it.

It steered his thoughts in the right direction and eliminated all other distractions. Soon he started to sweat, and his body came closer to operating temperature. In his field of perception the brittle planks of the pier became more and more distinct.

He memorized which of them were slippery, and which would gave way in case of dropping harshly onto them. In front of him he saw the end of the pier, how long the distance was, and he also saw his opponent already as if he was present.

From all of the opponents he had faced over the years, so many of them had relied on rigid strategies, based on either attack or defense, and they all had had trouble with Travis’ style. They had trusted in their learned methods and the strength of their muscles, but sometimes that wasn’t enough.

Travis had much of what he had ever learned forgotten or buried in his subconsciousness, and had grown his new style on that subconscious swamp. A style that didn’t follow convention or respected any tradition more than necessary.

Slowly his movements changed from the traditional kata to freer, more unforced techniques. They were his own creations, the result of many streetfights from all over the globe, not the content of a teaching.

Soon his feet felt like they were barely touching the ground. The orange-colored sunset was the backdrop of where he was directing his punches, and the sea underneath the pier itself felt to him like his own breath and pulse.

His warm-up routine ended in his fighting stance, in which he relaxed into with deep, long breaths. Travis felt heat radiating from his body and enjoyed the feeling. He was ready now.

The most difficult thing was to keep that tension, without letting it exhaust him, nor cool down too much, while waiting for his opponent. Like many times in the past, he closed his eyes, concentrated on his breath, and flexed and clenched his fists.

That way he kept the achieved balance of battle-ready tension. As usually, he supported this exercise with a visualization of energy circling through his body, energy in the form of a blue, pulsating light.

It helped him a lot, and he smiled while standing there with eyes closed. What he didn’t realize was that there was indeed a blue glow circling around his arms, too faint for Lily to see from the distance, and yet there.

When he opened his eyes, the man called Ayumu Fukui sat a dozen yards away from him in the lotus position on the pier, like he had dropped from the sky.

“I see that you are ready. We will now see if the stories about you are true.”

“What stories?” Travis asked in an amused voice while wondering how the man had been able to sneak up on him like that.

“The stories say you are good. They go as far as to say…you are one of a kind.”

“I never gave much on rumors”, he replied, while waving his hand. He couldn’t help but smile at the thought that such stories were going around, until he remembered that pride comes usually before a fall. It wouldn’t have been the first time for one fighter to lull another one into false security with flattery like that.

“Let’s get started, and we both will find out”, he said, and felt the nervousness creeping up that had spared him until now. Ayumu Fukui laughed out loud all of a sudden, and Travis twitched as if to dodge an attack.

“I traveled around the globe for exactly that, Travis Barlow.”



Lily had been watching from a safe distance.

She wasn’t able to hear what they were saying, but had good overview over the pier. The pier was deserted by now, conspicuously so, like there was something about those two men that kept bystanders from appearing.

Every chance to maybe keep this from happening was gone now, she clearly felt.



Travis emptied his head of all thoughts and filled it with the focus on Fukui’s limbs, which would make up his entire horizon for the following minutes. The stance of his opponent was unusual; it showed traits of the ancient Hokkaido-style Karate, and yet was different.

He looked stiff and sparse in his movements, but there was also the influence of an almost animalistic energy behind them. Whatever it was, Travis had no problems of avoiding the first blows of his opponent.

That was surprising; and yet even more surprising was the momentum behind these blows. It was like if every punch of Fukui had a bow wave to it that he could feel through his clothes. Travis pushed these thoughts aside and concentrated on getting into the rhythm of the fight.

He didn’t even realize he had been struck until he felt the hard planks under his back. Travis couldn’t even clearly remember how he had been punched to the ground, but the pain in his chest and his trouble of breathing spoke more for itself.

Travis could reconstruct what kind of attack must have hit him, from what he actually did remember. It must’ve been the blow with the palm of the hand against the center of the chest, a traditional Karate blow he learned in his youth.

Before more distracting thoughts of how this had actually happened could tempt him, Fukui attacked him some more. This time Travis was better prepared, and he started to figure out rhythm and style of his opponent.

It was very much like heavy logs of wood drifting in water; not very fast, but something he’d better avoid, didn’t he want to be crushed under their weight. Although Fukui showed the classic trait of Karate, which was leaving the center of the body a little too open to attack, he still couldn’t gain any advantage from it.

Either he was able to parry his attacks, or Travis was sure to have miscalculated the angle of impact; there was no other explanation why his punches against ribs or jaw of this man didn’t show any effect on him.

The blink of an eye later Travis decided to radically change his own pace of attack. Now he focused on leg techniques that had more power than his fists, in the hope of having some kind of effect on this mysterious fighter.

He aimed for the head, and, again, the man’s defense was rather easy to penetrate. But when Travis was sure that the impact of his instep against the man’s neck must’ve caused some reaction, he was struck down again.

The humming sound in his head was drowning out the cracking sound the planks made at his impact. His sense of balance was lost for several seconds, which made a concussion seem likely. There was no pain, weirdly enough, just the feeling of being knocked down by an irresistible force.

Ayumu Fukui stood there, as he saw when he looked up from the ground. There was a surprisingly large distance between them.