He dodged!

Even pitching at double speed the best Ichiro could manage to do was to graze the martial artist as he threw himself to the side to avoid the attack. It seemed that Kasemchai, with his experience and physical conditioning, was just too fast and too skilled to be caught out by something as simple as switching up his speed a bit; it even looked like the Thai had started to dodge before Ichiro had finished his swing. That wasn’t something a lot of people did, they usually froze up as he’d thought earlier, but he already knew Kasemchai wasn’t like that.

His swings were easy to see coming but a big wind-up usually served as a good psychological attack before the ball even came out, no one wanted to get hit after all, and even once they got used to it the variety of projectiles he had made it difficult to know what to do. The swings served to psyche the opponent out because they knew something was coming, just not what it was. He’d seen more than a few students second guess themselves only to get hit by something simple.

Gritting his teeth, Ichiro made a mental note to smack himself after this. Of course something that simple wouldn’t work here; Kasemchai had already shown he was made of sterner stuff than that. It was dumb of him to send the ball straight at the opponent even at double speed after he’d been able to dodge his first attack. If he’d predicted the dodge and added a little bit of an angle to it he could have caught Kasemchai right in the chest. Even so, it had done damage if the wince his opponent couldn’t mask was anything to go by; Ichiro had never himself experienced what a hit from his own AED felt like but he’d been beaned by a pitcher before and it wasn’t a fun experience. His Switch-Hitter was much faster than that and even a glancing blow from something moving at that speed had to hurt.

Painful or not however, the transfer student was already steady on his feet again and rushing towards him, the slow and considered advance abandoned in favour of simply charging his way while Ichiro was still recovering from his swing and at his most vulnerable. Slugger was out of position on the other side of Ichiro’s body and the recoil of his swing was still trying to spin him away from his opponent. For him to choose to attack now of all times? Kasemchai knew an opening when he saw one and had Ichiro been dependent on that one stance to attack from he would have been in a lot more trouble.

Instead of trying to fight the recoil of his last attack Ichiro instead used that momentum to carry his bat around to his other shoulder, chambering it on his left side rather than his right as he brought his other leg forward and shifted his grip to account for swinging the other direction.

[color=6ecff6][i]Bet you didn’t know I could swing lefty didya?[/i][/color]

Regrettably, even being able to do this wouldn’t be enough. The Thai fighter had already sprung from the ground by the time Ichiro was ready to swing and far too close for him to think to use any kind of projectile or duck out of the way. Faced with the imminent prospect of being kneed in the face by a Muay Thai expert much larger than himself Ichiro could only act instinctively and do what he always did in times of uncertainty.

Swing for the fences.

Putting all of his weight forward onto his uninjured left leg, Ichiro swung Slugger with all of the remaining force that he could muster directly at the ribs of his approaching airborne opponent. So focused on his swing was he that he didn’t see the elbow descending towards him before it cracked down on the crown of his skull and the world went black.

Vision returned a moment later and Ichiro found himself in a state of free fall, his legs not responding as he saw his opponent above him and the ground below him. His shoulder hit the ground first and the rest of his body soon followed, the bat that had fallen free of his fingers making a distinctive sound as it joined him. He didn’t know if his last attack had landed or not, but he knew enough to realise he had lost the fight at some point. 

[@HereComesTheSnow]