Chapter 7
In July 2013 a gas station camera caught footage of a brawl between two professional fighters and four other men.
Both fighters had by then amassed more than 50 fights between them with more than 40 of those being a win.
The four men had no known history of fighting.
It wasn't difficult to figure out how it ended.
Both fighters were completely obliterated.
One of them never entered the ring again...
There were no cushy floors.
No padded gloves.
No referee to stop it if it turned too ugly.
An athlete who'd spent most of their life training to fight in the ring had no business in a streetfight...
It was too dangerous a place for them.
---
Gabriel flinched as he touched a bruise on his left abdomen, just above his hip bone. Creeping all the way up his side, it was almost lucky that the giant welt stopped just under the bottom most rib.
He'd made quite a few dumb choices, the first was throwing a jab when they were already upon him.
Some could argue that he was already in a bad situation anyway so it was better to retaliate than take it.
They'd be right, but that wouldn't be the mistake we were talking about.
It was Kevin, Kyle or Kenny. Not the most intimidating name one could get stuck with, but with his height, he was certainly the one calling the shots in this group of four when Daniel wasn't around.
That was probably why he was the one doing the talking, asking Gabriel to follow them... and the one to try to hit him when he replied with a no.
The jab landed square on the boy's jaw...
His very first mistake.
The jaw was prime target if you wanted to knock a person out and any professional would stand by it's effectiveness.
But Gabriel wasn't looking to knock him out, not immediately anyway.
No, like a boxer, he first used the jab to gauge his opponents ability.
The worst he had done to this kid was confuse him and made him back off a little
Once he figured out that the boy couldn't see his punches, it didn't matter what his name was, Gabriel had a right straight with his name on it.
What he didn't get was that he didn't have the time or leisure of a 12 round match, because at the same time he had asserted to himself that his punches could land, one of the other goons who was quicker on the uptake finally came out of his stupor.
And half way through the punch Gabriel had reserved to put down the big one, this guy .
---
He could swear that he didn't feel any sort of pain when it had landed, but it sure as heck wasn't letting him off easy now.
He had spent the last 10 minutes gingerly spreading the ointment on it, but every slight graze would send the pain all the way up his neck, by this time he had barely covered 2/3rds of it and he wasn't sure if he was starting to get used to the pain.
It almost fluctuated in its feedback as sometimes his was too tired that it almost numbed it while the next second that exhaustion came back to bite him by pushing the sensitivity up to an eleven.
Finally he figured he would much prefer being able to get some sleep tonight, which wasn't very probable if he had to play it safe with each and every spot and that determinations started with this one.
With a few deep breaths he rubbed the ointment all over his right hand and gripped onto their sink with the other. By the time it was hovering over his injury however, he stopped himself as he bit on his lips.
Closing his eye in the last moment, he initiated.
The first sensation that came over him was this cool touch like a nice cold face towel after a hot sauna, it was quite chilling and almost made up for the excrutiating pain that came over him next.
"Mmhmmm!" He groaned into his closed mouth in confirmation, as if to say 'Yup! there it is!'
But he didn't dare open his mouth at the risk of letting a scream escape it.
Once that was done he quickly turned to the back of his shoulder where his next mistake was perched up just over his armpit.
Like the previous one, it wasn't a colour that flattered his frame quite as much as he'd like.
Then again, few people could really pull off purple, spotted with shades of prussian blue and he always thought that navy did better at making his eyes pop.