Before he could even process the throw, Angela was on him. She didn't drop her weight on his chest to crush him; she flowed around his defensive frames like liquid silver. She bypassed his frantic legs, transitioned seamlessly into a north-south position, and isolated his right arm.
Ryan panicked. He bridged violently, trying to explode out from under her, using all his youth and athletic power.
Angela simply floated. As he bridged up, she yielded, becoming weightless, letting his energy expend itself against nothing. The second his hips hit the mat again, she dropped her weight, making herself feel like she weighed a thousand pounds. She trapped his wrist against his own neck, sliding her other arm under his tricep, locking in a flawless, inescapable kimura grip.
She didn't crank it. She didn't apply agonizing pressure. She simply secured the lock, tight as a vice, and looked down at his face.
"If I wanted to," Angela said, her voice a calm whisper meant only for him, "your rotator cuff would be gone right now. The same way you tried to tear Ethan's."
Ryan looked up into her brown eyes. For the first time in his martial arts career, he felt genuine, primordial terror. There was no anger in her eyes. There was only absolute, terrifying competence.
"Tap," she whispered.
Ryan furiously slapped the mat with his free hand. Tap, tap, tap.
"Time," Michael called out, his voice thick with shock. The digital timer on the wall showed that exactly forty-five seconds had elapsed.
Angela immediately let go, stood up smoothly without using her hands, and walked back to her starting position on the edge of the mat. She didn't celebrate. She didn't look at the crowd. She simply smoothed out the wrinkles in her gray shirt and waited.
Ryan scrambled to his knees, clutching his shoulder. He looked at Angela as if she were a ghost. He looked at Jason and Derek, who were staring at the mat with their mouths slightly open. Ryan didn't say a word. He stood up, bowed rigidly to Angela, and practically ran off the mat, finding a dark corner near the back wall to process what had just happened to his reality.
Part IV: Round Two - The Mountain Crumbles
Derek Sloan stepped onto the mat. The amusement was entirely gone from the giant's face. He looked serious, wary, and immensely intimidating. He outweighed Angela by almost a hundred pounds. In the absolute terms of physics, skill can only bridge so much of a gap before mass and gravity dictate the outcome.
"Round two," Michael said, his voice tense. He looked at Angela. "Are you sure you want to continue?"
"Yes," Angela said.
Derek pounded his huge fists together. "You caught Ryan slipping. He's light. He relies on speed. You can't throw me like that, lady. I'm too heavy. I'm going to put you on your back and crush you."
"We will see," Angela replied.
"Begin," Michael commanded.
Derek didn't waste time with technical setups. He charged forward like an angry rhinoceros, aiming to grab her, smother her, and drag her to the ground using sheer brute force. He reached out with two massive hands, looking to secure double underhooks and simply lift her off her feet.
Angela did not retreat. Retreating from a larger opponent gives them momentum, making them heavier when they finally crash into you. Instead, she stepped into his charge.
As Derek's massive arms came forward, Angela ducked low, swimming her arms inside of his. She established bicep ties, gripping the crook of his elbows, and glued her forehead directly into the center of his chest.
Derek grinned. He had her. She was tied up with him in the clinch, exactly where a smaller grappler should never be against a heavyweight. He drove his weight forward, attempting to bulldoze her backward, intending to trip her over his massive tree-trunk legs.
But pushing Angela was like trying to push a deeply rooted oak tree.
She had widened her stance and lowered her hips drastically. More importantly, she was using structural framing. By keeping her elbows tight to her ribs and her forearms wedged against his biceps, she was using her skeletal structure, not her muscles, to support his weight. Derek was pushing against bone mechanics, not muscle tissue.
He grunted, his face turning red with exertion. He drove harder, throwing all two hundred and thirty pounds into the push.
Angela waited for the exact moment his commitment to the forward drive reached its absolute peak—the moment where, if she suddenly disappeared, he would fall flat on his face.
Then, she moved.
She released the tension, collapsing her frame on the right side. She pivoted on her left foot, stepping out of the way of his charge like a matador stepping aside for a bull. At the same exact moment, she took her right hand, gripped the thick fabric of his gi pants at the knee, and pulled straight up, whilst her left hand guided his momentum past her.
It was a perfectly executed Hiza Guruma—a knee wheel.
Derek's massive upper body continued its forward plunge into empty space, while his right leg was violently halted and lifted by Angela's grip. The sheer physics of his own momentum betrayed him. He launched into the air, a massive, helpless boulder, and crashed onto the mat with a sound that resembled a car accident.
The impact shook the floorboards. Several students flinched, instinctively raising their hands to their faces.
Derek laid there for a second, completely stunned, staring at the ceiling. The wind was knocked out of him so violently he couldn't even groan.
Before he could attempt to recover, Angela had moved into knee-on-belly. She placed her right shin directly across his diaphragm, dropping all of her focused body weight into that single, agonizing point. She gripped his lapels and pulled upward, driving her shin deeper, effectively pinning the giant to the floor with agonizing, suffocating pressure.