Chapter 268: New Game Plus!
The weigh-in was at eight in the morning.
Zoey stood on the scale in the tournament's designated check-in area, a room off the main arena floor, and waited while the officials wrote down her number. Around her, other fighters from other weight classes were doing the same thing. Amateur boxing infrastructure. Forms, officials, clipboards. A medical examiner who checked her eyes and asked her a few questions and cleared her without much fanfare.
It was nothing like an FTL weigh-in. No cameras, no commentator hyping up the moment, no crowd watching her step on the scale and making noise about it. Just a number on a sheet and a signature and then she was done.
She liked it, actually. The anonymity of it. Just a fighter in a bracket.
Coach Scott was waiting outside the check-in room with a cup of coffee. "How'd it go?"
"Good to go."
"Good. Eat something light. You're on at seven tonight."
The arena sold out. Because The Devil was on the card. The Olympic Trials didn't usually draw like this. It was a serious event for people who followed boxing and the Olympics seriously. Dedicated fans, family members of competitors, sponsors, coaches, people in the community who cared about where the next Olympic team was coming from. That was the usual crowd.
This wasn't the usual crowd.
The seats were full by the time the early bouts started.
Everett was in the third row with Elizabeth. Callie was next to him on the other side. She had a sign. It said THE DEVIL in letters that could be read from the back of the room. Katlyn next to Callie's other side with a tiny flag that had THE DEVIL on it.
Coach Scott was in the corner. Zack behind him.
Zoey didn't see any of them until she was walking out.
The walk to the ring was different here. No special entrance or music to build dread within her opponent and her fans. Just her name called over the PA system, her record announced, and then she was walking through the venue under the overhead lights with her headgear on and her gloves up and the crowd went loud.
She walked to the ring and stepped through the ropes and stood in her corner and looked across at Yuki Tanaka.
Yuki was already there. Already looking back. She'd tied her hair back tight. She looked ready to give it her all. Zoey was happy to see that. She wasn’t afraid of her. Or at least, she was hiding it pretty well.
‘Let’s break her fucking face!’ Inner Zoey cheered.
Zoey rolled her shoulders. Felt the unfamiliar headgear sit against her skull. Felt her hands in the gloves, the weight of them different from her usual gloves in the FTL.
She felt the thing that lived in the lower part of her chest start to wake up.
‘Finally,’ Inner Zoey breathed. ‘FINALLY!’
The referee called them to center. He went through the instructions. The basics, protect yourself at all times, obey my commands, touch gloves, good luck. Yuki touched gloves with a fierce look in her eyes. Zoey loved to see that.
They went back to their corners.
The bell rang.
Yuki came forward immediately. Shoulders low, hands up, feet alive and active. Zoey went forward too. They met in the center of the ring.
The first exchange was fast and ugly and real. Yuki's jab caught her on the cheek before Zoey had fully closed the distance. Zoey's right hand answered it, landing on Yuki's guard but pushing through, the impact shuddering up through both their arms. Yuki fired back with a left hook that grazed the side of Zoey’s head. Zoey stepped into it and drove a short right into her ribs.
They were three feet apart and the punches were coming from everywhere.
"OH! OH! Both fighters opening up immediately! Neither one is giving an inch here and the crowd is LOVING it!" The announcer's voice cracked through the room.
Zoey felt Yuki's combinations landing. A right hand to her jaw that snapped her head back. A left hook to the body that she felt in her ribs. Yuki was strong and she was smart and she was throwing everything she had every time she threw.
The Devil’s smile came onto Zoey's face without her deciding to put it there.
‘Yes.’ she thought. ‘This is what we’re talking about.’
Body 0.9. Normal human stats. A nationally ranked boxer throwing her best work at a girl who could actually feel it.
She'd forgotten what this was like. The honest weight of a real punch landing on a body that registered it. For so long she'd been handicapping herself, measuring exactly how much she could give without ending the fight too fast. She hadn't been able to just fight. Not really. Not against normal humans.
She fired a straight right that caught Yuki flush on the nose. Yuki's head rocked back and she walked through it, already throwing the counter hook, and it landed on Zoey's cheek hard enough that she felt it in her back teeth.
Zoey laughed. Actually laughed, in the middle of the exchange, a short bright sound that the ringside cameras definitely caught.
"IS SHE LAUGHING?! THE DEVIL IS LAUGHING WHILE TAKING SHOTS FROM TANAKA!"
"WHAT IS THIS?!"
"SHE'S HAVING THE TIME OF HER LIFE OUT THERE!"
The crowd noise climbed to something that the ceiling didn't seem quite big enough to contain.
Yuki wasn't backing down. That was the thing. Every time Zoey came forward Yuki came forward to meet her. The exchange in the center became the whole fight, neither fighter willing to give up the space, both of them throwing in combinations that the announcers were struggling to call fast enough. The headgear absorbed some of it. Not all of it.
‘She isn’t fucking terrible. I’m surprised.’ Inner Zoey commented. ‘I thought Coach said these guys were just losers who couldn’t make it in the FTL or the professional boxing league. But she is pretty fun.’
Back and forth. Hook answered by hook. Straight answered by straight. The crowd responding to every exchange, the energy in the building building on itself, the type of noise that fed back into the fighters and pushed them to fight harder.
About two thirds of the way through the round Zoey saw an opening. Yuki was loading up on a left hand, her whole body working into it, committed. Zoey rolled her shoulder into the punch, letting it glance off instead of eating it straight, and as Yuki's weight came forward she stepped inside.
The uppercut came from the floor.
Yuki's feet left the canvas.
Her heels came up and she staggered back two steps with her eyes suddenly wide and her guard scrambled, the world briefly not cooperating the way it was supposed to.
The arena exploded.
"THE DEVIL WITH AN UPPERCUT! TANAKA IS HURT! TANAKA IS HURT!"
Zoey followed. She threw two quick rights to the body before Yuki's guard came back down, feeling the solid impact of each one, feeling Yuki absorb them and hold on and keep her feet. She fired another right hand toward the head. Yuki blocked it. Fired again. Blocked again. She was taking the punishment and staying present and not folding.
And then, about three quarters through the round, something shifted.
The instinct of a body that had been absorbing everything it was willing to absorb and was asking for a pause.
A clinch.
Zoey couldn’t punch while being held like this. She felt Yuki's arms around her, the other girl's breathing close and ragged, and she felt the referee moving toward them.
She turned her head slightly. Brought her mouth close to Yuki's ear.
"Are you scared?"
The ref stepped in and separated them.
The bell rang.
End of round one.