Hammer and Tongs

Army didn’t have to look up to know Alicia was smiling, but he did anyway. Sort of had to, given what they were doing.

Sure enough, she had that evil little grin of hers on again, so wide you’d almost think it would hurt her face to stretch it. In that instant, it occurred to him why she didn’t bother with the taunting during a fight - she didn’t need to. She managed to get everything across just fine with facial expressions.

For instance, the one she had on a minute or so ago clearly said ‘I want to break your leg for making a joke’ and the one she had on now seemed to say ‘You are so fucked, and I’m going to enjoy getting you between my legs in the worst way possible’.

Pleasant woman.

And a fast woman, too. Her jabs came out quick, too quick for him to do more than take them on the chest as he struggled too keep up with her circling. He was too slow, way too slow for them, and way, way too slow for the crescent kick that shot out and crashed into his knee, bringing him down.

There was an upside to pain, though - it kept Army’s eyes open. Made him desperate. Forced him to dig deep to make things work. Without it, he might not have been alert enough to raise his good arm and block the knee that was rapidly approaching his face, but he managed to pull it off with fractions of a second to spare.

From there, he did the only thing he really could do - he punched. Lashing out with a hook, he tried to get around her guard and hit at the side, going for the ribs or - if he was really lucky - a liver shot.

Alicia thought she was faster than Army anyway. Right now? They both had damaged legs but she’d been through a one legged Boston Crab. He’d been through one of the most agonising leglocks Alicia knew and she’d been working it hard.

Right now, she was a lot faster than Army and he was down to one arm at that. So it was not a surprise that her punches hit, pummelling his chest one-two-three. And then her kick landed too, cutting his good knee out from under him. With that and his bad ankle, that took Army down to one leg and she moved in for the finish.

Except Army managed to block the knee to the chin.

And she was caught entirely off guard.

The punch cracked into Alicia’s ribs, luckily not catching her in the liver. It had been close though, and the redhead staggered to one side. This was where her tactics were paying off though. Down on one knee and with a dead arm, Army couldn’t or didn’t capitalise and she was able to rally.

And with Army still on one knee, she saw a chance to finally gain the upper hand once and for all. The kickboxer spun around, bringing one leg up and putting the full force of her lower body, hips and abs into a roundhouse kick – one aimed at taking Army’s head right off his shoulders.

He’d probably be too close to the ropes for what she had in mind next but she could fix that. And, even if she missed, Alicia’s momentum would bring her back to her original starting position.

Army might’ve been a cornered rat, but he was a big fucking cornered rat, with a nasty bite. He was perfectly willing to prove that to Alicia, and it seemed like he was on a good path for it. He got lucky. Managed a solid hit, made her hurt, got a little payback. He wasn’t sure what his next move would be, but he could worry about that after Alicia went down.

And she was staggering, and she was staggering, and...she didn’t fall.

The look on Army’s face told it all. A little pissed, but understanding. He’d given it a good shot, went for broke, but he’d missed his chance, and now the pain was coming his way at lightning speed. He tried to get his hands up for a block, but he couldn’t manage it in time. Really, probably wouldn’t have made any real difference if he did.

It was just a leg, but it felt like he got blasted in the face by a baseball bat, and the effect was similar. Army’s head snapped to the side and the rest of his body spun along with it, pivoting on his knee. He teetered, then tottered, the teetered again, instinctively trying to keep balance - until his body gave up and just let him crash.

Army collapsed on his chest, landing hard with his face against the mat. He was still moving. Barely. Twitches and squirming and groans, little signs that he was still conscious. He made a brief try of pushing himself back up, but he got less than a foot upwards before gravity got the better of him and showed it was in charge.

”Just…” He grunt and spat a little blood out of his mouth, managing a week chuckle. ”Just like I planned. Ha.”

She could see it in Army’s eyes. He knew what was coming but that didn’t stop him trying to block the kick heading for him. Trying was the operative word though and he didn’t even manage that properly. Instead, he took her roundhouse right to the skull, Alicia snarling as she felt the shock of impact run up her leg as she spun back around.

In front of her, Army crashed to the floor and twitched. He was still conscious, clearly, but the big redhead had him. As long as she didn’t screw this up, she’d got him.

For a long moment, Alicia just eyed him, rubbing at the sore spot on her ribs where she’d just been punched. There was a little scowl on her face as if she still couldn’t quite believe that he’d blocked that knee. Then her lips curled into a cat like smirk, she even chuckled slightly as she stalked around him, her hips unconsciously swaying with her satisfied gait.

”Your plans suck,”

Even her tone was assured now, maybe even smug. Sauntering around to the side with his good arm, Alicia dropped down and went to secure his limb in a Kimura. First, she needed to control it, then she looped her other arm over and under his bicep to clasp her other wrist. Right now, she was more interested in controlling the arm, stopping Army from using it to stop what else she had in mind, so she kept the pressure light.

She wanted him to think she was going solely for the armlock, then she’d go for the scissors.

It was more than a little creepy, the way she was stalking around Army. Definitely not the experience you'd expect to have in the middle of a ring.

Things were quiet again. Still. Haunting. The only sound was the subtle tap tap tap as she made her way around him like a lioness around a wound we gazelle. She'd already struck down her prey, the hunt was over, and it was just a matter of deciding where she’d let her fangs sink in to make the killing blow.

Army wanted to fight on. Wanted to get up. His body, however, had different ideas.

He was done, and it was dinner time on the Savannah.

That didn't mean he was going to just let her sit down and bend him into a pretzel. When she gripped his arm, he fought back, struggled, tried to pull away. It might not have worked, but he was making her work for her meal.

That was when he felt them. The iron vise, sliding around his waist. The subtle press, closing in on him. It was in that moment he realized how bad things really were, and he frantically tried to push towards the ropes with the one good leg he still had, hoping against hope it would be enough.

Alicia had to admit, Army was not making it easy in the slightest to get that Kimura locked down.

He had one arm left, he was flat on his face and she could use both arms to corral and then control that one of his. She wasn’t honestly sure whether that was his stronger arm or not but, given how hard he was struggling, she really hoped it was.

But it didn’t really matter. Even if she couldn’t twist his limb up into the Kimura as she’d been hoping, his arms were either dead or busy trying not to be jointlocked. In short, neither of them was going to be saving him from her actual finishing move.

And all his focus on keeping his arm free meant he wasn’t paying as much attention as he should have been to those killer legs of hers, meaning Alicia had absolutely no trouble whatsoever in sliding one under him. The other went over the top. The big redhead snuggled right up to the boxer’s side, settling herself into the perfect position, before her ankles laced together into a tight knot.

Then she waited with predatory patience. She doubted it would take long; Army was struggling to drag their combined weight across the mat with one leg. He was exerting himself, it wouldn’t be too long before he had to breath.

And when he exhaled, that was when her steely thighs would tighten sharply in an attempt to force as much of his air out of him as possible. And then she’d hold the pressure steady so that he couldn’t breathe in so much this time.

If someone had been walking by the glass door of Carmen’s gym at this very moment, they’d likely be quite confused.

They’d see a large redheaded woman and an even larger Hispanic man embracing in the middle of the ring, and they might mistake it for a tender moment in one of the oddest places. The woman was embracing the man, snuggled up nice and tight, latching on to him like she never wanted to let go. It was a reasonable assumption.

But that certain someone listened close, heard the pained grunts, saw the anguish on Army’s face, well…then he might be able to figure it out. There was passion here, but not the erotic kind.

Not for Army, anyway. He was too occupied with the idea of getting to the ropes to entertain any sort of ideas. Moving like this wasn’t easy - dragging Alicia and his own combined weight was a painful process with his one good leg. If he could succeed, there’d be little to stop Alicia from just doing another hold on the spot.

But he was a Rodriguez. Stubborness ran thick in the blood.

Army took a deep breath, preparing for the struggle, when he found that he couldn’t. Breath, that was. Not as much as he would’ve liked. Alicia’s thighs were compressing, not yet to the point of unbearable pain, but she was giving his lungs a workout.

Whatever. Wouldn’t matter. Army shook his head, gritted his teeth down hard, and kept on going, making do with whatever oxygen he could find. Just keep going, just keep going...

She definitely had to give him credit for stubbornness if not good sense.

Shifting her position slightly, Alicia went to lie over his good arm so that it was trapped between her torso and the mat. If she managed that, the big redhead would loop her own arms around his neck – not so much trying to choke the boxer as pull his upper body off the mat to deny him leverage. Anything she could do to make dragging them to the ropes harder. She didn’t even need to stop him, just slow him down until oxygen deprivation had its inevitable effect.

It wasn’t quite a crossface hold, but it was definitely along the same lines.

Otherwise, she just waited. Waited for his abs to soften as he exhaled before she tightened up again, pressing still more air out and then holding. Army had a solid belly, well defined and tough, and while Alicia was sure she could bust through it with sheer pressure, this was proving more fun. He was the biggest guy she’d got between her thighs since coming to Japan; scissoring out little guys and other girls was easy.

Ok, some were easier than others but it was a matter of pressure. Army was actually going to be a bit of a challenge and Alicia relished that, her eyes gleaming and lips curled into a catlike smirk.

No, seriously, if she was actually a cat she’d be purring right now.

She’d got him.

And, unlike Dmitri, she was going to keep tightening her coils around him until she put him out cold.

Rise. Fall. Breathe in. Breathe out. Inhale. Exhale.

This should've been easier to do. As bad as his external situation was, he didn't think his cardio should've suffered like this. He'd been trained to control his air intake fairly well, a must for the longer matches. But this felt like an unnatural shortness, as if he were doing twenty rounds, back-to-back. Almost like…

Alicia tightened again, and Army realized exactly what she was doing. She was practically smothering him, and there wasn't a thing he could do to stop her.

He pawed at the mat with his hurting arm, a vain attempt to keep moving forwards to the rope, but with his better arm trapped, he wasn't making any progress. He might as well have been going backwards. It felt like he was. The ropes seemed to get further and further away, the room was getting darker, the sounds were getting quieter…

He opened his mouth to taken in air, and couldn't get a single wisp down. No suction. No anything.

Stubborn to the end, Army clenched his teeth hard and refused to go out easy, clinging to consciousness. He gave up on pulling his way across the ring and tried to hit her side with some punches, but they wouldn't have done much damage, even if his body wasn't shutting down for business and his bones weren't in constant pain. Just one more futile move in a long series of futile moves.

It was working.

Alicia might not be an expert at bodyscissor knockouts. Hell, most of the time, if she won with a bodyscissors, they tapped. Fast and hard and clutching at their ribs in fear she’d cracked them. But knockouts – those she was an expert at and this was just a new tool in her arsenal.

Army was going out. She could see it in his slowing struggles, feel it in the growing slackening of his body pinned between her legs. She was wringing the fight out of him one drop at a time. Those abs of his were softening, weakening as he ran out of breath and couldn’t hold them strong against her ongoing pressure.

With that, her thighs were beginning to bite into his body, just lacking that last ultimate surrender that would see him unconscious.

Not long to go now, she just knew it.

The punches were pretty ineffective. Army was using an arm Alicia had twisted and wrenched until it nearly snapped. And on top of that, he was basically having to reach across his own body to throw them, robbing them of any force he might have been able to put behind them. The redhead absorbed them with a soft grunt, letting his upper body fall back to the mat as she got her arms under her.

Then she pushed up on them, arching her body up so that her side was off the canvas and throwing her head back with a guttural groan as she went to finish him. The Amazon’s thick quads and hamstrings swelled still further as she did her utmost to not only paralyse his breathing but crush him into submission. He was going out. One way or another, Army was going out.

That didn’t mean that Alicia didn’t want to make him tap before he went. Because that would just be the cherry on top.