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"Threefold is the faith of the embodied, which is inherent in their nature- the Satvic (pure), the Rajasic (passionate) and the Tamasic (dark)." - Bhagavad-Gita

"Western time is ticking; Eastern time is breathing; capoeira time is pulsating." - ????

Good thing I've already read this before, she groaned inwardly as the shaking bus rudely closed the guidebook she was re-reading in her hands, or there's no way I'd be able to keep up with the plot otherwise. The cephalopod had forgotten just how difficult it could be to find a quiet spot to try to read or search for a semblance of inner peace in on the surface world.

Some masters recommended finding quiet spots to perform meditation in, which could be a lot easier said than done, whereas others actually recommended finding the noisiest and most crowded possible places to meditate in specifically to train oneself to remain centered even while caught in one of life's maelstroms. As for her, she could bear it, just not grin.

The bus slowed to a stop. She grabbed her stuff, took a look back to make sure she wasn't leaving anything behind, and skipped steps two by two on her way down the stairs leading into the citywide subway system criss-crossing the underworld which could draw its unsuspecting passengers within the itchy and crawling confines of the Bolgia.

The Bolgia sat waiting smack dab in the middle of downtown under a hotel and sleep research center with all but the upper fourth of it hunched over underground. It beckoned passer-bys inside like a Venus flytrap with firefly light cords, mothflame lanterns, clicks, rattles, churrs and siren songs whispering sweet promises in their ears. The Sargasso Sea couldn't help it if all shipwrecks ended up drifting to it, now, could it?

Like the Mayan Underworld, the Bolgia was made up out of nine sections, distinctly differentiated yet interconnected by four pathways like a tic-tac-toe grid: the washrooms back-left, the arcade back, the slot machines back-right, the dance floor left, the ring/stage center, the pool table right, the DJ booth front-left, the card table front and the bar front-right. The red carpet, indigo curtains and Cubist paintings on the ebony walls made the place feel classier than it really was under the right kind of lighting, despite the shady deals and fast-acting pick-up lines its dark corners barely concealed, and the mirror in the white ceiling over the ring/stage ensured the action taking place on it could be followed from anywhere.

A manticore bouncer moved out of Mano's way after a cursory weapon check, she shot a glance right to the unassuming demon bartender who greeted her with a polite smile and a humble wave, and she told the cockatrice waiter who stopped at her table she'd take a moment to order if no one minded, which he assured her no one would. The Bolgia's staff bothered its customers as little as crime groups and the forces of order bothered it, although the former was just good manners whereas the latter was just good thinking. No one knew for sure what'd happened to the one person who'd ever killed someone in the Bolgia, but they'd never been heard from again and rumor had it they'd been turned to stone, trapped in their own nightmares, or worse, rumor which of course the staff had always known better than to confirm or deny.

On the ring/stage, under the spotlight, a weasel and skunk circled and eyed each other warily, mammals playing poker looking for a tell. The weasel wore army pants, the skunk wore white pants, and neither of them had a shirt on.

The weasel hopped, right heel spinning back over the crouching skunk who bounced up into a rising headbutt which the weasel caught to bring down on his left knee. The bent-over skunk headbutted the weasel's midsection but the weasel grabbed the skunk's right wrist twisting inward to bring his elbow down on the skunk's back. The skunk brought his forehead down to his own knees just in time, feeling the weasel's elbow going through his hair on its way down. The skunk put his left palm on the ground, arched his back to lock both shins around the weasel's neck, andpulled.

The weasel rolled to break his fall after being sent upside-down behind the skunk then, figuring the skunk must have had his back to him behind him, arched his back aiming a punch at the back of the skunk's head. The skunk, seeing the weasel's punch coming over his shoulder, bent down under it putting both hands on the ground while sending both heels at the weasel's back. The weasel did a squat thrust under the skunk's feet, kicking both of the skunk's arms out from under him, not having predicted that this would force the skunk to fall down sitting on the weasel's back facing away from him, pulling the weasel's ankles up toward the skunk arching the weasel's back with the skunk's foot on the weasel's tail to force him to hit the mat for release.

Mano had already recognized the skunk as Klein by then, but she didn't think she'd met the weasel before, although judging from how much more affectionate than the usual boxer hug their post-fight hug seemed to be (Oh my goodness, she thought), she figured they must have already known each other from before. Klein couldn't have been that fast, she reasoned. It took her a moment for the impact of the army pants on the weasel and for their possible implications to worm their way into her mind. Just how much could one skunk change in one year, anyway?

Klein's forearm dangled sideways under his elbow at shoulder level like a puppet's arm, as if daring anyone else to compel some invisible master to pull his strings and make him dance for the crowd's amusement again, trying to conceal how spent he really was behind a defiant wicked grin. He was just about to let himself fall down on his back dramatically as though his puppet strings had been cut to let everyone know that the show was over when he saw the crowd between a table and the ring parting like the Red Sea and an eerily familiar cloaked figure dashing toward him to vault over the ropes before the cloak came off and gasps emerged from the crowd.

The chimera mixing tracks at the DJ booth greeted her arrival with a pounding, electric, almost ethereal rhythm as the neon lights from above made the water rune on her right shoulder and the wave glyph on her left middle arm glow.

There, for a brief, shining moment, she knew that everyone looking at her saw as a true advantage what she knew she had to hide like a flaw to be ashamed of from everyone around her way too much of the time. As freaky as they may have made her look, the extra limbs starting from her sides at solar plexus and belly button levels were an undeniable combat advantage, and here, finally, was an audience who could appreciate that.

It felt liberating.

For a moment she turned her entire body deep sea blue just because she could, and even tried to allow herself to enjoy the attention it brought her without feeling guilty about it. She did maintain her usual austere and reserved expression in the process, since of course this was no time for her to be breaking character. Gods, how inappropriately vain she couldn't believe she could allow herself to act sometimes. Klein wasn't going to be a good influence on her at all.

He just smiled at her display, but her third eye caught his barely perceptible twitch when she suddenly opened it right at him, and then she was the one who smiled.

• You have a tell.

He tilted his head to the side with his arms crossed, trying to make his impressed expression seem like it was an act even though they both knew it wasn't.

• Nothing ever gets past you, does it?

She shook her head no, going through a quick private review of the optimal battle sub-routines she'd hardwired into herself while bringing her sharply honed mental focus on him. It had taken her only seven years to become a fourth level exponent of her discipline, the shortest possible amount of time it could take to reach it. He knew he didn't have the same level of training and experience she had, she knew that he knew it, and she had every intention of using that knowledge as a psychological weapon against him. It wasn't like she didn't know he would have done the same to her had the situation been reversed. Even here on his own turf, he only won about as many fights as he lost overall, and although she could believe him when he said he could kick someone anywhere around him from any position since she'd seen him do it, she had more trouble believing he could shoot black and white axé blasts from his joined heels like she'd only heardclaim he could.

She reminded herself that although the ball of energy bouncing around in front of her was fidgety, spastic and hyper by nature, his erratic footwork and constant motion were also intended to make him harder for her to hit and to make it more difficult for her to tell where his next kick would be coming from. He settled into a left foot front stance and, just for a moment, she could see on his face just how glad he was to be seeing her again.

• It has been a while, hasn't it?
• Long enough for me to have lost all track of time, skunk.
• That's okay. What's a little time between friends?
• Never too much, I hope. Now let's see if you still stink at this as much as you used to.
• I thought you'd never ask.

He lifted his left foot from the ground abruptly to startle her but she saw through his feint, calmly descending into a left foot front stance while extending her arms into a six-pointed star aiming every bent forearm at him like so many turrets, and he launched into a zigzagging mad dash at her.

She caught his left foot with her lower arms on its way up to her midsection, he bent and turned onto his left knee under her upper arms' ear pop and she caught his right heel with her middle arms as he sent it back at her chest. He let go of the ground altogether to send both fists at her midsection and since her lower arms had to let go of his left foot to grab his wrists on their way to her midsection, he pulled his left foot forward over him down to the ground and away from her to gain the momentum to twist out of her grip, turning around to stand up facing her afterwards.

"Wriggling like a worm on a hook."

He parried her right lower palm and left lower slap with left round and right turning kicks while standing on his hands, her left middle palm and right middle slap with right round and left turning kicks in midair, and her right upper palm and left upper slap with right turning and left out-in crescent jump kicks.

"Still a showoff."

She sent her legs pointing back out of range of the leg scissors he dropped into as her lower arms took over supporting her body, her middle palm strikes downward forced him to pull back from under her and her upper palm strikes to his midsection forced him to roll back to break his fall.

"She must look like a table from the side."

She saw his pounce coming a mile away, stepping right while whirling left to send three left backhands at him which he brought his legs forward over his head down to the ground to do a bridge under by a hair's width. The three right arms' slaps which followed also missed his left arm and head as he brought them forward into a crouch with his hands on the ground behind him before turning sideways on all four then up into a left foot front stance facing her.

"A slinky through a revolving door."

She stamped his left foot with her own, his right low round kick missed her left lifted leg and he span left all the way around, switching to a right foot front stance. She tried to grab his right ankle with all of her six hands successively while he switched from right crane to right leg pointing forward to pointing up to pointing forward to crane again to dodge the first five grabs before avoiding the last one with an in-out crescent kick which she caught on its way to her right temple, moving in to push him forward over her left leg with her three left arms.

"Rubber legs but feet of clay."

He rolled and half-turned into a crouching headbutt which she blocked with her lower arms, he bent his forehead to his knees feeling her middle hands' downstrikes grazing his hair and he thrust his tail right up into her face, which given how fluffy it was didn't really hurt anything but her pride, but still made it so that none of her three eyes could see. He brought his tail back down behind him as her upper palms clapped together over him for it, but she snuck her lower hands under his armpits to pull him up in front of her, replaced by her upper hands as her middle hands grabbed his wrists and her lower hands grabbed his ankles. He could only grit his teeth and tense up his muscles at the thought of what was on the way.

"Gotcha. "

She tossed him up in the air then went down to on her four upper forearms while sending her feet and lower arms forward over her head at his chest and midsection to push him out of the ring with a flawless scorpion asana.

One twirling kip-up later, he leapt up at her to try to pay her back for the lesson she'd just taught him and only realized in midair over the ropes that since she'd managed to force him out of the ring, the battle was over - he'd lost. So as soon as he landed he went for her cloak instead, grabbed it and handed it to her with exaggerated courtesy, hoping nobody would notice his previous oversight in light of it.

• Ever the gentleman, I see.
• But of course.

As the raccoon referee struggled to politely determine which of her arms he was supposed to lift up to indicate that she'd won, they shared a post-fight boxer hug which, although it wasn't affectionate quite in the same way as the one following the previous match had been, still definitely seemed to contain a lot more emotion than the average one did.

• I missed you, you three-eyed, thick-headed, eight-legged freak.
  • You still stink at this just as much as you always did.
  • And your manners are still everything they've ever been.
  • I'd like to see what yours would look like after some of what I've been through.
  • We have a lot of catching up to do and it sounds like it won't all be pleasant, but a fair weather friend isn't much of a friend at all now, is he?

She wrapped herself back up in the folds of her cloak, trying to get offstage as solemnly and to meld back into the crowd as casually as it was possible to after having put on a display as exceptional as the one she just had. After a short hushed verbal exchange with the weasel from before and a stop by the bar counter to collect his and her winning prizes for the evening, he joined her at the table she'd first sat at to watch the two of them spar. She ordered a cold Griffin beer while waiting for him and after he got there he waved to the cockatrice asking for a kettle of hot saké and a cup to pour it in.

• You've always struck me as someone enviably capable, Mano, but tonight, I have to say I can't help being just a little concerned about you.
  • That's the thing. The more capable you seem, the more people will expect from you, the more disappointed they'll be if you can't deliver on it.
  • That's not a situation which feels entirely alien to me, as cold of a comfort as I know that to be.
  • Cold comfort beats no comfort at all, I guess.
  • This is beginning to sound just a smidgen ominous, you know.
  • That's true.
  • I'm interested in listening if you feel like talking, but is this something it'd be better for me not to pry about?
  • I'd like to tell you somewhere eventually, just not here and now.
  • Later tonight in a more private setting, then?
  • That would do quite adequately, yes.
  • Should we leave now, or later?
  • Our drinks are on the way, and I've never known you to be the type to let a good drink go to waste.
  • You do know me, but a listening ear can be harder to come across than even a good drink is.
  • Yes, but you'll still be there when the drinks are gone, I hope.
  • I can't promise I'll be all if I get enough drink in me.
  • Trust me, after everything I've been through, I need a drink, and if you're going to be sitting through it, you're probably going to be needing one too.
  • Is there anything else I can do for you in the meantime, then?
  • Do you have any privacy concerns of your own about what your life's been like since we've last met?
  • Not really, no. Why, are you interested?
  • Enough to want to hear about it, at least. It'd be a nice change of pace for me to be able to focus on someone else's problems for once, and I think I'll feel less stage fright at the thought of talking about mine if you break the ice by going into yours first, if you don't mind.
  • Most certainly not. Ah! Our drinks are here.

They each thanked, paid and tipped the cockatrice with part of their victory money from that very night then lifted their glasses at each other in the traditional drinking buddy ritual gesture.

• Kampai.

"Let's drink, for tomorrow we die."