Farewell, The Underwear – Part 1

Section 1: The Winning Cup

Dave continued wandering down the street, finishing what remained of his oversized protein bubble tea. He sucked up the last few tapioca pearls and tilted the cup back.

Slrrrk.

Nothing but air.

“Shit. Gone already?”

Dave gave the empty cup a quick shake. As he did, he noticed a small peel-off prize label stuck to the side.

“Oh, shit. There’s one of these things?”

He scratched at the corner and peeled it open.

FREE MASSAGE AT SAKURA SPA — VALID UNTIL THE END OF TODAY

“Huh.”

Despite wandering around Flushing City in nothing but pink, triangle-shaped women’s underwear, Dave was, ironically, not much of a pervert. Women didn’t interest him that much, and neither did sex. But a regular massage sounded fine. His muscles had been through plenty lately, and free was free.

Dave lifted his head and stopped. Across the sidewalk, almost directly in front of him, a large sign hung above a glass entrance.

SAKURA SPA

Dave looked from the prize label to the spa.

“Oh. How convenient.”

Still holding the empty cup, he crossed the sidewalk and headed toward the entrance, where he noticed someone crouching beside the front door.

A black briefcase rested on the ground next to the man. He held an open can of Red Bull in one hand while scratching the head of a small Corgi with the other.

Dave slowed down.

Golden-rimmed glasses.

Michael.

This was not exactly the Michael Dave remembered. The man who usually looked ready to break someone’s bones without changing his expression was now crouching outside a massage parlor, drinking Red Bull and rubbing a Corgi behind the ears.

“Good boy, Luke. You’re such a good boy.”

Michael pulled out a sausage and shoved the whole thing straight into Luke’s mouth. Luke swallowed it in one gulp without even chewing.

Dave stopped and stared. He had never imagined Michael could make that kind of voice.

Michael took another sip of Red Bull before noticing him. He looked up, and the softness disappeared from his face instantly.

“What the fuck are you doing here, Underwear?”

Michael stood up and picked up his briefcase. “I’m warning you. Don’t cause any trouble here. This is our place. You start anything inside, I’m gonna chop your head off.”

Sweat appeared on Dave’s forehead.

“No, no, no. I’m not here to cause trouble.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

Dave held up the empty bubble tea cup and pointed at the peeled-open label.

“I got this.”

Michael glanced at the prize.

“Oh, I see. You’re a customer. Go inside.”

He stepped aside and pointed toward the entrance. “Ask for Coco or Amy. They also have premium sex services if you’re interested.”

“I’m just here for a regular massage.”

Michael gave him a knowing look.

“Come on. Everyone says that. But by the time they come out, they’ve all had the premium sex service.”

He took another sip of Red Bull and waved Dave inside.

Dave shrugged and headed toward the entrance, still carrying the empty cup.

Section 2: The Former South King

Just as Dave was about to enter Sakura Spa, a man came limping down the sidewalk.

He moved slowly, each step carrying a slight mechanical stiffness. His right foot was gone, replaced by an exposed prosthetic. Two swords hung at his side.

Michael noticed him and raised his Red Bull slightly.

“Hey, Mario. Long time no see. How’s your right leg?”

“How the fuck do you think? It’s gone,” Mario replied irritably.

“Fair enough.”

Mario was about to keep walking when something near the entrance caught his eye.

A muscular grown man was standing only a few steps away, wearing nothing but a pair of pink, triangle-shaped women’s underwear.

Mario’s eyes narrowed. The description sounded very familiar.

He turned toward Dave.

“Hold on a minute.”

Mario looked him up and down.

“Pink triangle underwear. Muscular freak.”

He pointed at him. “You’re the guy who beat up my students yesterday, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. Kind of.”

“What do you mean, kind of? That was a freaking massacre! Twenty innocent students, and you call that ‘kind of’?”

Dave frowned.

“Twenty? What the hell are you talking about? I only punched three of them. Once each.”

Clearly, they were talking about two completely different things. Dave was thinking about the courtyard, where he had knocked down three students with one punch each. Mario, however, had been told that Dave took down all twenty—exactly the story Dinello had threatened Pimple Face to stick to if Mario ever came asking questions.

“One of them died.”

Dave’s eyes widened.

“What the fuck? He died from one light punch? Was he made of tofu or something?”

Mario’s expression darkened. His hand closed around the handle of one of the two swords at his side.

“Then let me teach you a lesson.”

Mario drew one of the swords, leaving the other at his side.

Before Dave could react, he shot forward and swung the blade straight toward Dave’s neck.

A hand caught Mario’s wrist.

The sword stopped inches from Dave’s throat.

Michael stood between them, holding Mario’s arm firmly.

“Not here. He happened to be a customer of Sakura Spa today. You’re not killing our customer in front of our own door.”

Before Michael could say anything else, Dave stepped forward and pushed him aside.

“It’s fine. I want to see how strong the South King really is.”

Dave cracked his knuckles and faced Mario.

Mario gave him a calm look.

“Okay. Let me know whenever you’re ready.”

Section 3

Dave casually clapped his hands together.

“Okay. I’m rea—”

CLANG!

A sword struck the side of his neck.

Dave froze in shock. He had never expected Mario to move that fast. One moment, Mario had been standing several feet away. The next, he had flashed across the distance like a shadow, his sword already against Dave’s neck before Dave could even finish the word ready.

Mario’s blade remained pressed against his neck.

He pushed harder.

The edge dug deeper into Dave’s skin, but still no blood came out. It left a deep scratch across his neck without actually cutting him open.

Mario’s eyes narrowed.

“What the hell?”

The impact reminded him of the last time his blade had struck Joshua’s golden alloy body.

But this made no sense.

Mario stared at Dave’s neck. No matter how he looked at it, there was nothing metallic about him. No golden alloy. No armored surface. It looked like ordinary biological flesh—human skin stretched over muscle.

Yet his sword had struck it with the sound of steel hitting metal.

Dave rubbed the side of his neck.

“That’s it?”

Mario tightened his grip on the sword.

Michael watched them for a moment, then looked down at Luke.

“Come on, Luke. Let’s get back inside. I don’t want you to become a pile of dog meat tonight.”

Luke planted all four paws against the sidewalk and leaned backward.

Michael pulled anyway.

SQUEEEEEAK—

Luke slid across the sidewalk on all four paws as Michael dragged him straight through the entrance of Sakura Spa.

Then Mario disappeared again.

For the next minute, all Dave could see in front of Sakura Spa was a shadow.

Dave threw punch after punch into the empty space ahead of him, slowly advancing across the sidewalk as he fought an opponent he could no longer see.

His fists hit nothing but air.

But Mario’s sword never stopped hitting him.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

Metallic impacts rang continuously through the street.

New scratches appeared across Dave’s chest, shoulders, arms, back, and legs faster than he could keep track of them. Most of the slashes still failed to break through his abnormally tough skin, but Mario was moving so fast that the same areas were being struck again and again. Wherever the blade repeatedly crossed an existing cut, the skin gradually split deeper until thin streaks of blood began running down Dave’s body.

Dave kept punching as he moved forward.

Left.

Right.

Straight ahead.

Nothing.

He could no longer tell where Mario was. All he saw were shadows flashing around him while his own fists kept cutting through empty air.

The fight was completely one-sided.

By the end of the first minute, Dave had thrown dozens of punches without landing a single one.

Mario had cut him more than five hundred times.

Then the metallic impacts suddenly stopped.

About two meters in front of Dave, several overlapping shadows appeared at once.

One by one, they slid together.

The blurred outlines merged into the shape of a man until Mario finally stood there in full view.

He held one sword with both hands and slowly pulled it backward, farther and farther, until his arms were drawn behind his body and the point of the blade faced directly toward Dave.

Dave stopped punching.

He had no idea what Mario was about to do.

But that stance looked like the beginning of something serious.

Section 4

Dave swallowed.

The way Mario held the sword made him uneasy. But then he remembered what had just happened. Mario had landed hundreds of slashes on his body, and most of them had barely broken his skin.

His muscles were tough.

Abnormally tough.

He should be okay.

Still, Dave planted his feet and tightened every muscle in his body, bracing himself for whatever was coming next.

Mario remained in the same stance, the sword pulled far behind him.

“Any last words?”

“What? I admit, you’re really fast—fast as a ghost. But your blade can’t do any serious damage to me. You hit me with hundreds of cuts, and you still barely broke through my skin.”

Dave flexed his shoulders and chest.

“I, the Underwear, might not be the fastest, but I’m the toughest.”

Mario gave a quiet laugh.

“Underwear? Where is your underwear now?”

Dave looked down.

“Shit.”

Scattered across the sidewalk around his feet were dozens of tiny pieces of pink fabric.

His beloved triangle-shaped women’s underwear had been completely shredded by Mario’s hundreds of slashes.

Dave’s heart skipped a beat.

“Oh, shit. That’s my beloved women’s triangle underwear! What do I do without my underwear?”

For a long time, that ridiculous piece of pink fabric had been part of his identity.

Without it, was he even The Underwear anymore?

While Dave was having an unexpected identity crisis, Mario lowered his body.

The faint amusement disappeared from his face. Every muscle in his body tightened as he concentrated all his strength into a single point—the very tip of his sword.

For a brief moment, an old memory returned.

Joshua.

Mario remembered their battle that had lasted an entire day and an entire night. He had struck Joshua again and again from every possible angle, but none of it had mattered. Joshua’s golden alloy body had taken every slash without suffering so much as a scratch.

Until Mario used this thrust.

One concentrated strike.

One point.

For the first time in that entire battle, Mario’s blade broke through Joshua’s golden alloy body, pierced straight through his lung, and came out through his back.

If this technique could pierce Joshua, Mario had no doubt it could pierce the muscle freak standing in front of him now.

The memory faded.

Mario’s eyes locked onto Dave’s heart.

He lowered himself even further, both hands gripping the sword behind him. His entire body compressed like a loaded spring, every ounce of strength gathered behind the tip of the blade.

Then he released.

SPATIAL IMPALE.

Mario became a shadow.

Dave did not even realize Mario had moved. By the time his eyes could register anything, the attack was already in front of him.

Something slammed into Dave from the side.

His entire body was knocked off line.

Almost simultaneously—

SHNK!

The sword punched through flesh.

Dave’s eyes went wide.

“AAAGH!”

His face turned white.

For the first time since the fight began, Dave screamed in genuine pain.

Section 5

Mario pulled the sword out.

Blood burst from the wound, and Dave immediately clamped one hand over it as he staggered backward. Only then did he realize the blade had not gone through his chest.

It had gone straight through his upper arm.

Dave stared at the wound as blood ran between his fingers. A blade had actually pierced his flesh.

He had been cut before. Scratched before. But a sword passing straight through his muscle was something he had never believed possible. It defied everything he understood about his own body. It almost defied physics.

Dave looked at Mario.

“What the—”

Footsteps approached from beside him.

Michael walked past Dave and stopped between the two men.

“The fight is over, Mario.”

Mario looked at him.

Michael casually tossed his briefcase aside, letting it land on the street.

“Our humble organization has one rule. As long as a customer is on our business grounds, their safety is our responsibility.”

He adjusted his golden-rimmed glasses.

“You’ve gone as far as I’ll allow.”

Mario stared at him for a moment.

“So you’re challenging me?”

“If that’s what it takes, then so be it.”

Michael glanced over his shoulder at Dave. His eyes moved across Dave’s now completely naked body, covered in hundreds of scratches, thin streaks of blood, and the fresh hole through his upper arm.

Something Boss Colin had told him a while ago suddenly clicked.

“Oh, Dave. You are strong—strong among the weak, and weak among the strong. That’s what our boss told me a while ago. Now I fully understand exactly what he meant.”

The words pierced Dave deeper than Mario’s sword.

Whatever confidence he had left collapsed.

Dave slowly dropped to his knees and stared at the ground, unable to say a word.

Section 6: Window into a Bigger World

Michael clenched his teeth.

Every muscle in his body tightened at once. His shoulders swelled, his arms thickened, and his chest and back hardened until his entire body seemed denser, heavier—almost armored.

Mario disappeared.

A shadow tore across the street.

Michael charged straight into it, throwing punch after punch.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

Dave’s head snapped up.

Mario’s sword was striking Michael again and again, yet there was no blood. No cuts. Not even a scratch. Every impact rang out like steel smashing against steel.

Michael suddenly twisted and kicked straight into the path of the shadow.

He missed.

But Mario was forced to break his movement.

The shadow took shape as Mario dropped into a roll, tumbling across the pavement beneath Michael’s leg. He came back to his feet almost immediately.

Then he disappeared again.

Dave remained on his knees, staring.

Minutes ago, he had not even been able to see Mario move.

Michael had just forced that same invisible opponent to dodge.

The fight dissolved once more into shadows and metallic impacts.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

Dave could barely follow it. Michael moved through the street with his fists cutting through blurred shapes, while Mario appeared only in brief fragments before vanishing again.

Less than thirty seconds later, Michael suddenly drove one fist forward.

Several shadows converged.

Mario appeared in midair.

His foot met Michael’s fist head-on.

BOOM!

The impact blasted them apart.

Mario flew backward, flipped once through the air, and landed cleanly on his left foot. Michael slid nearly two meters across the pavement before coming to a stop.

Mario studied him.

“Not bad. Not bad at all. Compared to that muscle freak, you’re something else. I’ve hit you plenty of times, and I don’t see a single mark on those muscles. Not even a scratch.”

“Thank you.”

Michael adjusted his golden-rimmed glasses.

“But you’re tough too. Very tough. If you still had your right foot, I don’t think I’d last twenty seconds against you.”

Mario gave him a faint smile.

His hand moved to the second sword at his waist.

He slowly drew it.

“All right, then. Let’s go round two.”

Mario spread both arms, a sword in each hand. Balancing on his left foot, he lifted his prosthetic right foot slightly off the ground as the two blades extended outward on either side of him.

His eyes sharpened.

“This time, I’ll get serious.”

Michael’s expression tightened.

He clenched his teeth and forced his muscles even harder. His arms, shoulders, chest, and neck swelled under the pressure.

Under his breath, he muttered,

“I think I’ve got three minutes. Maximum.”

Dave stared at the two of them, completely stunned.

“Holy shit. I don’t think I could even last ten seconds in a fight like this. I’m completely outclassed.”

He swallowed.

“They’re in a totally different world… far beyond mine.”