"Come on, Mercer," Davis called out from the edge of the mat, though his voice lacked its usual bravado. "Stop playing around."
Jake ground his teeth. He hated looking foolish. He squared up again, this time raising his hands properly. He decided he wouldn't just throw one punch; he would throw a combination. He would overwhelm her with volume. There was no way she could slip a four-punch combo without retreating.
"Back up," Jake commanded, stepping forward.
Chapter 7: The First Exchange
Jake unleashed a flurry of strikes—a jab, a cross, a left hook, and an uppercut. It was a terrifying display of speed and power for a man his size.
But Emma was a ghost.
She didn't block the strikes; blocking meant absorbing kinetic energy, and she was too smart to absorb Jake's power. Instead, she slipped, rolled, and parried.
As the jab came, she slightly tilted her head. As the cross followed, she parried it downward with a flick of her wrist, guiding Jake's fist toward the floor. The left hook swooshed over her head as she ducked, and the uppercut hit nothing as she smoothly pivoted to his blind side.
Throughout the entire barrage, Emma hadn't taken a single step backward. She had moved laterally, circulating him, using his own aggression to steer him around the mat like a matador guiding a bull.
Jake finished his combination breathing heavily, facing the opposite direction from where he had started. He was swinging at shadows.
Chapter 8: Finding Air
Frustration began to boil over into genuine anger. Jake spun around, his chest heaving. His pride was stinging. He could feel the eyes of the entire platoon on him. He was being made a fool of by someone who hadn't even thrown a punch yet.
"Stop dancing!" Jake yelled. "Fight!"
Emma stood there, her breathing still slow, her expression entirely neutral. She looked as though she were waiting for a bus rather than locked in combat with a raging soldier.
Jake abandoned technique entirely. He rushed her, looking to grapple, to use his immense size to smother her. He reached out with both hands, aiming to grab her shoulders and throw her to the mat.
Emma stepped inside his reach. It was a counter-intuitive move. When a larger opponent tries to grab you, human instinct is to pull away. Emma moved closer, stepping inside his effective range, pressing her shoulder against his chest.