Chapter 2: Blood on the Canvas
The world narrowed to a tunnel of screaming light and noise. It was a physical thing, the roar of seventy thousand people in the Tokyo Axiom, a pressure that vibrated in Shouta’s molars and pressed against his eardrums. Backstage was a muffled cocoon of focused silence by comparison, a world of wrapped hands, the smell of liniment, and the tight, familiar ache of anticipation coiling in his gut.
His coach, a grizzled old hawk of a man named Yamada, finished taping his right hand, the gauze and tape forming a perfect, unyielding club. “He’s bigger. He’s taller. He’s got that bastard’s reach. You get inside, you make it ugly, you make it a fight in a phone booth. You hear me? None of this dancing shit he’s expecting.”
“I don’t dance,” Shouta said, his voice flat. He flexed the hand, testing the give. Perfect.
“You did against Keigo. Looked pretty.”
“That was different.”
Yamada grunted, not asking how. He knew. Everything was different when the kid was watching. Shouta became more, somehow. More brutal, more precise, more of a showman. It was a paradox Yamada had given up trying to decipher years ago.
The door to the preparation room swung open, and the noise from the arena poured in, a chaotic symphony of thumping music and disembodied announcement echoes. A stadium attendant, wired and jittery, poked his head in. “Five minutes, Eraserhead. They’re introducing Fury now.”
Shouta nodded. He stood, the muscles in his back and shoulders pulling tight beneath the sleek, black satin of his robe. The robe was simple, unadorned but for the kanji for ‘Eraser’ in stark white on the back. Underneath, the fight trunks were Izuku’s masterpiece. Glittering, matte black with chrome-gold piping that caught the light like razor cuts. ‘ERASERHEAD’ blazed across the front belt line in a font the kid had called ‘aggressively elegant’. And on the back, just above the curve of his ass, in smaller, perfect script, were the three kanji characters that made up ‘Izuku’. A secret. A signature. A piece of the boy he carried into the violence.
“Let’s go see the circus,” Shouta muttered.
Out in the belly of the arena, the air was hotter, thick with the smell of popcorn, beer, and human electricity. The path to the ring was a gauntlet of camera flashes and outstretched hands. Shouta kept his head down, the hood of his robe up, creating a shadowed world where only the polished concrete floor existed.
Then the music for Fury’s entrance exploded.
Pyrotechnics flared, casting hellish orange light down the long ramp. The bass was a physical force, shaking the guardrails. A cascade of synthetic fog billowed, and out of it emerged Tyson ‘The Gypsy King’ Fury, all six-foot-nine of him, draped in a royal purple robe embroidered with gold lions. He danced, he shadowboxed, he grinned with manic charm at the roaring crowd, part boxer, part carnival barker, wholly entertaining. Fireworks shot from the stanchions at the ring, whump-whump-whumping into the air. It was a spectacle, a declaration of personality meant to overwhelm before a single punch was thrown.
Shouta watched from the shadows, unmoved. He cracked his neck, left then right.
“Show pony,” Yamada hissed in his ear. “All that energy, he’s burning it now. Makes him anxious. Watch for the lazy jab early.”
The fanfare faded, the ring cleared of its pyrotechnic smoke. The arena lights dimmed. A hush, anticipatory and deep, settled over the crowd. Then a single, clean guitar riff cut through the silence—the opening notes of a thrashing, aggressive punk song Izuku had chosen, something with a driving, relentless beat. No fireworks. No fog. Just the music, raw and purposeful.
Shouta pushed back his hood. He emerged from the tunnel into the dim light, and the sound that greeted him was different. It wasn’t the carnival cheers for Fury. This was deeper, a sustained, tectonic roar of recognition. ‘ERA-SER-HEAD! ERA-SER-HEAD!’ The chant pulsed with the music. He kept his walk deliberate, a predator’s unhurried stride, but as the chants grew, he allowed himself a small, sharp grin. He raised a fist, then both arms, turning slowly to acknowledge the sea of flashing phones and screaming faces. It wasn’t arrogance; it was a contract. I see you. Now watch me work.
His path to the ring was direct, but three rows from the front, he broke left. The security detail, expecting this, peeled back. And there he was.
Izuku sat in the center of the VIP row, a stark contrast to the dark, sweating mass of humanity around him. He wore a custom pastel-blue tracksuit, his platinum hair tied up in a messy, elaborate bun with two silver chopsticks speared through it. On his lap, he held Shouta’s championship belt, the gold plates glinting dully under the arena lights. His face was a mask of performative cool, lips pursed, chin raised. But his eyes, those dark blue pools, were wide and glassy with a fervor that bordered on religious.
Shouta leaned over the barricade. The smell of Izuku’s lavender shampoo cut through the arena stench. He didn’t say anything. Words were pointless in the din. He simply put a gloved hand on the boy’s cheek, leaned in, and pressed his lips to Izuku’s forehead. The kiss was firm, lasting a second too long to be merely ceremonial. A transfer of intent. A silent I’m here.
Izuku’s cool façade shattered. A brilliant, unguarded smile broke across his face. He shoved the belt at Shouta. “Go get his stupid lion robe, Daddy. It’s tacky.”
Shouta took the belt, slung it over his shoulder, and turned towards the ring without a backwards glance. The moment was over. The world narrowed again, this time to twenty-by-twenty feet of canvassed violence.
The referee brought them to the center. Fury loomed over him, his grin still in place but his eyes now flat and calculating. “Heard you bring your kid to work,” Fury said, his voice a cheerful rumble. “Cute. Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle for the little one’s sake.”
Shouta stared up at him, his own expression blank. “Your breath smells like the bottom of a birdcage. You nervous?”
Fury’s grin tightened. The bell rang.
The first round was a feeling-out process written in fire. Fury used his reach, that monstrous eighty-five-inch advantage, like a fence of steel. The jab came constantly, a piston of bone and leather meant to keep Shouta at bay, to measure, to frustrate. Pop-pop-pop. Shouta weaved under them, slipped them, took a few on the high guard of his forearms. The impact was solid, jarring. He could feel the raw power behind even the probing shots.
Shouta was a pressure fighter by nature, but against this tree of a man, direct pressure was suicide. He became a ghost. He circled, never back in a straight line, changing angles with tiny, efficient steps. He feinted low, drew a reaction, then slid outside the follow-up jab. He was looking for patterns, for tells, for the millisecond of hesitation in Fury’s rhythm.
From the crowd, he could hear Izuku’s voice, a needle in the haystack of noise. “Move your head! God, Daddy, move your head!” The kid had no idea what he was seeing, but his anxiety was a pure, high-pitched frequency Shouta could somehow always tune into.
With thirty seconds left in the round, Shouta saw it. Fury, after a double jab, liked to drop his right hand a fraction, admiring his work. Shouta ate the second jab on his forehead, saw the right hand dip, and exploded forward. He wasn’t outside the reach anymore; he was crashing through it. He buried a brutal right hook to Fury’s body, right under the floating rib.
The air left Fury’s lungs in a surprised, wet oof. He clinched immediately, wrapping his long arms around Shouta, leaning his heavy weight on him.
“That’s it,” the referee warned, prying them apart. “Break clean.”
Fury’s grin was gone. His eyes were annoyed. The bell rang.
Back in the corner, Yamada was spraying water on his neck. “Good. You found the key. The body. His tall frame, he hates it downstairs. He’ll start dropping that right hand to protect it. That’s when you go upstairs.”
Round two was faster. Fury, stung, came forward with more purpose. He wasn’t just jabbing anymore; he was throwing sharp, sneaky right hands over the top. One caught Shouta on the temple, snapping his head sideways. Lights sparkled at the edge of his vision. He blinked them away, his mouth filling with the coppery taste of blood from a split lip.
He gave ground, luring Fury in. Fury followed, confident now, cutting off the ring. He threw a left hook. Shouta rolled under it, the glove whistling past his ear, and as he came up, he drove his own left fist like a spike into Fury’s solar plexus.
Fury grunted, bent slightly at the waist. Shouta didn’t let him recover. He swarmed him, ignoring the long arms, getting chest-to-chest. He worked the body with short, tearing hooks that made a sick, wet thudding sound that carried even to the cheap seats. The crowd was on its feet, a deafening wave of sound.
“BREAK! BREAK NOW!” the referee yelled, wedging himself between them.
Shouta stepped back, his chest heaving. Fury looked at him, a new kind of respect—and anger—glinting in his eyes. This wasn’t going to be the easy, flashy knockout he’d promised his fans.
Round three. Round four. The fight settled into a brutal, gripping rhythm. Fury’s reach and awkward, unorthodox style were a persistent problem. He’d land a sharp combination that made Shouta’s head ring, then Shouta would bull his way inside and turn the ring into a claustrophobic hell of digging body shots and sharp uppercuts. Shouta’s left eye began to swell, a hot, tight knot forming under the brow. His ribs ached from where Fury had landed a glancing hook. The taste of blood was a constant.
In the fifth, Fury finally adjusted. He started using his weight, leaning on Shouta in the clinches, resting, sapping his strength. He’d push him to the ropes and unleash flurries, his long arms creating a curtain of punches that were hard to see coming. Shouta covered up, shelled against the ropes, the leather beating against his arms and gloves. The crowd’s roar turned anxious.
“Get off the fucking ropes!” Yamada screamed, his voice hoarse. “You die there!”
Shouta didn’t panic. He waited. He picked a spot in the blur of motion. As Fury drew
back his right hand for a wide hook, Shouta dropped his level and threw his own right hand upward. It wasn’t a textbook uppercut. It was a destructive piston drive, launched from the floor with every ounce of twisted torque in his core. It connected under Fury’s chin with a crack that sliced through the arena’s noise.
Fury’s head snapped back. His eyes lost focus for a terrifying second. His long legs wobbled. The crowd’s roar became a singular, collective shriek.
Shouta didn’t pause to admire it. He surged forward, a predator sensing blood in the water. He ignored the pain screaming from his knuckles, ignored the fire in his lungs. He slammed a left hook into Fury’s now-unprotected liver, the same spot he’d punished all night. Fury folded with a guttural, involuntary gasp, his arms dropping to clutch his side.
The referee surged forward, his body tense, watching for the collapse.
It didn’t come. Fury, sheer willpower keeping him upright, stumbled backward into the ropes. He clung to them, his breath coming in ragged, wet heaves. The bell rang, a salvation gong. His corner men rushed in, pulling him onto the stool.
In his own corner, Yamada was shoving the mouthpiece back in, wiping Vaseline over his swollen eye. “He’s hurt! He’s fucking hurt! Don’t you dance now. You go out there and you finish this. Head movement! Straight lines! Got it?”
Shouta spat a thick wad of bloody saliva into the bucket at his feet. He nodded, his world reduced to the rhythm of his own heartbeat thudding in his ears. He glanced over. Izuku was standing now, pressed against the barricade, his knuckles white where he gripped the metal. His face was pale, tears cutting clean lines through the arena grime on his cheeks, but his mouth was set in a furious, trembling line.
Round six.
Fury came out behind a desperate, pawing jab. The snap was gone. The power was still there, but it was wild, uncontrolled. Shouta slipped the first jab, weaved under a second, and stepped inside. He didn’t throw a bomb. He placed a stiff, perfect left jab directly onto the swelling around Fury’s right eye.
Fury flinched, a blind, pained reaction. Shouta saw the opening. He feinted another jab to the body. Fury’s guard dipped. And Shouta unleashed the right hand again. This one was cleaner, harder, a straight line that traveled from his back foot through Fury’s shattered defense and onto the point of his jaw.
The sound was different. Duller. Final.
Fury’s legs gave out completely. He fell not like a tree, but like a sack of grain, collapsing in a heavy, disjointed heap on the canvas. The referee was already waving his arms, shouting numbers Fury couldn’t hear.
The arena erupted. The noise was a whiteout, a physical blast of pure sound. Shouta stood over him for a breath, chest heaving, the adrenaline singing a vicious song in his veins. Then he turned, walked to a neutral corner, and leaned against the turnbuckle. He watched the referee count. Ten.
It was over.
The chaos that followed was a familiar blur. His team swarmed the ring, lifting him, pounding his back. The belt was shoved into his hands, cold and heavy. The ring announcer’s voice boomed, “…and STILL the undefeated, undisputed heavyweight champion of the world… SHOUTA ‘ERASERHEAD’ AIZAWA!”
Microphones were thrust in his face. Lights blinded him. He gave the usual rote answers through gritted teeth, his split lip stinging. “Tough opponent… great fighter… blessed to have the support…” All the while, his good eye scanned the sea of faces near the barricade.
He saw him. Pushed up against the ring apron by the security detail, crying openly now, mascara smudged in ugly streaks down his cheeks, holding Shouta’s other belt like a life preserver. Shouta shoved through the crowd of well-wishers and cameramen. He dropped to his knees at the edge of the canvas, the ropes digging into his back.
He reached through, his gloved hand, still wrapped in blood-speckled tape, impossibly large and violent-looking against Izuku’s delicate face. He cupped his cheek, wiping a thumb over the tears.
“You’re a mess,” Shouta said, his voice ragged.
Izuku choked on a wet laugh, leaning into the touch. “You’re uglier. Your face looks like hamburger meat.” He shoved the belt at him. “I told you his robe was tacky.”
“You did.”
“He hit you so many times.”
“He did.”
“I hated it.”
“I know.”
A medic tried to pull Shouta away, gesturing to his eye. He shrugged them off for a moment longer, just looking at the boy. The fear was draining from Izuku’s expression, replaced by a giddy, exhausted triumph. It was the only victory that ever mattered.
The locker room later was a sanctuary of controlled pain. The doctor stitched the cut above his eye, the needle a sharp, precise pinch. His knuckles were examined, iced, wrapped. Every deep breath sent a hot spike through his ribs. He sat on the training table, a towel around his waist, feeling the crash descend—a leaden fatigue that seeped into his marrow.
The door swung open without a knock. Izuku breezed in, the pastel tracksuit now stained with splashes of beer and what looked like tears. He carried a giant, silly stuffed lion, its mane glittering with cheap sequins. He tossed it dismissively into a corner where it slumped next to a steel trash can.
“They were selling them in the concourse. For him. So I bought one. I’m going to set it on fire later.”
Shouta grunted. “Waste of sixty bucks.”
“It’s the principle.” Izuku floated over, his eyes tracing the fresh black stitches, the dark swelling, the map of new bruises over old ones. He reached out, his fingers hovering just above Shouta’s cheekbone. “Does it hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Shouta almost smiled. “Thanks, kid.”
Izuku’s face crumpled then, the bravado melting like sugar in rain. He climbed onto the table, careful to avoid Shouta’s sore ribs, and buried his face in the crook of his neck. He smelled of arena sweat, lavender, and salt. His shoulders shook silently.
Shouta winced as he moved his arm to wrap around him, but he did it anyway, pulling him close. The coarse towel scratched Izuku’s cheek. “Hey. I’m okay. It’s over.”
“I know,” Izuku mumbled into his skin. “I just… when you were on the ropes… I thought…”
“You thought wrong.” Shouta rested his cheek against the top of his head. The adrenaline was gone, leaving a hollowed-out peace. The only sounds were the distant echoes of the departing crowd and Izuku’s quiet, hiccupping breaths.
Yamada popped his head in, took in the scene, and nodded silently before pulling the door shut.
“The tailor was here,” Izuku said after a long while, his voice muffled.
Shouta sighed, the movement aching through his torso. “Anya? Why?”
“Brought the final mock-up for the new fight wear. Wanted to ‘see how it performed under live conditions.’” Izuku mimicked her professional tone perfectly. “I told her it performed perfectly because you weren’t dead.”
“You’re a diplomat.”
Izuku pulled back, his eyes red-rimmed but clear. “She asked if you’d be available for a fitting next Thursday. I said no.”
“Izuku.”
“I said you’d be busy. We’ll be in Milan.”
Shouta blinked slowly. “We will?”
“For Fashion Week. I have tickets. I already packed your bag.”
Shouta stared at the ceiling, at a crack in the white paint he’d never noticed before. His body felt like it had been run through a compactor. His face throbbed. His son wanted to go to Milan.
“Okay,” he said, the word leaving him like a last breath.
Izuku snuggled closer, a small, satisfied smile on his lips. Outside, the last of the crowd noise faded, leaving only the hum of the arena’s cooling systems and the promise of a silent, dark car ride home.