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Chapter One
Nutsbe
Sitting in his wheelchair, facing the sunlit window, Nutsbe knew what was coming.
His brain clanged with warning bells, his nerve endings sizzled and sparked. Nutsbe was fighting himself even before he had to fight the guy grabbing the back of his chair.
Nutsbe struggled to keep his muscles loose.
It took a concentrated effort not to clench his abs, not to grip the arms of his chair, not to turn his head and look. But Nutsbe knew that any reflexive motion could take him out of the fight before the fight even began.
He was going to ignore his impulses.
Breathe, he reminded himself. Relax.
Planting a foot on Nutsbe’s chair stabilizer to use it as a fulcrum, the backward lurch that followed was always a roller-coaster-belly flight.
As the front wheels lifted from the ground, it was a given that the attacker would jump to the side and out of the way, protecting his knees and shins from the unwieldy metal tumbling toward him. He’d take an extra step back to keep from getting pinned under the flailing weight of a hundred and eighty pounds of gym-hardened muscles sitting in the chair.
When Nutsbe first tried fighting from his wheelchair, he thought the best self-defense move in this circumstance would be to reach over his head and grab his opponent. Using a tight grip to soften the drop, maybe his weight and momentum would drag the attacker down to the ground, where surprise would allow him to get some kind of lock on the guy.
But a human was a human; a brain was a brain.
Few people trained on how to attack someone in a wheelchair. So they jumped back. And that overhead reach always left Nutsbe grabbing at thin air.
With a little practice, Nutsbe figured out how to take advantage of the aggressor’s jump. He learned not to fight on the way down. He spent that moment of disequilibrium tucking his chin to protect his head from taking that initial hit, preventing a cracked skull, the concussive effects of a sloshing brain, and whiplash. Spreading his arms wide, hands facing backward, Nutsbe waited for the jolting stop when he smacked the ground, dispersing most of the energy from his fall. The rest of that energy became the momentum he needed to throw his legs toward his head, rolling over his shoulder, bringing himself upright, hands lifted and battle-ready.
That Nutsbe was suddenly sitting up and reaching offensively for the attacker was unexpected.
Surprises were good in a fight. The brain stuttered as it realigned with the new information. It put the other guy back on his heels.
It was only a split second, but sometimes that made all the difference. It would be Nutsbe’s best shot at subduing an attack.
Nutsbe grabbed his opponent’s pant leg. Curling his fingers into the fabric, he trapped the cloth in his balled fist, preventing the guy’s escape. Then, Nutsbe jerked his elbow along his ribcage, dropping the man backward onto the mat. With his opponent’s leg tethered, Nutsbe’s sparring partner, Chuck, couldn’t do his own rolling energy dispersal. He took the full brunt of the hit.
There was no time for self-satisfaction. In a real-world fight, Nutsbe’s task was to pay attention to how the assailant reacted to the fall. That initial muscle-memory response to a fight could tell Nutsbe the level of his opponent’s combat skills.
Chuck threw his arms wide, curving his head as he tipped over, a trained fighter, not a street rumble junky.
There was good and bad in that. Newbie fighters, with their flailing kicks and wild haymakers, were dangerous in their unpredictability. Knowing that his opponent would be precise and strategic had to come into Nutsbe’s calculations as he moved to stop the attack before the stutter of surprise passed and his opponent recalibrated.
Nutsbe grabbed Chuck’s foot, twisting the heel, forcing the man onto his stomach. Like with the head, the person who controls the foot controls the opponent’s body. As soon as Nutsbe had Chuck on his stomach, he pressed the guy’s heel toward his thigh, depriving his opponent of a quick-release tactic. With a hurried shuffle over the pebbled red mat, Nutsbe positioned himself between Chuck’s knees to keep him from successfully twisting free.
Chuck’s nimbleness and athleticism allowed him to crawl forward when Nutsbe’s stress hold would trap most people. Instead, Chuck was able to flip onto his back, putting Nutsbe at a severe disadvantage.
In a split second, Nutsbe had shoved himself into position, sliding either leg around Chuck’s thigh and gripping him tightly in place.
As Nutsbe rolled onto his elbow, he rammed Chuck’s foot under his armpit, trapping Chuck’s ankle. From there, Nutsbe sucked in his stomach, curving forward to make a small space between his chest and Chuck’s leg. That was the magic of this move. Once Nutsbe got Chuck’s calf fully wrapped into a nice tight hug with his left arm, he could grab that wrist with his right hand. In a street fight, Nutsbe would continue his roll forward. Adding his weight to that joint lock would destroy his opponent’s ankle.
Chuck patted Nutsbe twice on the shoulder while saying, “Tap. Tap.” A sign that Nutsbe should immediately stop and release.
Boundaries were about safety.
No means no in all civil society.
Billy raced his wheelchair forward, stretching out his hand to make a slashing motion through the air.
The fight was over.
