Chika Igarashi

The only thing that anyone could recall from Chika’s infancy is her being found at a doorstep to an orphanage in Tokyo in a crib, with only a simple note attached to it, reading “Chika. She is your problem now.”

The orphanage kept her in until she was 5, at which point a family of Adachi adopted her. The next 2 years Chika would describe as “the first circle of hell”, held in the house in practically slave like conditions, tasked with cleaning the house on a daily basis, and a single piece of dust on the carpet resulting in her getting no food for a week, and any disagreement would result in a painful beatings, or in worst cases, outright lashings with a belt and in one grievous case, a cut into her arm with a knife.

After 2 years of mistreatment, Chika escaped from her home, leaving to live on the streets of Tokyo, not trusting her orphanage after the mistreatment she experienced. This period, “the second circle of hell” as she dubbed it later, mostly consisted of her doing odd jobs for Yakuza, serving as a glorified carrier pigeon (or raven, as the gang members would dub her for her black manner of appearance). As a result, she was on frequent escapes from police, and fights with members from rival gangs in the city. Due to this being barely profitable, in her off time, she would shuffle around populated squares, begging and sometimes simply pickpocketing people for extra change…or just fighting on occasion. Earlier in life, she mostly avoided and escaped any and all fights whenever she could, but whenever the situations became too difficult to escape, especially when she was given more difficult tasks the older she got, she would slug it out before seizing a window of opportunity to escape…and on rare occasions, actually manage to knock out her assailants, the adrenaline in these fights being one of the few things she truly enjoyed in her life, to the point of hating running away against more powerful foes.

This period of her life ended when she tried to con a rather burly man into an alleyway, believing herself to be fast enough to steal his money and escape with no problems…

…only for the man to pick her up, and painfully slam her into the ground with ease. Not giving up, Chika attempted to fight her victim, only for him to successfully tank all of her attacks (including getting her knife stabbed into his shoulder) and for him to knock her out cold. In her last conscious moments, Chika knew that either the man was going to kill her or give her to the authorities. Either way, she believed her life was over…
Only for her to wake up in the same alleyway, the large man attending to her and dressing all her injuries. Following confusion, rough words towards the man, and statements of her telling him that she was doing this just to hurt her even more was the interview from the man once she was done, Chika giving some details about how she came to be this way.

Feeling pity on the girl, he asked her whether she would like to escape this life for a better one. Mistrusting, Chika kept silent, with the man understanding and telling her to visit “Scorpion’s Sting” gym if she wanted to, any time that she liked.

A week of deliberating later, she showed up on the doorstep to the gym, only for her to be greeted by Eiichiro right at the steps. Breaking down crying, she accepted his offer, Eiichiro Igarashi adopting her as his daughter.

Very shortly after that Chika discovered what Eiichiro did. He was an independent pro wrestler, nicknamed Sting (devil’s luck that the more popular wrestling namesake did not sue him), touring with various federations in Japan, and occasionally worldwide. And on his off time from bookings? He operated his wrestling school and his gym.

The first couple of weeks with the two together went fairly smoothly, barring Chika’s criminal instincts flaring up on occasion, stealing wallets from unaware passersby (and Eiichiro forcing Chika to find their owners and apologize). The girl would grow to trust her adoptive father, the first person who actually treated her like a human being. Being a daughter of a pro wrestler came with perks in that regard, such as free tickets, with Chika deciding to take a look at a show.

What she saw there made her heart flutter. Seeing people fighting for their lives inside of the squared circle reminded her of the adrenaline she enjoyed in her street fights…with much less risk of outright injury (unless, of course, the opponent was too sadistic).

After watching a few shows, both involving her adoptive father and some Joshi federations running shows in Koraken Hall, Chika made a firm decision to become a professional wrestler. Eiichiro agreed to train her on the condition she will be able to balance her training with her studies, fearing that the difficult world of pro wrestling might not pan out for the girl.

Despite the harsh training from her father (jokingly dubbing it her “third circle of hell”), it paled in comparison to the hardships she endured in her life. Eiichiro taught Chika the basics of Strong Style, focusing on strikes with her legs, while requesting help from veteran Joshi wrestlers he was friends with to teach her their style. The result was a powerful and explosive mix of offence. Mixing that with her durability and innate fighting spirit, and even as a teen, once Chika started wrestling in companies visiting Tokyo, she was already a force to be reckoned with in the ring…
...though that didn’t stop her from losing for a good while early in her career, her mounting up losses almost getting her to quit until she finally scored her first ever pinfall in an 8-woman tag match, nailing another girl with a lucky kick. Improving it further, she honed it in into her finishing Brazilian Kick.

Slowly, but surely her career built up, winning multi-person tag belts once she was 15, and a secondary title of Kyoto Joshi Pro once she was 16, having a decent length reign with the belt, dropping it 6 months later. In addition, she became a co-trainer in Eiichiro's school, helping him with lessons whenever she could, especially with his lady trainees. She also took part in quite a few intergender matches in this time, having more of a mixed success in those (even partaking in a light-hearted affair with her adoptive father), and going on to take quite a few international bookings once she turned 17, going to Mexico, UK and America within 1 year.

During this time, she also started dating one of Eiichiro's students, Tetsuya Omori. As he came to training sessions with Eiichiro, Chika and him were smitten with one another, flirting non-stop during and outside of spars...and occasionally, even matches with each other.

A little while after Chika turned 18, in Spring of 2012, Chika discovered that she was pregnant. When she announced this to Tetsuya, he at first seemed happy...until the next day, when Tetsuya completely cut contact with her. She soon discovered that nothing had happened to him, only moving to a different part of Japan, appearing in a local Kyoto based promotion. The message from his actions was clear, it was to get away from her and their child, soon discovering that he had more than a few flings with just more than her around Tokyo.

Eiichiro would recommend to give the baby up for adoption...but the word would immediately flare up unpleasant memories in Chika (Eiichiro quickly realizing his mistake), who would choose to raise the baby on her own, with Eiichiro being fine with it, vouching to help whenever he could. With that, Chika would wrestle one final match the next month, though announcing that this was not a good bye by any means, only a "see you later", not treating this like a retirement at all.

And so, in December 2012, Chika's daughter, Kairi Igarashi, was born. For a year, Chika would focus completely on taking care of her daughter, but with her adoptive father's body letting itself know of the punishment it took over the years he's been wrestling (his debut was when he was 18 and he wrestled with minimum interruptions to now, when he was 45), and the gym and wrestling school not bringing as much money as it could, Chika knew she had to come back to the ring soon.

She announced her big return in Spring of 2014, and from then on, tried to mix up life of an indie wrestler and a mother, her adoptive father acting as Kairi's nanny whenever he could. Growing very loving of her daughter, she wanted to take her on her work trips whenever she could, and once Kairi turned 3, Chika would take her to trips to England and America, making sure to not overload her schedule (besides one incident which the little Kairi still complained to her mother about 3 years down the line). Her style did not change in the slightest, and once the ring rust was shaken off, Chika, who by this point fully solidified herself as "the Raven Knight" would become one of the best Joshi wrestlers in Japan, giving Aces of quite a few companies a run for their money and defeating them quite often for their world titles.

Between indie wrestling and starting to run her father's gym more, Chika could make sure that herself and her daughter could have a normal living…
...but with Kairi growing up came another problem - school. She wanted to get Kairi to the best school she could to avoid her problems with education she had due to her childhood, but quickly realized that her jobs would just barely cover her daughter's education, Kairi entering school in April 2019.

Making a difficult decision, Chika finally looked to commit herself to a company full-time. Her father was distrusting of large scale promotions, but understanding the situation, gave her the go ahead. Soon after making that decision she was contacted by AFW, taking a sizable deal from them in December 2020...