Bradley’s eyes bulged wide.
All the oxygen in his lungs evacuated in a wet, wheezing hiss.
His gold belt clattered to the floor.
But Chloe wasn’t done.
As Bradley folded forward, gasping desperately for air, Chloe pivoted on her lead foot.
With a fluid, terrifying grace, she swept her right leg through the back of Bradley’s calves, a textbook ashi barai.
Because she had destroyed his structural base, Bradley had no way to catch himself.
His 200-lb frame launched into the air, completely horizontal, before crashing down onto the hard linoleum floor with a force that rattled the coffee mugs on the counters.
The entire exchange took less than 1.5 seconds.
Bradley Jenkins, the reigning state champion, was writhing on the ground, clutching his stomach, his face purple as he desperately tried to force air back into his paralyzed diaphragm.
He sounded like a suffocating fish.
Cameron’s smartphone slipped from his trembling hands, clattering onto the table.
The live stream was now pointing at the ceiling, though the microphone was picking up everything.
Greg backed away, his hands raised in shock.
Chloe stood over the fallen champion.
She hadn’t even broken a sweat.
Her breathing was perfectly measured, in through the nose, out through the mouth.
She looked down at him with eyes devoid of any pity.
“You rely on rules, mats, and referees to save you when you make a mistake,” Chloe said quietly, her voice echoing in the dead silence of the diner.
“Out here, there are no points. There are only consequences.”
She stepped over his convulsing body, picking up his gold belt from the floor.
She tossed it onto the table in front of a pale, trembling Cameron.
“Take your trash and leave,” Chloe ordered.
Cameron couldn’t speak.
His eyes were wide behind his expensive designer glasses, darting from the gasping behemoth on the floor to the unassuming waitress standing before him.
He looked at her hands.
He looked at the flat, calcified knuckles.
He replayed the blur of violence he had just witnessed in his mind.
The short, inverted punch.
The perfectly timed inner sweep.
The complete lack of telegraphing.
Suddenly, the blood drained from Cameron’s face.
He knew the martial arts world inside and out.
He knew the histories, the legends, and the ghosts.
“Wait,” Cameron whispered, his voice cracking.
He pointed a shaking finger at her.
“That punch. That stance. I saw that in 2018 at the underground kumite in Tokyo. You’re Thomas Jennings’ daughter. You’re the prodigy who shattered the Russian champion’s sternum. You… You’re Chloe Jennings, the ghost of Kyokushin.”
