Kyo Akamatsu vs. Carmen Rodriguez - Let's You and Him Fight

For a few minutes, Kyo could only kneel on the ringside floor, shaking his head woozily as he stared at the ground. His vision was still swirling, and he blinked several times as he tried to clear the haze from his eyes. Slowly but surely, though, he stumbled upright, bracing himself against the ringpost as his leg threatened to give out from under him.

He heard a comment from the ring, and glanced up at Carmen. Glaring back at her, he wiped some of the sweat from his brow and began to circle the ring, waiting for an opportunity to re-enter the battle as he walked off his dizziness. Watching Carmen warily, Kyo made his move and grabbed the ropes to haul himself back in...

The reprieve was longer than Carmen expected, but most welcome. Muscles felt tighter. More spring in the step. Soreness starting to fade. This was a close to full life as she was going to get in this match, and from that look in Kyo's face, she figured she would need all the stamina she could get. He looked out for blood, and she was more than willing to give him some.

"Okay, then..."

She moved towards him as her entered, bobbing and weaving from side to side, working up a steady rhythm. Carmen lashed out with a quick jab the moment she was close enough to connect, then jumped back in the next split second, trying to get a feel for his movements and see how good his reaction time was doing. Testing waters.

Kyo had expected Carmen to lunge at him the moment he slid into the ring, to start with a barrage of punches while he was unprepared to defend himself. To his pleasant surprise, however, she waited until he was through the ropes before she closed the distance. Clearly, she wanted to win this cleanly, just like he did.

As anticipated, she unleashed a flurry of punches at him, probing and weaving to test his defences. Kyo's senses were still reeling from that last heavy punch, though, and his limbs felt leaden and slow to respond. He chopped and blocked against Carmen's punches, but winced as one glove hand slammed against his shoulder, another glancing against his ribs. Realizing that he was outmatched in his current state, he suddenly dropped low, rotating his whole body in a leg sweep in the hopes of flooring Carmen and buying himself some time.

Move in. Tap. Test. Assess. Move back.

Carmen was falling back on her speed, or what was left of it after this exhausting fight. Prodding away at Kyo like a scientist with a scalpel, looking for weaknesses in his defense and seeing how sharp his reflexes still were. It was just a matter of time and patience. She would find a good spot to hammer home, open it up with a jab, then drop him once again with a cross. The pace was hers, she just had to take advantage of it.

But Kyo wasn't stupid, was he? No, he was smart, smart enough to try and put a stop to that long before she had the chance to run away with the fight. The next thing Carmen knew, one of her jabs hit nothing but air. Kyo was down, his leg was sweeping, and she was tumbling hard on her back. On the floor. The worst place to be.

She kicked at Kyo the second her back hit, then tried to roll away and get back to her feet, hoping to get up before he could capitalize.

Kyo was still feeling dizzy from that earlier punch, but he wasn't out of the fight yet. And he proved it by delivering a quick and decisive leg-sweep that knocked the Latina's legs out from under her, knocking her onto her back. Carmen was good with her fists, Kyo noted, but she kept forgetting to watch for attacks from other angles.

Carmen was quick to react, however, shooting a kick that hammered up at Kyo's thigh, just above his knee. Gasping, he involuntarily dropped down to his good knee, giving Carmen the time she needed to get back up...

Carmen rolled away and managed to scrape enough energy from the bottom of the barrel to start standing up - but not to finish it, apparently. She could only get into a crouch, her weak knees stumbling as she tried to push it further She considered coming at him with another punch or a kick, and against any other opponent the surprise my work. Not him. Not Kyo.

She decided her best chance was to spice things up with something he might not have been prepared. Something she was hardly prepared for, herself, but she was running out of good option.

She summoned some of the last vestiges of her strength and jumped at Kyo, throwing her entire body into a splash, looking to just flatten him underneath. Carmen was almost a solid 180 pounds of strong muscle. That would a big fall

As Kyo dropped down to his knee, alarm bells went off in his head. No, dammit, you need to be back on your feet! Turn and face your opponent! Kyo was battling exhaustion and dizziness at this point, but he was well versed in the arts of meditation and focus, and it was a small effort for him to push the pain in his leg out of his mind. With that done, he got back to his feet--

--just as Carmen came lunging at him bodily, throwing her fit, mucscular body against his. "GUUUUH!" Kyo gasped as Carmen slammed against his chest, sending him toppling backwards as the two crashed to the mat in a tangle of limbs."Ahh..sh..shimatta..." he groaned.

The splash wasn't all that pleasant for Carmen, either, which was one of the big reasons she'd never even tried to use it before. Kyo was muscular, not much fat for a cushion, so he wasn't the most pleasant thing to land on. She knocked her own breath out with the impact.

But from the sound of things and the feel of his body deflating beneath her, Kyo came out of it far worse. She wasn't entirely sure what the word he said translated to, but going off the context, it was something like 'Oh, shit'. She rolled off him and made her way back to a knee, cradling her stomach as the referee moved in for the count. That was a much more solid hit, and it felt good to finally make some offensive headway with him. Mentally good, anyway.

Just in case, though, she kept her eyes locked on him from over her shoulder. Kyo had been full of nasty surprises so far, no reason to expect that trend to stop.

Kyo sucked in air as he lay on his back, trying to fight off the overbearing stiffness in his back and the pain in his chest. He had expected Carmen to straddle him after going for that splash, and to start wailing punches down at him from her dominant straddle. Instead, she rolled off of him gingerly, obviously still hurting from her earlier hits as well.

As his chest rose and fell, Kyo willed himself to move. Slowly but surely, he rolled away from Carmen, calling on what reserves of strength he had to push himself up to his knees...

Carmen spit off to the side as Kyo rose up, stubbornly refusing to stay down. Oh, she expected it and accepted it. But that didn't mean she had to like it.

"You are one stubborn man." She spat off to the side as she moved back into her fighting stance and headed towards him. He was still standing, but Carmen knew the look of guy who was on his last legs. She'd seen it in plenty of the women she'd fought before, and she doubted gender would make much difference, here.

She came in, looking ready to just bash away at him the moment she was close, but she had something a bit more creative in mind - she dropped her guard when she was close and grabbed Kyo's head, pulling him into an inverted headlock and clamping down hard. Not the way to get him down on the mat by itself, but it was a good setup for what she really had in mind.