Abattoir vs. River Styx - Once Upon A Time In Boyle Heights...

Styx would give Safiya some credit: she hadn’t tried to run yet. Not that she would’ve been able to get out, really - the cage door was locked, and unless she was really good at climbing, there was no way she’d be able to get over the chain link faste enough. But despite the piss-poor way this had progressed in record time, Safiya was staying tough. Good on her.

”Try to keep up.” Styx spoke, just loud enough for her voice to carry over the raging crowd. As much as she wanted to keep up the cold aura, she couldn’t keep the slightest grin off her face. ”Don’t make me do all the work, here.”

Taunting as it was, Styx did mean it, though she couldn't quite capture the annoying cadence of Safiya's voice. She didn’t mind playing with her food, but some real challenge before she left Boyle Heights would’ve been sweet. Something to salvage this.

After a quick roll of her shoulders, she only took a moment to consider her position before she rushed in, closing in on her fallen foe with a couple of long strides. She made her way to Safiya’s flank and swung her leg with a vicious punt into her side, bringing the tip of her steel-toed boots crashing into the challenger’s body and going for a field goal on her ribs.

Here came Styx.  She'd seen this plenty of times - the old 'stalking the prey' routine, a classic intimidation tactic.  If they could see you coming, the anticipation was supposed to wear on them.

Safiya was the calculating type, though, and definitely didn't scare easily, not even in a situation as dangerous as this one.  Anticipation aside, being able to see Styx coming meant she had a chance at guessing what was coming next, and as the bigger girl picked up her speed, Safiya rolled over onto her hands and knees, frantically trying to get upright in time to counter the kick that was almost definitely coming her way.

And come her way it did.  There wasn't nearly enough time or space to get clear and the nak muay took the blow right in her side before she could even twist around on the way.  Agony exploded in her side with an audible crunch, the sound of her right floating rib giving way under two hundred pounds of steel-toed pressure.  It drew a gasp from her, which only worsened her shortness of breath...

...but it didn't destroy her presence of mind, not like it would've done to an untrained, sloppy amateur.  With diamond-focused will, Safiya caught Styx's ankle in the crook of her free arm - just long enough to keep her off-balance - then spun inward with all the momentum she'd managed from turning into the kick and brought the other arm around.

The back elbow aimed at Styx's head was like a gunshot.  She was running almost entirely on adrenaline and wounded pride, and both of those things made it very dangerous indeed to stop taking her seriously just because of her injury.

Styx was legit surprised when Safiya managed to move - well, she didn’t get out of the way and it didn’t save her from taking a punt in the side with enough force to rearrange organs. But she did manage to move. Not bad

The kick connected anyway and Styx was given one of the best pleasures in life: the always sastifying sensation of bone giving way to oppressing metal, along with the subtle crack of ribs coming apart. Safiya would be feeling that for many, many mornings to come.

Styx had every intention of making it worse, but things changed fast. Safiya was hurting, but not enough to keep her from fighting back with a surprising burst. The next thing she knew there was a swift elbow cracking her in the face, hitting with enough speed to make up for what it lacked in any other areas. Safiya could bring some pain.

”Gnh!” Styx stumbled back from the sheer alacrity of the blow, eyes screwed shut from the sharp pain, completely taking her off guard. Now it was her turn to feel her jaw and make sure everything was in proper order, rubbing it while she shook her head and tried to get her head clear.

A hard-training nak muay of more than, say, three-ish years usually has insane core strength.  They've taken so many knees to the torso that they've essentially become conditioned to muscle through the blows, especially if they regularly compete.  Safiya had over six years of experience, and in that time she'd developed that ability to the point where it was basically second nature: shots to the ribs and gut, while undesirable, tended not to be a crisis issue.

The problem, of course, was that all the muscle and conditioning in the world doesn't do any good if your actual bones can't hold up to the pressure, and there was no way her ribs were going to withstand somebody of Styx's size kicking them full force with steel-toed boots.  There was definitely a fracture down there, to her incredible frustration.

Even as she spun into the back elbow, Safiya could feel the stabbing pain in her side slowing her down.  It was a feeling she hadn't experienced in forever, not since her first year in training when all the bruises on her sides had made it hard to breathe.  Nonetheless, her elbow whipcracked across Styx's face, staggering her, and Safiya leaped into action.

Literally - she jumped to throw a roundhouse elbow straight at the back of the street fighter's head.  There wasn't really a better way to get the right angle on it, not unless she wanted to just swing from the arm without any momentum.  Whether it worked or not, though, she was hanging on all the way back to the ground, because the elbow attempt had really just been a setup to get Styx leaning over.

Safiya had the knee chambered before she even landed - although the impact caused her to visibly wince and let out a gasp of pain - and she shot it straight for Styx's chest the second it was lined up.  See how she liked that, the smug bitch.

This was a new one. Styx had to admit, as she staggered back and began to regain her senses, that this was something a fresh experience for her. While not the first the time that someone had tried to bring the fight to her in such an aggressive fashion, Safiya was unique. Most of the foolish souls that had tried engaging her that way were at least close to her size. Not this one.

Styx stumbled back.

She came in close and struck hard. Styx had only just whipped around when another elbow cracked her across the back of her skull, coming from the oddest angle and rattling her brains.

Styx stumbled back again.

This was happening fast now, but she knew Safiya was going to follow up, seized the opportunity as she bowed forward. Probably with something fancy, something painful, something aimed at her leaning chest. As she opened her eyes, she saw it coming at the last second: a knee, driven hard into her chest.

Styx stumbled once more, but this time, that wasn’t all she did. Now, she was ready, and more importantly, she was pissed. The knee struck home, but Styx didn’t let Safiya pull it back, as her arm wrapped tight around the knee. She stood straight up with a murderous roar, lifted the nak muay along with her, spun around and whipped her into the side of the cage at full force, slamming her back into the harsh, unforgiving metal.

A full force knee to the body was usually enough to finish people, especially if it hit on the right side, striking at the vulnerable liver. More than a few of Safiya's fights had come to an end the second she was able to posture back and throw a knee, and she dared to hope for just a moment that it might be enough to put an end to this one.

Styx, however, ate the knee and came back for seconds.

She felt her leg being hooked, instinctively dropped her center of gravity, and had just enough time to realize that Styx had something far more explosive in mind than shooting a single-leg on her. By the time Safiya understood the gravity of her situation, she was hoisted and flying, whipped like a ragdoll through the air, where her back collided with the cage with enough speed to drive the air out of her lungs and drop her unceremoniously back to the floor.

The hit against the cage was bad enough, but the landing was even worse; she'd dropped onto her side, and her fractured rib shrieked in protest, a lightning bolt that shot all the way up her spine to her brain and then echoed its way across her nerves. Safiya cried out in pain, a choked squeal of agony, and clenched her teeth - a terrible idea, because that only increased the pain shooting through her jaw. She recoiled from the sensation, as if struck, and pushed herself over onto her front.

Oh god. The agony was excruciating; it felt like her vision was tinging alternately red and white as the seconds ticked by. How the hell had that girl just taken the knee like it was nothing? It'd always worked before, but now...

Safiya’s knee and the strikes that had preceded it were by no means pleasant, and Styx was sure that she’d be feeling this fight in the afternoon, when she finally woke up, the adrenaline wore off and the heat cooled down. That was far more than she could say about any other fight she’d had this week.

So, there was a modicum of respect for Safiya, the plucky, brave young fighter who’d dared to step into the Pit, and who was now writhing on the floor. That would not stop Styx from utterly wrecking her shit, however.

”Little fuck.” Styx’s lips curled into a fierce snarl, as she took a hot second to rub her chest, nursing the spot where the knee had landed. She spat to the side, kicked some dirt on Safiya for pure spite, and then it was right back to business.

She pounced on the smaller woman like a raging lioness on wounded prey, dropping all of her hulking weight on Safiya’s side in a crude mount. With the damage she’d taken, that would probably hurt enough by itself, but Styx was far from satisfied with that alone, something anyone could gather from growling way her words were coming out. ”C’mere, c’mere…”

One hand was dedicated to grabbing Safiya’s head and forcing it into the dirt, rubbing her face in it, making sure to get it all over the eyes, nose, mouth, all the most unpleasant places. The other was more focused on raw pain, as she threw hooks into the nak muay's chest, going for any opening she could find and ramming her fist in with relentless abandon.

Adversity takes a lot of forms, and the most dangerous is the outside-context problem, because it's the one you haven't envisioned and never properly prepared for.  Safiya had always been able to rely on brute force to get her through the tough moments and precise technique to carry her the rest of the way, and this was because she'd only ever fought people who were either more or less her size, untrained, or both.

Styx was neither, and as all of her weight dropped down onto the nak muay's hip, Safiya was keenly aware that she had finally encountered the outside-context problem.

The blows to her chest were practically incidental - they sucked, sure, but they were kind of in the background in light of the way the bigger woman was grinding her face in the dirt.  She growled in obvious pain as the stinging grit of the floor ground up against her open cuts, thrashing futilely in Styx's grasp.  Ahhh, goddamn it, it was in her eye now!  Safiya tried to shake her head, to absolutely no avail, and the punches just kept coming.

A twinge of despair, for the first time in a very long while, began to flutter in the back of her mind.  This was going terribly, and it was resurrecting a sense of terror she hadn't experienced since she was a child.  She hadn't met a problem she couldn't just knee her way through in what felt like forever, and now, sprawled on the floor and getting pummeled unmercifully, the unfamiliarity of her situation had planted some very unpleasant seeds in her mind.

The arm she wasn't lying on was trying to shield herself from the blows, and when she finally got the other one out from underneath herself, she tried to grab and immobilize Styx's punching arm with it.  The other, meanwhile, struck blindly at the other girl's face and collarbone, but they were arm punches with no momentum behind them, really more of a self-preservation mechanism than a serious attack.

While the bulk of Styx’s mind was focused on the task at hand - brutally maiming some stupid girl in the basement of a shitty bar - there was some higher parts of her brain still operating. For whatever reason, she was remembering a nature show she’d seen on Discovery Channel back when she was a kid, some stupid thing she’d stumbled on when there was absolutely nothing better to watch.

It had been about bear attacks, and what to do when you find yourself on the business end of a Grizzly's attacks. Bear pepper spray. Dropping into the fetal position. Not fighting back, playing dead, making the bear think you were no longer a threat so it would leave.

Safiya didn’t seem to see the wisdom in this, as she kept battering Styx face with feeble punches. They didn’t hurt, hardly more than a nuisance, but they were resistance. Resistance had to be pacified. If she’d given up and just laid there, Styx probably would’ve given up, not having much interest in beating a lifeless body. But she didn’t. She was still fighting back. She wouldn’t let the fight out, so it would have to be beaten out of her. Nothing Styx had a problem with.

She let Safiya grab her punching arm, and it earned her a reprieve from the chest shots. Styx didn’t mind it, really. She had the head in a decent grip, and while she had been content to just rub the little kickboxer’s face into the dirt, she could do more.

She gripped Safiya’s head, jerked it up, and rammed it into the floor. ”Stupid!”

Then she gripped Safiya’s head, jerked it up, and rammed it into the floor. ”Fucking!”

Once more, she gripped Safiya’s head, jerked it up, and rammed it into the floor. ”Bitch!”

The smart thing to do, as Styx was pondering, probably would've been to just go limp. Take the L and live to fight another day.

There was nothing smart about Safiya's thought processes at the moment, though; she was panicking, incoherent, and more than a little furious at her circumstances. And so she kept trying to hammer at Styx, squirming in a doomed struggle to get herself loose, right up until she felt the rough, calloused skin of a hand palming her head.

"Ahh, no, nononono---"

The first shot dazed her, sending her mind spinning and blood leaking from a split eyebrow. The second shot bounced her head off the ground and the point of impact was her already-damaged jaw, which let out a visceral crackle that matched the spike of pain in her head. The third, though, that was the one that really sucked, because she went in forehead-first this time, and the feeling of her brain ricocheting off the inside of her skull was enough to leave the nak may thoroughly blitzed, mentally speaking.

There was sort of a spreading numbness in her body, mercifully dialing down the sharp aching that Styx's beating had caused, and the outside noise was drowned out by a persistent high-pitched ringing in her ears; perhaps it was because of this that Safiya, against the better judgment of everyone watching, was still trying to get up.

Come on. It's not that bad. You've had worse than this, come on, get up--

Her eyes were watery, stinging with blurry tears. As she planted both palms on the ground and tried to push herself back up to her knees, she blinked rapidly to clear them out and found her vision was still all blurred, as if she was underwater. Probably not a good sign, but at least the pain was starting to recede in favor of an ominous cold nothing.