The following boxing matches were only entertaining to the parents of the kids who were in the ring facing each other.

Since most of the kids didn’t have much experience in boxing besides what they learned in gym class in preparation for that event, most fights were hit-then-backwards or hit-at-the-same-time and hoped to earn enough points to win.

There was a match with a disqualification because of a fight between two students from another school when one of them hit the other straight in the face at full force, making the referee call a foul move.

During the fights, when she could only wait and check her future opponents, Sophia was seated on a bench next to Mia, with the serious young lady taking a bunch of notes.

After some time, Sophia sighed and said, “Okay, I give up. I was trying not to pay any attention to what you were doing, but your scribbling was starting to annoy me. What the heck are you doing?”

“Taking notes, what else? Names of the winners, together with the movements they use, together with their tells.”

“Tells? What tells?”

“Look at that boy with white shorts. Whenever he is going to punch with his right fist, he always moves his head to the left before doing it. That is a tell. If you know he does that, whenever you see him doing that head movement…” Mia waited for Sophia to continue, and she said with a raised eyebrow, “I can hit him first! Or block! Nice!”

“See? Aren’t you glad you invited me to be with you?”

Sophia made a slight smile and said, “You know, I am starting to think you are not as useless as I thought you were. You are gaining quite a few points with me today, and that is not an easy task!”

“I know, and you are very demanding, moron! Now stop distracting me and pay attention to that match! One of them is going to be your opponent later on.”

“Opponent? No, corpse is a better word.”

Mia sighed and continued taking notes while following the boxing match very attentively.

Match after match, and then it was Sophia’s turn once again. To her surprise, two matches prior, Eliza Francis had won by a narrow margin, with only two points of difference over her opponent.

With a grin, Sophia entered the ring, with Eliza entering and going immediately to her corner. Next to her was what Sophia thought was her mother, a serious and angry woman who kept staring at her, and Mia, who was at her side, helping her put on the helmet.

While the referee was waiting for the fighters to get ready, the woman shouted from her side of the corner, “I hope you warned that menace to follow the rules! I don’t want my daughter to get hurt!”

While pointing to the exit of the gym, Mia answered, “The exit is that way. If your brat is here, then she is going down. If she gets hurt, she gets hurt. I didn’t see you that worried when Sophia arrived home with her clothes all dirty because that brat of yours threw mud at her!” Mia then faced Sophia and spoke in a loud voice, making sure the angry woman could hear her. “Kill her. Hurt her so badly that she will have to be carried away from this ring! You can hurt her without breaking the rules, you know?”

In a whisper, Sophia said, “Oh, I can do that! Light touches, right?”

Whispering back, Mia said, “Light touches will do but with some at full force. Several in the same place will make a nice bruise. Aim for the same spot, like you do to me when we spar. The boobs. Or the stomach.”

“Boobs then! She has tiny boobs, but I can hit them several times in a row if I want to!”

While Eliza’s mother was complaining to the referee, Mia left the ring, and Sophia stood in her corner, staring at the nervous Eliza Francis.

The referee told the angry woman to leave, or her daughter would be disqualified, so she left while still arguing.

The referee called the two fighters to the middle and warned them, “This is light contact. Follow the rules, and we won’t have problems.”

While gritting her teeth, Sophia said, “I don’t need to do much to win. She is so weak that if I go all out, I might kill her. She is only strong when she has her friends with her to help her fight. But alone? Bah, I won’t even sweat!”

The referee told them to go to their corners, and as soon as both girls were there, he gave the signal, and the referee at the table hit the bell.

Eliza lowered her body, took a few steps to the centre, and waited there. As for Sophia, she leisurely walked forward without even raising her gloves.

She stopped at a fist range from Eliza, who immediately threw a side punch to her head, which Sophia avoided by crouching, and then hit her with a punch in the right breast, making Eliza flinch.

Another side punch to Sophia’s head that she avoided by taking a step back, then a step forward, a faint with the left hand pretending to aim at the face, making Eliza put both gloves up as protection, only to get another punch in her right breast again.

The entire first part of the match was all like that. Eliza would throw a punch that would hit the air, and Sophia would make a feint and hit her in the right breast.

The bell rang, and Sophia backed away, going to her corner of the ring. Eliza was rubbing her right breast with tears going down her face, and her mother entered the ring and shouted to the referee, “Can’t you see what she is doing? That brat is hitting my daughter in the same spot on purpose!”

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“I saw everything perfectly! Go to your corner! She is following the rules: light punches, and she always backs away when she hits your kid!”

Not taking the warning, the still-angry woman walked to Sophia’s corner, and when she got near enough, Mia reacted at light speed. She threw a punch straight to the woman’s face, stopped at mere millimetres from her nose, and shouted, “Get back! I won’t stop my next punch, and you will wake up tomorrow in the hospital! Don’t mess with me, bitch, or I will kill you and rip your head apart and use it as a bowling ball!”

The woman turned pale, and the referee rushed to pull her to her corner of the ring next to Eliza and warned Mia, “You can’t threaten the opponent coach like that!”

“And she can come here to threaten my fighter? Do your job, or get out of this ring and bring someone who knows the rules! What she did was a foul! What I did was self-defence! Completely different things! And I didn’t hit her!”

The referee faced the table and whispered to the other referee, and he then raised his hand and shouted, “Foul to the coach on the blue corner for aggressive behaviour! The coach has to leave the ring!”

Eliza protested in between her tears, but the referee remained firm, making her mother leave the ring.

The referee gave the signal for them to get ready, and as soon as the bell rang, Sophia ran to the other side of the ring and stopped near Eliza, who was curled in fear and shouted, “What are you going to do now? Call your friends? Get up, coward! This isn’t over!”

Sophia took one step back and stared at Eliza, who was still crouched on the ground and covering her head with both gloves. The referee told her to get up and fight, but she remained there, crying and covering her head, which made the referee call off the fight and announce a technical KO.

He raised Sophia’s hand, and she took off the mouth protector and shouted to the crowd who were cheering for her, “That is a coward right there! From a bully to a stupid, scared coward! See what happens when we fight bullies? That happens! That, right there!”

Mia raised the rope, and Sophia left the ring while waving to the crowd of parents and students.

From his seat, Jack Cross grinned when he heard a man say, two rows from behind him, “That kid fights like a pro! Flawless technique! The other fights were boring, but when she was in the ring, it was amazing! I can’t believe she is that young!”

A woman answered, making Jack smile, “You are right! I thought this was going to be a waste of time because Eric lost so soon, but when she fights, she makes up for all the other fights!”

A man from Jack’s left turned back and asked, “And who do you think you are, some kind of expert?”

Jack looked back when the man answered, “Me? An expert? Maybe I am, considering I am a very famous MMA coach! What about you? Can you believe that little girl could knock you out without you even seeing it coming? Yup, I can recognize talent when I see it! And that girl has a tonne of it!”

Before Jack could say anything, Emma shouted, “That’s my friend over there, Sophia Cross! She is amazing, right? Right?”

“Indeed, she is. Do you know where she learned to fight like that?”

With a slight smile, Jack said, “From my late wife, actually. She started training my daughter as soon as she learned how to walk, and when she died, my crazy kid looked for whoever was dumb enough to teach her any kind of fighting style.”

“You mean boxing is not the only style she knows?”

“She only learned to box a few weeks ago, and it was for participating today, but she has been practising it every day.”

The man looked puzzled and asked, “Then what more fighting styles does she know?”

“I honestly have no idea, but I know she learned a bunch of unarmed styles and armed styles as well. She normally uses a short sword or two daggers as her weapons of choice.”

“Unbelievable… Weapons as well? At her age?”

“My late wife was a firm believer that a girl should know how to defend herself in case of need. Well, she used to say a girl should be able to kill in one hit whoever attacked her.”

With an enormous smile, the man went for his pocket, and from his wallet, he took a card that he handed over to the surprised Jack while saying, “This is my card. When you have time, I would like to speak with you and your daughter. I am always looking for young promises, and if your kid is interested in becoming a professional fighter, I believe I can teach her a thing or two.”

“Thanks. I will see what she says, but don’t get your hopes up. I never know what is up in her head!”

“If she practised every day says, for today, and she is already that good, I think she would like more opportunities to fight strong opponents.”

Emma looked excited when she said, “I know she would love that! She wanted to hurt all her opponents today, and she was very sad when she found out she couldn’t knock out anyone! Oh! Another fight is about to start! And then it will be the finals! Who will fight Sophia? I am accepting bets!”

…

Sophia was once again in her corner of the ring, with Mia Mills helping her put the gloves and helmet on.

In the other corner, the boy who won the previous match was grinning at her. Probably the fact that he had won in the first round because the girl who was fighting with him was too nervous and quit in the middle made him too full of himself. Either that, or he didn’t think properly about what he was about to say to his new opponent.

“You don’t need any of that, you know! You won’t land a single hit on me!”

Sophia grinned and answered, “Kid, if I didn’t use all this stuffing, you would be dead in two seconds. You never actually killed anything with your bare hands, did you? Unlike you, I know how strong I am and what I can do. But don’t worry, this will end in no time.”

She opened her mouth for Mia to place her mouth protector, and before leaving the ring, Mia said in a low voice, “Don’t you ruin everything now! Light hits, remember?”

“Or, and this is just a thought, what if they disqualify him?”

“You win, but why would he… Wait a minute, what are you plotting, moron?” Mia returned to Sophia’s side and asked while poking her nose, with Sophia shrugging and explaining, “I can make him angry, and he may forget the rules, you know.”

“Okay, as long as you fight according to the rules!”

Mia left, and Sophia bumped the gloves against each other while staring at her opponent.

The referee called both fighters to the centre and remembered the rules. When he told them to hit gloves as a greeting, neither of them did it. Instead, they returned to their corner, still staring at their opponent.

The referee gave the signal, the bell rang, and Sophia walked forward, her body slightly bent, gloves up and near her face, looking at her opponent through the space between the gloves.

The boy on the other corner smiled and walked forward as well, but faster, as if he wanted to end the match quickly.

That was his first mistake. The second was throwing a series of punches at Sophia’s head, thinking that he would hit her. Instead, she evaded everything and punched the arm that he put forward, right in the muscle after the wrist.

Punch after punch, Sophia hit the same muscle over and over. She wasn’t aiming at the boy’s head, face, chest, or stomach. Only that muscle. It didn’t take long for the boy to shake the arm that Sophia had just hit, as if he wanted to wake up his arm.