Dallas Texas: 12:30 AM
Location: Rasputin Bar and Grill
Sato sat at a square wooden table drinking an imported Ochakovo beer inside the bar where he had first been approached by Ares Metaxas and the self-proclaimed “Rebels of Society” that he led. The Old Rasputin was full of supporters, newly recruited prospects and full-time members who were dressed in dark red vests that signified their solid status within the movement. Ares sat across from Sato with a very relaxed posture and a beer in his hand. He was again dressed in a red leather jacket and had a dirty white t-shirt underneath it. The two had been there for about an hour and as always Ares had been ranting about politics and the critical issues facing Americans.
Ares: The American people are tired of getting fucked over Takuma. That’s why all these people are here! These are the down trotted, the weary, the sick. They're all here, including their frustrated loved ones who want to fight for them and for the future of their kin.
Ares was very animated and pointed at all the people packed into the bar. He was smoking a cigarette and looked pretty tired as always. The dark circles around his eyes suggested he hadn’t been sleeping much and by the looks of things, most of his time was being spent recruiting new members to his cause. Takuma couldn’t shake the feeling that Ares was building an army to take on corrupt politicians and the wealthy elite, which begged the question… just how far was he willing to take this fight.
Sato: I get it…
Ares: Do you? A $4.7 trillion budget for the year and they can’t even provide the populace with decent dignified affordable healthcare? 21.97 trillion dollars in debt and half of it blown away on the military-industrial complex blowing up innocent people around the world with drone strikes to kill some Radical Islamic terrorists birthed by our own governments very foreign policy. Regime change war, after regime change war, with nothing to show for it but physically and emotionally wounded veterans. Men and Women who swore to protect us and are now suffering due to the government's inability to properly care for them!
Sato: It’s been like this for years. Republican or Democrat all we get is the same NEO-CON Globalist bull shit. None of them want to make a real impact on fixing things. It just keeps getting worse every four to eight years. Especially now with President McStrump…
Ares: Don’t get me started on that Orange toupee wearing fat mother fucker!
Sato: Hahaha oh man I love it when you get fired up like that!
Ares: The truth is both parties sold their souls to the Devil years ago and have been controlled by lobbyists representing the ultra-wealthy and big industry for decades. I mean God Damn kid, it takes a lot of balls to vote that a corporation has the same rights as a human being.
Sato shook his head in disillusionment as he lifted his bottle of beer to his lips and took a long hard drink of the cold alcoholic beverage to drown his sorrows. He didn’t usually drink, as he was technically still a year underage, but no one had carded him and Ares didn’t seem to care at all.
Sato: Not to mention that they bailed out the banks and Wall Street with our taxpayer money. Those fucking assholes got a get out of jail free card and we got the raw end of the stick. On top of that now they’re jamming the sharp end of that stick up are assholes with these damn tax cuts for big business. We’re the ones that will end up paying the deficits that they're creating while the shareholders reap the benefits of record profits!
Ares: Most people haven’t even recovered from the economic crisis of 2008. Most of them couldn’t handle a serious financial emergency without going further into serious debt or filing bankruptcy. With McStrump’s unpaid tax cuts and him putting pressure on the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates low, these corporate cosmetically enhanced ass holes are going to continue rolling in the dough while the rest of us work three different fucking jobs just to pay our mortgage!
Sato: It fucking pisses me off!
Ares: Then join us! Do something about it! Everyone here with a God damn red vest on is trying to make a difference by taking action!
Sato: Hey! I didn’t see you handing out food at the soup kitchen earlier this week with the rest of us. All I see is a bunch of angry millennials and Gen - Xers drinking beer and complaining about how shitty life is.
Ares: Come on man! Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that you’re all helping those displaced people and visiting the sick and dying in the hospital, but don’t tell me this isn’t just some PR stunt from Mudcock to try and turn public opinion toward him. The man has been absolutely destroyed on all the real News channels for sending you idiots to North Korea in the first place. He’s being sued by dozens of family members who lost loved ones during your imprisonment. Hell, he’s even being investigated by the FBI along with President McStrump for multiple violations!
Sato: Whatever the reason behind it… It’s making a positive difference in people’s lives. Mudcock is an asshole, but right now he’s making the best of a bad situation. McStrump on the other hand needs to be voted out. He’s destroying this county and tearing it apart.
Ares: We have it on good authority that the man is losing it. Fits of rage, prolonged crying sessions over his dead son Ronald Jr. and even praying to some made-up God called the Blob? Can you believe it? Plus his approval rating has dropped to 12%. There isn’t much he can do when people are suffering from radiation poisoning throughout Western America.
Takuma choked on his beer when Ares mentioned the Blob. He wiped the dribble from his face and then pondered if he should tell Ares about the Blob and Dr. Summeroff. Not wanting to be thought a fool he avoided the issue and changed the subject.
Sato: Even if he gets voted out don’t see things changing all that much. This Ernie Flanders guy seems like he could be the real deal though. Like he could make some real positive changes. What do you think?
Ares: We all support Ernie, but without more progressives in Congress and in the Senate, most of his ideas won’t work. We have to cut wasteful spending if we want Medicare for all, otherwise, it will only accelerate this doomed financial path were on.
Sato: Yeah I get what you’re saying, but anyone is better than McStrump. This asinine southern border wall he built? Allowing Los Angeles and Seattle to be nuked off of the map by the North Koreans? Tax cuts for big business and the rich when people are losing their homes and can’t feed their kids?
Ares: All because of dimwits like this Huckleberry! These southern dumb fucks who can’t even read let alone make an educated vote. Now we’ve got Neo Nazi’s marching in the streets, hate crimes on the rise, all because Huckleberry’s inbred first cousin can’t mine fucking coal for a living anymore and is too stupid to even find the power button on a fucking computer let alone transition into a new job!
Sato: Ha!
Ares: What? What? Am I wrong?
Sato: No… you’re not wrong… you’re just an asshole.
Ares: Well maybe we need more assholes willing to stand up and send a message to these ignorant fuck wads. These people need an awakening and sometimes the only way to wake someone up is by knocking some fucking sense into them with your bare fists.
Sato: What are you saying?
Ares: I’m saying after you’re through kicking his sorry hillbilly ass all over that ring this Friday; that you and I need to make an example of him! That we knock some damn sense into his inbred ass and put the fear, God, into him and his kind.
Sato: I don’t know man… that’s not really my thing. Plus the guy helped us escape from the North Koreans. He’s really not all that bad. Sure he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I’m a pretty good judge of character and he seems like a decent dude.
Ares: Fuck that! Look me in the eyes and tell me that little shit didn’t vote for McStrump!
Sato looked away from Ares and took another swing of his beer. He knew what Ares was saying was true, but the thought of punishing someone for voting a certain way seemed wrong to him.
Ares: Exactly! Look, man, you want to be part of our group? Part of the Rebels of Society? You need to do this. It’s part of your initiation into the R.O.S. Also, I saw what you were going to do that Stan Filbert prick before the cops showed up last week. Don’t tell this isn’t your M.O.
Sato: Fine… what’s the other part?
Ares: Ayahuasca.
Sato: Iowa… what?
Ares: Ayahuasca tea.
Sato: You want me to drink tea? I drink tea all the time…
Ares: It’s a hallucinogenic. DMT. Every one of us with a red vest on has taken it. Think of it as enlightenment. An awakening…
Sato: The way of the intercepting fist is all the enlightenment I need my friend. I don’t do drugs...
Ares slammed his fist on the table and stared at Sato with extreme intensity. He clearly was not joking around about Sato ingesting the strange South American drug.
Ares: Make all the jokes you want, but we’ve all discovered things about ourselves and about this universe with the use of this medicine. A man with as disciplined mediation routine as yourself I’m sure can appreciate the type of experience that I’m talking about.
Sato: Yes… I’ve had out of body experience and I’ve elevated my consciousness to a higher plane of existence.
Ares: And you’re going to sit there and criticize us for using this tea? I’m telling you, it’s changed our lives, our perception of this world, even our understanding of reality itself. Some have had real spiritual breakthroughs while others made a personal breakthrough with facing demons that have plagued them their entire lives.
Sato: Fine… I’ll do it.
Ares: Well then, you’ll be earning that red vest sooner than I thought… Come on, get up, and follow me. We do this now while you still have the nerve to do it.
Takuma finished his beer and the two stood up and headed toward the basement door. Ares unlocked the door and the two of them made their way down the dimly lit stairwell. Once in the basement, Sato bore witness to many new recruits enduring extreme psychedelic trips and an old man with long white hair tending to a large witches kettle being heated on an electric burner. Laughter moans and crying echoed throughout the basement room as the new recruits worked through the experience they were undertaking. As they approached the tea brewer Ares introduced him to Takuma.
Ares: This is Uri. He is the one that brews the tea and makes sure that it’s at the proper strength needed. He prepares the plant and boils it in this pot just as the South American Shaman who trained him to do. If you go down a dark path, Uri will be your guide back to this plane of consciousness. He’s a good man, trust him.
Sato: Sounds like you’re expecting that I’ll run into trouble?
Ares: I expect that you have some darkness in you. From what you’ve told me about your father and what you experienced in North Korea, you need to use this as an opportunity to work through those inner demons. If you can do that you will walk out of the other side of it a better man, more equipped to face the challenges that stand in your way.
Sato nodded and Uri spooned a hot spoon full of the Ayahuasca tea in a cup for him and then handed it to the martial artist. Sato found and a free sleeping bag on the basement floor and sat down in it. He then began to ingest the psychedelic tea. Once he had finished the awful tasting dark brew, Sato laid down flat on the floor in the sleeping bag and began to prepare himself mentally.
Ares: Good luck buddy…heh… enjoy the trip.
Ares went back upstairs and the drug soon began to take effect on young Sato. Ten minutes later Takuma was vomiting into a steel bucket that had been placed at the base of his sleeping bag by Uri. It was clear that Sato seemed worried that his body had reacted the way that it had. At this point however, it was too late for him to reconsider his actions.
30 minutes later:
Location: The Inner Mind of Takuma Sato
A deep sense of fear had taken hold of me as if it had crept up my spine and into my brain. The old man Uri assured me that everything was fine and was adamant that I needed to breathe in deep. Suddenly it was if my mind had been wiped clean. I forgot where I was, why I was, who I was, even when I was. It was as if someone had hit the reset button on my existence. Unexpectedly the fear slipped away and a sense of euphoria enveloped me and the cold dark basement became warm and colorful. I felt connected to everyone and everything around me and then my perception of reality dissolved. I was thrust into a world geometric shapes, numbers, and strange entities that no human language could possibly describe.
As I laid back down on the sleeping bag I felt my consciousness leave my body, a feeling I was familiar with from my meditation studies. However, my meditation studies and ventures into the astral plane could not have prepared me for what would come next. A portal opened in the floor around me and my astral form was sucked through it into what I could only describe as the limbo or purgatory. The realm that exists between dimensions.
I floated along what seemed like space and time itself until I found myself inside my six-year-old body. Without warning or any reason, I was once again reliving my past standing in front of a wooden post in our backyard in my old Karategi with my yellow belt strapped around my waist. I had broken an ancestral antique vase in my mother’s dining room on accident while playing with my G.I. Joes. What followed bordered on child abuse as my father forced me to repeatedly punch the wooden post with my bare fist until I ether broken my hand or broken through the post. I looked down at my right hand covered in blood and the skin over my knuckles shredded from repeated strikes.
The sound of my father’s angry voice snapped me out of my stupor, but when I turned around something was wrong. My father’s face was bloated and his eyes as bloodshot as when I found him hanging by the noose he tied to the chandelier in our dining room. Horrified and distraught I backed against the wooden post and stared at his ghoulish face.
Akio Sato: What is a matter with you Takuma! You look upon me as a monster! I assure you I am no monster! The world is full of monsters my son, however, I am not one. I only want to impose on you the value of discipline and concentration.
Takuma: Liar! You are selfish and abusive! If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be in the mess that I’m in right now!
Akio looked as confused as he was angry as he backhanded his son across the face dropping him to the ground. Akio angrily stood over his young son with his hands on his hips in the blue-collar work clothes that he had yet to change out of.
Akio Sato: Get up. This time harness your chi… If you do not break that wooden post with your next 3 punches I’m taking off my belt. NOW I SAID GET UP!
The ground was spinning and I finally understood what hell was. I breathed in as deep as I could and struggled to my feet. Fresh blood trickled down from the corner of my mouth down onto the tip of my chin before plummeted to the dirt below me. I attempted to harness my chi into my fist, but the drug coursing through me made it almost impossible to concentrate. I struck the post as hard as I could, but I hardly made a dent into it despite the excruciating pain coursing up my arm.
Akio Sato: Your generation is soft! You want everything handed to you on a platter! No work ethic! You’d never of survived in my day Takuma. Japan was a grueling place to carve out a life!
My father’s words seared my ears as I held back every urge to retort his chastising comments. Instead, I once again cocked back my fist and unleashed another punch on the post. This time I felt the bones in my hand break just as they had all those years ago…
Akio Sato: Somewhere in Japan your grandfather and his father are rolling in their graves laughing at you my son. Have you learned nothing from our lessons? Is your mind so feeble that it cannot execute a simple task?
I watched my father as he unwrapped his belt from around his waist and prepared the belt for my rear end. It triggered something that I could only describe as insane primal anger inside of me. I cocked back my arm and harnessed every bit of chi that my little body had in it. I struck the post with all my might and it exploded into a shower of wooden splinters. A feeling of immense satisfaction flooded over me as I watched my father’s swollen bloodshot eyes open wide with disbelief. As I turned around it was as if every particle of myself dissolved into microscopic granules of sand and just like that I was in the superflow floating through limbo.
My particles reformed and once again I was whole, this time in the more recent past inside the cell that I had been held captive in during our time in North Korea. Horrific flashbacks flooded my mind of Dwight Couch’s death at my hands, and the beating I suffered from Kim Ji-Minn, improbable escape. Suddenly the sound of the cell door opening caught my attention and as I turned around there stood the she-devil herself. She had her hair down vulnerably and her uniform tied into a knot to reveal her much-toned mid-drift. A day earlier she had declared her ambition to birth a child of mine at the request of the emperor. I had denied her and this was her attempt to make me reconsider.
Takuma: What do you want Kim? Come to fulfill that S&M addiction of yours again? I know how you get off on dealing out pain to those who are defenseless
Kim: You know why I am here Mr. Sato. I am here for your seed. I will not leave without it!
For some men this would be the ideal fantasy, I would be in the minority finding this repulsing, but most wouldn’t know that Kim Ji-Min was a full-blown sociopath just by looking at her. In the time that I knew her, she’d inflicted more pain on myself and my roster mates than any one person could humanly conceive. I had a woman back home in America that I cared deeply for and I wasn’t going to allow the Emperor’s right-hand woman to use me as he wanted her too.
Takuma: If you want it, then take it like a warrior… take off these shackles.
JI-Minn starred at me with her cold dead eyes before pulling a key from her military shirts right-hand pocket. She then walked over to me and unlocked the cuffs around my wrists. She then walked away from me before turning around and bowing respectfully. For someone so cruel, she had exceptional manners and understood the warrior code. She had hinted earlier when we were first taken prisoner that she had trained and was familiar with the ancient ways. Everything that I read of her body language screamed that we came from a similar family of martial arts training. I returned the bow and took up my fighting stance knowing full well this would be extremely difficult.
Kim JI-Min moved first as the aggressor and tried to slide in close to hit Takuma with a sharp jab to the mid-section. Sato parried left and rotated like a spinning top to hit the North Korean in the back of the head with an elbow. The blow knocked Kim into the stone wall of the cold dank prison. She turns around quickly, clearly unhappy with Sato’s ability to avoid her attack so effortlessly. Kim Ji-Min bounced off the wall and went in for another attack on Sato, but was quickly intercepted and knocked unconscious by Takuma who hit her straight on the chin with a spinning wheel kick. Sato picked up JI-Minn and tossed her out of the cell before shutting the door himself.
I knew escape at that moment wasn’t an option. I was happy however that I had more than likely wounded Kim JI-Minn’s pride enough that the prospect of her wanting to mate with me was no longer a desire of hers. I was feeling good until she got up off the floor and looked at me with goulash pale dead face like something out of a vampire flick.
Kim Ji-Min: You think I am a sociopath? What do you think you are? MURDERER!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
Kim JI-Min Zombie corpse got up and pressed her burnt face up against the steel bars of his cell door. Her hair smoldering as if she’d just recently been blown up by a C4 explosive from her fight with Huckleberry that ultimately led to her untimely death. I felt my physical form soil itself, but at the time all of my focus was on the undead psychopath trying to rip the steel bars from my cell to devour me.
Kim Ji-Minn: You are no better than me!!!! Evil is in all of us!!!
Another portal in the prison wall opened and once again I was vacuumed into a vortex of hell and sent hurtling through the superflow of the limbo highway pipeline. I spent what felt like an eternity soaring through the void until finally another portal opened up. The next thing I knew I found myself planted face first on a sandy beach that I’d never been too and could not recognize. As I dusted the sand off of my face and hair and looked out at the water and saw what looked like my mother standing at the shore waist-deep in the ocean water wearing a white dress. I couldn’t see her face because she turned the other way, but something instinctual told me that it was her. I walked closer to the shoreline and stepped into the ice-cold water. Once I was sure she would be able to hear me I called out to her…
Takuma: Mother… is that you…
Mieko Sato: Yes Takumi… It’s me…
Takuma drew closer to his mother as he waded into the cold crisp calm ocean water. Tears began to roll down his cheeks as he moved toward her.
Takuma: Mother why did you leave me? Where have you gone?
Meiko: I left because you have shamed me! Shamed your father’s family name! Shamed the Sato and Shiroshi clans for all eternity! Imprisoned for drugs! Sleeping with a literal whore you found on the streets! Murder! You disgust me, child!
Takuma: Mother you don’t understand!
Meiko: I understand perfectly! I have failed as a mother! Failed to raise a son who understands morals and responsibility!
Takuma was finally behind his mother and attempted to hug her and ease her pain, but Meiko’s body disappeared and Takuma ended up falling into the ocean. As he popped his head up out of the water the shoreline was gone and the ocean became dark and churned angrily. Soon Sato was swept under and was drowning slowly as attempted to swim toward the surface. Just as if all hope seemed lost the drug finally ran it course. Sato's perception of reality returned and he found himself laying on the floor drenched in sweat look as if he’d just showered and forgotten his towel. As he sat up his erratic breather calmed and normalized.
Uri: It would seem you saw many things… traveled to many places…
Takuma: Yes… It would seem I’ve been punishing myself for a very long time. I’ve let other people’s expectations and their moral codes cause me great guilt, anxiety, and sorrow. I’ve allowed societal norms to control me and dictate what’s right and wrong instead of living by my own code.
Uri: Then you learned a most important lesson from Mother Aya it would seem. Congratulations Takuma Sato. Welcome to the Rebels of Society…
To be continued…