“I wanna be the very best, like no one ever was…” A voice coming from the reception area startled both Quinn and Phanpy awake. Quinn, recognizing his ringtone, sat up immediately and scurried over to open the door. “To catch them is my real test, to train them is my cause,” the song continued.

Quinn loved seeing the looks on people’s faces when his ringtone went off. The song was a 20-year-old one-hit wonder sung by a band most people couldn’t remember. When he was with friends, he would sing along dramatically like he was a pop icon. By the chorus, Quinn could usually get everyone to sing along with him.

As he opened the door he was greeted by a faint sunrise brightening up the gym and his phone going off in the corner still plugged in from before. Unsure of who was calling this early in the morning, Quinn hustled over to see Mabel Royal listed as the incoming call. Quinn kicked himself for forgetting to call her yesterday or the day before to let her know he had moved in.

“Gotta catch–” Quinn answered, which cut off the song before it could launch into its chorus. “Hey Mabel, I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier.” Quinn ended his sentence as a yawn came upon him.

“Oh Quinn, did I wake you? I called yesterday evening, but you didn’t pick up. I got worried.”

“No, you didn’t wake me up.” Quinn lied to keep Mabel from feeling bad. “It’s just been a tiring couple of days. I moved all of my stuff in and got a lot of the cleaning done.”

“That’s fantastic news! I wish I could be more helpful with the lifting and cleaning, but I made a couple of meals for you and Phanpy. Would it be okay if I swing by today with Gogoat to drop them off?”

Quinn’s stomach bellowed at the thought of a home-cooked meal. “Phanpy and I would love that. We were able to clean up the breakroom yesterday, so you can come over and we can talk about the move.” He didn’t want to explain everything to Mabel over the phone.

“Wonderful. I just need to pack up the food and warm up one of the meals and I’ll bring it over.”

“Sounds like a plan. I’ll unlock the front door.” Quinn said his goodbye and hung up the phone to see a groggy Phanpy walking up beside him.

“Morning, bud. You hungry? Mabel is bringing over some home-cooked meals.”

Phanpy lifted and curved his trunk so it looked like a thumbs-up and held it for a second before letting his trunk fall back down into a hanging position.

Quinn was shocked to see Phanpy’s recovery. “Look at you, already moving your trunk around. Lauren said Tyler is going to stop by today, we can ask him if you’re healed up enough to remove the bandages inside your trunk.” Quinn took a deep breath through his nose as he thought about what it must be like to have a clogged nasal canal. “Although, you might want him to keep it there with how bad I smell. I’m going to try and clear out at least one shower stall in the women's locker room so we can get clean.” Phanpy nodded his head and followed Quinn to the janitorial closet.

He quickly found a mop and bucket and filled it up with soap and water. As the bucket filled up with water, Quinn looked closer at the contents of the closet than he did the day before. In addition to what Lauren had found yesterday, he found a vacuum, toilet paper, goggles, trash bags, gloves, and a bunch of towels. The towels were all once the same color of blue, but had faded over the years along with their softness. The towels also explained the existence of a washer and dryer which he was grateful for.

Quinn grabbed gloves, rags, and trash bags before turning off the water and awkwardly moving through the hallway toward the women's locker room. It still looked as bad as before, and Quinn got to work. Phanpy helped where he could, by moving trash into piles with his feet, but he wished he could use his trunk to save Quinn a lot of time.

Quinn had cleaned a sink, toilet stall, and shower stall enough to use them when he heard the front door’s bell chime open. “Mabel, just a sec!” He hoped to shower before she arrived, but a smelly Quinn would have to do. He set aside the mop and took off the gloves before exiting the locker room with Phanpy behind him. Quinn was looking at the ground when he turned the corner and walked into a hulking mass.

“Oops, Gogoat I didn’t…” Quinn stopped his sentence halfway when he realized he had walked into a mountain of a man. He guessed the giant had to be at least 6’10” and weighed well over 350 pounds. He wore a tan sweatshirt that almost matched the shade of his brown skin. Quinn couldn’t help but gawk as the giant stared indifferently back at him.

His gawking was interrupted quickly by an indiscriminate yell that made Quinn cover his ears. Standing next to the giant was the source of the yelling — a Loudred.

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Phanpy, who would normally step in to protect his trainer, froze in place and started to tremble. Quinn noticed Phanpy’s trembling and quickly stepped in between him and shuffled backward. Phanpy took Quinn’s queue and backed away too. After moving around 10 feet away, Loudred stopped his yelling and silence took its place.

“Dude, what’s with the yelling?” Quinn spoke to Loudred but looked at the giant.

The giant didn’t respond.

“Do I know you?”

The giant didn’t respond.

“Are you looking to use the gym?”

The giant didn’t respond.

“We haven’t opened yet, the door was just unlocked.”

The giant didn’t respond.

Quinn was unnerved as no reactions came from Loudred or the giant. Quinn could hear Phanpy’s breathing start to pick up its pace. Quinn tried to calm him down, until he realized why Phanpy was so scared.

“Are you with Saber?”

The giant finally reacted and nodded his head.

Quinn cursed and asked, “Why are you here?”

“Protection.” The giant finally opened his mouth.

The color drained from Quinn’s face. “Aito said I had a month to come up with the money. How could I possibly have it two days later? The gym hasn’t even opened.”

The giant took a step forward and walked straight at Quinn.

Quinn panicked internally, but he had made his decision — he was going to fight for his gym.

Quinn clenched his hands into fists, keeping them by his side and standing as tall as possible. He took one step forward to meet the giant. Taking a page out of his opponent’s book, Quinn remained silent and met the giant’s gaze as he approached. The giant stopped within a foot and looked down at Quinn with the same expression of indifference he had worn when Quinn first saw him. Quinn had never felt so small, but he didn’t waiver.

Anticlimactically, the giant slightly turned and walked around Quinn and Phanpy with Loudred by his side. He continued walking over to the weight racks, grabbed the 75-pound dumbbells and started doing bicep curls.

Quinn knew the giant was only here under the guise of “protection.” Either he was here to keep an eye out to see if Quinn had any chance of coming up with the money or he was a reminder from Raze of how powerful Saber is. Probably both.

Quinn didn’t drop his guard, still expecting another sucker punch to appear out of thin air. When one didn’t come, he chanced a look down at Phanpy who he could still hear breathing at the same up-tempo pace. He found that the elephant was not looking at the giant or Loudred, but was staring at the same spot where Quinn had found the bloody hard hat.

Getting on one knee and gently turning Phanpy’s face to look at Quinn instead of the blood, he said, “Never again. Let’s go wait for Mabel.” He picked up Phanpy and walked back toward the entrance and sat at the reception desk with Phanpy in his arms.

He didn’t say anything out loud, but Quinn couldn’t help but wonder if Phanpy’s psychological injury was worse than his physical injury. Phanpy had still never battled and if Quinn was going to protect this gym he would need a battle-tested Phanpy by his side. Quinn felt guilty for thinking it, but he hoped that Phanpy’s brush with death wouldn’t be an insurmountable hurdle.

By the time Mabel strolled up to the gym, Phanpy had calmed down so Quinn set him on the chair while he helped Mabel. But before he could open the door for her, she had entered and was holding it open for Gogoat who was towing a small utility cart behind him. The cart had been modified so that a rope was attached to both sides and hung around Gogoat’s horns to allow him to pull it. Quinn doubted Gogoat normally noticed the weight of the small cart, but today the cart was packed tight with dishes of food wrapped in tin foil.

Mabel patted Gogoat on his side and said, “Quinn, you look…” She caught herself before she said anything that might upset him. “Would you look at this place, it’s so clean. Looks like you’ve been working hard since you got here. It still has a long way to go before it looks like how I remember it, but this is a night-and-day difference since I was last here.” She started walking toward the main part of the gym to see if there was any more progress, but couldn’t see the bandaged Phanpy who hadn’t left the chair behind the desk.

Quinn wanted to avoid Mabel seeing the giant lifting weights in the back of the gym before he could explain everything that had gone on in the last two days. “Thank you for bringing all this food. Let's go to the breakroom to eat and we can —” A large slamming sound from the back of the gym interrupted Quinn.

“Oh my, do you already have customers? That’s so amazing, you’re going to have this gym back up and running like the old days in no time.” Mabel continued talking as she went to investigate who the mysterious customer was.

“Mabel, wait. We should talk first.” Quinn started after her, but Gogoat had now unintentionally moved into his way and was blocking his path. Gogoat then shook off his improvised reigns and followed Mabel. Gogoat’s size made it awkward for Quinn to get around him. Eventually he was able to shimmy around the beast, but not before Mabel got a good look at the giant.

“Carlos, is that you?” Mabel called out. “How is your mother doing? I saw her last week in the park, and she said she had just started a new job. Starting a new job can be so stressful and at her age, I doubt she wants…”

Quinn stopped in his tracks and looked in bewilderment as Mabel casually approached the giant now known as Carlos and rambled on about mundane aspects of life. His instinct was to walk up and provide a buffer between the two, but Carlos’ earlier expressionless face was replaced with a half-smile and frequent nodding of his head as Mabel carried the conversation with Gogoat by her side.

Seeing the normal conversation unfold, Quinn realized that Mabel had no idea that the man she was talking to was an enforcer for the gang that Paul had been in bed with. He knew that she must know that gangs were a danger to West Havenwood, but he wondered if she knew how deep it all ran. Could she offer him any guidance or would telling her just bring another layer of complexity to an already convoluted situation?