Written as a commission for a client who wanted fanfiction of 3 of his favorite characters

Cosmo Imai looked around his gym and sighed. It was true that their humble gym attracted a murderer's row of fighters and martial artists looking to improve themselves. But they'd spent so much time fighting, sweating, learning together that Cosmo knew their habits and styles nearly as well as his own.

He could scarcely imagine a situation where training and fighting weren't his favorite pastimes, but he could no longer deny to himself that he'd grown bored and this had grown stale.

He sipped from his water bottle and scanned the gym again, forcing a smile and a generic compliment to his latest training partner to hide his growing discontent. He made a note to reach out to some of the more eclectic fighter' s he'd met through his travels and see if any of them were still local.

The athletic 20 year old yearned for the sense of danger and uncertainty that had endeared him to fighting in the first place. His blonde ponytail bounced as he shook his head and subsumed the feeling beneath the simple joy of grappling. The dissatisfaction endured, but he couldn't defeat it by pouting and wishing anymore than he could become the world's best martial artist overnight. Results required effort.

January, the Year Everything Happened

“Hey Simone, are you here to talk shit or are you here to spar?” Natalie Turner asked, standing in what had formerly been a very focused fighting stance. Her blue mouthguard, still shiny with spittle, now clutched in the palm of her hand as she narrowed her brown eyes at her partner.

“Both, ideally.” Simone Williams grinned. There was no tension in her 5'10 frame, just brown eyes full of mischief and laughter creasing her face. She shrugged, baggy tee obscuring the athletic body beneath, palms of her red MMA gloves up towards the ceiling of the gym.

“Come on. I've got class in an hour and we still gotta catch the bus back to campus.” Natalie complained. “Waste your own time; some of us are trying to go pro.” She slid her mouthguard back in and waved on the other college freshman: Nat was done talking even if her friend wasn't.

Early March, The Year Before Everything Happened

====================================== “You're fucking kidding me. I mean she's kidding right?” Sofia Gomez groaned. She stood there on the stage, wearing gym shorts and a sports bra. She'd comfortably made weight for her third professional MMA bout only to watch her opponent shed nearly all her clothing to barely make it under the 136 lb limit on the second attempt. Worse yet, the tall black woman had maintained a starry eyed, goofball expression throughout the proceedings as if she were simply happy to be there.

Sofia wondered if she'd looked that starstruck ahead of her professional debut. She doubted it; back then all she'd thought about was just beating the other girl by any means possible. As a final indignity, when they turned toward each other for the weigh in and matchup photos, her opponent had met Sofia's serious, 'fists raised' pose with a broad smile and a goofy pose more suited for a cartoon than a fighter. Sofia clenched her jaw: this girl must be fucking with her. She might not take Sofia serious yet, but once the cage door closed, this goofy teen would realize just how serious she was.

Unlike Sofia’s first two opponents, tonight's victim came with a little buzz of her own: amateur boxing, kickboxing, and MMA experience, and a famous mother. Her opponent's mother might be “The Assassin” but Sofia wasn't fighting Yolanda Freeman. She was fighting the daughter, an apparently starstruck college freshman. Sofia and her team didn't need tape to expect a technically proficient striker and only needed their eyes to recognize a girl in over her head. She ran her hands through her brown tresses and grimaced. Mauling a famous person's daughter might be just what she needed to finally earn the attention she deserved

When the Heavy Gate opened and the godjinn Jhuuba reached through it nearly a century ago, the sprawling desert northwest of the city sprung to life in response. The Nam-Yensa desert became the Nam-Yensa sandsea, a sprawling expanse perpetually churning and shifting on the whims of the Earthen deity. The city of Moghad stood just past the southeastern edge of the Nam-Yensa sandsea like a gateway to the Yol-Jhuuba principalities beyond.

The thriving city offered a number of amenities, not the least of which was the arena. Every city of any renown in Akkreja held an arena; in smaller cities the arena might double as the public square. Though the kingdoms of Yol-Jhuuba did not hold physical combat in the same regard as their equatorial neighbors, Moghad's proximity to Akkreja ensured a bustling, well regarded arena flourished there too. Inside it, in a broad lobby reserved for contestants, not spectators, a young man argued his case to one of the arena's many employees.

He'd expected more from this place. More theming: dirt and dust, glistening gems, or solid stone intricately carved by expert masons like in the stories his countrymen told about this place. Yol-Jhuuba, a sprawling land of mines and merchants formed less than a century ago from the more than two-dozen fiefdoms that dotted the stonelands. The country lay less than a week's journey southeast of his homeland of Akkreja, assuming a smooth trip across the unpredictable sandsea.

Travelers' tales swore that in Yol-Jhuuba, (frequently shortened to 'Yolj') a man's worth was measured by his money, not his might, and freedom was bought, not earned. Isaiah Wylde looked forward to discovering for himself what kind of place so many of his fellow initiates from the Wylde school had traveled to in order to test their mettle and their spellcraft.

He'd expected glitzy, ostentatious splendor and feverish movement and noise from a sprawling port city that might as well be one giant bazaar. Who wouldn't want to sign up for an arena this big, this widely advertised throughout the city? Instead, the broad youth stood in a long chamber ringed by drab, sand-colored walls. A solitary employee stood behind the counter at the end of the near empty room, yawning and staring at a clock near the counter.

Isaiah Wylde rolled his neck, took a deep breath, and prepared to change his whole life.