Context: This is from A.T.X.D. Storm Seeker - Book 7. I want to exhibit what a one-on-one fight scene would look like. In this scene, the main antagonist has corrupted a whole army of the operatives against their comrades by turning them into bewitched, revenant anti-operatives. They're not zombies, but they are possessed and resurrected versions of their former selves (and they will be brought fully back to life afterwards). But it's during a major battle prior to the final battle that the operatives fight with their bewitched comrades in an attempt to knock them out and bring them back to full mortal, sentient form. This is one of a few concurrent battles happening in this scene - this one between Ashley Miller and her sister-in-arms Jordan Ceva-Ankers. Can you feel the pain, anger, and emotion? What would make it and similar fight scenes feel and read better?
Rounding the corner, Ashley skidded to a halt when she locked eyes with another one of the revenants: the charcoal-black hair, the lean and firm build, and the sharp eyes that normally carried a charmingly-feisty twinkle but were now glowing with the hideous, raging yellowish-green color.
“I don’t want to fight you, Jordan,” Ashley warily protested to her Alpha Team comrade and sister-in-arms.
“Like I’d give you a choice,” Jordan retorted with the reverberating echo in her throat. “You abandoned me, Ashley. Left me to die there in HQ.”
“Jordan,” Ashley gasped with betrayed horror. She knew the revenants’ thinking had been corrupted and warped by Kaurus and Devila, but even the knowledge of this wasn’t enough to resist the emotionally cold punch Ashley felt in the stomach from hearing such an accusation. “You told me to go protect our teammates and evacuate them to the hangar. You volunteered to hold back the Luminara.”
For a moment, Jordan hesitated despite her look of possessed fury remaining unaltered. But after briefly shutting her eyes with seemingly irritated frustration, Jordan abruptly charged. This time, luckily, Ashley was prepared: splashing through a small rain puddle, the Commander met her friend in a head-to-head, hand-to-hand collision equivalent to two creatures crashing their antlers together as one struggled to gain an advantage over the other. But within seconds, Jordan grabbed Ashley by the cheeks and neck and, after a quick spin, sent her slamming back first against the wall of a nearby container. The Commander only had a split second to see Jordan’s fist coming her way before the former ducked and barely missed getting punched in the face as the first blow instead struck the container wall.
[Scene break]
If that punch had been off by just a little, Revenant Jordan’s knuckles might have knocked an eyeball out of its socket. But it was still enough to draw a rough cut and blur Ashley’s vision. But when she looked up, Revenant Jordan wasn’t there anymore, instead replaced with someone else the Commander recognized: Patricia “Trish” Segoya. But unlike her revenant friend earlier, Trish looked at Ashley with morbid fear and terror as though the Commander were the monster here. Blinking feverishly and shaking her head with a desperate huff, Ashley tried to dismiss the image of her late sister-in-arms from the Kronosian War. But Jordan, not with friendly intent, helped Ashley snap back to reality by slugging the Commander hard in the torso.
“How do you like that, bitch?” the revenant demanded angrily.
“I thought you knew, Jordan,” Ashley began, her own angrily contorted expression now visibly coming to the surface as she recovered and digested the insult, “nobody calls me a ‘bitch’ and gets away with it. And you…in your revenant….state….are no….EXCEPTION!”
With a determined surge of adrenaline, Ashley ran forward and delivered an uppercut with the heel of her palm into Revenant Jordan’s nose. The light drizzle around the docks wasn’t enough to drown out the grotesque sound of the cartilage in Jordan’s nose buckling and something inside squirting open as the revenant Captain shrieked in pain and clutched her face. After slipping back a step in another puddle and taking a moment to observe the blood on her hands, Revenant Jordan looked up quickly and screamed angrily at the same moment she charged the Commander. Instinctively, Ashley raised her arms but forgot in the moment that her friend was skilled in some of the same martial arts as she; especially the footwork. Her arms missed Jordan’s Magnum boot as it went right between them and planted itself into Ashley’s diaphragm, and the Commander felt like something inside had been cracked or otherwise damaged as she clutched the impact zone and staggered back. She had only a moment to look up before Jordan charged forward, swung her toe straight up into Ashley’s gut before delivering a Hapkido-style hand strike to the soft tissue area between her opponent’s chin and throat.
Ashley gurgled with painful shock and teetered backwards on the heels of her own boots before crashing hips and shoulder-first against the rigid asphalt of the harbor’s surface. Groaning and coughing painfully, Ashley tried to drag herself forward but then heard her opponent’s footsteps get closer. Before she could turn to look up at the monster that was otherwise her friend, Ashley felt a heavy weight restraining her by the side of the helmet. The rough and greasy surface pressing down on her helmet and cheek confirmed that Jordan was holding Ashley down with her tactical boot, which might have crushed the Commander’s skull like an egg if she hadn’t clipped on the headgear. But the pressurized pain was excruciating as Jordan increasingly put more weight into her foot, and Ashley seemed unable to reach up, grab her opponent’s leg and pry it off her face.
Now it dawned on her: that flash hallucination Ashley had seen of Trish. It was her most traumatic memory resurrected in a new form: sisters-in-arms forced against their will to fight in brutal hand-to-hand combat until only one survived and the other lay bloodied or broken at their former friend’s feet. Just like how Trish had been brainwashed by the Kronosians so she could mindlessly assault Ashley when they were gladiators, Jordan had been possessed by Devila and saw her former friend as a mere obstacle to her own survival. The horror of stabbing Trish there in the arena, holding her fellow freedom fighter’s bloodied body as her life slowly slipped away, and the hole that memory had punched in her heart…no wonder Ashley’s determination to fight Jordan was so meager that she had been this easily overpowered. The Commander couldn’t bear to go through it all again. If nobody had found a way to lift the curse on the revenants and free them of their insane rage, then what was the damn point in continuing this fight? So as she lay there with her opponent’s boot threatening to cleave her skull, Ashley felt her eyes leak with streams of tears. Maybe they were tears of pain from the excruciating injuries she’d received thus far, but most likely, she felt they exhibited the mortal terror of this literal deja vu-hell she was going through.
[Scene break - A comrade, Melody, fights off Jordan and gives Ashley a chance to regain her strength]
With Melody now cornered between the Revenants Laney and Charlie, Ashley tried to reinforce her second-in-command. But that was brought to a halt when she felt the tread of Jordan’s boot grind into the back section of her body armor as the revenant Captain kicked her hard from behind. But this time, the Commander retained her balance and, gritting her teeth angrily, Ashley charged at Revenant Jordan and caught her by the shin as she tried a kick to the ribs. She yanked Jordan around and attempted to throw her in a roll, but the revenant Captain merely twisted herself like a cat and skidded to a halt on her soles before boosting off in yet another charge. Sweeping back a leg, Jordan spun and attempted her Neural Whip kick at Ashley's neck, but the Commander performed her own step back and retaliated with a Savate Fouetté that allowed one tactical boot to deflect the other one midway with a firm smack at the shins.
Before her opponent could strike again, Ashley briefly deprived Jordan of a critical weapon by delivering a Chasse Bas step kick and driving the heel of her Bates boot into the Revenant’s kneecap and lower thigh. Revenant Jordan let out another angry cry and struggled back while clutching her leg, the lower thigh area of which now had some vague dirty tread marks imprinted on the fabric of the uniform, before Ashley delivered a sloppy sucker punch to her possessed friend’s jaw, causing her to bend down a little more and release another small spittle of blood. With a final angry cry, Ashley stepped forward and threw a light punch with her raw and greased up fist into a vulnerable place as Jordan recovered a little faster than expected and was likely attempting another counterattack. Her friend’s sharp and beautifully dashing eyes, despite being polluted with that fiery aura, widened with morbid shock as Jordan clutched her throat, made a pitiful gurgling groan, and fell backward but this time didn’t get back up.
Letting out an exhale of both relief and anguish, Ashley relaxed her body posture for a moment as she watched Jordan cough and slowly try to regain her breath after being hit in the windpipe. It pained the Commander to watch her friend grab at her throat and try to breathe normally again, but Ashley had used throat strikes before and knew she hadn’t hit her friend that hard. So the relief she was feeling came from the fact that Jordan would live and not require any handicaps to breathe again. It seemed as though, yet again, Ashley had won the game of survival, but this time it hadn’t come at such a detrimental cost. But then hearing another angry battle cry from Revenant Laney and a pained grunt from Melody reminded Ashley that there was still a battle going on around her and she had to get back in the action. Taking one last look at Jordan as the latter continued to recover, Ashley hurried off to support another sister-in-arms.