Shredding It

There Tam stood, still balancing on one foot while this wily schoolgirl held her other one suspended with a simple grip on the soles. Birds were chirping, people were snapping on their phones, and there was a breeze going between her thighs.

Weirdest start to a conversation she'd ever had.

Tam ignored the cramps and just focused on what the wannabe skater girl was saying, though she wished she didn’t. She didn’t even know how they were getting into this in the middle of a schoolyard scrap. Every other word seemed to be flying over her head like so much hot air. Japanese schoolgirls were a different breed of slow. Her leg was starting to cramp.

“I’d put your brother in a hospital and you’re gonna be next to him.” Tam shot back. She didn't care enough to let herself be jerked around like this. Except when Natsu did just that in the most literal way possible. “No. But whatever it is you’d better make it cou-!”

The Viet girl went wide-eyed when she was suddenly thrown by her leg by the weaker Japanese schoolgirl. She was sent tumbling across the ground and slammed back-first into the trash can just behind them, sending its contents flying into the air. Tam’s head poked back up from the rain of paper scraps, convenience store boxes, and banana peels. Her eyes narrowed at Natsuko as the sharp stench of rotting bento filled her nose. Game on.

Tam burst out from underneath the bin, launching it up into the air. As it fell, she spun on her back foot and struck the can dead center, sending it flying straight at Natsuko. Whether or not she hit the stupid brat, if her shot was accurate enough, Tam would kick off the floor and leap into a running jump to hammer down with a spinning heel kick.

Onnnnn second thought, it might be for the best if Goto and her perpetually scowling adversary refrain from crossing paths for the foreseeable future. Natsu's older brother would decidedly not take too kindly to Tam's cantankerous boastfulness. And while Natsu recognizes Tam's fighting skills, she couldn't envision their first encounter unfolding without anything less than simmering animosity and Natsu needing to fetch the smelling salts to coax Tam back from her battered stupor. Although Natsu was starting to feel like she herself wasn't fairing any better than her brother would when it came to ingratiating herself to her Viet-Friend either. The Cherry-Blossoming Schoolgirl figuring that might have been the case given squinty-eyed death stare Tam directed at her from beneath the scattered garbage strewn about. She anxiously giggled and innocently scratched her cheek. She sorta figured that Tam wouldn't believe her if she explained that sending her careening into a trash bin was an accident...

"Yo Shun, you alright dawg? Tam duffed you, son!!!" Ken remarked to his battered companion, helping him back to his feet with a yanked tug after clasping hands.

"...OwOwOw...Dat's so uncool...Why she always gotta be trippin-*BANG*..." Shun's justified objections would be ended by a garbage can sent careening towards him, bowling him over and back into a swirly-eyed unconsciousness.

"Whoa!!!" Nattie exclaimed after somehow managing to duck into a low crouch with her palms leveraged against the pavement and her bandana fluttering in the breeze above her. A few milliseconds shy of being plastered with the airborne trash receptacle, although the clanging ruckus behind her indicated that someone in the audience was significantly less lucky. Natsu arising with her attention directed at the garbage littered mayhem behind her. Understandably taken aback at the feat but recognizing her grave mistake immediately and swiveling back towards Tam with widened eyes and a lowered guard. Witnessing Tam's last spin before getting thwacked square against her chest with enough strength to send the schoolgirl into an admittedly cool-looking mid-air spincycle, but culminated far less gracefully as Natsu crashed against her own trash bin. One that she slumped against with her legs spread out in a "V", stewing miserably with a hacked cough. Thinking that couldn't have gone any worse...and this was before the banana peel plopped down right on her head. Natsu flinching in regret from having spoken too soon.

“Keep talking shit, Shun! You’ll get it too!” Tam pumped a fist in the air at the two of them.

Nothing slipped past her ears when it came to shit-talking. Especially from her would-be buddies. Call it a learned skill from sleeping in the close quarters of a rusty ship hull for months on end, drifting from contract to contract all over the South China Sea. The slightest noise caught her attention. Every bit of whisper and gossip only became louder and even more difficult to tolerate every second she chose not to do something about it. People just knew better now. She wouldn’t let anyone get away with poking fun at her in her corner.

That included this skirted pampered princess standing across from her. Nothing was going to make her feel better than leaving the bottom of her shoe marked on her pretty face.

Tam would settle for seeing her steeped in the garbage for now. It was rewarding to feel her kick land flush and see the Natsuo flying through the air with the grace of a human-sized football. Seeing her covered head to toe in the trash wasn’t bad recompense either. Though she wondered if Natsuo would buy it if she said that wasn’t intentional.

A passing thought. One she didn’t care to dwell on for long.

Tam took off running before Natsuko had half a chance to figure out where she’d ended up. She’d run up quickly on the schoolgirl and plant her front foot into the cement before twisting on the spot. Her back leg would swing forward, carrying the momentum into a full roundhouse kick aimed straight at the Sakura Girl’s head.

Welp...now Natsu could officially confirm, without a shadow of a doubt, that Tam indeed had the wicked strength to back up her snarling words. The Spry Schoolgirl felt like she'd been kicked by a scruffy-haired dumptruck, with an aerial rotation of about 720 degrees as verifiable proof for all of the teenage onlookers. Not that Natsu necessarily needed, or wanted, any concrete proof to substantiate this assumption thanks to all of the strikes she had blocked beforehand. However, the comparisons between Tam and older brother persisted onward considering she hadn't been walloped that fiercely since sparring with her musclebound sibling months ago. Uncanny resemblances or not, she didn't quite remember him ever sending her flying into what felt, and smelled, like yesterday's garbage.

"...Ewwww...total, yucksville. This is worse than cleaning out the arcade bathrooms at the end of the day..." Natsu squeamishly muttered with a repulsed grimace while unearthing herself from between the overturned garbage cans. She started swiping off used food wrappers and began lamenting what she'll end up smelling like by the time this fight was finished. The banana peel splatting on her head cementing her fear that her street cred might have been taken down a few notches with a pratfall that friggin embarrassing. Natsu huffed out and clasped the banana peel and haphazardly discarded it in front of her. Unintentionally on the exact spot where Tam would step on before performing her roundhouse kick. Nattie unaware of the comedic consequences of her actions...

Bullheaded Tam. That was the name her friends on the shore used to call her.

When she had something in her sight, it was rare to see Tam let it go. Nothing steered her off the path. Whether it was a soccer ball, a dollar bill, or a leaf in the wind that caught her attention, she would charge forward to seize it if she wanted it. Call it a habit of growing up dirt poor with nothing but the clothes on her back and the mountains of garbage that made up her old shanty town.

Those instincts were what guided her now, breaking into a sudden rush at Natsuko. Her opponent was leaving openings for days. It wasn’t like she would just let her recover. She’d run her down, knock her out with this roundhouse kick, and finally crush that half-pipe next to them before lunchtime.

Suddenly, the Viet girl let out a sound somewhere between a scream and an imitation of a dying seal as the world suddenly slipped out from under her like a rug. More specifically, the banana peel that Natsu had thrown her way.

Her back hit the coarse pavement with a splash of skin and tenderized flesh resounding from beneath her skater clothes. All the while wishing that slip would have just killed her and spared Tam the embarrassment.

Part of her could give the clever minx credit. Using Tam's own attempts at embarrassing the Sakura Girl against her, and in such an effective way. She didn’t think the Japanese ditz would have had the quick thinking and foresight to outwit her like this. Another part of her, however, just wanted to see this girl six feet under and make Ms. Arisawa sorely regret the absolute pain both physically and mentally that she'd just caused.  A feeling she made clear as she raised her head, staring daggers into her adversary's eyes.

Outside from Natsu's brief fascination with attempting to read people's fortune with tarot cards as a kid, the Spry Schoolgirl never professed herself to be a psychic again after having closed down her cardboard sidewalk stand. Still, she didn't need to possess occult clairvoyance to know exactly what everyone was thinking about her being spin-kicked into the groddiest of garbage bins. "Yoooo, that girl's fightin' style is straight trash, son!!!" or "Psh, man you sure she's the one who took down entire the Mad Machine Gang?" These were the kind of background remarks Natsu was expecting to be hushed about as she started flicking the last eggshell from her shoulder, grimacing in disgust after getting rightfully dunked on after underestimating the skater girl. Color her stunned than to curiously peek her head up after hearing what sounded like a tomboyish banshee wailing and witnessing her foe splayed out on the ground.

"...Huh?!...Wuthaheck..." Gobsmacked with saucer-wide blankness in her eyes, Nattie scratched her scruffy-haired head as to why Tam wasn't uppercutting her to the moon right about now. And the courtside chatter was buzzing more about Tam busting her ass than Nat's "garbage" offense. Gears started spinning in her head though, and the schoolgirl knew the perfect way to capitalize on this perplexing yet fortunate turn of events. Natsu scrambled up to her feet and made a beeline towards the nearby elongated lunch table. Several revelers of the fight seated there but started clearing way when Nattie abruptly stepped up onto the table from the far end. The former track-team captain than sprinting down the table and making careful steps so as not to stomp on any errant food wrappers or cellphones. Leaping skyward once reaching the other end with her bandana fluttering and her aiming centered on Tam's midsection for her Flower Rainmaker flying elbow drop.

Tam hated being humiliated more than anything else. More than having to sleep on underpasses and park benches, more than being forced to fight her entire life for a modest living, more than that stupid headband on Natsuko’s forehead. She could move past all of those things for the sake of her sanity. But being someone’s laughing stock? Being duped and taken out by a goddamn banana?

Someone was getting their legs broken. Slow as she was after the impact, Tam was still determined to make her adversary pay for it with interest.

Tam looked up and noticed Natsu was already taking off toward a nearby table. For a second, she thought Tam might be running to grab a weapon. She watched the Japanese girl instead climb onto a table, thinking for a moment that Nat was about to up and run away. Tam was already pushing herself upright, moving to intercept when the Sakura Girl suddenly took flight; the young martial artist fluttering in the air with the poise and grace of her namesake. The determination and zeal shown in her eyes stunned half the adolescent crowd into momentary, awestruck silence as time slowed to a crawl for each of them.

Well, everyone except Tam. As much as her back was killing her, she wanted to kill Natsuko even more. She would twist and roll off to the side as her enemy came down, leaving nothing but bare cement to greet Natsuko’s elbow on the ground.

Whoever invented the phrase "Killing Two Birds With One Stone" probably wasn't an avid wrestling fan, and in all likelihood he'd advise not to apply it to a bare-knuckled street brawl. Natsu just figured that maybe changing up her fighting style would catch Tam off guard considering that the Viet-Fighter was rampaging on through whatever Natsu threw at her. Like a perpetually surly bulldozer with steam coming out of her ears and nose. And like the tree said to the woodsman, she was plum stumped as to what the dickens Nattie could have done to earn such an indignant and vengeful wrath. Maybe it was that whole getting embarrassed by that Dasher guy comment?

Regardless, The Blooming Brawler figured that this was the perfect time to incorporate some of her pro-rasslin' training for practice sake alongside earning her the winning edge against the skater girl. Unfortunately, Nattie ending up killing neither stone as she instead went splat against the pebbled concrete and instantly started bellowing in rather considerable discomfort/straight up agony. "TSSSSSS!!! OWOWOWOWIEOWIE!!!!" Nattie writhing about and stamping her sneakered feet into the pavement as her pain sensors were all lit up like a Christmas tree, clutching the blood scraped underarm that was supposed to be driven into Tam's breadbasket, not sheer granite.

Tam didn’t have to see the elbow hitting concrete to know how badly that unfortunate drop had hurt Natsuko. Don’t call her a sadist, but the Vietnamese fighter couldn’t help a small snicker after hearing that heart-wrenching whimper. Call it karma. That was what little schoolgirls thinking they were hot shit ended up doing to themselves: getting hurt and crying for mommy. Tam had had enough of seeing their type back in her country. She wasn’t developing a new tolerance for it here.

Not when this wannabe was so eager to receive what was coming.

There wasn’t a scrap of mercy behind the former mercenary’s eyes as she slowly stood up from the floor and cast a long glare at Natsuko over her shoulder. Slowly, she turned around and stepped her way over until she was casting a long shadow over the Sakura Girl.

“Pathetic little wimp.” Tam reached over and grabbed a fistful of the Japanese girl’s hair. She pulled her close enough to look her hated rival in the eye, casting forth a palpable disdain before promptly tossing her up into the air like a human volleyball. The ‘serving’ motion Tam would feed this particular human projectile was a punch to her stomach, sending her careening through the air toward the halfpipe. If Natsuko had the awareness to look up in the middle of her flight, she would find herself on a collision course with a skater standing tiptoed in the center of the flat bottom, unaware of how close-up his view of the fight was about to become.

Suffice to say, anyone's whose misjudged their gripping on a jungle gym as a kid is accustomed with the specific flavor of seething anguish that comes with scrapping skin off rockbound concrete. Scorching spasm and burning twangs centered on her sanguine patched elbow that she knew would pale in comparison to whenever she gets the opportunity to splash iodine on it. Mistakes were most definitely being made, challenging the merciless skater girl in the first place perhaps being one of them as the downtrodden schoolgirl obeyed Tam's torqued yanking on her scalp. Barbed mockery wafted against Nattie's defiant grimace via the warmth of Tam's breath, words that Nat couldn't even dispute given her pitiable state. Slackened with her bloodied arm limp and effectively getting toyed with by a cantankerous fighter whose apparently deadset on sending a clear-cut message to the streets by making an example out of an embarrassed and vanquished Natsu.

*...nngh, that doesn't sound good...* Overheard from the raucous teenager spectators was Ken sitting atop one of the lunch tables, knowing Tam well enough to recognize when she was attempting to go long and spike the proverbial ball. Natsu balking from being rendered weightless in mid-air with such flippant ease until what felt like a locomotive being socked into her abdomen seemingly brought time to a brief standstill. Dilated pupils and ballooned cheeks being the instantaneous reaction from Tam's unbridled strength mashed against Nattie's breadbasket in the milliseconds before she was torpedoed through the air. The skater sporting a gigantic headset jamming out to his tunes before getting twirled like a swirling top by the propelled schoolgirl embedded against the graffiti spattered concrete wall. Natsu pathetically slumping to her knees leaving a cracked indentation behind her, cradling her midsection and distraught misery on her visage before faceplanting into the floor.