Code Zulu Alpha: Nerd in the Apocalypse!

Cynthia just smiled brightly as she took the seat next to me but Tatiana was already winding her right shoulder as she stood up. Turns out, she was next in line and she would be facing someone she had a brief "acquaintance" with.

Cheers just erupted once Tatiana's face was shown on stage but Elena's followers managed to stand their ground.

This place had no shortage of beauties that could also squish our heads like they were watermelons, and everyone was all up for it.

With that said, the two just exchanged pleasantries before an insurmountable pressure was felt from them, and it only took a second before they exchanged blows.

Tatiana was a fraction of a second faster than Elena but Elena landed the first clean hit.

What happened was Tatiana opened up with her favorite move: the jump spinning hook kick, but Elena countered with a variation of one of Kaley's kicks that was a jump spinning wheel kick.

Tatiana just exploded as she lifted from the air but she missed Elene by just a breadth as she ate her foot with her temple. Any normal person would've been knocked the fuck out by getting hit cleanly with that move but Tatiana wasn't any normal person to begin with. However, she still took a bit of time to get up as she shook her head and Elena was courteous enough to wait for her to recover.

[You should've finished me off…]

[I should've, but what's the fun in that?]

[Heh, I love that answer—]

The two just exchanged knowing glances after that but a rain of kicks were exchanged in a matter of seconds. From watching the earlier games, I've seen that Elena was also a capable fighter but not to this degree.

Not only was she nimble and quick on her feet, her body's flexibility was almost close to Tatiana's. However, her strength lies in reading what her opponent's next move would be from closely watching their bodies.

It's the same concept when predicting someone's punch by their shoulder movement but there were a lot of variables if the whole body was involved.

I was following the same concept when I'm in a fight with someone else and it was delightful to see other people do the same thing I could. But the crux of such a skill falls on knowledge of how different muscles function and reaction time.

The work-around for the first one was to wear clothing that covered certain parts of your body—like the gi Aikido practitioners use—while the workaround for someone's reaction time was you know, be faster—or to opt for something more doable, feints or purposefully opening up yourself to an attack for the chance to counter-counter.

And Tatiana could definitely do both—be faster and to anchor Elena to making a specific move.

It's just that Tatiana was built to act first than to react.

She had gained some weight ever since her incident—though most of it got turned to muscle already—but it would still take some time to get used to the new hardware.

At this point, Tatiana still got the initiative but Elena was slowly piling damage to Tatiana's body. Aside from the first hit she received, she also received multiple low kicks to her legs and each of those was like a shot of Tequila. It would sting and burn the first few times but a few more would make you touch the ground faster than you thought.

But despite that, Tatiana looked like she was enjoying the fight and it only took a few more hits before it happened.

Elena had just perfectly timed a counter for Tatiana's high kick but she suddenly groaned in pain and pulled back when she saw that her shin collided with Tatiana's shin. She had never looked so confused in her life but before she could even react, the next thing she saw was Tatiana standing sideways—well, everything sideways—because she had already hit the ground.

What basically happened was Tatiana delayed her high kick for a fraction of a second to bait Elena for the same counter she was receiving over and over.

Tatiana kept exploding with power as she delivered her blows and the timing of each strike got ingrained in Elena's head. However, it made her reaction to each attack robotic and once Tatiana shifted her knee to turn that high kick to a low blow, it confused Elena.

The damage Elena took was secondary but the full second of confusion was huge.

It made Elena pay special attention to Tatiana's right leg, completely disregarding the other.

And yeah, Tatiana took a page from my book because she shifted her weight from her front foot—her left leg—to her back foot—her right leg, to deliver the same blow that knocked her out when we first met.

From my point of view, I could still see a little~ bit of movement from shifting the weight from one foot into the other but this was the first time Elena encountered such an abnormal kick. The tip of her chin easily ate the tip of Tatiana's foot and it rattled her head so much, making her lose balance and fall down.

With that said, she tried to get up as fast as she could but Tatiana had already mounted her and was poised to give her the good ol' ground and pound.

Elena would've eaten several elbows and punches to the face but this time, Tatiana gave her the same courtesy from last time.

[What do you want to happen?]

[...]

[No answer? I'm gonna kiss you— if you resist, I'll punch that pretty face of yours if not, you admit your loss.]

[What if I'm the one to kiss you though? Do you lose?]

[Hah! It just makes me a little bit horny but you've lost that game when we arrived. How about it?]

At this point, let's just say the next scene that happened after that made the crowd go wild while our group had now two wins on our belt.