Christine approached the tree, with Alan some twenty feet behind her. When she was able to see past the tree, she saw that there was no abused woman near the giant, and in fact no woman whatsoever. She yelled, "IT'S A TRAP!"
Then someone behind the tree yelled "TAKE HIM!" to the Goliath waiting ahead.
The giant charged straight at Alan, bringing him near Christine's own line of advance.
Suddenly it seemed to Alan that things were happening in slow motion. The giant ahead was coming at him fast, arms up, head and shoulders down and legs pumping in a surprisingly quick sprint.
Alan felt helpless, like he was in a nightmare fleeing from some threat but could only move slowly. He no longer had time to ponder how they had been foolish enough to fall into a trap, how many enemies they might be facing, or how to escape. In the blink of an eye, his heroic effort to save someone had turned into utter disaster. His courage evaporated. For a moment he had a terrible image of himself bloodied and battered, forced to watch while a gang of vicious thugs raped a defeated Christine. All he wanted to do was get out of there, but that wasn't an option. His vision narrowed to the monster charging at him as he frantically struggled to avoid being splattered instantly like a bug smeared on a windshield.
The primitive survival instincts of millennia of human evolution kicked in. Without conscious thought, Alan braked and turned, skidding as he did so, trying to dodge behind the nearby tree to avoid being crushed by the giant who was now sprinting toward him. If he could get behind the tree, then the giant would have to slow to make the turn, at least reducing the force of any subsequent impact.
Christine wasn't nearly as concerned as Alan by the trap. Unlike him, she knew how capable she was in her chosen martial art. She had some butterflies, because she'd never been in a real fight before, but she figured she could take on a small gang of opponents without difficulty, provided that they didn't have comparable or better martial arts training. Since she knew that thugs usually didn't have the discipline for such training, that didn't worry her; she was much more concerned that they might have weapons: a knife or a gun would be a problem. Although she had trained in how to defeat someone with such a weapon, provided that it was at close range, that would raise everyone's risk of serious injury substantially. She was more worried for Alan than for herself, and would have been happier if she were facing their assailants alone: trying to keep Alan safe complicated matters.
She saw that the behemoth was going to pass her, making it obvious that Alan was the intended victim. She decided that wasn't going to happen.
She ran on for a moment, then suddenly accelerated, leaping in the air in an arc that would carry her past the giant at the precise moment that she needed.
When Christine had seen the huge man charge at Alan, her immediate impulse had been to incapacitate him permanently so that he couldn't attack anyone else, disabling him with a single savage kick deep into his right knee, like breaking a board, turning his cartilage and ligaments into bloody hamburger. She certainly wasn't going to let him hurt Alan.
But just before her leap she'd realized that she was letting her anger override her Aikido training, which emphasized harmony and love of all beings. Like her role-model, Wonder Woman, Christine didn't need to hospitalize the giant to make sure that Alan wasn't harmed, so she'd revised her countering strike to not cause such massive damage by jumping slightly later and more forcefully, so that her kick would impact just above the behemoth's knee rather than penetrating it, delivering what Bruce Lee called a "timed stop hit." Also like her role model, she'd used her incredible figure to distract him.
Aaron saw her leap, sensing that she would pass near but miss him. His eyes were drawn to her enormous breasts, which were continuing to rise and pull away from her chest as she started to descend. All other thought left his brain as his body continued on autopilot.
Christine's leap was timed to descend next to Aaron just as his right leg needed to come off the ground. Kicking diagonally downward as she closed on him, she transferred virtually all of her kinetic energy into his sprinting right thigh just above his almost-straight knee, momentarily pinning his trailing foot to the ground with the momentum of her descent and the kick from her strong leg muscles.
As she kicked, she shrieked the kiai battle cry she'd been taught, both to distract her opponent and to focus all her energy into the point of contact. The result was instantaneous.
Aaron was startled out of his trance by her penetrating alto cry, followed immediately by the impact of her kick. What the fuck? In an instant he realized what she had done, and that he was about to hit the ground very hard. Her expertly-timed pin of his trailing right leg had caused his body to twist sideways so much that his left shoe could not gain traction. At the same time, his overall momentum pulled his body away from her, breaking their contact. Since he'd already been in a deep forward lean for his sprint, he literally came down as if he'd been pole-axed, striking the ground in quarter-profile on his left side.
He automatically tucked in his chin as he started to fall, as all football players are taught to do to minimize head and neck injury. That trained reaction caused his forehead to hit the ground first. Because he wasn't wearing a helmet the impact knocked him out. For an instant he slid on the side of his face as the rest of his body collapsed. A small rock tore his cheek, which started bleeding profusely. At the same time, the sideways motion of his upper leg, imparted by Christine's angled kick, flipped him onto his back, halting his slide mere seconds after her leap.
As with their previous fights, Ryan's plan had been to beat Alan and intimidate both him and Christine. Rock and Ivan sprang from their hiding place when they saw Aaron sprint by. They expected to grab and subdue a cowering Christine, so they were chortling at her presumed cry of terror. By the time they cleared the tree, Aaron's body had already skidded to a stop.
The tree had blocked their view of Christine's explosive counter, so they were dumbfounded when they saw the motionless form on the ground. They both thought, What the hell?! A short, confused advance brought them near Aaron's head, where they saw the blood all over his cheek. They couldn't believe what they were seeing. Rock found himself wondering, Holy shit! What happened to him?!
A look at their opponents provided some clarity. Alan, standing at a distance on the other side of Aaron, looked as bewildered as they were. He'd never been in a fight before and it showed. He was still trying to comprehend what had just happened, how they'd fallen into such an obvious trap, and what he should be doing about it at that moment.
In contrast, Christine was facing them all in an alert and obviously well-practiced martial arts stance. She looked confident, unfazed by whatever had occurred.
It dawned on Rock as he looked again at Aaron's still body, She must have done this! Ivan reached the same conclusion. They were blown away that Christine - a mere girl! - had taken Aaron out. He was built like a brick wall and supposedly had never lost a fight. They wondered how she had scored such a freak lucky hit.
She certainly didn't appear to be a threat; she looked hot and sexy! Both attackers had a hard time staring at anything other than her incredible huge lycra-clad breasts, which were heaving up and down as she breathed deeply. They couldn't believe that anyone so busty could be a significant fighting opponent, though they knew vaguely from school that she was involved in some sports.
Rock leaned down to check Aaron. The wound on his cheek was small but bleeding significantly, making it look much more serious than it really was.
"Jesus!" Rock exclaimed as he brought his hand down to feel the extent of the damage. "You okay?"
Aaron's eyes were closed and he failed to respond, though he was obviously still breathing.
Ivan hovered nearby, keeping a wary eye on Christine. They were focusing on Aaron's facial wound because it was bleeding a lot. They couldn't imagine any way to take him out that would leave him on his back head-first in the direction of his charge. The more they thought about it, the more puzzled they were about what had occurred. Since they hadn't seen the encounter, they had no idea how he'd been taken down so abruptly and assumed that he must have just been phenomenally unlucky.
When Christine kicked the giant, the impact sent her tumbling diagonally away from her prior path, into a well-practiced forward breakfall roll that provided a safe landing, where she deliberately retained just enough momentum to bring her to her feet. Her cell phone fell victim to this maneuver, getting crushed from the impact when she came to rest on the back pocket where it was being carried.
That left her standing facing the shed, so she turned to confront their attackers. Her outthrust chest increased both her testosterone production and her lung capacity, priming her to take on anyone while also ensuring that they would be mightily distracted. She brought her breath under control, to the slow, deep, tactical-breathing pace she had been taught to use in combat. Her elbow was hurting, leading her to realize that she must have struck a rock during her breakfall roll.
She assessed the situation swiftly. Alan was just in sight behind the tree. Some distance from him was the prone giant, whose immobility told her that he was 'down for the count.' To her right, she saw the hastily assembled barricade blocking off that access. In front of her, Rock and Ivan were edging toward the downed body and, still some distance away, Ryan was running up the corridor toward them all.
She realized that her years of training to defend against real predators had more than prepared her for this little dustup: these bullying football jocks were going to learn a lesson. The ones still standing were schoolmates, so she would restrict her technique to things that would be unlikely to seriously injure them, even though that decision placed much of her repertoire off limits.
Alan was undecided whether to fight or flee. His instincts screamed that he needed to flee, and he probably would have if Christine hadn't looked so confident and in control. He'd realized in recent weeks that he was a lover, not a fighter; if she had looked worried, he probably would have panicked. Instead he drew inspiration from her and resolved to fight with her to the end, even though he expected them to lose and take a beating.
When the giant started running directly at him, Alan's adrenaline had spiked so much that he'd lost all external awareness. He hadn't heard the distant command of "Take him!" He didn't see Christine accelerate and leap. The threat of the giant was so all-consuming that he didn't even register the man's crash to earth.
Alan's fear had been so great that he was lucky he hadn't shit his pants. He tried desperately to catch his breath, because his adrenaline spike had momentarily shut down many of his body's systems. As his blood pressure dropped, his higher brain functions again began to operate. He realized that he somehow hadn't been "crushed like a bug," and began to recover partially from his panicky fear. His breathing was so heavy as he tried to suck in oxygen that he couldn't hear anything else.
Alan's own assessment initially included only the fallen giant. Whoa! That guy is down? What a lucky break! What happened to him?!
He saw Rock and another football player from school cautiously approach the giant from his far side, coming up to his head. Then Rock said something to the giant and bent down to touch him.
Alan saw Christine off in the distance, beyond the prone giant. He thought, Thank God she escaped that monster too! He was still so out of it that he didn't realize that she must have been responsible for the behemoth's condition. Besides, like the others, he was fooled by her appearance and his ignorance of how effective martial arts could be. It just didn't seem possible that a girl who looked like she did could fell such an enormous guy in an instant.
Christine took a moment to recover from her counterattack. Now that it had succeeded, she was shaking slightly in relief as her momentary adrenaline surge subsided. She thought, Geez, it actually worked! Although she knew that her extensive training had prepared her for such actions, she'd never before been tested in unexpected combat. Now she began to feel those first-time jitters in the aftermath of her first serious contact with a real-life aggressor.
She looked to see how immediate a threat the others were to Alan, and concluded that he wasn't in imminent danger - Rock was focused on the downed giant, Ivan was trying to look at both the guy on the ground and her, and Ryan, who could reach Alan first, had eyes only for her.
She shook herself out of her post-contact fugue. She focused on Rock and Ivan, who were closest to Alan, and on Ryan, who was obviously coming straight for her.