The Bear Mauls His Favorite
The smell of grass.
No, not just grass.
Earth. Rotting leaves. The musk of animals I couldn't name. A full sensory gift set strong enough to knock my nose out cold.
…What the hell is this.
It took a while for my consciousness to claw its way back. My eyelids felt like lead, and my skull was splitting open. Right… what had I done yesterday?
Overtime. Headed home. Caught the subway. And after that…?
…Nothing. The film had completely cut. I hadn't even been drinking.
Okay. Eyes first.
I forced them open—and it wasn't a fluorescent light staring back at me. Not wallpaper, either. Definitely not the mold-speckled ceiling of my studio apartment.
Just sunlight filtering through leaves, a stretch of blue sky, and birdsong.
"…?"
Mountains. Everywhere I looked, mountains. Trees, rocks, underbrush, and more trees.
Yesterday my team lead tore into me, I pulled overtime, barely made it home—and I wake up in the middle of the woods?
I don't even like hiking. Camping even less. My idea of a perfect weekend is parking myself on the couch with a UFC stream and a bucket of fried chicken.
And that guy is lying on a forest floor?
Yeah, no. Not buying it. Had I been kidnapped or something?
I had no idea what was going on, but I needed to get out of here. Fast. I tried to sit up in one sharp motion.
My body felt weirdly heavy.
Okay, so I haven't worked out in a while, but…
No. Heavy didn't cover it. I felt like I'd been poured into a block of lead. Lifting one arm seemed like it would take everything I had.
How to put it…
Like my whole body had gotten bigger? My center of gravity was off, and some strange part of me kept insisting that standing on all fours would feel more natural.
Phone. Find the phone first.
I groped for my pants pocket. There was no pocket.
…What?
Weird enough—but that wasn't even the weirdest part. My line of sight was too high. Not high like standing upright, exactly—more like I was on all fours and still looking out at roughly human head height.
Something was wrong. A lot of things were wrong. But I didn't have time to sort through them.
Rustle. Rustle.
Movement in the brush. People. Two sets of footsteps. Coming this way.
I'm saved.
I shouted on pure reflex. Hey! There's someone over he—
What came out of my mouth was:
"Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr—"
…Excuse me?
"Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr—"
No. What did I just say?
My tongue wouldn't move right. My vocal cords refused to cooperate. Did I even still have vocal cords?
Before I could fully panic, two figures pushed through the undergrowth. One held a camera. The other was… Dominic Carter.
…Is this a dream?
My breath nearly stopped.
Dominic Carter. Simultaneous UFC Light Heavyweight and Heavyweight champion. A permanent fixture in every pound-for-pound greatest-of-all-time argument. The fighter whose highlight reels I rewatched every single week—the undisputed number one of my entire life.
That Dominic… Carter…!!
Is it really…?
It was. Those broad shoulders. That thick neck. The low center of gravity that was his trademark. The exact frame I'd seen on screen hundreds of times.
Why Dominic Carter was standing in a Korean mountain forest was beyond me. A shoot? A documentary?
I want his autograph.
A fan's instincts are terrifying. This was the man who'd lifted Dan Jones and thrown him. The man who'd raised two belts at once in the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas—the exact moment I still used as my phone wallpaper.
Ahem. The first thing that popped into my head in this situation was an autograph. Yeah, I'm pathetic. I know.
But something was off about Dominic's face. He wasn't smiling. The cameraman had already gone bone-white. No—past white. Pure terror. The hand holding the camera was shaking hard enough to rattle the lens.
Dominic was the same. In the eyes of a legendary champion, I saw an emotion I'd never witnessed there before.
Awe.
"Holy shit."
Dominic exhaled the words.
"What am I looking at."
Then he took a step back. Dominic Carter—the UFC Heavyweight champion—backed away from me.
…What?
What was he looking at that made him do that?
Dominic spoke to the cameraman in a low voice.
"Back up. Slowly."
The cameraman nodded and started retreating. Dominic didn't. Instead he slowly dropped into a lower stance.
A wrestling stance. The one I'd watched hundreds of times in the UFC.
I knew better than anyone what that stance meant. It meant a fight was about to start.
…Huh?
Dominic clenched his teeth and muttered,
"If it charges, I'll draw its attention. You run."
The cameraman shouted back,
"Are you insane?! We need to go. Now!"
Dominic didn't budge.
"I've fought in the Octagon my whole life."
His eyes changed. Those were the eyes of the champion I idolized.
"I'm not running from anything."
Protecting the cameraman was part of it, sure—but that wasn't all. A champion's pride. The will to never turn his back, no matter what stood in front of him.
Yeah. That was Dominic Carter. My favorite was still my favorite.
But what exactly was he looking at?
The moment I tilted my head—
"It's moving!!"
Dominic roared it.
—COOOMMMEEEE OOONNNN!!!!!!!
With a massive battle cry, Dominic charged. A champion's speed is a different animal in person. Explosive drive from a low stance. A wrestling double-leg—the same takedown that had put countless fighters on the mat in the UFC—coming straight at me.
Why me?
I swung my arm on pure instinct. No thought. Something was charging, so my body moved first.
WHUMP—!!
A heavy impact rang out right after. No—heavy was too soft a word. It was closer to an explosion.
What… what just happened…?
The next instant, Dominic's body was flying through the air. Three meters… five… no, farther than that. His frame traced a clean arc and slammed into a thick tree trunk.
CRACK…!!
Something ominous splintered. The tree split, and Dominic crumpled to the base of it in a heap.
What the hell is going on…?
I stared blankly down at my arm.
A thick forelimb blanketed in dark brown fur, the size of a human torso. Long, heavy claws. Each toe thicker than my old human wrist.
This wasn't an arm. This was a beast's front paw.
…Huh?
Why my body had felt so heavy. Why standing on four legs felt natural. Why I couldn't speak. Why I had no clothes. And why an eighty-six-kilogram former UFC champion had gone airborne hard enough to crack a tree.
…Every piece of the puzzle snapped into place.
I slowly turned my head toward a nearby puddle. My reflection stared back from the still water.
At first I thought something was standing behind the puddle. A massive animal looking down at me. But when I turned my head, it turned its head too.
Dark brown fur. Small, round dumpling ears. A huge snout. And an overwhelming bulk. The puddle couldn't even hold all of me. I was too big.
…
A bear. I was a bear. That much I understood.
But.
This isn't a bear. This is a compact car.
The bears I knew weren't this size. The Asiatic black bears at the zoo were basically oversized dogs. Whatever was staring back from the water was something else entirely. On its hind legs it would be about as tall as a streetlamp. One front paw was the size of a manhole cover.
…I'm a bear.
I was a bear. I had become a bear. The guy who'd been grinding overtime in front of a monitor yesterday was now a bear. And not just any bear—a ridiculously huge one.
Calling it a dream felt dishonest when Dominic's blood was still glistening on my claws.
Dominic. Dominic Carter. My favorite. The man I had just swatted into a tree.
I looked back at him where he lay. The cameraman was long gone, but Dominic—unfortunately—wasn't moving.
…Wasn't moving.
…Dominic?
No answer was coming. I was a bear. I couldn't speak. But that wasn't the real problem.
Why wasn't he moving? Was he still breathing?
I wanted to check on him. But if I walked over there now, that would be a one-ton bear approaching a downed human. From that point on it wouldn't be a wellness check—it would look like a hunt. I couldn't just stroll up. I couldn't even confirm whether he was alive.
…He's not dead, right?
An eighty-six-kilogram man had flown through the air and shattered a tree. …He might be dead. I might have just killed my favorite.
I didn't get his autograph and gift him a funeral instead, did I?
A joke that wasn't funny at all drifted through my head.
…I'm sorry, Dominic.
My chest hurt. This was the feeling of a hardcore fan personally sending his idol to the hospital. Was this right? Could there be a worse first meeting?
UFC champion versus one-ton monster bear. The outcome of that matchup had already been decided.
I win.
The feeling was strange. How do you describe one-shotting the number one fighter of your entire life…
—It was the worst.