Katsuko Himura vs. Wild Thing - Taming the Shrew

Match Type - Standard
Victory Conditions - Pinfall, Submission, or KO

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vs.

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Ugh. Another 'Standard' match. Why the humans bothered with them, Lore couldn't understand.

She knew the company had all sorts of unique matches they could offer a fighter like herself - the cage match in particular suited her tastes well. But these standard matches were so mundane, so tedious, so boring. The wrestlers came out and did their moves and the crowd cheered or booed or both and there was a pinfall or the occasional submission...and that. Was. It. Where was the passion? The raw energy? The brutal combat? It lacked passion, in Lore's eyes.

She had put in a request for more hardcore matches, but it had been apparently ignored. For now, she would have to wrestle like everyone else. She would have to hold back, especially if she wanted to win. Her instincts had cost her the victory in her last match, and she had no intention of repeating that mistake, not if she could help it. If.

Her music started and she came out in her usual style, running down to the ring at full speed and sliding in under the bottom rope, the crowd confused by whole demeanor...again. She dug her nails into the canvas and spun around with the momentum, facing the entrance with hungry eyes. Standard match or no, she was eager to be fighting, despite all her inner whining. A mundane match was better than no match after all, and she had no idea who she would be facing today...and she did love a good surprise. Maybe this woman would be an interesting sort, something to pique Lore's curiosity. The AFW had no shortage of interesting and unique women. Learning about them all first hand would prove to be a rare experience, if nothing.

And Lore would start with...

...Katsuko, youngest daughter of the Himura family, who was betrothed to Soren Tabbard--and a woman warrior who prided herself on her prowess in the traditional ways of combat.

From behind the barrier at the end of her ramp, Kat peered around the corner to watch Wild Thing's entrance. She had, of course, been meticulous in her research for the match. Not that she expected to gain an advantage; it just felt like part of the exercise...Know thy enemy, and so on. That, and it fed her curiosity.

What the AFW website had to say about Wild Thing sounded gimmicky--like perhaps they had found an actress who would pretend to be a feral girl, but on the weekends she went out and had a few beers with the girls and watched baseball like everyone else. But if that were the case, she was a magnificent actress. The ferocity, the wild abandon, the brutal and completely undisciplined charge she made up the ramp: it felt very... real. Unsettlingly so.

And then it was Katsuko's turn to emerge. When she glided onto the ramp, every light in the stadium went dark except for three white spotlights that lit up her flowing white robe, held together by a ruby sash around her waist, highlighted by patterns around the sleeves of the same color. Her [url=https://soundcloud.com/carlix-alejandra-alfonzo-roa/01-kage-no-denshouka-dai-ichi:28teca8i]entrance theme[/url:28teca8i] involved an a cappella children's choir that drew her into the match with an eerie, melancholy sound. It went very well with her signature featureless white mask, she thought.

Then she reached the ring; the menace of the electric guitar cut in--menacing, yes, but also flourishing. At the same time, blue light bathed the arena. Katsuko slid under the ropes and stood tall in her corner. With a rustle that filled the stadium, she slipped off her robe and folded it with a practiced set of moves, meticulous. Sharp. Deliberate and on the music's beat. Then she sat it down outside the ring in a neat square. Underneath, she wore simple but elegant silk: a long coat tied over a blouse; loose white pants that shivered in the air when she moved; her feet were bare.

Finally she turned, slowly, and bowed to Wild Thing as her music ended on one last lingering note.

And people called Lore weird.

She was honestly at a loss to describe what she was seeing come down the ramp. She wasn't unused to flair from wrestlers. It was all part of the game, and while it could be a little silly at times, she was quite ready for whatever insanity would come her way. The AFW was a business filled with cheerleaders, ninjas, cowgirls, and all manner of oddities.

But nothing quite like this.

Lore's opponent was ghastly, and it wasn't merely the light's effect, either. She was basked in that unnatural glow,and her alone as she made her way to the ring in robes, seeming to walk on thin air as she moved. She made her way into the ring and disrobed, neatly laying her clothes aside with meticulous fashion. Just as white underneath as she was on the outside - but her mask, that eerie, pale mask, stayed on, made her face unreadable. Quite unsettling. Was she angry? Determined? Jovial? The only way to know would be to engage her. Maybe that was the whole point.

The whole time she was making her entrance, Lore simply stared at her, unsure what to say, or even if she should say anything at all. Typically she would have already attacked the strange woman, but she was so offputting that her senses warned against it. She dared to take a few steps close and sniffed the air, trying to get a feeling for what this woman was about from her scent.

Wild Thing's approach was... tentative. Katsuko followed it, barely moving her head to track her opponent's movements. It was horribly disrespectful, and Katsuko felt a touch of shame...but she couldn't help but to make the comparison. Her opponent was suspicious in the manner of a puppy, like a canine yearling encountering snow for the first time. She came padding up, brow furrowed and just so serious while she sniffed out the intruder. Literally.

(She wanted to like this girl, Kat decided--and she wanted her to be real. There was an innocence about wildness that could be so simultaneously cautious and curious and animal.)

But of course respect came first--and that meant meeting her as a combatant. When Lore got too close, Katsuko moved like an automaton springing to life under an electric current and set out to strike the wolf-girl's oh-so inquisitive nose. If she hit, it would be a quick in-and-out movement with a closed fist, hardly a flash. Then Katsuko would return to statuesque stillness in a grounded back stance, weight on her back leg, two open palms between her and Lore

The idea was to test the boundaries of Wild Thing's reflexes--and to start the games off with a sense of play. Gotch'er nose, ma'am! After all, it wouldn't do for her poor opponent to suppose that the girl behind this mask was entirely humorless, would it?

She smelled so...clean.

It was a smell that Lore had become more and more used to in her time living with her 'fellow humans'. The smell of some scrubbed and wiped and sprayed and polished to a fine shine. The sort of smell one never came across in the woods, but wreaked in abundance with the concrete playgrounds. So pristine, so pure, so white - there might not have been a speck of dirt on her.

That would likely change in short order.

She said nothing, and aside from the movement of her eyes, shifted not an inch as Lore near - had she not seen the woman making her haunting way down to the ring, she would have sworn she was dealing with a mannequin.

Until, of course, she punched Lore straight in her face.

Even with Lore's speed, even with her reflexes, the blow caught her off guard. She simply had not been expecting it, not in the least, and it seemed to come out of nowhere. The woman moved back into her stance, reminding Lore that this was a fight with a clear objective. Strange opponent or not, she had a battle to win.

She growled and crouched, going low and rushing at the odd woman in a crouch. Planting her hands at the last moment, she swung her legs out, sliding along the ground and looking to kick her right at the ankles.

There was an old idea that a real master of martial arts would be able to read an entire match from the first few stances an opponent took. Of course that was all mythology put on to give the sport some peripheral glamor--like the synchronized "karatekas" who would break plywood with their fists.

But Katsuko could still read a lot from her opponent's technique. Most of the time. But then again, that technique did not traditionally involve scrambling across the battlefield on all fours.

Unfortunately for Kat, she was able to avoid Wild Thing's first attack. She was in a good position for it, all her weight on her back leg, with her front leg far in front. It was all a matter of instinct, well-trained, to lift that leg and let Lore slide under. The trouble was that it was all instinct. She suffered a split-second sort of hesitation while she processed the sheer unorthodoxy of her opponent and did nothing to follow up on her successful dodge.

Her last thought was something along the lines of she's so fast, even the slightest opening could be deadly...

And she was so quiet, that was off-putting, as well. Lore didn't talk much during her matches, either. Not if she could get away with it. She preferred to save all her energy and effort for breakneck fighting, going on pure offense. Holding a conversation while she fought just detracted from that.

But at least she made noise. She grunted and groaned and gasped and growled. Maybe the mask was covering it, but Lore couldn't hear anything from her. Silence like that would be weird for anyone, but for a wrestler it was downright queer.

She missed the trip, her opponents excellent reflexes showing - unlike her other opponents, this one had speed on her side, too. She wasn't a plodding sumo like Miyabi or a ponderous giant like Lou. No, this would be a test of speed, a true battle between the seconds, and Lore had every intention of coming out on top.

She kept spinning and swung her leg around again, this time shooting it up from her crouched position, her heel coming at the woman's chest in an upward arc.

Hers was a violent, acrobatic style that came from all the wrong directions--and with all the speed of a viper-strike. The last place Katsuko thought a blow would come from was from underneath her, practically from between her own legs, and yet: here was Wild Thing's foot, coming from a girl who snarled. It was unlike anything Katsuko had ever encountered on her well-scrubbed judo mats.

Kat had still been in her [url=http://s3-media4.ak.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/Urxy1sdTNCFkZRZFGAnaOw/l.jpg:hec5vdp7]back stance[/url:hec5vdp7]. With her hands in front of her chest--if only this feral style hadn't thrown off her concentration--she should have been able to grab Lore's offending leg. And she would try to...After the full force of the blow had rocked her chest. After she had backed up a step and ruined her stance and the serene sense of power that composure was supposed to convey. After, in short, the pain.

(It's also about then, when the girl in the mask was shuddering away from Wild Thing, wrestling or grabbing clumsily after the offending leg, that she realized just how unhygienic her opponent was. Wild Thing smelled. Even through the mask. Katsuko had a weak sense of smell, but this--this made her stomach flatten out. If Katsuko's face had not been hidden behind the implacability of her cover, Lore would have seen her lips curl in disgust)

"Nyech..."

Katsuko couldn't hold in the groan. But smells aside: there was still a match on. There was some chance Wild Thing would just slip away from Kat and take another shot at her; Kat's reflexes had been stung by Lore's unfamiliarity. But if Katsuko's almost hard-wired dedication to stance payed off, and she did get a hold--then she would stuff Lore's...foot (gross as it was)...under her armpit and try to hold her on one leg. From there, Kat would launch a kick of her own at her opponent's side, in the rubbery flesh right under the ribs.

Her stance was a perfect match to her attire - rigid, sterile, straight, perfected. Lore didn't know what style this was and she didn't think it much mattered - humans were always trying to impose some sense of order into fighting, to break it down into neat little rules and forms. Pointless, all of it. A cobra didn't need to learn form or precision when it struck - it just did. A deer didn't train to run - it just ran. Fighting was a brutal, hard, bloody affair by nature. Imposing some arbitrary onto it was pollution.

The blow landed, slamming her into her chest as intended...and putting Lore right into the strange woman's tightening clutches, grabbing her ankle. She let out a strange sound of vague disgust, as Lore started to thrash wildly, shaking around, trying to free herself as her ankle was wrapped up tight. The woman struck out with her first kick of the match, hitting Lore in the side with a sharp, flashing blow, right in her stomach, painfully precise and aggravatingly agonizing.

Barely a minute in and this woman was already starting to wrack Lore's nerves, in more ways than one.

She twisted around, trying to flop on her back and shoot out her leg, a desperate kick aimed at the woman's modestly clothed chest. She was trying to take the momentum away from her, Lore's greatest advantage. Smart. She would find a way around it, sure, but it was smart all the same.

While Wild Thing wretched against Katsuko's grip, she mentally took note of a few essential facts:

1. Wild Thing was faster than Katsuko. This was unusual. It was surprising. But it was nevertheless a fact mad evident by the charge and the blow her enemy had just executed; if the game came down to a matter of reaction time, then Katsuko would be the one to be folded up and set aside.

2. Wild Thing was stronger than Katsuko. Blow for blow, she would do more damage. Her blows would wrack the muscle, fold the joints, and blaze across the nerves with greater fury than any of Katsuko's knife-handed jabs, however precise. For the Himura in this fight, Wrestling and boxing were both out as winning strategies.

3. Wild Thing reacted to a loose hold by thrashing and hissing. It rocked Katsuko here and there, but there was no concentration to it--no technique. Is that how she would react to a rear naked choke? To an armbar? To a basic guard?

Very well then. Like an angler embattled with a much larger and more powerful fish, Katsuko would battle with leverage, slowly and at a distance--giving line, drawing in, returning line..feeling her out...exhausting her wild strength. Her fiancà would appreciate the subtlety of it.

(Speaking of: she hadn't seen him in the audience. Not that she had carefully scanned the audience in the midst of this performance, but--)

"Hng!"

Wild Thing flipped onto her back. Another blow against Katsuko's sternum interrupted her thoughts. It was a bad place to be hit. Kat had delicate lungs, and every sharp blow sent rippling force bouncing around her ribs and throat and chest. After only the second strong hit, she started to feel a burn, a need to cough. She did cough. For a moment, the girl in the mask would bend over--and, just on the periphery, tremble under her white silk.

But as her body shook, her mind began to focus. She'd been in fights before: she had lost fights. Wild Thing was strange, but battle was not. There was a pause while a still came over Katsuko. She found a peaceful center; and then, the explosion of movement in a few mechanical steps.

Wild Thing had just fallen on the ground. Her leg, the one that wasn't wrapped in Katsuko's arm, was on the ground, too. If her opponent allowed it, Katsuko would plant her foot on top of the knee. She would bend over Wild thing and focus most of her weight to pin that knee against the mat; her free leg, meanwhile, would be held far back, giving Kat a wide, stable center of gravity. Then Lore would see the mask looming, stoic, over her, and she would find it hard to thrash in such a grounded state.