I arrived downtown hours before the rally was set to start. I stashed my gear in the park. By stuffing it in a plastic trash bag, I could hide it in a city garbage can below the plastic sack used to line the receptacle. I concealed my hockey stick in a nearby hedge. I then staked out at an internet bistro and opened the secure chat app on my burner phone.

My guys began checking in. We exchanged updates and modified our head count as more came online. In between monitoring our commo, I reviewed the footage of the last riot hereabouts.

Watching footage from various angles, uploaded by a variety of spectators, I pondered what might happen today. What would the enemy and the police do differently, this time? What would they do the same? Did my plans and contingencies need tweaking?

In the recommended videos column underneath the viewing window, I noticed a few references to “Hockey Man.” How had I become a celebrity so quickly? Unable to contain my curiosity, I clicked on a video titled: Is This Hockey Man Without His Gear?

It was.

The footage was taken during my initiation into the Cold Civil War. I brawled in plainclothes, with my face exposed.

I had gone to lunch downtown that day, mostly because I wanted to find a decent audiobook at the main library. There was a crowd in the park, carrying pro-life signs and listening to well-dressed people with microphones remind them they should speak in love, turn the other cheek, and listen respectfully to opposing arguments.

I hadn’t made it all the way past the park when the counterprotestors arrived—about six dozen of them, wielding clubs, cattle prods, and pepper spray, their faces covered by ski masks or bandannas. They swarmed the park and began to present their thoughtful arguments with the tolerance and civility they were infamous for.

The mostly middle-aged and middle class picketers who didn’t back away immediately from the Woke Warrior mob got Maced and bashed in the face. The attackers, screaming “racist” this and “misogynist” that, swiped purses, cameras, cell phones and picket signs.

An elderly pro-life demonstrator, wearing one of those black baseball caps with gold lettering identifying him as a Korean War veteran, refused to surrender his sign, which displayed a sonogram image of a baby in the womb. Some skinny masked Blackshirt tried to wrestle the sign away, but the old codger wouldn’t let go.

Another Masked Marxist came up behind the old guy and cold-cocked him with a roundhouse to the side of the face. Grandpa’s glasses broke and flew off his head while he staggered sideways from the force of the unexpected blow. But he still wouldn’t relinquish his grip on the sign. He got punched again. The hat was yanked off his head. Still contending for the sign with one hand, the old veteran placed his free hand against the bushwhacker’s face and shoved, catching the black bandana in his bony old fingers and tearing the mask off as the Blackshirt backpedaled.

The first attacker clutched the sign with both hands, but still couldn’t expropriate it, so the attackers began kicking the old man. Fellow travelers arrived, surrounding the spry old veteran, spitting on him, and producing weapons. That’s when I reached the scene.

Some pro-lifer desperately appealed to his brethren to turn the other cheek, over the P.A. system. I drove a left hook into the stomach of the first attacker, who doubled over with a gasping, wheezing noise.

Another one came at me. I grabbed him by the hair and yanked him into me, planting my knee into his midsection, causing another explosion of lost breath.

Somebody groped at me from behind, but my blind spot wasn’t as blind as they probably hoped. (Benefits of playing hockey include well-developed peripheral vision and maximized situational awareness when your adrenaline is pumping.) That one got an elbow to the nose. Blood spurted and shrieking commenced.

Two of the Blackshirts managed to take the old man to the ground. I kicked the one I could reach. Somebody swung a club at me. I blocked it with my forearm and landed a straight right to the jaw. The attacker swayed like a drunkard on a moving bus, suddenly losing interest in further attacks.

“...We must turn the other cheek...” the voice over the loudspeakers pleaded.

Another weapon swung toward my head. It appeared to be a masked woman swinging it. I bobbed under the blow and tapped her with a short left jab. Down she went.

Gender is just a social construct, after all.

Though I would pay for it later in bruises and pain where I blocked the baton strikes, it was kind of fun stacking those commies up around me—even more gratifying than a video game. There‘s nothing quite like the give of flesh against your knuckles when you make solid contact with an entitled woketard’s face.

The paragon of pacifism prattled on over the public address system. “Blah blah blah violence resolves nothing blah blah blah turn the other cheek blah blah blah…!”

Problem was, the Blackshirts wouldn’t turn their cheeks for me, so I might have banged some of them in the same spot more than once.

The P.A. system fell silent when the guy with the microphone got mobbed by three attackers with riot batons. Sadly, he had only two cheeks to give for his philosophy.

A masked Blackshirt assailed me with a cattle prod, holding it out in front of himself with his lead hand. He might as well have said, “Here you go—please disarm me.” I used a roundhouse kick to do that, following up with a side kick that caught his chin, dropping him.

I wasn’t expecting the attacks to fall off so suddenly. Did the Blackshirts give up, or had they decided I was too much trouble, and moved on to find easier victims? With my guard still high, I shuffled toward the nearest Blackshirts...but they melted back and spread away. I was almost disappointed by their retreat.

Then I realized what was happening.

They were clearing a path between me and a tall, dark, bare-chested dude with dreadlocks, in baggy black pants and Chinese-looking shoes with no laces. He did a kind of a bouncing dance on the balls of his feet. His gaze was locked on me, but his body was turned at an oblique angle. From his stance and the way he moved, I guessed that this was somebody with training. Maybe experience, too.

I advanced.

He whipped out a high snap kick with blinding speed. But kicks are hard not to telegraph. I shuffled back, evading the kick, but felt a little foolish when my intended counterstrike caught nothing but air.

He followed up with a side kick that caught my elbow.

I kept my distance for a moment to get a feel for his style—and to let him burn up some energy. He shifted into forward gear.

Step into my parlor.

I’d been hoping for this, and lunged inside his guard, hooking off the jab. The jab caught him clean on his mouth, though he dodged the hook. Showing good discipline, he slipped right and left. I shifted focus to his body, banging him in the ribs with both hands. If I could catch him solid in the stomach, it would take a lot of wind out of his sails.