Lorenza Saldano vs. Carmen Rodriguez - ¡Guerra!

Carmen could safely say that, when she challenged Lorenza to a rematch, many moons ago, she never expected that it would come down to getting a toilet seat swung at her. Simply did not cross her mind.

It didn't even hurt all that much, and there were certainly worse things she could be hit with, but just the thought of it made her want to retch. And she was swinging the blasted thing at her face. Where her mouth and eyes were, for Christ's sake.

She swung her head back as the toilet seat passed by and reached out before it could get away, grabbing as tight as she could with one of her arms still pulsing with pain. Her hands were covered in tapes, so she didn't have to touch it barehanded, a small saving grace. Still skeevy as all hell.

Carmen couldn't see too much, but if there was one thing she could always do with Lorenza Saldano, it was butt heads, and that was precisely what she went. She held the seat as tight as she could and jerked forward, slamming their foreheads together and making a sound like coconuts.

There didnâ€t seem to be much which made Carmen uneasy, but the prospect of being hit by this toilet seat was one thing. To be perfectly honest with herself, Lorenza knew she would be just as uncomfortable and grossed out had Carmen been swinging the toilet seat at her.

Lorenza had managed to hit Carmenâ€s arm with the first swing, and thought she could do better with the second. But she couldnâ€t—she caught nothing but air.

Carmen would reach out after the toilet seat swung by, grabbing ahold of it and keeping Lorenza from following through with her swing. The Mexican boxer was yanked forward by her opponent as they now both held on to the toilet seat. In the darkness, Lorenza could just barely see Carmenâ€s bloody face coming right at hers. She certainly felt it when they clunked heads, however. It hurt…a lot. Carmen had to be hurting from the forehead-to-forehead collision, too. Lorenza would drop the toilet seat and stumble back, doing her best not to fall into the grime which seemed to cover the floors of this dankest part of the locker room.

After years of not being allowed to do a headbutt, it was easy to forget why they were such a bad idea. Needless to say, when Carmen's head connected with Lorenza's thick skull, she was given a harsh reminder. She swore she could feel the lump rising on her skull the moment she pulled away, a nasty shiner that was going to stick with her for weeks.

But, on the the bright side, it made Lorenza drop the toilet seat. So the chances of her vomiting dramatically decreased.

Her wobbly steps were almost a dark mirror image of Lorenza's, as the two struggled to keep from falling down. Before, it had been fairly clear when one of them was dominating, but now Carmen couldn't tell which way the wind was blowing. Both tired, both stacking up damage. Even. For the moment.

Looking to change that, Carmen moved back towards Lorenza, but not straight to her. She went to the side and grabbed hold of a rusted stall door, as if she needed it to lean on. While she wouldn't have minded resting against it, She had a better use.

Carmen swung the door wide open, making it fly right into Lorenza like a swatter to a fly.
-

Lorenza could barely see Carmen in the darkness, but the headbutt seemed to have hurt her just as much as it had hurt Lorenza. She was wobbling in the shadows, just as Lorenza was, and, for a moment, neither one of them was dominating or being dominated. They were on even ground, both hurt, both surely looking for an opening to try to turn the tide in this vicious duel.

Lorenza would put her fists up and would move towards Carmen, slowly, warily, watching her rival and waiting to see what she would do. When Carmen leaned on the rusted stall door, Lorenza thought it was a sign of weakness. She was soon proven wrong as the door suddenly swung outwards, heading right towards her. Lorenza put her arms up in front of her face, taking the blow on her forearms and stumbling backwards, getting a little turned around as she reeled from the blow.

It worked. A desperate, silly move, but the stall door smacked into Lorenza and did exactly what Carmen needed it to do. Carmen couldn't tell if she blocked it or not, but even if she did, the blow had her reeling, a solid impact. All she needed.

Thinking outside the box. That would get her through this.

A little while before they had their fight, Carmen went through a sparing session with Angel, and while she could hardly say she was a kicking master, she'd come out of it knowing more than when she went in. It was sloppy and slow enough that it would have gotten a C on any test, but she took a bold step after Lorenza, raised her foot and came at her rival with the hardest push kick she could muster. Her leg shot out, the heel going straight for her chest.

Lorenza had gotten a little turned around when the door ran into her, though it had not left much lasting damage. Her elbows might have been bruised. That was all. She had fought through broken bones—she was fighting through broken bones. Bruised elbows were nothing. Lorenza would growl, put her fists up, and stomp forward again, ready to continue beating Carmen down.

As she approached, she saw Carmen moving in front of her in the darkness, her body bunching up in an unfamiliar way. It was, Lorenza soon learned, a kick, aimed right at her chest and intended to push her back. It would do its job, as the boot of her opponent planted itself right between Lorenzaâ€s breasts and gave her a hard, painful shove, forcing her to stumble back yet again. The pain in her chest was much worse than the pain in her elbows.

“Fuck,” Lorenza spat. She would, from here on out, be more cautious. Very slowly, she would put her fists back up, taking a single step forward as, this time, she would wait for Carmen to do the attacking.

As Lorenza went back, it occurred to Carmen that she'd never successfully kicked anyone before - not counting dropkicks, at least. Satisfying and effective. Maybe not quite as much as a well-struck punch, but the attack had its place. She wasn't about to take up Muy Thai, but she made a mental note to learn some more maneuvers when she had the time. Few things caught people off guard like a kick from a boxer, and they'd be a crazy little addition to her growing moveset.

It wasn't enough to put Lorenza down, though, and she came back only a moment later, getting her guard up and forcing Carmen to bring the fight, which she had every intention of doing.

"You okay, over there?" She moved in with a quick step, splashing up water from a puddle between them as she went, and tested Lorenza guard with two jabs and a hard right to follow them up, her taped fists whipping out in white blurs, slicing through the darkness. "Looking tired."

The kick hurt, but Lorenza was okay. She smirked to herself in the darkness as Carmen mocked her, clenching her fists a little tighter as she got ready to kick Carmenâ€s ass once again. “Lo siento, hermana, but I canâ€t take any of your taunts seriously knowing you got hit in the face with a dirty toilet seat less than a minute ago.”

She waited, fists up, and Carmen did indeed bring the fight to her, moving forward, splashing through a heretofore unseen puddle that stood between them. Carmen threw a couple of quick jabs, and Lorenzaâ€s guard absorbed them, as well as a hard right that the Puerto Rican followed up with, though that punch did force Lorenza to back up a step in order to keep her balance. She would come back with a few hard punches of her own, throwing a couple jabs right for Carmenâ€s face, then throwing a hard right hook, trying to get it around her opponentâ€s arms to slam into the Puerto Rican boxerâ€s temple.

Carmen inwardly sighed. Lorenza was probably going to rib her about that toilet seat all the way their graves.

She pushed that minor annoyance aside as the two of them had a minor moment of real boxing, trading unfettered punches with ruthless force. Carmen's strikes just whiffed off Lorenza's guard, missing their marks and leaving her unsatisfied. She moved in and started follow up with a hard right, guaranteed to slip through the blocks, but she never had the chance to connect. Two jabs snapped her skull left and right, and she just managed to get her arms up in time to avoid a lethal hook that would have surely left her flat on the floor. And she really, really did not want to be laying on this nasty floor.

Instead of returning fire with another punch, she stayed low and wrapped her arms around Lorenza's iron waist, then jerked up and tried to throw her over her shoulders, toss her away in a wrestling move with a name she could not for the life of her. Some kind of suplex, not important. The point was, it would be a rough landing for Lorenza if it worked.

It felt good to trade punches. A couple of jabs, a hook. Block that, step back to steady oneself, then come forward, throwing a barrage into your opponentâ€s guard in retaliation. There was a give and take, an ebb and flow about boxing which was almost soothing for Lorenza.

So, of course, that brief foray into the sport which both women were professionals at lasted for mere seconds. Carmen remained low and threw her arms around Lorenzaâ€s waist, hoisting the Mexican up and trying to throw her over her shoulders. As Lorenza was lifted into the air, she started thinking fast. She really didnâ€t want to land in the puddles and hundred layers of grime which covered the floor in here, but if she was, so was Carmen. Lorenza would quickly try to snap her legs closed around Carmenâ€s head as she went tumbling to the floor, hoping to painfully drag her rival down with her by the head.