It was a lucky hit.
Lucky enough to knock her senseless, catching her jaw and snapping her head hard to the right. White lights burst in her vision, made worse by the spotlights trained on her and the roaring of the crowd that matched the static in her head. A lucky hit. It was enough to make her drop her guard, stumble backwards, lose her footing. Her opponent noticed.
Shite, she thought, rushing to get her stance up before his uppercut landed. But her vision was still spotty, her head still playing static. Her foot slipped in a pool of her own blood, and she fell forward onto his thrust, doubling the force of it. Pain exploded across her clavicle - broken, definitely. She drew in a shuddering breath, tucked in her shoulder, and hit the ground moving. Even though she knew how much it would hurt to roll with a broken clavicle, it was better than falling to her knees and just waitin' to get killed.
"What a hit!" Tommy narrated. "Meatrot, with an uppercut to the chest, and folks, I can see the damage from here - but wait, Cait's back up - "
She was. She'd ended up with her back against the metal bars of the cage. On a good day she'd have no trouble with her back against the wall. Today was not a good day. The shock of rolling into standing position with her broken clavicle - feeling the separated bone scrape together as it moved - had put a ringing in her ears, and her mouth tasted like blood. Shite. Not blood from when her opponent, Meatrot, had clocked her in the jaw. No, she could feel this clawing its way up from inside her. From her lungs? From her stomach? Hell if she knew. Cait was no doctor.
You didn't have to be a doctor to know spittin' up blood three or four times a day wasn't a good sign.
Fuck - she'd lost her chance to attack. Gotten distracted trying to choke the blood back down. Meatrot had turned back on her, and she was too dizzy, her world was spinning, and she couldn't tell the white spots in her vision apart from the spotlights or the roaring of the crowd from the ringing in her head. It was a deadly mistake. The fucker went for her arm.
Her stance was bad, her guard was off, and all he had to do was bodyslam her right arm against the solid metal bar of the cage to produce a horrible, grinding crunch and cloud her vision with blood.
Fuck, fuck, fuck - she could see her bone. Her forearm bone had snapped and ripped clean through her skin, the jagged edges of the break covered in the remains of her own muscle. She couldn't move her fingers, couldn't move her arm, but god, she could feel every inch of it.
Fuck. At what point did she stop calling them lucky hits?
"Oh, going for the arm!" Tommy exclaimed over the loudspeaker. "Can't fight without an arm, folks. That thing is out of commission..."
Her vision tunneled. Time slowed. She felt her heart beat once in her chest.
Cait grinned.
"Well, now 'm just angry," she said.
The wide, broken smile put a flash of uncertainty on Meatrot's face, disturbed the confident sadism there.
Cait slammed him in the side of the head with her left hand, palm open, right against his temple. Used correctly, palms could be harder than fists, and this hit connected flat with all her force. She saw his pupils dilate in shock, saw him stumble back and grip his skull. Blood began to leak out of his ear, and considering she hadn't hit his hear, that meant something right fucked up was going on in his head. She'd burst something important with that hit.
Fear of death crossed Meatrot's face. This wasn't a fight for entertainment for him anymore. Now, he was fighting to survive. A cornered animal, he seemed to know he had to end this fight now if he was to get help for his injury in time to avoid brain damage. He gathered all his considerable strength, lashing out for a finishing blow.
She dove forward with just as much confidence. She was no underdog in this fight. Cait grabbed her limp, swollen right hand with her left and pulled, thrust, twisted her mangled arm into his gut, using the jagged edges of her own broken bone as a makeshift javelin, hard enough to clear the skin and muscle right into the lining of his stomach.
Meatrot's eyes widened one last time, making contact with hers. She looked back into them with spite, and the last thing he saw was her snarl as she yanked her arm backwards, taking his innards with her and dropping him facedown to the dirty cage floor.
The crowd went wild.
Cait stood straighter, dropping her stance and facing the screaming raiders below her, just beyond the walls of the cage. The euphoria, the rush, the intensity, washed through her, and the pain exploding all over her body only seemed to add to it. She spit out a mouthful of blood and pumped the fist of her working arm up into the air.
"Aaaand, that concludes this round!" Tommy said after a moment of shocked silence. "Cait is the undisputed winner!"
The rush was an itch, the pain a fuel. She approached the bars of the cage, high as a kite, and screaming in victory herself. She looked out into the crowd, fist into the air, fire in her eyes.
"Who's next?" she screamed.
Then everything went to shit.