Anything You Can Do

Carmen wasn’t blind - she could see the hints of disappointment play across Alicia’s face. She’d obviously been hoping that the two of them could go at it, and she couldn’t blame her - this was obviously a woman who wanted to put herself up against the best in the room, which Carmen certainly was and Suzy certainly was not.

Carmen could sympathize, especially since fighters with the drive, skill, and physical prowess that Alicia had were rare to come by, Friciton or Tension, man or woman. But if she was really joining up, she would be coming by the gym on a regular basis.

They would have their time. No need to rush. For now, Alicia would make a good teaching tool.

Carmen glanced back to Suzy as she slipped off into the ring, and by the time she’d brought her attention back to Alicia, the kickboxer was already taking off her top, revealing impressive upper body beneath. She nodded, always loving to see a woman who kept her body in top shape, before she made her way over to the side of the ring and stood there with her arms folded and her eyes centered. ”Freestyle sparring, ladies. Follow my commands, go when I say go and stop when I say stop.”

Inside, Suzy had already started bouncing on her toes when Alicia made her way in, getting into her groove. Her stance was still a little too loose, but she moved well enough around the ring, and she didn’t back off when the taller, bigger fighter made her way in.

Confidence. A good trait for a fighter. To a point.

”Damn right it won’t take long.” Suzy began to make her way to the center of the ring, gesturing for Alicia to meet her there so they could begin. ”Gonna drop your slow ass in...two minutes. Won’t even touch me.”

As soon as they were both in position, Carmen snapped her fingers to kick it off. ”Go!”

Well, the usual rules – although it meant she was going to have to be quick if she wanted to make her point. The redhead gave Carmen a nod to show she’d understood before entering the ring.

With a slow, predatory strut, Alicia made her own way to the centre of the ring, her flat gaze never wavering from her nameless opponent’s. She wasn’t smirking for once, her expression focused but disinterested as she made her approach. As far as she was concerned, this was not a fight – this was an execution, a necessary demolition job to show what she could do. Even if she had been inclined to take it easy on the boxer, the Latina’s trash talking was leaving her little interested in showing any mercy.

So, yes. This wouldn’t take long. It certainly wouldn’t take two minutes. And, if Alicia had anything to say about it, one of them wouldn’t be touching the other. It just wouldn’t be the one that this trainee thought. ‘Slow ass’ indeed.

Her dark, dead eyes were still fixed on the other woman as Alicia took up her fighting stance, refusing to let overconfidence push her to making a mistake. She waited, breathing easily, waited, waited...

And then the instant Carmen snapped her fingers, she was moving forward at full speed, one foot coming up as she twisted to deliver a blisteringly fast side kick to her opponent’s belly.

Alicia was strong, obviously so. But the boxer really shouldn’t have been so quick to write her off as slow.

Right away, Carmen noticed - and liked - the stark silence that was coming from Alicia. Since joining the AFW, she’d gotten used to the way wrestlers liked to taunt and talk during matches.  It had its place, was a good way to throw off certain opponents and get certain reactions. She’d learned to indulge in it herself, a few times.

But none of that was coming from Alicia. When she stepped in the ring, Carmen could see this fiery focus in her eyes. That was how she knew, before she snapped her fingers and before a single muscle was moved in the spar, almost exactly how this was going to go, and that her poor student was biting off a bit more than she could chew.

Needless to say, she was going to watch very closely, just to make sure that she didn't choke on it.

If Suzy was intimidated by Alicia’s glare, she wasn’t showing it. Yes, the redhead was taller. But she’d handled taller opponents before. It was just a matter of staying in motion, while they-

Carmen’s fingers snapped, Suzy blinked, and when her eyelids opened again Alicia was already in motion and closing in fast. She didn’t have time to dodge as the kick came up and shot out like a piston. Suzy managed to get her arms down and defend the blow, which kept it from going into her stomach, but, well…

The impact alone was enough to nearly knock the fledgling boxer clean off her feet. She stumbled back, nearly slipping every step of the way, and she might’ve fallen flat on her back if the ring ropes didn’t save her at the last moment.

She looked back and stood up straigh with a stunned stare, just for a moment, while she tried to figure out what happened, what she’d just been hit with. When the moment passed, Suzy shook her aching arm, still sore from the strike, and started to move away from the ropes with slower steps. She was more cautious now as she tried to circle around Alicia, boots lightly tapping along the mat as she moved.

People didn’t tend to realise how fast Alicia could move. She’d been a runner for years, and a gymnast, but people looked at her, saw the curves and the muscles and thought ‘slow powerhouse’. Well, they were right about the powerhouse bit but – like they said – speed killed.

Speed in this case meant that one loud-mouthed boxer who thought she was a lot better than she was had taken a brutal kick to the arm, had been sent staggering away and was only just realising what she might have signed herself up for.

Alicia’s mouth was twitching as if she wanted to smirk. But she didn’t.

She could have pressed the advantage. She could have marched the staggering boxer right over to those ropes while she didn’t know which way was up and kicked her head clean off her shoulders. She could have been waiting to greet her with a boot to the jaw after she bounced off the ropes. There were any number of things Alicia could have done that would really have ruined her opponent’s day and a couple that would maybe have ended it right there. But then she’d be accused of a cheap shot and blah, blah, blah… Alicia knew the type. She knew it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference to Carmen, whose opinion was the only one that counted here, but she wanted to make a point.

A couple of them, actually.

So she stood and waited, letting the younger boxer get her wits about her again, and come back to the centre of the ring to try again. The girl wasn’t trash-talking this time and she was showing a good deal more respect; now did she recognise the problem she faced? Her best weapons were her fists, to use which she had to close to within punching range. Alicia’s were her feet and not only was the effective range of a kick longer than a punch anyway, the redhead was taller with proportionately longer legs.

So, to get at Alicia, Carmen’s student was going to have to take a kick – at least – before she could do anything in return. Whereas the British woman could just stand back and pick her moments with complete confidence.

That was, of course, if she’d wanted to. Instead, Alicia didn’t wait. She surged forward again, keeping the boxer square in front of her and throwing a salvo of jabs and hooking punches at the girl’s high guard. She didn’t need any of them to get through, though that would be a bonus.

All she actually needed was the boxer to get her hands up high so that she wasn’t looking for the knee to the gut that was Alicia’s actual attack.

This whole display was amusing by itself, but Carmen wasn’t merely having her student go up against a more skilled, stronger opponent for the entertainment value. She genuinely wanted her student to learn something, here.

”Watch the feet.” Carmen called out, as her pupil moved around the ring and tried hard to shake off her mounting concerns. It occured to her that those words could be taken two ways, and she meant both - Suzy needed to watch her stance and posture, and she needed to watch the incoming missiles that were Alicia’s feet.

Suzy seemed to realize this, as her gaze shifted between Alicia’s violet eyes and her violent legs. She took a couple of cautious steps towards the center, considering her next move…

Whatever it was she was planning, it was canceled the second Alicia took the initiative. The gap was closed with the same alacrity from before, and Suzy brought her arms up for the defense again, just in time to start absorbing shots.

Hooks, jabs, jabs, hooks, over and over they pelted Suzy’s guard, battering her back and forth. ”Hands up, keep it tight!” To her student’s credit, she did as Carmen had taught and managed to withstand the onslaught decently enough - one or two slipped past, but she could handle it well enough.

The knee, though, was a different story.

She’d just started to wind back for a counterpunch when Alicia’s knee crashed into her stomach and killed the effort. It blasted the wind straight out of her, made her legs buckle, and now Suzy was in full retreat again. She staggered back towards the ropes, coughing and trying to straighten back up before Alicia could capitalize.

To be fair, to give credit where it was due, her guard was pretty good. Alright, Alicia’s punches weren’t the wrecking balls her kicks were, but she still wasn’t weak by any standard. And her fists moved fast, snapping out and recoiling to strike again as she tried to overwhelm her opponent’s block by sheer weight of numbers.

And it wasn’t working. Except the ‘distraction’ part worked to perfection and, after that, the rest really didn’t matter one bit.

This time, there wasn’t any last minute interception, just the familiar sense of flesh buckling as her knee drove home. Caught entirely off guard, the boxer just crumpled, her inexperience serving her very poorly as all the air in her body made a spectacular exit. Once again, the Latina was on the back foot and this time, Alicia had no intention of letting her breathe. Literally or metaphorically.

It was tempting to go for the shoddy footwork but, at this point, there really wasn’t much use.

Instead, stalking after her, the redheaded amazon let her get close enough to the ropes for what she had in mind. And then she brought one leg up and blasted it out in a push kick aimed at the other woman’s belly again. Her idea was to kick the boxer into the ropes, wait for her to bounce back and then take her head off with a big boot to the face.

That, between her momentum and the power in Alicia’s lower body, ought to settle her down. And if it didn’t knock her right out – and it probably wouldn’t as this one had a hard head even for a boxer, it seemed – then that’s what a triangle choke was for.

As far as Alicia was concerned, her opponent was ending this one drooling.

Carmen had three rings in her gym - two for boxing, one for wrestling. Suzy and Alicia were currently in the wrestling ring, which was good for her student. Competing in the AFW meant she would need to get used to the difference. Chief among them, being the ropes.

Suzy managed to get her guard up to block Alicia’s push kick, but just like the last kick she’d taken it, turtling up didn’t matter too much in the long run. Suzy’s lighter body was thrown back to the side of the ring, and that was where the real problems came in.

Her reflexes told her that the ropes would sag, like the boxing ropes that she was used to. Those reflexes were proved wrong, however, when she was sent hurtling forward, the momentum behind Alicia’s attack forcing her to keep moving. Dashing towards her opponent. Not good.

”Hands up-”

Suzy was moving too fast to heed Carmen’s warning, and wound up running right into Alicia’s boot. Down she went, flat on her back with an ignominous crash. She laid there for a moment, groaning and groggy, shaking her head from side to side. Not the way she pictured this going, most likely.

Again, credit where it was due, the Latina’s guard was apparently reflexive enough that she got it up to block the worst of the kick. But it still sent her flying back into the ropes, which immediately sent her right back at Alicia. And the kickboxer was waiting, with the result that the smaller woman was sent crashing to the mat with an emphatic boot to the head.

It probably wouldn’t have really helped if she had got her hands up, to be honest. She tried but, well, she was probably even more of a novice in a wrestling ring than Alicia was.

So really the result was pretty much inevitable.

This time, Alicia did smirk.

Not that it stopped her moving. With the boxer levelled, the mixed martial artist dropped down, looking to straddle her torso and immediately push up to score high mount. Unless the boxer moved very quickly to either slip out or counter somehow, she was going to find herself with Alicia astride her upper body. More worryingly, her neck and one arm would be locked between the British amazon’s thick thighs in a mounted triangle choke.

Never an enviable position for anyone to be, it should be said.

Carmen had taken some heavy hits as a boxer, even more know that she'd transitioned over to wrestling. Despite that wide array of painful experiences? Even she found herself wincing when the underside of Alicia’s boot was introduced to Suzy’s facesit ramming speeds. There was a loud, echoing slap throughout the room, resonating through the metal wall, and Suzy was on her back before it had finished making the rounds.

She landed on her back, Alicia came down on her chest, and just like that, it was all over. If it had ever really began in the first place.

Suzy tried to struggle, to her credit, bucking and thrashing when the large woman came down on her. It didn't help. If anything, it just made it easier for Alicia to control her gave her some space to work with. Her legs wrapped around the young boxer’s neck, the arm came up, and she found herself locked in one of the more well-known and rightly-feared submission holds.

Carmen wasn't a big fan of MMA, but she could appreciate a proper triangle hold all the same. So could Suzy, if the furious and quickly waning tapping against Alicia’s thigh and the steady thrashing of her legs was any indication.

When Alicia locked in the triangle choke, her calf settled under the boxer’s neck and locked behind her knee, the match was over.

Triangle chokes were evil. Pure evil.

And they were also viciously effective, particularly in the hands (legs?) of someone who knew what they were doing.

They required far less strength than a scissors, worked faster and trapped an arm into the bargain. And, for an inexperienced grappler, once panic set in it was hard to see a way out. The Latina, with one arm trapped, pinned under a larger woman and with her own shoulder cutting off the blood to her brain, was never going to last long once Alicia secured the choke. She just didn’t know what to do, at least that was Alicia’s read of the situation, except tap, tap, tap.

A rapidly weakening tap, tap, tap, to be sure.

The big redhead just kept her hold tight, staring dominantly down into the boxer’s eyes as they began to flutter. The struggles kept on weakening, and Alicia waited until almost the last moment because she released the hold, pulling back to straddle her torso in a schoolgirl pin as she waited for the Latina to recover.

She’d have knocked her out but something at the last moment had pointed out that Carmen probably wouldn’t appreciate that. In some regards, Alicia could care less. In others, she might want a membership here and a chance to spar with the boxer. And knocking out her pupil, however much she deserved it, probably wouldn’t help.

Her eyes strayed to Carmen.

"Fun warmup. Got any more?"