Uvo

I have been training for 5 days straight. The old woman has taught me a variety of poses, punches, kicks, and blocks. The rules of the tournament are, as usual, anything goes.

Whether you want to use a sword, hammer, gun, any piece of technology and well, you get the idea. Any piece of equipment and any weapon is all up to you.

This also includes the use of body enhancing supplements or drugs. Of course, I stay away from that stuff and it seems like the old lady has no intention of forcing me to take anything.

Ant’s been coming by every day but is mostly silent, he said that he’ll come and watch the fight.

Tracksuit guy, it turns out, is called Tom and has been training here for a few months. He's going to be my partner in the upcoming fight.

He looks like he's in the middle 200’s. That's the other thing, there are no age limits.

He must have a regular job outside of this because he arrives and leaves around the same time as Ant.

He's taller than me, around the same height as Ant. He's also better trained but lacks the mindset I have, I sparred with him a couple of times and despite being more disciplined I've won almost every bout.

Tracy hasn't come back from wherever she was going a few days ago.

I hope she's okay, I've known her for a few years now so it would be a blatant lie to say I didn't care about her.

Ant’s been pushing himself to fight as well, for all I know he might just be relieving some stress. Hell, it works well for me.

It’s Saturday so there’s no school and I was surprised to find Ant here before me. He’s in his usual clothes, he doesn’t realise it but he looks so out of place in this gym. He has these perfectly clean tracksuit trousers and a short sleeved t-shirt that has some Academy name on it that I can only assume is the one he goes to.

In comparison, my shredded cotton trousers and a stained white t-shirt make me look a lot more at home in a dump like this. I appreciate the fact that he doesn’t care in the slightest though. I’ve met many an arsehole in my time that would jump at the opportunity to take the piss out of my attire.

Anyway, like I said, it’s Saturday so the fight’s tomorrow, and yet for the entire day, Tom has been missing. I grabbed some food with Antony which was an experience I will remember for a long time. It was like nothing I have ever had before.

A burger. A huge slab of meat, the likes of which I’ve only ever seen on the TV adverts which I could have sworn were fake.

Then there was a bunch of other things with it that I can’t even remember because I was too absorbed in the myriad of juices and flavours spilling into my mouth.

Suddenly I found my motivation for the fight hit a high point. If we could win this maybe I could get one for Tracy as well.

Winning the fight though required 2 people, and it was already well past the time where we were meant to meet for training.

I gave the manager a questioning look. She hadn’t told me her name yet and I didn’t ask.

“Where’s Tony?”

Antony asked what was on both of our minds, the lady looked slowly over to Antony and closed her eyes.

Suddenly, she disappeared. I felt wind rush past but I was not expecting her to move so my eyes completely lost track of what was happening.

I saw that Antony was equally, if not more confused than me.

“What just happened?”

“She moved fast.”

“Right, I could guess that much. You think she’s gone to find him?”

I nodded, no doubt this was important for her. I still don’t know what that big headed alien was shouting to her about but it was clearly on her mind. If it had something to do with the fight then Tom is vital. Antony would hardly make a suitable replacement.

Even I’m going to be at a disadvantage and I’ve been fighting all my life.

It did not take long for the lady to return. In her arms was a clearly disfigured human. The arm was bent up and around in a very unnatural manner and his knee joint was bending the wrong way.

Blood flowed freely down the man’s face from every feature on it. Even his eyes were bleeding.

He was wearing familiar clothes though and even if he wasn’t I could have guessed that this was Tom.

The woman laid the body down on the floor and checked his pulse.

She got up a second later and shook her head.

“It’s faint but he’s alive. Uvo, go to the office and call an ambulance right now.”

I nodded, rushing to the office I found the phone, dialed the number and told them where I was. Thankfully after a few agonising minutes and a surprisingly wound up manager, the ambulance arrived and took Tom into emergency care.

No one went with him, I barely knew the guy, same for Antony and the manager had the fight to cancel.