Kapitel 12: Debut (2)
It was 10 minutes before the fight and Ryu was steeling his nerves, psyching himself to fight the Jackal. At this point Raven had him moved into a back room where he was sat down and given water before the fight.
Sitting in the room, Ryu's mind was racing, "What if I get seriously injured, how will mom cover the bills," he was thinking of all of the worst possible case scenarios, and doing this was slowly chipping away at the confidence he initially had when he entered the building.
"Knock, knock," Ryu heard a knocking sound coming from the door, "Come in," said Ryu in response to the knocks. The rusted-out metal door opened with a loud creaking sound, walking through the door was Raven. His facial expression revealed that he was excited about the fight, "Let me get you taped up," said Raven as he approached Ryu. "You doing alright, bud?" said Raven as he saw the state that Ryu was in, from Raven's perspective he saw the teenage boy filled with jitters and the confidence in his eyes had waned since he had left.
"Yeah, I'm doing okay, just a little nervous," said Ryu. "Yeah, that's normal it's your first fight, just remember the worst that can happen is you lose, and we have a doctor on standby, you'll be safe. This might excite you though, the prize money for tonight is looking to be about one million yen to the winner," said Raven. "Wow, that's a good chunk of money, if nothing else motivates me that will," Ryu said with a nervous chuckle.
As they were talking Raven went to grab tape to wrap around Ryu's hands, it was bare knuckle meaning there was no boxing gloves, but they still wrapped hands to prevent as much injury as possible. Slowly, Raven took the tape and wrapped it over, under, and around his knuckles and wrist to keep them stable. Once he had finished both hands, Ryu felt a slightly tight uncomfortable feeling around his fists, but having the tape reassured him a little that they took injury seriously, despite being an illegal fighting ring.
"Alright, time to make your entrance, I picked your theme song let me know if you like it," Raven said to Ryu with a chuckle, as he finished taping up his hands. "Alright, I got this," Ryu thought to himself, and he got out of the chair ready to face his opponent head on.
As he walked out from the door, he heard a big booming voice go over the crowd, presumably it was the announcer from a microphone, "Hello ladies and gentlemen, tonight we are going to have a Featherweight fight, walking out currently, coming from the left side, hailing from our very own Tokyo, Japan, is The Ogre," said the announcer in his overly dramatic voice, heavily emphasizing his syllables.
As, he finished a song came on, it was "All Star," by Punch Mouth, "What the hell, how did he think that this was a good walk on song," thought Ryu, but he put his thoughts to the side and walked on. Despite this, though, he did hear some laughing and cackling coming from the crowd when they put together the relationship between his nickname and the song.
Once he had gotten to his spot in the octagon, Ryu leaned up against the cage, it felt cold and the sides of it were visibly rusted. Almost immediately after his song had stopped playing the announcer piped up again, "Welcoming a returning fighter, one you all know very well, he throws fast punches, and moves like the wind, the Jackal," said the announcer, again exaggerating every syllable to the maximum. As the Jackal walked out it was ominously silent, it turns out the Jackal's signature walk on was a silent one to build up his mysterious mystique. He looked to be a tad bit shorter and a tad bit more muscular than Ryu, but he still fell within the weight classification because smaller fighters can hold more muscle mass comparatively as they have smaller frames.
As Jackal approached the octagon, Ryu realized he was wearing an odd mask, one that resembled, well, a jackal, and this added to his persona. Besides, the mask he was covered in tattoos from head to toe which added more to his persona. As he walked out the crowd chanted, "Jackal, Jackal, Jackal." "He must be pretty popular in this fighting ring," Ryu thought to himself, but hyping himself up he thought, "Even so, he's no match for me, I got this." Ryu subscribed to the ideology that if you believe in yourself, it will happen.
As it stood, Ryu was on one side of the octagon, and Jackal was on the other, not wasting any time the announcer fired back up again, "Tonight's first fight will be starting now, fighters, get ready, 3, 2, 1, fight!"
Immediately Jackal started circling in on Ryu at a pace that was abnormally fast, Ryu didn't want to let Jackal take the initiative because by studying his movements, he could tell that once Jackal started it would be hard to stop. Ryu threw away his normal defensive fighting style, and approached Jackal offensively, holding both of his hands up in a Muay Thai fighting stance. "Muay Thai," Jackal said in a deep raspy voice, "You'll be easy to deal with." Ryu didn't let his words go to his head, he instead focused on the task at hand, fight him, or lose.
Ryu had closed in enough for his wingspan to reach, but not close enough for Jackal to reach him unless jackal lunged forward. With that, Ryu threw a fast jab towards Jackal's head, he dodged it, but Ryu anticipated that. Jackal didn't notice that Ryu's stance had changed into one that was subtly preparing for a kick, after all Jackal wasn't used to not getting the first hit in.
As he dodged, he ducked his body to the left shielding the left side of his body defensively as Ryu's jab was thrown towards the right side of his head, Jackal was anticipating a follow up punch, but not a follow up kick.
Grounding his base leg, Ryu put all of his power into his other leg, swinging his body with maximum torque, effectively performing a near picture perfect round kick, this kick hit Jackal in his unguarded right side. The blow was heavy and made Jackal lose his stance for a second, not wasting any time Ryu threw a body shot right towards Jackal's liver, despite Jackal's instability from the kick, he rotated his body to take the body shot in a less vulnerable position, letting Ryu's fists hit his abs instead of his liver.
"What a surprise, The Ogre has gotten the first couple of hits against the Jackal!" the announcer said excitedly, indicating that this was an uncommon phenomenon.
This body shot did little to affect Jackal as he had significant core strength, which deflected the blow. Now it was Jackal's turn, Jackal threw a one two combo that Ryu narrowly dodged, but because the dodges were so narrow Ryu had lost some of his stability in his footing, so when Jackal sent a straight kick after the one two combo, Ryu had no choice but to be hit. Jackal's foot made contact with his lower abdominal muscles, which Ryu had tensed before the kick hit to deflect some of its strength. Despite doing his best job to deflect the hit, it still hurt. Ryu felt spikes of pain glimmering through his body, all of them originating from his lower abs, this threw Ryu off for a second which gave Jackal the opportunity to throw a jab that connected to Ryu, Ryu focused hard not wanting to be hit again and shrugged off the new pain from the second blow. He waited for the cross to be thrown, which it was, Jackal's movements were predictable. When Jackal threw the cross, he ducked down and countered with a punch straight into Jackal's face, the punch surprisingly connected. Jackal thought to himself, "What the hell, they said this kid was a noob, but he's fighting like he knows a thing or two, I gotta amp up my game."
"Four minutes left in the fight," said the announcer.
The illegal cage match rules for this specific host were 5 minutes of fighting, and the winner was decided by either points or knock out. It was a far cry from traditional rules, but they did this to keep it exciting.
Ryu retreated back, going on the defensive, practically taunting Jackal to come at him. Jackal had blood streaming from his nose, which looked misshapen after it took a direct hit from Ryu. There was a high possibility Ryu had broken his nose. On the other hand, Jackal had already realized his nose was broken, and he had started to see red, nobody had ever hit him smack dab in the nose before, and a beginner doing it to him drove him mad.
Empowered by his rage, Jackal didn't hesitate to throw a fury of jabs, punches, and kicks at Ryu, each one of them was either dodged or blocked because while the rage and adrenaline gave Jackal more stamina than usual, it also made him more impulsive and less contemplative in his fighting style. Ryu, despite dodging or blocking all of his hits couldn't seem to find any openings in his stance, the fury of random blows flying at him of all different types made Jackal highly unpredictable.
Suddenly, Jackal threw his shoulder down and pivoted closer to Ryu, preparing to throw an uppercut, which wasn't a good move by anyone's standards, Ryu was able to read what was happening and pretended that he was clueless to what Jackal was doing, Jackal threw the punch and at the last second Ryu pivoted, but this pivot was used to build torque for a kick, Jackal completely seeing red had yet to process what was happening and in a second everything went black for him. Ryu had nailed a perfectly executed kick straight to Jackal's head, this kick was so brutal some of the audience was worried that Jackal would suffer some brain damage.
"The Jackal is DOWN! The Ogre has won, if I do say so myself this has been one of the quickest fights I've witnessed in my entire time here, congratulations to The Ogre!" said the announcer in his usual cheesy tone.
As that announcement was being processed by the crowd Raven was already in the octagon helping Ryu out of it, holding him. "Wow man, you don't understand how much money you just made me from betting on you, the odds were like 1/9, bro, I'm rich," Raven said, not caring much about Ryu's condition and more about his monetary gain.
Ryu laughed and said back, "You could at least act like you care about my wellbeing, but good job." "Haha, my bad bro, by the way here's your payment," said Raven as he handed a paper envelope filled with bills to Ryu.
"I don't think I've ever held this much money in my life, I'll have to figure out a way to help mom with this without her getting suspicious," Ryu thought, he replied to Raven with a curt, "Thank you," and then indicated to Raven he'd be taking his leave from this place.
With that he gathered the small number of belongings he had taken to him with the fight and left before any of the patrons who bet on the Jackal could take their anger out on him.
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
-- Power-
Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein