This one had some fight in her. Aibhilin was impressed as she sat behind the fighters, still picking at her meal while watching the two meet. Not just anyone would attempt to start a grapple with a larger opponent, and she’d thought it through pretty well. His left arm was down, his right high, and she had gone for his shoulders in a full speed tackle. It wouldn’t have worked if the angles were different, had he not spun away and struck low just before she hit him. He was too large to be taken by a simple tackle from a physically lesser opponent should he have been on balance and had both of his hands prepared to start a standing grapple, but by hitting him when and where she did she would send him to the ground. She did wonder if the girl had experience in ground fighting, however. It wasn’t necessarily as simple a notion as get on top of the opponent and win, and there was little and less chance that Aighrit was going to drop his blade or let the girl take his shoulders in the process of taking him to the ground. A bite, a chew, and Aighrit was down, though as she suspected it wasn’t without the positioning of an experienced grappler.
Aighrit decided that he liked the newcomer. Not because of the bow or her wishing him a well and good bout, but because she was so clearly determined to fit in here. He wasn’t trying too hard to fit in himself, he was fairly sure that Aibhilin really didn’t like him actually, and he and the newcomer were hardly shaping up to be all that similar. She was all animal instinct and toned, predatory lizard-brain while he liked to think of himself as the old-souled, ever smiling kid from the badlands who had wanted to be a healer but wound up a killer in training through a supreme twist of fate, but he had the personal experience to understand empathetically that she was trying because she was curious though scared, proud despite being intimidated, and above it all desperate for something more. It must have been confusing here, he’d seen others from outside of the Empire’s sphere come into the villages and camps of the Wastes, had known the look of someone who hadn’t realized the world was larger than the handful of faces and places that they had known their entire life. Most rejected the overwhelming number of people and places and returned to what they had left. She had no choice but to learn something new, so she gave it her all.
Aighrit hadn’t expected to be taken by a full on tackle, but he welcomed the change in pace. She had dropped her weapon, he had not, and it left him with a number of options. His opponent had closed with him at too tight a distance for him to dodge effectively, too close for him to easily reposition his blade into her open belly from her lower leg or move off the line after having just planted to her side to launch his strike, a strike which she had dealt with better than he would have thought a newcomer usually would have. He could have dropped the blade and attempted to use his left hand to lift at her right leg and his right hand to push hard on her left shoulder, which would likely have sent her into a spiral and snowballed collapse to his left, but thought better of attempting it. She would have to go through him if he did knock her off balance, and from here his chances of stopping her in her tracks entirely were poor at best, still recovering from his swing and being newly planted in his current position as he was. Better instead he figured to let her have her way, at least to an extent.
She hit him head on and ferociously hard, and the two went rolling into the sand with his back landing first. Aighrit was not an inexperienced fighter, however, and he controlled himself well during the fall for a student. On the sand entering a grapple was a common state of affairs, and he was certain that he would have had more practice at ground fighting then she was like to have had. Still she had hit too fast and too hard, from too close a distance for him to attempt to flip their position in the air, and getting landed on and skidded across the sand on bare skin was a painful experience. He wouldn’t stop fighting just because of a little pain, however. While still in the air Aighrit had tucked his chin close to his clavicle to protect the back of his head from being the initial point of contact with the solid earth below, and yanked upward with his legs, hips and groin, aiming to get his thighs around her waist and his legs locked at the knees and ankles, right knee below his left knee and right ankle over his left ankle to create the maximum amount of pressure and the strongest grip on her as he could before hitting the sand.
Unless Rags managed to struggle out of the lock before they hit the sand she would likely be too late once upon the body of her opponent on the ground. He would have enough leverage over her, and enough of a size and mechanical strength advantage to keep her from being able to get her knees onto his body, a position he was more than happy with. If caught in the guard she would have all the arm length she would need to launch blows with her hands toward his face, but too little to get her mouth anywhere near his face, something you learned to make sure of if you wanted to keep your ears or nose clear of an opponent’s teeth. The blows he could deal with. He wasn’t strong enough to thrust himself up with his arms and reverse the girl’s position, and didn’t even attempt to. Being on your back wasn’t the same thing for a trained fighter as it seemed to the inexperienced, or at least inexperienced in this form of combat, average wastelander. They were generally more used to lobbing crude projectiles and closing on the opponent after softening them and their ranks to employ heavy stone clubs or old world junk weapons meant more as a finisher than a proper weapon for melee combat.
Simply being on the ground was not the same thing as a pin. From here he could keep her from getting her knees on his shoulders, and still had full use of his own arms, the left of which was still gripping his practice blade. He would smile up at her regardless of whether or not the she had struggled out of his guard in the air, or whether her waist was now being gripped tightly with his thighs locked in place at his knees and ankles. He’d have been smiling even if she’d passed his guard, drawn a secondary weapon and thudded it down on his head. It wasn’t meant to be facetious or mocking and his eyes didn’t betray any ill intent behind the gesture. This was simply the way of life here, two potential future friends having a bout on the sand. It wasn’t necessarily fun, he didn’t enjoy fighting, but it was life. It was living, breathing movement through time and space, above ground and with a still mostly hot meal, and a reasonably comfortable bed of animal skins and old world extension cords formed into a makeshift hammock to look forward to, and he even had reasonable company. Why let his distaste toward fighting ruin an otherwise happy, healthy day.
Aighrit would simply wait a moment for her to launch a blow and, assuming she was still going through with her earlier plan and punching toward his shoulders despite the guard, he would use his left arm to lash out at her right bicep if a blow was thrown from that hand in an effort to hit the nerve cluster located on the spot and deaden the attack mid swing or at least soften the impact upon his body, and if a blow was thrown with her left hand he would use his right hand to grab her arm after she made contact, and would attempt to keep it straight while he shot his left arm, blade in hand, between her ribs and underarm and her extended arm, before violently twisting to his left side at an angle that, should it be successful, would overextend her arm from the rotator cuff of her shoulder with enough force to cause her significant pain. He wouldn’t roll over on top of the arm if he caught it in a lock, he didn’t want to dislocate her shoulder, but he would steadily turn further to his left inch by inch in an effort to get her screaming and thrashing about on top of him, her subconscious desperate to end the pain and save the arm.
It would be the least damaging way to make it clear that she needed to be let go, have the Doctora call it and stand the pair back up and set them to their blades upon their feet once again, at least in Aighrit’s thinking and assuming he managed to achieve the lock whatsoever. These were the few moments his smile did not shine through, when he had an opponent in a disadvantaged position and was actively twisting or tearing away at them. He wouldn’t hurt her, not really, whether he had achieved the lock or not. It wasn’t about his fear of causing permanent or at least long lasting injury to others that concerned him, he had enough self control and enough skill to know how much pressure he could put into a blow, twist, lock or whatever else before causing actual damage. It was one of the first things impressed upon the students here, cause as little actual damage to your fellow camp mate as possible, they’re too much of an investment to risk making ineligible for future paid bouts on the sands of the arena. It was the knowledge that one day he would be expected to do this for real, and that on that day he would have to roll over onto the arm if he had caught and locked it, shove it out of place and then run his blade through their spine as they twisted on the ground in agony. He shuddered, disturbed at the thought, though it was unlikely any would notice it as anything more than a spasm caused by fighting for every inch toward twisting Rag’s arm out of place.
Tim the Yeti
