The colorfully clothed folk were still preparing for the start of the day when Red walked into their camp. Smoke was in the air as pots of stew boiled over fires, and women with heads in handkerchiefs chatted cheerfully as they threw fabrics over clotheslines. An old woman was sitting by one of the many gypsy caravans, sewing up brightly colored garments.
Farther off near a green caravan parked away from the others, a group of shirtless men gathered. An elderly man, shorter than the others, wearing a green bandana and wielding a cane, could be seen speaking to the shirtless men, who in turn listened intently.
Red figured that if he had to talk to anyone about a fight, it would probably be the old man.
When he walked up to the group of men, he overheard some of what the old man was saying, “Jowa will face the Bear Seeker, and that is the end of the matter. We can't pit him against anyone else because Jowa can hardly stand up to anyone a head taller than himself.”
“Excuse me,” Red said, approaching the elder gypsy, trying to get his attention.
The old man raised an eyebrow at the tall young man approaching him, his bagged eyes narrowing. “You got any manners, boy? Can’t you see grownups are over here talking?” he spat at Red, annoyed by a youngster who’d interrupt him.
“Sorry,” Red said quickly, backing up and allowing the men to get back to what they were doing.
The old man's lip pulled up into a grimace, scowling at Red before returning to addressing the men around him. He continued speaking, “We’ll see how Jowa does against Bear Seeker, and if he can’t manage to even bruise that hairy mongoloid then he isn’t fit to fight in gypsy brawls any longer.”
“What about that skinny boy we have right there?” said a shirtless man with a handle bar moustache and a heavy accent while gesturing to Red.
“Yea, he would make a good opponent for Jowa,” another man added.
The old man glanced sideways at Red, then after a second of contemplation, he smiled with the few remaining teeth that he had and called out, “Boy, come here.” Red walked up to the old man reluctantly and stood before him. “You come here looking for a fight?” the old man asked while scratching his grizzled chin with a liver spotted hand.
“Yes, sir,” Red said respectfully, “I’m a prize fighter.” The words “prize fighter” came from the new memories he had floating in his head. Red hadn’t even fully grasped what it meant yet.
The old man was at first startled as he repeated what Red had just said. “A prize fighter, aye?” He started to laugh a wheezing and cough filled laugh then looked to the men beside him, “Ya hear that boys, we got ourselves a prize fighter here.”
“Haha,” one man laughed, who was possibly drunk as he swayed where he stood.
The other men were indifferent to the conversation between Red and their elder. They seemed used to the old gypsy's berating nature.
Red started to laugh too since he was unsure of the situation, but him joining in stopped the old man from laughing immediately. “What’s so funny, boy?” the old man asked, almost indignant.
Red stopped laughing too. He hated when his social ineptitude came into question. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. Red did not have enough smarts to come up with good lies and would always get in trouble when he tried, so he steered clear of false statements.
The old man started to laugh again as he said, “Young man, you must be missing a few cards in your deck. I’ll tell you what, since you want to fight so badly for a prize, we happen to have just the right opponent for you. Meet us here about six shades from the sun falling, and we’ll have a fight and a prize waiting for you.”
Red nodded, then turned around and left, causing the old man to laugh again at such an abrupt departure. Red just couldn’t keep up with the old man and his antics; he wasn’t socially aware enough to engage in that kind of conversation.
Later on in the day, he appeared before the old man once again, this time without anyone else present. He had spent most of his time after leaving the gypsy camp preparing his body for the fight the way his memories told him to. He mainly went over some moves, combos and visualized different scenarios of the fight he might find himself in. Since he didn’t know who his opponent would be, he could only make a generalized fight plan.
The old man smiled a hole ridden smile at Red. A couple of yards behind him, a ring had been made and carved into the dirt, with people sitting in chairs all around it in a circle. Unlit torches stuck out of the dirt everywhere around the people and the ring, notifying those in attendance that they should expect the brawls to keep going well into the night.
“Listen, young man. You have the honor of starting out the show for us,” the old man explained to Red, “Your opponent is already here and waiting for you in the caravan across the way over there.” He pointed at a wooden green painted caravan that sat just beyond the people surrounding the ring. There was an aisle carved in the dirt leading from the caravan to the ring, lined with unlit torches. The participating fighters would get dressed for their fight within.
The gypsy elder pointed an old wrinkled hand with gaudy jewelry on it toward a red painted caravan next to him, “This is where you’ll wait for your name to be called. What is your name, by the way?” The old man asked, almost forgetting to ask for the strange youth's name.
“It’s Red,” Red answered.
The old man shook his head as he said, “That won’t do. There’s no showmanship in it. There’s nothing that grabs the audience’s attention, nothing telling them that the person who walks before them is a fighter. Got any other names?”
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Red was confused at what he was hearing, but answered nonetheless, not wanting to be shown as an idiot in front of a stranger and said, “Red is short for Redyl. My surname is Rombell.”
The old man slapped a wrinkled hand to his head as he grunted, “That’s even worse.” He sighed before he waved off Red like a bad smell, “Just go wear what’s in your caravan and I’ll have the announcer think of something for you. Just come out when you hear your name.”
Red followed the order obediently and climbed into the red caravan to find sitting on a stool: a pair of linen shorts, leather hand grips and leather sandals that wrapped all the way to the calves. Putting on the brawler clothes, he sat down in the caravan with his hands in his lap, waiting to hear his name.
After some time and some announcements, there came a booming voice that put Red on alert.
Within the ring, an announcer bound with muscle and without a sing hair on his head spoke, “Folks, we have a young man who is a self-proclaimed ‘prize fighter’ in the red caravan. He hails from this very city and is young, hungry and ready to scrap. Please, good people, let’s give a warm welcome to, RED RUMBLE!”
The audience clapped warmly but not enthusiastically for the name they had never heard of. They had come to witness men of renown engage in bare-knuckle battle with each other, not necessarily the newcomers. The clapping continued until the crowd became confused and looked at the red caravan, then back at the announcer.
No one had emerged.
“I said,” the announcer said, clearing his throat before continuing, “RED RUMBLE!”
A few more claps occurred, but they quickly died when again, no one showed up. An elderly man began to cross the little arena in front of the audience, giving them apologetic smiles as he went by. He made his way across the ring in the center of the crowd, eventually arriving at the red caravan.
He kicked at the caravan hard.
Inside the caravan, Red jumped at the sound and looked around, perplexed, until he heard a crackly voice.
“Red, get out here! You’re up, you deaf idiot,” the old man rasped angrily.
Red didn’t move to the caravan door and instead, argued, “I haven’t heard my name yet, sir.”
He wanted to be polite, but it was hard to be when he was being so blatantly disrespected by being called names.
“Get out here, now!” The old man yelled while continuously kicking the caravan, making it shake.
Red dropped out of his wooden caravan with a look of irritation.
“You said to wait for my name,” Red said, still arguing with the old gypsy as he walked up to him.
“The announcer gave you the name, Red Rumble. It was obvious that he meant you,” the elder seethed through gritted teeth, veins forming upon his forehead.
“Oh,” Red said with his eyes widening in revelation, “So they were calling me out earlier.”
The old man kicked Red in the backside sending him stumbling forward, almost falling down.
“Just get into the damn ring,” the old man hissed.
Red rubbed his backside as he walked up the ring's side and into its boundaries. The ring was made of unearthed dirt and measured a few yards in circumference. Red looked around at the people who stared back at him with indifference, some with anger at having to wait for him to come out, and only a few who seemed to be interested in the young man.
“His opponent in the green caravan,” said the announcer, also one of the people irritated with Red’s delayed appearance, “You know him from other gypsy brawls and for being a gypsy fighter that has a lot more heart than he does muscle. He is the brawler who is smaller but is still quite the mauler. He says that it only takes two hits to put his opponents down and if they don’t, the next two will! Please clap your hands for Frawt Two-Shot!”
The crowd became more lively when they heard this name than they had for Red Rumble. Some people went up to their feet to clap. This was a familiar name and one of the fighters they had come to see.
A thin man two heads shorter than Red emerged from the green caravan. His dark blonde hair was beginning to recede, despite the fact that his face indicated he was still young. Ribs could be seen on both sides of his body, and his stomach appeared to be nearly caved in. He was wearing the same shorts as Red, tied by a string, but his were green fabric, whereas Red's were red.
He walked up right to Red’s face and grimaced toward him.
“You ready to lose, boy?” Frawt Two-Shot said up to him, covering Red in the smell of fish breath.
Red nodded and smiled at Frawt Two-Shot only making the man that much angrier. Red was acutally happy to finally fight someone with his boxing, or was it the memories that were making him happy, Red had no clue.
“Alright, alright. Save some of it for the fight,” said the announcer, stepping between them, his large frame helping him separate both Red and Frawt easily.
Once they were on the opposite sides of the ring, the muscular bald man announcing said, “The rules are simple, just don’t go outside the ring and you can fight all you like.”
“What if we go outside the ring?” Red asked. The rules being explained held no similarity to what the foreign memories held about boxing.
“Eh, we just put you back in there and let you go at it again. But that all takes time, so it’d be best just to keep everyone inside the ring so the people won’t get bored with us having to keep dragging you fellows back in,” as he said this, he smiled with a single golden tooth gleaming and turned to look at each fighter's face before shouting, "Now, let's begin!"
Frawt didn’t need to be told a second time to start as he marched forward with his fists making circular patterns in front of him. It took a second for Red to figure out the situation but when he did, he felt himself become more like the person in the memories that weren’t his own.
Red started to feel like a pro boxer.
He shifted his body into a stance and rushed toward Frawt, who, in response, tried to keep the charging young man at bay with a series of looping punches, his arms becoming like two windmills. Red bobbed and weaved the punches easily without stopping his forward momentum as he brought up an uppercut to hit Frawt’s chin.
The audience, which had just begun to cheer for the start of the match, fell silent as Frawt Two-Shot fell backwards into the dirt as his eyes rolled back into his head. Red put one leather-wrapped hand into the air in celebration as he looked over at the crowd. After a pause of surprise and uncertainty, the people sitting on the sides of the ring erupted into applause at seeing such a sudden and abruptly ended scene of violence. The old man who was standing on the side beside the crowd was staring wide-eyed at Red in disbelief, showing his few teeth as his mouth hung open.
Even the announcer had trouble finding his words before he managed to say “And the winner is Red Rumble!”
The Gypsies who ran this brawling event knew all about unarmed fighting. They’ve seen it for generations—different styles and techniques of all sorts. But this was a world of sword and magic. Everyone fought with weapons. How could they have evolved unarmed combat to the level found in the world Red’s memories came from, a place where luxury and technology allowed for expansive and rapid development of such things.
The way Red moved in his stance was like brush strokes from a painter. The uppercut he landed was a death sentence by the reaper himself. Red was neither sweating nor out of breath, it looked like he could fight endless amounts of rounds.
From the side of the ring, the old man with the cane looked on as Red’s face beamed with a look the elder deemed as arrogant. The memories of the boxer within Red’s mostly empty head filled the young man with the ego of a champion boxer who knew no fear. The old gypsy found his teeth grinding at the sight of such hubris.
He wanted no more than to knock this kid off his high horse immediately.