The Martial Unity

Chapter 1 Rebirth

The doctor moved his stethoscope away from the childʼs chest while glancing at the test reports before him. The data was very clear.

”Unfortunately, itʼs a Non-Type-2 Inflammation type of severe asthma.”

”What does that mean for him?” The childʼs mother asked, as she gripped the childʼs hand harder.

”Itʼs a chronic type of Asthma that doesnʼt respond well to drugs or steroids. Unfortunately, it seems to be particularly severe in his case. His lungs are crippled and heʼll need to take regular nebulizations just to lead a semblence of a normal life.”

She shook when she heard that. As for the boy, he didnʼt understand a word of what was being said, but his motherʼs somber anxiety had trickled into him. He felt his throat choking up, as tears welled up , threatening to spill despite his furious endurance. His breathing grew more agitated and laboured as the conversation progressed, and his motherʼs despair grew more palpable, he felt like he was trekking a mountain. He felt like he was being snuffed by a pillow. He felt as though the air was growing thinner.

”Mom..” He desperately gasped as he began crying.

”John!” She held his face in her hands. He could feel her fear through her quivering palms.

”I need five milligrams of albuterol stat.” The doctor immediately paged.

”Calm down, son.” The doctor calmly coaxed, immediately after. ”Take a deep breath, everything is ok.”

He was lying. The boy didnʼt know how he knew, but he knew in his heart that the man was lying. His vision grew red as he felt his mind blurring

”M..om..” He whispered as he struggled to hold onto her.

The last thing he heard before he lost consciousness was his mother screaming his name.

**********

John woke up with a jerk, breathing heavily and coursely, drenched in sweat. It took him only a moment to remember.

”…Tsk, the same nightmare flashback..” The worst kind of nightmares were the realest ones. Heʼd rather have the stereotypical free-falling off a building nightmare, but nope! He would relive the worst day of his life. The day he was diagnosed with severe chronic asthama, a curse that crippled his dreams and passions, shackling his body.

”The things I would have accomplished if it wasnʼt for this goddamn disease…” He managed to choke out, while still gasping for air. Sports, exercise, travel, treks and of course, what he yearned for most;

Martial arts.

John Falken was a lover of martial arts. Ever since he laid his eyes on Enter the Dragon, the first martial arts movie he had ever watched, he could never get over how amazing they were, how could he? The way they moved enraptured him, their stances, their checks, their footwork, grapples and of course, their strikes. Heʼd spent his entire life dedicated to them, albeit not in a way that one would expect a lover of martial arts would.

He was born with severe asthma, preventing him from ever engaging in any physically intensive activities, martial arts included. So instead of practicing them, heʼd decided to dedicate his life to learning about them. If he could not study martial arts as a practitioner, he would do so as a scientist.

By the age of twenty-five, he had obtained a bachelorʼs degree in Physics and a diploma in human anatomy, and a minor degree in statistics and probability. Armed with the knowledge of these three fields as his foundation, he spent all his time performing research on martial arts and combat sports. He would perform surveys, studies and experiments on different martial arts and gather data on several variables and attributes on them and draw conclusions as well as hypotheses based on them before publishing them in respected peer-reviewed journals.

As the advent of MMA and UFC truly arose as a major industry with a large market for combat sports entertainment at the birth of the twenty-first century, his work became the foundation for modern MMA. The sudden rise in the significance of martial arts in the twenty-first century was a dream come true to John. He built upon to publish research that would become the bread and butter of combat sports.

And then, he died. At the age of fifty-nine, his already-compromised lungs collapsed, and he passed away a peaceful death. Heʼd spent his entire life dedicating his heart and soul to the one thing he loved, and died loving it, while still cursing the shackles that prevented him from truly embodying it.

Yet, this was not the end.

(ʼHm?ʼ) John stirred as he felt a strange sensation enveloping him.

(ʼDidnʼt I... die?ʼ)

John wasnʼt sure what was happening, but he was relatively certain he was to die when he last felt his consciousness slipping in the hospital, his last sight being that of hastened doctors injecting him with something or the other.

(ʼI guess not? But what the fuck did they wrap me in? A jelly coated condom?ʼ)

He could barely move, yet could feel that he was in a fetal position though.

(ʼIʼm going to sue these motherfuckers so hard, there is no way this falls within ethical practice. Canʼt they just let me chill in peace for fuckʼs sake?ʼ) He cursed.

Just then, he felt a force pushing onto him, it seemingly pushed down on his butt attempting to push him through what seemed to be an opening of some sorts. At this point he was positive that something was definitely off, he was just far too bewildered and frightened to even attempt making heads or tails of this situation. A few seconds later, he felt his body being forced out of an opening, and thatʼs when he panicked, calling for help.

”waaaaaaaaaa!” Was what actually escaped his mouth.

(ʼEh...? Did I just... cry?ʼ)

He opened his eyes, only to behold a giant woman holding him.

(ʼNo, sheʼs not giant... Iʼm the one whoʼs small!ʼ) He barely managed to glance with his stubbornly half-closed eyes, at his clenched folded tiny arms, horrified.

”Quick, treat her! Her breathing is dangerously shallow and pupils are dilated.”

What ensued was a long session of attempting to stabilize his biological motherʼs condition. The presumed-doctors and nurses all diligently performed variety of actions with great determination, but alas, to no avail. Slowly but surely, her eyes lost their light, yet they never once turned away from John.

”Time of death, 17:42.”

John didnʼt understand the language they spoke, but he understood what had happened. Although he still half-believed this was some hallucination, he felt a pang of grief even as his consciousness drifted away.

(ʼFuck me... Please let this be a drea...ʼ)

Alas, fate deigned to ignore his wish, yet again.

**********

He woke up later that evening in a daze, yet he needed only one moment to know that that was no hallucination. He really was reborn as a baby, despite how absurd the notion seemed to him. He was in a rather small medical room, waddled in a thick towel in a wooden cradle, the room had windows on opposite sides of the room, one leading outside and the other to the corridor where he could see nurses and doctors walking through occasionally through the gaps in cradle. He glanced around only to realize he was not alone, there were several other babies just like him in their own cradles.

(ʼAn incubation room.ʼ)

He sighed. He hadnʼt the faintest idea where he was, but judging from the foreign language they spoke in, as well as the difference in clothing and even architecture, he was far, far away from the US.

(ʼItʼs not just that, the technological level of this place is really low. Incubation rooms like this are filled with devices that monitor babiesʼ vitals, furthermore, there was no electronic technology when they delivered me either. Even this room doesnʼt have any lights, just lamps.ʼ)

That being said, the lamps were strange, the source of light was not fire, which flickered whereas the the lampʼs light did not waver, it most certainly wasnʼt electricity. In fact, as far as he could tell there was no electricity in the room at all. It really was a bewildering notion to someone from the 21st century, was there really a nation with such primitive technology? John wasnʼt sure.

(ʼThis is insane, this shouldnʼt be fucking possible. What the fuck is happening?ʼ)

Assuming he was reborn, he didnʼt know if he was even reborn in the 21st century. What if he was reborn in a dystopian future? Or the past?

(ʼNo wait... Is this even Earth?ʼ)

He didnʼt know yet, but he would find out sooner or later, assuming he had anything resembling a life he used to have. These experiences had shattered his subjective worldview of reality, only time would tell what his new one would end up looking like. He braced himself, in fear and partially with a tinge of excitement, for his future to unfold.