Katsuko Himura vs. Wild Thing - Taming the Shrew

The rich and intricate history behind this hold was somewhat lost on Lore. She was a little too busy being choked out by it to really care.

The odd woman's thighs were like fleshy steel cables, wrapped tight, choking, strangling. Couldn't move. Could hardly breathe. She poured as much power into the strikes as she could muster, but it was becoming an increasingly thankless task. Lore just wasn't used to living in this world of holds and stretches and submissions - the woman was excellent at shutting her efforts down. Annoyingly so.

She shook her head about as the woman locked her fingers around Lore's head and pulled back, making her bad situation all the more worse. Lore could feel the blood rushing to her head, like she was ready to pop. She needed an escape. Now.

Switching it up as her lights started to dim, she tried to grab hold of the ropes and pull, swinging her legs around and trying to squirm out of the ring, even if she had to drag the strange woman along with her. Desperate, crazy, unorthodox - that was her all over. No conflict, here. If the woman thought getting her in a trap was a simple thing, she would learn just how rough a wounded animal could be.

The arbitrating referee immediately moved in.

Behind the mask, Katsuko's eyes froze, smacked dumb: Oh yeah. In professional wrestling, grabbing the ropes was sufficient to end a submission hold. She had a count of five to return to the striking game or she'd be disqualified...She wasn't sure she saw the point to the rule...

Not that she had long to consider the implications. Wild Thing was apparently as oblivious as she to her advantage--more oblivious. Undisciplined and childishly ferocious as ever, she was so determined not to lose that she missed the ref and pulled them recklessly over the ringside partition. And towards the four foot drop to hard tile. If she fell at the wrong angle from that height, which was likely if Katsuko didn't let her go, she might have broken her own arm. Or neck.

At first Kat tried to hold her inside the ropes, but Lore was so much stronger: soon it was sure that Wild Thing would get over. Then Katsuko immediately released Wild Thing--but not in time, not the way Wild Thing wrenched at her with so much ferocity.

(So much ferocity. Her determination seemed to border on hatred for Kat)

They were both going over the edge.

"Idiot!"

Katsuko rolled with her usual training to curl into the fall, and at the end she'd emerge in a [url=http://www.idrawdigital.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/10_low-coruch.jpg:24s43ihy]crouching defensive position[/url:24s43ihy]. But this only hid just how messy and close the tumble had been: It was her arm that made contact with the ground first, and her hip came second. Both her shoulder and her back throbbed with pain from the impact. The girl in bloodied robes breathed hard, facing (she hoped) her enemy.

(Yes, your enemy, Himura.)

She faced her enemy and felt the full draining disappointment at the failure of what she had thought would be the end--and the full, bitter resentment for this girl who had no respect for the mask, no respect for Kat, who fought dirty, recklessly and without restraint, and who somehow kept ending up on top because of it.

"I'm ashamed," Kat managed between angry breaths, "that I've left you still standing! Is there any ploy you won't try under the auspices of this ring!?"

The referee was moving in, saying something, interfering with the fight - why, Lore didn't know or care. Not that she could really hear her, anyway, what with the thighs clamped around her ears and all. She was probably just warning Lore about some stupid rule that she was breaking without even knowing it. Again. Whatever. One way or the other, she was getting out from between this crazy woman's legs.

The strange woman fought to stay in the ring, really fought, but Lore won out, making them tumble out and thankfully breaking her hold as the fell, She landed on her back and quickly rolled over to her front from the momentum, staying in a crouched pose as she barked at her opponent, swiping at the air.

She looked the woman over, sniffing, the smell of fresh blood finding its way to her nostrils. She was hurting. Trying to hide it and doing a good job, but a hunter knows when her prey is aching, plain as day. She put up a good front and spoke her taunting words. Lore answered her question. Honestly, truthfully, bluntly.

"NO!"

With that, Lore ran at the odd woman head on - no punch, no kick, no roll, not even a tackle. She just ran straight into her, putting the two of them on a rough collision course.

(Your enemy, your enemy, your enemy, your enemy...)

Katsuko had never had enemies. Never. She was too shy for it in school--and too noble for it in the ring. Even in the roughest tournaments, she had chosen a school and a style that shared her values to the very groundwork of those institutions. No one had ever wanted to hurt her.

"NO!"

(She wants to hurt you)

Kat could have caught Wild Thing's head under an arm. She could have feinted to the side and landed a chop across Lore's spine. To an unpracticed football tackle, there was a lot a karateka could do. But sometimes raw speed and power offers a kind of intimidation, a roar, that makes a century of civilized refinement run cold in its veins. They slammed together and entered a clinch and all Katsuko could do for the first split second was gasp and push back.

Lore expected the woman to shy away. Maybe dodge. Maybe bring up her arms and try to block her. Maybe even do some fancy-kung-fu-wushu-counter-flip...thing.

The one, big thing she didn't expect was that the woman would take her head on. Which, of course, was exactly what she did.

The two met and Lore found herself getting pushed back. They were close to the same height, but the woman had weight advantage, and if they had both been running, Lore probably would have been bowled over - not much of a difference, but enough to matter. She had to stomp her feet down, bare soles sliding along the tiles as her grip tight, nails digging into the woman's robe.

She was in bad territory. This woman had skill, knew all sorts of crazy holds, and the longer they grasped, the more she risked gettign put in. Wanting a quick out, she pulled the woman in and jerked her head forward, driving her foreehead into the mask and looking to hurt the face underneath once more.

Katsugo's stance fell apart with the same elegance with which it had been put together. She was silent. Her synthetic face hung blank around her ears. Her silk clothes folded together as she sank to her knees almost as if it was their practiced function--as if she were simply kneeling down to bless Wild Thing.

Her head throbbed and her vision went starry and her stomach turned nauseously over inside. She had taken every measure to ensure that the mask would not unfairly protect her from blows to the head, especially blows that might result in a KO win. The material communicated the force of the head-butt; it had communicated the force of every blow up to this point. Her brain had just about had enough.

She grabbed blearily at the ring-post nearest her and tried to regain her footing--and vision that didn't involve double-copies of her enemy.

(You're about to let that fiend win, Himura...)

What was that stupid mask made out of? Lore had hit dead on with her own skull, which, according to her father, was quite thick indeed. It hurt the woman, clearly, but the match remained unbroken. It didn't protect the woman, that was obvious. If anything, it just made her pain worse. So why bother wearing it in the first place? What was the point?

Whatever - as curious as it was, Lore was rapidly approaching the point of no longer giving a damn. She could look for answers on the internet later, tap into Google. For now, there was just the match and putting her on her back for as long as possible.

The odd woman fell to her knees and Lore was on her in the next instant, growling as she pounced on her and tried to straddle her chest. Pinning? Yes. But also domination. Taking control. Showing this little woman with her mask and her piercing glare who was really in charge of this ring.

By now the two thirds or so of the crowd for whom the fight was obscured by the ring had gotten around into a position to watch the fight. What they got to see was Katsuko covering her face with her fists while she [url=http://www.fitdaily.com/Images/0013/GBRID-03H.jpg:2bbaeyld]bridged[/url:2bbaeyld] and scooted and desperately tried to wrench away from Lore. And Lore? Her growl carried menace everyone could hear while she rushed to dominate Katsuko.

Images of tapping shot through Kat's mind--escape from nausea, from delirium, from pain, from the hatred seething from Wild Thing, from the humiliation before the crowd, from the fear of injury. She could be in bed in half an hour.Then the beast settled on her chest, sank down with finality, and snarled. As Kat well knew, this, the full-mount, was the most dominant position, both symbolically and practically.

She might have laid down and taken the pinfall.

But at that same moment that her stomach dropped under Wild Thing's weight, she saw him over her shoulder. Like a still-photo: He was in the back, leaning over the crowd. She saw his long, blonde hair and the tie he always wore too long over an ill-fitting blazer he'd forgotten to button.

Kat made a split-second decision: she tried to wrap both her hands behind Wild Thing's head, around the braided hair, and to wrench the animal's face into her own. She'd struggle to hold her there, their eyes mere inches apart, and the smell of the wild unwashed girl would settle in with all the blood and sweat and breath. At the same time, the hold would keep her own shoulders off the ground and away from a pinfall. If this was successful, Wild thing would see in Kat's eyes that aforementioned piercing glare--see that in spite of all this, Kat was no knave, and she was not about to give up. Not to someone like Wild Thing--not as the daughter of her tradition.

Which was all very well, we might suppose, for Lore. More pertinently for her, however, would be the great difficulty she would have punching Kat's face while her nose was being crushed into the mask.

She had her. She had her.

It had been a long, painful affair - it felt long, anyway - but she finally had the odd woman pinned down, dominating her and controlling the situation. After all the pain and irritation, she could only imagine the look of surprise on her opponent's face. In some ways, it was better than actually seeing it for real, since the mental image was probably far funnier than the real thing.

She reeled back, charging up a punch tailor made for that mask, ready to crack it open no matter how many blows it took...but she paused at the last second. The woman wasn't looking at her, didn't seem to notice the impending pain. She was focused into the audience. Lore looked to the side, trying to see what she see saw.

That was a mistake.

The woman took the opportunity to reach up and pull Lore's face down, mashing it hard against the mask, threatening to crack her nose. Lore put up quite a struggle, shaking her head as much as she could, flailing her arms about, barking into the woman's face, but it was no use. The hold was tight. "Let...go!"

Safe...

No. Not while Wild Thing straddled her. Even with her head constrained, Wild Thing was still dangerous--to Kat's ribs, to her legs, to her groin. Truth be told, it was still a very bad position for Katsuko--and even for someone with her training, there just weren't many ways to escape this kind of dominating straddle. As her old master had put it, "the best defense against a full mount, miss, is not to get into it."

What she really needed was for Lore to make a mistake. She curled one leg up and held it behind Wild Thing's back.

"Let you go?" Kat breathed, keeping her hands tight. "You ask the most absurd things, 'Wild Thing.' But perhaps I should release you. You would only give me another hold to take--or perhaps an even better, an even more dominant grip. Ah. Loraine...All this power, and yet you find yourself undone at every turn. Can you tell me the reason why?"