[Mkguild] The King of Fighters (1/3)

[Nathan Pfaunmiller]

Working title.  This tale has a bit of a flexible date, so I'm not
assigning one quite yet.  The actual tournament can change a bit to
accommodate OCs, but most will remain the same.

-LurkingWolf

____________________

Training Paula had become more and more involved for Lois.  The former
assassin pushed her as hard as she could handle, and she was beginning to
respond to the training more and more successfully.  She was already giving
him some good fights, but Lois was becoming worried.  If she became too
used to just his one combat style, varied though it was, then she would
have trouble adjusting to other opponents.  With a change in pace long
overdue, Lois took Paula to the training fields early one afternoon.  He
had expected just to find a few men that he could recruit to help him show
some variety to Paula, but what he found was that the fields were being
overtaken by some sort of hubbub.



Lois looked on quietly, Paula following just off of his tail, watching the
odd scene on the training fields.  Three men stood on a trio of barrels
which had been pushed together in a makeshift platform, calling out to
different portions of the small crowd as questions echoed from all sides.  Just
visible to one side, written in legible, if not particularly elegant,
script, was a notice of a small pugilism tournament.  The writing made
reading it more difficult, but after a few moments, Lois finally made it
out.



"All fighters to the rings to-day!

Crown the King of Fighters!"



A smaller notice written below read.



"Contributions required for participation, the first half to the winner,
and the other to remember the Fallen of Bradanes."



Lois raised a brow at this, but he noticed as he turned back to the trio of
men on the makeshift platform that Paula had already made her way towards
their perch.  Lois stepped closer, and was able to see after a brief
inspection that the well-worn hat in which they were collecting
contributions had two or three coppers in it so far.  The small crowd was
interested more to hear the men parading atop the barrels than they were in
actually participating.



The ermine walked to one side, to where a fast-talking hare in patched
clothing was quickly announcing to his portion of the crowd why they should
consider joining.



"How much for two to enter?" Lois called above the muttered questions of
the gathered throng.  The hare jumped down, pointing towards Lois.



"Aye, there's a man whose spirit will take him places!  Sir, the entrance
fee is what you wish to pay.  We ask at least a copper for the pot, but if
you could add more it would be a certain grace for us."



"By your accent I would wager that you're not of the north," Lois observed.
"And freshly Cursed, too; your clothes have not been tailored correctly for
your form."



The hare nodded.  "Correct on both counts, sir.  As for my accent, it may
differ by degrees from that of my countrymen, as I have traveled abroad for
some time, but all of us have come from the once-great, now-plagueridden
city of Bradanes.  We were cursed to die there, now Cursed to live here."  He
smiled at the irony, showing his buck teeth.  "For myself and my fellows
here today I can say that our lot has been easier than most.  Here with our
families intact we are, but burdened now with the knowledge that there
remain those not so lucky.  We seek through any means possible to ease the
lives of those so stricken, and with no goods to peddle, we have turned to
a competition for worthy men and women to twice prove their worth: in
battle, and also by helping those needier than themselves."



Lois pulled out a pair of silvers from his pouch, making a show of the
amount to the speaker.  "Thank you, sir.  For my entrance I wish to give
one silver, and one to you for your most helpful information."



The hare snapped a large foot to the ground quickly enough to raise a small
cloud of dust.  "Not so, sir!  I have no need of silver.  If you wish to
give two, apply the second to your entrance as well."



Lois feigned insult.  "Is my money not for me to do with as I please?  You
have aided me by answering my question, and I wish to pay you for it."



"I will not accept, sir, not while there remain hungry mouths to feed among
my people," the hare replied, now scowling at the ermine's suggestion.  Lois
could have sworn that the temperature had lowered in the area, but he
smiled to the hare all the same.  He was always suspicious of anyone who
claimed to perform charity in such a way as this, but the man's reaction
convinced Lois of one of two options.  Either he was earnest, and the money
would be used well, or the hare was an excellent actor, in which case he
had earned the coin by his performance alone already.



Smile still intact, the ermine expertly tossed the coins into the hat, both
landing solidly within its small circle.  “That is all I needed to know,
sir.  Get yourself a larger hat for the pot, you may need it in a few
moments.”



Paula had returned to his side, smiling wryly at him.  She had caught onto
his intentions, and seemed quite amused by them.  Before she could comment,
however, her mentor suddenly dodged into the throng of interested Keepers.  She
heard a few words exchanged between him and another Keeper, and suddenly
the man was loudly proclaiming how he would wipe the confident grin from
the ermine’s face.  Lois prodded him further, and the two began to scuffle
until one of the men atop the barrels stopped them.



“Gentlemen!  There will be plenty of time for that in the ring, and far
more to gain from it!”  It was the hare, regaining his elevated voice and
eager theatricality.



The man that Lois had prodded seemed to consider before shouting in
affirmation and throwing a whole crown into the hare’s hat.



Suddenly, the two men were everywhere at once, challenging others to fight
for everything from the pride of their country to revenge for slights
others had made to their mothers.  Before long, most of the crowd had
thrown in, tossing coins from their purses into the hat so quickly that the
three men were nearly overwhelmed.  Although the other two began to have
trouble coming up with words, the hare continued to throw the full weight
of his quick-spoken words behind the cause.



In less than an hour, the men were forced to call a halt to the entrants so
that they would be able to handle it all.  In far less time than it should
have taken, the men had set up dueling pairs in a tournament, with the hare
scrawling quick notes on the back of the sign he had set up an hour
beforehand.



Lois grinned to his partner in crime as he handed him two crowns in
recompense for his help.  The ermine was not often so free with his money,
but those two crowns had earned back far more than their own worth in the
hat.  He was so busy smiling that he failed to notice the mousy old woman
who crept up beside him.  She had been Cursed with the form of a mouse, but
she wore the form well, down to the twitch of the whiskers she gave as she
smiled up at the ermine.



“Thank you for that,” she said in a quiet, creaky voice.



Lois turned back to look at her, surprised at her sudden appearance.  “For
what?” he asked innocently.



“I saw what you did there.  I thought when those three took it into their
heads to do something so foolhardy as this that it would end in failure,
and I warned them.  I guess sometimes it pays to be a fool, and young Emery
is quite the example of that.”



“The hare?” Lois inquired.  The mouse nodded.



“He was born in Bradanes, and raised most of his life there.  When he
claims that he lost no family to the plague, it is because he had none left
to lose.  They all died when his house caught ablaze, and when we found him
he was being cradled in his mother’s arms.



He grew up swearing to leave the place to escape those memories, and leave
he did with a traveling carnival.  By the time he returned, Bradanes was a
city of dying men.  We were poisoned and disfigured, waiting to die.  Emery
returned to find it in such a state, and rather than leave he swore to save
it.  Few knew of him; one brave voice among the hundreds of suffering was
easily drowned out.  Those who heard his messages scornfully asked what he
knew; he had not succumbed to the poison, he could only watch as the city
withered and died.”



Lois turned back to watch the hare, who was energetically speaking with
another of the refugees who had joined him in the endeavor.  “He seems
quite driven,” he commented.



“You don’t know the half of it.  When the bitter insults began to fly at
him, he did the only thing he could think of to respond to them.  He drank
of the poisoned water himself.”



Lois’ mouth went dry.  The hare he was watching had barely entered his
adulthood.  Had he really been willing to cast away what remained of his
life to better help others?  What did that say of him?



“We destroyed the wells and left Bradanes not long after, but when we did
he came with, us, covered in rags to hide his own plague-distorted face.”  She
smiled.  “He was a handsome fellow, it was good to see the Curse graciously
returned some of that to him.”



Lois was almost tempted to call the whole story a bluff, but as he watched
the men who were rapidly putting together the bracket for an impromptu
tournament he could not bring himself to believe the suspicion.  It was
unlikely, but the way the men were quickly separating the pot into two
halves, one for the winner and one for their cause, he could see on their
face an expression of joy.  It wasn’t the pleased, scheming look of men who
had made a haul through deception.  It was instead the faces of men who had
set out to accomplish an unlikely work, and somehow it had come together
despite the odds against it.


He nodded and smiled to the mouse beside him.  “I am glad to have been able
to help, ma’am.  Now if you will excuse me, I believe that this tournament
is about to begin.”  He gave her one last smile before heading towards the
rings where the hare was beginning to summon those who had joined the
competition.
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