Megumi Mutoh vs. Shizuku Himuro - Beyond the Boundary

With her arm still aching from Shizuko's attack earlier, Megumi tried to soothe the pain while distancing herself from her opponent, but it seemed that her fellow Wrestle Angel wasn't planning to give her any chance for a respite as she moved around her, going to her side before wrapping her arms around her waist while putting her head under Megumi's armpit.

Knowing that staying idle would result in her being thrown down into the mat, the Combat Genius would have to do something before Shizuko could carry out her plan. And there was one thing she could do now that Shizuko had her head under her arm.

As Shizuko's head was under her armpit, Megumi would try to keep her head trapped under there with a side headlock as she would plant her feet on the mat, preventing herself from being lifted up. Then, she would quickly try to counter Shizuko's attempt to throw her over with a Saito suplex with an attempt to bring her down into the mat, face first, with a bulldog!

Whittling away at an opponent's fortitude was always the paramount first step in achieving victory as a seasoned submissionist, preferably if you happen to damage one of your adversary's limbs in the process. Shizuko's mercilessness targeting of Megumi's twisted arm being ample evidence of what limb she intended to twist and contort a submission out of if possible, and it was these ruthless tactics that even had the fabled submission artist Toshimi Minami tapping out in disgrace once upon a time.

But that was still only the first step of Shizuko's game-plan. The second crucial step involved getting this woeful non-believer onto the mat, where the vast majority of her submission repertoire could be put into play. Matters were moving along just as the psychic clairvoyant had predicted as she snugly positioned herself beside Megumi, only for a trap to be sprung that ensnared Shizuko's head in a stifling die-headlock. One that she struggled to undo as she tugged on her opponent's arm with wincing aggravation, but eventually the floor was introduced to Shizuko's face at a rapid pace as she was smashed into the ring canvas.

"Grah!!" Shizuko grunted out loudly from the numbing faceplant, which left her splayed out with her well-rounded rump wriggling slightly from the impact before she found it in her to shuffle over to her side in a groaning slump. Shielding her wincing face while scores of fans became reignited with applause from the perennial fan-favorite's resurgence.

Successfully stopping Shizuko's momentum with her quick-thinking, Megumi decided that it's about time for her to show her opponent what she was made of. Releasing her hold on Shizuko's head, Megumi would give it a brief thought about what to do on her opponent before she decided on using something that she rarely used, with her being mostly a striker and a high-flyer. Positioning herself on top of her opponent's body, with her placing her back right on top of Shizuko's, she would then grab onto her opponent's nearest arm, looking to wrench it in a Fujiwara armbar.

"Alright, Shizuko... let's see if you can handle the taste of your own medicine..." Megumi said, grinning as she would try to work on Shizuko's arm and shoulder with the submission hold. At the same time, she would also bring one of her hands to the wrist of the arm  that she was holding, looking to give it a bit torque, hoping to draw some reaction from the usually silent clairvoyance.

The crowd was cheering for the Combat Genius, and she grinned, showing a confident expression to a nearby camera, nodding her head in tandem to the crowd chanting her name. The crowd seemed to be siding with the red-clad former Wrestle Angel at the moment, and she would like to show them that their support to her wasn't misplaced.

Scores of non-beleivers in the audience cheered on what was a pure example of the Combat Genius exercising some of that intellect of hers to reflexively turn the tables on the stoic psychic. Shizuko currently laying beside Megumi and grumbling bitterly into the ring canvas still vibrating somewhat from after the bulldog reversal. Even with her clairvoyant brains scrambled after the mind-numbing faceplant, Shizuko already began motioning to turn around before the obstinate brunette weighed herself down upon her back to back. Shizuko gasped and blinked rapidly when her arm was extended outward...

"....Nnnnnn!!!...." Shizuko somehow managed to bite back whatever agonized groans were building up inside her as she felt her shoulder joint torqued and biceps muscles stretched out, the psychic burying her forehead into the canvas to better hide her shame from being subjected to a submission move of her own specialty...and to better hide her teeth-gritting pained expression. At least until Megumi added her own flavor to it by spraining Shizu's wrist and finally bringing the silent psychic to illicit a high-pitched yelp of agony. An admission that Megumi was expertly applying the hold, which came before Shizuko beginning to motion and crawl towards the ropes inch by inch, dragging the infuriating brunette atop her with every sluggish shift.

"...Nng...It is not my destiny...to lose to...to lose to you today...Megumi...."

Maintaining the Fujiwara armbar, Megumi kept her position on Shizuko's back as she kept wrenching on her shoulder and twisting her wrist, looking to weaken the clairvoyant more in order to make it easier for her to win this match. Still, Shizuko showed that she wasn't one to submit to her this easily as she started dragging herself, inch by inch, towards the ropes. While her progress was slow, she was still making progress, which was commendable of her, at the very least.

"Oh yeah? You better take confidence in your own abilities rather than putting stock in this destiny nonsense!" Megumi said, wrenching Shizuko's shoulder harder than before, careful to not accidentally dislocate her shoulder but still keeping the pressure going. Megumi herself wasn't a fan to this superstitious nonsense, and while she respected other people's beliefs, she would rather have no one shoving it to her face.

The crowd kept cheering for Megumi, but there were some people who were cheering for Shizuko as well as she made her way towards the ropes. The people might see her as a humorless person who talked too much about fortune-telling and destiny, but such determination was something that people could get behind.

Vexing though it may be, Shizuko was in no position to deny the fact that Megumi was applying the armbar just as masterfully as she herself would. An astonishing feat considering that submission maneuvers were most assuredly not Megumi's specialty. At least that was an assumption Shizuko was now paying dearly for as she had her arm elongated and cranked back to an excruciating degree by her former W.A. compatriot. Her moniker of the Combat Genius not being given without it's due merit apparently as the flinching clairvoyant continued her woeful slog towards the nearby ropes, Megumi's flowing brown hair partially obscuring Shizuko's vision as she shuffled onward. A small undercurrent of applause being generated for the stoic psychic who was currently in too much pain to appreciate it fully.

"My abilities...are what will-NGH!!...what will make you see the error of your way..." Shizuko bitterly snarled out as she endured Megumi's insistence on not believing in her fated path, the clairvoyant at one point slumping down and stopping her progression as her buxom chest compressed against her canvas. The clairvoyant squirming slightly as Megumi's back fully pressed down against her own, until Shizuko would abruptly pivot her legs to the side until her foot was now clearly underneath the bottom rope. It prompted the referee to tell Megumi to break the armbar in quicker time than expected had Shizu merely crawled all the way there.

Megumi kept the pressure going, looking to weaken Shizuko with the armbar even as they were getting closer and closer towards the ropes. And then, the referee told her to let go of her opponent before she realized that Shizuko had just reached the bottom rope with her foot. Seeing that her opponent had gotten a rope break, Megumi would release her from the Fujiwara armbar, getting back up on her feet.

"So... do you feel like reading my fortune now?" Megumi asked, looking to tease Shizuko a bit as she would wait for Shizuko to get back up. She hoped that the cranking that she experienced earlier would weaken her quite significantly, but she was aware that the armbar hardly put a dent on the submission specialist.

As soon as Shizuko got herself standing back up, Megumi would ready herself, taking a stance as she would carefully observe her opponent. Knowing how deadly Shizuko was due to her submission holds, Megumi decided that she needed to make use of her speed and strikes in order to take her down. She would try to close in, looking to smash her forearm right into that busty chest of her fellow Wrestle Angels compatriot, hoping to crack her defense open for more attacks later.

When under duress from an excruciating submission, every single solitary second and inch of distance mattered. Shizuko knowing this fact most acutely as the submission specialist she was and was therefore able to nimbly manage to shorten the distance between herself and the nearby ropes by extending her leg towards the finish line rather than crawl the entire way there. After enduring so much of a searing contortion in her arm, Shizuko breathed a hefty sigh of relief as she stayed close to the ropes while tenderly massaging her afflicted limb after shuffling up to her knees.

"..." Shizuko offered no response to Megumi's taunting aside from a slight shift of her grimacing facial expression towards the wrestling prodigy, her crimson eyes glaring upward before she began steadily rising back to her feet. Considering that she was currently wrestling with one arm still in blistering discomfort and an obnoxious striker dashing straight towards her with a reared back forearm, Shizuko knew that her immediate future was looking particularly grim. But the clairvoyant knew that future was merely how it looked...not how it was meant to be. The twin-tailed psychic instinctively sidestepping towards Megumi and bending low so as to meet her half-way before wrapping her good arm behind the back of her opponent’s thigh. With a heaving groan, Shizuko would lift the combat genius onto her shoulders in a fireman's carry before using Megumi's forward momentum to help propel and chuck her over the top rope.

Truthfully, Megumi respected Shizuko as a wrestler and as a person, though she honestly believed that she should be a little less uptight. But that definitely didn't stop her from teasing the clairvoyant, and now, she aimed to break through her defense by closing in and attempting to smash her forearm into her busty chest.

But, as she got closer, when Megumi tried to swing her forearm, Shizuko sidestepped, avoiding the attack before bending low, wrapping her good arm behind the back of her thigh. "W-waah!!" Megumi let out a startled yelp when she found herself being lifted up in a fireman's carry.

Then, Shizuko's next action was something that Megumi least expected when the clairvoyant then threw her over the top rope and out of the ring. "Waaahhhhh!!!" Megumi cried out as she was thrown out before she landed on the barely-padded floor near the barricade outside the ring. "Uuurghhh!!!" The landing hurt a lot, and now she was left winded.

"Uuurghh..." Megumi shook her head as she pushed herself back up. Her entire body hurt quite a lot thanks to her landing, and as she grimaced, she looked at Shizuko with one eye as the referee started counting for the count out.

"ONE!"

If Shizuku's unexpectedly violent and quite literally, over the top, counter seemed to reek of desperation, it was probably because the clairvoyant was indeed feeling backed up against a wall. Megumi had temporarily rendered one of her arms and had left her little defensive options. While Shizu's counter may have seemed callous, it was because that as a submission specialist, you had to eventually adopt a certain cold indifference towards the well-being of your opponent if you were going to contort a submission out of them...and furthermore, Shizuku had taken all she was prepared to withstand from Megumi's mockery of the clairvoyant abilities she's had since she was a child.

The twin-tailed psychic exhaustively leaned herself against the ropes after Megumi's precipitous fall, which earned the stunted gasps of a few fans not expecting the cold-hearted counter. Shizuku took a few seconds to compose herself before laying herself down and rolling underneath the bottom ropes, then standing tall over the languishing combat genius. Once Megumi was on her hands and knees, the clairvoyant would reach down to grab onto the same arm she had been abusing this entire match by its wrist and yank it upward with her other hand grasping Megumi's fingers. "Perhaps if you simply accepted my offer to read this palm...this miserable fate would not have befallen you..." Shizuku coldly stated while slowly bending Megumi's fingers backward to an excruciating angle, bitterly glaring down at Megumi on her knees before applying one quickened and dramatic pull back on her digits before releasing her arm.

"TWO!"