Bouncing Back

One of the main things going through Carmen’s mind was why she hadn’t heard of Alicia before. Granted, she was a boxer first and a wrestler second, and she tended to gravitate towards things of that nature, but she kept up with combat sports in general - kickboxing, MMA. Alicia was young, but all the same, it felt odd that someone at this level never hit her radar before. Women like this didn’t just pop out of the ether.

She shrugged it off and yelled to her phone, restarting the timer for another three minutes. Questions for another time. When she wasn’t getting a firsthand demonstration of those skills.

Alicia wasn’t one for big pauses, and soon enough they were back at it again, circling each other with hands up and open. Carmen bounced in her stance, staying loose, her boxing habits slipping through regardless of the stance she took. She’d need to be loose and fast - while she was used to either enjoying a size advantage or a speed advantage against her opponent, she had neither, here.

Alicia came in low and fast, once again showcasing her frightening speed. It was too late to backpedal out of the way - too close, not enough room. But she did have other options.

As Alicia moved, Carmen fell back, letting the redhead get over her. A risky move by itself, but at the same time, she grabbed Alicia’s head and pulled it in between her legs, quickly wrapping them around her head. Carmen tucked her right ankle behind her left knee, pulled back, and tried to clamp down on her opponent’s head with the figure-four headlock, a strong variation on the headscissors. One she’d never had the chance to use before, but unique situations called for unique solutions.

Plus, she liked the irony.

So easy to overlook that, having been a champion in Tension, Carmen had to have picked up some grappling know-how.

By the time Carmen was falling back though, there wasn’t much Alicia could do about it. It wasn’t immediately a problem either. Not until the boxer’s hands were catching on her short hair, pulling her down and in as Carmen’s legs closed in around her head to form a figure four – one that immediately had Alicia grimacing slightly.

She’d felt stronger. Had felt much stronger. That didn’t make this fun.

On the other hand, she hadn’t made her own scissors game as good as it was without learning some ways out of this spot.

If Carmen had been behind her, the easy solution would be to roll them both over. Then she could pull her head free, maybe turn it into a Boston Crab.

With this position, she tried something else. The first step was getting her knees under her. The second, just like Valley had done to her, was to force Carmen’s shoulders down to the mat, stacking her up and pushing forward.

The pressure around her head wasn’t fun but she could definitely take this longer than she fancied Carmen’s neck could take the torque she’d be putting on it.

Oh right, and it counted as a pin too, didn’t it? Oh well, that too.

Carmen was under no delusions about efficacy of this move. She wasn’t inclined to submission moves in general, and even on the rare occasions where she did go for them, she preferred moves that worked with her arms, giving her better control of her opponents and allowing her to chain to other things if and when they escaped.

This figure-four provided none of that. It wasn’t going to make Alicia tap, and while it would work away some of her energy, it probably wasn’t enough to make a big difference. But it kept the redhead from mounting her and gave her a chance to breath. Both welcome things. For as long as it lasted, anyway.

Alicia could still move, though, and she started pushing up, defying Carmen’s attempts to keep her grounded. At first, she thought the Briton might be trying to turn the hold against her, maybe move into a submission of her own, but that turned out not to be the case - she was getting stacked. Uncomfortable, for one thing, and there was the matter of her shoulders on the mat. She could almost hear the nonexistant referee counting the pinfall.

”1…!”

”2…!”

”Mierda.” She cursed under her breath and twisted to the side, unwrapping her legs from Alicia’s head. Not wanting to try her luck at mat wrestling with Alicia while her thighs were in the equation, she tried to roll back and pop to her feet quick, resetting things before she could be caught.

If Carmen was worried about the three count, Alicia was barely thinking about it. It was a testament to the time she’d spent in Friction that she was considering it at all, her focus was far more on crunching Carmen’s neck and using her leverage to take the sting out of the headlock attempt.

It wasn’t so much a submission attempt, in the redhead’s view, so much as a delaying tactic. And Alicia’s patience for delaying tactics had almost always run somewhere between ‘zero’ and ‘barely any’.

So she just kept pushing and pushing, until her opponent decided she’d had enough and tried to make a break for it by unlocking the hold and getting out of there.

Carmen obviously and understandably had little to no interest in sticking on the mats where Alicia’s skills and greater grappling experience lent her a dangerous edge. So the boxer was rolling free, trying to climb back to her feet. Alicia, by contrast, had no interest in allowing Carmen to take things back to standing where they’d be more evenly positioned. She’d worked to get the boxer down and she meant to extract her pound of flesh before she let her prey slip through her coils.

Metaphorical pound of flesh, of course.

As a result, Alicia too was quick to roll into a crouch only she didn’t waste her time going to stand. The moment she had her feet and legs under her, the kickboxer’s lower limbs uncoiled explosively, driving her in a leaping tackle aimed at taking Carmen back to the mats before the boxer could slip free.

The plan was simple: After a failed attempt on the floor, Carmen would return to her feet in a quick fashion, reset things if she could, and try to come at Alicia faster the next time, throw more traditional wrestling holds into the mix, see how they both fared on that level. Her footwork would serve her well, there, and she could get a good position on the redhead if she was patient.

The reality was different: Before Carmen could even hope of setting that ball in motion, Alicia went on the full attack. It seemed they were having similar thoughts, and her opponent had decided she wouldn’t be standing straight up anytime soon.

A living redheaded rocket slammed into Carmen, hitting with enough force to knock her clean off her feet and send her crashing to the mat - with Alicia on top. Not a good position, but one she wasn’t without options for. If she was fast enough.

Almost immediately after the impact, Carmen attempted to wrap her arm around Alicia’s head and her legs around her stomach, going for a rushed guillotine choke. She didn’t expect it would be any more successful than her last move from the bottom, but if it hurt Alicia and kept her from wrapping her up with those legs again, she’d be satisfied.

Alicia’s tackle hadn’t been subtle by any definition of the term. She’d literally just thrown herself hard into Carmen, gambling that force and catching the boxer on the rise would make up for a slight lack of technique.

And her gamble paid off, her wrecking ball of an attack taking Carmen off her imperfectly placed footing and sending the two women tumbling to the mat in a mass of limbs.

The moment after any takedown was critically important, as important as the takedown itself, as both fighters scrambled for position. In this case, the curvy redhead was looking to scoot up Carmen’s body out of the cradle of her guard and Carmen was looking to keep Alicia right there.

Interestingly, she went for a very offensive option to do so, but she rushed it and that was risking botching it.

The kickboxer’s MMA training showed as she went to deal with the threats. The arm was the immediate threat, not wanting to be choked, so she went to duck her head down to block off access to her vulnerable throat.

At the same time, the redhead planted one hand and used it to push herself up while her other began to deliver short, sharp punches into Carmen’s ribcage. Looking for the liver if she could get it, but she’d take anything she could get.

There were precious few things in her life that Carmen didn’t care about being in control of, and wrestling certainly wasn’t one of them - particularly when she on the mat with a redheaded beast who seemed rather bent on crushing her between two titanic legs. So, while this was by no means her speciality, she felt going for the choke was her best bet after the tackle took her down - neutralize the threat, shut Alicia down.

It might’ve worked, too, against someone with the same level of ground game as herself. With Alicia, though, things were noticeably less effective. Her usual weight advantage was gone, and her speed wouldn't count for much on the floor. She might've been okay, if she'd managed to snag Alicia’s head and keep her controlled. As it so happened, she didn't.

Carmen didn't bother to hide her annoyance as her arms failed to get grips on Alicia, letting the fiery red head of hair slip through. She managed to secure the bodyscissors portion of the move, but that would mean little on its own. If she kept at it, maybe she could snatch Alicia’s head and save the hold, but…

Those thoughts immediately fled the second she felt a harsh, stinging pain in her ribs, coming from a short-range bombshell. Reflexes took over and she immediately turtled up to protect herself, dropping her arm down just in time to cover her liver, but not before she suffered another shattering shot to the ribs.

But that wouldn't be enough, not nearly enough - Alicia was too dangerous for this position. Pure defense just wouldn't do. As the Briton pushed up and made some space between them, Carmen threw out a left hook from below, looking to at least stun Alicia for a crucial moment.

It was becoming fairly clear that Carmen had no intentions of letting Alicia even pass her own guard if the boxer could manage it. Certainly, the chances of her pushing up and getting a scissors of her own… Well, it could happen but she wasn’t about to keep trying for an obvious hold in a bad position.

Instead, right now, the redhead had been trying to work for an advantage in position so that she could see what she could set up.

Only to be punched in the face.

The hook landed, rocking Alicia’s head back sharply before the redhead snapped it back down. But, where another woman might have looked frustrated by the effective defence Carmen was putting up and her inability to pierce it, Alicia just grinned wider.

It wasn’t about to stop her getting a foot under her, the redhead rising up onto one knee. And then the MMA fighter threw her weight back against Carmen’s locked ankles, looking to pop them open with her bulk and momentum. If that worked, it would be the work of a moment to slide slightly back, throw one leg over and figure-four them, trapping Carmen’s limbs as Alicia went to roll them to one side.

And leaving the boxer’s heels in perfect position for her to slip a forearm under the back, hyper-extend the foot down and put pressure on Carmen’s Achilles Tendon with the sharp edge of the forearm.

Not a scissors but probably just as painful if she could manage the advanced technique. But she hadn’t achieved the proficiency with the hold herself without knowing how to break it.

What was it Mike Tyson said? ‘Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.’ Something like that.
 
Good words to live by, though Carmen couldn’t be sure how well they applied in the current situation. After all, she was making a fairly decent habit of bashing Alicia’s face in, but the woman still remained as cunning and canny as ever. If anything, the pain seemed to be making her even sharper, if that crazy grin of hers was anything to go by. Slightly disturbing. Probably meant to be.
 
This was a fight about constant motion, with the two of them constantly weaving in and out of their preferred comfort zones. Carmen knew she was in trouble the moment the redhead started to rise, and her worries were confirmed when she suddenly surged away and broke free of the hold - for a brief moment in time, Carmen was on her back with Alicia in front of her, wide-open, and that was a moment far too long.
 
She tried to pull away before her leg could be grasped, but the Briton’s deceptive speed was on full display. Her legs was snatched, pulled back, bent in a way it was never meant to go. She wasn’t well-versed enough with submissions to know this hold by name, but that hardly mattered - it was effective, and the searing pain through her bones was a testament to that.
 
Carmen went into instant panic mode, and she had to bite down hard to keep a scream from escaping. If there was a way to counter this move and escape, she wasn’t aware of it - aside from the obvious way. That would have to do.
 
She dug her fingers into the mat and made the hard crawl towards the ropes, trying hard to get to them before Alicia could get in some serious damage. Hardly her best moment, but if that was the only option, she would gladly take it.

And there it was, the usual reaction to having your tendon squeezed between a forearm and your own ankle bone.

Either a mad scramble for freedom or a rapid tap.

Not to mention the torque it placed on the ankle, but this was a hold that could leave you limping off the mat in very short order.

Not that Alicia was going to make it easy for her opponent to get to the ropes but she wouldn’t be able to stop her either.

The instant Carmen’s fingers visibly brushed the ropes, Alicia would release the hold and scoot away and back to her feet. It was not an efficient use of her three minutes but it was just the way she fought. Rope breaks were to be respected, referee or not, and if that meant losing a few seconds then she’d lose the few seconds.

In any case, she felt sure she’d had the tendon locked enough that Carmen was going to be limping for a while. Compression locks were really nasty, and Alicia had got her forearm in good and tight. That tendon was not going to be feeling good, not at all.

Waiting for the boxer to rise too, Alicia shifted her weight, patiently eyeing Carmen with the predatory focus of a big cat on the prowl.

She thought no worse of the other woman for not knowing the way out – as with most joint locks or the like, the best way out of a calf crusher was not to get caught in one in the first place.