Time had gone by, and the event was about to start any moment, but the final act of the event still wouldn’t be for at least another two hours as they watched other fights take place.
Both Park and Austin had made it to their seats in time to see the spectacular opening ceremony. Flames erupted from the octagon center, and an announcer had seemingly appeared out of nowhere, with the crowd already largely cheering.
“Hey, hey, that’s Clem from AJ Entertainment, right? Isn’t she basically under the Howlers gang? Maybe I can get an autograph or something.”
“Calm down and focus,” Austin said. “I know we came here to have a good time, and it’s your first AFC event, but as a member of the Howlers, and if you’re going to be around us, you need to always focus.”
“Right, focus,” Park said, looking straight ahead at the octagon and not even blinking as he watched the announcer announcing the upcoming fights.
Austin just slapped his head.
“Have you ever experienced danger in your life? Right now, we’re in enemy territory. Look around you—this is the One Gang’s city, and Harvor himself should be here. So, have you recognized which ones are part of Harvor’s gang yet?”
Park looked around, trying to spot any obvious gang members, either men dressed in sharp suits or those with tattoos and wearing glasses.
When he couldn’t spot too many of those types, he started to notice something else. In the crowd, there were those who were ecstatic, enjoying the event—most people were.
Either with their phones out, taking photos, or just cheering ahead, but there was one group of people who weren’t cheering. Their facial expressions were almost stone-cold as they looked around the place.
On top of that, Park noticed their clothing as well.
“It’s the guys in tracksuits, the purple and white, right?”
“Bingo,” Austin said. “Just remember their position. Keep an eye out if they make any moves. Right now, we don’t know where Gary is either. There are too many people in one place, so the signal isn’t even sending out messages properly.”
“So be on guard and be ready to act, and remember you’re our driver. You’ve got an important role. If we need to get out of here, we rely on you.”
“Right!” Park nodded and pumped his fist. “I have big boots to fill; I won’t tarnish Tyler’s name.”
There was a pause for a moment—the name had somewhat stunned Austin.
“Right,” Austin answered, thinking that Park was a quick learner. He might have been annoying at times, but he certainly did care about the gang, that was for sure.
---
Inside the stadium itself, there were several preparation rooms. These were large square spaces that were mostly empty for the athletes.
One would bring their entire team with them—a coach, a sparring partner, medical staff, whoever they liked as long as they were okayed by the AFC beforehand.
In the room, the only thing that was supplied was a TV, allowing them to watch the matches that took place before theirs. It was up to one’s own team to bring training equipment for them to warm up before their big fight.
For Jayden, he only had one person in his room: his coach, Byron. Right now, Jayden was sitting on a bench, his head facing down in his AFC uniform.
His hands were clenched together, and even though he hadn’t worked out, hadn’t done any warm-up of the sort, his body was sweating.
“Jayden!” Coach Byron shouted, placing his hand on Jayden’s shoulder. It was the first thing that had gotten a reaction from Jayden.
“I’ve been calling you for five minutes, and before that, I was rambling on for fifteen minutes. Are you really going to make this old man think he’s gone crazy?”
“Sorry,” was the one-word response from Jayden. He placed his head down again, and it looked as if he was going into a trance.
“We’ve done a lot of preparation for this day. You know you’re one of the best at analyzing tapes and figuring out a way to beat an opponent with your skills.”
“You did it today, and you’ve continued to do it, and heck, you need to think about it—this is one heck of a jump up in opponent.”
“You’ve lost before, and you’ve come back stronger and better.”
They were words Byron never wanted to say—words one shouldn’t say to his athlete. Even the thought of losing would be considered taboo, but they had to look at the reality of things in a situation like this.
There were a large number of ranks between Jayden and the current participant, and Harvor was undefeated and had been for a long time. It was only because of a string of events and absences in the in-between ranks that Jayden had gotten his chance. After all, exiting fights had to happen and with a lot of he rank's remaining stagnant, they could only watch fights between the second and third rank so many times, and knowing Harvor had already bested them they wanted to see something else.
“I can’t lose this one. I’ve waited so long for this day,” Jayden said as he looked up at his coach. “I’ll be ready to use and do everything I can to win this fight.”
Jayden didn’t say it, but even if he got banned from the AFC, if he saw a chance, then he was going to take it.
“There’s something else as well—all those tapes we watched are useless.”
“What was there to analyze? Whenever he faced a new opponent, he would change up his style of fighting and defeat them in another fashion.”
“He seems to be a genius at fighting, and not just that, you know as well as I do, there’s something else too.”
“In all the time since the AFC existed and that Harvor has been the champion, he has won every single fight without having to reveal his Altered form. So who knows how strong he is.”