Blaise Cameron vs. Makoto Takeda: Time to Say Goodbye...

The fans reached out and patted Blaise on the shoulder, trying to rally him on as he laid there. Cute. Cute and completely fucking pointless. They could cheer him and jeer her all they liked, but their little hero was done.

Mako rubbed the spot on her skull where he hit, shaking her head and huffing before she moved back towards him. "You think you're tough Blaise?" She took a quick jump forward and made all the fans scatter away, giving her some space to work.

She brought her boot up and pressed it against his face, leaning on him to sandwich his skull between her foot and the guardrail. "You're not tough, dumbass. I know tough. I've seen it. I live it. There's a big fucking difference between being tough and being too stupid to know when to quit." Mako grinded her heel down for some extra pain. "Guess which side you fall on?"

Blaise is only dimly aware of the audience's support at this point. He wants to fight on, but his body is starting to take the reins. And there's been a lingering, nagging question he's been trying to push away, but is having an increasingly difficult time doing so: What's the point?

Amy thinks he's a loser. Suzumi didn't even believe he could do this. His track record proves them right, and as if he needed more proof, he's getting demolished. Amy knew he'd lose this. She spelled it out for him. It's a foregone conclusion. Why should he keep taking this punishment? What's in it for him? What's in it for these people besides watching someone get wrecked? He's normally okay with being abuse eye-candy, if secretly. But tonight, just... no.

Mako's boot grinds into his face, forcing his skull back against the railing. "Nngghh!" His legs scoot uselessly against the floor, his hands slap blindly at her ankle and foot. It's completely ineffective and serves only to highlight his dwindling spirit. "L'go!," he cries, muffled against her sole.

Mako, to the surprise of absolutely no one, didn't immediately honor Blaise's requestion. Instead, she kept the pressure on, leaned in even harder, kept him pinned hard enough that she almost thought his skull would crack.

"That's it," She gave him one, final press before she pulled away, overjoyed to see the impression she'd left on those cute little cheeks of his. "Struggle and squirm. Show all these people how much of a little bitch you are before you walk out the door forever."

She pulled away and grabbed Blaise by the hair, dragging him forward and pulling him off the rail. Mako gave him a quick knee to the stomach and let him drop on the floor, while she started to slowly stalk him. Closing in. "Quit, Blaise."

When the pressure is finally relieved from his face, Blaise curls in on himself to hide his head in the safety of his arms. His face is sore in a weird, different kind of way, and he can just imagine an ugly grid-pattern impression sunk into his skin from the sole of her boot. But his arms do nothing to prevent her from grabbing his hair and pulling him to his feet again with a yelp.

He wants to rebutt. He wants to argue. But his mind fails to form anything coherent, other than a seething wheeze of breath. And then that knee blasts into his abs again, briefly thrusting his body a few inches into the air before dropping him to his knees. He braces himself with his right hand, the other looping his midsection. "Nnggh..!" His head hangs low enough that his bangs lick the concrete beneath him, his eyes squeezed shut and face written in pain. But to her demand, he shakes his head rapidly, clinging to his proverbial life.

Mako liked the quiet defiance most of all. That silent reslience that Blaise was giving her, trying to fight back in some small way, even though he couldn't even squeak out a few words. It was almost impressive, in a way. Impressively annoying as fuck.

Mako stood over his prone body, right above the waist, staring at him while she ran a few ideas through her mind. Things she could. Pain she could inflict. Something to push him over the edge. She decided on a threat - a very real threat, that she had every intention of using.

She reached down and grabbed Blaise by the wrists, snatching one away from his stomach and the other away from the floor. Mako made him fall forward, forced him to lay flat on the ground, while she brought her boot up and pressed it against the back of his skull. Not hard enough to hurt, not just yet. But hard enough to convey the message.

"Last chance." She raised her boot up as the audiences boos turned into screams, pleading for her to stop. "Quit, Blaise."

Blaise feels Mako lean down and collect his wrists. He can't even resist her. She takes his balance, and he flumps against the floor. Then he feels the weight of her boot back against his skull. The lack of rules in this match really sinks in suddenly. She could hurt him. Seriously hurt him. His breathing picks up as fear starts to creep in for the first time in a long time.

Blaise's arms develop a light tremor as they're kept aloft. He hears the audience start to panic, easily picking up that they're concerned they're about to get more violence than they bargained for. Makoto has given him an ultimatum, and there's no more time to deliberate on it. He has to make a call.

He's lost. He knows he has. He's lost everything, and everyone. The teen scrunches his eyes shut, and a couple droplets of moisture fall from his face to the concrete below. His last act in the federation can't be one of fear. He has to endure whatever she's about to do, at least long enough to say he didn't wimp out. His family won't understand. Amy will hate him more than she already does. But it'll mean something to him. It's all he can hope for now.

"J-... just do it..."

Were this any other match type, Amy might have elected to fly in under the radar. She might have entered the arena from the audience, hiding with her collar turned up high, her hood down low, waiting just outside the crowd barrier for the opportune moment, like maybe when her target had her back turned. Only then would she sprint into the fray and get in that sneak attack. Hypothetically.

And, were this any other match type, Amy might have spent some time strategizing more than just her entrance. The chair lay abandoned mere feet from where Mako had Blaise trapped underfoot. She could leap off of those steel steps for an extra spicy dropkick. Hell, she might even have figured out a way to incorporate that guardrail that Mako was so fond of throwing people into. There were opportunities abound, and, if she had the time, Amy could have come at Mako with something fancy.

As it were, though, this was an I Quit match, an I Quit match wherein the loser would leave the AFW. Blaise- her classic rock buddy, her dance partner, her friend- was on the verge of being that loser- or worse. Subtlety wasn’t the way to go here; he needed to know that the cavalry was coming.

So Burn started to blare throughout the arena, plainly broadcasting her entrance. And, in case it still wasn’t clear enough to Blaise that he should still hope, that he should hold on just a moment longer, Amy yelled as she sprinted down the ramp. “Blaaaaaaiiiiiseee!”

Rather than waste time with an elaborate attack, Amy charged straight at where the combatants locked up outside the ring. She locked on and threw herself into Mako in a reckless flying tackle, not bothering even to slow down, or to adjust her trajectory to avoid the low wall that separated the audience from the ring. There just wasn’t the time.

Mako wasn't the least bit surprised when Blaise uttered his last words of pitiful defiance. Even now, when everything was lost, when he was seconds away from the end of his career one way or the other, the little dumbass still didn't have the good sense to just give up. She would've laughed, if it wasn't so pathetic.

"You know," She gave him a little tap on the back of his head with the toe of her boot. 'I wish I could say you made the wrong choice, but being honest? It wouldn't matter. I'd do this, either way." She brought her foot up as high as it could go, taking aim and making sure it would hit dead center on the target. "Enjoy retirement, Blaise."

And then she heard it. The sound of crappy old school rock*. "The fuck?"

It came out blaring over the loudspeaker, filling the arena, and the crowd went nuts. Why, Mako had no idea. Not until she heard that shrill, ear-piercing war cry from the ramp, that all-too-familiar voice growing nearer and neaer. "Oh," Mako rolled her eyes and let go of Blaise's wrists, leaving him to flop. "You got to be shitting me."

As it turned out, Mako was not, in fact, being shat. It was none other than Amy Poford, and Mako turned around just in time to see the blonde berserker heading at her like a woman possessed. She got her fists up, readying to fight, but the bitch wasn't interested in just throwing blows. She launched her entire body at Mako and hit her like a missile, crashing hard in her stomach.

Mako cried out and fell on the ground with Amy on top, nearly hitting her head against the guard rail in the process. "Fucking bitch!" She tried to push her away and squirm free, not wanting to be under the taller girl for too long. She knew too well the damage Amy could do if you let her go nuts. "Fuck off!"

*The opinions of Mako do not reflect her writer.

The tremor in Blaise's arms grows in intensity. He knows he's about to get hurt. The waiting is almost as terrible as whatever pain he's about to endure - on top of the pain he's already feeling. He feels nauseous with dread, hyperventilating... when his breath catches in his throat.

A song has his the arena. "Nnh?" He can't lift his head immediately. Only after his arms are released and he drops to the floor does he turn his head towards the ramp. But it's not what he sees that surprises him so much as what he hears.

'Amy...?'

And suddenly, there she is. His vision is blurry, but he wouldn't mistake her for anyone. She slams into his attacker, completely vacating the area around his body. But still with the beating he's endured, he's having a hard time getting up. Every little movement is unsteady, and more often than not shoots stinging pain through his torso. He manages to work his way to hands and knees again, at least.

Amy had already executed the entirety of her plan, which consisted of A) separating Mako from Blaise, and B) making sure that Blaise kept his damned mouth shut. She hadn’t actually intended to get on top of Mako; after all the anxiety she'd gone through backstage, she didn’t want to risk Blaise getting booted from the roster anyway because she'd caused him to be disqualified. Or whatever happened when a third party interrupted an I Quit match; she wasn’t exactly familiar with how any of this worked.

But now that she was where she was, and Mako was where Mako was, Amy couldn’t really help but indulge. Amy had just sprinted all the way from a green room where she’d watched Mako, evil little bitch, gleefully and methodically take Blaise apart; you might say that there was a bit of lingering resentment. Amy took a fraction of a sliver of a moment to watch Mako try and struggle out from underneath her, her recent sense of urgency quickly twisting into a furious bloodlust.

“No,” Amy spoke firmly, not as a response to Mako’s command, but rather as a denial of Mako's current escape attempt. Mako did manage to squirm out from under Amy, but Amy grabbed a fistful of Mako’s collar and pulled her back in again. “Go fuck yourself!” She attached a fully-drawn right cross aimed directly at Mako's cheek to the expletive of that sentence. Judging from the instant sense of justice in her chest, it would only be the first of many.