The Mysterious Demon

(A/N: Dear Readers, thank you all for your patience, I know I haven’t updated in a while but you’ve caught me in the middle of my final exam period, Ramadan and Eid but to compensate, I’ll be making this chapter longer than usual. Enjoy!)

-Blake-

An alarm woke me up that morning, making me get up instantly.

I’ve been training with Dominic for 3 weeks now and these weeks have been some of the hardest I’ve had to go through physically. I thought having Dominic as my trainer would have been easy, we’d have fun all the time -and sometimes we do, but there’s fear in her eyes, fear for me.

As I brushed my teeth and changed into my workout gear, I’m reminded why. Just as much as it hurts me to think that she was beaten up and humiliated in the worst way possible, she probably felt that same way thinking about me and what would happen if I were to go against the King. I’ve acted confident for her, told her I could do it, trained my ass off to get stronger and stronger each coming day, trying to put her fears to the side but in truth,

I doubted.

As strong as I was getting, there was still a part of me that thought that if Dominic couldn’t do it, then how could I? And if I were able to defeat him, to gain the title of strongest street fighter, then how would that make Dominic feel? I didn’t want to put her through something like that but whenever I’ve tried to talk to her about it she’d tell me that things like that weren’t a problem, that thoughts like that would just drag me down, have me hesitate.

‘Think of me as your challenge, not your setback. Just like how I thought of Xavier,’ she had told me so I shook the thought out of my head. I was doing this for her and would win whether I liked it or not because he needed to be taught a lesson.

I walked down to the training room where Dominic was waiting for me. I caught her testing out one of the punching bags, her swings sharp, the contact loud and in the end, she did a quick turn and kicked at the height of someone’s head which made the bag swing off of its hook. I stood impressed before going in to help her pick the bag up again but before I could, I noticed that her face which was semi-hidden by her hair held a smile.

“Morning,” I greeted and she turned to me with a grin,

“Good morning!” We shared a quick kiss, the gentlest part of the day, before getting ready, “This is your last session before the face-offs, you ready?” My last day of intense workouts, my last day of 6-hour sessions from 9 am-3 pm, my last day of independent workouts from 9 pm-11 pm, my last day before the fight.

I grinned,

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

–

We were at the 5-hour mark for today’s training session, Dominic was teaching me a new hold which involved me being locked under her and as much as this position would have been desirable any other time, right now it was painful as fuck. Thankfully, she unlocked it when her phone went off, leaving me laying on the floor like a starfish because of my exhaustion.

“Alia will be here soon,” she lets me know after her phone call. Alia was one of Dominic’s trainees and she’d come for her lesson once a week for an hour as well. During this time Xavier would come and train me. In that sense, Alia is my saving grace. I love Dominic, but her workout sessions are far from easy. Even now when I should be used to the intensity, my legs shake, hardly able to carry me and even though we aren’t focussed on ab work, laughing, sneezing, makes my core ache.

I look up to see Dominic leaning down to look at me while I was still on the floor. Her face held a soft expression, her beautiful smile playing on her lips, her eyes gleaming.

I wanted to ask her a question but nerves got the best of me and it ended up getting stuck in my throat, so instead, she lightly taps my cheek twice and says, “Come on hun, you had your break already, carry on going until Xavier gets here”

‘hun’, that was new but it gave me a warming feeling so I wasn’t complaisant when getting up, even though it hurt like hell but before I could fully stand, “Why’s your ass on the floor Blake? Don’t tell me Demon can still beat you this close to the competition!”

I rolled my eyes at Xavier’s exclamation as he walked into the room, jacket swung around his shoulders as if he ruled the world. “Don’t be mean,” Dominic says but just as I was starting to think that she was defending me, “beating me isn’t that easy of a feat.” Their chuckles filled the room, and a sudden realisation that these street fighters were going to be the death of me made its way into my head. They were the actual demons.

Alia comes in not too long after that, we nod at each other in formal greeting but we don’t usually talk. I do catch a bit of their training while I’m having my break with Xavier though and something about it tempts me to ask, “Why is she so much nicer to girls?”

While Dominic would raise her voice when giving me quick instructions, was rough, would tell me to go faster or that I was too weak, her voice was still stern but more gentle with her, she was formal, she was caring, and she made sure Alia was comfortable all the time.

Xavier was confused at my question until he turned to them and realised what I meant. “Because boys are assholes.”

I looked back at him with a raised eyebrow and he shrugged. “If she were to show any ‘nice-ness’ during her training sessions with guys they’d walk all over her, call her weak, or wouldn’t take her seriously. Boys are assholes. Girls, on the other hand, respect her no matter how she speaks to them so she doesn’t bother being rough. It strains the throat you know.”

“You say, ‘boys are assholes’ as if you aren’t one of them.”

Xavier laughs at me wholeheartedly before exclaiming, “Because I’m a man!”

—

-Dominic- Two Days later-

“It feels weird, doesn’t it?”

Xavier was standing next to me in my office in the bar. There were 15 minutes left until the Face-Offs started and the whole place was packed. Xavier was the commentator for the fights tonight, I was the supervisor, but all we could think about was how we used to stand in the street fighter’s section in the midst of the screaming and cheering and wait for our names to be called out.

“It does,” I answer.

I feel him nudge me after that so I turn to him to see his hand outstretched. “For old times sake,” he says which makes me grin before locking my hand with his,

“Through this, we, the first and second strongest, promise to stay true, stay fair and stay bloody no matter who we’re fighting or what we’re fighting, even if it’s each other.”

He pulls me in and hugs me after that before going on and telling me to ‘wish him luck’ as he exited the room. The next thing that could be heard is his voice booming through the speakers,

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, ARE YOU READY?!”

And as the cheers grew, my goosebumps started to form so I took in a deep breath and walked out of my room. The fights were starting.

–

After a few hours, the tournament rounds were ending quickly, fights being 2-5 minutes on average. There were a lot of new fighters this year but unfortunately, a lot of them were inexperienced and would quickly be defeated by those who were year-long fighters. Even then, almost none of the fighters I used to go against were here anymore. The only person I did recognise tonight apart from Nick and the rest of the guys was Destroyer but he wasn’t here to fight, he came up to me to say hi, telling me he only came to see me since the fights were held in my bar this year. When I asked him why he didn’t sign up he told me it wasn’t fun if I wasn’t going to be a part of the competition.

“You could have had a shot at beating King,” I tell him and he scoffs.

“That trash of a human being who calls himself ‘King’,” we pause to look at the ring where he was currently fighting and although Xavier told him to stop already, he continued beating the unconscious fighter until Xavier pulled them apart forcefully, “deserves to be ripped apart by you, M. D”

I can’t help but smile, “Still calling me M. D when the whole world knows my real name?”

He shakes his head, “I didn’t want to find out like that. I wanted maybe a handshake, a formal greeting-” I stopped him by extending a hand which he looks down at with shock.

“My name is Dominic,”

He shakes my hand excitedly which makes me laugh, “Wait I wanna take a picture too!” And after our selfie, I start paying attention to the ring again. Blake was up for his semi-final match.

Blake had been doing really well in the fights so far. I wasn’t worried about his stamina because we had been training in long hours for weeks so he had built that up, I also made sure that these past two days he was resting so that he’d have the energy to go all out tonight. The only thing to worry about now was his technique and how well he’s able to adapt to his opponents. During our spars, I made sure to change my fighting style often so he wouldn’t get used to the same thing. He had also been fighting at the bar on his own which would have helped that too.

I was still worried though. Every time he’d get hit, I’d flinch, hoping he wouldn’t get hurt too bad but that was unavoidable tonight, especially if he were to go against the King. But I was confident. I taught him as much as I could in the short amount of time we had. I had him work hard and it’ll be worth it.

It’ll be worth it.

I made sure whilst Blake was fighting, I was near the ring, showing my support and giving him pointers whenever I could. This time was no different. After this semi-final match, he’d be going against King who, judging from the match that just took place, was still bloodthirsty.

When Blake saw me he grins, showing the blood pooling in his mouth which makes me chuckle, “Win.” I tell him and he nods at me, determined.

Their match starts and Blake doesn’t hesitate to go right in, dodging the other guy’s punch before responding with his own, one at the jaw, another on the side but afterwords, he got kicked which separated them again. This went back and forth for a while until he was finally able to hold the guy in the hold that I had taught him which not only trapped the other guy from moving but also the angle at which his arm was held was probably causing a tremendous amount of pain. The guy was being persistent though if only Blake was to make it tighter he’d dislocate the shoulder.

“Tighter Blake!” I shouted after a few more seconds you could see the shoulder come undone, making the guy scream out in pain and finally give in.

“THE WINNER IS THE BEAST!”Please check at N/ôvel(D)rama.Org.

“Yes!” I exclaimed as Blake got up and made his way towards me. I gave him a kiss which he returned excitedly.

“Only one more left,” He whispers in my ear and we both turn to look at King who was walking up to the ring.

I made Blake look at me before Xavier could announce the start of the fight. “Remember, if he’s using the blades they’ll most likely be at his joints, his elbows, his knees. If you see him coming in with those then you need to avoid it at all costs. Use your legs. Stay strong.” I tell him and he nods at me. With that I let him go.

“You can do this!” I cheered but it gets lost in between those of the crowds’.

“Having both of the street fighters train you? I can hardly call this fair!” King exclaimed at Blake but his smirk is still plastered on his face. He didn’t care about fairness, never did. “You put in a good effort to get this far boy but you’ll lose to me, the King!”

I hoped Blake was ignoring him as he nodded to Xavier who announced the beginning of their fight.

“START!”

King comes in quickly, quicker than Blake could register and he was punched roughly on the jaw. However, Blake regained his focus and moved in with a few punches of his own which were easily blocked. He tried kicking too but King took a hold of his leg before swinging him over and crashing him onto the floor. Blake didn’t day down though, he knew better than to do so. He got up and was able to kick at King’s legs, making him fall which allowed Blake to throw punches at his face a few times, blood dripping onto the ring but what he failed to see was,

“Blake his elbow!” I shouted but by the time he noticed it was too late, King brought his elbow down where I could clearly see a blade stick out slightly from the shirt and jam into Blake’s leg. “Fuck,”

The pain in Blake’s leg was distraction enough for King to be able to free himself and go in to swing his leg around and hook Blake’s neck before dragging it down and locking him into place. Blae tried struggling but all of King’s weight was on top of him, he couldn’t move which made King laugh out loud, the laugh that haunted me. He continued beating Blake and at this point I just wanted Blake to give in. It hurt.

But he didn’t, he continued fighting and I could see King was getting impatient too because he raised his elbow again, the same one as before, and pungled it into Blake’s black by his right shoulder blade. “Blake!”

However, he didn’t stop the fight just yet and although I was looking at Xavier with desperation to stop the fight, he was looking for something which made me stop and look too. Blake was holding onto the elbow which held the blade in his back, keeping King from removing it, before sharply pulling it to the side. This made the device attaching it to him break. The knife was still stuck in Blake’s back but King was thrown to the side.

The cheers became quiet at this. King was exposed.

That was Xavier’s queue, “IT SEEMS KING HAS BEEN BREAKING THE FIRST RULE OF THE RING. THERE ARE NO WEAPONS ALLOWED! AND FOR THIS, HE IS DISQUALIFIED!”

I quickly jump onto the ring when Xavier announces this and I rush to Blake who was struggling to get up. He tried smiling at me when I got to him but the pain stopped him and he let out a groan. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t beat him,” he told me but I shook my head.

“You did more than enough, you need help now,”

“Fuck off! I could have won without the knives! This is bullshit!” King shouts from behind me but Xavier wasn’t having any of it,

“Shut the fuck up you sick bastard, and get off of our ring!”

“Like hell!”

Since he was behind me, I couldn’t see what was going on but judging from the gasps from the crowd and Blake trying to say, “Behind you-!” I knew he was planning on attacking me while my back was turned.

I quickly got up as he was trying to bring another knife down at me and caught his wrist. This seemed to shock him but his anger was still present. “I’m not sure if anyone’s told you but those who break the rules will then have to go against me.”

When I said this I could see a hint of fear run through his eyes while the crowd started cheering again, this time, for me.

I turned to Xavier and told him to take care of Blake which made him hurriedly get Blake out of the ring before I started. I looked back at Blake one more time to see him mouth the words “Kill him” as he went which made me smile.

After he was gone, I turned back to King with a murderous look. He had been trying to get his wrist out of my grip but was failing because I wasn’t planning on letting him go.

Without giving him the pleasure of a warning, I lifted a leg and kicked him back while I was still holding his wrist which I could feel break before I let go of it. While he was distracted by it, I went in again with another kick to his side which he caught but I didn’t stop and used his hold of my leg as support to my jump and I went in with my other leg which allowed me to crash him down with me.

As he groaned in pain I walked up to him, grabbing his collar and lifting him before going in for a punch, he tried blocking it but his broken wrist was too weak and he ended up hitting himself and falling onto the floor again.

The more I hit him, the calmer I would get, the more I felt like the weight on my soul was being lifted. I breathed in and out before letting a smirk grow on my lips as the crowd screamed at me to carry on beating him.

I watched as he tried punching me but at this point, his attempts looked sluggish to me. His swings easily avoidable until I grabbed one of his arms, pulling him into a kimura which strengthened my position and allowed me to rip the muscles in his shoulder. I took joy in the yells of pain he was letting out, continuing to beat him while he couldn’t fight back until his face was unrecognisable, his arms loose at his sides. He was on his knees, incapable of moving but I was past mercy.

“When you’re up against me, You. Will. Die.” I threatened as I walked up to him for the last time, ending it with a round kick to his skull and watching him fall to the floor.

There was a moment of silence before Xavier’s voice ran through the hall,

“AND THE WINNER IS OUR QUEEN, DEMONNN!”

The crowd confirmed my win with their cheers and I looked up at the ceiling, the lights shining down on me but this time not as a failure, in victory.

“DEMON! DEMON! DEMON! DEMON! DEMON!”

I put a fist in the air,

“I AM DOMINIC AND I WILL FOREVER BE THE DEMON OF THE RING!”