Giant Steps

Zulime's brown eyes narrowed. Those brown eyes had seen a lot. Back in Louisiana, she saw revivals that would have woken the dead, and teetered on the edge of it at some points in Zulime's estimation. Back at AFW, she had seen PPVs that had burned the house down. And now she was standing in a jazz club with broken and defeated bodies littered around amongst the knocked over tables and the broken glass. There was a lot to be proud of, Zulime recognized. But as the leader of the gang bore down on her, she recognized that there was more to be done. The threat against her life was not lost on her.

Her hands dropped down, and they were low and ready. Sweat dripped down off her elbow. There were so many things that she was grateful for. The Riverboat Queen was happy that all of her attacks had worked so far, that she been able to go from man to man without getting caught in a mire and literally ganged up on. The Cajun girl was appreciative that in doing so she had not been struck to the point where she would have been halted and beaten on. Zulime was also happy that she had not stepped on the glass that now littered the floor, thanks to nothing short of divine providence guiding her footsteps. She took a deep breath. The Riverboat Queen had a deep and abiding faith that she could get through this. She just needed to pick the right spots and go for it with everything she was worth.

In that sense, it was very similar to jazz, a fact that was not lost on her as the man turned his attention to the drummer. Zulime had an opening, and she was going to throw herself through it. There was only a measure's worth of time for her to act, and Zulime did not want to waste a single beat. The drum roll came as fast as Zulime's fleet feet closing the distance between herself and the only man who remained standing. She gritted her teeth as she ducked down, easing her spin. There were many women at AFW who had longer more beautiful legs than Zulime, but there were very few who could summon the power that Zulime was calling on now when she went for a spinning kick that would come close to sending her leg through the man's stomach.

Ichijo may have had enough of the drummer, but Zulime could not have been happier with him. Ever since the brouhaha had started he had been giving her cues, as if she were still sitting on the bench in front of the piano. As she was extending the strike into the gangster's stomach, she felt cool. The Riverboat Queen probably could have had a movie about her life, and this would have been the best action scene, she reckoned.

That was, if she made it through the evening. Zulime had been surprised by them showing up at all. As she followed through with the kick, she did so with all of the power that she could. The Riverboat Queen was going to make it through this, she thought to herself. There was simply no way that she wouldn't. Especially with everything coming together as well as it was going right now.

Ichijo pretty much has seen things that were still unbelievable to him. He didn’t really want to believe what has transpired actually happened. This was something you’d see from action movies, something which he’d grow up watching. The one lone warrior taking on some thugs; despite the numerical advantage they all had, it was still never enough to defeat the hero. History has been chock full of examples like this, a one-man army taking on the numbers against him. Roy Benavidez fighting in Vietnam and saved all of his buddies while getting shot a ridiculous amount of times. A Viking, which remained unnamed, in the battle of Stamford Bridge; forcing his way through the waves of men and arrows from Saxon’s fury. Simo Hayha, a Finish sniper who killed over five hundred enemy soldiers with an old-school, iron-sighted rifle during 100 days in the Soviet invasion of 1939. Zhang Fei during the Battle of Changan held off a much larger force just by standing and yelling like a badass, making an impossible escape. Mind you, that one was just a story made up. Jack Churchill, AKA “Mad Jack” blows it out of the water. Some think it was a total joke when you hear someone fought through WW2 with only a bow and a sword. His motto was “any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed.”

It might not apply to the Louisiana native standing before him in the literal sense. But Zulime was well prepared. At least, that is what Ichijo thought. He was never a believer when it comes to spirits or anything of the supernatural. He never gave credit to forces that were beyond his control. Anything that he accomplished, he did so by his own works. But even Ichijo knew that he wouldn’t do well against several goons coming for his head. He had been down that road one too many times during his childhood, and it usually ended up with him face flat into the mud. He just had that will to keep getting up after the ass whooping. Even if he had the skill that Zulime has, he did not believe that she would have been able to get through all those guys unscathed. A little bit roughened up and dishevelled, but that was more by her own movements. A shameful display as he saw his brethren laying on the ground, separated from their consciousness. However, he swore to take up his last stand for his men and his friends. To be the guy in those stories. Nothing was all lost, the king was still there in the chessboard, and he can even take out the queen. He will not let this woman, who had handled all of his best thugs in a manner beyond belief, leave this bar without a scratch. Neither gods nor men will compel him to fall to the Cajun. Such forces will not prevail, Ichijo choosing repudiate the “music” that had been playing, the flow of all things. It might not have worked out for him the last few times, but this would be different.  He believed as such.

The drummer was beginning the beat on the snares, which Ichijo had tolerated this much. But no longer, as he shouted at the man causing such a racket. Once he was done with Zulime, Ichijo is going to throw this man through the kick drum and beat him in the head with the cymbal. Just for the fact that the drummer was making such a mockery out of the gang since they came. Stopping such foolish drumming was the first step to this, Ichijo moving on to the next step. However, before he could do so, Ichijo didn’t realize he had committed a grave sin when it came to the battlefield. Never take your eyes off your foe.

Unbeknownst to Ichijo, Zulime was already closing the distance between them in blistering speeds. In some cultures, it was dishonourable to attack an opponent who isn’t ready, but when one makes a threat on your life, there will be an exception to the rule. It would have all gone so well, there wouldn’t have been anything to be worrying about. And then Ichijo turned around and found out that was definitely not the case. The spinning kick would have been nasty if the man was ready for it if his guard had been up and his body had been in fight mode. As it was, he was distracted, relaxed, which meant that he only started to switch at the last moment, as the man saw the foot coming towards him at high speeds. Not enough time to dodge, to block, to do anything but blink. Boom. Done.

Ichijo felt his whole stomach cave under the force of Zulime’s foot, all of the muscles relenting to the power and probably could have gone through his stomach. His eyes near bugged out from its sockets, a large puff of air escaped his body, forced to expel all of it. Ichijo folded forward, near resting on the extended leg, a brief moment where his legs tried to hold him up but would eventually fail him. He went down to his knees, clutching his body, trying to get air, but it wasn’t coming in. He wheezed, coughed, hacked and spluttered. Ichijo didn’t want to feel what Keisuke had gone through, but right now he was. Right there, he had felt what all of his goons felt but only directed to the body. He honestly wished he’d pass out from this just so he didn’t feel the debilitating pain that was coursing throughout his body right now. He’d fall to his knees, his forehead touching the floor, involuntarily forced to kowtow to the Riverboat Queen.

Zulime landed gracefully. In the ring, she liked dragging her opponent to the ground and using her endless curves to smother her opponent into submission, or depriving her opponent of his or her clothes and then using her hands and feet to their fullest potential in the most amorous of ways. Tonight, she was someone different however. She had to be. There was no time to take these men out by suffocating them. Instead, she had to be a ninja, a bandit, a highway robber who hit and run in the dead of night. Up on the stage, she was under the lights. It was just her and the drummer providing entertainment for everyone else. She imagined that if everyone had stuck around, they would be equally if not more enthralled by the performance that Zulime was putting on, but she certainly understood not intentionally putting oneself into harm's way.

The Riverboat Queen, on the other hand, didn't particularly mind. She had come to Japan to wrestle, which was putting oneself in harm's way down to its very core. Sure, she had avoided hardcore matches which meant that she was not putting herself in the way of the worst excesses of violence, but there was always a distinct possibility of injuring oneself. The Cajun girl was young and full of life, so it would have been very difficult to keep her down for long. Yet she knew that those injuries could add up and have a deleterious effect over time.

What was more likely to have an overt rather than pernicious effect was getting roughed up by these up-jumped thugs, which Zulime had avoided thus far. She looked at the man in front of her. While she had not personally faced the brunt of one, she heard that kicks to the liver were among the most painful blows that one fighter could inflict upon another. While Zulime had come to the country to wrestle and fight, she had come to this bar with the understanding that she was just going to play music to her heart's content. So when she saw the man in front of her now, there was no mercy in her.

He was kneeling down, as if in prayer. Zulime's loa were not the type who were interested in prostrations and genuflections. They believed in life, in dance and song and smiles. So when she looked down upon the man who was before her, it was not with the solemn gaze of a pastor attending their flock. Instead, it was with the fiery burning eyes of the old spirits that haunted the alleyways of New Orleans, revenants of the past manifesting as vengeful ghosts.

The drummer slowed down a bit. It was fair, she thought, given how hard that he had been working. The clashing of the high hat came in four counts. Such a time signature was anathema to anyone who seriously studied jazz, as it was far more fitting of pop singers whose only interest was to get famous. There was no appreciation for the more experimental side of music, she thought. Zulime would let that go for now, because just like in those pop songs that were ever so musically naive, they were an augury of things to come. Zulime let the count get to four, just as she would let the man rise from his slumped position, before she sprang into action.

Once the man was upright but still on his knees, she would leap into the air, starting a graceful flip. At the highest point in the flip when her feet were a good few yards in the air, her strong hands would latch onto the man's shoulders. From there, she would complete her handspring. The wide arc would give the Riverboat Queen enough torque to pull the man up from the ground and toss him a long distance towards the stage. Her long dark hair whipped all around, and her silky red dress threatened to expose her to the world, but Zulime didn't really mind. The only thing that she was worried about now was sending this man flying through the air.

And afterwards, she would keep on flipping. There was no real need for it, given that all of the other members of the gang were incapacitated, but Zulime was a notorious showoff. Every time her feet landed, the drummer kicked the bass, and every time her hands landed on the ground, the high hat announced its brass to the jazz bar. The bartender just scoffed, and shook his head with a wry smile. Now was not the time for that sort of thing, given the broken glass and debris everywhere, that smile said, but Zulime knew that she was going to get away with it so she was going for it anyways.

Now, Ichijo wanted to throw up. It wouldn’t be impossible to do, the spinning kick that Zulime landed on his stomach might as well brought up what he ate for breakfast and then some. He wasn’t sure if he’d wanted what Keisuke has gotten or not, a liver shot like this was not a joke. It wasn’t the first time that he had been hit there, but unfortunately for the gang leader, it’s not something you can train to be stronger. No exercises to strengthen it. There are several soft tissue vulnerable points on the body that don’t deal well with getting hit because they have almost none of the standard protection. A person’s musculature (and ribcage) are like body armour. The more well developed it is, the better it protects your essential bits by placing a thick layer of muscle over the top. A kick to the chin, in this case, works well not because the chin is especially vulnerable but because it works like a car crash, snapping the head backwards and sending the brain slamming into the inside of the skull. It basically gives a brain the hardest jolt possible by snapping the entire head like a lever on a pivot. The skull itself is pretty tough, but the brain can’t handle being thrown around inside the skull, so any punch that really snaps the head around is a bad thing.

Both the liver and the solar plexus suffer from the fact that they’re not as well protected as they could be. While most of the organ is covered, Zulime struck the part of the liver that wasn’t protected by the ribcage and not protected by either the major chest or abdominal muscles. It’s pretty much wide open to get squished by a good kick from the right direction. This is also the approximate location of that nerve cluster, the solar plexus. The liver is an essential and squishy organ, it does not like getting punched, and unfortunately, it’s partially behind a chink in your natural armour. By comparison, the stomach and intestines are behind a solid wall of abdominal muscles that most athletes train to be pretty thick. That’s why many fighting stances start by teaching you to fight chin down and arms in front. Protect those weak spots in your armour. Boxers do actually train to strengthen the muscles protecting the region underneath the rib cage, but those muscles will never be as strong and protective as say your chest or stomach. Which is why fighters train in dodging and protecting their vulnerable area’s, you can’t solve every problem head-on.

Ichijo, however, never get that training. He might have learned to not get hit in the important squishy parts of the body, but he didn’t have the experience to take on a fighter like Zulime. This is the first time that he legitimately thought he’d shit himself. But that probably would have been more of an uglier sight than seeing his brethren laying across the floor, scattered all over the bar. His spine could have been realigned permanently, but most of his organs kept that from happening. Luckily, no messes would be found, but Ichijo couldn’t remain standing anymore. There was that initial delay, where the pain didn’t set in, mostly feeling the air escape his body.

But then came the pain. And his legs stopped working, the brain couldn’t comprehend as to why. It was so non-specific that it didn’t make sense. Ichijo felt hurt, the space around him hurt, even though it wasn’t a part of his body. It was like an out of body experience where his consciousness became aware that everything was pain. Inevitably, he curled up. He didn’t recognize he was really kowtowing to this woman, but he wasn’t in a position to do anything about it. Ichijo would rather die than to bow to her bare feet. A solid strike to the liver, one that came from the powerful legs of Zulime, is something that supersedes willpower and toughness. It could be described as a one/off switch. Nothing in this would have given him the mental strength to overcome physical paralysis.

Of course, he had the knowledge that this doesn’t last forever. This shall pass, and Ichijo will rise again. The Riverboat Queen hadn’t knocked him out for good like his cronies, and there was still a chance. His ears were pounding, but he could scantly hear the padding on the floor, something was coming closer and closer. His head was down, but the sight of Zulime’s bare feet would disappear from his vision. Only for the shoulder part of his jacket being pulled up and then yanking behind him. He couldn’t tell where Zulime has gotten the strength from, but his world would be turned upside down, the man hurled from Zulime’s flip. Something off a wire-fu flick, Ichijo landed on his back, tumbling roughly before he would find his back on the stage. Ichijo groaned as his eyes were half-lidded. He barely had the strength to move after the kick, but this took more out of him. It was horrible. Made even more so once he saw Zulime coming towards him, flipping and performing tricks. Ichijo wasn’t a man that feared anything. But the sight of Zulime barreling towards him was horrifying. He had one question in mind. Something that was scrambling around his battered brain.

“…Just…nnngh...who…are…you…?”

Zulime couldn't stop. There was a lot about her that was intuitive, learned more in her reptilian hindbrain than anything else, ways of moving. Her eyes flicked to the left and to the right whenever she entered a room, looking for easy marks and easy prey to ensure that the riverboat kept chugging along. Her body shimmied and dipped when she was up on stage like she was a bird going through an elaborate mating ritual, as she attempted to win over everyone in the crowd. Her muscles twitched, like one black bar eyeing another, ready for battle. The Riverboat Queen was aware of herself, acutely so, but even through the self awareness that she had cut out for herself she would not have been able to stop what she was doing. It was endless, it was inevitable, it was something that she knew was inimitable to her.

One flip came, then the next. Zulime was nigh upon her opponent now, and with one last graceful arc came down hard on Ichijo's stomach. A sound erupted throughout the jazz club, one that was easily mistaken for the kick of the mighty bass drum. She then ground her foot into the man's stomach as she completed her last tumble, standing upright and staying vertical for the time being. The Cajun girl was looming over the man now. A thought occurred to her, one that she found incredibly funny in a slapstick way. The foot that had just slammed into his stomach not an inch from his junk lifted from the grind. It was not much time nor distance before her bare foot was hovering above his manhood. She tapped it. It wasn't a kick, it wasn't a stomp, it wasn't anything that was meant to seriously hurt the man. But her eyebrows, which arched halfway to the heavens, demanded a response from the man.

It was a shame that he would not have the chance to give it. Zulime bent down and grabbed the man's head, and held it close to her hip. When she walked to the stage, she made sure that she avoided the glass and splinters that had littered the ground. She would afford no such luxuries to the man that she was dragging. The drummer had awoken from his acrobatic induced torpor, and was giving her a pitter patter on one of the toms that built the tension nicely. The Riverboat Queen dissipated the tension by throwing the man onto the stage, and got up there herself. She grabbed the man once more, and sat him down right next to her on the stool of the piano.

"Honey, it don't matter a lick who I am." Zulime started plucking a jaunty tune on the ivories, something that was horribly out of place for what she was about to do. "What is far more pressing, is who you are." Zulime grabbed the man by his shoulders and slammed his head against the keys. The sound that it made could only be described as horrid, but despite that Zulime had a wild smile on her face. With one hand, she kept playing, the bass notes thrumming out. When she looked down, she saw that the piano had been damaged. It was a shame, really. She liked this piano. Her hand was in his dark sweaty hair, pulling him upright again.

But she really needed to find out what was going on. "Who are you and who sent you?" Zulime seized the back of the man's head and slammed him into the piano once more. At least this time it fit into the rhythm of the song. "I will play you your favorite tune," she said with a crocodile grin, "and all you gotta do is tell me who sent you." Once more. It was probably a bad idea to make the man so woozy when she needed information out of him, but just like with the flips that she had just done there was no way that she could stop herself. She was enjoying it too much.

Ichijo found himself regretting thoroughly on not focusing on the real threat in front of him. The hard blow that landed onto his stomach was unlike anything he had felt before, and he was close to throwing up the food he just had earlier before storming the joint. In his mind, it was justified to be focusing on the drummer, the person seemingly operating like the puppeteer. Pulling strings and directing Zulime’s body around the many goons that lay on the dirty floor beneath them. It wouldn’t be so far-fetched that there is some force out there controlling their every move, but the more this goes on, the more he was inclined to believe it. Seeing is believing after all, and while Zulime is not considered the most devout and religious character, there was at least proof such forces are out there. There are many gods out there, just turns out the one she serves so happens to be in the bar at that very moment. Everything fell into place well enough, and Ichijo hated that it’s like this for the Riverboat Queen. It wasn’t as if he had planned to kill the woman, but as things have gotten out of control, he got desperate to end things, no matter what. That was the third mistake he did. The second was thinking he and his crew had a chance fighting her. The first was actually stepping foot in this accursed place.

As a leader, he should have been leading by example, keeping his eyes on the prize and making sure there wasn’t anything or anyone that could upend this plan. Although he has his frustrations with the fellow brethren, Ichijo knew they weren’t the only problem here. He lost control of the situation and ended up getting stuck by Zulime’s barefoot. The same foot that ended up crashing onto his stomach again. One would think that he’d throw up this time, but air mostly came out instead. That and a hoarse cry emitted. Ichijo’s body jerked up violently in the air soon as Zulime stuck the landing before he rested on the stage wall. From there, Ichijo found out that air wasn’t the only thing that left his body. His energy went also. The reptilian hindbrain just resided in defeat, the shards of his will be left on the ground under him. His eyes closed, but not one of peace, shut tightly to ignore the pain that was washing all over him. Ichijo was more focused on getting more breaths in, haggard as they are, that he completely missed the taunting tap of Zulime’s foot. It wasn’t hard enough for him to bring notice, he focused on breathing. Just staying alive. And just want all of this to end.

Sadly, that wouldn’t be the case, as the Cajun wasn’t done with him yet. Which was horrifying to think about. After all of this, striking all of his men down like the warrior she is, Zulime still wanted more. Such a petrifying thought pacified him enough that he was going to comply. Somewhere in his brain probably didn’t want to resist anymore, as if that was the reason why things have gone the way it was. Which isn’t far from the truth, to be honest. He was more amazed that she still had the strength to hoist him up to the stage, his body rolling some distance before stopping. And that is where he saw Keisuke, still recovering from that takedown. His croaky voice was trying to make out something, but he wouldn’t get the chance to make it clear before getting dragged again by the Riverboat Queen.

He couldn’t tell how long it must have been since he has been in this position, sitting in a stool like this in front of a piano. Probably around four or five when his mother wanted him to try out the instrument. He was always musically inclined, just not into stuff like Tchaikovsky, Bach, Mendelssohn, Dvorak or Sibelius. Most definitely wouldn’t be the next Paganini. Still, it was so long ago that he could barely remember it. If only he had something to jog his memory…

*BANG* Yep, that would do it.

The sound that was created was akin to a toddler hitting random notes for fun, without any sort of skill or idea. Pretty much how he was playing as a child. That hurt, the combination of his face and the white/black keys isn’t fun at all. Then again, this was better than being kicked by her legs. With that fleeting moment, he was at peace with the world. Ichijo was woozy, really woozy. And it didn’t make sense for someone to be slamming one’s face to the piano to talk, especially after what has happened. The only way he was able to keep upright at the moment was because of the grip Zulime has on his hair. He felt his scalp burning, the roots of his hair threatening to be pulled away. Another slam came straight after. And then another. Each one had flashes of the man’s face before his very eyes. That smirk when he shook his hand. Did that bastard set him up for this? There’s no way he and his crew would be having this much trouble if it wasn’t. And yet…

“Ghhh…Why…bother…” Ichijo groaned out, his head still pressed on the keys, annoyed by the irritating din of the messy chords. “I bet…you…were…cahoots…set us…up. I be...believed him…wanted revenge…said you humiliate him bad…but….but that is….bullshit…” His eyes turned to the side of Zulime. “Isn’t it...?”

Zulime tried to look like she was having fun. On some level, she really, really was. As she tore through her assailants like a hot knife through butter, she felt like an avenging angel laying waste to a city of sinners on the plain. The Riverboat Queen, however, also knew that if someone was willing to do something like this, they were more than likely to want to do it again. And the best way to do that was to pre-empt the next one coming, and get them before they got her. So the the look on her face was a positive one, but on the inside she was burning with desire to find out who was after her. The Cajun girl's mouth had a smile on it as she flittered with the ivories, finding melodies despite the dissonance that she had just produced by banging the man's head against the grand piano.

He didn't say it. Well, that wasn't entirely true. There was a clear subtext there that could not be denied. Zulime had only faced a few men in her life, and there were even fewer that she could say that she humiliated. The music stopped. Her fist curled into a ball, and even the pretense of the carefree look on her face faded into a look of hard anger. The dark skin on her face faded into something more and more resembling the look that someone might give another on the battlefield. When Zulime went against Pierre, she thought it was to settle a score. But as it turned out, Pierre still wanted to continue.

Silence permeated the room. There was no drums, no piano, no words from the bartender. They did not realize the gravity of what had just happened, but Zulime did, more than anyone else ever could. This seemed just beyond the pale to her. If you had a problem in the ring, she thought, then perhaps one ought to at least attempt to solve their problems in the ring. Sending armed thugs at her was something that required an answer. She would find something that would be suitable for Pierre, the arch asshole who dared come into her gym and disturb her workout and molest her to being this whole charade.

But first, she had to take care of the guy in front of her. "It's a lot of bullshit, suga', but not on the level that you think." Zulime sent his head down one more time, just to ensure that he was nice and compliant when she went through with her next move. She grabbed his head and stood him up right alongside him just a second later. The man was fairly well out of it, and Zulime wanted to make sure that she pulled this off well. It may have been totally meaningless to the man, but it was something that had a deep spiritual significance to her. It was almost like a ritual, to her. Her foot raised up and graced the man's head, the same foot that had disgraced Pierre so immensely that he decided to send armed thugs at her.

Then she moved into action. She spun around with the ease of a ballerina and smashed her ankle into the side of the man's head. Once more, she spun, this time bringing in even more force with the kick. Another circle came and with it the most powerful kick yet. And from there, with her back facing her opponent, she jumped in the air and went rear first into him, hoping to land with her butt on the man's face, causing the man to topple over with even more impact at the bitter end.

With how groggy he was, what would come out of his mouth wouldn’t entirely make a whole lot of sense to Zulime. At least not in the way that she wanted to hear. Ichijo felt as if he was in interrogation, with Zulime playing the bad cop of sorts. It was just like what he’d see on those crime drama shows, only that his head wasn’t being banged on the table, but on a piano of all things. Getting roughed up by someone who’s supposed to be upholding the law isn’t so uncommon in these shows. It would make more sense if the Cajun had handcuffs underneath that dress of hers. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she was some undercover cop just busting out gangs before they even start. That would make sense in a land of make-believe. To be fair, his head has been bashed in many times, and he just had his stomach caved in by her foot. He wasn’t in the right state of mind to be answering questions like this

But frustration seeped into his mind, considering how things went all wrong since they stepped foot in this establishment. Just seeing the Riverboat Queen tearing through her brethren like a hot knife through butter, her legs and feet striking and bringing pain unlike any other. The way she taunted them with words and actions when she was chilling on the table. All the meanwhile his brother from another mother got choked out near to death. Ichijo doubted that this man needed Zulime taking out if she’s able to handle all of his crew. He had to be on this, let her know about them coming. Like lambs to the slaughter, sent to the abattoir to bring his sick enjoyment. Though that is his interpretation of the whole mess. Which was far from the truth. So far, and he was in on it from the beginning.

Zulime would manage to make sense out of the nonsensical. With how much Ichijo did say, or didn’t say, there was enough to bring two and two together. Even though Zulime was stated to be a wrestler in AFW, she hasn’t had a lot of fights with men so she can easily deduct who this person was. At the very least, Ichijo can say that he didn’t say anything if Pierre managed to come for him. He hasn’t told his name but gave out breadcrumbs to find out the truth. That was just as bad, however, but he was angry, lashing out, enraged and throwing a tantrum. It was supposed to be his crew’s ascension. But instead, they couldn’t get off the ground to start. This was the sole reason he took this gig. And it is all in tatters, just like the broken glass and wood on the floor. The silence allowed him to recognized that he might have made a mistake saying all of this. Because the chances of him walking out of this place were slim.

Evident by another slam to the piano, making an obnoxious din to abruptly cut the silence. At the very least, Ichijo would manage to move away from the piano, his head was thumping with a massive headache. Despite this, he was able to stand, just as Zulime wanted. All along the way to the stage, he wondered what was next. Pain and more pain was his future. But for so long, he had only taken her kicks to his body. Unlike his brethren, her feet found their heads to send them into La La Land. A slight she was going to correct.

Ichijo would find the Riverboat Queen’s foot graced near his head. He stared at it, from the sole to the heel to the pearly-white lacquered nails. His mind remembered from what Pierre told him about it, humiliating him that night. He did actually see that match before he’d go for that gig. Noticed how the Cajun brought him down like how he described. In a sick kind of way that enjoyed his suffering, he thought that this would be easy. But this was the same foot that took down Pierre, and this was the same foot that struck down his brothers. His friends. His hopes and dreams.

And they would be used to bring his own end as the Louisianan woman whipped her body around, striking him with the first crescent kick. Just that alone was enough to nearly send him unconscious, but the Cajun continued to spin round with the grace of a ballerina, the second strike hitting with the force of an alligator. That same leg turned round, striking his side, which was already sore as it is. But Zulime kept whirling and kicking, never stopping in a violent maelstrom of vengeance and fury. When one kick knocked him out of consciousness, the other brought him back to reality, a twisted way of torture. At that point, Ichijo wanted this to stop. Wanting this nightmare to end. Zulime wouldn’t see, but tears welled up in his eyes in pain. Eventually, the end did come, just in the form of her large posterior landing straight to the moneymaker. The impact of Zulime’s rear slamming into his ugly visage caused her ass to jiggle mightly. But it had also caused him to fly backwards. His feet left the stage floor, soon his body was sent out of the stage at such a distance. Ichijo wished he was out way before his body crashed onto the last of the furniture and tables, landing in the middle of the room with his brothers in arms. His eyes were glassy, ultimately looking at the ceiling above them and the knife he had stuck there. “シスター...ヘルプ...” He whispered hoarsely, almost pathetically before his body slumped into the sea of unconsciousness, joining his brethren. But also leaving Keisuke alone.

Zulime didn't get to pull out that move as much as she wanted. She won most of her matches, to be fair, but quite a few of the matches that AFW threw at her were of the hentai sort. And that move was to finish wrestlers who were trying to pin or submit her. As she looked down at that man, she reckoned that he was not worth shaming the same way that she would try to make any man or woman who entered the ring against her cum. Zulime had been blessed with the art of amorousness, a skill that won her many favors while she was in the ring. That fact made her smile. She wondered if some day these men would happen across a website that had her face plastered all over it.

She hoped that these men would remember her, and the hell that she wrought all over them, for the rest of her lives. They had come to her in the hopes of doing serious damage to her, and now she had annihilated them all. She wondered if the shame would be carried with them for the rest of their lives. Zulime knew that for her part, this would be a funny story that she told at cocktail parties. As she considered the man on the ground, she thought about what she had done. After devastating all of them, perhaps she ought to feel a touch of guilt, but she didn't. They had come at her, to her holy place, with broken glass and fire burning in her heart.

And now they were all littering the ground. Zulime got what she wanted out of the evening. She paused for a second to scan the room. There were upturned tables everywhere, amidst the broken glass and blood. This was her place, where she had been for every week for who only knows how long. And now it was a wreck. She waved to catch the attention of the bartender, and then signed an imaginary check in the air. The bartender nodded. The mutual understanding was there. It wasn't really Zulime's fault that someone showed up to attack her, but it was the classy move to be willing to pay for the damage she caused.

Zulime collected her shoes and doffed an imaginary cap at the drummer. She didn't know if he was playing to her beat, or she was playing to his. Or they both tapped into something more universal, something that permeated this place like the ether that flows through everyone. Whatever the case was, she was happy to have him there. He played her out as she walked off the stage. For a second, she stopped and smoothed down her silky dress to make it look nice and neat for the walk outside. She put her shoes on, trying to impress absolutely no one in the jazz club.

When she looked back at the jazz club as she was at the door, she thought about everything that happened tonight. The look on her face wavered between a smile and a frown a few times as various emotions slammed into her. Happy because she was still standing. Sad because of the damage. Satisfied because she got a good little fight in there. She opened the door and exited, her mind already turning to which bottle of wine she would summon up from her cabinet to help her unwind.