Kira Kosarin versus Vivian Hsieh (POTB Round 1)

Penghu. It suddenly occurred to Vivian how silent it was, for a crowd of several thousand. There was a scarcely a sound apart from what she and Kira made, but the crowd was awake, many waving halfhearted flags and banners with support slogans in Chinese or her likeness upon them. Perhaps it has occured to enough of them that their hometown favorite might lose that pessimistic despair has soaked into the rest.

Grimly resolute, Vivian got up from her corner for round five, and tried to reassure her supporters with a smile that she hoped didn't look too grotesque, given her swollen eyes and bloodied face.

Her face was hot with the baleful sun's heat, the injured parts especially so, and when the first punch of round five snapped her head back in an arc of bloody spit and sweat, her nose felt aflame, and her eyes burned in the direct light. Suddenly disoriented, Kira's next punch twisted her unready stomach into knots, and she stumbled backwards into the ropes.

Kira was soon at her throat again, swinging a hard left (Vivian's right), but the scalding sand shifted beneath her feet, her punch whistling past her target's ear. She fell forward, her forward momentum helping Vivian's counterpunch sink harder into her chest. A red bikini wasn't much in the way of armor, and thus Kira expelled a lungful of air into Vivian's face.

Good, she thought, that means I hit hard. Silent the crowd was no longer; loud cheers answered the punch against the foreign Kira.

But she was faster to recover, faster than Vivian from the blast of air in the face, which had stung her eyes, and wide-eyed silence once more settled over the crowd as Kira played origami with her body, folding her over with a thunderous one-two to the belly. The combo knocked her into the ropes with enough force for her to bounce right back into a flash of leather and the shroud of darkness.

Vivian woke on the hot sand, lying on her side, crumpled in a heap beneath the ropes, the referee's shadow over her, counting. His voice was distant, as though it were an echo in the valleys around Jade Mountain.

"Three!" She rose to all fours. Threes, actually, for her left hand was occupied with wiping sand off. She stayed there for a second, and tried to rise further, but then the world spun and she fell back.

Her thoughts swam in her head, the words drifting listlessly, incorporeal, hard to hold onto. The… sand helps… pain focuses me…but my feet… aren't enough… they're used to the burn…

"Six!"

She scooped up a handful of scalding sand and poured them over her ample and swollen mounds, barely held in by her blue bra top, and stuffed a fistful down her thong, just for good measure. The sand worked like a piece of Airwaves, instantly awakening and immensely enervating. At her sudden jerk to her feet, the ref gasps, interrupting his count.

"Sev- alright, she's up, fight!"

Kira closed the distance from the neutral corner faster than the French could surrender, but Vivian was ready, the heat making her jumpy but fast, and keeping her attentive. The punch slammed into her gloves, with little effect other than physics spraying her with sweaty sand that clung to her gloves. Her counter caught Kira in her recovery, slinking past her unready guard and into her face. A follow-up followed the counter, then another, and another in a tempestuous flurry. Finally it was Kira retreating, and the cheers were rising; her foot slid back, then a step, then another, and then they were in the middle of the ring.

Kira retreated further.

Her heart swelled as punch after punch hit its mark. Kira looked hurt by her blows; her face was nearly as twisted as Vivian's own, and that emboldened Vivian. She pressed on, and eventually it was Kira at the ropes. Vivian winded back to knock her down.

With a slight tilt of her neck and determination in her gaze, Kira dodged it, and cracked a smile as she drove the already battered Vivian back again with a barrage of blows.

The unexpected lack of resistance stripped her of balance, and the sand in her bikini was no longer hot - it was rapidly becoming sweaty, and, thanks to Kira, bloody. Her breasts were the first targets; she stumbled back in her best effort to protect them. Then it was hooks at her belly, and she moved back to avoid that too, fumbling over her feet. The sand in her bikini was just warm now; it was no longer focusing her or enervating at all. Kira swung at her head, and she tried evasion again, but there was nowhere left to go. Her back came up against the springy ropes.

The bell could not be far off now. A long time, she felt, had passed, and three minutes could not be that long of a period. Wrapping her arms in the ropes, Vivian braced for Kira's blows and tried to hold on until the bell. Only jabs came now, flying at her chest and face, making her body bounce back and forth on the ropes, sliding a little lower with each succèsive shot.

After about the tenth or so, she had lost all sensation, and when a punch to the chin snapped her head back, darkness covered her eyes again.

—---------
Vivian woke lying on a cot in the locker room with blood congealing on her bare skin, and Ili Cheng filled her in. There had been just five seconds left on the clock when the referee called the match, seeing that she was out on her feet, avoiding a true knockdown, on her feet by virtue of her arms clinging to the ropes. Kosarin won by TKO5.

Anger flared in her, and she sat up despite her pain and injuries. She swore.

Kira would fall someday. By her hand, she vowed.

Even if it was the last thing she did.