Author's Note

The chapter beings..... and soon will the flames of the roasts will soon cometh!

Please be gentle...... it’s my first time 🥲

Chapter One

Huffing and puffing, I continue on. Nothing is stopping me from achieving what I want. Once I feel my heart rate go down I go into a full sprint. Five minutes of a full sprint go by and I slow down to a jog. My heart pounding in my ears as sweat slides down my hoodie covered face. I take deep breaths in and out to get air circulating in my lungs, keeping myself from getting winded and gassed. I continue my jog and bring my hands up to the sides of my face. I stop jogging and start throwing a combination of jabs and straights, pivoting in place as I lean back, duck, and roll under imaginary punches being thrown at me. I throw jabs at my imaginary opponent and quickly lean back a bit and bring up my left shoulder up to let an imaginary straight right hand slide to away harmlessly away from my head. I then roll under to my left to avoid a right hook. I spring back up pivot to my left and throw a right uppercut to my imaginary opponent’s chin. Imagining his head getting knocked up, I throw a straight right to his exposed chin.

I keep on with my shadow boxing for ten minutes, throwing combinations of jabs, straights, hooks, and uppercuts. Once those ten minutes were up I continued on with my road work. A couple miles into my run, my phone rings. I stop my road work and pull out my phone.

“Richard? The hell does he want?” I tap the green answer button and put the phone up for my ear. “Yo! What’s up?”

“Tatsuo! Whatcha doing right now champ?” A energetic old man says through the phone.

“I’m doing road work right now, why?”

I hear my old manager sigh. I already know what he’s going to say. Every time he sees or hears that I’m continuing with my training he always disapprovingly sighs and always tells me to give up on boxing, that no one will want to fight me. I always hate it when he does that, but I know someday someone will want to sign a contract. I know it.

“Kid, I’ve told you this a thousand times already. No guy wants to fight you! You’re just outta of their league. Not even the guys in the heavy weight divisions wanna fight you. Stop wasting your ti—“

“What are you calling me for, Richard?” I interrupt him, already having enough of his bullshit talk.

He sighs again. “I just wanted see how you were doing kid, I haven’t seen you in awhile. Thought I’d call ya and see if you wanted to go get some lunch, maybe chat a little.”

“I’m kind of busy right n—“ I’m then interrupted as the old man starts to yell into the phone.

“Busy my ass! What your doing is pointless. I’ve told you over and over, no one wants to fight you! Why can’t you get that through your head?! Your just too good! Insanely! Once people knew that, that’s when you boxing career ended. It ended, Tatsuo. Stop fantasizing that someone with equal skills as you will come. They won’t. You know this.”

I move my phone away from my ear and tap the phone to end the call. I let my arms loosely dangle by my sides lifelessly. My mind starts to repeat those last words of the old man’s. I knew that nobody with equal skills as me are out there. I knew that very well. But... I didn’t want to give up. Boxing is all I knew. Boxing is everything to me. Boxing is what keeps me going. Sure it sounded a bit obsessive, but it’s what I enjoy doing. It’s like a drug that I’m addicted to.

Richard’s words started to run through my head. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I should just give up. It’s pointless. Negative thoughts started to flood my head. Not thoughts of suicide or hurting myself. Just thoughts of being cursed with just being too good. Thoughts of just giving up on everything about boxing. These thoughts started to get me out my mood of running as I prepare myself to walk back home.

But then....

Something unexpectedly started to happen. Something that would make anyone trip out from the sight. As I walked, everything started to fade away and start to fade into something different. One minute I was in my hometown walking back home on a concrete sidewalk, and next I’m in the middle of town with anthropomorphic mythological animals walking around the small town, chatting away happily with one another.

Unicorns, Pegasi, Dragons, Minotaurs, etc! My mind couldn’t comprehend what the hell was going on. I was so lost and bewildered that I didn’t know what to think, or even how to act. I just stood in the middle of the town, looking around dumbly with my mouth agape like an idiot. This all felt way too real that I started to panic a little in the inside. I had no idea where I was, or how I even got here. My heart started to race as my palms got sweaty, knees weak, and arms started to get heavy. Full panic was about to hit me.

Until...

A strong gust of wind blew through the small town and something, what sounded papery, ends up covering my face. I shakily grab whatever is covering my face and pull it off. I look upon what looks to be a flier that’s advertising something.

“What’s this?” I said under my breath as I read the advertisement. “Boxing World Champion Belt is on the line. Who will be the first, the fiercest, the most skillful, and the best pound for pound king? Will it be you? Come on down to these selected gyms to sign up.” I finish reading the flier and as I finish it my fear started to slowly fade away as excitement started to slowly fade in. My body started to shake, heart started to race, and my hands started to sweat. This was a sign of my boxing career coming back, I thought. Also, a change to fight opponents who will mostly be on my level, maybe even greater than mine. The very thought of that got me the chills.

In my state of excitement I failed to notice a couple of the equine folk that live in the small town walk up to me ask me something. I shake myself out to calm myself and look towards the small group. The three being a deep red coated stallion with fiery mane with no horn or wings, a jet black scaled dragoness with parts of her being purple, and a female wolf with a stark white coat and blue markings on her fur. Their appearances would have shocked anyone, but not me. I was more excited then ever as I saw that all three had boxing gear hanging around them.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch what you said?” I said, trying to hide the excitement in my voice.

“I said, are you looking for the boxing gym that’s around? I asked cause you looked lost and you look like your not from around here” the stallion said as he curiously looked at me.

I looked down at myself, “Is it really that obvious that I’m not from here?”

The dragoness grunts in annoyance as she cross her arms across her chest. “Considering you look rather odd, yeah. It’s pretty damn obvious. Like, who wears hoodies and sweats pants, and whatever those are” she points down at my shoes “in the middle of a hot day when Celestia’s sun is blazing the hottest.”

“I gotta agree with her, your pretty strange one” he says with a chuckle. “But hey, I’m not here to judge I’m here to see if you want to tag along with us to get to the gym” the fiery red stallion holds out his hand towards me with a smile. “The names Fury Steel, care to join us....” he pauses to get my name.

I grab hold of his hand with strong grip and he does the same, which gets his smile to widen. “Tatsuo, Tatsuo Gracia” I replied with smile equal to his. My name got mixed reactions from the stallion and dragoness.

“Uh... strange name for a strange guy like you. Suits you very well!” Fury says with a nod.

“Strange clothes, strange character, and strange name. Now we just need to see what you look like. You might look strange too” the dragoness chuckles.

“Chill with the heat throwing Kayda. Why do you always gotta flame the newbies?”

“Newbie?” I ask, almost offended.

“You got boxing experience? Like as in, you fought in the ring before?” The dragoness now named Kayda asks as if I didn’t have any experience. “You don’t even look like you box at all?” she scoffed as she sized me up.

“It’s probably the baggy sweater I got that makes me look off” i grip the ends of my sweater. “Here I’ll show ya.” I lift my sweater over me and sling it over my shoulder with a grin. “Do I look like a bo—... are you guys ok?”