Sports Day (3)
"This event decides the strongest animal in the zoo. It's called Find the Strongest!"
The words were barely out of my mouth before the visitors started buzzing. What I'd just announced was something they'd been dying to know for themselves. Not a single animal in the zoo was ordinary, so the question of who reigned as the strongest kept coming up again and again. Some visitors swore it was Namcat, the cat who beat up tigers and stole their food. Others insisted it was Cheongho, the former military dog whose monstrous physical ability let him shut Namcat down with room to spare. Plenty of people backed the rest of the roster, too.
Some threw their support behind Bbwoobbwoo the elephant, an apex of the wild in his own right. Others backed the giraffe, claiming a neck-whip and a hind-kick ended any fight. There were even visitors who declared that cute was enough, and that Pe-eng was the strongest of all.
"All right — starting now, cast your votes! Which animal do you think is the strongest in our zoo?"
At my call to predict the final result, the murmuring swelled even louder. It got so loud that one couple started arguing outright, each of them backing a different animal.
Once I figured the voting had gone on long enough, I pulled out the bracket. It was split between the small animals and the large ones.
"To be clear, today's event isn't about ranking everyone by strength. It's a contest to crown the single strongest animal in the zoo. For the sake of convenience and safety, we'll be dividing them into separate brackets."
When I explained that the smaller animals — dogs, cats, and the like — would compete apart from the large ones, like tigers and elephants, the visitors looked disappointed. They clearly wanted more of the kind of spectacle where Namcat beat up a tiger.
"Still, since this is a contest to decide the strongest, the winners will meet in the final."
Only after that extra explanation did the buzzing die down a little. I called out the stars of the opening match at once. We were starting with the small animals: Daepodong and Natae.
"Isn't this already over?"
The moment Natae shuffled into view, plenty of visitors decided the match was finished before it began. And it didn't stray far from their expectations. A few details came out a little different, but the result itself was exactly what they'd predicted.
"C'mon, move a little, would ya!"
"…………………………Hmph."
Daepodong stood over Natae, sprawled flat on the ground, poking and prodding the koala's belly fat as if begging him to do something. But Natae, laziness given form, was never going to stir for a plea like that. In the end, the match only finished once Daepodong dragged him, inch by inch, clean out of the arena.
There wasn't a shred of combat tension in that first match. What it had instead was laughter, and plenty of it.
From the next match on, though, things were actually worth watching. In the very next bout, Tokkiz against the Goosez, the rabbits darted around until the geese were completely frazzled, then sent them flying with hind-kicks.
The match after that — Wonsungi versus the red fox — was a real show. The fox dropped low and circled, hunting for an opening the way it would on a real hunt, then spotted a gap and charged in a flash. But Wonsungi's movement was every bit as technical as those precise hands of his. He sprang clear of the charging fox, twisted in midair, and came down squarely on the fox's back.
"Whoa! Did you see that?! Was that martial arts?!"
The visitors roared at the impossibly flashy movement. And Wonsungi wasn't done. He wrapped those long arms around the fox's body and locked in a choke. Bound and pinned in an instant, the fox had no choice but to surrender.
The matches that followed put on plenty of similar spectacles. Cheongho wore a wolf down with nothing but counters, and Namcat faced a kangaroo and knocked it out cold with dozens of Nyangnyang Punches in a single second.
Once the small-animal preliminaries wrapped up without much fuss, it was time for the large animals. Maybe it was the sheer pressure of their size, but their matches were every bit as worth watching. There was no shortage of sights. A bear locked in a contest of strength got snatched up by Bbwoobbwoo's trunk, rocked like a fussy baby, and tossed out of the ring. Hodori, facing the giraffe, ate a hit from that long neck as it whipped and whirled, and went bouncing out of bounds himself.
But the real show started now. With the preliminary winners colliding, the matches carried a tension the earlier ones hadn't.
The most dazzling of them was the long-overdue rematch between Namcat and Yubu. Namcat had no wings of his own, and still the two of them waged the fight in the air. He sprang off Yubu's body as the owl flew, then kicked off him again, hanging suspended in the empty sky. They traded blows even from there. The spectacle of it was beyond words.
Even so, the winner was Namcat, just as expected. Yubu had once thrown a match and settled into the role of a pet, and he still couldn't overcome a Namcat who remained every bit as strong. Namcat dropped out of the air, landed atop Yubu as the owl fell cutting through the wind, and touched down gently on the ground.
"Whoaaaa!"
"Owls really are just for riding!"
"I knew you'd win, Namcat!"
The visitors cheered as Namcat landed smoothly astride a twitching Yubu and casually started grooming himself. Plenty of them said they'd known all along that Namcat would win, though scattered among them were people who felt bad for Yubu's loss.
I'd meant to get on with hosting.
"The winners' matches really are spectacular... Ack! What the—!"
Namcat had closed in without my noticing and driven a Nyangnyang Punch into my knee. It didn't carry nearly the force of the ones he'd used on Yubu, but it still landed with a solid weight.
"Hand over the Churu you promised."
"You little bastard..."
He looked ready to keep protesting until I produced the treat. Only after I shook my head and handed over the Churu did he finally let up.
"Whew. We had a little commotion, but it's settled. All right — on to the next match. This one is Cheongho versus Wonsungi!"
Cheongho sat square in the center of the stage, staring blankly at Wonsungi as the gibbon fluttered and fidgeted around him. The instant the gibbon darted in close, Cheongho swung a forepaw.
"Kkik!"
It was a single, almost casual blow, and yet Wonsungi took it and went bouncing straight out of the ring. A hush hung over the crowd for a moment, but the matches that followed kept coming, and the silence didn't last.
When those matches were done, the small-animal side had come down to Namcat and Cheongho, and the large-animal side to the elephant and the giraffe.
"And so we have two animals left from the small bracket, and two from the large. But isn't it a shame to keep matching the little ones against the little ones, and the big ones against the big ones?"
The visitors roared their agreement. Honestly, Namcat and Cheongho were so overwhelmingly strong that the outcomes were easy to call. No one could deny the matches were worth watching for the flashy movement alone, but the problem was that the results felt all but certain. At the promise of small animals against large ones, the visitors bounced in their seats and shouted for the matches to start right now.
I laughed lightly and called out the stars of the first bout. It would be Namcat versus the giraffe.
Even measured to the highest point of his body, Namcat didn't clear a foot and a half, and he stood facing a giraffe that rose more than sixteen feet. The giraffe looked down on the match, and on Namcat, as a joke. The cat didn't even come up to its knee. That was its mistake.
"Eek— eeek! Kreeeik!"
The giraffe threw everything it had at him. Against a cat that small and that quick, though, not a single blow landed. Namcat scrambled up its body and that long neck instead, and started hammering Nyangnyang Punches into its head. The giraffe whipped its neck back and forth, desperate to shake him off, but he clung on and kept punching, relentless. Under a barrage that never once let up, the giraffe finally surrendered and fled out of the ring.
"Actin' all big when you ain't shit."
Having successfully driven the giraffe off, Namcat groomed himself with a haughty air, as if none of it had been any trouble. The visitors cheered. He had already beaten his natural enemy, the owl, and now he'd taken down a giraffe on top of it. I watched, dumbfounded, as he took a full lap of the stage like he was savoring the applause — and then he left without so much as a glance in my direction.
"...The winner walked off, so there won't be a winner's interview. We'll move straight into the next match."
I shook my head and called the next pair. Cheongho strode out, proud and imposing, while Bbwoobbwoo came bouncing along as if he couldn't be happier. The two of them took their places at the center of the stage, traded a light greeting, regarded each other for a moment, and then crashed together.
In the space of a blink, Cheongho closed on Bbwoobbwoo and drove a forepaw forward. Bbwoobbwoo met it with that long, thick trunk. The impact was so fierce it sounded like something bursting — a heavy whump — and the force behind it was unmistakable. Several more collisions followed, much the same. Little by little, though, Bbwoobbwoo started to give ground. The strength in the trunk that had been stopping those blows began to slacken, and Cheongho drew closer and closer.
After a few more clashes, Bbwoobbwoo could no longer block him, and a forepaw landed square on his head. Struck right between the eyes, the elephant toppled in slow motion and hit the ground with a heavy thud.
"Holy shit... is that a dog, or a monster?"
"Okay, Druid quality is actually unreal. What kind of dog beats an elephant?"
"Namcat's Namcat, sure, but Cheongho might be even more impressive. Knocking an elephant flat beats Namcat winning by dancing around and chipping away without ever getting hit."
Watching Bbwoobbwoo go down, the visitors shot to their feet and cheered. Cheongho looked like nothing more than an ordinary military dog, and yet he had won a head-on fight against a massive elephant. I gave the crowd a little time to settle, then started preparing the last match — the final.
On a stage where even the giraffe and the elephant had fallen, Namcat and Cheongho stood facing each other.
"At last, only the final remains. Namcat, who's been with me the longest. And Cheongho, who was anything but ordinary from the moment I brought him home. Which of these two will come out on top? The final begins now!"
The visitors' cheers exploded all over again before I'd even finished. The two of them, though, just stared at each other, blank and unblinking. More precisely, they were in the middle of talking trash.
"It is not too late. Forfeit now and withdraw, and you will still walk out of here intact."
"How 'bout you forfeit, huh? Keep gettin' your ass beat and it won't just be that snout of yours that's black. Your whole damn body might turn black."
"I offered you a special chance. You are the one who ignored it."
"Hmph. You're the one who kicked that chance away."
Done talking, the two of them moved at the same instant, as if they'd planned it. Namcat closed in with blinding speed and threw a Nyangnyang Punch at Cheongho's muzzle. Cheongho lifted his head just slightly, slipped the blow with ease, and swung a forepaw at the cat. There was a sharp shhk as the paw grazed Namcat's tail. Namcat flicked that tail and taunted him.
"Hey, thanks. My tail fur was all matted anyway. That was just about perfect for fluffin' it out."
"Then you will try dodging this one as well!"
The taunt only seemed to put wings on Cheongho. He crashed into Namcat even faster than before, and with more force than he'd used against Bbwoobbwoo. Caught off guard by the overwhelming power, Namcat failed to react and ate the hit. Even so, he was a cat who had survived the wilderness they call the streets, and even as he took the blow he fired back a brutal counter. A rapid pap-pap-pap cracked across Cheongho's face as more than ten Nyangnyang Punches landed in a burst.
Having each landed a blow that mattered, the two of them slammed together without rest, as if this were the decisive moment itself, and the longer they clashed, the more wrecked both of them became. After roughly three minutes of unbroken collision, the match was finally decided.
Out past the boundary, in the out-of-bounds zone, Namcat hobbled in place while he groomed a forepaw. Opposite him, Cheongho stood bolt upright — his coat gone badly unkempt, patches of fur torn out here and there.
It was the moment Cheongho ascended to the throne of the strongest animal in our zoo.