A duel in honour of The Return of The Cripple, perhaps history's most tragic unfinished epic.

How this epic tale should have gone before a certain trickster god screwed it up:

Henry—The Cripple, history’s greatest duellist in disguise—had planned to reveal the finished form of his revolutionary martial art in the final bracket of an amateur recruitment tournament in the game’s shittest zone instead of the much more obvious choice of the contemporaneous Winter Open Invitational. Then—and this step was as crucial as the first, if not more so—he would've immediately quit the game. In the very breath with which he’d finished delivering his victory speech at that recruitment tournament, he'd have logged out and ditched Saana for good to start a new career designing avant-garde fanny packs.

That was essentially the entirety of the plotline. However, of course—like all of Henry's avant-garde undertakings—the story had many deep and hidden layers.

"...you see,” he explained to the intern mid-fight, catching the biting wolf companion by the tail, discus-spinning, and hurling it out of the arena, “a mythopoetic exegesis would expose a profound symbolic meaning in my saga’s two contrasting arcs. Through my, The Cripple’s, choice of the worst staging ground imaginable for my return AND resting place,” he shield-blocked a poisoned arrow, “I would, in one un-explosive moment of rebirth and redeath, establish the eternal position of myself and A Thousand Tools relative to our competitors.” The pet dispatched of, he jogged after the fleeing, terrified intern. “Pros, amateurs, all have been made before my towering might identically puny. A noob in Suchi poses an equal non-challenge to me as the second ‘best’ in the world, and to stomp one is the same, from my elevated vantage point, as stomping all others. And all of these, in turn, are inferior to the challenge beyond The Beyond, the challenge of designing fanny packs.”

He shot a , zapping the intern in the back of a knee and causing him to stumble. “(Of course, the Cripple-esque ironic anti-humour discernible to Patricians or above in that fake analysis is that, actually, once my opponents reverse engineered and learned my techniques, I might not have been ranked #1 anymore because I'm still afflicted with a trash reaction-speed and, therefore, an aversion to confronting that depressing reality is why I'd really avoided The Winter Open. In this respect, the preceding exegesis was merely a pathetic cover-story for my petty self-serving decisions, mirroring how I’d once insisted on calling my broken cheat items ‘tools’ to obfuscate me gaming every match in my favour.)”

Retreating and allowing the intern to get some distance, he caught a juggled bow and pinged an arrow into his opponent's arse. “(Then, the even funnier humour for Ultrapatricians was that, actually, because of those very tools—which the ethics of More unambiguously condones—plus my acquisition of a globe-spanning empire, yet another valid tool, nobody would have ever been able to compete with me in a fight regardless of how much they study my art. Therefore, the original, silly-sounding analysis really did contain one of my sincere reasons for quitting and leaving to pursue an indeterminate future challenge elsewhere as embodied by the mythological totem of the fanny pack.)”

Climbing up a giant ribcage obstacle, he span, slapped a return-fired arrow from the air, and whispered ominously. “(And beyond these lesser amusements awaits, past a horizon of comprehension unfathomable in its intellectual depths to any pea-on-brain man of The Present, an Uberpatrician in-joke the likes of which humanity has...)"

At the finale of his career's grand epilogue would come London Tremor's hour in the spotlight. The world would be scrambling for answers on the bewildering art. They would be begging for tutorials from The Cripple deaf-eared and retired at a sewing machine in his new fashion studio. And all they would find as their sole source of enlightenment would be a series of articles written by one clueless intern who’d stared at the awesome face of God without recognising him.

Then, in the extended postlogue—lasting somewhere between years and decades—the duelling scene would have to reconstruct A Thousand Tools from London's glimpses of the constituent arts. Henry'd given the saga a fun, interactive, group-puzzle-type ending. It was basically James Joyce's Finnegans Wake but in martial art format and with a more coherent narrative structure.

“HF Wins! -0, +0!” the announcer declared, the veteran duellist sneaking in a finishing blow amidst the distraction of his monologue.

“…Let fanny packs be worn on every hill and molehill of Mississippi! On every mountainside, let fanny packs be worn!” Henry, closing up a sample from the epic victory speech prepared for that brilliant day stolen from them all, lowered his raised fist, his arm sinking beneath the crushing weight of another smothered dream, his foot pressing down upon the cheek of the intern prostrate in defeat beneath him. “But no. Instead, we’ve been derailed into this lesser 15-tournament affair. Tragic, isn’t it?”

All around the stadium, those trainees alert enough to follow along were straining their tired noggins.

It would be easy to dismiss this shockingly stupid alternative as one of The Tyrant’s hyperbolic jokes. Was there a lamer way to debut a revolutionary style? Who on this planet could take the fruits of such an exhausting labour in researching and synthesising hundreds of martial arts and then piss all over them? Rather than funny, the idea seemed downright offensive, conceivable only to some kind of next-level hyper clown. What reason could he possibly have to trash his own work like this? Vengeance? Because, five years ago, some people had called him a cripple and a cheater? Preposterous.

However, as the trainees glanced around themselves—at this weird stadium in a slum in the game’s least relevant zone, at The Tyrant’s shenanigans preceding his exposure, at their own bruised bodies and egos—they couldn’t eliminate the gnawing sense that some of the facts aligned.

In a ring-side tent for VIPs, Mrtyu and several other veterans shook their heads in horrified despair. To think, the future of their scene had once lain in the hands of just such a clown. Saana's hidden duelling potential might very well have gone unlocked simply due to the teen's petulant grudge.

Henry, stepping away from the confused crowd, stepped off the intern and raised him to his feet. “How's your mood now? Disappointed? Mournful?” He brushed some dirt off the kid’s shoulder. “Does your heart weep for what might’ve been but never will?”

“I suppose I should be angry?” replied London Tremor, accepting the story at once. “You tried to turn me into a global joke.”

Henry groaned in disgust. “That’s only the Low-Tier Patrician interpretation of The Cripple's Return. Anyone focusing on the minor detail of not recognising me betrays their own ignorance. Of course, a newbie wouldn’t remember my by-gone antics; I haven’t been relevant as a duellist for half a decade, this just being a side-hobby to tinker with during my off-hours. If you instead rise to my saga’s highest layers, you’ll realise your inclusion was actually a fantastic compliment. Of all the journalists here, I—whom history will eventually discover to also be its greatest author—selected you to be the minstrel who sings my closing stanza. That means you were the least worst of the trash available for me to dupe. Yes, HL’s stamp of approval acknowledges that your lettered soul exudes the least worst style, the least worst vivacity, the least worst pizzazz, the least worst potential for More!”

He offered the next map pick to the intern, who indicated the more discrete, underground location of Catacombs.

“But,” Henry continued, grabbing the kid by the shoulder and walking him over while the snarling wolf caught back up with them, “more important than the common opinion or my pretentious one, what you would have been given through your participation in my epic saga was, objectively, a level of publicity impossible to purchase. Millions of free eyeballs, laser-focused on your reportage. Sure, the starting point sucks, but shouldn’t a skilled enough journalist be able to salvage their reputation? Doesn’t anyone who fails to overcome this test of strength deserve their downfall?” He nodded with self-approval, this nonsense beginning to sound convincing to his own ears. “Really—when you really think about it—yours would've been like a redemption arc within a redemption arc. A double redemption arc! Like myself, rising from the ashes of global duelling contempt, you, my final scion scorched of scorn, would redeem yourself through the synthesis of my two epic halves, the despised duellist and the loathed poet. Finally, humanity would reach a resolution to that age-old war between pen and sword. What’s the mightiest tool of all?” He slapped the kid’s chest with pride. “It's you, the pen that writes about the sword. My sword - my sword, drawn for a final cut, before it's sheathed and left to rust as I retire from this EZ, nooblord, Low-Tier-Pleb-garbage, less-intellectually-stimulating-than-designing-fanny-packs duelling side-hobby.”

One veteran duellist sprinted up to the ring side in frustration. “You disrespectful, crippled piece of shit, fight me again! Rematch! NOW!”

Henry, smirking, stopped outside an underground entrance and swept a lofty arm across the ruined view of the crowd attending this workshop that should never have been. “London Tremor, my chosen bard, ours would’ve been EXACTLY like the Jesus story. Except with a better ending. You, my apostle, recounting the gospel of my life, my resurrection, and my immediate choice to quit this dull earth again, would've gotten murdered and then enacted upon yourself the highest miracle of self-revivification. Then, one distant day, decades after this era of pleb-lic condemnation, you’d have been relaxing on a private Moroccan beach—your own beach, bought with the earnings of your journalistic fame—when an anonymous package would've been delivered by your bikinied butleress. You’d open it up and, ‘Oh, what’s this?’” He mimed pulling out an item from a box and, eyes bulging in amazement, attached its tasteful straps to the kid. “Why, it’s the perfect hip-mounted-storage accessory, custom made to fit your waist as thanks for your participation in its own harrowing saga, the fanny pack at last—after its own unjust century of crucifixion—reborn. That’s right, my friend. It was a triple redemption arc. You, me, and the fanny pack, all making our epic comebacks.”

London Tremor pondered the joke, and then his gloomy features broke into a melancholic smile. “Damn. That would have been better...”

"See, I picked well." Henry, giving a sigh of agreement, marked this friendly one-on-one in his therapy diary a partial success. “Truly, The Return of The Cripple would’ve been way cooler than this lame-o, multi-tournament, internationally-attended, millions-of-competitors-dumpstered, backup bonanza.”

They were all, truly, living in the worst of timelines, a sabotaged, neutered version of his original grand humanist-fannypackist epic.

London Tremor, once humiliated, once terrified, had come to this exchange anticipating a ruthless beating. Instead, his own saga turning out to be one of not vengeance but redemption, the beatings he received were much gentler, much softer hearted.

In their next friendly duel underground, the intern was cornered down a hallway, Scotia guarding him had his spine broken, and then their unstoppable assailant beheaded him. In a final match, in the twisting passageways of Labyrinth, his chest was sprinkled with holes. Throughout, The Tyrant continued their amicable conversation. The teen spared some advice on leveraging the publicity, on transforming the intern’s embarrassment into success. When London aired his grievances about his bossy senior at Channel 5, The Tyrant advised him to tolerate Spear’s mentorship for now. Although 2049’s Gaming Journalist of The Year may have been comically incorrect, his articles were at least interesting and his immoral work ethic was, in a sense, another praiseworthy manifestation of mankind's unyielding drive for More.

London struggled to grasp the cause behind this unwarranted kindness. Such charity fit with neither his conception of The Cripple’s mocking duelling persona nor the brusque severity of The Tyrant. Could it play into another multi-level scheme beyond his puny comprehension? Or perhaps, for someone so accomplished, the small investigative slights by Spears and himself really had stirred no more lasting irritation than a prod by a mosquito?

Regardless, the intern left the arena with a buoyant step and a renewed respect exceeding even what’d he’d developed for HF while shadowing him as a mere duelling expert in disguise. The negativity and insults spammed in his stream chat after his defeat, all flew past his vision unheeded, nothing but the drool-addled mumblings of pleb mouth-breathers.

In a bright mood, he rejoined Oliver at his confinement cell. There, the senior journalist was also in heightened spirits, taking a moral victory in his censorship and frying up the next juicy steak of slander.

London, since the boss had no further requests, strolled back to the arena side, pushing as close as he could through the spectators. With the best of his novice knowledge, he continued narrating the challenges, fighting to retain some of the viewers who’d tuned in simply to watch his humiliation.

Many other oddballs showed up to vie for the teen’s priceless time, old enemies with petty grievances, fans of his grand campaigns begging for advice in the field of war, rich folk skipping the queue. With equanimity and magnanimous grace, HF demolished them all, dispensing each with a myriad mix of his thousand techniques.

Throughout, the intern from Channel 5 named what traces of arts he recognised. For the rest, the majority, he took the wild, long-shot guesses of a fallen soul whose only possible trajectory from hereon was upwards.