Bashira Matsumoto vs. Masuyo Ai - Food Wars

Bashira kept her intensified vision locked squarely on the soon to be flattened ramen shop waitress and nothing else, motioning forward with every blocked jab in the hopes of keeping Masuyo distracted enough not to be aware of her surroundings until it was too late. The Bear-Woman tossed in some purposefully antagonizing shit-talking to boot...all a part of her plan to get this bitch seeing red and make a stupid mistake as a result. Bashira was a master at throwing her weight around in all regards, not to mention the fattened padding that could take whatever strikes this scrawny puke could dish out and than some...

...but where Bashira may have the Beast outclassed in terms of power and endurance, Masuyo had her own trump card. That irritatingly nimble agility of hers that saved her ass from the earlier corner trapping. One of Bash's jabs whiffing completely and offering the Ramen waitress all the time in the world to sneak in the jarring uppercut that had her ursine foe head whipped upward briefly with a chubby thwacking sound. One that hit right on the money and had Bash backpedaling drunkenly with a blubbering shake of her head and an obviously slackened defensive posture. Chinks in her armor beginning to widen into chiseled cracks as Bash was reeling and staggered.


 ,

She's big but she's slow. She's big but she's slow. She's big but she's slow.

Masuyo wouldn't say that she was ever intimidated by just anyone. If anything, fierce foes were just the kind she longed to meet in MMA. These days they came few and far between, mostly just prizefighters looking for money and an easy way to get a name for themselves. None of the passion and spirit that she saw on a daily basis from AFW.

That being said, she didn't like ending up in a hospital bed. Respect was a two-way street and it was beyond clear that she and Bash had run clean out either way. If this beast wanted to hurt her, she would hurt her. That was mainly why she was going with the pretty rare "keep away" strategy. Rare for her, at least. But she could only do it for so long. There was a time when she would need to bring the fight to her.

Better sooner than later.

She struck gold and sent Bash reeling in a gorgeous display of fist-to-face that left the audience in hoops and hollers for tonight's clear underdog. But she wasn't done just yet. The MMA maven squared her shoulders and watched as the ursine woman stumbled back. With a quick breath, Masuyo lunged and leaped forward, shooting a flying knee square into Bash's button nose.

One booming meeting between Bashira's chubby face and Masuyo's rocketing right hand was all it took to breathe new life into the Demon waitress' chances of walking away from this match with a victory, when most avid wrestling betters didn't like her chances of walking away from this match period. But now there were renewed believers everywhere, all cheering and sounding off in their support of the clear underdog in this backlot brawl suddenly taking it right back to the rotund bid dawg. Bashira floundering backward with stark-wide eyes and rapid blinking to try and get a handle on her out of focus vision right before getting served a knee strike right below her chin

"Bpbpbpbp..." Bashira's lips babbled flapping sounds as the Bear-woman wobbled backward a few more steps with a slight wheeling of her arms around in a seemingly losing effort to keep her unsteady balance...and yet miraculously, the massive wall of fattened muscle somehow remained upright. An astonishing feat all its own, but one that was obviously unlikely to be repeated given how tottering Bashira's posture was and how she'd apparently abandoned all pretenses to a defensive stance given that her arms her wide and to her sides. One more killing blow was looking like all that was separating Bash's massive frame with the ring canvas below...

"Damnnnnn son!"

Masuyo agreed...if she knew at all what that meant. But that pop was just one if many that the audience was more than happy to feed her after her knee strike landed flush. She couldn't see it herself but she'd watched enough replays of her MMA fights to know the kind of face Bashira was making right now. Glassy eyes, loose lips, and a

Masuyo came down on one knee, satisfied with the results and how well she was keeping this ursine foe at bay. How you started the fight was almost as important as how you finished. Now if only she would…”...just fall over already.”

No can do, it looked like. Bash was reeling and nearly gone, but it wasn't quite enough to get her bear-sized target off its hind legs. Maybe it was that rotund belly keeping her upright. All the excess weight may have had more uses than just soaking up damage. She made sure to note that and run it by Gin for the future. Well, if going high wouldn’t work…

Masuyo sprung forward and came in low on her oversized opponent. Her hands reached out in the middle of her duck to grab a leg out from under the bear. If she could yank it out, it would make an opening to sweep the other foot and dump her plus-sized bully on her back.

Woefully teetering about upon being doled out several knuckle sandwiches, of which were her least favorite kind, Bashira somehow managed to stay vertical despite the wishes of those in the audience pulling for the plucky MMA maven having fought smart up until this point in the match. A veritable David and Goliath style matchup was on display and earned Masuyo some of that dark horse momentum, even if the Goliath in this analogy was one of prodigious girth instead of massive height. The size-discrepancy nevertheless was on full display and made it all the more tragic when Masu's last offensive volley didn't fell the giant.

Some partial credit could be afforded towards Bashira, who'd somehow managed to be battered about by wild haymakers and yet still remained partially vertical. The partial stemming from the Bear-Woman seemingly about to topple over given her drunken wobbliness and far-off look in her eyes. Bash realizing something had clamped onto her leg but was of no sound mind to formulate any other thoughts as it appeared she'd finally become robbed of her balance and take a timbering collapse that was assured to make the ring quake upon impact...although several hearts would sink when her pony-tailed shadow would be cast over Masu as she plummeted...

Was it with Arisa in the third round after that spinning backfist, or with Izumi in the first in the semifinals? Even with the long list of matches she was sure existed from her previous career, every moment still lingered vividly like a lapping film reel in Masuyo’s head. It just took the right circumstances to recall them properly, as if they were etched into the bone and muscle as much as the mind. Just now she was recalling when that same knee strike had won her first rookie title. The other girl was out before she even hit the ground.

Shizuo got everyone at school to start calling her “Tiger” after that. Man, that made her second-year sooo embarassing.

That was also what was making the fact that Bashira was still standing about as demoralizing as it was annoying. Masuyo knew she wasn’t getting weaker and that she wasn’t off. She knew Bash was going to be a tough opponent but she was still human at the end of the day...she was pretty sure. There was a cap to the amount of damage this woman could take and the Demon was keen to find it as quickly as possible before things turned around on her.

So was she slightly desperate when she went for the leg takedown on such a large opponent? Sure. Did that mean she meant to have Bashira come tumbling down on top of her? Not at all, but that was what happened.

She went to leap back to try and avoid the collision coming her way, but it was too little too late with her mind so focused on the attack. Her eyes went wide as all three hundred pounds of ursine bulk crashed down on her from the waist down, forcing the air from her lungs as the body. Her head reeled back to the ceiling, gasping for a few wisps of air as she pushed against the bully’s shoulders to try and wiggle free. This was not where she’d thought she’d be. Not this soon.

Awash in her punch-drunk stupor, Bashira began showcasing further signs of wavering instability once Masuyo decided that cutting the legs out from underneath someone was better served as a somewhat literal interpretation rather than as a metaphor. Not many positive attributes could be assigned to Bash, but being pig-headed and obstinate came in damn useful when refusing to succumb to consciousnesses-rattling knee strikes. Even those who were rooting against the boorish thicc girl couldn't help but be astonished by her capacity to take Masuyo's ruthless blows and not already be counting the roof-lights above. A woman her "petite" size having become far more accustomed to just straight taking the hits rather than dodging them because of...well, obvious reasons, and this meant having the endurance factor of a bull-headed rhinoceros with about the brain capacity to match. Although the MMA maven was far less astounded...and more likely desperate to get this bullying lunch snatcher off of her feet already.

A swooping thump of a sound jostling Bashira awake like being rolled out of bed by an upheaved mattress. She poked her head up and immediately started massaging her jawline while scoping out her surroundings and wondering why their was all of this squirming and fidgeting beneath her. It felt like that one time she sat on the couch and by accident the family dog, who wriggled herself free before sprinting off and eventually running away from home some time later. Bash recognized those jet-black locks anywhere, and the situation became crystal clear in one seething snarl. She'd pitch an arm backward and start wailing down on Masuyo's head with whopping haymakers, all while remaining straddled atop her lower lumbar like a three hundred pound beast of burden. "The fuck you gonna do now huh?!...Cheapshotin skank..." Bash uttered while arising herself and thuggishly slapping her head to goad and irritate the maven into perhaps being too blind in her rage to notice the bully standing beside her for an attempted leaping leg-drop.

Maybe this is what being a lumberjack was like. Years ago she went on a delivery run to their local brewery and the path took her through a sugi forest. For a moment it was hard to believe that those same soaring and majestic monuments of time were the same floorboards that supported her feet in the restaurant, that kept their walls sturdy in the stormy season. Under the sunlight they reached so high it wasn’t hard to think their branches brushed the clouds so near to Earth. Whenever the wind swept over her as she walked, for the smallest instant as she watched those mighty cedars listing to one side, she felt as though the power of the divine were looming over. The weight of hundreds of centuries poised to crush her in an instant.

It was an awe-inspiring thing to walk beneath giants and lose yourself amongst their shade, not sparing a thought towards the return home. A very humbling experience.

That was not what Masuyo would call this. Nowhere near it. Being under folds upon folds of dense flubber would have been bad by itself if it weren’t for the beast waking up. A more optimistic part of Masuyo hoped Bash wouldn’t be in too bad of a mood when she came to. Maybe just a little groggy from the impact and maybe she could maybe use that as a chance to maybe escape. Nope.

The fists started coming down just in time for Masuyo to tuck her arms close and get her head down behind a haphazard guard. With literally anyone else that would have given her plenty of space to think and maneuver, with Bash it was the absolute minimum she needed to do to survive. One wild swing after another clapped and sunk into her with unforgiving power. Beneath the giant’s body she was smacked and mauled left and right like fresh food. It was just too hectic for her to do anything about it other than enduring and hoping she tired herself out soon.

She could take the blows. She could take it taunting and mean words. Even the smell. Masuyo could not take a three-hundred-pound leg drop, but that was what she got. That oak fell hard, a battering ram right at the front gate. The MMA maven could almost feel her arms bend in the split-second before that cleaving force crushed her head and slammed the back of her skull into the canvas, rebounding like a deflated doll. Her arms fell to the sides of her head and there was little more than a low, pained groan to fill the air.

What may have been worth mentioning to Masuyo in the days before this matchup, and may have "accidentally" been omitted from Bashira's selective memory at the time, was that she was no stranger to squaring off with MMA practitioners in the past. She didn't wear these padded gloves for her own sense of fashion, you know? The octagon was where she honed some of her striking prowess as a matter of fact. And while she was knocking around some skulls there, she could even say that she mastered her own personal fighting style which garnered her a win streak once upon a time. MMA ring veterans would liken it to watching a three-hundred pound freight train barreling forward and tanking through whatever strikes get pelted at her so long as she gets within arm's reach. Not exactly an ingenious step forward in terms of the technical stratagem that comes into the sport, but it got Bash to do exactly what her name implies.

So she was no stranger to getting her bell rung like it was the last day of school if it meant getting to where she needed to be. It was all in service of gettin down to brawling business, and currently, business was popping. Slugging lefts and rights being sledged downward with the same ferocity that was being levied back when the ramen waitress was cornered against the ring turnbuckle, except this time she couldn't go runnin away like the yellow-belied chickenshit Bashira had henceforth deemed her to be. All of Masuyo's shielded cover-ups prevented the Bear-Woman from getting clean connections to this raven-haired mofo's ugly ass face. But enough of that battering eventually got her to lower her guard and ensure she'd take the full underside of Bashira's chubby thigh in the leg drop, slamming downward and and burying her head beneath it's flab as a referee attempted to go for a pin count, but was interrupted by Bash herself hauling her rotund mass up to her feet.

"...*pant*...Nah, see...fun's just gettin started, right Noodle Princess? Whatsay after all this is over you go back in the fuckin kitchen and make some more ramen, huh?!" Bashria's colorful dialoguing would not be impeded as she clamped onto Masuyo's hair, a disrespectful act among many tonight. And one she delighted in wrenching in while guiding the forlorn waitress back to her feet and into the slogging waltz back towards one of the corner turnbuckles. The Bear-Woman's ponytail jostling from side to side in waddling stroll that was anything but speedy, but to keep Masu placated once arriving at the padded corner she'd reel back and wallop the waitress in the forehead with a quick but stunning headbutt. If she wasn't yet seeing stars, she might be seeing something much more ominous as in one deft launch of a heave, Bash would attempt to Beil Throw Masu clear across the ring with a bellowing roar.

If it weren’t for what was left of her eyesight, she would have been convinced that Bash just smashed a rock against her forehead. It would have been far from an unfamiliar feeling, but not any less comforting. It threw her for a loop beyond belief, sending the MMA girl into an instant daze just in time for her flight to the other side of the ring. Her lack of awareness as she soared through the air meant even more pain was going to be waiting for her at the bottom, and that’s what came in a violent crash as her back hit the floor hard enough to bounce her a few solid inches from the floor.

Many eyes in the audience couldn't help but avert their gaze in the same instant, just barley sparing themselves from the more heinous angles of tonight's underdog being battered and thrown like a human chew toy. When they looked back they expected to see a girl in agony. A fighter on the backpedal, desperate to regain some semblance of composure.

But a good number of them knew what the name Masuyo Ai meant. She'd proved it at Summer Splash, she'd proved it with Kyoko Akan, and she'd prove it again here. The MMA maven had already rolled onto her chest, slapping two hands to the ground as her forehead dug into the canvas. She tucked her legs in and pushed, fighting a slow but steady rise to one knee before she pushed up again and stumbled her way onto two feet. From a distance she looked weak, her face masked in the raven shade of her bangs. But from behind them gleamed a pair of eyes steeled with resolve, shining bright as she whipped her head upright with a fierce scowl at her ursine adversary.

“That...all you got?!” Masuyo clenched a defiant fist in front of her, swelling with energy in the center of her palm. “I can take ten times more than that. I train every single day!”