Mac beats Incin

It didn’t last long. Ultimately, the sharpness that got the claw stuck in his glove in the first place helped it tear back out. Incineroar stumbled back, flexed the claws in and out of his paw for a moment, then fixed his glare back on Mac.

It was different though. His head listed, in measures of fractions of an inch, but perceptibly. Mac could see the tiny muscles around his eyelids straining, his eyes wanted to close but they couldn’t. Actually one was starting to swell. His movements were just a tad more sluggish. Progress was being made.

Maybe it didn’t look it, but now was the time to go for the finishing blow.

Mac jabbed him in the pec. Incineroar gave a snarl, so Mac jabbed him again. That was enough, Incineroar brought his claws down over Mac’s head.

Mac slipped to the side and went to work. In the moment, he was behind him, firing a rain of lightning-fast punches into his spine. Incineroar howled in pain and frustration, but Mac kept going, circled around to the side and back towards the front. As he passed by Incineroar’s arm, the beastman did a single, panicked slash at his head. Mac ducked the swing, easily, and as he did so, he spun.

It was a single spin, it was fast, it wasn’t flashy, it was only done for the singular purpose of building up just a bit more momentum so he could rock the side of Incineroar’s face with a single, powerful cross.

But that was enough.

Incineroar didn’t fall, not at first. He stumbled forward, blindly swinging and grasping with his claws as his knees grew weaker by the second. Until everything gave out, all at once, and he fell, face-first into the gravel.

Mac dug his boot under the body and rolled him over, and his hand flopped over the ring’s edge.

The gong rang and the crowd erupted in a singular vacuum mass of noise. Mac looked out at all of them. Every face he could spot in the crowd was lit up with excitement, and his lit up in return. He raised a fist in the air, they got louder. He raised his other, they got louder more. Mac wanted to scream along with them, hell, maybe for a second he did.

“That’s it!” Biff called out, still audible over the crowd. “That’s it! In a surprise but not an upset, Little Mac from Southtown takes his first victory!”

- Chapter 52