Brigitte shot a gloved fist towards the guard of the hulking individual opposite her in the ring. She followed one glove with the other, delivering a flurry of jabs to her partner's forearms before backing off and flutterstepping side-to-side to prep for the return volley of blows that expected to receive. Such a rebuttal, however, never came. She dropped her guard for a moment and hitched her gloves onto her hips, shifted her weight over to one hip, and cocked her head to the side.
"Kom igen, hit back! They're not going to go easy on me while I'm out there fighting beside Reinhardt.." she whined across the her sparring partner on the other side of the ring. "..besides, I could use the stress relief." Opting instead to not wait for any kind of answer, the toned, muscular Swede pushed a lock of umber hair from her sweat-beaded, ruddy, freckled face and returned her guard in front of her. Quickstepping into striking range, she delivered a pair of of haymakers to her opponent's guard that sent him staggering back onto the springed ropes fencing in the practice ring.
This was her chance.
In one fell motion, the tawny-haired warrior cast her hand over her far shoulder, grasped at the handle of her training club and brandished it from the back-slung sling. She ducked in, charged to her on-the-ropes opponent, and swung the blunted sparring weapon at his exposed side. She felt one brutish swing connect, then proceeded with a follow-up. Brigitte spun on one heel, leapt off of the undersprung boxing ring mat, carried the momentum of the faux-flail around her body in a single rotation and took aim at where she knew her opponent's chest would be.
A dull, thumping 'thwack!' reverberated out into the air as her weapon made contact. The practice tool wasn't meant to do any serious damage, but she knew that her 'training dummy' was going to be feeling that combo for the next couple of days. She didn't need to see him fall to the mat - but she did listen for it while she turned away from the sorry sight of her defeated opponent. Brigitte sauntered towards the other side of the squared-circle opposite the savage beating she had delivered.
"Alright, who's next out there? I've only got another week or two before I say my goodbyes and ship off for the battlefield.." the dominant fighter called out, leaning onto the stretchy top ring rope. The wanna-be soldier took a moment to catch her breath before her next would-be combatant entered the ring. "Come on! Some brave hingst must want to take me on.." she groaned, this time employing a seductive timbre in her voice to entice one of the men of the rural stopover into being her next practice dummy. "You all know the wager, don'tcha? Take me down, and I'll let you do anything you want to me.."
This was often her last-ditch effort, and she wasn't above baiting a new challenger into the ring with the implication that some kind of insatiable lust would overcome her had she found a fighter capable of putting her on the mat for a 3-count. In her nomadic travels across the war-torn countryside as a squire to Reinhardt, she had grown to make use of this tactic as a 'necessary evil' of sorts. Newcomers often garnered wary stares from the townsfolk, and pugilists of her caliber didn't exactly inspire an abundance of training fodder after the first couple bodies hit the mat. There was, however, no shortage of horny, sexually-frustrated young men in any given hamlet from the scrapheap of Junkertown to the spires of Numbani.
"Guess there's no more worthy men out there.. shame, really, because I've got a lot of tension I could use the help of a big, strong man to relieve.." Brigitte mocked as she turned her back on the ropes, and the timid crowd on the other side of them. A pugnacious-looking hulking mass of a man standing only a few paces away from her made the boastful nord jump back into the triplet of ropes shock.
"Helvete! Don't scare me like that!" she squeaked as the cultivated exterior image of 'bad viking bitch' faltered for a moment.
"I didn't mean to intimidate you, Ms. Lindholm - but my name is Sven, and I do mean to try my best to beat you, if you don't mind," replied the well-spoken but, rather contrastingly shirtless combatant with the upper body of an adult male gorilla.
Brigitte considered this for a moment before inclining her head in acknowledgment of his fighting words. Sparing the remaining pleasantries, she raised up her fists in a bellicose admonition of her intent to box the newest fighter. As Brigitte sized up the next challenger to her proverbial title belt, she couldn't help but notice the similarities that the gargantuan collection of muscles bore to the Bundeswehr of old that her mentor would wax philosophically about for hours after putting away a keg or three of ale.
The match began without warning. It started without the ringing of a bell, or the touching of gloves. Instead, it began when the burly challenger darted into range of her with a preternatural quickness and connected his glove with the side of her freckled, flush face. The next thing Brigitte was aware of was the sweat-stained boxing ring floor rushing up to her for an introduction of its own. The defeated Brigitte collided with the mat and settled there in a heap to the gasps of surprise from the menagerie of emboldened challengers and audience members alike.
Brigitte had learned from her mentor that it was important to fight with honor, and to protect those who needed protecting. In her travels across the bandit-ridden countryside with Reinhardt Wilhelm, the grizzled knight-errant, she had watched a battle-scarred old man don his suit of armor on a moment's notice - the armor she was charged with the upkeep of - to valiantly ride into towns overtaken by thugs and extortionists for the express purpose of restoring order, and justice. She was there to take care of him (and his war-torn suit of armor) after the battle had run its course. She would patch the pock-marked metal of his armor when he was showered with gunfire. She would replace entire panels where some grunt's weapon had bashed through it.
He did it without hesitation; a steadfast alliance with Lady Justice.
This man, however, had no such sense of do-gooding.
She knew that when she felt the top of his foot connect with her gut. That blow clouded her vision, but the next, more merciless kick to the underside of her jaw cleared that up in a hurry. The dishonorable rogue was making it apparent that he was content to beat her into submission there on the floor of the ring after suckerpunching her to the mat. Several humiliating bodyblows later, and Brigitte felt her scalp tighten against a grip that her champion took of her hair. Body sore and panging dully with pain, the beaten-down fighter felt herself being lifted off of the mat to go face-to-face with the man who had just thoroughly laid her out.
