“Miss Devil!” Zoey heard the scream of several young children rushing over to her as she arrived at the gym.
Zoey’s eyes briefly flashed with fear as she was engulfed in the sea of children. At a moment like this, for someone who wasn’t good at dealing with social situations and moments of high emotions, Zoey was eternally grateful for the Teaching skill. Even as children hung on her like baby monkeys, wrapping their bodies around her while yapping their lips off, Zoey didn’t mentally shut down! She laughed before taking the children off of herself one by one with a gentle smile.
“Sorry, I was gone for so long. I had to go deal with something very important to me.” Zoey explained.
“Did you have to fight someone!?” Ricky excitedly looked up at her.
“I had to fight myself in a way.” Zoey thought about how to respond.
“What does that mean?” Cassie tilted her head.
“Sometimes a person won’t feel good in the heart. They don’t want to hang out with their friends, don’t want to do things they always enjoyed doing, and don’t want to talk to anyone. When this happens, they need to talk with someone that they can trust to help them get better. Although I’m not better all the way, my heart feels good enough that I can go back to my regular life again.”
“...” The children had to take a couple of moments to process her words.
Zoey hoped Teaching was good enough to relay to her students the importance of mental health recovery. She tried with her words, but looking at their confused little faces made her unsure. So, she decided to take their minds off confusing things that’s difficult for even adults to wrap their heads around. Zoey brought them over to the training mats to begin their training.
“We’ll begin with some shadowboxing. Since I was gone, I need to see your progress again.” Zoey told them.
“Yes, Miss Devil!” They responded.
Each student stood a safe distance from each other as they started. Ever since Zoey’s fame shot up after the YFTL, the gym has gone through some drastic changes. Coach Scott expanded the gym for the higher number of people coming to the gym because of Zoey’s origins at the gym. The children had plenty of room to show off their technique while shadowboxing without getting in each other’s way.
Coach Scott came over to her as she was appraising the children’s flaws and strengths. A brief glance at his face and she almost bust out laughing seeing his face. She knew he saw these children as a gold mine of future champions, but couldn't he at least try and hide the fact that they were worth so much to him? Their parents definitely wouldn’t let him snatch them up so easily if they knew how much he wanted them. And Coach Scott wasn’t the type of person, in Zoey’s opinion, to be satisfied with only taking one or two of them.
He had Ben, Zack, Zoey, and now Dylan as talented fighters advertising for his gym. If he had any more, he was going to burst from being too greedy. His gym couldn’t be the only one to produce talented fighters. Even though, in all honesty, it was all thanks to Zoey; he could even expand this far.
She couldn’t say for sure that Dylan would’ve never made anything of himself in the fighting world without her, but she damn sure played a huge ass role in developing his talents. Her students were just ticking time bombs to explode on the YFTL, and Coach Scott knew it. There was a big difference in making a splash in the YFTL versus making a splash in the professional boxing scene or anything similar. Zoey’s fame was directly thanks to the YFTL. If she didn’t debut there, Zoey doubted she would be anywhere near as famous as she is now. Women’s boxing just wasn’t it. Hell, there were a lot of women's sports that just didn’t get a lot of attention.
“I got a fight lined up for you, kid.” Coach Scott coughed as he adverted his eyes from her students.
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“Really?” It only took several months before anyone was willing to fight her. She hoped this wouldn’t be the standard, or she’ll have to drown herself in daemon cases.
Zoey started to go around correcting and giving advice to her students, still shadowboxing as Coach Scott talked about her upcoming fight. Her week-long recovery didn’t seem to affect their skills too much. Just a few adjustments here and there but most of them had it memorized with their bodies. They had proper stances, utilized all of their body’s muscles while throwing their punches, and kept their feet light.
“It’s a well-known FTL wrestler. His name is Simon Birch.” Coach Scott explained.
“A guy?” Zoey was surprised that a man had challenged her. “Do they not separate by gender in the FTL?”
“It’s a little complicated, kid. They do, but they don’t.” He replied.
“Huh?”
“The thing is, the FTL women typically only fight other FTL women while the FTL men fight other FTL men. But there is no rule stating that men can only fight men and women can only fight women. Anyone can fight anyone as long as the promoters and matchmakers think it can generate enough tickets that it’ll be worth doing.” He explained.
“Promoters? Matchmakers?” Zoey questioned.
“These are the people I talk to, so I’m not surprised you don’t know about them. Promoters are the guys who work with me to arrange fights, sign contracts, and handle marketing, selecting the venue, and ticket sales. Matchmakers work for the promoters. They usually decide if two fighters are worth making a match between and if it's profitable enough for the company.”
“This guy is strong then?” Zoey asked, fully interested in her opponent. “Let’s switch to bag work, everyone!” She told her students.
“Yes, Miss Devil!” They were sweating and excited to punch the bags.
“He’s undefeated, just like you. His nickname is Mr. Ground N Pound. A record of 15-0.”
“Why did he challenge me?” Zoey was getting a little bit excited. It wasn’t often she fought wrestlers.
“He thinks all of your fights are bullshit. He plans to expose you by challenging you and defeating you.”
“When do we sign the contract?”
“So you want to fight this guy?”
“Yeah, sounds fun.” Her students overheard Zoey’s and Coach Scott’s conversation.
It wasn’t like they were whispering or anything, so the little imps heard everything they’d been saying. They excitedly started whispering amongst each other while working on their bag work. Zoey couldn’t help herself from showing a small smile at them, sharing a similar feeling to herself. Maybe once she retires from whatever job she decides to do in the future, she could retire as a teacher. Teaching cute little kids isn’t so bad.
“Alright, I’ll get back to the FTL’s promoter and tell him we got a fight. In a few days, I’ll come to get you in a few days after I set up a meeting with him so that we can overlook the contract for the fight since you’re eighteen now.”
“Huh?”
“You’re a big girl now, Zoey. Your mom and dad can’t overlook contracts about you anymore.” Coach Scott chuckled.
“A-Alright.” Zoey wasn’t looking forward to looking over a contract filled with multiple pages and reading over every single little line to make sure she wasn’t getting fucked over.
“Alright, that’s all I wanted. You can go back to your class, Miss Devil.” He snickered as he jiggled away.
Zoey turned to the spirited faces of her students. They looked like they were on the verge of exploding after finding out that she had an upcoming fight. She could tell they had a million and more questions to barrage her with, but that could be saved for after class. “You can ask after class.” She told them.
For some reason, they took that as a signal to go as fast and hard as they could on the bag work. As if speeding up their training was something that could be done just by going faster. Zoey shook her head with a smile. Each training had a period of time. It didn’t matter how much they got done or how fast they did something. It was over when the time was up. They were just tiring themselves out for no reason.
At the end of class, the children tired themselves out too much to surround and barrage her with questions. Most of them were sprayed out on the mats breathing in and out, completely exhausted. Although, not all of her students were wiped out. They got lucky that Cindy lasted for them and could ask the questions on all of their minds.
Cindy held her by the wrist while panting. “Fight…when…who…where…?” Her round bright green eyes stared at Zoey like a wild animal.
“Dunno, some guy named Simon Birch, and dunno.” Zoey watched the children being dragged out by their parents while furiously tapping their phone screens.
“Thank you…” Cindy let go of her death grip around Zoey’s arm and slowly made her way back to her mother.
“Bye, everyone.” Zoey waved at her students.
“Bye, Miss Devil…” They tiredly responded back.