Tomás Ferreira vs. Luong Chun - Before the Fall

[BlackAkuma]

경찰과 도둑. ‘Police and thieves’.

Some of Luong’s earliest memories were of playing the game, back when she was a fresh-faced child with her cousins—playing out in the fields, dashing through the reeds, struggling to stay one step ahead of them. The game had other names in various cultures, with the most common one being "tag." She’d always had fun with it, dodging about, chasing after them in the noonday sun.

This match brought her back to those moments, with her and Tomas playing a more mature version. Both of them danced on the edge of defeat, weaving about to stay one step of the other. It was a wild game, and it was hard to tell how it would come to an end. Luong almost found the experience thrilling.

He was coming for her now, hard and sure, knowing he needed to close the distance while she was still recovering. She backpedaled, but there was only so far she could stay ahead of his strikes, and that roundhouse came far too close for comfort. Her spatial awareness served her well, but these were not the open mats of her typical tournaments. This ring had ropes, limited space, and she would be cornered, sooner or later. Most likely sooner.

She could not afford to be complacent. She must act.

Luong took one more step back, then launched herself forward, throwing herself toward Tomas at full tilt to take him of guard. Her leg rose quick, throwing a snap kick towards his face, but that was merely to draw his attention - the real attack came lower, as she pulled that same leg back, thrust forward, and shot her heel towards his chest, attempting to drive her heel in deep like the edge of a blade.

[GoingBananas]

The match had long since blurred the lines between competition and something more primal. Each movement, each strike, was less about mere scoring and more about survival, about proving who could outlast and out-think the other in the narrow space between instinct and calculation. Tomás could feel it in the way his body moved; fluid, sharp, but burning with fatigue. His ribs ached from past blows, his breath rasped in his chest, yet the fire in his eyes would not dim.

When Luong darted back, he sensed her guard cracking, an opening forming. He surged forward, driving his legs into the canvas, whipping his torso into a roundhouse that sang through the air. Close. Too close. The sight of her hair flicking as she evaded told him she was running out of room, her back pressed towards the ropes. He pressed on, his jaw tight, his mind narrowing to the simple truth: corner her, break her balance, end this.

And then she lunged.

Her sudden burst forward snapped him out of the rhythm he thought he had set. Her body came at him like a whip, faster than his guard could reset, and the blur of her leg streaked up toward his face. Instinctively, he raised his arms, bracing for impact, but the strike never landed. His gut twisted as he realized too late what she had done.

The real danger came a heartbeat after. Her heel snapped forward, precise and merciless, and slammed into his chest with a crack like wood against stone. Pain exploded through his sternum, sharp and suffocating, the force sending him stumbling back a few steps. His lungs seized as the air was blasted from them, and his teeth clamped shut with a grunt that rattled deep in his throat.

His body bowed under the shock. His chest throbbed with each breath, ribs protesting as if they might splinter from the pressure. He bent slightly forward, arms tight around his midsection, fighting to steady himself as the world wavered in and out of focus.

[BlackAkuma]

It had been a gable, and with all gambles, there was the chance that this one could’ve spectacularly blown up in Luong’s face. As fast as she was, this was only a tenable strategy for so long, and she ran the risk of her foe catching her and laying on the damage. But that was the game - no risk, no reward. The only difference was that, this time, there was a good deal more risk than usual.

Here, now, her gamble paid off, as the abrupt change in tact was enough to catch Tomas off guard. The feint did its work, forcing his guard upwards and leaving the true target exposed, where her foot could slam into his chest and dig deep. She could feel the bone giving way under her bare heel, feeling the cascading impact through his body. It would’ve been enough to drop most men with ease.

It was a testament to Tomas’ fortitude, then, that he managed to stay upright despite the heavy hit - stumbling, but stable. The blow had clearly done its work on him, however, creating an opening that she had to make use of.

A simple move wouldn’t do - while it would be more reliable, she had already played with this foe for far too long and paid the price. She couldn't afford to draw this out any longer, having already pushed her luck much too far.

Seeing her chance, Luong rushed in, closing the distance with a long stride. Once she was in range, she leaped up and spun about, twisting in the air, her hair flying about as she spun and picked up momentum. Her foot lashed out at the apex of her ascent, as she tried to bring it crashing down on the back of his neck with one of her deadliest moves - the Grand Coronation.

[GoingBananas]

Tomás’s chest burned as though someone had slammed a sledgehammer into his sternum. The heel of Luong’s foot had dug deep, and though he remained standing, the effort it took to steady his body made his arms shake as they came up instinctively to guard. His breath left him ragged, drawn in short bursts that refused to fill his lungs properly, each inhale scraping like fire. He knew she had baited him—her feint was well timed, and he had betrayed himself by instinctively lifting his guard. For all his grit, even he could not deny how cleanly she had pierced through his defense.

Still, he staggered but did not fall. That alone was a matter of pride, his willpower refusing to yield even as his chest pulsed with sharp pain, each breath a reminder of the strike that had landed. Tomás’s vision wavered slightly at the edges, but his feet scraped at the canvas, forcing his balance back under him. His eyes narrowed through the haze, and even in his pain he could see the intent in hers—a dangerous shift in her rhythm, one that told him she was ready to risk everything to bring him down.

He knew better than to ignore it. Foes like Luong didn’t telegraph for no reason. His instincts screamed for him to move, to cut her momentum before it began, but his battered body refused to cooperate quickly enough. His chest seized, his step faltered, and in that fraction of hesitation she was already on him.

Her body blurred in motion—a single sharp stride, the spring of her legs, and then she was airborne, spinning. His eyes tracked her but too late; the whip of her hair and the sheer torque of her twisting frame carried her far past what his battered stance could endure. His guard began to rise, sluggish, desperate, but her foot was already arcing down.

The impact came like a thunderclap. Her foot smashed into the back of his skull, forcing his face toward the mat with brutal finality. His world exploded into white-hot pain as his jaw rattled and his teeth bit into his tongue, copper bursting across his mouth. The canvas rushed up with sickening speed, and then the thud of his body hitting echoed in his ears, dull and distant.

For a moment, everything went weightless. His limbs sprawled awkwardly on the mat, his breath trapped somewhere between his throat and chest. His eyes rolled as he tried to focus, but his vision only swam, fragments of light and shadow without coherence. He could feel the pounding ache blooming at the base of his skull, a pressure so fierce it threatened to drown him in darkness.

Some primal instinct kept his fingers twitching against the mat, as though reminding him he was still tethered to this fight. But his body refused to lift, every command lost to the ringing void in his head. The Grand Coronation had landed, and Tomás lay reeling, caught in the devastating aftermath of her gamble.

[BlackAkuma]

It was, indeed, a gamble, though Luong supposed every move in a fight could be considered to be that, in some way or another. There was always a chance that any move you made would fail, and while you could minimize risk and plan to keep yourself covered, there was never any guarantee that things would work out. It was simply the chance you took.

This gambit, however, was riskier than most. Using a move like this was ill-advised, with her usually saving it for the coda of a fight, not its opening. Using it in such a situation, so early, was a desperation move, and one that would’ve failed her spectacularly if she missed. It would leave her open, comically vulnerable, possibly enough for Tomas to seize the momentum and never give it back.

Thankfully, mercifully, that was not to happen. The move landed. On target. Perfectly. She couldn't have asked for more. It wasn’t simply the impact, but the follow-through and what happened right after, as his face was smashed into the canvas, driven hard by a blow that had all of her weight and momentum behind it.

Luong was in no position to see the immediate aftermath, but after she rolled away and popped to her feet, she rose to her knees, looked over, and saw that Tomas was laid out on the floor, looking utterly wrecked. It was the most satisfying sight she’d witnessed all day, and for the first time in what felt like minutes, she allowed herself the luxury of a full breath. Relief.

Her first instinct was to rush over and go for the cover, and she even stood and moved towards him with that intent, but she stopped herself after a single step. That was the winning condition for this match. She needed to humiliate him, and earn his submission through that. What was the best way to accomplish such a thing?

Ideas were forming, wild ones, but she needed to make sure her position was secure before she enacted any of them. On top of that, she had some scores to settle - it was time she made Tomas understand his place in the bigger picture.

She moved over to him, reeled back, and gave him a harsh kick in the side, enough to flip Tomas over to his back. She wasted little time from there, raising her heel and pressing it hard against his throat, looking to choke him with in one of the most degrading ways she could imagine.

”꿈틀거리다”

Squirm.

[GoingBananas]

Tomás came back to the world in pieces. First the ringing that swallowed the roar of the arena, then the pounding ache blooming behind his eyes, and finally the cold canvas pressing against his cheek. His thoughts were scattered, disordered, as if the impact of Luong’s attack had knocked them loose and let them drift where they pleased. One truth cut through the haze with absolute clarity: her gamble had landed. That impossible, spinning, falling strike she’d thrown at the very start—reckless, wild, brilliant—had hit flush. Too flush. Even dazed on the mat, he could feel its precision in the way it had driven him straight down, giving him no chance to brace or counter.

“Caralho…” he muttered under what breath he could manage, a low, stunned rasp. It wasn’t just pain; it was disbelief. Anyone else opening a match with a move like that would’ve been asking to lose in the first ten seconds. If she’d missed, he would’ve buried her momentum before it was born. But she hadn’t missed. She’d rolled the dice, and she’d won.

As his vision steadied into something resembling clarity, he realized she hadn’t gone for a pin. She wasn’t here for the quick victory written into any other rulebook. He heard her footsteps approaching—unhurried, confident, almost contemplative. She stopped beside him just long enough for him to brace out of instinct, his aching body dragging itself toward readiness even as his mind lagged behind.

The kick to his ribs came sharp and unannounced, flipping him onto his back with a grunt torn from his lungs. “Porra…!” he spat, his voice raw. He squirmed instinctively, rolling his shoulders and shifting his hips, his body resisting even as exhaustion dragged at every muscle. He hated how little strength he seemed able to draw upon, how slowly his reactions came. The lights overhead blurred into hazy streaks as he tried to blink himself fully back into the present.

Then her heel pressed down firmly against his throat.

Not enough to crush. Enough to command. Enough to choke. Enough to tell him exactly what she wanted this match to be. The pressure tightened his jaw, shortened his breath, and forced his hands to twitch upward before he wrestled them back under control. Pride flickered through him hotter than the pain, burning against the humiliation threading through her restraint.

“Filha da mãe…” he growled, voice strained but defiant, his body writhing beneath her heel. It wasn’t fear that moved him, but refusal—stubborn, exhausted defiance that refused to let her mistake the state he was in for surrender. His muscles coiled and pushed, even when they shook. His boots scraped the canvas as he fought for leverage he didn’t yet have. It didn’t matter. He kept fighting for it.

Luong gave a single curt word in Korean above him—sharp, dismissive, absolute.

And Tomás did squirm under her command, breath catching, body twisting in protest, his movements growing smaller but no less insistent. The pressure at his throat, the exhaustion, the pain—none of it silenced him completely. Even choking down a thin, strained breath, he forced out a rasped answer in Portuguese, half snarl, half promise:

“Eu… ainda não acabei…”

He’s not finished yet. But whether he had the strength to make it true was another question entirely.

[BlackAkuma]

It was nothing personal, though Luong wouldn’t blame Tomas for seeing it that way. After all, it was difficult to hold such a view when a woman was crushing her throat with the ball of her foot. Or so she imagined, it wasn’t as if she had been in such a situation before.

But no, while it might’ve seemed as Luong hated the man, she could muster some true respect for him. He was skilled, more so than many of the dregs that plagued LAW, especially in the men’s divisions. She would imagine his abilities would prove too much for many lesser combatants, and if he had been up against someone of his own station, this would be a much more equal contest. Perhaps, even, balanced in his favor.

But alas, fortune was not so kind. He found himself against Luong, and she had no aspirations loftier than showing him his place in the world.

He would not take such a revelation lightly, however. While she did recognize his language - it reminded her of Spanish, but clearly wasn’t exactly that - she hardly needed to suss out the meaning in his words and to see the defiance. He was squirming, yes, but that was involuntary. Mentally, he was still hanging on.

Unacceptable.

Luong lifted her foot, only so she could bring it down hard into Toman’s temple and drive his skull into the canvas. She pinned it there, leaned it, and ground hard with what little weight she had.

”Speak. English.” As much as he hated conversing in that disgusting language, this was one of those instances where it was needed, since she strongly doubted this man knew a word of Korean. Luong raised her foot and held it just over his face, making her unspoken threat clear. ”Do you submit?”

[GoingBananas]

Tomás’s world narrowed to pressure and ringing pain. The brief lift of Luong’s foot was a lie—hope dangled and then crushed—as the stomp came down against his temple, snapping his head back into the canvas with a jolt that sent white sparks through his skull. The mat felt impossibly hard, unyielding, as though it were complicit in the punishment. He tasted copper and dust, breath scraping in and out in ragged pulls while the weight of her foot pinned him there, grinding, reminding him with every second that she could end this whenever she pleased.

He did not. Not yet. Consciousness clung to him like a stubborn weed, growing in cracks it had no right to survive in. He knew—some cold, lucid part of him knew—that he had taken too many blows for clarity to be his ally anymore. His reactions lagged, his limbs felt thick and distant, and the dull thunder behind his eyes warned him that stubbornness was becoming a liability. Still, lying there and accepting the shape she wanted to carve into him felt worse. Worse than the pain. Worse than the dizziness.

Her demand cut through the haze, sharp and clipped. English. The threat hovered just above his face, unspoken but unmistakable. Tomás dragged in a breath that burned his throat and turned his head just enough for one eye to find her—blurry, doubled, but there. “Fine. In English.” Anger flared hot, eclipsing the fog. Not just at her, but at the pattern of it all: the dismissals, the sideways looks from officials who never learned his name, the way victories were minimized and failures magnified. He’d been told to know his place more times than he could count. He was tired of swallowing it.

“Go fuck yourself.” he rasped in English, the words torn from him raw and ugly, but unmistakably defiant.

Before the threat could become another stomp, Tomás moved. Not cleanly, not gracefully—his arm shot up on instinct more than precision, fingers hooking around her ankle with a desperate, iron grip. Pain lanced through his shoulder as he twisted, but he put everything he had left into it, yanking her foot sideways and down, not to control her, but to disrupt her balance. The motion was reckless, born of fury and survival rather than strategy, and it sent his body rolling with the effort.

Whether it would be enough to force her to stumble or merely provoke something worse, he couldn’t know. He only knew he refused to stay pinned, refused to let her decide that this—broken, breathless, grinding under her heel—was all he was allowed to be.

[BlackAkuma]

In truth, Luong was growing bored of this charade. She wasn’t terribly interested to begin with, but for a moment, Tomas had piqued her interest. He had shown skill, drive, promise, and had given her some modicum of a challenge. There had been satisfaction in putting him down, a sense of accomplishment. No, however, that was rapidly fading, and its play was a growing ennui. The match was, in her eyes, over, and it was simply a matter of ending things in a proper manner. He might resist, yes, but the outcome was not in doubt. He would submit.

But then he had to go and say that.

For a moment - a long, stretching moment - Luong didn’t respond. She didn't say anything. She merely looked down at this man, the insect who had dared to say such crass things to her in this embarrassment of a language, with a blank, flat stare, as if she needed a moment to process the words that had come out of his mouth. She wanted to make sure her understanding of English was correct, that he had actually said what she thought he said. She barely even reacted as he pushed her foot away and rolled to the side, merely standing there as her head slowly tilted to the side.

But when she reacted, she reacted. There was no windup, no preamble. One instant, she was perfectly still. In the next, she closed the distance, brought her foot up, and viciously drove her foot into the back of his head, slamming his skull into the canvas with ruthless precision and merciless force. A second one would follow, even harder than the first, but she took care not to drill his head with too much force. She wanted him hurting, but awake. He couldn't suffer if he were unconscious.

She brought her foot around, slid it under his battered face, and used it to lift him up, forcing him to rise with a single foot. With her folded arms, she leaned forward and met his gaze with a frigid stare. ”A word of warning - choose your words carefully. You might not be able to use your jaw for much longer.”

[GoingBananas]

The boredom radiating from her was almost worse than the pain. Tomás knew it, the surrounding air seemed to freeze, the way his resistance no longer registered as defiance but as inconvenience. That realization settled heavily in his chest as he struggled on hands and knees, head still ringing from the last exchange. He had felt it before, in other arenas, other rooms: the moment when someone decided you were finished, whether you agreed or not.

Then came the silence. A long, dreadful pause in which nothing moved except his own shallow breathing. He rolled partly onto his side, vision swimming, just in time to catch that empty stare fixed on him. It wasn’t anger. Or even contempt. Surprisingly, it was assessment, cold and distant, as if she were confirming a calculation. The absence of immediate retaliation made his skin prickle worse than any kick; it told him he had crossed from an opponent to a problem.

The problem was corrected violently. Without warning, the impact detonated at the back of his skull, snapping his face into the mat so hard his teeth clacked together. The world fractured into light and sound, a sharp crack followed by a deeper, heavier thud as the second stomp came down. Pain roared through him, hot and blinding, driving the air from his lungs. He lay there stunned, limbs twitching, mind skidding along the edge of blackout—but still, stubbornly, infuriatingly awake.

A pressure hooked beneath his face, forcing him up despite the protest of his neck and spine. His boots scraped uselessly until his legs straightened, balance borrowed rather than owned, his weight guided by the merciless lift of her foot. When he finally found himself upright, swaying, he met her stare through a haze of sweat and blood, jaw tight, eyes glassy but burning. Her words reached him clearly enough, each one measured, promising damage with the same calm certainty as a contract clause.

Tomás listened. Then he laughed. More breath than sound. Saliva pooled in his mouth, metallic and thick. He leaned forward just enough, ignoring the way his head swam, and spat straight at her face, the gesture crude and deliberate. “I don’t plan on talking much.” He growled in English, the words slurred but resolute, carrying years of pent-up resentment with them. His head leaned back before trying to headbutt the High Kick Empress.

The act cost him. He knew it even as he did it. But as he stood there, barely held together by rage and will, Tomás felt a grim satisfaction settle in his gut. Whatever came next—and he had no illusions it would be gentle—she would remember that he had not gone quietly.