Rebirth 1991: Keep the Fame, I'll Take the Royalties

The Financial Knockout

Mid-May 1993. The sharp, metallic clang of the warehouse bell cut through the thick, cigar-choked air.

Inside the ring, the atmosphere instantly shifted from a noisy, arrogant billionaire’s club into a suffocating cage of pure, impending violence. The halogen lights beat down on the canvas, illuminating the sweat already glistening on the shoulders of the two men.

Mike Vance did not charge forward like a drunken street brawler. He was a professional, undefeated cruiserweight, and he knew how to cut off a ring. He stepped forward with a heavy, rhythmic bounce, his gloves held high, his eyes locked onto Elias’s striking, exotic face. Vance wanted to dismantle the teenager methodically. He wanted to break the million-dollar jawline and collect his paycheck.

Elias van Kempen stood in his corner, his expression a mask of chilling, aristocratic calm. He didn’t raise his guard to his eyebrows. He held his hands in a loose, relaxed stance.

He didn’t need anger. He needed algorithms.

[SYSTEM SHOP ACCESSED.][ACTIVATING: REFLEKS MIKE TYSON (MIKE TYSON REFLEXES - DURATION: 3 MINUTES)][COST: -25 CP][CURRENT BALANCE: 245 CP]

[CHA-CHING!]

The biological shift hit Elias’s central nervous system like a bolt of lightning. His perception of time slowed to a thick, viscous crawl. The spatial geometry of the ring materialized in his mind, calculating distance, trajectory, and kinetic energy in a fraction of a millisecond.

Vance closed the distance and fired a stiff, piston-like jab aimed directly at the bridge of Elias’s nose.

It was a punch thrown with hundreds of pounds of professional torque behind it, fast enough to break cartilage.

Elias didn’t blink. He simply executed a microscopic, mechanical slip to the outside. The heavy leather glove whizzed past his cheek, the rough stitching grazing his eyelashes. The wind of the punch ruffled his dark hair.

Vance grunted, immediately following up with a brutal, sweeping right cross designed to separate Elias from his consciousness.

Elias rolled under the punch with terrifying, sociopathic grace, his knees bending just enough to let the massive arm fly over his head. The sheer kinetic force of Vance’s missed combination echoed with a heavy SWOOSH in the humid warehouse air.

Outside the ropes, Paul Rudd was currently losing his mind.

Paul was gripping a dirty towel in one hand and a bucket of ice in the other, jumping up and down with tears of genuine terror streaming down his face.

”Move your head, Elias! Move your head!” Paul shrieked, his voice cracking into a hysterical pitch. ”He’s trying to decapitate you! Protect the face! The LVMH contract is in the face! If he breaks your nose, the French are going to sue me!”

Vance backed Elias into the ropes, his frustration mounting. The kid wasn’t just fast; he was a ghost. Vance planted his heavy boots and unleashed a relentless, punishing flurry of hooks and uppercuts.

The sound of the leather gloves slicing through the air was visceral, a violent symphony of aggressive intent.

Elias wove through the barrage. Slip, roll, weave. He moved his head by mere millimeters, his movements entirely devoid of panic. He was operating with the cold, unfeeling precision of an industrial machine avoiding a jam.

Realizing he couldn’t land a clean shot, Vance roared in frustration and lunged forward, abandoning his technique to trap Elias in a brutal, smothering clinch.

Vance wrapped his thick, sweaty arms around Elias’s shoulders, pinning the teenager against the ropes. The smell of cheap wintergreen liniment, stale sweat, and aggressive testosterone filled Elias’s lungs. Vance leaned his entire 220-pound weight onto Elias, trying to exhaust his legs, grinding his chin roughly against Elias’s shoulder.

”You can’t run forever, pretty boy,” Vance hissed into Elias’s ear, his breath ragged and heavy. ”I’m gonna grind you down. I’m gonna make you bleed for these suits.”

Elias didn’t struggle against the weight. He didn’t gasp for air. His breathing was perfectly regulated, entirely calm.

He tilted his head, his lips hovering just inches from Vance’s sweating ear.

”Kau berdarah-darah demi lima belas ribu dolar, Mike?” Elias whispered. His baritone voice was a smooth, chilling blade of pure, condescending reality, cutting entirely through the fighter’s bravado. (You are bleeding for fifteen thousand dollars, Mike?)

Vance stiffened in the clinch, momentarily thrown by the calm, conversational tone.

”Kau mengorbankan fungsi otakmu untuk uang kembalian,” Elias continued seamlessly, his words dripping with the icy disdain of a corporate boss looking at a disposable laborer. (You are sacrificing your brain function for spare change.) ”Berhentilah membuang tenagamu. Pukulanmu bahkan tidak bernilai sepuluh sen.” (Stop wasting your energy. Your punches aren’t even worth ten cents.)

Vance’s eyes widened. It wasn’t a street insult about his mother or his manhood. It was a surgical, deeply humiliating attack on his actual worth as a human being. The teenager in his arms wasn’t fighting him; he was appraising him, and finding him profoundly cheap.

”Shut your mouth!” Vance roared, his professional discipline completely shattering under the weight of his bruised ego.

Furious and desperate to prove his worth, Vance aggressively shoved Elias away from the clinch to create space, pulling his right arm back to deliver a wild, emotionally charged, devastating uppercut.

It was exactly the mistake Elias had calculated.

Vance’s rage blinded his technique. The uppercut was heavily telegraphed, leaving his entire left flank and jaw completely exposed for a fraction of a second.

Elias didn’t hesitate. The Mike Tyson Reflexes locked onto the opening.

Elias pivoted flawlessly on his back foot, generating a massive, coiled torque from his core. He dipped his shoulder and fired a straight, twisting right cross straight down the pipe.

He didn’t swing with anger. He swung with the absolute, unyielding finality of a foreclosure notice.

CRACK.

The impact of Elias’s glove hitting Vance’s jaw sounded like a baseball bat striking a wet sack of flour. The sheer, concentrated kinetic transfer was devastating.

Vance’s head snapped violently to the side. A spray of sweat and saliva exploded into the hot halogen light. His eyes instantly rolled to the back of his head, his brain bouncing against his skull and completely severing his motor functions.

The massive, heavily muscled cruiserweight didn’t stagger. He crumpled.

Vance dropped to the canvas like a felled oak tree, hitting the floor with a heavy, lifeless thud that sent a vibration through the ring. He lay there, completely motionless, his arms splayed out in a tragic, unconscious heap.

The digital clock on the referee’s wrist read: Round 1. 1:12.

The cavernous warehouse was plunged into a silence so profound, so suffocating, it felt like the air had been sucked out of the room.

Outside the ropes, the Wall Street Nepo Babies and Silicon Valley executives stood entirely frozen. Their cigars hung limply from their mouths.

Richard Sterling Jr., the arrogant real estate heir who had confidently thrown fifty thousand dollars onto the canvas, actually dropped his crystal glass of scotch. It shattered on the dirty concrete floor, but he didn’t even blink. He stared at the unconscious professional fighter, then looked up at the sixteen-year-old boy standing over him.

”He... he didn’t even get hit,” Sterling choked out, his face turning a sickly, pale green. A massive sweatdrop rolled down his cheek. ”It’s a wipeout. The kid just margin-called my entire week.”

”Three hundred thousand dollars,” a hedge fund manager whispered in pure, unadulterated horror, clutching his head. ”He just liquidated us in seventy-two seconds.”

Inside the ring, Elias van Kempen did not raise his arms in victory. He didn’t climb the turnbuckles or scream his triumph to the crowd. He merely looked down at Vance with a faint, aristocratic sigh, rolling his shoulders to loosen the muscles.

”An incredibly poor return on investment,” Elias murmured.

”Elias!” Paul Rudd scrambled through the ropes, slipping on a patch of sweat, entirely ignoring the fallen fighter. He rushed over and grabbed Elias’s face in both hands, frantically inspecting his cheekbones. ”You’re alive! The nose is intact! The symmetry is unbroken! We don’t have to call the plastic surgeon!”

”Remove your hands from my operational assets, Paul,” Elias commanded smoothly, batting the assistant’s hands away. ”Bring my jacket. The ambient temperature in this warehouse is unacceptable.”

Paul quickly grabbed the faded vintage leather jacket from the corner and draped it over Elias’s shoulders.

Elias didn’t bother waiting for the referee to officially call the knockout. He casually ducked through the ropes and stepped down the small set of stairs, entering the stunned, silent crowd of billionaires.

They parted for him instantly. The smug arrogance they had carried into the warehouse had been entirely violently extracted. They looked at the teenager with a mixture of raw fear and profound, sickening financial grief.

Elias walked directly to the folding table in the corner where the bookie was standing.

The heavy-set bookie was sweating so profusely his shirt was glued to his chest. He was staring at the massive pile of banded hundred-dollar bills resting on the table. Three hundred thousand dollars of the haters’ money, plus Elias’s original hundred-thousand-dollar stake.

Elias stopped in front of the table. He didn’t even take off his boxing gloves. He simply rested his taped hands on the edge of the wood, locking his dark, mesmerizing eyes onto the terrified bookie.

”I believe,” Elias smiled, a dark, devastatingly charming expression of absolute capitalist supremacy, ”my dividend has matured.”

The bookie swallowed hard, his hands shaking violently. He didn’t argue. He didn’t try to stall. He reached into the lockbox and began stacking the heavy, banded bricks of cash into a large, black canvas duffel bag.

It was a mesmerizing amount of physical currency.

Elias turned his head slightly, making eye contact with Richard Sterling Jr., who was watching his fifty thousand dollars disappear into the duffel bag.

”Thank you for the capital injection, Richard,” Elias purred softly, ensuring his voice carried over to the devastated executives. ”Your arrogance has successfully funded the next quarter of my media empire. Please, drive home safely. The valet is expecting a generous tip.”

Sterling opened his mouth to shout an insult, but no words came out. The sheer, overwhelming reality of the Face-Slapping paralyzed him. He had paid ten thousand dollars to watch Elias get beaten, and instead, he had personally financed the teenager’s global expansion.

The bookie zipped the heavy canvas bag shut and pushed it across the table.

”Four hundred grand,” the bookie muttered, avoiding Elias’s gaze. ”You’re a demon, kid. An absolute demon.”

”I am a highly motivated fiduciary,” Elias corrected flawlessly.

He grabbed the heavy strap of the duffel bag, slinging four hundred thousand dollars in untraceable, tax-free physical cash over his shoulder.

Deep within the dark recesses of his cerebral cortex, the digital loan shark erupted in a deafening, glorious symphony of golden coins and mechanical applause.

[CHA-CHING!][SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: FINANCIAL DECAPITATION VIA KNOCKOUT EXECUTED WITH FLAWLESS SOCIOPATHY!][EVALUATION: YOU CHARGED YOUR ENEMIES FOR ADMISSION, INSULTED A PROFESSIONAL FIGHTER’S WAGE, AND COMMITTED HIGHWAY ROBBERY IN UNDER TWO MINUTES WITHOUT BREAKING A SWEAT. YOU ARE THE APEX PREDATOR OF THE UNDERGROUND ECONOMY. THE SYSTEM WEEPS WITH PRIDE.][REWARD: +30 SHAMELESS POINTS (CP) DEPOSITED.]

Elias smiled as he walked toward the exit of the warehouse, Paul Rudd scurrying nervously behind him. The operation was a monumental success.

As they stepped out into the cool Los Angeles night, the system delivered its daily, inevitable toll.

[SYSTEM WARNING: DAILY MAINTENANCE FEE DEDUCTION INITIATED.][DEDUCTING -$50.00 USD FROM LIQUID CASH RESERVE.]

Elias’s internal ledger updated perfectly. The fifty-dollar deduction was a microscopic drop against the tidal wave of cash he was currently carrying. His liquid cash balance officially rocketed to an armored $798,390.00.

He was nearly a millionaire in physical liquidity again.

”Alright, Paul,” Elias commanded, tossing the heavy duffel bag into the trunk of the rusted Honda Civic. ”The war chest is full. Tomorrow, we take this capital and we buy a radio station.”