Diego wondered how Morea was doing. He usually got some text hassling him about something or other first thing in the morning. He didn’t see him at his locker when he arrived at school this morning either. Seemed like a typical day otherwise. Walking down the hallway he saw the same two boys pushing the same small kid. Spotting Mia out of the corner of his eye, Diego decided to step up.
“Yeah you’re really tough together huh?” Diego taunted. He was taller than both the bullies, and he got in one of their faces and said “Why don’t you try to do that to me?” The boy stared him down, but his friend pulled at his arm saying “Come on let’s go man, teacher’s watching.” Diego laughed, knowing an excuse when he saw one. The two boys walked away.
Diego helped the smaller boy up when he heard “Wow what are you trying to be, the Flying Fox?” He felt a lump in his throat when he heard the name “Flying Fox.” He turned around to see Mia smiling at him.
“What are you talking about?” In a rare moment Diego appeared to lose his cool.
“Didn’t you hear, it’s all over social media.” Mia showed him her Instagram page where pictures from a local newstation showed a new vigilante, the Flying Fox, saving a store from robbers.
“Uh, I must have had my phone off.” He nervously said as they walked to class. Passing people through the hallway, Diego could see other people watching clips of the Flying Fox, both at the store, and in the underground fighting circuit.
“You’re a big hit homes!” Morea said as he ate his taco at the cafeteria.
“Thanks man.” Diego said. “Was worried about you, didn’t hear from you this morning.”
“Came in late homes.” Morea took a drink of milk before saying. “Listen, I got you another fight.”
“What?”
“You’re a hit homes. The public wants to see, you know…”
Diego stopped him before he could say that name “Hold on man, I’m done with that stuff.”
“I’m countin on you man come on!”
“You ok, you’ve been acting awful nervous lately.”
“All right I’ll level with you. You know this thing was started to settle disputes right? Well, there’s been a little dispute, and..”
“And you need me to bail you out of trouble again.”
Officer Santos waited in the conference room while Chief Higgins began his briefing. As everyone knew, about a year ago there was a wave of shootings and violence across three days in Los Angeles. Ever since then, thankfully, gang activity had been pretty quiet. Now the department knew why. Higgins showed a clip of two people fighting in an empty swimming pool with a crowd of people around. Apparently, soon after that wave of violence, an underground fighting network was set up. The gangs agreed to settle their disputes through underground fights, and amazingly it worked. It developed from there into people fighting for money, then naturally gambling grew out of it, and it’s operation even expanded internationally.
Officer Santos felt a lump in her throat when she saw the next clip. It was a fighter in, what to her was a familiar looking Lucha Mask fighting on a rooftop. “In other news,” Chief Higgins said, “looks like we have a vigilante in our midst. This cat right here calls himself the Flying Fox.” A different clip then came up on the screen. “Here he is again stopping robbers at a convenience store. He’s lucky he didn’t get himself killed.” Officer Santos almost got sick while the other officers laughed around her. “So keep an eye out for this too. We got word on where we think the next fight will be, so keep your ears peeled for instructions later.”
That night Diego found himself in a warehouse surrounded by a pretty substantial crowd. Through the eyeholes of his lucha mask he could see the crowd cheering him on as they chanted “Flying Fox, Flying Fox.” He posed to the crowd, but then felt nervous as Kennedy introduced the next fighter. “And his opponent!” Alexander, said to the crowd, “From the land of the rising sun, Yoshimitsu!” The crowd cheered as the muscular Japanese fighter did a spin kick for the crowd. Kennedy said two more words, “Let’s fight!”
The two fighters nodded to each other as the crowd erupted. They paced around for a moment, both with their hands up. Both fighters felt the desire to entertain and both began a series of ariel maneuvers, none of which landed a significant blow to the other. They paced around again as the cheering continued.
Diego leapt back up and landed a spinning kick to his opponent, knocking him to one knee. Diego instinctively knew he should take the fight to the ground and start punching, if he was lucky he could land a submission hold. His show off side got the better of him and he leapt back into the air in an attempt to make a Superman punch.
Yoshimitsu easily caught him with a simple punch to the stomach. Diego hit his head while landed on the hardwood floor while clutching his stomach. Yoshimitsu wasted no time getting on top of his opponent, landing a series of hard blows to the head.
Diego was getting hit hard. He could hear the audience cheering for blood. He desperately raised his arms trying to block the still landing blows. He feared passing out, his ears were ringing as he looked up to see his opponent pause. The ringing in Diego’s ears was now replaced by something else, the sound of sirens.
“Cops! Everybody out of here.” Kennedy yelled as the crowd dispersed. Red and blue lights flashed in the distance but were fast approaching.
“I hope this settles Morea’s mess!” Diego thought to himself as he ran out the back. He didn’t see his friend, but was only concentrating on getting out of there. Morea always found a way to weasle out of trouble, and now he had to focus on himself. While running he put his hands up to his mask, he was unsure of whether or not he should leave his mask on.
Getting some distance from the Warehouse, he saw several cop cars pull up to the building. His legs kept moving a pair of headlights shown on him. He bolted again as another car followed behind him. There were no flashing lights on the car, shit he was really in trouble now. The car didn’t pursue him for long as he heard “Diego!” over the megapone. “Diego, get in here now!” Dam, now he was in some real deep shit. He almost wished it was some gang member about to whack him.
Officer Santos pulled up beside him and pushed the passenger door open on her patrol car. As soon as Diego got in his mother slapped him silly. “You stupid asshole you could have gotten killed!” She ripped the mask off him and looked at it. “You got blood on your grandfather’s mask!”
“I’m sorry mom.” Diego said. “I was just doing it to get some money for us.” Diego wasn’t a weasel like his friend. His stomach was in knots now that he saw how upset his mother was, and he knew his Grandfather was disapointed.
“When we get home your grandfather is going to give you the stretching of a lifetime.” Diego’s mom calmly said as they drove away from the crime scene.
This has been a fun experiment these last couple months, but I am going to end it here. Thanks to everyone who took the time to read these stories. If you liked these, I am working on a horror story that I will begin posting in October. In the meantime take care of yourselves.
Hard Coal Studios 