Tension in Ueno: 24/7 Championship Match- Carmen Rodriguez (c) vs Akino Sanada

Carmen clicked her teeth as Akino took the strike and dropped flat. That was a good punch she’d thrown, yes, but not good enough.

Much of the power from her hits came from Carmen’s legs, twisting her body into them in order to deal extra damage and generate high force. From a kneeling position, she could still generate a lot of force, but if she wanted to put someone down long enough to generate a true knockout.

She could do better. She would do better. One punch, one perfect punch, was all she needed to put Akino down for good.

She grabbed a hold of the maid’s head with a tight grip, letting her nails sink in to get a good hold. Carmen stood up, bringing Akino along with her, and pushed her back so she’d lean again the nearest table while she recovered.

Not that Carmen would give her a chance.

The 24/7 Champion took a step back, then moved forward and swung her fist at Akino from the side, looking to hit her with the same sort of punch she’d just gone for, in the same place - only much, much stronger.

Akino groaned through grit teeth as she laid there on the mat, one hand resting on her aching jaw. Though it was hard to put the moment into perspective, she was profoundly lucky that attack had happened on the ground. Had Carmen been standing when the punch was thrown, there likely would’ve been an unconscious maid being carried off to the trainer’s room while Carmen held up her title to celebrate a successful defense.

That wasn’t the case right now, but the boxer was bound and determined to fix that. Akino grimaced in pain as Carmen’s fingernails dug into her head and dragged her back up to her feet, where she was shoved up against a table to hold her steady. Seemingly out of it, Akino stood there as Carmen reared back and fired her fist, seemingly destined to deliver the finishing knockout blow that would put the maid away!

...That is, until it didn’t. As the fist flew toward her, Akino ducked down and threw her arms around the offending limb, then attempted to drag Carmen down onto her front by her arm. If she could get the champion down, Akino would immediately swing a leg over to straddle the boxer’s shoulder joint, then tuck the trapped arm under one of hers and start wrenching back with all her might while roaring out at the top of her lungs! The Shoryu Kekkai, this modified seated armbar, was a finisher of Akino’s, one she fully intended to force the defending champion to submit with!

This was it. This was the moment where Carmen won the match. She instinctively recognized it coming, knew how damaging her punch could be if she connected.

If she connected.

Instead, Carmen felt herself getting spun all around, turned about and dropped down. She had a bad feeling what was coming, knew it would be the worst thing possible if she couldn’t avoid it, but she couldn’t quite move fast enough. Couldn’t get free in time.

Carmen was caught in a submission hold, and not just any hold, either. One of the worst in Akino's broad arsenal.

She had to grind her teeth down hard to keep from screaming as the armbar was locked in. Carmen thrashed around wildly and reached out, but this wasn’t a situation where any of that matter. That was the danger of a 24/7 match - there were some submission holds that were nigh-impossible to escape without a rope break, and there were no rope breaks to be had in this match. The as-of-right-now champion was going to have to find some other way out of this hold, preferably before her shoulder was dislocated.

Akino got her hold locked in nice and tight, and immediately the pressure was cranked up! She had to fight to keep her position with Carmen thrashing about so frantically, but the maid had anchored herself in place, and tucking the boxer’s arm underneath her own had given it nowhere to go as she pulled back on it.

With no ropes to go, Akino only saw one way that Carmen could get out of this, and that of course was an option the Puerto Rican was likely going to do everything she could to avoid. Even a angry as the maid was, she had no intention of inflicting a serious, sidelining injury to Carmen. But whether or not that happened, in her mind, depended entirely on how long Carmen was going to be stubborn.

“GIVE UP!!!” Akino commanded while continuing to wrench back on the trapped arm. It seemed all that was left now was to see how long Carmen could last before the pain became too much.

Carmen could accept that, one day, she was going to lose the 24/7 title. It was just the way of things, and with her being vulnerable to challenge at any time, it was only a matter of when, not if or how. Someone would pick just the right tme to attack her, she’d go down, and that would be that.

But when that day came, she wouldn’t be in the dirt, begging for someone to let her out of a hold. In other words, it wouldn’t be today. Not like this.

Carmen pounded her fist against the pavement and summoned whatever strength she could muster. She started to push upwards, gritting her teeth with the arduous task, rising higher with the supreme effort. Just a little more. Little more…

When she had enough space, Carmen tried to roll to the side and lift Akino’s body up and over her, looking to dump her down right on her head with a mighty scream to go along with the attempt.

Akino felt confident she had Carmen beat, and that any second now the Puerto Rican would be tapping, and the ref would be pulling Akino off to declare her the victor. But no, that didn’t happen. The maid pulled with all her might, but Carmen continued to hold on and fight through the pain.

Then the bluenette felt her foe shifting around, and suddenly Akino was being pulled backward and elevated off the ground! The intensity in her expression was replaced first by shock, then by pure agony as she was slammed down onto the pavement.

It only lasted a split second, but the impact forced a near-bloodcurdling shriek out of Akino, whose hands immediately went to work cradling her throbbing skull while the rest of her body writhes frantically along the pavement like a fish out of water.

Carmen - and probably everyone within a mile radius - winced at the death wailing that Akino made on contact with the pavement. That hurt. That had to hurt a lot. Carmen knew how bad head trauma could make you feel, from lots and lots of personal experience.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t going to take advantage of it so she could end this, though.

With Akino busy dealing with the surely immense agony, Carmen grabbed her legs with both hands, pressed her back against the maid’s chest, and went for the pin.

The referee took a knee on the pavement and started the count. ”1…!”

Akino’s head felt like she a bowling ball had been hurled into the back of it. For a brief moment she recalled one of her first matches in the indies, a hardcore match against a young man whose head she swung a baseball bat into. Akino couldn’t help but think that must’ve felt a lot like what she was enduring at the moment.

And the maid felt a something warm over her gloved fingers. Was that blood? Or was it just sweat? She couldn’t tell, but the feeling of Carmen’s body suddenly pressing down over her while her legs were wrapped up told her there was something else to worry about at the moment.

“2...!”

The ref’s hand came up again and started to fall. But before it could strike the pavement again Akino shouted out and jerked a shoulder up, breaking the count at what felt like the very last possible moment!

Carmen was a patient woman, or at least tried to be, but when Akino kicked out, she felt that patience dwindling. This was going too long, and as her burning shoulder proved, the more it wore on, the higher the likelihood that she'd get put into another submission hold. That could not happen again.

Something would break - either a bone or her will.

With more than a little desperation under her breath, Carmen reached over and grabbed some sand from one of the fallen fish bowls - grimy blue stuff, wet and slippery. Akino was still reeling and she took the opportunity to grab the maid’s hair with one hand while she shoved the sand into her face with the other, temporarily blinding her once more.

Maybe not altogether needed, but she simply was not in a mood to leave anything to chance.

There was a part of Akino that questioned whether it had been smart to kick out just then. As bad as she was hurting, coupled with the fact that the back of her head might’ve been busted open, continuing a heated fight likely meant either she or Carmen was going to wind up getting hurt at the rate things were going. Maybe it was her competitive stubbornness that had drove her to fight through her pain, or perhaps it was her anger.

But even as far as her rage was concerned, Akino had been started to come close to getting over it. Rubbing her eye into the mud had been bad, but the maid still wanted to believe that Carmen hadn’t done it to deliberately target the eye, and that it had just been a heat of the moment thing the boxer hadn’t really thought through.

But that all changed in a heartbeat when Akino was dragged up by her hair only to have the grimy blue sand shoved right at her eye. There was no doubt about it now. Carmen had deliberately exploited to utilize one of the lowest tactics a fighter could ever try to pull out. Just like that Akino went into another fit of rage, but it didn’t do her much good. She screamed, thrashed and kicked about to rip herself out of Carmen’s grasp. But even if that worked, the Puerto Rican had effectively, if only temporarily, blinded her. Akino frantically tried to rub the sand out of her eye, while trying to pull herself up and get balanced, while trying to find where Carmen was. Her body was trying to accomplish a million things at once, and all it amounted to was little more than her wildly flailing about.