Dragon Horse

Aroon strides beside the blue ropes lining every side of the white square base, touching each of the four corners, and stopping to shut her eyes for a few seconds every time.

Her knees sink into the epicenter of the ring. Her forehead drops to the rubber one, two, three times. She pivots to face all one, two, three, four directions. One knee digs into the ground. The other reaches out like her hand did for her mother and father before they walked out of that door.

She straightens, drawing one first back, stretching out the other, aiming and firing an invisible arrow into the distance.

Then, she picks up her Mai Sok San from the foam floor and nods to her opponent.

Raiko puts his heels together and points both of his feet outward in a V. He keeps his arms straight at his sides, a flex of his fingers away from his sheathed katana and his wakizashi. He bows at the waist and nods back.

A man watches the match from the stands, rubbing his thumb over the dog tags dangling from his neck. One reads “Wukong” and the other reads “Asponsi,” the codenames of his son-in-law and his daughter.

And Aroon's father and mother.

Aroon and Raiko pivot towards him. They salute to each other. To him. He lifts a knife-hand into the air.

Aroon shifts into fighting stance, one Mai Sok San at chin level and the other at her chest. Raiko unsheathes his katana, and holds it in front of him, both hands on the hilt.

The man lowers his knife-hand.

Aroon swings her clubs. They bounce off Raiko's reinforced blade. Which proceeds to cut her across the nose bridge. That's one point to him.

Aroon attacks again and again, and he sidesteps her again and again. She fights in blazing bursts of blows. But he's faster, more fluid, and more flexible. She's slower, stiffer, and not strong enough. Never strong enough. And three minutes have been vaporized like that landmine did to her mother. She has to do this right for her mother. Why can't she do this right for her mother?

Her grandfather clears his throat and clutches his dog tags. If she doesn't adjust her strategy, the lactic acid will dissolve her stamina, and all it will take is one solid hit from Raiko to smother her into smoke.

He's taught her better than this.

Then again, he taught Wukong and Aponsi better than this, and now they and their weapons are buried below the ice.

In the living room, a pair of Muay Thai gloves clings to a coat hanger. A horsehair helmet sits on the kitchen table. In that kitchen, a pot full of sticky rice, seasoned chicken, and boiled vegetables sits on the stove. A black-and-white picture is propped up beside the empty bowls by the sink.

He remembers Aponsi and Wukong, clad in Arctolean armor, clamp the shoulders of a six-year-old Aroon, already in uniform, saluting the camera, her mother's horsehair helmet falling over half her face. He remembers his own helmet falling over half of six-year-old Aponsi's face. The only half left in her body bag.

"Aroon," Aponsi scolds, still intact, "give back my helmet!"

"This is my helmet now!"

"Alright, alright, it's your helmet...for now."

A few steps away from them, he laughs deep from his belly as he struggles to take the picture because of how much she squirms against her chuckling parents’ clutches.

"For the sky's sake, little elephant, hold still!"

The light above the lens flashes, blinding.

Aroon has seven points.

Raiko has eight.

Aroon keeps swinging her clubs at Raiko, changing from combination to combination, knocking the katana out of his hands. Raiko draws his wakizashi and flicks it back and forth, so quick that it becomes a thin silver line. That slices an angry red clone into Aroon's chin. That's nine points for him now.

And one minute left.

Her grandfather's hippocampus switches the focus to Aponsi's black and white face.

"Dad, swear to the sky that you’ll look after Aroon, so I can look after Yang. You know how reckless he is."

The focus switches to Wukong's black and white body. Still intact.

"Dad, you know I’m reckless. We both know that if Dara and I walk through that door, we might not walk in again."

Aroon's black and white face and black and white body, half-covered by the helmet. Cut in half by the helmet. Like her mother's face. Still half-intact, and better than the condition of her father's body.

"You need to swear to the sky that you’ll never let Aroon walk out of that door," say both the body bags.

So, he holds Aroon back from running after them as they carry their suitcases and walk out of the door, their shadows stretching over their daughter, his granddaughter, stomping down on his feet, and pulling against him.

"Why can't I go with them?"

"Swear to the sky," says Wukong.

Wukong sprints towards a wounded Aponsi, but then, he's eviscerated in an explosion before he can protect her from the Sub-Equatet's bullet.

Nine-year-old Aroon tugs on his pant leg, the Muay Thai gloves slung over her shoulder.

"Why can't I fight?"

Or is it Aponsi who's eviscerated in the explosion, and Wukong whose jaw is smashed in by the butt of a Sub-Equatet rifle, and then, has his skull blasted open by a bullet?

"Swear to the sky," says Aponsi.

A twelve-year-old Aroon tightens the straps of the Muay Thai gloves around her wrists, looking up at the horsehair helmet on the shelf.

"Teach me until I can fight with them."

A sixteen-year-old Aroon tears off her gloves and bandages her own bloodied, bruised knuckles. After she wraps up her hands, she lifts the helmet off the shelf and puts it on her head. It fits.

"Let me fight for them!"

A combat medic pulls up a body bag’s zipper, the white plastic rippling over her remains.

Forty-five seconds.

Iron on steel. Steel on iron. Aroon spins away from Raiko's wakizashi, which shaves some of the hair off her buzzcut, then she wheel-kicks it out of his hand. That's eight points for her.

Her club crunches into Raiko's cheekbone.

Nine points.

Raiko falls to the foam mat, rolls on his knee, and retrieves both of his swords.

Thirty seconds.

Raiko charges at Aroon, bringing his blades down. Aroon catches the two swords between her clubs. She transfers her weight to her back leg, raises her knee, drives her hips forward, and stomps outwards into Raiko's solar plexus.

Ten points to Aroon.

But then, just before time's up, she throws one of her Mai Sok San in a cross, slamming it into Raiko's skull.

This time, when he falls to the foam mat, he doesn’t get up.

Aroon casts her clubs to one of the four corners, leaps over the ropes, and marches over to her grandfather.

"My dog tag," she grits out, "now."

Her grandfather sidesteps her and ducks under the ropes of the ring. He crouches next to Raiko. Viscera trickles from the boy's nose and mouth. A brain hemorrhage.

"What's my code name, old man?" asks his war elephant – the elephant who asked him to beat and beat her into a blunt weapon. So focused on the names clinking against each other over his chest that she's blocked out the comrade who could become a corpse at her feet. The comrade that he has conditioned her into fighting like he's the one who planted that land mine or changed the grip on that rifle.

"You're not getting one."

"You're not holding me back again, bpuu." Aroon glares at him with glistening eyes, her knuckles white from clutching clubs that she no longer has in her hands. "You can't."

"I can't let you fight."

Her face flashes into that of her six-year-old self, then into her father’s (or is it her mother's?) bloody, bludgeoned one. She walks away from the arena, her head lowered with the weight of a helmet she'll never wear.