The music hit like a kick to the chest. It wasn’t jazz, or big band, or anything Ben recognized. It sounded like the world had exploded and someone had recorded the aftermath. There was smoke, shouting, spilled beer, and the smell of hot sweat. The crowd gathered around the grimy ring with the enthusiasm of a Roman mob.

Ben stayed in the back. Standing. Silent. A shadow in a military jacket, hood up, combat gloves on. No one recognized him. Not yet. In this century, he was just a ghost.

And then you stepped into the ring.

First, it was the way your shoulders rolled, shaking off tension like a beast waking up. Then the way you walked: steady, precise, like the whole damn world was just another target you could knock out with a single hook. With an energy he hadn’t seen even on the battlefield.

"The Revenant," someone said beside him. "She’s a beast. No one makes it past round two with her."

Revenant, Ben thought. Like someone who came back from the dead.

Then the fight began. It wasn’t just strength. It was sharpened rage. It was technique forged in long hours of training. It was pain turned into precision. In 1940, a woman like her would’ve never been allowed in a ring. Back in his time, the idea of a woman fighting was a joke — a freak act. In Payback, when they decided to add women to the team, it was just for screen diversity. And even then, they never let them bleed.

The final blow landed hard and clean, followed by the roar of the crowd. You stood tall, chest rising and falling, knuckles red, a slow trickle of blood from a split brow. The other fighter didn’t get up.

Ben’s eyes stayed on her as she climbed down from the ring. She pushed through sweaty men, women screaming her name, the flashes of cellphone cameras. He didn’t know how, but his legs started moving. His body reacted, as if something inside —something long dormant— was searching for… fire.

He found you sitting on a wooden crate, drinking water. You were wiping your face with an old towel. Ben stopped a meter away, arms crossed, he didn’t know what to say, so he said what came out.

"Back in my day, a woman like you would’ve been serving coffee to the soldiers." That was Ben's comment, raw, harsh, simply a soldier of the time. "You’re not like them."

He fell silent, then added in that rough, half-growl voice of his, part scorn, part something too honest to hide: "Maybe that's why you just fucked up my damn day."