Gregory swallowed hard, nodded, and backed away, stepping completely off the canvas. Thorn grinned, slapping his hands against his thighs. He bounced on the balls of his feet, shadowboxing a quick flashy combination in the air. "All right. Okay.
Grandma wants to play. We doing MMA rules, grappling only? What's your preference, old woman? " "No rules," Abby said quietly. Thorn stopped bouncing. He let out a sharp chuckle.
"No rules? Are you crazy? I'll break your jaw in 10 seconds. I'm sanctioned. If I hurt you "If you hurt me, it's my fault," Abby interrupted.
"You wanted a lesson in discipline. School is in session. Come on. Abby didn't take a traditional fighter's stance. She didn't raise her hands to guard his face.
She didn't widen her base. She just stood there, arms hanging loosely at her sides, shoulders relaxed. He looked entirely undefended. To a trained sport fighter, it looked like suicide. To anyone who had survived close-quarters combat, it looked like a trap.
"You asked for it. " Thorn sneered. He bit down on his invisible mouthpiece, raised his hands into a tight guard, and advanced. Thorn moved with the fluid grace of youth. He darted in, testing the water with a lightning-fast jab aimed at Abby's forehead. Abby barely moved.
He just shifted her head a fraction of an inch to the right. The glove slipped past his ear, rustling her gray hair. Thorn frowned, pulling the hand back, recalibrating. "Lucky flinch. " he thought. He stepped heavily on his lead foot and threw a crushing low kick, targeting the exact same spot on Abby's thigh that had crippled the teenager moments before.
But Abby wasn't there. He didn't check the kick by lifting his leg. That required balance he didn't want to compromise. Instead, the moment Thorn's hips committed to the rotation, Abby stepped forward. He stepped inside the arc of the kick, completely jamming the strike.
Thorn's shin slammed harmlessly against Abby's hip bone without any momentum to drive it. Before Thorn could retract his leg, Abby's left hand shot out. It wasn't a punch. His open palm crashed into the center of Thorn's chest right over the sternum. It wasn't a strike designed to knock out.
It was a push executed with the entire weight of Abby's thick-rooted body behind it. It disrupted Thorn's center of gravity perfectly. Thorn stumbled backward, his arms flailing for a second as he tried to catch his balance. He caught himself, his face twisting into genuine anger now. The embarrassment stung worse than a punch.
"Okay. " Thorn hissed. "Okay. " He rushed forward, abandoning the technical probing for raw aggression. He threw a one-two combination followed by a looping right hook designed to take Abby's head off. Abby's eyes tracked the shoulders, not the hands. Hands lie.
Shoulders tell the truth. He caught the first jab on his forearm. He parried the cross with a slight flick of his wrist. As the looping hook came in, Abby ducked. He didn't bend at the waist.
He dropped his elevation by bending her knees, a sharp, agonizing flare of pain shooting up her ruined left leg. She ignored it. Pain was just data. Thorn's hook sailed over Abby's head, leaving the young fighter's right side completely exposed. Abby stepped into the pocket, close, uncomfortably close.
The smell of Thorn's expensive cologne and sweat filled Abby's nose. Abby didn't throw a hook of his own. He didn't aim for the chin. He bypassed sport entirely. Abby's right arm wrapped tightly around the back of Thorn's neck, clamping down like an industrial vice.
At the same exact moment, Abby drove the crown of her own forehead directly into the bridge of Thorn's nose. Crack. It was a sickening, wet sound. Thorn screamed, his hands instinctively flying to his face as blood instantly erupted from his nostrils, painting his lips and chin bright crimson. His eyes watered, blinding him.
The sudden, agonizing trauma shattered his fighting rhythm entirely. But Abby wasn't done. Combat wasn't about scoring points. It was about ending the threat. While Thorn was blinded and reeling, Abby's left hand snaked down, gripping the fabric of Thorn's gi pants at the hip.
Abby pivoted his hips violently, pressing his right thigh flush against Thorn's lead leg. With a sharp, synchronized heave, Abby threw him. It wasn't a pretty judo throw. It was an ugly, brutal street sweep. Thorn's feet left the canvas.
He hung suspended in the air for a fraction of a second. His brain desperately trying to understand how the old woman had bypassed his guard so effortlessly. Then, gravity reclaimed him. Thorn slammed into the mat back first with a concussive thud that shook the floorboards beneath the canvas. The breath left his lungs in a violent rush.
Before Thorn could even register the impact, Abby was on him. Abby dropped his right knee directly onto Thorn's solar plexus, pinning him to the floor with agonizing, focused pressure. Thorn gasped, her eyes wide and terrified, staring up at the fluorescent lights, completely paralyzed by the lack of oxygen and the crushing weight on his chest. Abby grabbed Thorn's right wrist. He didn't manipulate it into a fancy submission hold.
He simply pinned the boy's arm flat against the mat, leaned her body weight over it, and positioned her free, calloused hand against the side of Thorn's elbow joint. Abby held it there, just resting. 1 millimeter of pressure downward and the joint would snap backward. The gym was a tomb. No heavy bag swung.
No one breathed. The three sycophants by the cage stared in absolute, slack-jawed horror. Thorn lay there, choking on his own blood, his chest heaving uselessly against the anvil of Abby's knee. He looked up into Abby's eyes. Thorn expected to see triumph.
He expected to see a man gloating over a victory, demanding respect. Instead, he saw nothing. Just the calm, dead-eyed stare of a man holding a tool he didn't particularly want to use. "You fight for applause," Abby said, her voice barely above a whisper, meant only for the boy beneath him. "You fight to feel big.
That's why you'll always be a target. " Abby tapped the side of Thorn's elbow with his index finger. Just a tap. Thorn flinched violently, a choked sob escaping his bloody lips, entirely surrendering. His ego broke in that single humiliating flinch. He realized with terrifying clarity that his black belt, his trophies, and his youth meant absolutely nothing to the woman kneeling on his chest.
Abby held her gaze for five agonizing seconds. He let the silence do the heavy lifting. He let the reality of the situation burn itself into the young man's prefrontal cortex. Then, slowly, Abby released the wrist. She stood up.