Chapter 113: Party Culture Part I
Soon enough, the first day of the new semester arrived, and shockingly to Alex, people seemed to recognize him. Though he didn’t know it, the highlights of his fight with Vitor Borges had gone viral, and was spliced together with clips of Jack Logan talking about Alex on his podcast.
Even people who didn’t watch the UFC seemed to recognize Alex from the viral videos plastered all over social media. Young men at the university came up to Alex to speak with the man and get a selfie, while women of all types tried to flirt with him.
And by the time Alex finished his morning classes and decided to get lunch at the university’s cafeteria, he was in a pretty good mood. However, this did not last long, as Chad approached the man while he was eating a burger.
When the star football player of the university, approach the new freshman who had become famous overnight due to his brutal actions in the cage, the bystanders all pulled out their phones and began to record.
Chad was not in the greatest mood. After being kicked out of Shannon’s house the other day, she had not bothered letting him into her home again, or even allowed him to speak with her. And there was only one person he blamed for this. Thus, the moment he saw Alex again, he lost all reason and tried to start shit.
Luckily for him, Emily wasn’t nearby, and did not witness Chad make a fool of himself, as he knocked Alex’s trash off the table, and screamed at him.
“What is your fucking problem!?! Did you talk shit about me to your aunt?”
Alex did not even bother paying attention to the rampaging buffoon in front of him and instead continue to eat his burger while drinking his soda. This elicited laughter from several of the bystanders, especially the girls, who commented on how Chad was making a big mistake.
Since Chad had interrupted his peaceful lunch. Alex could only end it here as he stood up from his seat and began to walk away without saying a word. This, of course, caused even more people to laugh at Chad and his desperate attempt to intimidate a professional cage fighter. Which led the man to become even more enraged as he blocked Alex’s path and stared him down.
The man was roughly the same height as Alex and was of a similar build. Perhaps Chad was a bit bulkier than Alex, as Alex’s strength and conditioning revolved around his performance as a fighter, and not just body building to look good.
Thus Alex was more lean, then Chad, who, despite being a quarterback, had the body of a linebacker. Alex still did not say anything, and simply stared Chad into the eyes, who began to posture for the sake of appearances.
“Don’t you run away from me, you little shit! Answer me when I ask you a question!”
Alex sighed and shook his head. Before deciding to entertain the idiot who was delusional enough to believe that because he was an athlete that he could stand toe to toe with a professional fighter.
“Are you asking me if I ratted you out to Shannon? No… Because unlike you, I’m not a little bitch! But get in my face again, and I will make sure you never play sports again…”
After saying this, Alex walked past Chad as if he were nothing to him, while eating what remained of his burger, and drinking what remained of his soda. Upon seeing how little Alex thought of him, Chad couldn’t help but call out to the man as he walked away.
“What? You think that because you’re now in the UFC, that makes you some kind of badass!?! Just wait until your next opponent knocks your bitch ass out! We’ll see how tough you are then!”
This pathetic comment once more caused the bystanders to laugh at Chad’s expense, while Alex did not even respond and continued about his business. Once Chad had seen that his verbal taunting had done nothing to the kid he used to bully, he stormed off in a fit of rage.
Although Alex had denied ratting him out to Shannon, Chad couldn’t think of anyone else who would tell the woman about his past. Little did he know it was Alex’s mother who had done so, and because of this, he still blamed Alex for this incident.
Little did either of the two men know that the videos were posted on the internet, causing its netizens to roast Chad for thinking he could take on a UFC fighter.
“Who is this dumb jock and why is he picking a fight with Baba Yaga? Does he want to die?”
“I pity any girl who is in a relationship with such a fool….”
“Emily should be embarrassed! Learn to control your man! @EmilyParker”
When Emily saw how foolish her boyfriend had behaved and how badly it reflected on her, she immediately lost two affection points for Chad. Which Alex would notice, and smirk at.
—
Alex continued with his classes until they ended some time in the afternoon. Where he immediately went to the MMA Gym and began his training, which consisted of over four hours of different types of training. Including cardio, strength and conditioning, pad work, bag work, grappling, clinching, jump rope, shadow boxing, and, at the end of it, all sparring.
Unlike most professional fighters, Alex tried to work sparring in with each day he trained. And usually at the end of the day. Unbeknownst to him while he was sparring, a fan of his was watching and waited until Alex was finished to approach him.
The man was wearing a UNLV sleeveless hoodie and a pair of black fight shorts. Knowing that he was a fellow student at the university, Alex decided to give the guy the time of day when he approached him.
“You’re Alex right? Hey, I’m Shaun, it’s an honor to meet you.”
Alex shook the man’s hand and nodded at him, where Shaun was quick to continue his introduction.
“Hey, I’m throwing a party tonight, and I was wondering if you wanted to join us?”
Alex was slightly surprised to hear this, and raised his brow slightly before asking the immediate question on his mind.
“A party? On a Monday night?”
This caused the man to chuckle and shake his head before he explained his reasoning.
“Hey man, it’s Vegas! And we’re in college. There’s practically a party every night of the week. So what do you say? Are you coming over? People should start showing up in a few hours. So that gives you plenty of time to rest, right?”
Alex thought about it for a second before nodding his head and agreeing to the request.
“Sure, why not? When I was in Korea, I wasn’t exactly invited to many parties. Sounds like fun…”
This caused Shaun to light up in excitement. He quickly exchanged contact info with Alex and texted him the address before heading out.
“Alright cool man, I’ll see you later, killer!”
After saying that, Shaun disappeared, while Alex just shook his head and smirked. Thinking about how it was only his first day at the new university and already he was the big man on campus. Of course he had no idea that Shaun was actually the friend of Chad’s who had invited him over not long ago for the fight night which Alex made his UFC debut in. Nevertheless, Alex quickly went home and got himself ready for the event.
—
Alex drove up to the house where the party was located in his Mclaren Senna, and was not surprised to see that lights were flashing, and that loud music echoed across the block. He quickly parked his car in the first available spot, and walked towards the house, where he saw college-aged men and women all drinking from red solo cups.
Most of them seem to recognize Alex from the various memes and videos that were flooding the internet. And the moment he stepped into the doorway, some intoxicated man who was walking around with his shirt off called out to him.
“Hey! It’s the I’m just here for the violence guy!”
Immediately upon saying this, a bunch of people looked over at Alex and raised their drinks, while shouting various forms of praise at him. Soon enough, Shaun emerged with a drink in one hand and a blunt in the other as he welcomed Alex to the party.
“Hey everybody! Listen up! We’ve got a celebrity in the house! You’re all looking at the next UFC Light heavyweight champion, Baba Yaga!”
Alex was confused when he heard this, and looked over at Shaun with an almost comical look on his handsome face.
“Baba Yaga? I thought my nickname was Berserker?”
However, Shaun broke out into a fit of laughter as he shoved a drink into Alex’s hand, and made a remark on the rebranding that the internet had forced upon him.
“Not anymore, it’s not! The internet is calling you Baba Yaga, you know, after that famous action movie franchise? You’re the guy they send to kill the fucking boogeyman! If I were you, I would adopt that as my fight name, because that’s what everyone is calling you nowadays!”
Alex was stunned that after only one fight in the Ultimate Fighting Challenge, he had gained such infamy that the internet had turned him into a meme, and had even given him a new nickname. Berserker was a nickname that his coaches in Korea had given him due to his hyper aggressive fighting style.
But Baba Yaga was the nickname the entire world had given him after defeating the man that went by the fight name of the “Boogeyman”. Thus, Alex could only shrug his shoulders and accept the rebranding that fate had forced upon him. He did this while drinking from the cup that Shaun had given him, after raising it in a toast to his new identity.
“To Baba Yaga!”
All the people who were nearby to witness this toast roared in applause, and raised their glasses along with Alex. Where the man himself chugged the hard liquor as if it were nothing. It was at this moment that Chad and Emily emerged from some other area of the house, where they froze on the spot upon seeing Alex.
Chad was immediately angered. While Emily was anxious, she did not know what to say to Alex, who she had not seen since they were kids. Emily was a petite and thin woman, with curves in the right places. At most, she had C-Cups, but she had an incredibly beautiful face. Her hair was long, and an extremely dark blue. Almost as if it were black. While her eyes were a much lighter shade of the same color.
Before she could even say something, Chad stepped forward and put his finger on Shaun’s chest, while demanding to know why Alex was invited to the party.
“What the fuck is this asshole doing here?”
Shaun had no idea that his friend had beef with this up-and-coming fighter, and was quick to explain himself.
“Hey man, we train at the same gym. I saw him finishing his routine and asked him to join the fun. Deal with it!”
Though Chad was angry at Shaun, he was more pissed at Alex for stealing the spotlight away from him the moment that he entered the room. Alex decided to be a particular asshole, and introduce himself to Chad as if he did not even know the man, despite having just had an encounter with him earlier in the day.
“I’m sorry to have we met before? I’m Alex…”
Alex reached out his hand with an almost taunting smile on his handsome face, which caused Emily to step forward and introduce herself.
“Alex… You really don’t remember us?”
It was then that Alex chuckled and shook his head, before confirming that he did indeed remember them.
“I’m just messing with Chad. Of course I remember you Emily, you were, after all, you were my childhood friend when I was growing up. How have you been?”
Emily did not know why, but she sighed in relief when she heard this. However, in the back of her mind, she was actually upset that Alex referred to her as his childhood friend, and not his childhood crush. Still, now that she was seeing the man for the first time in years, she offered to go fetch some drinks, and talk to Alex about how his life had been after he left Vegas all those years ago.
“I’ve been good… Why don’t we get a couple of drinks and sit down? I want to hear about what you have been up to these past five years. After all, I saw your fight, and I’m amazed that you chose to become a professional fighter….”
Alex smiled as he wrapped his arm around Emily’s shoulder and shamelessly groped her breasts. This caused the girl to chastise him on the spot as she tried to pull she herself away from him.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing!?!”
Yet Alex’s response was as shameless as his actions as he smirked and rested his hand on the woman’s breast.
“My bad, it was an accident, I swear to god!”
After so blatantly lying through his teeth, Alex pulled Emily close into his arms, where she began to notice that he was no longer the boy she remembered him to be. Alex had grown into a tall and handsome young man. One who was quite muscular at that.
Despite feeling uncomfortable with Alex’s actions, Emily tolerated them, especially after Alex used the excuse of them being childhood friends. Meanwwhile Chad was fuming on the spot. He was just about to intervene and attack Alex when his friends forced him to shotgun a beer on the spot. By the time he finished, Alex and Emily were nowhere to be found.