Although Mouse was asleep, he detected that someone had entered the basement. It was a basic instinct that all poopers developed. If someone approached your shelter in the tunnels and you were not able to react in time, you were lost.
But it was Marcus. He had already arrived. Mouse detected him before he even turned on the light. In the champion's hand was a bowl.
"Well, you've saved me from having to kick you to wake you up. We'll talk while you have breakfast."
"Breakfast?"
Mouse's face was one of not understanding what the champion was referring to. Marcus began to laugh out loud.
"I forgot that you are still a pooper who doesn't know anything about the world. Breakfast is the first meal of the day..."
"Do people eat more than once?"
"Well, depending on how much money they have, but people eat up to three or four times, but with you we will limit it to two, once when you wake up and another after training, cereal and fruit first, and puree afterwards"
Mouse's face was disappointed, he really thought he had gotten rid of the puree.
"If I let you eat Rata's stew every day you will end up gaining too much weight and that is not good"
Mouse resigned himself, he had to obey both Marcus and Mr. Blacker.
In the basement there was a small table, with a couple of metal chairs, Mouse acted by imitation, he had only sat in the wrestling room because that was what he saw everyone do, in the sewers there was no furniture, even in the dining room everyone ate sitting on the floor.
The boy looked at the bowl, it was some kind of puree, but it wasn't grey or smelly, it was white and had some pieces of some coloured things in it, the mouse was going to put his hand in to eat when Marcus gave him a little pat on the head.
"Use the spoon, you're not an animal..."
Mouse hadn't used a spoon since he left the farm, he picked it up with hesitation and was even about to drop the first spoonful. But he put the second one in his mouth, the puree was sweet, and those colorful things were something like fruit, well the best that could be found at Gretia Station, which wasn't much. But Mouse thought it was the most delicious thing he had ever eaten, much more than Rat's stew even.
"Today is going to be the only day I spend with you, boy. The rest of the days I'll only come for a few hours to teach you. You'll do the physical training with Blacker, but you'll only do what I tell you today."
The boy raised his head upon hearing that, he didn't understand why Marcus had come then.
"It's stupid to waste my time watching you exercise, I'll explain them to you and then you'll repeat them every day, well you'll train four days and rest one, but don't worry, Blacker will explain that to you"
"Isn't it better to make the most of every day?"
"Ha ha ha, so that you end up like when you arrived at the fight? With pain, stiff muscles, tense. That would be a disaster, boy, I don't have time to explain why but it works like that, now before anything else I want you to listen to me carefully, do you know what Hurricane consists of?"
"Fang and Mr. Blacker told me it was like a wrestling contest, in each fight the loser is eliminated, and so on until only two remain..."
"Well, it's much more than that, it's a Spring tournament, one fight each day, with no time to recover, it's very different than fighting every two weeks in the cage"
"I don't understand, fighting is fighting..."
"Think about it, Mouse, what would happen if on the first day they broke your eyebrow and you couldn't open your eye in the next fight? And if even if you won that second fight your opponent broke a rib? In a Spring tournament the damage accumulates, and it's your worst enemy. That's why it's better for me to train you and not Blacker"
"You are a champion, you will always be a better teacher..."
"Ha ha ha, you're right but that's not the reason, Blacker would have done with you what most sponsors do, make you gain weight and strength, teach you two or three tricks to fight and correct some mistakes, in three months there's not enough time for you to really learn anything else, but I'm not going to train you to fight, I'm going to train you to win the Hurricane"
"I still don't see the difference Mr. Marcus..."
"Stand up boy"
Mouse expected him to hit him for replying but he simply took him to a wall, stood him up straight and made a mark. Next to his own he made another one higher up.
"Look, Mouse, that's your height now, and that's the height of the kids you've faced up until now. Do you think that in three months you'll get as big as them or that even if that miracle happened those kids wouldn't grow?"
Mouse looked at the mark and shook his head, it was impossible for him to reach the height and weight of the other boys at the moment.
"If the other boys were bigger, why or how were you able to beat them?"
"I'm faster, and most of them were hitting like crazy, they didn't have a plan"
"Exactly Mouse, so why waste time making you slower? On the contrary, in these three months we will focus on several things, on making you faster, on not taking so much damage, on making you take advantage of the fact that you have something inside your head to win and on learning to use your legs. The less damage you take, the more advantage you'll have over your competitors as the fights go on."
"But I know how to use my legs..."
"Ha ha ha, I don't know how you see how you move in the ring, but a champion who has seen you will tell you. Most of the time you stumble backwards, you get away because you're fast and agile, but if you keep going like that, they'll catch you sooner or later. Your kicks are weak because no one has taught you how to do them. It's normal that your first instinct is to hit with your hands, but even if you're a weakling, put your arm next to your thigh. Which muscle is the biggest? The answer is clear: your legs, but if that's the case, why not use them to your advantage?"
"Do you want me to kick them? Like I did with the bone breaker?"
"Yes, and my advice didn't go wrong, did it?
Mouse got an idea of what Marcus was thinking. He managed to turn his last fight around by following the champion's advice.
"Listen, kid, in the hurricane the two most difficult fights you will have will surely be the first and the last, the first because your rivals will be fresh, even if they are monkeys waving their hands they can hurt you, you will have to be smart, and the last. In a hurricane only the monkeys that survive will make it through the first fight, and the talented kids, the monkeys will eliminate each other, or they will be eliminated by the smart kids who know how to take advantage of the damage that others have done, if you get to the last fight, there is no doubt that it will not be a monkey that you face"
Mouse understood what they were telling him, until now the boy thought about how to win a fight each time, but now he had to plan long term from the beginning.
"Well then, if everything is clear, let's start with your hell..."