The young man, now bruised and battered, wracked his head, desperately trying to find ways to get out of his predicament. He searched his own memories of what to do and found nothing. The boxer wasn’t a grappler, so there weren’t any memories of the boxer ever fighting on the ground. Still, Red scoured as much of the boxer’s memory as he could in order to find something, anything, that could turn the tables in his favor.
“Fight!” screamed a voice inside Red’s head. “You want to become a somebody then you have to fight!”
Coach? Red thought, but didn’t even know what that word meant.
The boxer’s memories became vivid inside Red’s mind, transporting Red’s thoughts far off to a different world. A rough-looking man with a white rag draped over his shoulder, holding one of those clear containers that held water but wasn't glass, stood on the side of a large box stage with ropes tied around it.
“Fight damn it,” the coach yelled with all his vigor and spirit, “You’ve got to fight! You aren’t like regular people and you know that! There’s no making it out of this neighborhood for the likes of you in any normal way. You can only fight your way out!”
A familiar voice answered the coach’s yelling, “I don’t know, coach. This fight, I’m going against someone who uses too many unorthodox maneuvers. How am I supposed to fight someone like that?”
It was the boxer who was speaking—the boxer that was in Red’s head. Red knew that voice as well as his own.
The coach went past the ropes that covered the large box stage, going right up to the boxer’s face, and said with a gritty voice, “Every hit he gives you, you give it right back. Every move he makes, you make sure you’re right there with him. Tit for tat."
The boxer nodded his head solemnly, “I…understand.”
The coach started to yell, “Tit of tat. You hear me?”
“Yes coach!” The boxer yelled back with renewed strength.
Red awoke back in his world, the memory of the boxer that was as clear as day disappeared in an instant. Red was hurting all over now, bloodied from the Hound’s onslaught. The gypsy wasn’t at all tired from his attack, he seemed determined to keep going until Red stopped moving.
Tit for tat, thought Red.
The Gypsy Hound landed another blow that gave him great pleasure. Reaching back for another, he felt a punch hit him in the chin. He refocused on the bloody mess below him to find Red defiantly staring back at him.
The gypsy went at Red again, this time with more ferocity. Red answered him in the same way. They exchanged an uncountable number of attacks until Red felt the hound’s weight shift more to one side, finally giving Red an opportunity.
Red turned his body to where the Hound’s body had shifted and turned the Hound away from him, allowing Red to start getting back up. Startled, the Hound tried to push Red back down, but it was too late, Red already had the momentum and shifted the Hound over allowing Red to get back to his feet.
The crowd cheered at the sight.
The Hound dashed backward in retreat a few feet, barely dodging a punch Red threw right as the young man found his feet under him. Still on all fours, the Hound waited for what he knew was Red’s approach, and to his satisfaction, Red came bounding toward him, hands up and ready to punch.
But Red knew what the Hound had planned.
As soon as Red approached at a certain distance, he dipped low, letting his fist drop and swing low enough to the ground that his knuckles scraped across the dirt.
The Hound went for the same leg he had success with last time, smiling a yellow-stained smile, feeling like, by grabbing his opponent’s leg, victory was at hand. But before he could wrap his arms around Red’s leg, he felt a punch in the form of an uppercut carrying a force he had never felt before. The power connecting with his chin was like a boulder dropping from a mountain.
He blacked out instantly.
The onlookers watched as the Gypsy Hound's body flew backwards with his eyes rolled into the back of his head, landing and sliding in the dirt before finally becoming still.
Red put one arm in the air, staring at the sky above.
Thanks for the advice, coach.
**************
“Here’s your reward,” The old man said with shaky hands, unable to cope with the amount of gold he was losing to a boy he had tried to squash.
He even lost his own personal money to the people he had taken bets with, of course in favor of his own fighters being able to beat Red. The only gold he had left was what he was handing to Red. The announcer stood by the old man’s side, looking on proudly toward Red, congratulating the young man in silence.
“Thank you, sir,” Red began, but was hushed by the old man raising his hand.
“Please…just go,” the old man croaked quietly.
“Ok, I’ll see you tomorrow!” Red said joyfully as he turned to leave.
“T-tomorrow?” The old man stammered after registering what the young upstart had just said.
Red had already left beyond earshot, leaving the old man and the announcer alone.
“Well of course, sir,” the announcer answered the old man’s question, “He is going to come back to defend his title as brawler champion.”
“No, this cannot be!” the old man shouted defiantly.
“I don’t see the problem, sir. He is going to bring a lot of eyes as well as new challengers. It’s good for business.”
“Not if I can help it. Tell the brawlers to come here.”
“What? Why?”
“Just do it. I’ll make sure that arrogant brat gets taught a lesson, one way or another…” a violent gleam entered the old gypsy’s eye. The wrinkles in his skin folded in on one another making him look all the more menacing.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
The announcer shook his head at the thick-headedness of the old man. He knew that the old man was the same as the Hound; once he latched onto something, he wouldn’t let go.
Bruised and bloody, yet still victorious, Red strutted down the street with his bag of coins latched to his belt, jingling beside his bag of bird and rodent meat. He began whistling a song he'd heard in one of the memories of the boxer.
He didn’t know who the mysterious boxer was or what kind of world he had come from, but Red was thankful to him. Without the memories, he wouldn’t have been able to make as much money as he did. With the amount of coin hanging from his belt, he could live well enough while earning even more money from fighting.
He felt it unnecessary to find a magic man any longer to get rid of the strange, foreign memories. Red felt that whatever was affecting him wasn’t the bad magic his mom had told him about. It must be the good kind; it had to be.
The symbols of the barriers surrounding the higher-end districts illuminated the path Red had taken, giving him a clear view of where he was going. There were still a few people out at such a late hour. A few workers were getting a head start on the day, and others were lost souls wandering in the night. A couple of drunks stumbled down the street that wreaked of alcohol singing into the night that Red smiled at. He always enjoyed the voices of jubilation, even when elicited by alcoholic substances.
Turning a corner that led to the slums, Red felt like singing as well, and even though his voice was abhorrent and made screeching owl beasts sound like angels, he still gave it a go.
“Boy, what a tune you can carry!” A voice behind him said, spooking Red, making him flinch.
“You think so?” Red turned around, getting over his initial scare before scratching his head modestly, “I have been practicing…”
Before Red could finish talking, he quieted at the sight of the person who had spoken to him. Before him was a man wearing a sack hood over his head with veined eyes peeking out of two eye holes cut in the sack, one of which was purple, as if he had been punched there recently. The man was flanked on either side by two others also wearing sack hoods, one of whom was a large man with curly chest hair showing through an open shirt, and the other was a smaller, skinnier man with a concave stomach.
The three men looked oddly familiar to Red, including their bruises.
“Can I help you good sirs with something…?” Red asked, warily.
The sound of footsteps came from behind him. Red turned to find more men wearing sack hoods over their heads.
“You can help by not screaming…” the man in the middle of the original trio that appeared began to say in a low growl, but was cut off by Red who started to scream pathetically, reaching high notes he always thought far from him when he sang.
“You little bastard what do you think you’re doing…?” The sack hood leader growled, attempting to silence the loud youth in case Red warned Soalde's guards, but Red started to flee before he could get to him.
“After him!” he yelled at his surrounding cohorts.
“Where’d you think you’re going?” shouted one hooded man who got in Red’s way, but the man wasn't prepared for Red to punch him directly in the face, and as a result, he crumbled in an unconscious heap on the ground.
“Leave me alone! Mother said to be wary of men who hide their faces!” Red continued shouting at the top of his lungs, his sore legs gaining new life from fear of the scoundrels his mother always warned him about.
The sack hooded men chased came after him.
Red was like a dumb beast as he escaped, going for the only place that a beast would know to go when being pursued—he ran for home. The men weren’t letting up in the slightest, however. The fastest among them was their leader with the gritty voice that growled as he ran.
Red noticed that the leader of the hoodlums was closing in. Reaching for his belt, Red pulled off his meat bag to throw it at his pursuer. The leader had not expected to be attacked by a foreign object while moving and was hit square in the face. The sound of gold and silver coins scattering on the cobbled stone was accompanied by the sound of a human head landing on the stone as the hooded men's leader fell unconscious.
Red became stunned when he realized he had reached for the wrong bag.
No! My money! Even the money my mother left me is in there!
He saw that the men had slowed their pursuit to gather around their fallen leader and the shiny cruepels reflecting light from the nearby crackling sage symbols. Red had no hopes of going back for his money and it brought a tear to brim out of one eye.
Mother said not to be so focused on money because it would make me greedy. But I need that money to buy food!
Too many men surrounded his fallen coin, too many for Red to fight alone. He was forced to abandon the money.
He was a fighter thanks to the strange memories he had received that weren’t his own, but those were meant for fighting in the ring. Even the boxer in his memories was wary about multiple opponents. His style was designed for one-on-one combat.
Red ran off into the night while biting his lip in frustration. What should have been the most glorious time of his life—becoming a gypsy brawling champion—instead became one of the worst, with him becoming the poorest he's ever been. He was distraught and inconsolable.
Finding a dark place around the Classy Slums, Red sat down in a heap with his emotions in a whirl, his mind completely lost in the misery that had befallen him. His eyes began to well up with tears, but he tried holding them back as much as he could.
“Red, men don’t cry when they are in trouble, they find a way out!” his mother would say to him.
“But it’s really hard not to cry, mother,” Red sniffed, speaking out loud—his mind as vacant as it usually was—and wasn’t accustomed to dealing with immense setbacks without his mother.
What would have mother done at this moment, Red wondered.
He recalled the times when he and his mother had the most difficulty, and when he was down, his mother would give him one thing: food.
The only thing that cheered Red up was putting something in his stomach.
Red reached into his bag and began loading the whole load of pungent meat into his mouth, which helped his thoughts cease going down the trail of sad emotions for a time.
“Hey, if it isn’t Red Rumble!” a strange voice spoke out from the darkness.
Red still focused on eating his troubles away and unable to react readily to a stranger’s approach simply glanced up at a man who was flushed from alcohol and wearing a straw hat.
“Whatf doyawant,” Red said with a mouth full of food.
“Congratulations on becoming the gypsy brawling champion, boy!” The drunken man yelled, “I swear I have been attending those gypsy brawl events since I was a kid, wanting to give it a go at least once in my life, but never got the nerve. And then here comes this new boy that no one has ever heard of, comes and beats every single one those top gypsy fighters! What a world, what a world.”
“Thanksff,” Red said, still eating.
His mood had improved significantly since he had fed himself, and the compliments from a random stranger also helped.
“You really got what it takes to be a world class fighter, I’ll tell you what. Even being a Hunter wouldn’t be beyond your capabilities, I bet,” the man went on while wearing a thoughtful expression.
“A Hunter?” Red asked, now reaching the bottom of an empty food bag.
“You know, the Hunters that bring in the materials for the sorcerers to create the sage symbols and what not.”
“Do they get a lot of money?” Red asked, an idea beginning to form in his head, being careful not to hurt his brain by forming it too fast.
“Well, it depends. Me, myself, I am a Hunter but I’m only a Level 2 Base Hunter,” the stranger described, “But I make do with what I got. I’m able to support myself and my two kids with a sustainable life, that I do. Got my very own place here.”
The man thumbed at the motley cluster of classy slum dwellings. Red’s eyes followed to where the thumb was pointing, ambition stirring within him.
The Classy Slums, Red thought, Mother said we would get a place here one day.
Thinking about those days when his mother struggled to find work but managed to keep them fed and safe most of the time added more fuel to the fire that was beginning to form within him.
The drunken man, even drunk, still had the wherewithal to see what Red was feeling and brought out a card, handing it to the gypsy brawling champion. Red received it carefully, not wanting to tear it with his wide, clumsy hands. His mother taught him to take things slow with any kind of thing he found important.
“That’s the address to the slums branch of the Hunter’s guild. If you think you got the right stuff, which I think you do, give them a visit,” the drunken man said.
Tears formed in Red’s eyes once more as he got up to hug the man. The man, still drunk, gave in completely and unafraid. He laughed at having been almost completely swallowed by the young man’s overbearing frame.
“I don’t know what this is but have at it,” the drunken man slurred finding himself hugging another man in the dark hours of the night, “Just don’t get carried away. I don’t swing that way. I’m a married man!” He started to laugh louder.