Bust 2.2
I couldn't sleep that night. I didn't know if it was the fact that I had slept through most of the day earlier or just the anxiety making me want to puke my stomach out, but sleep wasn't very forthcoming and what little I did get wasn't restful.
Come morning I simply went through the motions: turn off my alarm, get dressed, brush my teeth and sit at the table for family breakfast. I didn't feel like going to school that day but I couldn't just tell that to my family and expect them to comply, so I kept silent.
My parents weren't fools though, and they did comment on the fact that I hadn't touched my toast. I managed to fend off some of their questions and they probably thought that I'd caught something, but I couldn't force myself to eat right now. Nor did I want to, my appetite was all but gone.
I scampered off before they could continue their questioning, not even waiting for Marie. Although we went to the same school we had a kind of implicit arrangement to avoid walking together, so I usually left earlier while she used that little extra time to take a shower.
I think I would've liked having her chatter around to fill the OR silence.
School wasn't much better; the lack of anything even remotely mentally engaging left me with a lot of time to think and every line of thought led me back to my current predicament. It was unbearable being able to feel the anxiety and hopelessness of my situation but not being able to do anything about it.
It went on like that until Tuesday afternoon. I went kept going through the motions, I answered if someone spoke to me and engaged in whatever activity I was supposed to be doing, but my mind was OR elsewhere. I didn't see Cass or my basketball friends during those days, or if I did I don't remember it. I was slowly going stir crazy, waiting for the other shoe to drop; it felt like a free fall, not knowing when I would hit the ground.
"...James!"
"Hmm… What?" I said, my thoughts elsewhere.
"Are you even paying attention to me?"
I was talking to Lisa as I walked home. I couldn't remember exactly why she was walking with me, but it may had been something about no one being able to pick her up and needing to take a bus?
"Sorry, I was distracted." I tried to force a somewhat sheepish grin.
"What an airhead," she sighs, "I was telling you about the new burglar I saw in the news the other day. Dad seemed pretty worried about it, him working in a bank and all, but anyways would you like to come to my house on Saturday?" She asked, suddenly changing the topic.
"Wait, what? Why?" I answered, before realizing my mistake, "I mean! Yes! But you know.. why so sudden?"
She chuckled at me. "My parents are having a barbecue for their wedding anniversary and they're going to invite a lot of people from their work and their friends, and they're let my brother and me invite one friend each. I though that you would be the most fun choice."
"Only one?"
"Yeaaaah, there was kind of a big incident a few months back: I can't invite any of my other friends home right now, or at least not with a straight face." She explained.
"Ok, count me in then."
"Great! Call you later with the deets? Yes! Bye!" She said very quickly before crossing the street and going the other way. I think I should ask Marie about this, just to be safe.
It couldn't be that bad co-
I felt a vibration in my pocket.
It was my phone.
I stood almost entirely paralyzed for a few moments, before sense came back to me and I answered.
"..." I couldn't force myself to say anything.
"Hello James. How are you feeling? Healing up fine?" It was the woman, Meredith, false concern in her tone. I had almost wished to hear Oliver, the lesser of the two evils, but I didn't seem to get what I wished for lately.
"...Yes."
"That's good," She said, "We are meeting, you and me, today. Go back home and leave your school bag, you won't need anything from it, tell your parents that you are going to a friend's house and get back to the street, a car will be waiting for you. Don't be late." She hung up.
I ran the rest of the way back home.
Mom was the only one home and she was watching a cooking show on the couch, so she didn't pay me much attention as I left my stuff in my bedroom and went back out. I told her I was going to a friend's house and she didn't question it.
When I got back down a black car was parked right in front of the door, the window rolled down and allowing me to see Oliver waving at me from the driver's seat. I opened the door and got inside next to him.
"So how have you been these last two days?" He asked to try and break the ice.
"Horrible." I answered, looking out of the window.
" Hmm, yeah I suppose."
"Do you know what will happen today?" I asked him. I was still nervous around him, but I couldn't keep acting scared; I didn't think I would last long if I did. Or maybe I was just getting used to the gut wrenching anxiety.
"Not much, a little physical training I think, see how you are in a fight, maybe tell you about the other gangs and so. Meredith likes to multi-task so who knows?" He told me nonchalantly. "There won't be many of these things though, as far as she tells me it will probably be this one for training, then it will be up to you to go to the gym. Afterwards it will be two more for coaching and teaching you how to drive."
"How to drive?" I asked him. It didn't occur to me that that might be an important skill.
"Yes, of course. You wouldn't think an enforcer will always get his own driver did you?" He answered in a chuckle.
"No, I suppose not." I said, it wasn't that bad, I had been wanting to learn how to drive anyway.
"Good," His tone got a little more serious and less upbeat. "We are about to arrive. There's two masks in the glove compartment. One's for you and hand me the other one."
I opened the compartment as instructed, inside there was a gun I was very careful not to touch and two masks. The masks were featureless plastic ones, with cloth straps and buckles at their sides to securely tie them to our heads.
I put one on and, as we slow to a stop, handed Oliver the other. As he put on his mask I noticed that we stopped in front of an old gym. The building was run-down, unpainted bricks littering the front of it and above the double glass door there was a metal cut out depicting a strong man lifting an excessive amount of weights. The paint was washed out but the sign still read 'Atlas GYM'.
We got out of the car and stepped inside. The interior of the building wasn't amazing; a boxing ring stood in the middle of the room with several old machines and training implements littered around it far away enough from each other as to prevent accidents. Other than that I noticed that the gym was very spacious with a high ceiling and catwalks making a sort of gallery, or at least it would have been spacious if it weren't for the fact that there were 151 other people crowding it.
"Follow me and look confident." The man whispered in my ear as he walked past me.
Maneuvering through the crowd, Oliver led me to a wooden door with a small glass window that had the word 'Management' written upon it in the back of the gym. He opened the door and I followed him in.
Inside the little office there were three people. One was a small old man with graying hair and a bit of a hunch sitting behind a desk, and another was a voluptuous blond in a revealing dress next to him, but I all but disregarded them as my eyes focused on the third one.
Meredith was standing in front of the desk, still wearing business clothes and her hair in a bun. A small grin formed on her face as she saw us, and I hated it. Actually I hated her, I belatedly realized. I hadn't hated anyone before in my life, but just the sight of her filled me with a feeling of futility and anger that I couldn't put into words. I didn't know if it was the feeling of Oliver standing behind me, the lack of a gun in her hands or the last two days without good sleep, but the fear and nervousness were just a little ball in the pit of my stomach now.
Then the old man spoke. "He doesn't look like much."
"I assure you Lucio, we wouldn't have brought him here if we didn't have faith in his abilities." Meredith reassured him, "He is our new co-worker after all." She said it while smiling at me, to anyone else it might have looking like a friendly smile. It seemed mocking to me.
"Hey there Oliver," The woman greeted him, "What do you think about him? The crowd today is quite energetic after all."
"Don't worry about him, I have seen him fight before and he is a machine." Oliver's answer gave me a little more perspective into what was going on, and I hoped I was wrong because my bruises hadn't finished healing yet.
"Go and prepare the crowd Lucio, we will give him a pep talk in the meanwhile." Meredith told the old man.
"He better last at least five matches Meredith." Were Lucio's parting words as he and the blond woman exited the office.
There was a silence between the three of us afterwards. Meredith was the one to break it. "You are probably wondering what's going to happen, right James?"
I nodded.
"In case you haven't figured it out yet, good old Lucio works with us: he lends us his gym a few times a month to use for pit fighting and gambling. Tonight we called him to let him know there would be a special event and to prepare the gym just for you," She said, slowly walking closer to me. "The rules today are very different to the usual: first we are organizing this a little bit earlier than usual; second to make up for that weapons will be allowed, no guns of course; and third because whoever defeats the champion will take six grand back home. The champion being you." She was now right in front of me.
"I'm not dressed for fighting," I said. I was wearing a pair of baggy jeans and a black long sleeved t-shirt, something that wouldn't give me much mobility. There was also the fact that my bruises hadn't healed yet, but she wouldn't care about that.
"I don't care," She told me, echoing my thoughts. "Your objective isn't to beat every fighter there. What I expect you to do is to make it so that no one else wants to risk getting into that ring with you. I want you to appear so strong that none of them will even think that they have a shot at defeating you. So stand straight, look confident and act dangerous. Those people out here? They're sharks. They will smell your fear if you show even th slightest hint of it."
"And I'm supposed to scare them," I said, the fear was back now. Intellectually I knew it was irrational, I could probably beat any of those men in a one on one fight any day of the week. But could I do it 10 times in a row? 20? 50?
"Yes," She said. "But don't worry. I'm not about to send you naked to the wolves, they all have weapons after all so it's only fair that you get one too. Here," She handed me a pocket knife, blade folded in. The blade was 10.23445 centimeters long and 2.544546 centimeters wide at the base. "If I were you I would stab everyone that comes up until they get too scared, but I know you don't have what it takes. Still, here's for hoping."
She looked towards Oliver. "I'm going outside to see how bets are coming. Wait 'till they say his name." Then she left, leaving me alone with the man.
I looked the blade in my hand and then at Oliver. "Any tips?"
He just shrugged. "It's not as bad as she makes it sound, I've seen you fight and I've seen these guys fight. You got this."
"How many people will I fight?"
He shrugged again. "Dunno, we mostly let fights run until it's too late or people begin to leave. But we are starting kind of early today so you should probably scare them into not fighting."
"How?" I ask desperately. "I'm sixteen years old and I have only fought seriously three times in my entire life. Behind that door there are people with probably a hundred times more experience than me." I was starting to pace around from nervousness.
Oliver grabbed me by the shoulders and used his weight to keep me in place. "Calm down. That doesn't matter, okay? None of them know that. I used to fight in places like this before and all you need to know is that your opponent can't read your mind. They only know that you, the supposed champion, are standing between them and the prize. They won't see a nervous sixteen year old unless you show them that. They-"
The rumbling of cheers and applause coming from the gym interrupted him.
"Shit, no more time we have to go out. Act confident." He said, exiting through the door.
I supposed that was my cue so I followed him.
It was like the whole gym had changed while I was inside the office; stage lights I hadn't seen before in the ceiling now illuminated the whole gymnasium, which was now even more packed with people if than before, and a quick head count now netting me about 200 people in the gym and even more entering it.
The people cheering and shouting parted ways before Oliver, opening a small path to the ring. I immediately remember what Oliver just told me and fix my posture, straightening my back and lifting my chin high to simulate confidence.
I needed to think and I had too little time. I was nervous, scared and a lot less confident than I appeared. I could practically see my thoughts begin to circle each other, so I took a moment and stopped thinking. I needed to solve this problem, like anything else in life it was just a problem. Life was just math, just logic, so this could be approached like a logic problem.
I silenced the voice in my head that told me that my desperation was making me delirious.
4 meters to the ring.
Asses the problem.
I didn't think that Meredith had called me here just to watch me beat people in a fight or to make people beat me. She was supposed to train me, I think, so what had she told me to do?
Scare everyone into not fighting me. Take everything else out and that was her main message.
3 meters to the ring.
What tools can I use to solve the problem?
I needed anything and everything that might help me look scary. The knife was a good option but not one that I wanted to use. I needed them to perceive me as someone they couldn't beat, showing the knife and not using it might give me some credibility in that area, make them think that I didn't believe that they would be good enough to warrant it's use. Not much sprung to my mind, a memory of Cass telling me something about how my moves were strange when I fought. Economics of movement she had called it, would these people register that even subconsciously?
2 meters.
I needed not only to play to my strengths, but to showcase them. The longer each match lasted the more credibility I would lose and the more time I would spend fighting. None of these people would hesitate to fight against someone like them, someone who felt pain and struggled to win just as much as they did. I needed to show that I was different, I needed to show them I was better.
1 meter.
They were loud, unrefined brutes. I needed to be the opposite. Silent, graceful, efficient. I had to use my mind to its fullest, control every movement and perform it to its fullest efficiency. I didn't need to be a martial arts master or be invincible, I only had to look the part.
I reached the ring and, using one of the posts as handhold, I jumped into it. In the ring the blonde woman was speaking, introducing the fighters and explaining the rules. On the opposite corner there was a broad shouldered tall man, 196.67228 cm, he was shirtless showing off his huge muscles. His arm alone was 3.67 times as thick as mine.
I was already calculating every point and angle where I could hit his head to generate enough rotational energy to knock him out in one hit. I had to do it fast, that was the primary factor to establish my strength. I gauged that thirty seconds would be the longest I could take without losing cred for the win, although this was a completely baseless assumption.
The woman finished speaking and retreated outside the ring. Meanwhile the man advanced slowly towards me, a tire iron in hand, now.
"I expected a big man to be my opponent not some little kid. Why don't you go home to mommy and let me have the prize." He said taunting me.
I didn't dignify him with a verbal response, instead I took out the pocket knife and unfolded it.
"What are you going to do with that toothpick kid?"
I threw it up a short distance to spin it and change my grip to the blade, before throwing it over my shoulder and impaling it into the post behind me without turning around. If he was smart he would appreciate the backhand throw, if he was smarter he would appreciate the fact that pocket knives are completely unbalanced and if I was lucky he would understand that I didn't need it to beat him.
He just snarled and swung the tire iron at me, closing the distance. I was prepared for it, my muscles springing into action, I moved forward and out of the range of his swing before it's even close to me. He seemed to notice this, but his swing was already carrying too much momentum for him to stop.
I took advantage of it, planting my foot on the ground and pivoting, transferring all my forward inertia to my other foot in a spinning kick to the back of my opponent's head. My heel collided in a tangential angle and the man stumbled towards the ground, not yet knocked out.
He tried to recover and turn around, but I was already there waiting for him and finished him off with a straight uppercut before his guard was even up. He fell unconscious to the ground and didn't get up.
"The win goes to the champion!" Shouted the blond woman, who I realize was acting as announcer and referee. "Who will be the next challenger?"
I looked though the crowd, some of them were showing signs of apprehension, but most still seemed eager to fight me. I had beaten the first with only two hits and only now realized my mistake: I had to do the same with every following fighter or else they would think I was getting tired.
I held a hand out stopping the announcer, another idea formed in my mind. She looked at me and I just showed her two fingers, not trusting my voice to hold up. Also silent guys were supposed to be scary right?
"Two challengers at the same time?"
I nodded.
"Well there you have it people, our champion thinks himself too good a fighter to be bested by even two of you! Who will want to step up and prove him wrong?!"
"What about the money? I'm not splitting it with some other idiot if we win!" Someone in the crowd shouted. A chorus of agreements follows.
The announcer looked at me again, not knowing what to do about that and probably thinking that I had any idea.
I again nodded. I had to win anyways so there was no problem in raising the stakes.
"Full reward for each one!" She tells them.
Two more contestants step up onto the ring. This they were closer to my height, being 10.34556 centimeters taller and 3.6575 centimeters shorter respectively. Tall had a chain wound up around his arm and Short had a collapsible baton.
The idea was that the more I raised the bar for myself the more amazing my wins would be. Of course if they didn't stop coming after I had beaten five people or six then I would start having real problems.
Short straight up ran at me, baton completely extended and cocked back for a full swing. I caught his swing by the foreman and with my other hand grabbing his trouser I spin and throw him over my shoulder and out of the ring.
Tall was more cautious, circling me as he spun the chain slowly lengthening with each rotation by uncoiling it from his arm. I circled him in turn, watching him spin the chain and waiting for the window of opportunity that I knew would open in a few seconds, having calculated the speed and trajectory.
It happened, just as the chain went a little too far, a little too long and collided with the ground robbing it from much of it's momentum, I sprung forward letting the slowed chain hit me in the ribs and across my back as I bit down a whimper of hurt. I grabbed the chain and moved behind him, twisting the arm that had the chain looped around it and forcing him into the ground and into a lock. I twisted a little more, before he cried surrender.
I kept the chain as he gets out of the ring and hold four fingers up.
The announcer shouted with emotion, encouraging the crowd. More of them were apprehensive now, I had defeated these two just as easily and skipped over a the three to go directly to fourth. Some seemed to think I was bluffing, as evidenced by the four that were now getting into the ring, but a lot more were intimidated by my combat prowess.
The real problem wasn't how many people got up here, but rather that at least one of them would know how to fight. I mean, I had my mathematical ability going for me, but I hadn't expected them to be so bad at fighting. Though I suppose a good fighter would be fighting in professional fights and not in some illegal ring run by the mafia.
I was divagating. Probably the adrenaline.
I didn't even care to notice the heights and weights of my opponents anymore, the effort necessary to remember them being bigger than simply calculating them again on the fly. Two of them had knives of different lengths, one had a hammer and the third had a pair of brass knuclkes. They all looked confident, smiling and grinning.
I extended my hand and gestured towards me with my palm, message very clear.
Come at me bro.
The four of them rushed at me together, not giving the advantage of taking them out one by one like Tall and Short had. Knives 1 and 2 were in the center with knuckles at the the left and and Hammer at the right.
I didn't wait for them instead rushing to the right towards Hammer. I noticed that all of them adjusted their positions as I moved, while Hammer tried to meet my charge with a swing of his eponymous weapon.
His attack fell short as I wasn't running towards him, but rather towards the ropes at the edge of the ring. I jumped out the ring at maximum speed feet first, and at the last second grabbed on to the rope and pulled myself back, spinning my body in a circular motion and planting both my feet on Hammer's face. Sending him to the ground with a broken nose, and probably a concussion.
I rolled after him, avoiding stabs from Knife 1 and Knife 2, to grab his hammer and ended up in front of Knuckles. Knuckles showed a little more fighting ability than my previous opponents and went in for a jab, he was too close so I ended up blocking with my left arm and countering with a cross-hammer to his jabbing elbow. I felt my arm straining under the hit, but I knew it would be barely enough for a fracture thanks to the angle and small length of the hit.
Knuckles, meanwhile, recoiled his arm in pain, giving me a little more distance which I used to kick him back, before turning to parry a stab from Knife 1 with a hit of my hammer to his hand, breaking a few fingers in the process and putting him out of the fight from the pain.
Knife 2 was just behind him and came at me with a downward stab in a reverse grip. I blocked it with the head of the hammer colliding vertically with his wrist and leaving him open to a forward kick in the middle of his chest. As he backed down I threw the hammer at him, just a little too fast and a little too unexpected to block, so it hit him in the face and broke his nose
I took stock of my opponents: Hammer had already gotten out the ring after I disarmed him, Knife 1 was in the ground cradling his broken fingers against his chest, Knuckle was standing against the ropes and holding his elbow and Knife 2 was just in front of me grabbing his nose.
Knife 2 and Knuckles could still fight, I had thrown away my weapon and received damage of my own, my arm wasn't broken but I probably wouldn't be able to use it for much else today, there was only so much I could do without breaking the laws of physics.
Yet, both looked at each other and shook their heads, not wanting to risk it. They both got out of the ring.
I held my hands up, showing six fingers to the crowd. I don't know if it was the fact that my opponents now sported broken bones or if it was because I had just won a four on one and seemed to want even more, but no one stepped forward.
Except for one person.
"I will fight. Alone." Said Oliver, getting into the ring.
The announcer shouted again, riling up the crowd. Oliver was probably better known here, and I was a seemingly unbeatable newbie. They wanted to see blood.
Oliver advanced towards me and I began to circle him. I knew he had powers, I just didn't know what they were. I racked my brain trying to remember even a tiny tidbit, something that would give me a clue. Nothing.
I didn't have more time to think because Oliver charged at me, opening with a roundhouse kick. The damage to my left arm prevented me from blocking, so I closed the distance out of the range of his kick and into his guard.
Oliver's defense was almost deplorable, strangely so because his kick had been almost perfect. I almost hesitated, but went with a right jab anyway.
Pain exploded across my knuckles, what should have felt soft and squishy felt as hard as hitting pure steel. But in the middle of the pain I managed to catch a glimpse of something in the kinetic equation, a single strange data point, but I knew that must have been his power.
I backed off, I needed more data to extrapolate his power, but I couldn't keep hitting him, not if I wanted to keep use of my hands. Obviously he didn't agree with this plan, but I was able to keep avoiding him, dancing and weaving between his blows as I moved across the ring.
Eventually I reached the chain. I was panting, dodging Oliver hadn't been easy. He came at me again, but now as I sidestepped his blow I hit him, whipping the chain across his back. I watched and took note of the equations that unfurled as a result. I kept working on that a few minutes, trying to avoid getting hit while getting some blows in with the chain and observing. In the end it took me twenty hits to get his power.
Somehow he reflected kinetic energy, probably why he was called Vest since he was more or less bullet proof, but it wasn't so simple. Luckily for me there was a catch and it was that his power wasn't a hundred percent efficient. How much energy it reflected increased with the amount of energy applied. The harder he was hit, the less damage he took.
That left two options, I could try to bleed him out through swallow cuts using the knife that I had left on the post. It would probably take too long and I was a lot more tired than him, trying to always keep myself ahead with my speed.
I chose option two.
Oliver came at me with a left hook, but I was prepared this time. I moved, partially taking the hit and grunting in pain as I countered by whipping the chain at his neck and initially missing, hitting at it's side instead of the front. Or at least that's how it looked as it went and coiled around Oliver's neck just as I was moving towards his back.
Oliver tried to spin, but he had put too much energy into the hook and the momentum had left him reeling for just long enough for me to grab the other end of the chain and pull tight. Oliver's power probably deflected the negligible kinetic energy that the chain going taut applied on his neck, making it bounce a little, but it couldn't the reflect the force it applied.
Once my grip was secure I stuck my back to Oliver's and pulled down hard. Every muscle I had struggling to lift the heavier and taller Man. Oliver tried to resist but as it was he had no leverage to move, his whole weight was being supported by his back and his feet didn't touch the ground.
He struggled, desperate to breathe and break free. He squirmed and hit me in my sides, but I held firm, my muscles straining against each other to keep him lifted above the ground and my back on the verge of breaking from being used as a fulcrum. He tried to roll onto one of my sides, but I had enough of my wits on me to prevent that. I could hear the crowd cheering for me, louder than before, and I didn't know why but a smile formed in my face.
I let go of Oliver when I see the announcer signaling me, a worried expression on her face, and the man fell to the ground crouched on his arms and legs. He moved his mask aside to take even bigger breaths.
The announcer asks again who wants to go against me.
This time the whole room is silent.
***
A while later Oliver, Meredith and I were back in the small office. Lucio and the announcer weren't here this time as they still had to oversee the rest of the fights.
"I'm not going to fight you again, you are way too brutal man." Oliver said, lying down on the desk and massaging his neck, I could see bruises beginning to form.
"Same here, you hit like a freight train." I replied, and it was true, reflecting kinetic energy basically meant that his hits were twice as strong as a normal person. I had managed to mostly avoid a direct hit, but he had clipped me a number of times resulting in various painful spots along my body, but the worst were the hits to my ribs he had given me when I was strangling him.
"You performed excellently James. The whole point of this wasn't for you to defeat everyone, but for you to appear as if you could defeat everyone." Said Meredith.
"That's why you gave me the knife."
"Yes, I expected you to stab someone or hurt them bad enough that no one else would want to try their luck. But I like your way better." She said, sitting on a chair and motioning for met to do the same. "You see James, we aren't the most powerful organization and so we need to compensate in other aspects. One of those, and one the boss puts a lot of stock into, is appearance. We don't need to be strong as long as we can make everyone else think that they can't take us. Which is more in line with what you did today."
"That was it? That was the whole reason I came here?" I asked. Pain and adrenaline making me forget about the under layer of fear for a moment.
"Not necessarily, you also got yourself a good reputation. Everyone who saw you fight today will talk about it and the news about you will spread: a silent professional fighter capable of beating the Boss' personal enforcer? It will spread like fire. So you better keep in mind that you need to keep up that appearance of silent professionalism and efficiency that you showed today."
"Good." My body hurt all over, and the moment the adrenaline wore off my bruises would make me remember them. "Can I go home?"
"Yes, just one more thing." She went behind the desk and grabbed a couple of folders from a drawer. "Take this, there is a gym regimen I will expect you to upkeep. You will also find my personal files about most of the cities gangs redacted for you to study them. Also," She took a stack of sixty bills from her pocket. "Six thousand dollars. To the winner." She smiled.
For a moment I consider refusing, it was illegal money, but I was too tired, too exhausted and in the end? I didn't care.
***
That night at home, I tossed the money into my closet along with the files. As I brushed my teeth, ready to call it a day and recover from the exhaustion I couldn't help but smile.
I had won.
The anxiety, the nerves and fear weren't there anymore. No, that was a lie, they were still there, but I thought I would be able to deal with them now. It was a small win, it almost didn't matter, but if it was stuff like this then maybe, just maybe I would be able to handle this.