Pas de deux - Charlotte vs Catalina pt.4

Pas de Deux - Charlotte vs Catalina pt.1

Pas de deux - Charlotte vs Catalina pt.2

Pas de deux - Charlotte vs Catalina pt.3

Pas de deux - Charlotte vs Catalina pt.4 <------------------ U R HERE

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Date: 1st November 2023

Location: Tingley Coliseum (Albuquerque, NM)

Neither girl was a clincher.

Catalina Romero didn’t believe in clinching. She trained for it. She trained to resist it, trained to employ it when needed, but she was not a clincher. Clinching was for people who drew out the fight too long and needed to kill time to conserve the slightest bit of energy. It was poor planning, the inability to execute a knockout because you’re either pillow-fisted or just plain sloppy, or you were one of those chronic huggers whose whole gameplan leaned around chipping, chipping, chipping away at stamina by leaning and little shots in between the hugs. 

Either way, it was pathetic. Every second Catalina spent clinching meant a second less to pour on some real damage.

Charlotte Cameron, on the other hand, very much believed in clinching; in the same way a worm believed that it was going to be slurped up by a bird if it popped its head out of the ground. She was allergic to it. It was the antithesis to her entire fighting style. If she was clinching, being clinched, or in any position where a clinch was even half successfully attempted, something had gone very, very wrong with her gameplan. She built herself around not getting caught, keeping her presence fighting on the inside measured in seconds, and darting away before any real exchanges could happen. 

Yet here they both were.

Clinching.

Catalina initiated the first one, and it surprised herself just as much as it surprised Cameron. They had fought for six rounds. Six rounds. The average Catalina fight did not last six rounds, and here she was playing tag with a mouse girl that she was doing startlingly little damage to. Oh, she was hurting, sure. Oh, she was bruised. Oh, she caught her in the jaw and rocked her, but she should have been knocked out half a dozen times over by now if she would just-

Stop. Fucking. Running.

Little mouse girl with no heart and no fighting spirit.

And so when Charlotte came in for that little thing that she did where she would jab, maybe catch her on the breast or the shoulder, then dart away as Catalina instinctively swung for her and inevitably missed, Catalina instead threw herself forward, took the jab head-on with a wince, and wrapped her arms around Charlotte, gloves finding her neck, pawing for her back, as she wrestled for a grip that would draw Charlotte right in so she could get him a few seconds of uninterrupted, unambiguously punching.

She expected Charlotte to do the things she had seen Boxers who had no stomach for inside clinching to do. Go rigid, maybe, arms locked to the side signaling for the ref to come break them up, not even wanting to pretend to fight her woman to woman because she boxed like a mouse. Or maybe try to shove her away in vain.

Instead, and to both of their surprises, Charlotte fought right back. She dove into the clinch, finding Catalina’s arms, then her neck, as Catalina had found hers, and their wet bodies came together in a dull thud of muscle. 

She was strong. For someone who ran so much, Catalina was astonished by how much power she could generate in the clinch. And as they held on for dear life, as their wounded torsos rubbed and grinded and flexed against each other, as their cheeks pressed against each other and their haggard breaths tickled against each other’s ears, Catalina wondered, for the briefest of moments, whether she could lose this.

Just a moment. Just one little, hateful moment, and she took that little drop of doubt out on Cameron.

“This all you got, Aussie girl?” she hissed venomously into her ear. “All that running and this is all you can do? You’re pathetic. You hop like a kangaroo but you don’t fight like one.”

“Sheila,” Charlotte shot back in a tone that was just too tired to pretend to be nice anymore, fake or otherwise. “Get fucked. You’re a fucking cunt, you know that?”

And that was all they got out, the ref broke them up and they stared tired daggers at each other as they resumed combat.

They clinched again 10 seconds after. Not because Catalina needed it to pound her on the sides again, but because she wanted to drag her in for another verbal comeback. It was petty. It was maybe even counterproductive, but she didn’t care.

"After I knock you out and take all your self-respect, I'm going to track you down in the locker room and I'm going to skullfuck you until you cry for your wombat gods."

"Yeah, but you're not gonna win. And I'm not going to fuck you, lass. Only shag winners."

Where was this defiant energy during weeks of media? Fucking aussie had been denying her this combative energy all this time like some kind of mood vampire. Fucking hated her. Fuck.

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I was gonna do a second part for April Fools but it's no longer April Fools. So, uh, whatever. Have some regularly scheduled traditional art entertainment instead.

Catalina belongs to Sharigan360, and the art is done by RC.

XOXO Purin Purin

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