Afterlife

7

Fiara stood in the center of the sparing ring, waiting for her first if any challenger to join her, showing off as if she were an amazing fighter, truth be told she knew absolutely nothing about fighting, other than what she'd learned from movies and self defense classes she took as a kid. 'What the hell am I doing. These people are going to wipe the floor with me!' she thought to herself, 'Maybe this was a mistake.'

Finally the group turned to face her and Diego raised his hands in mock surrender as he approached the ring saying, "Alright fine, I'll do it," with a bright smile on his face. The others then approached the ring and stood along the outside, ready to watch the match.

"You got this, Diego," Connie said with a smile as he made his way into the ring, rolling up the sleeves of his white shirt as he prepared himself for the spar.

"You sure you want to do this? You can still back down you know," Diego offered as he waited for Fiara to make the first move.

"Why, too scared to lose to a girl?" Fiara taunted as she tried to put herself in a prepared fighting position. 'What are you doing?! Just don't. Stop the fight now while you still have your dignity.'

"No... I just don't want you to break a nail or something," he countered with a smirk. He didn't actually mean it, he was just baiting her to get the fight going.

The observers made sounds of approval at the insults being thrown around as they laughed and waited for one of them to make a move. Fiara couldn't help but smirk in annoyance at the fact that she actually found this whole thing rather hilarious, right down to the taunting comments they were using on each other. "Ok, but you asked for it," Fiara said as she made her first move, stepping forwards and swinging her fist at the same time, but due to her poor stance, there was very little power behind it, and Diego was able to dodge it easily by sidestepping her move and taking out her back foot with a simple sweep of his foot, causing her to stumble forward, nearly faceplanting into the mats.

Laughing nervously at how easy that seemed for him, she regained her balance and turned to face him once more. He wasn't even standing in an attack position. He appeared to be completely relaxed and confident in all his movements. "Is that all you got?" he taunted.

She smirked once again as she said, "Ok, wise guy, lets see how well you can handle this," she then proceeded to run forward, pretending like she was going to go down for a sweep of his legs, but just before she actually made the motion, she paused in her lowered position, then instantly stood up, ready to deal a swift punch to his stomach, but he had carefully watched every move she was making, and also managed to dodge this attack as well. As she was standing up, he grabbed hold of her shoulders, and using them for support, he flipped over her shoulders, landing safely behind her and kicking backwards, hitting her square in the center of the back and sending her flying across the ring and bouncing off the ropes before landing on the mat. She grimaced as she lifted herself again, leaning against the ropes slightly as she considered her next move. 'Is he just playing with me?' she asked herself upon seeing that Diego hadn't even broken a sweat yet, while she'd become his personal punching bag. 'I can tell he's not attacking me at full strength. If he were, then my injuries would be much more severe by now.'

"Look, I really don't want to hurt you... so why don't we just make this a whole lot easier and drop the whole thing," Diego suggested with his usual smile.

Any other person might have agreed to Diego's proposal, but Fiara was a very stubborn individual when it came to things like this. She didn't like people thinking she was weak. "Sounds to me like you're just too chicken to fight me," she retorted with a smirk, "Come on... I know you're holding back on me. Show me what you've got!" she challenged as she once again placed herself in ready position, this time waiting for him to make the first move.