SD III: Mariko Ishii vs. Ninjette

Kozue was wise to think it through. Yes, Mariko had gotten more than a few of her opponents to cave in and start worshipping her feet like this by offering the possibility of release from whatever hold she was torturing them with. But in none of those cases had she ultimately given them that freedom.

And that certainly wouldn't have been any different this time around either.

When Kozue's struggles abruptly stopped, Mariko paused and waited, expecting to feel her foe's lips kissing her soles. Instead she felt teeth gently close against her foot. It didn't hurt, but the message was received. Though before Mariko could attempt to punish her for the choice, the girl started to frantically squirm and thrash about again. If Mariko had locked in an ordinary camel clutch, her feet being planted on the mat would've given enough support to help her easily ride out these struggles. But that wasn't quite so easy to do when her feet were instead occupied with Kozue's face. And it was only a matter of seconds before Mariko lost her balance and rolled off to the side.

"What's the matter? Not ready for your nap yet?" Mariko asked teasingly as she pulled herself up to her feet. "I guess we'll just have to fix that then." She walked over to Kozue and leaned down to grab her arm, wanting to drag the brunette up to a vertical base.

It wasn’t the easiest thing, getting Mariko off her, but Kozue did manage to dislodge the incredibly sexy monkey on her back after epic struggling. A good thing, too, because she was just starting to see stars dance across the dark blankness of her vision, feeling the early signs of an unwanted nap. A twist to the left, a jerk to the right, rinse and repeat, and she was free.

‘Free’ was a relative term, though. Sure, she was out of the hold, but that hardly meant she was out of danger. Kozue was gasping on her knees, wide open, and with an opponent who was skilled and creative enough to use that in all kinds of painful ways.

She had to do something to break Mariko’s momentum. And as her foe came over and started to lift her up, she had an idea.

”Yeah, sorry.” Kozue mumbled as Mariko started to haul her up to her feet, no doubt setting her up for something devastating and effective. ”I’m just a little…”

She reached up with both hands, pulled Mariko’s head down to the top of her own, then kicked her feet out and fell straight to her butt, trying to break the femme fatale’s jaw on her skull with the appropriately named Jaw Breaker.

”...hardheaded.”

Mariko didn’t know it immediately, but she’d just made a critical error. With Kozue down on her hands and knees, there were countless approaches she could’ve taken to keep breaking her foe down and keep momentum on her side. More specifically, she should have tried to keep Kozue down rather than pull her up. Granted what she had in mind, had it been successful, would surely have done the job perfectly well. But it gave the crafty speedster an opening, and Kozue took it.

“Ugh!” Mariko cried out when her head was brought down, jaw slamming right against the top of her opponent’s head. Her body recoiled, her hands immediately moved to cover the aching spot on her jaw, and she began to stagger backward.

Her hand reached out and was fortunately able to catch the rope in time to stop her from tripping over herself and falling down. Kozue had managed to catch her by surprise with that one, but at least Mariko was still standing. Though if that would remain true depended largely on whether or not Kozue was able to capitalize on the opening she’d made for herself.

Because of the way the Jaw Breaker worked, Kozue couldn’t immediately see the fruits of her work, but she could fairly well imagine it from the way Mariko’s chin had come down on head. A nice, clean hit, one that she thought would be enough to bring the beauty down.

But it didn’t. Kozue was more than a little surprised to see that Mariko was still on her feet after that hit - staggering, stunned, sure, but standing. Kozue’d taken that move herself about a year or so ago, and it had left her laid out on the ramp for a solid minute. It just went to show how tough Mariko was, despite her dainty looks. She was a flower, but she was tough-ass flower.

It only took her a second to shake that off and move into action, knowing she couldn’t let this window pass her by. Kozue drew her feet in and rolled towards Mariko, closing the distance with a quick somersault that ended right in front of her. She popped up to her feet, reached forward, wrapped her arms around Mariko’s waist and pulled them together in a tight embrace, hugging her close. For one golden second, there wasn’t an inch between them. Skin touched. Hips met. Mariko’s bountiful breasts spread out against her flat plain. Eye to eye, nose to nose, mouth to mouth, almost close enough to kiss.

”Hi.”

Kozue’s impish grin turned into a hardened grimace as she jerked back, lifted Mariko into the air, and attempted to send her flying overhead with a belly-to-belly suplex.

Mariko certainly would've liked to say it was entirely because of her pure toughness that she'd managed to avoid getting dropped by Kozue's jawbreaker. That undoubtedly had some to do with it, but some of it had simply been a matter of luck, and her hand finding the rope at the right time.

But neither toughness nor luck would be able to keep her on her feet after what came next.

The next thing Mariko knew Kozue was suddenly right in front of her, pulling her into a tight embrace. For the briefest of moments, the contact between their gorgeous bodies was as sexy and intimate as anything else they had done in the match. And as brief as it was, Mariko couldn't help but love the feeling of their breasts, hips and thighs pressing together. Her eyes stared into Kozue's. Her lips longed to meet the brunette's, and her hand instinctively moved to grope her perfect, second place ass.

It had only just gotten there though, when Mariko was then sent flying. "GUH!!" she cried out as she came crashing down back first onto the mat, grimacing in pain and arching off the canvas for a moment before flopping back down.

Mariko was the taller between them by at least three inches, but fortunately, she didn’t seem to be all that much heavier than Kozue. A good thing, too, because the New Jersey Ninja had absolutely no idea if she could pull off that suplex before she attempted it.

While she was stronger up top than she had been when she first got into wrestling, throwing people about was still a new sort of thing for her. With anyone else, she probably would’ve just went for a kick or a DDT or something she knew damn well she could.

But Mariko was special. She wanted to bring her to the floor in the hardest way possible, and if that meant throwing out her back a little bit in the process, it was more than worth it.

”Phew!” Kozue sat up just as Mariko was flopping down, took a deep breath, and then it was right back to business. She rolled back on her shoulders and got to her feet, a single smooth motion that ended up with her standing at the fallen Mariko’s side. Not that she intended to stay standing for long.

”Alley-oop!” Kozue swung her arms to the left, then whipped them back quick, spinning her body about while she fell down, rotating in a full circle so she could come down on Mariko’s chest with a Pendulum Elbow.

Mariko's back was hurting after that belly to belly suplex, and the room still felt like it was spinning around her. Yet her a good portion of her mind was still lingering on that glorious moment of contact between their bodies right before Mariko had been tossed through the air.

She never would've guessed she could be turned on by a suplex, but here she was...

It was soon after that she noticed Kozue standing over her. Mariko was expecting the brunette to sit - or step - on her face again. And truth be told she wouldn't have hated if either of those had really been the case. But instead Kozue swung her arms down, and Mariko was given a dose of something more painful.

"UGH!" she gasped out when the point of Kozue's elbow struck down right on her sternum. Her body curled up and tried to roll to the side while she coughed and tried to catch her breath.

While a lot of fans were with her as she went for elbow drop, she could hear a few dissenting voices urging her to attempt another smother. They weren’t wrong, really - on the surface, everything was perfect for it. Mariko was down, she was hurt, the perfect opening.

Only, in Kozue’s mind, she wasn’t. The only time she’d really had any success in the last round was when she went for something big on Mariko, something that knocked her for a loop and left her too weak to resist the smother. She had to hit her with the big gun, then go for the kill. Anything less, and Mariko would just escape and she’d waste time.

She had a good idea of what she needed to do, though. After the elbow landed, Kozue rolled to her feet and started to go through the ropes, though she stopped dead in her tracks when she saw a couple of items laying on the floor: Mariko’s discarded shoes. Just sitting there. Waiting to be worn.

It was childish, even by her standards, but she couldn’t resist the idea of kicking Mariko in the face with her own boots. Luckily, Mariko’s shoes were easy to slip into - no laces, no straps, just a tight, comfy fit - so she was able to hop into them quick, then continue on through the ropes.

With a couple of inches now added to her height, Kozue hopped back up to the apron and grabbed the top rope, waiting for Mariko to rise once more. The idea was to leap in and hit her with a flying dropkick to the face when she turned around, a move that would make her forget her name for a while if it cleanly connected. From there, her second KO would be a solid lock.

Her fans clapped along, Mariko’s fans tried to warn, and Kozue gripped the rope tight in anticipation. The second Mariko looked her way, she yanked herself up, perched on the rope, prepared to leap forward, and-

Mariko hissed and held her arms against her chest. The pain she felt from that elbow drop wasn't crippling and would probably be gone before this match had completely wrapped up. But it sure hurt like a bitch now. And the fact that Kozue hadn't immediately moved to capitalize on her vulnerable position could only mean she was planning something devious out of view.

Well, it was "technically" possible that Kozue could just be standing a few feet away waiting for her to get up so they could continue on with a straightforward wrestling match. Didn't seem all too likely though.

Mariko slowly began to push herself up, eyes starting to search around for Kozue. Incidentally, she managed to catch a brief glimpse of the blue-clad ninjette out of the corner of her eye fairly quickly. But if she turned that way immediately, she'd just expose herself for whatever Kozue was planning to throw her way.

So Mariko decided to be a little deceitful. As she inched up, she acted as if she had no idea where her foe was. Her eyes scanned over the space before her, and her head briefly turned in the wrong way once just to sell the illusion. But the second she made it to her feet, knowing that was going to be Kozue's perfect chance to strike, Mariko bolted toward the set of ropes her foe was positioned by and swung her leg up to kick the top rope. If she timed it right, she'd have that rope wobbling right when Kozue landed on it, hopefully throwing off her balance and preemptively stopping her aerial assault.

On paper, it had seemed like a good enough plan. Kozue would go up on the ropes, springboard off, dropkick Mariko into next week, then smother her into unconsciousness, all while the crowd cheered her on. Just a moment’s opening, that was all she was asking for.

As it turned out, though, things just couldn’t be that simple. She’d done everything right, considered every factor, except for one detail: Mariko was good. Too good.

She had an instant, while she was perched on the ropes, where she realized what Mariko was about to do, but at that point it was far too late.

”Nonono-”  She kicked the rope, Kozue lost her footing, and it was all up to physics from there. With an awkward squawk,  she fell and caught her stomach one the top rope, knocking the wind out of her. From, she went tumbling into the ring and landed hard on her back, once more finding herself staring up at the ceiling while pain ran through her veins. Great. Probably looked like something out of a cartoon.

With a groan, Kozue rolled over to her chest, partly to start pushing herself up and partly to get herself closer to the ropes. She had a strong feeling the latter reason would come in handy, soon.