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the knee that was only meant to induce him to block low, so she could flick the same foot up to the side of his head in a roundhouse kick. But she’d already seen enough to know he was much too quick for the second kick to find its mark, and he might even trap her leg, even though this was against the usual rules of karate-sparring, and strike her knee so as to disable her.
    She gazed at him over her gloves, peering into his hard, dark eyes, and kicked low. He leaned in to block and readied his counter. But she didn’t flick her foot up into the trap he had prepared, instead lunging forward and jamming her fist into his face. His head snapped back, but the strike did not break his nose—Durant would be disappointed—though she knew it stung like hell, and blood oozed out along his upper lip.
    Tsukino stumbled back and glared at her through watery eyes, then glanced around the ring to see the reaction of the crowd. Of course, the Marines roared their approval, and the Jietai murmured on their side, uncertain how to respond to the sight of their champion struck by a woman.
    “Fine,” he snarled, and tore off his headgear. “Let’s do this your way.”
    When he attacked this time, no longer able to wait for her to make the first move, he meant to hit her hard. But Emily’s fighting stance was perplexing, since she didn’t hold her fists up in the usual guard position. Instead, with open hands, she extended one up high, as if in greeting, and the other low, as if to receive a gift. Her block, such as it was, barely grazed his fist, just enough to push it aside, and the next strike as well; and when she didn’t retreat after several more, increasingly frantic strikes, the blocks became sticky, as if he couldn’t extricate his hands from hers.
    She never grabbed on, since that would make her vulnerable, but neither did she let him pull back, always threatening the counter-strike his retreat would create an opening for. When his puzzlement reached a maximum, she saw in his eyes what he meant to do, and as he lunged at her, she ducked under his outstretched arms and threw him over her shoulder. An elementary jiu-jitsu technique, one even the youngest students learn in their first year—she knew the shame of falling for it would sting more than the impact with the ground.
    He tried to spring to his feet, but before he could fully right himself, she’d scissored her legs around his neck and twisted him face-down into the dirt, folding the wrist trapped between her legs into an exceedingly awkward position.
    “I’d rather not break a limb, Tsukino-san,” she hissed into his ear. “There is no honor in losing like that.”
    He groaned and roared at her, though in a higher pitch than one might have expected to hear. She increased the pressure on the back of his hand, until he tapped out.
    Another point, another chance to hurt her—she glanced over to see Lt Otani cover her eyes, Durant and Ishikawa standing on either side, but oblivious to her distress. When she saw the expression on Lt Kano’s face, a few feet away, Emily regretted having stepped into the ring at all. What else could she accomplish there? Reconciliation with Tsukino now seemed impossible. The only other option, she knew, was to demonstrate the utter futility of his position. She studied him over her gloves, peered into his eyes again, and readied herself for the desperation of a beaten man.
    He would probably remember little of it, but the crowd might—the Jietai and the Marines—and maybe leave her in peace. “That’s wishful thinking,” she muttered. He attacked first, for how could he not, as patience was all on her side; a fierce kick-combination, much too slow to catch up to her, since she’d anticipated it and stepped inside his leg before he could even extend the fist he’d meant for her face. The first strike merely caught his bicep just below the armpit, while a slap across the face dazed him as she struck the opposite bicep. He winced