Nathan Weed vs. Kozue Kaburagi - Second Strike: "I Quit" Match

Kozue rushed Nathan as he was getting back to his feet, and, instinctively, his hands came up over his face. But no strike was forthcoming- oh right, against the rules; it was hard to remember that. Instead, Kozue grabbed him by the shoulders and leaped over his crouched form. As far as he could tell, no damage had been done- which meant that she was investing into something much bigger.

By the time Nathan had whirled around, Kozue was already on the top rope, looking over her shoulder with a predator’s glint in her eye. Nathan leaped forward, hands out, trying to catch Kozue before she could launch. But Kozue simply hopped backwards, over his charging head and square onto his shoulders, thighs about her ears. The thighs tensed.

Then those thighs turned into very familiar calves, and he felt himself being pulled clean off of his feet. Nathan shut his eyes to spare himself at least the visual disorientation, but he needn’t have bothered. Kozue’s maneuver crushed the entirety of Nathan’s lean frame directly onto the top of his head, destroying any sense of equilibrium he might have hoped to preserve. All he could do at the end of it was kneel with his face pressed into the mat and will away the throbbing in his skull, teeth clenched tight.

The move wasn't quite perfect. Kozue felt she put a little too much torque into back roll, and she wound up rolling twice as far as she wanted to. She very nearly slipped off Nathan's shoulders, too, and luck was one of the main reasons she didn't wind up getting her face plastered on the floor.

Nonetheless, as Kozue came to a sliding stop and watched the fruits of her efforts, she wasn't surprised to see it all came through. "Holy shit, that worked." At least, not too much.

His back was to her and it didn't look like Nathan even knew what planet he was on - golden opportunity, if she could capitalize. She got a little running start, took a hop, and came down hard on Nathan's back, trying to plant him on the mat and get him in a camel clutch. Knees under the shoulders, hands on the chin, wrenching his back hard. They were too close to the ropes and it was way to early to get him to quit for anything, but at least she was doing a good job paving the road to victory. So far.

Kozue consistently defied conventional wisdom about what a girl her size could do, and Nathan had long since learned to stop presuming to know what to expect from her.

But Nathan still couldn’t help but wonder: what?!

It was one thing when that compact little body smashed into him like a sack of bricks- she came at him from way up high, enlisting gravity to put those extra newtons into her attacks; it made sense. It was yet another to be hit with a knee that rivaled some of the hardest hits he’d taken as a boxer- Kozue was fast, and that knee was practiced and precise; he could believe it.

But there was something simply incredible about how Kozue could leverage her relatively meager weight and stature and completely lift Nathan off of his feet and drill his head into the floor. No, he decided. He had to draw the line somewhere; his suspension of disbelief only went so far.

His incredulity ran parallel to the agony and force-wrought confusion that the maneuver in question inflicted onto his skull. While he was thus incapacitated, Kozue mercilessly continued her assault- starting first with a slam into his exposed back that propelled the remainder of the air from his lungs, followed by an uncontested camel clutch that transformed his quiet groaning into a more pronounced, throaty howl through clenched teeth. Things weren’t going very well.

So far, so good. Very good. actually. Kozue wasn't about to break open the wine just yet, but she felt confident enough to bring it out the fridge and let it start cool. She'd taken an early lead in this match, scored the first hit and the first submission. That wasn't just dealing physical damage, but mental, too, and that was what this match was all about.

She settled into the camel clutch and laced her fingers together nice and tight, wrenching his neck while she settled into her seat. Might as well get comfy, she had plans on being here for a while.

"So. Nate." She pressed her chin against the back of his neck as the crowd started to clap, trying to rally behind Nathan and pump him back to his feet. "Don't suppose i could interest you in quitting? It's just one loss, man. You've already got one on me, you can deal with it. And we go can hang out at this nice bar near the arena, gives free drinks to wrestlers after every show. All you've got to do is say the words, and we're heading home early for the night."

No, she didn't think playing with him like this would work. But it was fun. Kozue pressed up on her tiptoes and started to pull back even further, seeing if she could get another few feet of pain out of him.

Despite the stretch in his back and grunts at his throat, Nathan could feel a laugh bubbling up in his chest. Oh no.

"Don't..." She just sounded so reasonable. So inviting. Despite himself, his face contorted into a grin against the fingers at his chin, and Nathan shut his eyes. "Don't make me laugh right now!"

Luckily, Kozue doubled down on her hold, yanking his head further back and eliciting, not laughter, but a surprised cry of pain from Nathan. And, while the new position was wreaking fresh havoc on Nathan's body, it did allow him to unhook his arms from over Kozue's knees. Once freed, his hands went straight to work, pulling down at the ones clutched sadistically at Nathan's head.

For a brief moment, Kozue considered the possibility that she could make Nathan quit through tickling. That would be a first. Probably wouldn't work, but it was crazy enough that she wanted to try.

For now, just dishing out pain would do, though she was having a harder time with it now that Nathan's hands were free. She kept the hold locked in for a long as she could, but that turned out not to be very long at all - her palms were sweaty and his fingers were to persistent. She had to let it go.

The crowd gave him a quick round of applause for the endurance, cheering on as Kozue began moving to her next attack. "Come on, man." She moved over to her knees beside him and gave Nathan a hard push in the side, trying to put him on his back. "Get your head in the game. Don't make it too easy for me."

With that, Kozue popped to her feet, jumped over to the other side of his body, then flipped backwards and spun in the air, doing a full rotation before she came down on him with a moonsault senton, looking to drop hard right on his chest.

A not-insignificant sector of the crowd cheered when he pulled Kozue’s fingers away from his chin, and Nathan was bewildered. For him? For him?

But Nathan didn’t have long to think about it. Before he could even get a single foot underneath him, Kozue had shoved him over onto his back and, before he could even really start to enjoy how unbesieged his back was, she jumped up and arched her back...

It was a rare occasion for Nathan to be able to watch the impending destruction that Kozue was rapidly threatening upon his person; usually, his eyes were screwed shut from some other attack, or he was transitioning into a safer, less vulnerable position when she took to the air. It was a sight to see- the seamless transition between standing and flipping, the definition of the muscles she engaged and relaxed to launch herself upwards, the way her ponytail straightened out as she curled into the flip. She was confident; she was practiced. She was a finely tuned instrument. She also fell a lot faster than he expected, and he hardly had the time to flex before she dropped on him like a bowling ball.

But more than all of those things, Kozue was right. He was being too reactive- a relic, maybe, of his boxing style. He wasn’t going to win matches by human error, especially when he started to take on better opponents. If he needed to rely on his opponent to make a mistake to seize momentum, he was not going to have much success in the league.

So, even as Kozue slammed her back into Nathan’s chest, even as his head and lower body jackknifed upwards into the blow, even as his brain started to register panicked reports from all over the front of his torso, an arm came up around Kozue’s waist and climbed up her body until it found her head. Nathan pulled her into the chest that she’d just assaulted and squeezed away.

"Bam!"

Kozue stuck the landing just like she'd planned, and shot her fist into air for a quick celebration. Unlike the Reverse Hurricanrana, the Moonsault Senton was something she was quite confident in sticking, and she was glad to see that all those hours spent slapping her back into the mats and nearly busting her head multiple times paid off.

Her first instinct was to pull his leg in for a pin, but she managed to push that thought aside before she wound up looking really stupid in front of a live audience. No, her best bet here was to just keep on doing what she'd been doing, overwhelming Nathan with move after move until he became an easy mark for whatever submission she wanted. She already had a good idea what to go with, too.

Kozue began to sit up when she felt Nathan's hand move up her body, sliding across her meager chest. There was an extremely awkward and confused second when she thought the boy was trying to cop a feel, but it turned out to be nothing so pleasant. All she could do was squawk as he yanked her back and squeezed her head, trapping him in his clutches.

Her body started to jerk around like a live wire, trying to slip free before he could put her into something substantially move painful. She knew Nathan was durable, but she'd never have imagined that he'd be able to tank a moonsault, and judging from the short burst of claps, neither did the crowd. Definitely something to keep in mind the next time she went to the sky.

There was no real plan here. Kozue had a habit of taking whatever momentum she earned and sprinting with it, cartwheeling her advantage into ever growing combinations of increasing intensity; this was just a way to stop that. Which wasn’t to say that he didn’t press down hard on his headlock. Nathan didn’t have much in the way of a submissions arsenal, but a headlock was straightforward: squeeze to hurt. Simple.

But Kozue wasn’t content to let Nathan do as he pleased. Still fresh, and no doubt riding high from her streak of match control, Kozue’s struggles were endowed with a vigor Nathan was unable to contain. That, coupled with the active ache in his torso, was enough for her to be able to slip from his hold.  

Nathan gave Kozue a hearty shove away from himself once she wiggled free from his lock. Then he rolled over to his hand and knees, jaw set. He was hoping for time enough to ride out the pains she’d planted in his body, but he supposed that was too much to hope for. But it was early yet; he was already on his way to his feet, and, once he caught her in a submission hold of his own, he would have plenty of time to rest.

Kozue was ready to accept the possibility that she might lose this match. She was confident, yes, but she thought it was good policy to be realistic. A little dose of humilty. If she went in thinking that she couldn't lose, she'd be too cocky, too headstrong, make easy mistakes. Nathan was too good for that. She had to be cautious.

That being said, she wasn't ready to accept losing a headlock, of all things. That, she would fight tooth and nail. All the fighting paid off, too, as Nathan eventually let her go and pushed her away, giving her some much needed breathing room. Kozue greedily sucked in air as soon as her throat was free and rubbed the back of her neck, nursing the ache that was already growing there. Nothing debilitating yet, but it would become a problem area if she didn't watch it.

Kozue rolled away and grabbed the ropes, pulling her way up back to her feet. She wasn't too bad off, she could recover, but she needed a moment to get her bearings. She decided to spend that moment in the corner, leaning her back against it with her arms on both sides.