“One Punch, Prove It!”, A Black Belt Mocked a Quiet Farm Girl — Then He Was Shocked
Chapter 6
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Maeve's tightly coiled fist connected squarely with the left side of Trenton's jaw. The sound was absolutely horrifying—a sharp, wet, concussive crack that echoed violently off the high, corrugated metal ceiling of the warehouse. It did not sound like a leather glove hitting a pad; it sounded like a heavy wooden baseball bat shattering a coconut.Time seemed to freeze in the gym. The physics of the impact defied what anyone in the room thought possible from a girl in dirty Carhartt jeans. The sheer kinetic force of Maeve's punch didn't just turn Trenton's head; it bypassed his neck entirely and transferred directly into his center of gravity.Trenton Hayes did not take a single step backward. He did not stumble. He did not have the opportunity to brace himself. His eyes instantly rolled back into his skull, showing nothing but the whites. The neural network in his brain essentially pulled the plug on his consciousness in a fraction of a second. His legs turned to absolute liquid. The staggering force lifted him slightly off his toes, spinning his limp body a quarter-turn in midair before he collapsed hard onto the mats like a dropped bag of wet cement. He landed face-first, his arms splayed out at unnatural, awkward angles, completely and entirely unconscious for five agonizingly long seconds.The gym was trapped in a heavy, suffocating vacuum of silence. The rhythmic thudding of heavy bags had ceased entirely. The whir of the industrial ceiling fans seemed to fade away into the background. The only sound remaining in the entire building was the faint electric buzzing of the neon OPEN sign glowing in the front window.Oliver Penn, still sitting on the mat and clutching his bleeding nose, stared upward with his mouth hanging wide open in utter disbelief. Cody and Wyatt, Trenton's usually loud and loyal shadows, stood completely frozen against the chain-link cage wall, their eyes wide with unadulterated terror. The invincible, arrogant king of the Ironwood Combat Syndicate had just been flattened into oblivion by the quiet janitor.Maeve did not celebrate. She did not gloat, flex, or raise her hands in victory. She simply stood there, letting out a slow, controlled breath, slowly unclinching her fist, and lightly massaging her reddened knuckles. She looked down at Trenton, whose jaw was already rapidly swelling, a thin pool of drool and blood forming on the pristine, sanitized foam mat he had prized so highly."Cody," Maeve said calmly. Her voice pierced the absolute silence of the gym like a gunshot, making several people physically jump.Cody flinched, snapping out of his terrified stupor. He swallowed hard. "Yeah?""Call an ambulance," she instructed, her tone completely even as she reached down to her utility cart to pick up her faded green flannel shirt. "His jaw is broken. And tell him he owes me double my paycheck. Cash."Chaos instantly erupted. Suddenly, two dozen people were shouting all at once. The smartphones that had been casually recording the tense encounter were now wildly panning back and forth between Maeve's retreating figure and the lifeless, broken body lying on the mat. Someone screamed loudly for Coach Garrison, who finally burst out of his glass-walled office holding a stack of tax forms, demanding to know what had caused the commotion.