A Little Friendly Competition

There was no resistance as she hiked her opponent to her feet, no help either. Just a limp acquiescence as Alicia’s hands gripped the Georgian’s biceps hard enough to leave bruises in the wake of where her fingertips had pressed into flesh.

It wouldn’t have really mattered what Eka said or did. Either way, unless she’d physically walked away, the redhead was intent on finishing what they’d started. Particularly after that attempted low blow. But she didn’t get resistance. She didn’t even get agreement. She got a wavering wreck of a woman, as if the failure of her little attempt at cheating had hollowed her out, left Eka without anything left to call upon. She even swayed as Alicia let go of her arms, only just catching herself before she fell back again.

And she was all but crying, unable to even meet the redhead’s vengeful gaze as she wiped her nose messily on one arm.

Pathetic. It was all she could do to get into a fighting stance.

If anything though, Eka’s apparent surrender (not to mention the tears) just fanned the flames of Alicia’s fury higher. She didn’t waste any time on the niceties or on checking on Eka, let alone any breath on more useless words. Instead the British amazon just brought one leg up in a ferocious knee lift aimed at literally annihilating the Georgian’s belly. She wasn’t holding anything back now, not her strength or her speed.

If the other wrestler wanted absolution, she was going to have to earn it, one brutal blow at a time.

Her country was named after a man who fought a dragon. At the moment, Eka felt like she was fighting two. The first dragon was small and subtle, a serpent that rose from the doubt in her heart to fill her ears with quiet dread. It was nigh impossible to combat directly, and Eka had been under its spell for a while now. The second dragon was far more physical, far more real. A flame breathing British woman sent her a devastating kick.

And the strike hit home. The blow caused Eka to stagger to her right, and she considered taking the fall. Alicia's powerful legs were surely enough to down her, especially at this stage in the came. The Georgian girl was beat, mentally and physically, and going down would put an end to her struggle. But she couldn't. A great dishonor was upon her now, and Eka knew she had to do her utmost so that maybe she could earn a little bit of respect back.

She took another, and another, and another to find her balance. Eventually, she was on her two feet and standing upright. Her chest rose and fell with every breath, and a sharp pain rocked her whole side. She knew that she was going to go down, but at the very least she was going to go down fighting.

The Georgian woman charged forward recklessly. It was incredibly foolish to try and beat Alicia at her own game, but her usual methods weren't working, so Eka thought she should go for something bold. She pivoted on her left foot and sent her right leg out and forward, hoping to get a strong kick into Alicia's side. Eka barely knew how to throw a kick other than 'swing your leg really fast' which meant that her form was, well, formless. But her legs were rather strong...

Despite the satisfying way that her knee had sent Eka staggering away, Alicia stomped after her, waiting for an opportunity to follow up. The Georgian had managed to keep her feet despite the massive hit but it was very obviously painful for her to even breathe now. Not that she had much breath left, given the way she was gulping it down, and she was barely standing.

Pathetic.

But her opinion improved slightly when, rather than backing down again, the other wrestler at least clawed her way to her feet proper and then came in to attack her.

Seeing Eka coming towards her, Alicia came to a halt and threw up her stance – while she was angry, that didn’t mean she was completely without tactical sense. She managed it just in time to drop her arm to intercept Eka’s kick, taking it against her bicep with a grunt. In terms of technique, the Georgian’s blow had been atrocious. Her trainers would have been appalled.

Still, it packed a distinctly respectable amount of power and, braced or not, it sent Alicia staggering a step to the side. Her arm stung but the anger-fuelled adrenaline let her shake that off. Before Eka could pull her limb back, the big redhead went to slam her own knee into the brunette’s inner thigh. It was instinct as much as anything but she wanted to take advantage of the momentary extension of that limb.

Eka didn't really expect it to work, in her heart of hearts. The kick was sloppy, her mental state was all over the place, and Alicia presumably knew how to deal with it. Sure enough, Eka's leg met the side of Alicia's arm, and the pangs of the kick were sent up that long leg of hers. It wasn't that effective, nor was it going to win her this little spar, but that felt good. It showed that she was still willing to fight, and on Alicia's terms too. For a brief second, Eka felt a glimmer of hope, for herself and for this spar.

And then that all came crashing down. In a literal sense, in that Eka had no idea how to follow up this attack, and in a literal one, in that Alicia made that decision for her. A powerful knee slammed into her thigh, and Eka was sent down to the floor in a hurry. That, combined with the kick, proved to be too much for the Georgian girl, and she was resting on her backside, looking up at the towering British woman above her.

She braced herself. Eka recognized that this was going to be it, in a sense. This is where she would win or lose. Probably lose. Still, the Georgian girl had her hands up. Come on, Alicia, she thought, show me what you do to end those MMA matches you are in.

Knees to the inner thigh were rarely fun. Eka’d be feeling that one for sure, even not counting the way it’d dropped her to the mat. She’d been caught thoroughly off balance and it showed. A striker she was not. Still, she’d tried.

But that wasn’t going to save her.

If she’d been in a better mood, Alicia would likely have remembered what had happened last time she’d tangled with Eka on the mats. Her own submission skills were well-honed but the Georgian was at least as good and more familiar with wrestling submission locks. The last fall had basically been her getting taken down, just managing to avoid tapping to two holds before giving in to the third.

If she’d been in a better mood, the best solution would have been to stay up and kick Eka to a KO.

As it was, she went to straddle the brunette, looking to drop her curvy backside – and her full weight – on the ribs she’d hammered with a knee. That wouldn’t do any good for her opponent’s bones or breathing. Assuming she managed that, Alicia wouldn’t waste a second before rolling to the side in an attempt to wrap her legs around Eka’s waist again.

This time, one thigh would be pressed right over those wounded ribs. While she had no intent to injure the brunette, she was certainly ready to make this painful. Her hands, free as they were, went for a grip on Eka’s far arm, looking to lock the two together with Eka’s arms helplessly trapped.

This, as far as Alicia was concerned, was game over. Hence the lack of time spent in mount going for ground and pound.

Eka might have something else to say about that though.

Getting put on the ground was bad enough, and the fact that it was done in a devastating and quick fashion did little to lighten her mood. The redhead melted around her arms and impacted her ribs in a hard and brutal fashion. The Georgian girl winced in pain as Alicia's whole bodyweight rocked her side. Doing wrestling in high school, she had her fair share of blows awfully similar to that one, but nothing quite to the degree that she had felt now. But Alicia was not content to stop there. Those meaty thighs of hers, which Eka so admired, clamped around her in a vice grip, and Eka felt a lot of empathy for the trash in those compactors.

Pain was her whole world. She could scarcely breathe, let alone move. Her attempts to push against Alicia's mighty legs were cut short when the MMA fighter grabbed her arm and ensured that any upper body strikes would be completely nullified. Eka's soft whimpers of pain filled the dingy gym, as Eka looked for an escape.

Her cheating was useless. That occurred to her now. Her parents always told her that cheaters never win in academia, wrestling, or in life. Eka wished she were in better circumstances to reflect on that, but here she was. Her penance for the dirty move was to be crushed between the thighs of the most furious woman in the world, and she supposed that was the appropriate price to pay.

But still, she held out. The Georgian woman's pain tolerance was tested to the extreme as she tried to hold out against tapping. She fully expected little to no mercy on the part of Alicia, figuring she deserved no clemency whatsoever. Eka gritted her teeth and did her best to try and power through this as much as she possibly could. Her legs were fruitlessly digging into the mat, and the veins in her neck were beginning to bulge...

At this point, it wasn’t really clear whether Eka was fighting back or not. She didn’t do much to resist the bodyscissors but then having over a hundred and sixty pounds dropped on her might have something to do with that. And once Alicia caught her arm and pulled their upper bodies tight together, Eka had nowhere to go and no options.

This time, she wasn’t playing nice. She had the hold right over the area she’d hurt and she was putting a lot more effort into making the Georgian pay.

But Eka wasn’t tapping. She wasn’t doing anything to really struggle but she seemed to be doing her best to just outlast the pain. The big redhead had to disagree but she didn’t want this to be a long, drawn out submission either. She wanted Eka to tap now and, the more Eka just lay there and took it, the more Alicia’s concerns about injuring her seemed to fade away.

With a grunt of effort, she flexed her scissors tighter, Alicia’s violet eyes narrow with effort as she bore down. At this point, she wasn’t playing nice at all. While she wasn’t by any means trying to hurt Eka, putting that kind of pressure on already wounded ribs showed she wasn’t bothered by the idea of something cracking under the strain.

It’d be preferable if it was her pride but the choice was now up to Eka. She’d made her bed; now she got to lie in it.

Eka felt the temperature rising. With each passing second, the Georgian girl felt more and more on edge. This was the most pain she had felt for a very long time, and there was no escape from it. Deep down, she recognized that she didn't have the strength or wherewithal to power through Alicia and those very strong legs of hers. She would have sighed save for the fact that she could barely even breathe. The redhead was granting her no mercy.

Not that she deserved any. Eka closed her eyes. This was not her happy place, not at all. She couldn't get there through the mental haze and physical pain. The Georgian girl couldn't even get close.

Finally, she relinquished her pride, and tapped. Let this be done, she thought. Eka felt awful for a variety of reasons, but there was nothing she could do at the current moment to make herself feel any better in the slightest.

Fully aware of the hell she was putting Eka through though she was, it didn’t change a thing for Alicia.

She could feel the Georgian trying hard to breathe, her body constricted to the point that her lungs could barely expand. Her opponent’s eyes had closed, her attempts at resistance fading until she was just lying in the bigger woman’s brutal embrace like a ragdoll.

It was only a matter of time and, as it turned out, not a matter of much more time at all.

Whatever else she felt, Alicia didn’t linger in releasing Eka. As soon as the tap registered, she relaxed the pressure she’d been applying and unlocked her ankles, letting the ribs she’d been abusing pop painfully back into place.

With rather more vigour than usual, she pulled her top leg off and used her foot to shove the Georgian clear. It was a forceful shove, the big redhead clearly keen to get the other wrestler out of the way as she immediately rolled up to a knee. Then she rose to her feet, towering over Eka.

But Alicia didn’t linger. Didn’t want to waste a second more on Eka for all the questions boiling amongst her anger. Instead, spinning on her heel, the British amazon stalked to the ropes and ducked through, leaving without a word. Her march carried her through the gym to the doors, which she brushed through and left to bang closed.

Only then did the redhead pause.

The sound of her fist slamming against a wall echoed in the empty corridor.

The shove wasn't appreciated. She could hardly blame the redhead of course, but it just confirmed the fact that she not quite dignified herself with her conduct. She was clutching her side, doing her best to gain her breath back. Never in her life had she been squeezed that tightly, and the Georgian girl could honestly not imagine something like that happening again. She already saw big black bruises starting to form across her belly.

For one second, Eka was absolutely sure that the abuse was going to continue. She was looking up at the redhead now, waiting for the hammer to fall. Alicia didn't say anything. Back at the coffee shop, both of them had been so talkative and friendly. Now creeping doubt simmered just below the surface of all of their interactions. The Georgian girl opened her mouth to begin speaking, to try and explain herself in an attempt to mollify the large and angry redhead with words. But there were no words capable of excusing what she had done, not yet.

Then both of them turned away. Eka looked away because it was so difficult to face her shame, and Alicia turned to leave the gym. At least that was what she presumed Alicia was doing. The Georgian girl wanted to stay here for a bit, both to avoid Alicia and reflect on her actions.

She wasn't a cheater. In all her matches, she had conducted herself with honor. There was a sound emanating from behind the door, like a gong that ended this portion of her life. Cheating had gained her no advantage. As a matter of fact, it ensured her defeat. Eka was cross legged with her palms face down on her knees, in the pose of a meditating monk. Her bright blue eyes were closed and her heart was full of disquiet.

This wasn't who she was at all. This wasn't what she was going to do.