Nathan Weed vs. Kozue Kaburagi - First Strike: Standard Match

What Kozue wanted to do was use her leverage over Nathan and score a quick hit to his back after she let go of the hammerlock. Probably with the dropkick. That would, hopefully, knock him to the middle rope, and from there she could score a tiger feint kick. After that, it will be a simple matter of landing a springboard Phoenixsault, then rolling him up for the pin. 1, 2, 3 followed the sound of uproarious applause. Couldn't be simpler.

What actually happened, though, was that she got an elbow in the face. Much less glamorous and awesome, far more painful and embarrasing. "Fuck!"

Yeah, 'fuck' was about the right description for it.

Kozue immediately let go of the hold and stumbled back as the sense was temporarily knocked clean out of her head. She found herself leaning back against the ropes, nursing her head while she tried in vain to upright again.

Once Nathan was free, he whirled around to face his opponent. She was stunned and leaning against the ropes; a sitting target. He could have done good work with his fists there, but he was not going to use his fists. No, he was going to do a dropkick.

The decision surprised him, and it was even a little nerve-wracking. This would be his very first dropkick, which wasn’t too shocking, considering that the maneuver went against his every instinct- kicking? Voluntarily leaving his feet? But Kozue was tough. She’d eaten his punches; she’d powered out of the handful of holds that he knew. She was forcing Nathan to go bigger, pushing him to try new things. Normally, Nathan was very accepting of defeat, almost to the point of indifference. But he worked hard this fight, and he thought it would be nice to come out of it with the win; knocking Kozue out of the ring seemed like a good way to achieve that.

Kozue’s vulnerable appearance gave Nathan a drop of confidence, which was good, because he would need every ounce he could get. Dropkick. Whew. Nathan grit his teeth, shut his eyes, then leaped up. He pointed himself at his target, turned sideways, and… what else was there? That was it, right?

The technical term for Kozue at this particular moment was 'a sitting duck'. Just hanging there, wide open, vulnerable to any sort of attack Nathan could think of. Regardless of all the options, though, Kozue was expecting a punch. It was the move that made the most sense. This guy could throw them hard and fast, and he could probably score a knock out without too much effort.

Instead, she got the exact opposite of what she expected - a dropkick. At least, she thought that's what he was going for. It looked sort of like a dropkick...the kind of dropkick she would've thrown herself, if she had never thrown a dropkick before. He didn't get the running start, didn't spring right, and the heels connected with scarcely any force. It just hit Kozue's chest, made her sway on the ropes, and didn't even hurt enough to warrant more than a grunt. Clearly not part of his usual mindset, so she was curious what possesed him to do it now, of all times.

"That's...not how you dropkick, Nate." Kozue cocked her eyebrow as she bounced off the ropes, jumped up and came at hiim with a forward dropkick, trying to slam her feet into his chest as he was getting back up. "Like this!"

If he weren't so wary of what Kozue would do to him next, Nathan would have liked to spend some time lying down on the mat. To reflect. "There's no shame in failing while trying something new." Dad's words, words he took to heart. Words that were difficult believe when an arena packed with people was laughing at you, and probably millions more at home.

His maiden dropkick had him land hard on his butt, which he thought was normal, until he realized that no dropkick he'd ever seen before had the deliverer in pain. Next came the realization that his feet hadn't touched Kozue at all; not with any substantial force, anyway. It was like he'd given her a light push, and, if he'd been delusional enough to hope that maybe she'd been hurt anyway, her retaliatory dropkick quickly put that notion to rest. Nathan slammed backwards into the mat, his arms tight about his chest. He rolled to his side, gasping. "No kidding..."

Kozue could sympathize a big with Nathan, here. The dropkick was always hardert than it looked to pull off - you had to get the right amount of height, had to master the timing, had to get the proper momentum. If anything was too off, you'd wide up getting something that wasn't worth much of anything, and Kozue had thrown plenty of worthless dropkicks in her early days. Granted, she'd thrown those in training and saved the perfected versions for the ring, but whatever worked for him.

Regardless, that pang of sympathy wouldn't keep her from taking advanatge. Hell, the best way to get him to learn was with some negative reinforcement, right? Made sense in her mind.

She ran to the ropes across from him, bounced off, came back his way and then dropped down with her legs outstretched, trying to hit him with a baseball slide to the chest while he was laying on his side. "Also, like this."

Nathan wanted to laugh. He would have if he could have. Sadly, the best he could manage was a windy little wheeze as Kozue drilled him in the chest again. Relentless.

“Right, I got it, thanks.” Nathan croaked as he rolled- achingly, sluggishly- away from the direction of impact. His destination was the ropes, because he didn’t think he could get to his feet by his own power. He also didn’t really believe that he’d get there unmolested, but he didn't want to do nothing. Besides, if the sure-footed Kozue happened to trip over her own feet, somehow, he didn't want to regret not being in position to take advantage.

Kozue landed on her back, swung her legs  up, and immediately got back to her feet with a quick kip up, earning her a new round of applause when she pulled off the manuever. A small, small part of her hated that looking good would probably be at Nathan's expense, but there was really no helping it with these sorts of things. She'd looked bad enough in the past few months, it was time she got to be on the other side of the coin.

"Just making sure, never hurts to review." She did a short walk after Nathan and caught him before he could get too far, reaching down and grabbing a handful of that long, brown hair of his. She pulled up, forcing his body to rise, only to grab his wrist as soon as he was up and send him to the ropes with an Irish Whip - that was what it looked like, at the start, anyway. Instead of letting him go and making him run, though, she kept the hold on, pulled Nathan back towards her, and tried to hit him with a hard knee to the stomach. Just a little more softening and he'd be ripe for the plucking.

Even with the assist, Nathan needed some time in getting up- the interval between single knee and on his feet was particularly long- but he managed, his breathing still ragged from the repeated assaults on his chest.

Once he was there, Kozue whipped forward into- nope, she yanked him back, topping off a knee he already knew to be devastating with the extra oomph of bodily momentum. And he was just woozy enough that the smaller woman met with no resistance as she tossed him about the ring.

The knee cut deep, and Nathan deflated like an old balloon. He wrapped his arms around his stomach as he sank down to his knees, doing his best to inhale, but, for whatever reason, air just didn’t seem to want to enter his lungs.

That move was a new one for Kozue, something she'd done in practice but never pulled off in play. It worked. Hell, it worked better than she pictured, bringing Nathan down to his knees and making him a perfect target. She had him halfway to the ground, now she's just have to get him the rest of the way and she could start thinking about pins. And how would she get him the rest of the way, exactly?

Kozue's wild streak started to kick in as she dashed away from him, bounding over to the ropes. She spun around, hit them with her back, and came back towards him with even more speed backing her up. She had to use the added momentum before she could crash into Nathan head on - that would've done some damage, but not as much as what she really had planned.

Instead, Kozue jumped and did a front flip over Nathan's kneeling body, tumbling above him. As she passed, in mid-flip, she reached down and tried to wrap her arms around his skull, so the back of his head would crash into her shoulder when she landed.

A somersault neckbreaker. Something she'd been wanting to bust out in a match for a good, long while, but never had the chance. If Nathan was still conscious after all this, she'd have to thank him.

Nathan was losing the fight, that much was clear. He’d been on his heels the entire match, but that bungled dropkick only confirmed that he ought to stick to what he knew, or at least to avoid test driving new moves in official matches. Kozue, at least, could stretch the conceded inch into miles upon miles upon miles. He could still turn things around, though; he just needed the breath to act. While he was struggling to suck the air back into his respiratory system, however, Kozue did that thing again, the thing where she disappeared after putting him into a compromising position. The stomach he clutched sank like a sack of wet sand; something was about to hurt.

Nathan summoned the courage to turn his head toward where he’d felt Kozue last, just in time to see her leap toward his kneeling form. She sailed over him (huh?), but snagged his head on her way down (oh.), then let her tremendous momentum do the rest.

Her shoulder smashed into the back of his head, and for a moment the world turned white and hushed. Then the moment passed, and all of his senses came rushing in at once- the roar of the crowd in his ears, the twinkling of the arena lights up above (wait, they’re not supposed to be doing that), the smell of drying blood in his nose, and wracking pain all over his body. Needless to say, Nathan was more a little overwhelmed by it all. He could do little but cradle the back of his head in his hands, close his eyes, and vocalize his anguish in the groan of a dying animal.