08-05-2008, 02:12 PM
Rivals - The New Girl Continued (part 2 of 2) written by Jeri
As the baton went in, Crissy felt her still hard muscles acting as a cushion between the baton end and her backbone, saving it a little. However, her muscles were being compressed and absorbing all the force of the blow, bruising them painfully. Her stomach exploded in pain as her muscles were crushed.
Crissy dropped to the floor in a ball, grasping her stomach. She couldn't breathe due to the pain, even though the baton had not hit her solar plexus. She was not able to move at all, as the pain was so intense it prevented all her other muscles from working. She was not aware of anything but her pain. The pain rose and fell in intensity, but never went away. She thought it would never go away, and she would have to live with it the rest of her life.
Amber immediately rolled Crissy over out of her fetal position. She was completely limp, though conscious, and did not resist at all when she laid her out flat. When Amber started massaging her muscles, Crissy screamed and rolled back up into a ball again. After Wednesday's session at Dad's house, Amber was worried that she had hit some internal organ that Dad had not told them about.
Slowly, Crissy came around from the pain-induced fog. She started to massage her own muscles, bringing spasms of pain. However, now that she was able to think again, she knew that this was the most effective way to recover from the blow she had taken. She suddenly realized she had not taken a breath since the blow, and started a quick inhale, which was aborted when it caused another searing stab of pain as her muscles expanded. She finally was able to take small, rapid, shallow breaths without too much pain.
Crissy explored the attack site painfully with her hands, and realized almost all the pain and damage was focused on her muscles. After hearing this, Amber told her she was relieved. Crissy, from her side of the pain, didn't think "relieved" was the word she would have used.
At this point, Crissy was able to stand up, and recovered pretty rapidly after that. In about fifteen minutes, she was back walking around, though she was a little bent over, favoring her stomach a little.
Tori had been sitting on the bed this whole time, sobbing a little. She was responsible for all the anguish her best friend was going through, she thought, since she had been the one to tell Amber how to use the baton. Amber and Crissy saw her there, and knew what she was thinking. They went over to the bed and sat down on either side of her. They told her that she was not responsible for this.
Crissy told Tori that she, herself was responsible, since their standing rules were that the person receiving the punch always had the right to say "no" to any type of attack, and the other always respected this. However Amber said Crissy was wrong, and it had been up to her to determine the force of the attack. In the past, whenever they tried something new, they had always started out with a blunted attack, to see how far they should take their new attacks. She should have used less force on her first attack. Crissy said she disagreed strongly with this assessment.
Tori was in the middle between them. Her head was swiveling back and forth between the two, as each would make their points in the argument. She was realizing they were very, very close friends who were always looking out for each other, and she should not worry about them. By now, of course, she knew that it was not her fault. Knowing this and seeing the friendship flowing between the two restored her spirits and excitement.
The argument eventually died out, with neither of the two changing their viewpoints. Crissy turned to Tori and told her this was a moot point any way, as they had both taken worse blows than that, which was very true.
By now, Crissy's stomach was much better. It would be sore for a while longer, but that would be all. She may even have a bruise visible on her stomach, though Amber thought they had massaged it sufficiently that she would not. Amber made Crissy stand against the wall again and punched her several times in the upper stomach, with increasing force each time. Crissy cringed a bit, but said she felt all right and could continue.
Tori decided it was time to bring out the "big guns." She asked Crissy to get her gym bag and bring it over to the bed. Crissy picked it up, and had a brand new respect for Tori's strength. It must have weighed over 60 pounds, and Tori had carried it perched on her shoulder all the way from the Army base. Crissy had heard the dull metallic clunk when Tori had put it down and heard it again when she had just picked it up. Tori opened it, revealing an assortment of blunt medieval and modern weapons. Over the next fifteen minutes, they went on a treasure hunt, finding weapons stuffed into all of the multiple pockets of the gym bag, and arranged them on the bed. This was Tori's big secret for the last week. She had been collecting her dad's more interesting blunt weapons.
There was a mace and a flail from the medieval period, a couple stone war hammers and a couple of the aboriginal wooden clubs. There were also rafts of smaller hand weapons, such as brass knuckles. There was also one solid, gold-colored gauntlet cast in some light metal, but still heavy.
Amber said, "What, no swords?" Then she looked up toward Tori, and both of them were scowling back at her. She said, "Oh, yeah. That's right..."
The gauntlet fascinated Crissy. Tori told her that her father had been the liaison between a movie company and the Army at one of the bases he was stationed at. They were shooting one of the "Our Man Flint" movies, and were using the base as a location. Her father had advised them on some of the martial arts scenes, and had played one of the guards as an extra for them. In one of the scenes, Edward Mulhare, playing "Rodney," attacked Flint, played by James Coburn. He pulled out what was supposed to be a solid gold gauntlet to attack. It was, of course, solid cast aluminum with gold paint, but it still weighed over ten pounds. A couple months after the movie finished shooting, Tori's father received a package containing the glove as a gift for his part in helping the company, since the Army wouldn't allow him to receive any additional pay for his acting and liaison help.
Amber thought she knew what Tori was planning, but wanted her to confirm it. Tori said they could try these weapons to see if any of them were worth keeping to incorporate into their stomach punching contests. Amber grabbed the flail, a smooth ball of iron at the end of a chain attached to a large wooden handle. Tori said immediately, "No, I won't let either of you use that!"
Amber pouted a little, and wanted to know why she couldn't use it. Instead of explaining, Tori picked up a piece of blank typing paper from the table and crumpled it into a ball, which she threw to Crissy. She grabbed the handle of the flail, looping the leather thong of the flail over her wrist, and laid the ball of the flail out on the floor behind her. She then told Crissy to throw the paper wad directly at her as hard as she could. As the paper wad came flying at her face, she whipped up the flail, hit the paper wad squarely with the iron ball of the flail sending the paper careening to the side wall, finished the swing of the flail around behind her, and without looking, trapped the iron ball with her bare foot just as it hit the floor.
She gave the flail to Amber and made sure the strap was tight on her wrist. She stood back and threw the paper wad in a gentle arc toward her. Amber missed it by about three feet, but almost took off her own head in the process. She had missed the ceiling only because the contractor never put in the drop acoustic ceiling they were supposed to, so the room was over ten feet high. Crissy tried next, but did worse than Amber. Tori had made her point. If they couldn't hit a simple ball of paper, they would not be able to control the flail well enough to hit one another without missing and breaking a rib, or something worse.
Amber took the flail from Crissy and sheepishly put it back on the bed, vowing that some day she would be better than Tori with it. She picked up the mace and looked questioningly at Tori, who nodded. The mace had a large, smooth iron ball at its business end, larger than the flail. Amber seemed to remember Tori telling her that these types of weapons, without the fearsome long, pointed spikes usually associated with them, were used by the clergy in battle. She guessed it was against their religion for clerics to draw blood with a weapon, but it was OK to bash their opponent's skull to a pulp with twelve pounds of iron. Amber found that the mace was really heavy. She had a hard time raising it with one arm to swing it around. These weapons were made for brawny men who practiced with them until the mace was light in their hands. Tori told Amber that she would probably need to use both hands to control the mace properly at first. Amber put it back down, after first trying a couple more practice swings.
Tori picked up the flail and told Crissy to go to the wall. Crissy did, with only a little trepidation. After the Wednesday lecture and tutorial with Dad, all three girls trusted each other not to do something stupid. Tori just held the flail in front of Crissy and let the iron ball swing toward Crissy's middle stomach. Crissy felt the eight-pound ball hit her stomach and bounce off. Tori then increased the swing to increase the force of the impact. After several of these, Crissy was used to the feeling of the ball hitting her stomach. Tori drew back her arm and swung the ball in a small curve into Crissy's stomach, where she had hit her before. Crissy grunted and lurched forward just a little. Crissy knew that this was nowhere near a full strike. She asked Tori to increase the swing, to see how far she could go. The next hit sent her to her knees, holding her stomach. She took her time getting up, but asked Tori to hit her harder. Tori drew the flail back farther, and swung it harder and faster at Crissy's stomach. Crissy gasped as the ball penetrated her flexed stomach muscles, and fell to the floor holding her stomach. Tori asked if she was OK, and she nodded that she was, though she was still on the floor groaning from the pain.
Crissy had felt the first few blows from the flail only a little, as they bounced off her hard stomach muscles. The next two blows started to penetrate her stomach muscles a little, causing her quite a bit of pain. The last strike had penetrated well into her stomach, compressing the muscles up against her spine. This sent a surge of pain throughout her stomach. The pain peaked to an extreme level on the blow itself, and then subsided to a harsh ache almost immediately. She was in a lot of pain, but not as much as she had been in earlier.
Amber then wanted to try it, so she went to the wall. Now knowing how much force to use against a stomach, Tori swung the flail back and hit Amber with the ball, again in the middle of the stomach. Amber grunted and lurched forward, but did not fall. She straightened up, and Tori swung the flail harder into her stomach, harder than she had hit Crissy. Amber gasped and grabbed her stomach and fell to her knees, but seemed to be recovering even as she was falling.
Tori said it was time for them to try something on her, and she went to the wall. Since Crissy had recovered, she grabbed the mace with both hands. Tori told Crissy to aim directly at the center of her stomach, since if she missed a little, the mace would still hit somewhere in the stomach. Crissy swung the mace gently toward Tori's stomach, more to get used to swinging it than to spare Tori. She then swung it harder, after she confirmed that she had good control of it. Tori grunted a little on the contact on this swing, but didn't lurch very much. Crissy then drew the mace back more, and hit Tori with a good blow, causing her to collapse.
Tori dropped from the last blow. The mace had a larger head than the flail, and it was twelve pounds. This spread the blow over a lot of Tori's stomach area, compressing a good chunk of her abdominal muscles at once. This caused a shock of pain, as a large portion of her muscles hurt at the same time from the blow. She collapsed to the floor grabbing her stomach. The pain was not localized as the usual punch was. It was spread over what seemed like the whole of her stomach. Slowly it receded, but not as fast as the usual punch, and nowhere as fast as Tori wanted it to.
The three girls helped each other back to the bed, massaging their stomachs. They decided these two weapons were a little too extreme for their current level of training, so they looked over the other weapons there on the bed. Most of the others were along the same lines, heavy clubs or hammers that would be hard to control.
The main items that caught their attention were the two "brass knuckles." One was the classical "Roaring Twenties" style, a large chunk of brass with four thick brass ringlets welded to it. The second one was more interesting. It had a chunk of iron instead of brass for the palm piece, but the piece was in a molded shape that fit the palm naturally when gripped. The knuckles were also molded in iron, but covered most of the inner section of the fingers. On the back of each of the "knuckles" was a large protrusion, an artificial set of exaggerated knuckles. The overall effect was of a large fist with pointed, though not sharp, knuckles as the striking points. It was also much heavier than it should have been; it weighed several pounds, so it must have been filled with lead. There were also several other devices that looked promising.
It was getting late in the afternoon, but Amber just had to try out some of the new toys before Tori left. Tori said she wanted to, also. Amber told Tori to go to the wall, and picked up the iron knuckles. Amber hit Tori weakly in her flexed stomach. The knuckles left four red spots, but that was all. Tori told her that it was all right to go all out to her middle or upper stomach, as those were pretty strong. Amber shot a short, powerful jab to Tori's stomach, directly at the navel. Tori gasped and doubled over sharply, but didn't fall.
Amber was quite surprised the weighted knuckles didn't have more of an effect. It was Crissy who told her why. The knuckles weighed so much that Amber couldn't accelerate them to a decent speed in the short distance of her jab. With that short of an acceleration distance, it would have been more effective for Amber to have just punched her with her bare fist.
Now it was Tori's turn. She went to the bed and got the "Rodney Glove," as they had christened it. It was quite heavy and fit Tori's arm loosely, but had an internal holding bar she could grasp to hold it tight. Amber was already at the wall, so Tori tried a short jab, just like Amber did, to her upper stomach. Amber confirmed that Crissy had been right, as her muscles absorbed the blow without too much effort, and the blow had less of an effect than her punch to Tori. Tori then swung her arm back for a second punch, this time coming from behind her back and twisting her upper body into the blow. The glove crashed through Amber's stomach muscles just above the navel. Because of the large frontal area of the glove, the blow covered most of her upper stomach and a little of the solar plexus area. Amber exhaled in a whoosh and fell to the floor grasping her stomach with her arms.
Amber had expected the first blow would have hurt more than it did, seeing as she was getting hit with a ten-pound chunk of metal. However, the glove did not have much speed when it hit, so it compressed her abdominal muscles a little and rebounded back as the muscles tightened again. She saw that Tori was really winding up to swing the glove this time, so she flexed her abdominal muscles as hard as she could, hoping it would be enough. Again, it wasn't. Amber saw the start of Tori's swing in what looked like slow motion due to the inertia of the heavy glove. It didn't look like it was moving very fast, so she thought she would be saved this time, too. She watched as the metal glove hit her hardened stomach muscles still in slow motion, but it just kept going. It didn't stop until it had crushed her taut muscles against her backbone. Pain exploded over her whole body. She almost passed out from the pain. She actually saw stars, due to the pain and the sudden exhalation. She couldn't breathe in, and started to panic thinking she would suffocate. Suddenly there was a sharp pain in her chest that caused her to draw in a sharp breath, and she was able to breathe in gasps again. Her stomach was still a knot of pain that refused to die completely, but it was at least starting to get better.
Crissy had seen Amber's reaction to the blow and that she was not able to get her breath. So, she rubbed her knuckles hard in the center of Amber's chest, causing a sharp localized pain to break her paralysis and allow her to breathe. Tori then started to kneed and massage Amber's stomach to help her recover.
Amber took a while to recover, with Tori and Crissy's help. When she was able to stand, she helped Tori and Crissy put some of the weapons into Crissy's gym bag for use in future contests. The mace would stay but the flail would be returning with Tori, along with most of the rest of the hammers and clubs. The brass and iron knuckles would stay, as would the Rodney Glove. They helped Tori pack the weapons she would be returning into her gym bag. They then all got dressed again and made ready to leave, making arrangements to meet the next Saturday.
As Tori was starting to leave, Crissy asked her, "By the way, how did you sneak all these weapons out of your house past your dad?"
Tori said, "I didn't. I told him what we were planning on doing with them and showed them to him. He pulled one of them from the pile but said the rest were OK to use." And with that, Tori said "Bye," and left with a much lighter gym bag balanced on her shoulder.
"I wonder what weapon he wouldn't let her bring?"
Amber said, "Maybe it was my sword...
As the baton went in, Crissy felt her still hard muscles acting as a cushion between the baton end and her backbone, saving it a little. However, her muscles were being compressed and absorbing all the force of the blow, bruising them painfully. Her stomach exploded in pain as her muscles were crushed.
Crissy dropped to the floor in a ball, grasping her stomach. She couldn't breathe due to the pain, even though the baton had not hit her solar plexus. She was not able to move at all, as the pain was so intense it prevented all her other muscles from working. She was not aware of anything but her pain. The pain rose and fell in intensity, but never went away. She thought it would never go away, and she would have to live with it the rest of her life.
Amber immediately rolled Crissy over out of her fetal position. She was completely limp, though conscious, and did not resist at all when she laid her out flat. When Amber started massaging her muscles, Crissy screamed and rolled back up into a ball again. After Wednesday's session at Dad's house, Amber was worried that she had hit some internal organ that Dad had not told them about.
Slowly, Crissy came around from the pain-induced fog. She started to massage her own muscles, bringing spasms of pain. However, now that she was able to think again, she knew that this was the most effective way to recover from the blow she had taken. She suddenly realized she had not taken a breath since the blow, and started a quick inhale, which was aborted when it caused another searing stab of pain as her muscles expanded. She finally was able to take small, rapid, shallow breaths without too much pain.
Crissy explored the attack site painfully with her hands, and realized almost all the pain and damage was focused on her muscles. After hearing this, Amber told her she was relieved. Crissy, from her side of the pain, didn't think "relieved" was the word she would have used.
At this point, Crissy was able to stand up, and recovered pretty rapidly after that. In about fifteen minutes, she was back walking around, though she was a little bent over, favoring her stomach a little.
Tori had been sitting on the bed this whole time, sobbing a little. She was responsible for all the anguish her best friend was going through, she thought, since she had been the one to tell Amber how to use the baton. Amber and Crissy saw her there, and knew what she was thinking. They went over to the bed and sat down on either side of her. They told her that she was not responsible for this.
Crissy told Tori that she, herself was responsible, since their standing rules were that the person receiving the punch always had the right to say "no" to any type of attack, and the other always respected this. However Amber said Crissy was wrong, and it had been up to her to determine the force of the attack. In the past, whenever they tried something new, they had always started out with a blunted attack, to see how far they should take their new attacks. She should have used less force on her first attack. Crissy said she disagreed strongly with this assessment.
Tori was in the middle between them. Her head was swiveling back and forth between the two, as each would make their points in the argument. She was realizing they were very, very close friends who were always looking out for each other, and she should not worry about them. By now, of course, she knew that it was not her fault. Knowing this and seeing the friendship flowing between the two restored her spirits and excitement.
The argument eventually died out, with neither of the two changing their viewpoints. Crissy turned to Tori and told her this was a moot point any way, as they had both taken worse blows than that, which was very true.
By now, Crissy's stomach was much better. It would be sore for a while longer, but that would be all. She may even have a bruise visible on her stomach, though Amber thought they had massaged it sufficiently that she would not. Amber made Crissy stand against the wall again and punched her several times in the upper stomach, with increasing force each time. Crissy cringed a bit, but said she felt all right and could continue.
Tori decided it was time to bring out the "big guns." She asked Crissy to get her gym bag and bring it over to the bed. Crissy picked it up, and had a brand new respect for Tori's strength. It must have weighed over 60 pounds, and Tori had carried it perched on her shoulder all the way from the Army base. Crissy had heard the dull metallic clunk when Tori had put it down and heard it again when she had just picked it up. Tori opened it, revealing an assortment of blunt medieval and modern weapons. Over the next fifteen minutes, they went on a treasure hunt, finding weapons stuffed into all of the multiple pockets of the gym bag, and arranged them on the bed. This was Tori's big secret for the last week. She had been collecting her dad's more interesting blunt weapons.
There was a mace and a flail from the medieval period, a couple stone war hammers and a couple of the aboriginal wooden clubs. There were also rafts of smaller hand weapons, such as brass knuckles. There was also one solid, gold-colored gauntlet cast in some light metal, but still heavy.
Amber said, "What, no swords?" Then she looked up toward Tori, and both of them were scowling back at her. She said, "Oh, yeah. That's right..."
The gauntlet fascinated Crissy. Tori told her that her father had been the liaison between a movie company and the Army at one of the bases he was stationed at. They were shooting one of the "Our Man Flint" movies, and were using the base as a location. Her father had advised them on some of the martial arts scenes, and had played one of the guards as an extra for them. In one of the scenes, Edward Mulhare, playing "Rodney," attacked Flint, played by James Coburn. He pulled out what was supposed to be a solid gold gauntlet to attack. It was, of course, solid cast aluminum with gold paint, but it still weighed over ten pounds. A couple months after the movie finished shooting, Tori's father received a package containing the glove as a gift for his part in helping the company, since the Army wouldn't allow him to receive any additional pay for his acting and liaison help.
Amber thought she knew what Tori was planning, but wanted her to confirm it. Tori said they could try these weapons to see if any of them were worth keeping to incorporate into their stomach punching contests. Amber grabbed the flail, a smooth ball of iron at the end of a chain attached to a large wooden handle. Tori said immediately, "No, I won't let either of you use that!"
Amber pouted a little, and wanted to know why she couldn't use it. Instead of explaining, Tori picked up a piece of blank typing paper from the table and crumpled it into a ball, which she threw to Crissy. She grabbed the handle of the flail, looping the leather thong of the flail over her wrist, and laid the ball of the flail out on the floor behind her. She then told Crissy to throw the paper wad directly at her as hard as she could. As the paper wad came flying at her face, she whipped up the flail, hit the paper wad squarely with the iron ball of the flail sending the paper careening to the side wall, finished the swing of the flail around behind her, and without looking, trapped the iron ball with her bare foot just as it hit the floor.
She gave the flail to Amber and made sure the strap was tight on her wrist. She stood back and threw the paper wad in a gentle arc toward her. Amber missed it by about three feet, but almost took off her own head in the process. She had missed the ceiling only because the contractor never put in the drop acoustic ceiling they were supposed to, so the room was over ten feet high. Crissy tried next, but did worse than Amber. Tori had made her point. If they couldn't hit a simple ball of paper, they would not be able to control the flail well enough to hit one another without missing and breaking a rib, or something worse.
Amber took the flail from Crissy and sheepishly put it back on the bed, vowing that some day she would be better than Tori with it. She picked up the mace and looked questioningly at Tori, who nodded. The mace had a large, smooth iron ball at its business end, larger than the flail. Amber seemed to remember Tori telling her that these types of weapons, without the fearsome long, pointed spikes usually associated with them, were used by the clergy in battle. She guessed it was against their religion for clerics to draw blood with a weapon, but it was OK to bash their opponent's skull to a pulp with twelve pounds of iron. Amber found that the mace was really heavy. She had a hard time raising it with one arm to swing it around. These weapons were made for brawny men who practiced with them until the mace was light in their hands. Tori told Amber that she would probably need to use both hands to control the mace properly at first. Amber put it back down, after first trying a couple more practice swings.
Tori picked up the flail and told Crissy to go to the wall. Crissy did, with only a little trepidation. After the Wednesday lecture and tutorial with Dad, all three girls trusted each other not to do something stupid. Tori just held the flail in front of Crissy and let the iron ball swing toward Crissy's middle stomach. Crissy felt the eight-pound ball hit her stomach and bounce off. Tori then increased the swing to increase the force of the impact. After several of these, Crissy was used to the feeling of the ball hitting her stomach. Tori drew back her arm and swung the ball in a small curve into Crissy's stomach, where she had hit her before. Crissy grunted and lurched forward just a little. Crissy knew that this was nowhere near a full strike. She asked Tori to increase the swing, to see how far she could go. The next hit sent her to her knees, holding her stomach. She took her time getting up, but asked Tori to hit her harder. Tori drew the flail back farther, and swung it harder and faster at Crissy's stomach. Crissy gasped as the ball penetrated her flexed stomach muscles, and fell to the floor holding her stomach. Tori asked if she was OK, and she nodded that she was, though she was still on the floor groaning from the pain.
Crissy had felt the first few blows from the flail only a little, as they bounced off her hard stomach muscles. The next two blows started to penetrate her stomach muscles a little, causing her quite a bit of pain. The last strike had penetrated well into her stomach, compressing the muscles up against her spine. This sent a surge of pain throughout her stomach. The pain peaked to an extreme level on the blow itself, and then subsided to a harsh ache almost immediately. She was in a lot of pain, but not as much as she had been in earlier.
Amber then wanted to try it, so she went to the wall. Now knowing how much force to use against a stomach, Tori swung the flail back and hit Amber with the ball, again in the middle of the stomach. Amber grunted and lurched forward, but did not fall. She straightened up, and Tori swung the flail harder into her stomach, harder than she had hit Crissy. Amber gasped and grabbed her stomach and fell to her knees, but seemed to be recovering even as she was falling.
Tori said it was time for them to try something on her, and she went to the wall. Since Crissy had recovered, she grabbed the mace with both hands. Tori told Crissy to aim directly at the center of her stomach, since if she missed a little, the mace would still hit somewhere in the stomach. Crissy swung the mace gently toward Tori's stomach, more to get used to swinging it than to spare Tori. She then swung it harder, after she confirmed that she had good control of it. Tori grunted a little on the contact on this swing, but didn't lurch very much. Crissy then drew the mace back more, and hit Tori with a good blow, causing her to collapse.
Tori dropped from the last blow. The mace had a larger head than the flail, and it was twelve pounds. This spread the blow over a lot of Tori's stomach area, compressing a good chunk of her abdominal muscles at once. This caused a shock of pain, as a large portion of her muscles hurt at the same time from the blow. She collapsed to the floor grabbing her stomach. The pain was not localized as the usual punch was. It was spread over what seemed like the whole of her stomach. Slowly it receded, but not as fast as the usual punch, and nowhere as fast as Tori wanted it to.
The three girls helped each other back to the bed, massaging their stomachs. They decided these two weapons were a little too extreme for their current level of training, so they looked over the other weapons there on the bed. Most of the others were along the same lines, heavy clubs or hammers that would be hard to control.
The main items that caught their attention were the two "brass knuckles." One was the classical "Roaring Twenties" style, a large chunk of brass with four thick brass ringlets welded to it. The second one was more interesting. It had a chunk of iron instead of brass for the palm piece, but the piece was in a molded shape that fit the palm naturally when gripped. The knuckles were also molded in iron, but covered most of the inner section of the fingers. On the back of each of the "knuckles" was a large protrusion, an artificial set of exaggerated knuckles. The overall effect was of a large fist with pointed, though not sharp, knuckles as the striking points. It was also much heavier than it should have been; it weighed several pounds, so it must have been filled with lead. There were also several other devices that looked promising.
It was getting late in the afternoon, but Amber just had to try out some of the new toys before Tori left. Tori said she wanted to, also. Amber told Tori to go to the wall, and picked up the iron knuckles. Amber hit Tori weakly in her flexed stomach. The knuckles left four red spots, but that was all. Tori told her that it was all right to go all out to her middle or upper stomach, as those were pretty strong. Amber shot a short, powerful jab to Tori's stomach, directly at the navel. Tori gasped and doubled over sharply, but didn't fall.
Amber was quite surprised the weighted knuckles didn't have more of an effect. It was Crissy who told her why. The knuckles weighed so much that Amber couldn't accelerate them to a decent speed in the short distance of her jab. With that short of an acceleration distance, it would have been more effective for Amber to have just punched her with her bare fist.
Now it was Tori's turn. She went to the bed and got the "Rodney Glove," as they had christened it. It was quite heavy and fit Tori's arm loosely, but had an internal holding bar she could grasp to hold it tight. Amber was already at the wall, so Tori tried a short jab, just like Amber did, to her upper stomach. Amber confirmed that Crissy had been right, as her muscles absorbed the blow without too much effort, and the blow had less of an effect than her punch to Tori. Tori then swung her arm back for a second punch, this time coming from behind her back and twisting her upper body into the blow. The glove crashed through Amber's stomach muscles just above the navel. Because of the large frontal area of the glove, the blow covered most of her upper stomach and a little of the solar plexus area. Amber exhaled in a whoosh and fell to the floor grasping her stomach with her arms.
Amber had expected the first blow would have hurt more than it did, seeing as she was getting hit with a ten-pound chunk of metal. However, the glove did not have much speed when it hit, so it compressed her abdominal muscles a little and rebounded back as the muscles tightened again. She saw that Tori was really winding up to swing the glove this time, so she flexed her abdominal muscles as hard as she could, hoping it would be enough. Again, it wasn't. Amber saw the start of Tori's swing in what looked like slow motion due to the inertia of the heavy glove. It didn't look like it was moving very fast, so she thought she would be saved this time, too. She watched as the metal glove hit her hardened stomach muscles still in slow motion, but it just kept going. It didn't stop until it had crushed her taut muscles against her backbone. Pain exploded over her whole body. She almost passed out from the pain. She actually saw stars, due to the pain and the sudden exhalation. She couldn't breathe in, and started to panic thinking she would suffocate. Suddenly there was a sharp pain in her chest that caused her to draw in a sharp breath, and she was able to breathe in gasps again. Her stomach was still a knot of pain that refused to die completely, but it was at least starting to get better.
Crissy had seen Amber's reaction to the blow and that she was not able to get her breath. So, she rubbed her knuckles hard in the center of Amber's chest, causing a sharp localized pain to break her paralysis and allow her to breathe. Tori then started to kneed and massage Amber's stomach to help her recover.
Amber took a while to recover, with Tori and Crissy's help. When she was able to stand, she helped Tori and Crissy put some of the weapons into Crissy's gym bag for use in future contests. The mace would stay but the flail would be returning with Tori, along with most of the rest of the hammers and clubs. The brass and iron knuckles would stay, as would the Rodney Glove. They helped Tori pack the weapons she would be returning into her gym bag. They then all got dressed again and made ready to leave, making arrangements to meet the next Saturday.
As Tori was starting to leave, Crissy asked her, "By the way, how did you sneak all these weapons out of your house past your dad?"
Tori said, "I didn't. I told him what we were planning on doing with them and showed them to him. He pulled one of them from the pile but said the rest were OK to use." And with that, Tori said "Bye," and left with a much lighter gym bag balanced on her shoulder.
"I wonder what weapon he wouldn't let her bring?"
Amber said, "Maybe it was my sword...