Chapter 155: Sparring Partner [FIXED!]

Darren pulled up to the gym’s fight arena, a converted warehouse space with mats laid out across half the floor and a proper caged ring set up in the back for the more serious sparring sessions. He scanned the room as he walked in, sizing up the handful of fighters already working through rounds — a decent mix, some clearly amateur, a couple who moved with the kind of polish that suggested actual competitive experience.

None of it fazed him. If anything, stepping back into an environment like this felt like slipping back into a language he’d never fully forgotten how to speak, even after months away.

He thought, briefly, about the card still sitting untouched back at his apartment. If whoever had handed it to him was watching closely enough to know his location, know enough about him to approach him outside a shop with a vague promise of opportunity, there was a decent chance eyes from that world could be here too, watching him move, gauging whether he was worth whatever they were offering. He hadn’t responded yet. Wasn’t in a rush to.

He pushed the thought aside and signed up for a round.

The man waiting for him in the ring wasn’t a complete stranger to the gym’s regulars — Darren caught a few murmurs as he approached, other fighters glancing over with something between curiosity and quiet avoidance. This guy had a reputation, apparently. Coming back from an injury, someone muttered nearby, used to actually fight professionals, even if the record on those fights wasn’t pretty. Lost badly, more than once. But losing to actual professionals still meant more real experience than most people in this room had ever been exposed to, Darren included.

He studied the man properly as he climbed into the ring. Heavily tattooed, ink running up both arms and across his chest in a design dense enough that Darren couldn’t tell if there was an old scar buried somewhere underneath it all. Didn’t matter either way.

"Boxing or MMA?" Darren asked, rolling his shoulders loose.

The man raised an eyebrow, glancing toward the ref standing just outside the cage. "Either. Whichever’s your strong front."

Darren considered it for half a second. "MMA."

The man nodded, unbothered, stepping back to give himself room.

Darren ran a quick read over his opponent’s build while they both settled into ready stances — shorter reach, noticeably so, and a frame that read stiff rather than fluid, the kind of muscle built through heavy lifting rather than functional mobility. No real flexibility in the hips from what Darren could see in his stance, weight sitting low and locked rather than loose and adjustable.

That wasn’t nothing. Whatever professional experience the man carried meant real technique, real instinct built through actual competition — things Darren couldn’t fully account for just by eyeballing his frame. This wouldn’t be some easy walkover.

But the physical mismatch sitting underneath all of that gave Darren a real, tangible edge, the kind that didn’t disappear just because the other guy had faced tougher competition before. Reach. Mobility. Speed off the mark.

Darren settled into his own stance, weight balanced, hands up, and allowed himself a small, private confidence as the referee called them both to the center of the ring.

Whatever this man had learned getting battered by actual professionals, Darren intended to find out exactly how much of it had actually stuck.

The referee’s hand dropped, and the fight opened exactly the way Darren expected it to.

He closed the distance fast, testing with a jab, then followed with a low kick aimed at the man’s lead thigh. Both landed clean. The man absorbed the leg kick with barely a flinch, resetting his stance immediately, and Darren registered that — good conditioning, at least, even if the footwork underneath it looked stiff.

He kept working the same pattern. Jab, cross, a feint toward the body before switching high. Every strike that landed connected solidly, no pulled punches on Darren’s end — he’d learned a long time ago that half-effort in the ring taught you nothing real about yourself or your opponent. And the man took each hit without much visible reaction, absorbing the contact like someone who’d built up real tolerance for pain somewhere along the way.

A few of the other fighters nearby had started drifting closer to the ring’s edge, drawn by the exchange, murmuring between themselves as Darren continued landing clean shot after clean shot.

The man’s counters came slow, telegraphed, easy enough to slip or block outright. Darren caught himself wondering, somewhere around the third exchange, whether this guy’s reputation had been overstated. Every professional loss on his record started making more sense the longer this went.

Then, mid-exchange, the man grinned.

Darren caught it right as he was setting up another combination — something shifting behind the man’s eyes, some switch flipping that hadn’t been active a second earlier.

"Alright," the man said, voice low, almost conversational despite the exchange still technically in motion. "Now I don’t have to feel bad about what I’m about to do to you."

Darren’s brow lifted, more curious than concerned. He threw the punch he’d already committed to.

It never landed.

The man’s head moved a fraction of an inch, just enough, and in the same motion his hips rotated in a way that hadn’t shown up once in the previous exchanges — smooth, sudden, none of the stiffness Darren had clocked in his stance minutes earlier. A hook came back the other direction, catching Darren clean along the jaw.

The impact rattled straight through his skull, white flashing briefly at the edge of his vision, his legs buckling half a step before he caught himself against the cage.

The murmurs from the sideline sharpened into something louder, more engaged, a few people straightening up to actually watch now instead of glancing over occasionally.

Darren shook his head once, resetting, tasting copper along the inside of his cheek.

"Okay."

He’d been played. Whatever version of this man had absorbed those opening shots without reacting hadn’t been fighting at his actual level — he’d been feeling Darren out, letting him build false confidence, mapping his rhythm and habits in real time while pretending to simply eat damage.

That was a level of patience most fighters never developed. The willingness to take real punishment on purpose, just to study an opponent before committing to anything.

Darren reset his stance, more careful now, weight lower, hands tighter to his frame.

The man came forward this time, and everything about his movement had changed. No more stiffness in the hips. His feet cut angles Darren hadn’t seen a professional-caliber fighter use outside actual footage — small, economical steps that kept him constantly off Darren’s centerline, forcing Darren to reset his aim every time he tried to close distance.

Darren threw a combination — jab, cross, hook — and only the jab connected, glancing off as the man slipped the rest entirely, countering with a body shot that drove the air clean out of Darren’s lungs.

He staggered back, forcing himself to breathe through the pain, aware now of exactly how much he’d underestimated the gap between them.

The crowd along the cage’s edge had grown thicker, more people abandoning their own training to watch this specific exchange play out. Someone near the back called out something encouraging toward the tattooed man, and Darren caught the edge of a name — apparently he had a following here that Darren hadn’t clocked walking in.

Darren refocused, forcing his breathing steady, and adjusted his approach. No more standing and trading. He needed range, needed to use whatever reach advantage he still held, keep this fight at a distance where the man’s superior footwork mattered less.

He circled, throwing kicks now instead of committing to punching range, testing the man’s guard from further out. A leg kick landed. Then another, digging into the same spot on the thigh, hoping to slow the footwork that had embarrassed him a minute earlier.

The man absorbed both without complaint, though Darren caught the faintest shift in his stance afterward — a slight favoring, barely perceptible, but there.

"Good. That’s something."

Darren pressed the advantage, keeping the kicks coming, refusing to get baited back into punching range until he’d done more damage to that leg. The man adjusted, cutting the distance faster now, forcing Darren to either commit to a punch or retreat.

Darren retreated once, circling out, buying himself another beat to read the rhythm building against him.

"You’re better than I expected," the man said, breathing slightly heavier now, some of the earlier smugness tempered by the leg kicks landing. "Most guys panic after that first shot."

"Not most guys," Darren said, resetting his stance.

"Guess not."

The man came forward again, faster this time, clearly done playing at half-speed. Darren caught the first strike on his guard, absorbed the second against his ribs with a grunt, and used the third opening to land a clean counter across the man’s temple — his best shot of the exchange so far, solid enough to visibly stagger him for the first time since the fight began.

A genuine cheer went up from somewhere in the small crowd now gathered.

The man reset, shaking his head once, and Darren caught something new in his expression — not the earlier condescension, but real, focused respect.

"Alright," the man muttered, more to himself than to Darren. "Let’s actually go, then."

Darren settled back into his stance, jaw still aching, ribs throbbing, fully aware now that whatever comfortable rhythm he’d walked in with was gone entirely.

This was the real fight. Everything before it had just been the setup.