An Unknown Prime

Interlude: A Sombre Realisations

During the cataclysm during the planetary alignment, Arion was back in the Rocky's with his mother. She was huddled up by the fire of their cabin with a blanket covering her. He knew his mother was afraid of the sounds of thunder and strong winds. He thought wrong when he wanted to take his mother on a hike during his break using his winnings from a recent tournament.

"I'm sorry mom," he said. "I didn't expect things to be this bad when I took you here for vacation."

The mother smiled warmly at her son and gestured her to sit next to her. "Did I ever tell you that you are so much like your father?" she asked.

He took a seat and leaned on her. "Always," he said. "You've been telling that since my first fight."

"You father was a man who never give up on a fight," she said in reminiscence. "He had been fighting."

Arion was silent for a few moment and turned to his mother. "Was it because you two always fought that he left?" he asked softly.

"What? No! He's not that kind of man. Your father would never fight me, he fought for me. Pathetic don't you think?"

"Ma! You're not pathetic. You're the best! You even knocked out Creepy Joe a few blocks away."

She pinched Arion's cheek. "I learnt that from your father. I would rather have you not be in any fighting at all, just because I was so afraid of you getting hurt. You know you took a couple of classes behind my back."

"I wanted to defend myself," Arion defended. "Honest. Cory was being rude to me in school."

"The boy was rude," he said. "I can tell you're behind him being locked up behind bars."

"If I can't punch him in the face, I can rat him out for working with Creepy Joe for selling drugs. Recorded everything he says and gave it to the cops."

"And that's how you're like me," she pointed out. "That's how I will handle a nuisance like him. I would tell your father if a man harasses me. People know that he was the best fighter in the arena back in the day."

"Dad was an arena fighter?"

"Oh he was," he said. "One of the best. The arena was like one of those UFC fights."

"Can we talk more about dad?" he asked. "You never told me about him much over the years. I'm old enough."

His mother huffed. "I guess you're old enough," she said ruffling his dark hair. "You see, your father was a miner back in the day. Back then his bosses treated him like trash. Didn't even bothered calling him his name, just his worker number. He got fed up being treated like this and fought with them a lot."

"Can't he just quit?"

"I wished he could. If he left, he didn't know where to go and what to do. All he knows is fight and mine. He later involved himself with street fighting. That's how we met. I was being harassed by men and he srapped them for me. Of course, I treated him in return for the favour. I used to work at a nearby gas station nearby, so I met those kinds of men. I had to replace the guy's shift since he was injured after a bad fight that broke during his last shift. That's how we fell in love. Sure, he had a crude sense of humor but I love hearing him talk."

"Go on," her son encouraged.

"He came over each time I took a late shift. One day he just up and left the mine and joined the nearby underground fighting ring. You cannot believe how badly I for him. I even quit my job to work as a general assistant in the nearby clinic to patch him up each time he would come back from a fight."