Like a House on Fire

She and Rei used to talk like this a lot. The only difference is that back then the two of them weren’t sharing the same bed. Bunk beds had been a mutual dream of theirs. One of the few they could actually make possible together.

Everything the Okiwanan told her was simply realities in her head that part of her never honestly wanted to confront. She knew there was no point in living in the past. She came into AFW with no regrets about herself nor the path that led her into the same ring where she and Blade reunited. But knowing wasn’t quite the same as believing, like Toshimi once told her after a particularly long and pitiful attempt to resist her killer crossface. Certain things just couldn’t be changed, no matter how hard she fought to keep them the same. But those memories would be enough. She thought.

Blade’s gentle touch took a weight off her shoulders. The German girl let out a gasp and glanced at the woman at her side who looked back with comforting eyes. For the first time in hours, she felt herself start to smile.

“H-hey!” What the heck? In a flash, Chizuru was back in the wrestling ring and the countdown had almost zipped right past her. All of sudden the two of them weren’t about to doze off into a dreary sleep. They were in the middle of a high-stakes match for the ultimate bragging rights. The championship match for the ages! The German girl’s heart set ablaze as she reeled back and kicked her legs out, breaking the pin in a split second. Chizuru quickly rolled away from the Okinawan’s grasp and came up to her knees at the foot of the bed. The auburn-haired wrestler raised her hands defensively as she leaned in and stared Blade down.

“Yeah right! You’re not beating me twice!” Chizuru laughed. She lunged forward and went to clasp hands together with her roommate. The gunmetal aerialist could outmaneuver her in more ways than Chizu could likely count on twenty hands, but she wasn’t going to be toppled over that easily.

Ever since grade-school, Blade started hesitating when it came around to asking her Father what her Mother was like. The Okinawan was far too young to recollect anything more than a muddled mental picture of someone smiling down at her with a heavenly hue around her, but her Pop's tended to become somewhat sullen whenever she broached the subject. A reaction that always made an imprint on Blade considering how much she'd grown to idolize her Father as a strong-willed lionheart. But one constant detail about her that he'd always recollect was how she always seemed to know just what to say when it came to assuaging someone's worries, guiding them when they felt lost, or alleviating the weight of the world off their shoulders. Blade never thought herself capable of doin anythin like that...but, on rare occasions, something would just take over for her. Like she was on autopilot or something.

Friends thanking her for words that she didn't even know she had in her. Dad mentioning that she was more like her Mom with every passing day. Blade...still didn't know about all that. But she did know that being unapologetically truthful to Chizuru, while painting their future as capable of becoming just as bright as their past, appeared to be just what the Doctor ordered. The shining smile on Chizu's beaming face instilled within Blade hope anew. They might just end up making this work out for them after all...but for now the Aerial Artist was far more concerned with becoming Pillow-weight Champion Of The World!!!Blade sucking her teeth while snapping her fingers in crestfallen disappointment from being robbed of the title, undauntedly locking hands with Chizu while on her knees. "Nyu-uh!!! Yer the one whose gonna be countin those roof-lights!!!" Blade gloated, but was becoming gradually overpowered and ushered backward until the Okinawan was practically limboing backward, arms quivering in wincing strain before flopping backward with Chizu straddled atop her!!!

"Aww, come on!!! That's no fair!!! Yer strong as an ox, how am I suppose to get out of that one??!!" Blade laughing exclaimed, smiling brightly in spite of coming up short in the test of the strength.

Chizuru wanted to be as strong as her dad one day. He was the strongest person she had ever known and she didn’t mean that only in the physical sense. For so long he was the pillar that held up her entire world. Whether it meant staying up through the night to help her with her math homework that she’d left to the last minute as usual with the threat of mandatory remedial classes looming with the break of dawn. Whether he had to lift a telephone clean out of the concrete sidewalk and carry it across the street over the neighbor’s fence to help their cat out of a tree. Whether it just meant being there for dinner every Friday with his daughter’s favorite of currywurst and fries.

Not once in her life had Chizuru ever seen him shed a tear. No matter what he lost, or how much hurt he had to suffer. A baby like her could never be someone like that. In hindsight, maybe she had always just been clinging to a childish, idealized version of herself.

It took someone as strong as Blade to help her realize just how wrong she was. The past was over, but the future was uncertain and rife with potential. For a while, that scared her. Facing the unknown and everything that would come after Wrestle Angels was something she had never given any thought to. It was such a given that she had to be reminded of it. To realize that she didn't have to walk that path alone.

At that moment, Chizuru was happy to have met Blade Uehara. She wanted to show that burning heart to her roommate. To know that she didn't make a mistake. Her inhuman strength seemed to double as she forced Blade to the sheets. Chizuru threw a leg over and straddled her waist, keeping her pinned as she bucked beneath her.

“It’s not that bad!” Chizuru let out a laugh of her own that rumbled between their mingling bodies. A smile peered through her auburn bangs as she slid her legs back and leaned forward. She looked at the Okinawan with an appreciation she hadn’t shown enough to the world in the days gone by. "Don't be silly! You’re a lot stronger than you think. It’s just one of the many things that makes you an incredible wrestler.”

The adoration glowed on her face with cheeks flushed a faint red tinge. It was so embarrassing for her. To be seen this vulnerable in a place so private. She felt determined to show Blade her best. Her everything. The German-Suplex wrestler linked their fingers together and closed their palms tight. Chizuru looked her roommate directly in the eye as she pushed into the effort, pressing her chest down and shutting the space between their battle-trained bodies. The pink lips of her smug smile seemed to draw closer to the Okianwan’s face with a sweat-beaten brow and the look of a rare passion.

“I think you’ll always be amazing to me, Blade.”

Blade tended to ruminate on just what life would have been like if she'd had a sibling, the obvious benefits to her as a rambunctious scamp in her childhood years were general horseplay and someone to blame broken vases on. She might have fallen in love with wrestling at a far younger age if she'd had some to put in sharpshooters and stage mock wrestling matches with in their bedroom. But now that she thought about it, with years of adulthood and hindsight to aid in her judgment, Blade would have actually just appreciated the chance to mentor, support, and guide someone like her Father did for her. Perhaps it was just more of her mothering nature welling up from within, or just a way to pay the universe back for blessing her with the doting Dad she had. Regardless of the reason, she was thankful for it. Because it lead her to this specific moment in time, when all of reality's hardships and burdens melted away, and with someone she couldn't be happier to share that moment with.

Horseplay 101 dictated that Blade give it her all for the sake of honorable sportsmanship and in order to claim the imaginary championship she'd have to discuss creating with Chizuru later on. Preferably with construction paper, markers, and a decent knowledge of basic arts and crafts. However, despite struggling mightily with fervent determination, the test of strength against the daughter of a veritable Goliath went about as expected. Blade's arm's quivering in the seconds before she was ultimately overtaken and dominantly mounted by the German Suplexer and her adorable might. The Okinawan yelping playfully and giggling like a schoolgirl upon being ushered back down to the bed, not quite remembering the last time she'd actually had fun when losing a wrestling match. Fidgeting and bucking about to no avail...but settling down once overhearing the words from above, and opening her eyes to the heavenly smile above.

At first balking somewhat from the flattery, but nevertheless entranced through half-lidded eyes as Chizuru closed the gap between them until their breadbaskets flattened against the other. An intertwining of their legs to the squished bloom of their breasts, which perhaps made Blade's pattering heartbeat noticeable to her Auburn-haired crush. The admiration in Chizuru's eyes was reflected right back with a scarlet hue of her own. Tasting the warmth of eachother's breath as Blade's grip on their hands tightened from their soft lips beginning to be brought together, subconsciously yearning so. This was everything Blade could have ever wanted. She, was. "Chizu...I...You know...You're more than just a Wrestle Angel, to me. You're...well, umm...you're my angel..." Blade whispered to a hushed tone and the flicked softness of their lips faintest touch. "Chizuru...I...I think I’m-


"THE PHONE!!!" Reality fracturing the romantic sentimentality of the moment via the ringing of the bedside phone. Blade jolting out of her fantasy with far too much impetus however. Thrusting herself upward to an unintentional clonking of their foreheads that put Blade put in a dazed stupor, and with a sound that was akin to two coconuts being bonked together!!!

Tomorrow, Chizuru would think back on this night with bemusement and a slight sense of nostalgia.

She would think of how silly it was that she had even doubted herself in the first place. She would remember the melancholy of the hours spent packing her entire room's worth of childhood memories into tiny cardboard boxes. She would recall the anxiety she felt as Blade loaded the last box into the back of her car and they crossed the point of no return. She would think on all those doubts and regrets and watch them flow carelessly down the drain in her morning shower.

Tomorrow, she would smile at the cool tiles beneath her feet from the sound of Blade's voice in the back of her mind. In brief flashes, she would see the Okinawan's smile and feel her profound kindness in every word. The memories of longing, regret, and pillows would be the only thoughts in her mind at that moment. Afterward, she would turn off the shower, grab her towel, check her face, and leave to dress and have a bowl of sugary cereal at a half-clean dinner table.

Tomorrow, she would look her roommate in the eye, and with genteel blue eyes "I love you, Kyouko Ueh-"

BONK!

Chizuru’s head snapped back as the Okinawan’s thick skull collided with her own. The sound of cracking coconuts bounced off the walls. Chizuru’s eyes rolled back into the back of her head. Her eyes were overcome by a field of flickering stars before her body finally slackened and fell flat across Blade.

Behind her closed eyelids, Chizuru snored an inch away from Blade’s face. Oddly peacefully at that considering the way she went out. In the waning twilight of the day peeking through their window, Blade’s roommate slipped into a deep slumber.

Tomorrow, Chizuru will remember absolutely nothing.

"WasSUP, this is yer resident Aerial Assassin here, Blade Goddamn Uehara, lettin you know that the star of the show is not in at the moment, so speak at the beep. And watch out from above~..."


"HELLO KYOUKO!!! You there??!! It's me, POP-POP!!! Hope I didn't catch you at a bad time again. I remember last time I called, you said you'd just stepped out the shower and you slipped and fell on your tookus getting to the phone. Crossin my fingers you didn't hurt yourself again this time...Oh!!! But anyway, I just got home from work and wanted to know how the BIIIIG Move went, HAHA!!! You had butterflies in your stomach all week about it, so here's hopin everything worked out for Daddy's Little Girl. Can't wait to meet your new roomie and give her a Big Ol' Bearhug, HAHA!!!! Alright bye bye for now, and you call yer POP back, ya here!!!"