CHAPTER 116
Marcos did not want to be here. This was a stupid idea. It could go wrong in so many ways. But it was a hail mary, a sliver of a chance to help him get back to L.A, which is why he found himself sitting in the house of the biggest drug gang member in his old neighborhood.
He was very familiar with the man - Oscar Ramirez - as Marcos had grown up less than 10 meters away. During his childhood, it hadn't been too out of the ordinary to see drug deals happening right outside his window. To hear gunshots in the distance, knowing that more likely than not, that man was part of it. It never really scared Marcos though, by nature of the fact that that's how it had been his entire life. If anything, he had a somewhat okay relationship with the man. Marcos had been the child growing up in their neighborhood, so the richer people in the neighborhood like Oscar had been able to spare Marcos a few more bites to eat if he wasn't able to get some at home. One thing Marcos learned very quickly during his upbringing was that no matter their occupation, they were all still people, stuck in the same shitty circumstances.
So, knowing the money and power that the man possessed, Marcos figured that he might be able to get a loan from the man, enough to get him back to L.A, and then when he eventually made it as a fighter, he'd be able to pay him back, with interest. That's what led him to sitting in the man's living room.
"Well, well, well, isn't this a surprise? Is Mr. Hollywood already sick of America?" Oscar remarked as he sat back in his chair, resting his feet on the table, staring at Marcos.
"Trust me, man, this was definitely not the plan to be back here." Marcos told him.
"Oh yeah? What happened? You pull so many girls there they thought you were a pimp?" Oscar commented jokingly. Marcos' face remained stony as he shook his head.
"No. My father got arrested for beating the shit out of me so I got deported back here." Marcos replied coolly. Oscar's face flashed with anger, filled with loyalty to the boy that he had watched first-hand grow up.
"Something was always off with that man." Oscar stated in a low, menacing voice. "I swear, if I ever see him again…"
"Don't do anything to him." Marcos told him firmly, a surprise amount of confidence in his voice for a mere teenager talking to the leader of a drug gang. "He deserves to rot in jail for the rest of his life. Nothing more. Nothing less. You've been to jail before. You know how they treat child abusers there, right?"
Oscar slowly nodded, stroking his chin thoughtfully.
"Very true. It would be a miracle if he lasts a year. Certainly wouldn't survive a day in jail here." Oscar remarked. "Now… tell me, my boy, what brings you here? Something tells me it isn't just to catch up?"
So Marcos told him everything. About everything that he'd been through in the past few months. About his future plans. About how he needed the money to get back to L.A, and how in a few years, he'd be able to pay him back, WITH INTEREST, because he'd be a professional fighter. Marcos said it with such certainty, his determination of old having returned, and yet it still wasn't enough to entice the man into a deal. Instead, Oscar shook his head.
"No. Sorry. I don't loan to kids." Oscar replied. Marcos sighed.
"Come on, man. I'm 17. I turn 18 in two months. I'm an adult."
"You're the kid we all raised in this neighborhood. I'm not loaning to you." Oscar stated. "I don't want to have to kill you if you don't pay up."
"Please, man. I swear. I swear I'll pay it back within a few years. With as much interest as you want. I swear in her name." Marcos begged, invoking his mother as a way of pleading his case, as a way of showing just how important this was to him. And shockingly, that was enough to cause Oscar to be uncertain for a few moments, teetering on the edge. Death wasn't unusual in their neighborhood, but the suicide of a loving mother and wife… it had ripped shockwaves through their area. She had been well-respected by the community before her death, never mixed up with criminal activity but still always treating the criminals with respect, so her death had hit all of them hard. The fact that her son was swearing in her name… there clearly wasn't a shadow of a doubt in his mind that he'd be able to succeed.
"I'm sorry. The answer's no. Rules are rules." Oscar eventually told him. Marcos sighed, glancing downwards in defeat. Well this route was clearly not going to bear any fruit. It was back to the drawing board if he wanted any chance of making it back to L.A in time.
"Right. Well thank you for your time. See you around, I guess." Marcos murmured, before standing up and preparing to walk away. However, before he could get too far, he heard the person behind him calling him back.
"Wait a second." Oscar called, and Marcos turned back around to face him again. "Look, just because I'm not loaning you the money for a flight, doesn't mean that I'm not going to help you."
"Oh yeah? What have you got for me?" Marcos asked. Oscar walked across the room, opened his safe and pulled out a stack of money, money that he then placed in Marcos' hands.
"Here. Take this." Oscar said. As Marcos looked down at it, he saw that it was 500 Brazilian Reals, approximately equivalent to 100 US dollars. He raised an eyebrow.
"Thanks, but I don't think this is going to get me across the city, let alone back to L.A." Marcos remarked. Oscar nodded.
"Which is why you're going to have to double it. Make more. Then double that again. Until you have enough for your flight home."
"And how am I supposed to do that?" Marcos asked. "Because I'm not becoming a drug dealer for you if that's what you want, I'm sorry."
Oscar nodded.
"We all watched you grow up, Marcos. You were everyone's child. You really think we want you going down the same road we did? The only reason I'm sitting where I am, earning money in shameful ways, is because I had no other choice. No other means for a rise to power. But you do."
"How?" Marcos asked, genuinely curious.
"Come with me…"
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"Where are we?" Marcos questioned, his hair on his neck standing up on its end, like a cat backed into a corner. Oscar had taken him to a semi-concealed, totally abandoned building in the roughest part of their slum. It was a part of town that Marcos didn't dare venture to as a child. His parents didn't even tell him about what went on in this part of the neighborhood, nobody talked about it at all, which is how rumors amongst the kids had begun to start. Some believed that it was haunted by the slaves who had died here many years ago. Others believed that it was a dumping ground for all of the casualties of their neighborhood's constant war against the government. However, as Marcos stepped further into the seldom explored building, he realized that they were dead wrong with their guesses.
This was an MMA gym. If you could even call it that. More accurately, it was an MMA gym that had been through the wars, several times over. The cage was bent to the brink of breaking, spikes from the cage sticking out at angles awkward enough to impale anyone unlucky enough to be pushed into them. There were weights and other ancient looking exercise equipment beside the ring, as well as some pads and other boxing equipment. But that wasn't the part that shocked Marcos the most. It was the people.
These weren't just people, or Martial Arts, that were using the abandoned underground fighting facility. These were absolute brutes, silverbacks, alpha males of their species. They all couldn't have weighed less than 230 pounds or so, and none of them were certainly shorter than 6 feet tall. There were some absolute behemoths amongst them, some around 6 foot 5 and at least 250 pounds of pure muscle, throwing punches that were hard enough to cause earthquakes.
Even for a relatively experienced fighter like Marcos, these guys were enough to make his skin crawl. They made him look like the 7 year old he had been when he first started Martial Arts. They had clearly been training for decades but not just that… they had clearly been bruised and battered so much by the world that they had been molded into stone warriors. Unbreakable, undefeatable objects, not too dissimilar to the fantasy movies Marcos had seen with Sarah about giants taking over the world.
Marcos wanted nothing more than to turn on his heel and leave before he caught their attention, but unfortunately Oscar seemed to have other ideas. He led Marcos over to someone sitting at a desk beside the ring, appearing to be the organizer of whatever underground fight club this was.
"Oscar! How's it going, my friend!" The organizer exclaimed, delighted to see Oscar there. Oscar smiled at him.
"Not too bad. Not bad at all." He replied.
"You here to make a bet on one of our fighters? Might I suggest Hulk over there. Almost a sure thing if you ask me." The organizer asked, pointing at one of the men in the ring, by far the largest man in the club, who was proceeding to beat the crap out of his opponent.
Oscar shook his head.
"No. Actually, I'm here to enter a fighter to your roster." Oscar told him, before placing a hand on Marcos' shoulder. "This is Marcos."
"Him?" The organizer asked, taken aback in shock. Although Marcos was quite large for a teenager, he had nothing on the people at this fight club. Not to mention the fact that he was still a kid. He wasn't a hardened adult like the rest of them. "You sure about this?"
"I am." Oscar replied firmly. The organize nodded.
"Alright then. It's your funeral." He replied, not too optimistic about Marcos' odds against any of these guys. "So kid, the way this place works is that if you become one of us, you can come here every night, and you have the opportunity to challenge whoever you want, betting as much money as you want. If they accept the challenge, they put in the same amount of money. Winner takes the pot. Understood?"
"Sounds about right." Marcos nodded. With a few miracles, this could possibly be a way for him to fund his eventual flight back to L.A, slowly but surely. He realized what Oscar was saying about slowly increasing the small loan he had given him: win fights and earn more money, simple as that. "So can I join?"
The organizer chuckled.
"It's not so easy, my friend." The organizer said. "We only accept the very best fighters around. Nothing less. To cement your place on our roster, you have to earn your place. Win a fight and you are accepted within our ranks."
"Who am I fighting?" Marcos asked. At that very moment, from inside the ring, the champion 'Hulk' had just unleashed a skull-denting knockout on his opponent and stood tall in the ring, his arms in the air, barely having broken a sweat. The organizer smirked at him before pointing at the mountain of a man.
"Him…"
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"Arghhh!"
Bells. That's the first thing Marcos heard as he came to. For a moment, he thought it was Christmas, that this was the beginning of some Christmas song where the bells were ringing and everything was bright and cheerful.
However, it took a few moments for him to realize that it definitely wasn't Christmastime. It was February 14th, and he was kissing the canvas of the ring, where he had just had his ass handed to him by a colossal brute of a man. For the first few seconds after he regained consciousness, Marcos was filled with confusion. He was lying face-down in an MMA ring, but what ring? Where was he? How the hell had he gotten here?
Then came the pain. A splitting, mind-bending, shattering pain unlike anything he had ever felt before. He used to think that emotional pain was worse than any physical pain known to man, but right now, physical pain was certainly giving it a run for its money. His entire body was on fire, scalding, burning itself from the inside out. There wasn't an inch of his beaten down, battered motionless corpse that hadn't taken serious structural damage. There were parts of him he reckoned would never work the same way again. All of that… all to not even land a single hit on his opponent the entire fight.
As his memory slowly returned as Marcos felt himself being dragged off the mat, he recalled the way the fight had unfolded. Marcos had tried to dance around him, expose a speed and agility advantage. However, it turned out to be like trying to fight a grizzly bear. All it took was a single punch to send Marcos flying across the ring like a ragdoll, crashing against the far side of the cage.
Painful as it had been though, Marcos had not been put off by it. He forced himself to continue, knowing that this could likely be one of his only opportunities to eventually find a way home, so he channeled any remaining strength into charging at the champion over and over again, each time getting squatted away like a fly, despite how intricate or technical his combination was. All it would take was a bone-crunching punch, kick or throw that would send him right back to the ground, until eventually he was provided the relief of unconsciousness, and the organizer ended the fight.
Carried over to the other side of the underground fight club, Marcos saw an ice-pack being shoved into his hands. His vision hadn't completely returned after his brutal knockout, so it took him a while to see who was helping him, and when he did, his jaw dropped, a big mistake as his whole face was now swollen.
It was Hulk, standing over him with an almost sympathetic look on his face.
"For your face." He gruffly told Marcos.
"Thanks." Marcos murmured, accepting it and almost moaning aloud in relief as his pain decreased by even a miniscule amount. His entire body was being wracked with agony, and it took all of his effort to remain conscious as he looked at Hulk. "Fuck, man, you're huge! It's like fighting a fucking killer whale!"
Hulk, who normally remained deathly stoic, cracked what looked like the faintest hint of a smile.
"That's what happens when they let a kid try and fight here. I don't know what they were thinking." Hulk remarked. "I could have killed you."
"Yeah, well, you might as well have. Now that I lost, there's no way I'm being allowed to fight here again."
"I wouldn't be so sure about that." Hulk slowly stated. Marcos raised an eyebrow. "I like you."
"You enjoy having an opponent to swat like a fly?" Marcos commented. Hulk chuckled.
"A little." Hulk admitted. "But can I tell you something? I've been champion around here for the past two years without defeat and you know why? Because everyone I fight… they take one look at me and they hold back out of fear. You didn't. You gave it everything."
"You're saying I'm the best person you've fought in two years?" Marcos asked. Hulk laughed outwardly at this.
"God no. By far the worst." Hulk commented. "But you have potential. You're young. With the right training around here, and the mindset you already have, who knows what you can achieve?"
"You're going to train me?" Marcos asked, eagerly. Hulk shook his head.
"Not myself. But you are now a member of this club. You train here with all of us. Fight here with all of us. Welcome…"