CHAPTER 177

CRACK!

The sound was loud. It was unmistakable. It was the infamous, notorious sound made by bone clashing with bone. Or rather, it was the sound of bone being smashed to pieces by stronger bone. That was indeed exactly what had happened as Tory had gone knee-first into Sarah's head.

Gasps rang around the crowd as Sarah went down in a heap, and the medics were brought onto the mat. There was not even a discussion about it. Seeing the way that Sarah's face had smashed against Tory's knee - a complete accident but a painful one for the Cobra nonetheless - immediately spurred the tournament officials into action. They didn't have to see the scarily large stream of blood that began to gush from Sarah's now slightly crooked nose to realize that Sarah needed medical attention.

The timer for Round 3 drew to a halt, but nobody even noticed it as medics, senseis and teammates rushed onto the mat. For the second time in three days, Tory felt herself being forced away from her opponent by tournament officials, instructed to retreat to her corner and face away from the ensuing scene. Thankfully, even though Tory's knee-strike had been illegal, given that both of them had been moving towards each other at the same time, it was correctly deemed a freak accident so Tory wasn't automatically disqualified. The better question though would be whether Sarah would still be able to fight after this.

Because the strike that had landed was against tournament regulations, this didn't count as a knockout or anything. Sarah wasn't even unconscious or anything. At that moment, as a searing pain flashed through her face, descending into a throbbing agony, she kind of wished she had been knocked out by the blow. She was forced to feel every shred of discomfort and pain as she sat up, her face being assessed and treated by the medics, her future in the rest of this fight very uncertain at that moment.

The loud crack as Sarah's nose had been presumably broken had sent blood-curdling shivers down Marcos' spine. Even from the opposite side of the mat at Sarah's corner, he heard the smash, and apparently a lot of the arena did too as they all went deathly silent. Marcos didn't hesitate to race onto the mat as he watched his girlfriend instantly collapse, Kreese close behind.

They made it to Sarah even faster than the medics did, and as Marcos saw her up close, his face paled as white as a sheet, and it took all of his strength not to pass out. Marcos was no stranger to the sight of someone being beaten down - he was a fighter after all - but seeing his girlfriend in that situation… it shook him right down to his core in a way nothing else possibly could. Blood was pouring from her nose like a waterfall, spilling onto her hands, gi and the mat as she tried to cup her nose and stem the flow a little. Sarah didn't say a word, and her eyes remained closed, so the only indication that Marcos had that she was even conscious was the quiet groans of pain that the girl was emitting.

"Sarah! Sarah, are you okay?!" Marcos exclaimed, kneeling down beside her. Sarah's eyes slowly opened at the sound of his voice, and her normally ocean-blue eyes were being tinted red by the reflection of the blood all over her face and body.

"Argh…" Sarah quietly murmured in pain. That was all she could bring herself to even say. Marcos didn't manage to get another word in either, as the medic quickly arrived and shoved Marcos out of his way in his haste to treat the fallen fighter. Marcos had to settle for kneeling beside his girlfriend, holding her hand comfortingly, but not able to do anything else for her as the medics took over.

Mopping up the blood and stemming the flow was the biggest thing they needed to sort out if they wanted any chance of this fight being allowed to continue, if Sarah was even able to fight that was. They used a variety of different tissues, towels and handkerchiefs to remove as much blood as they could from Sarah's face, not all of it because as soon as they removed some, more continued to flow from her nose. They needed to plug her nose to stop the flow, but they quickly realized that they couldn't do that. Not yet, as right now, her nose was crooked pretty badly, almost certainly broken.

"Alright, Ms. Gledhill, your nose appears to be broken. We're going to have to reset it. This might hurt a little, but you're going to have to fight through it, okay?" The medic said in the calmest, most reassuring way that he could.

But nothing he said could possibly prepare Sarah for the stabbing pain that crashed down onto her face a few moments later as he forcefully reset her nose. It felt like a lightning bolt had been hurled from the skies above, smashing against her nose with all of its might. Sarah couldn't help but let out a loud cry of pain, crushing Marcos' hand extra-hard in the process, and it was a scream that didn't go unheard by the Miyagi-Dos on the other side of the mat.

The Miyagi-Dos were all completely silent as they watched and listened to all of this unfold. Tory wasn't allowed to look in the direction of her downed opponent, but the rest of the Miyagi-Dos tried to peer in from afar at exactly what was going on. For a horrible moment, when Sarah had initially gone down, they thought it could've been something much, much worse than just a broken nose. Sarah had gone down HARD, and the audible blow to the head had the potential to cause permanent damage, if not worse. The fact that after she had gone down, she hadn't moved an inch, made them even more terrified, so all of them let out colossal sighs of relief as they saw her slowly regain consciousness and sit up at the medics' instructions.

This did nothing to ease Tory's fear and worry whatsoever, especially given that she couldn't physically see what was going on. She couldn't believe that this had happened again. That she had injured yet another opponent. All of the emotion from two nights ago came flooding back to her as she silently prayed that Sarah was okay.

Thankfully, it seemed like the Cobra would be fine. Or at least, eventually she would be. Now that her nose had been reset, the medics were able to plug up her nose to stop the blood flow from continuing, and the pain in her nose slowly began to subside, the rest of the pain that her face was feeling beginning to come forth as well, particularly in her head.

Sarah wasn't an idiot. She wanted to study medicine. She knew the likelihood of a concussion, especially given that after the hit itself, she had fallen to the ground and hit her head. She knew that she probably wouldn't be allowed to continue if she claimed to have one. Although she was also well aware of the severity of the impacts of being concussed, Sarah knew that there was no chance she was quitting now.

She needed to show the medics that she was fine to keep fighting so, clutching onto Marcos' arm for support, Sarah pulled herself up to her feet, to the uproaring cheering of the entire 100,000 person arena. As she stood up once more, the pain throughout her whole face only grew more and more, but she forced herself to push it down. They would be entering round 4 of the fight, so there was only 10 minutes left of the fight. 10 minutes, then she could feel all of the pain she wanted afterwards.

After a long concussion test by the medics, Sarah was eventually declared fit to keep fighting, much to the delight and ecstasy of the fans. The medics could tell that Sarah wasn't really being entirely truthful with her answers to their questions, but they realized that at this point, there wasn't much they could do. She was on her feet, she was talking, she was coherent, and then still forcing her to forfeit would be a questionable call given all of these circumstances.

Even though the fight was due to continue, the two fighters were still told to retreat to their respective corners for the normal allocated break between round 3 and round 4. Both Sarah and Tory stood with their respective senseis and teammates, trying not to look at the mat behind them, as cleaners took to the mat to mop up all of the pools of blood that had begun to form.

"Sensei, I don't know how much longer I can keep going." Sarah murmured. "My face, it's…"

"You don't have to continue fighting." Kreese told her, quicker than he even expected to say those words. Sarah shook her head.

"I have to keep fighting. The dojo…"

"Does not matter more than your health." Kreese stated firmly. It was another example of just how much Kreese had changed. Never in a million years would he have said these words in last year's All-Valley, and certainly not in the 80s when he was also at the helm of Cobra Kai. Before, Cobra Kai had been the most important thing in the world to him. It had operated like an Army: the success of the dojo was more important than the wellbeing of the individuals within it. He had changed since then, which was why he was offering the almost alien suggestion of dropping out of the tournament.

"Thank you, Sensei. But I'm still going to fight." Sarah stated. She was never going to take that offer. Quitting now simply wasn't who she was. She was going to keep fighting until they had to physically carry her off of the mat.

"Are you sure?" Marcos asked, looking at her, unsure, remembering how petrifying of a sight it had been seeing her lifeless on the ground. "If you're hurting, you don't have to be a hero. There are more important things than winning this tournament. If there's a chance of there being some permanent damage…"

"Marcos, honey, I swear, I'm okay." Sarah told him, placing a hand on his and squeezing it gently in reassurance. "Let's win this."

Marcos slowly nodded, knowing that there was nothing he could possibly say to talk her out of it. There was only one thing they could possibly do now, and that was to coach Sarah to winning the tournament…

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

It took a while for the fight to finally restart, but when it finally did and round 4 began, both girls definitely approached the beginning of the round a lot more gingerly than any other round before. Sarah was still getting into the swing of things, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in her nose as much as she could, and Tory was still pretty shaken from the blow that she had dealt.

This game of chicken, where neither of them really attacked the other, occurred for most of the round, however, in the dying minutes, they both seemed to pick up the pace quite a lot. They realized that everything was fine, that the fight was back to normal. Their minds slowly gravitated back towards the thought of winning the trophy, and that spurred them onto fighting in both of their more traditionally aggressive manner again.

By the time round 5 - the final round of the fight - began, things were completely back to normal. The girls were swinging at each other like no tomorrow, with there being no signs of Sarah's injury apart from the nose plugs that were keeping her from continuing to bleed. They went back and forth with their attacks, Tory pressing Sarah hard until the Cobra Kai managed to fight back and the fight swung the other way.

Tory was desperate to find an opening to score with, doing absolutely everything she possibly could to push Sarah into making a mistake. But despite how much her head was pounding, Sarah held her nerve and managed to defend from Tory. She had a plan in mind of how to win the fight, one that her, Kreese and Marcos had come up with during the break.

By this point of the fight, both of the girls were nearing exhaustion. They were doing the bare minimum required to block each other's strikes, and that meant parrying them away from their faces but not necessarily doing anything after that point. This gave Sarah the opportunity to capitalize, provided she picked her moment right, and that moment arose around halfway into the final round of the battle…

Another bomb was unleashed by Tory upon her opponent, a pretty sloppy swing that possessed enough power to knock Sarah into next week. As Sarah blocked the punch, rather than parrying it like they had done for almost every punch in the past few minutes, Sarah completely caught it out of the air. She grabbed it and struck in seconds, using the arm to send Tory all the way over her shoulder and crashing onto the ground, face-down on her stomach.

In this takedown, quite possibly the final takedown of the fight, Sarah hadn't let go of Tory's arm the entire time. This meant that as the Miyagi-Do fell to the ground, the Cobra was immediately able to wrap her arms around Tory's like a constrictor and before Tory could prevent it, Sarah had her an arm lock, wrenching it in his socket, waiting for Tory to tap out.

Ironically, it was exactly the same position that Miguel had had Robby in during the school fight almost 2 years ago. Sarah was using her knee to press down on Tory's back and prevent her from moving, while her arm twisted Tory's shoulder and put her in excruciating pain unless she submitted and tapped out, handing the win to Cobra Kai.

For a while, Tory struggled furiously, trying to find a way out of the lock. But with every passing second, as the pain in her arm grew more and more prevalent until it was the only thing Tory could actively think about, she knew that she had only one choice. There was nothing left for her. She was completely out of moves. All of the preparation, all of the long nights and incredibly hard work, only be one miniscule step away from the top of the mountain before it comes crashing down around her ears. Tory had no choice but to tap her other arm against the ground. The fight was over! Sarah and Cobra Kai had won!