There Can Only Be One Foam Sword Fighter

Gasser stands up straight. His eyes widen. "Ben's got a new shot." Next time I try it, he forcefully knocks my sword out of my hands.

"You can do that once," Gasser says matter-of-factly.

As though to punish me, he begins to increase his pace, driving me across the parking lot. For my one wound, he spanks me a hundred times over. But it's worth it: I learn that Gasser keeps a mental dossier of his opponents' strengths. It reminds me of a moment in The 13th Warrior when Banderas' character is told that a true warrior must "calculate what he can't see."

Finding secret moves will be my strategy to beat him.

As I plan my attack, Gasser and Hill spend several late April nights in the kitchen of her Olathe home, trying to forge new weapons. In a bid for a foam-sword commercial empire, they want an armory to sell at the Wichita Renaissance Festival on April 26. But things aren't going well.

Hill uses her interior-design skills to craft ornately detailed prototypes from wood and household decorations, including bamboo blinds and curtain tacks. Gasser, the chef, moves to the kitchen, churning a series of toxic chemicals barehanded to create rubbery molds. Into the molds, he pours chemicals that dry into foam. Gasser whispers excitedly over and over: "This is the stuff of legends."

Alas, numerous mistakes force delays and run them over budget. Some of the new swords are the wrong density, too limp to be fun or too hard to be safe. Others dry in the molds and can hardly be removed, like foam Excaliburs.

At the Wichita festival, Gasser downplays his sword-making defeat. He stands in a grassy valley filled with carnival-style tents and villagers speaking in bad Old English accents. The Barbarian is in full battle regalia: a bearskin cloak and a helmet made from animal hide. His leather armor weighs more than 35 pounds. Three sets of cow horns jut menacingly upward from his shoulders. Two coyote pelts grace his pecs. Hill stands beside him, clad in a caribou cape, a short leather skirt and a corset. They've brought more than 100 swords that hang from racks near a booth with a cash box and a foldout table.

Gasser insists that I wear festival garb to unleash my primal persona. He gives me some hand-me-downs: black parachute pants, a leather tunic and a coyote pelt across my shoulders. I have even shaved my head bald, like Gasser, to look more ferocious. But my fierce get-up does little to stop an old man in a kilt who keeps petting my fur and cooing that my outfit is beautiful.

At 3 p.m., Gasser shouts a rallying call. About 80 combatants emerge from across the fairgrounds to duel in a roped-off battleground about the size of a baseball infield. We'll compete in a bracket-style elimination contest. Gasser will be the judge. One hit, and you're out.

A crowd of roughly 300 spectators sprawls on hay bales, chanting, "Blood makes the grass grow! Kill! Kill! Kill!" Others shout, "Murder! Maim! Mutilate!" We split into two opposing lines on either end of the arena. I line up beside a guy in his mid-30s who's smoking a cigarette. His hands are gnarled from fighting with wooden swords. He looks across the field toward his first competitor. "I can't wait to tap that ass," he shouts.

I'm embarrassingly jacked on adrenaline. It surprises the hell out of me how thrilling it is to fight in public against unknown legions. For weeks now, I have mocked the idea of wearing a warrior outfit on a day that's not Halloween. Now, with the great sword and the warrior garb, I'm confident.

My first match is against a role-playing high-schooler from Warrensburg. He's wearing a leather tunic. I win in seconds by bludgeoning him with a series of overhead shots that Gasser taught me.

My next foe is a guy in his late 30s. He wears a pirate bandanna and a Marvin the Martian shirt that reads "This is civilization?"

Feeling cocky, I point to a pile of weapons laid out on the ground. "I'll tell you what. I'll even let you use two swords."

He looks feeble, but I have completely misjudged him. He takes me by surprise with a block-and-counter combination. The hit glances off my elbow. Two rounds in, I'm out.

Later, I find out that my nerdy-looking foe has studied martial arts at a dojo in Oklahoma City for 20 years.

But I have some training that I've kept secret from Gasser. A week ago, I took an aiki ninjutsu lesson from two seventh-degree black belts, Steven Crawford and Thomas Jotoshi Maienza, at Crawford’s Mixed Martial Arts dojo on Metcalf in Overland Park. They've taught me three katas, or Japanese fighting moves. They're called the nimitsu, the santobi and the juji — and they should give me an edge against Gasser. I've been sandbagging all day so that he doesn't see my new attacks.

After the main battle, I catch Gasser near his equipment tent.

"No one has wanted to fight you today, so I'm issuing you a formal challenge," I say.