She folded the apron with methodical, agonizingly slow precision.
Once in half, then again, and placed it gently on the counter next to the cash register.
When she turned back around, the exhausted, subservient waitress was gone.
Her posture had completely transformed.
Her spine was perfectly straight, her shoulders dropped, releasing the tension she carried all day.
Her feet shifted subtly on the linoleum, her left foot sliding slightly forward, her right heel lifting a millimeter off the ground.
It was an ancient, deeply rooted stance.
The air around her seemed to drop by 10°.
“Hey,” Chloe said.
Her voice cut through the diner like a blade drawn from a sheath.
Bradley paused mid-laugh and turned around.
He looked at her, irritated.
“Are you deaf? I told you to get my—”
“You have terrible hip mobility,” Chloe interrupted, her voice deadpan.
Cameron stopped laughing.
Greg lowered his beer.
Bradley’s brow furrowed in genuine confusion.
“Excuse me?”
“Your kick,” Chloe continued, taking one measured step forward.
“Your planting foot was completely flat. Your hips were locked. If you threw that roundhouse at a heavy bag instead of empty air, you would have blown out your own ACL. You don’t have power. You just have momentum.”
Bradley’s face turned crimson.
The absolute clinical disrespect in her tone was something he had never encountered, especially not from a waitress in a cheap diner.
The fact that thousands of people were currently watching this on a live stream only poured gasoline on his ego.
“You crazy bitch,” Bradley growled, stepping forward.
“I’m going to teach you how to talk to a champion.”
He lunged forward, reaching out with a massive right hand to grab her by the throat, fully intending to throw her across the room.
He never even touched her collar.
As Bradley’s hand shot forward, Chloe moved.
It wasn’t the bouncy, erratic movement of modern sport fighting.
It was zero to 60 explosion.
She stepped inside his reach, slipping her head off the center line by a fraction of an inch.
Simultaneously, her left forearm snapped up in a rigid, bone-shattering parry, striking the inside of Bradley’s extending wrist.
A loud crack echoed through the diner.
Not the sound of a slap, but the sickening sound of dense bone colliding with fragile cartilage.
Bradley gasped, his arm deadening instantly from the nerve strike.
Before his brain could even process the pain, Chloe’s right hand, held in a tight, flat-knuckled fist, buried itself directly into his solar plexus.
She didn’t swing her arm.
She drove the strike from the floor, rotating her hips, transferring her entire body weight through the two flat knuckles of her right hand.
It was the legendary shita tsuki, an inverted short punch utilized in full contact Kyokushin karate.
