A Rusty Blade (for Killcarrion)

Risako practically stormed into the infirmary room, striding through the doors and quickly getting a name and number from the rather stunned orderly at the desk. Without wasting any time, she then strode down the hall looking for the right room, all the while ignoring the one or two nurses who feebly tried to bar her way. One look at who she was, and of the angry look in their eyes, was enough to make them back off.

She had seen the match, of course. When she had heard that Uehara was going to be in an upcoming match, she was thrilled for her ex-tag partner. Her excitement died down a little when she heard she was facing Maiden Sakurazaki-- she remembered all too well just how ruthless the Maiden was. But to not only see Uehara was bad enough, but to then see her double-teamed by Sakurazaki and Reika Freaking Ichigaya...

Her hand involuntarily balled into a fist. If only she had known Ichigaya would try to intervene like that. She knew that the blonde was a ruthless heel, but to ambush Uehara like that...oh, she was going to make Ichigaya hurt for that.

Eventually, Risako found the door she was looking for. Taking a deep breath, she opened it and let herself in...

"M-Miss Uehara!! You really shouldn't be moving around until the doctor comes in to give you a full diagnosis-"

"Well I'll save him the trouble!! I'm fucking fine and I just wanna get out of here!!"

The intensified bickering between Blade and the solitary nurse in the room could be overheard by anyone within earshot even from behind closed doors. Blade herself having regained consciousness not long after waking up in the infirmary. She felt like she had just been run over by an eighteen wheeler, with the actual truth behind what had transpired being only slightly more appealing. It took her several hazy seconds of staring blankly up at the ceiling before she properly recalled everything that had just happened that night...and immediately began putting her wrestling skivvies back on despite the nurse's insistence that they follow proper procedure in the event one of the competitors had suffered a concussion.

But the rattled former W.A. was hearing none of that as she staggered and fumbled about while getting her clothes back on, fighting through an ungodly soreness in her spine and a nagging headache that hobbled her movements. She was a bundled up dynamite keg of mixed emotions that was on the brink of exploding if she didn't start moving immediately, and her current trajectory was leading her straight out of this hospital room. She ended up leaning heavily against the nearby table on her way out, gnashing her teeth and developing a dripping and cold sweat from fighting through the aches in her body.

And this was how Panther would find her. Blade's former tag partner and one of her closest friends practically bumping into eachother at the door. Blade widened her eyes in shock and instantly spoke without thinking.

"Risako!?!...H-hey, can you tell these people to leave me the hell alone?!" Blade barked out, clearly not thinking straight while the nurse behind her continued to protest and insisted that Blade will only end up exaggerating her injuries if she doesn't allow the hospital staff to do their job.

The moment she opened the door, Risako was greeted by a scene of chaos: Uehara, still wearing her wrestling outfit, half-leaning on on a table and visibly fighting off pain. Pain, and, by the look of things, intense aggravation at the hospital staff who were frantically following and shouting at her.

She blinked for a few minutes, before turning to the assembled orderlies and letting out an exasperated sigh. "I want all of you to be somewhere else for the next half hour or so."

One of the orderlies blinked in surprise. "B-but ma'am..."

"NOW." Risako's tone was one that brooked no argument. In an instant, all of the medical staff immediately remembered other things that urgently demanded their attention, and scurried off, leaving the two wrestlers alone by the doorway.

Sighing, Risako turned back to Uehara. "Hey Kyouko-san," she said with a warm smile, raising an eyebrow at her getup. "Heading back to the ring already? Are you sure you don't want to grab some lunch first?"

Scavenging the will power to remain upright wasn't getting any easier with time. Blade's posture getting wobblier and more strained as she watched the hospital staff make their exit thanks to Risako's stern demanding. While she was grateful for the privacy and to have the hospital staff off of her back, Blade reserved expressing her gratitude once Panther started in on her cheeky small talk.

"Nyu uh...Don't you do that thing where you try to "handle" me, alright?! I'm not in the friggin mood..." Blade grumbled out while straightening her posture as best she could, the aerial artist snarling her teeth from back pains she was pushing herself through.

"The show...*ngh*...The show's still going on...So I'm gonna go out there and challenge those goddamn Won sisters, that pretentious boot-licker Misaki, and that blonde bane of my existence to whatever match they want just so long as I can get my hands on them again. And if you're not gonna help than..." Blade bitterly muttered while hunched over as she started to take a few strides towards the exit behind Panther...before she crumbled with a pained yelp to her knees. Blade pressed her forehead into the cold tiled floor with a hand massaging her horrendously pained back, really hating how she must look to her best friend...

Risako didn't know what was worse: seeing her friend in this horribly battered state, or worse, seeing her as she was emotionally. Even though Uehara was trying desperate to hide it, Risako could see quite plainly that she was trying to keep a horrible mixture of humiliation, frustration and self-directed anger in check. Risako would know, after all-- she had dealt with that particular beast all too often in her career. Even as Uehara pushed herself past her limits, she knew what her friend was going through.

The moment Uehara fell to her knees, Risako was there, grabbing her by the arm and hoisting her up to her feet. "Kyouko, listen to me very carefully," she said, using the soft but stern tone she used when she meant business. "You're in no state to fight right now. You're going to kill yourself over this if you continue right now. Leave it. Please."

With that said, she would guide her friend to a nearby bench and prop her down, before sitting next to her. "Rest for a bit, okay? Besides...I just got here. Don't I get a 'hi'?"

Whenever she was on the cusp of doing something monumentally stupid, it felt like Blade was staring down a boundless, black void. One she gazed into now while standing on a cliff. Another step into the darkness would have surely lead to her own self-destruction had she not been pulled back by a hand on her shoulder. Or rather, an arm that was wrapped around her and helping to shuffle her over to a nearby bench. A few hobbling steps was all she could manage as she leaned heavily against the wrestle angel by her side. Blade kept her head low and weary eyes centered on her feet as she finally began calming down with some deep breaths. Nothing quite like hearing someone tell you you're gonna kill yourself to sober you up quick, fast, and in a hurry.

"...*sigh*...Hi, Risa." Blade somberly muttered out while still avoiding eye contact with Risako, somehow feeling even more embarrassed after realizing how certifiable she must have looked just then. "I’m...I’m sorry you had to see all that. Can you...can you just do me a favor...and find me a deep, dark hole I can just bury myself in for all eternity?" Blade quipped out some dark humor while burying her face in her hands while still leaning over in her seat. At least she was feeling better enough to joke about everything.

"NNNNNGH...God…why did it have to be Ichigaya?" Blade's rhetorical question being muffled by the palms of her hands. She honestly would have preferred to have gotten her ass kicked by anyone else...anyone.

Much to Risako's relief, Uehara seemed to calm down at that point. The fight left her abruptly, and she hobbled over onto the bench next to Risako and allowed her hold her steady like the big sister that she...well, figuratively speaking, sometimes was. She didn't know if Uehara's injuries were getting the better, or if she was actually listening to her, or if it was some combination of both. To Risako, it didn't matter as long as Uehara calmed down and let her body heal for a bit.

"Sorry," she replied. "I'd do that for you, but I just got out of that hole myself." Seeing how badly Uehara was taking this, Risako leaned her face closer to that of her ex-partner. "Hey. Listen to me. What Ichigaya and Sakurazaki did was shitty, but stop beating yourself up over the fact that you got double teamed by them. You lost because they cheated. You lost because they are worthless garbage people who you are better than in every single way. So stop doing their job for them by making yourself worse, okay?"

Slowly, she reached over, guided Uehara's palms away from her face, and looked Uehara in the eyes. "Don't get angry at yourself. Get angry at them. Get even." She gave Uehara's hand a tight squeeze. "Just be sure to invite me along for the ride."

Wallowing in self-pity wasn't a good look for Blade, but it was a little known fact that she was intensely self-conscious about herself. And these past few weeks just made her sink deeper into that self-deprecating hole. How could she interpret her first few matches in AFW as anything else but colossal failures? A DQ win before getting pummeled by two China dolls, a loss via being handcuffed by a frilly boot-licker of a maid, and now Beauty of all people. The one who put her wrestling career on ice and has ingeen the cause of several nightmares and sleepless nights. All this aggravation and tension was mounting up inside her...but her self doubts would start fading away thans to Risako's encouraging words helping her to gain perspective.

She blinked before staring deeply into Risako's eyes while holding onto her former partner's hands. A few seconds of introspection passing by before Uehara spoke up in a low, timid voice...

"...Did you know I love the way your eyes sparkle when you start talking about getting revenge?" Blade broke down from her somber state into a burgeoning smile that devolved into out right chuckling as she buried her head into Risako's shoulder. Blade couldn't have been hugging Risako any tighter right now if she tried, her chortling laughs helping to hold back some tears as well. "...*sniff*...Man, the hell kind of life coach am I? I'm supposed to be the one helping you out of a jam, not the other way around. Guess I just can't get anything right these days, cept getting my ass kicked. I might be taking you up on that offer to help me out, but you think you can start by helping me back to the bed. I...kinda sorta can't stand..."

It was painful to see Uehara in this state: broken in body and spirit, sinking into despair, ready to give up on almost everything. Part of what made it all so painful was that Risako had recently been down this road herself after a string of defeats, and it was Uehara who had been the one to pull her back from the abyss. Now it was Risako's turn to return the favour.

Supporting Uehara's weight on her shoulder, Risako stood up and vegan to walk her former partner back to her room. "Hey, you helped me out so often that it was bound to be the other way around at some point. In fact, you helped me out so often that I've memorized all of the things you told me." She looked Uehara straight in the eyes. "Which is that none of this is your fault, and that none of this is down to you sucking or not being good enough. They haven't won yet, but if you just give up like this...then, well, they will."

With hat last tidbit of encouraging pep-talk, Blade could confidently state that Risako had officially made a full recovery from her own earlier despondent state and was back to her normal self. For as long as Blade could remember, Risako was always the mother hen of the W.A. locker room. A role that a lot of the other girls appreciated or outright found irritating. Blade was in the latter category at the beginning, until all of their matches and backstage confrontations finally clued her into Risako just wanting the best for her. For a time, Blade wondered if she took such a disliking to Risako in the beginning because she herself never had a mother growing up. And it just felt...foreign, suddenly having a maternal figure in her life.

...Blade was over thinking all of this. Her back was killing her, and these were thoughts best left for a time when her brain wasn't scrambled from what felt like twenty powerbombs.

"Heh...that's pretty good advice. The person who told you that must have been a genius...nggh..." Blade flinched after her own joke towards complimenting her own tutelage. She leaned heavily against Risako and held onto her tighter the worse the pains got until they finally reached her hospital bed. She grumbled and flinched while adjusting herself to lay down straight, flicking off her wrestling boots onto the floor before leaning back to breathe steadily with her hand on her forehand. "Sorry...if I'm being too jokey, or whatever. I just don't like being seen like this, ya know? Plus I...umm...I...*breathes*...I guess I'm just glad to have my partner back." Blade lowered her hand to smile back at one of the few people in the world she trusts wholeheartedly.