Reforging the Heart (For Yori)

A new beginning. A new start. Hashed out at one of the best promotions the world had to offer: AFW. How did Senji feel about this? He felt quite nervous, apprehensive, and excited. The third element tempered his negative emotions, pushing him in a good direction rather than wallowing over his sorrows. Here, he could do what he loved and get paid for it. However, there was a major stopping point before he could reach a spot at the top. He needed to recondition himself to rebuild his weakened body. Senji had enough rest in these past several years and felt as though he was ready to get back out into the world to construct his life again.

Fortunately for Senji, there was an enthusiastic Brazilian eager to take him under her wing. To give him a chance, when put in another way. At the current time, he was ensnared in the steel-textured coils of her legs. The detestable limbs remained wrapped snuggly around his hips, both knees bent back as was typical in the closed guard position. The most apt word to describe the position was tight. Tight and claustrophobic. It could not be soft enough to be safely ignored. The pressure was not dissimilar to a hydraulic press. Despite this, it wasn't enough to cut him in half by the waist. His golden eyes narrowed down at her as his entire body was compelled to shiver at the display of power. He tried to lean back, stretching his stomach outward. This angled her legs further down if Lorena did not resist.

He spread his limber arms out in order to shrug his shoulders up. After that relaxing motion, he leaned deeper into her waist - ending up leering over Rena with his arms crossed over each other - and thought it'd be right to say something.

"You don't take it easy on anyone, do you? It's nice you think so good of me.", Senji breathed out. He could take it, he thought to himself. She wouldn't intentionally hurt him, and it wasn't as crushing as a type of bodyscissor. All that was appropriate now was to wait for Lorena to begin their first session and his first lesson in the way of becoming a better grappler. Fitting the scenario, he was dressed up in a blackened Gi top that lacked the bottom half to avoid Lorena being able to grip him by the pants. To replace it, any viewers would find a red and black rashguard/spat set to avoid the problem of the user overheating while fighting or exercising.

Within AFW's brands, talent were granted exclusive entry into the developmental facility. It was a sprawling gym equipped with top-of-the-line gear and professionals on hand to provide training and dietary guidance. With such resources readily available, it was a peculiar decision when Lorena directed her new little protégé, Senji, to a modest Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu school tucked away in a corner of the city. There, thin black mats worn with age barely cushioned the ground, hazy mirrors adorned the walls making reflects appear as oil paintings, and a dusty trophy case stood as a relic of past glories, untouched for over a decade. The air was thick with the scent of sweat, and the humidity clung to the skin, creating a tacky sensation on the mat. Yet, amidst the humble surroundings, there was an undeniable sense of familiarity and authenticity that resonated with Lorena, far removed from the polished sterile halls of any modern gym.

Lorena Telles:

She shifted on her back as Senji tried to position, hiking up her thighs to squeeze at the top of his hips, putting enough pressure on his sides to keep him from rising enough to start to roll her up. It was a comfortable place for her, one of ample control where she relished in the thrill of looking an opponent in the face while methodically stripping away their options with each calculated move. Here, she was less aggressive, her only real move reaching up to grasp the eri of his gi to tug him down closer to her to deny him being able to straighten up and lock in a solid position of his own on her. She wanted them close where he had no room to maneuver for leverage.

“Aw, Pequeno Cardeal, this is me going easy.” Lorena crooned softly, her tone tinged with amusement, as her fingers nimbly climbed up along Senji's eri, walking her grip higher with a practiced roll of her wrist. She quickly switched to the opposite side of the gi's collar on the inside fold to leave her forearm nestled up across his jawline as a looming threat yet to be realized. The garment was given another hard yank to try to draw him down against her where he had no striking power over her were this an actual fight. “Don’t be presunçoso unless you want to spend our whole session drooling on the mats. Now… walk me through what you are thinking if I'm your opponent. We go slow for your benefit.”

They hadn't started, and Lorena was already putting some good pressure on her student. She gripped the collar of his gi, fingers dancing along the folds while her forearm braces against his jaw. Initially, he tried to raise his neck but found it difficult to do so. The ankles of her legs were locked behind his back, tightly securing him in the familiar closed guard. The position was personal, close with her arms and legs pulling them flush against each other.

After being discouraged from pulling away, Senji's chin rested on the BJJ maestro's left shoulder, the shell of his ear near Lorena's mouth. The braid on her end, at least, spared Senji from having the risk of a lot of hair in his mouth. Senji spoke off to the right, his gaze struggling to see behind himself so he could keep an eye on what he was doing.

"I get it. Well, there isn't a point in trying to lift myself back up, I don't think. So, I wanna keep you close??"


To respond to the guard, fighting the slight unease concealed by a genuine smile that faded into his best poker face, Senji tried to clutch at her ribs for purchase with his ten fingers, settling his right hand far back on her left shin from Lorena's perspective. With that, he'd start to crawl forward, inching the both of them along the mat. This probably had the consequence of moving them forward and inching her toned legs up, up, and up the length of his waist and stomach. It was as if the limbs were climbing Senji, alternatively. At the same time, the redhead was hoping to establish a good amount of pressure exerted on the woman to grind her between his body and the floor. For a last, minor offensive Senji ran his hand around the mat's surface in a half circle before desiring to slide his left arm across her throat and starting to PUSH down on her windpipe using considerable strength. A shoddy choke but, in truth, a desperate harassment technique to ease up the grip Rena had on his Gi.

Despite knowing some ways to deal with this position, as Senji wasn't an airhead, two vulnerabilities became apparent. One, with his pushing, the boy compelled all of his weight towards the left which would ever so slightly reveal his back showing towards Lorena. It could be compared to him turning around at a snail's pace. Two, there was the drawback of her calves climbing his body...

“Bom, bom. Careful if you come away, or I am taking your neck. Keep your chin tucked, make it hard for me, make it painful if I want to put pressure, so I think twice.” Lorena's back wriggled on the mat, the crinkled folds of her open top making soft muted sounds as she shifted her positioning. “If you pull back now…” Lorena suddenly applied a bit more force on her inside hand at his eri, trying to make a gap, not a particularly large one but just enough to cross her other arm up so Senji's throat was at the center of where her limbs crossed. She would apply brief but impactful pressure by pushing out with one arm and pulling at his gi to lightly apply the choke before easing up pulling her second arm away to return it to where it was after the demonstration.

“I have too much freedom and your fat head is weighing you down. Makes it easy to strangle you.” Lorena chuckled softly as she quieted down, letting Senji continue where they left off. She couldn't see him work but could feel as he roamed. She remained mostly passive throughout only applying force where she already had a grip to give him a measure of resistance. As he shimmied her legs up his side, she cautioned him. “Using your weight is okay for leverage. Just remember I am going to use it against you when I move. Too much and when I act you won't be able to stop me.”

When he brought his arm around between them, she followed her own advice and flexed her body inward, bringing her chin down to wedge against her forearm, not allowing him to get to her throat easily. Her free arm worked between them as well, her fingers curled to clench at the fold of his gi at his elbow. With a hard push she shoved back with her arm gripping his eri. At the same time she would pull at his elbow trying to force him back and lock his elbow so she was forcing his entire arm to be straightened out again.

“From here…” She would then take control of their grapple, forcefully if he fought her as she went through a few dangerous transitions from where she left them. The first had her cross her arms again, though this time she reversed her grip to reach around the back of his neck to draw him into the choke. She reset. Next she broke her closed guard and effortlessly skirted mostly from beneath him, shifting to the side she kicked a leg up to hook his head beneath the crook of her knee, pushing his upper body away while she slipped her hands down to capture his wrist, pulling it straight into an arm lock, giving his wrist a small torque. She released and motioned him to ease off her so they could reset again.

“So…” As they situated themselves back to where his arm was locked straight, she held that position for them to work through it again. “What did you do wrong and how do you intend to get out of this? I have your arm so I am going to choke you in a few seconds, the motion is easy for me because I limit your options.” She demonstrated the control over his arm, releasing and tugging at his elbow to lock the arm and pushing and pulling at his eri to show she could shift his shoulder too.

So far, so good. Judging by her reaction, that is. In the corner of his vision, he saw her limb crisscrossing to perform a scissor-like motion. A cross choke version, it seemed like? The conditioned response was to relieve pressure, as standard with choke escapes, by targeting her grip and to snap the two points off. However, he would never get the chance to pull it off, as Lorena was only demonstrating her methods. The effects were felt when a small, guttural noise rumbled up his throat at a low volume. A constrained neck trying to pass air through inhales and exhales. In-between her statements, Senji chimed in with a sentence of his own. Her initial compliments made him fluster a bit, compelling his face to feel warm. He wasn't well-versed in Portuguese or Spanish at all. However, the rolling, exotic cadence of Rena's voice was veeerryyy nice to listen to.

He could only assume she wasn't cursing.

"I'm not flabby, Lorena. That's what my training was for...-besides, my father wouldn't let me turn into a blob."

Speaking of his original tutor, of the two he had access to, his advice had been remarkably similar to Lorena's. However, that was designed for usage on a battlefield. In a grimy, nasty fight to the finish. That did not mean one was less effective. He was getting the meaning of her words through his thick skull well enough. Next, Senji found himself enamored by what looked to be an armlock combined with a thigh lock around his neck. At the same time as Takijima being pushed away by his elbow, his free arm, the left, was fast enough to clench deeply into the surface of her hip. Once more, she let him go before applying a lot of pressure. At the beckoning of her hand, Senji dug his knees into the mat and crawled them back so she could reverse a few steps.

He pondered on a plan of defense briefly, before wiggling his hips from side to side within the confines of his waist being locked.

"I gotcha! Mmm...I need to protect my arm, because i wouldn't want you to...break it. I don't--- really --- want to hurt myself with a slam so that's not a good pick."

Once she locked in the choke again, this left a more tactical approach. The veins in his forehead pounded, his body writhe with strain and flexed muscle. The previous grip on her thigh tightened out of reflex, golden eyes staring into her pumped up expression. He gurgled on his own words while one of his eyelids slowly closed. Senji's flushed face had contorted into a grimace. Senji was brought closer into the climax of the hold that strangled him at three points: The right leg wrapped around his neck. Senji's shoulder pressing inward at his throat's side. His own bicep's slight curl into the front of his throat combined with her groin putting pressure on his windpipe. An uncomfortable tingling was there as well as the general swimming of thoughts as he resisted the urge to tap out. The initial attempt at a pull, several seconds after she locked in the choke, without changing his position, would be worthless. Senji elected for an attempt at walking both of his legs forward; he settled his heels beside her stomach with the knees curled up instead of having them straightened out, in order to make space of him to sit his butt down on the floor. As a side effect, Laura probably felt, although both were cushioned by a double combo of short-shorts/long-sleeved spats and a conditioned waist, his pelvic bone smack into her trunk using an intermediate amount of force. As the final step, Senji's free hand tried to reach forward to his trapped arm's palm to, similar to an armbar's defense, force his forearm back towards himself at a 90-degree angle, bracing his elbow on the woman's belly, to alleviate the constriction of his neck partly. The priority here was the position change, even if she stopped the armbar defense.

If he had his way, Lorena wouldn't be getting the submission she desired from him without working for it.