Showdown VI - Dire Pack vs. Valkyries: Faction Warfare - Manami Kuroda vs. Makoto 'Mako' Takeda

Match Type: Hardcore
Victory Conditions: Victory by submission or knockout, and leaving the room under your own power.

***

Mako’s room was kind of a fucking dump, but she loved it.

As near as she could tell, this room hadn’t gotten any attention paid to it, aside from the bare minimum to keep it from collapsing. It was a mess, with chairs strew all over the place and broken wood and cracked glass. The windows were either cracked or broken entirely, giving in after years of abuse from nature. She looked up and saw a metal pole coming down from the ceiling with wires sticking out of - kind of a weird thing. She couldn’t figure it out, until she saw a ceiling fan on the other side of the room. How it got over there by itself, she had no clue.

An overturned bookcase with old, rotting magazines strew all over the place. Paint coming off the walls, so cracked and faded it was hard to tell what its original color was. A floor that cracked with each and every step she took, echoing through the empty space. The faint scamper of roaches moving inside the walls, maybe even a mouse or two.


Homey. Kind of took her back.

She made her way through the halls and stripped out of her jacket, tying it around her waist as she inspected the place. Whatever this room had been meant for before, it was only a battered shell now, a hollowed out husk that most people wouldn’t have wanted to spend two minutes in. It was hard to believe there was a time when she spent the night in places like this. Days she just needed to get away from home for a little while. Find a shack on the outskirts of town, some place that people forgot about, break in and spend the night there. Not healthy, but better than being on the street, in the pouring rain.

It was a somber thought, one she wasn’t too sure where it came from. Didn’t matter - now, she had to focus. She gave herself a few slaps on the chin and rolled her shoulders, heating up her body by a few degrees. ”Come on, come on.”

Manami would be around soon. Not soon enough. She’d wanted this fight for years, since she first heard about her making waves in Friction, and now here they were, in their own little playground. Mako didn’t believe in things like fate or destiny, all came off like bullshit to her, but even she couldn’t deny the attraction. It was only a matter of time before they crossed up, and she was just lucky that it was going to happen on her terms.

It was going to be hell, she knew that, but after Manami was down, there wouldn’t be any doubts on the Valkyries position. People had feared them once, and with the big, bad wolf put down, they would have a good reason to fear them all over again.

Now, all she had to do was wait. She found a sofa off to the side of the room, knocked the dust off, and plopped down on it, letting her leg drape over the armrest. Manami would be around soon, no harm in getting in some quick rest.

“It’s fascinating that you can look so serene in all this desolation.” The voice in the room has spoken suddenly. Behind the shadow of a pillar adjacent to the sofa at Makoto’s feet, the silhouette of a familiar Japanese woman came into shape. She stood with her arms crossed and her back pressed firmly into the aged plaster and brick. The auburn richness of her brown eyes silently regarded the Valkyrie sprawled out on the furniture. “Like a little pig in shit.”

This wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar location to her. To her, Tension Heights was simply one crumbling megastructure that could be found all over Kyoto. Manami had entertained these types of circles countless times over a nameless and unremembered career in her earlier years. She loved breaking men and women. She relished the unbridled rage and savagery when someone recognized their life was on the line. Where exactly she took those fights didn’t particularly matter to her, though if a choice were forced upon her, it would be this exact setting. A location without the pretense of professionalism or competition. Stone crumbled, words faded, but the blood that stained this ground would be remembered forever.

Manami just wanted to annihilate Mako in a way she would never forget. And she knew that Mako was of one mind with her own.

As she stepped out of the shadows and into the pale light spilling in from a crumbling window pane, Manami felt her face itch as her muscles hinted at a smile. She had been a part of this federation for years and forced to fight in that awful ring so long she’d begun to feel cramped. Tonight was exactly what she needed. No crowd, no cameras, no noise. Nothing to distract them from each other.

If the Wolf Girl had to be honest, in some small and completely insubstantial way, it was peaceful. This did take her back.

The Wolf of Satsuma:

The Wolf Girl turned and positioned herself in the middle of the room. Her hand came to her hip while another brushed some hair behind the back of her ear. Easy as could be, as if this would be nothing more than a friendly visit with a long-lost friend. “Are we going to do this?”

Mako had just closed her eyes, thinking about maybe getting in a quick nap - it hadn’t been the shortest drive down here, and riding a motorcycle was harder on the body than people realized. She figured she would have a little more time, but no - the Wolf Mother was prompt, had to give her that.

She opened one eye to see her opponent melt out of the shadows, stepping into the light and letting it cast over her frame. She opened the other eye soon after, just so she could get a good look at her. It wasn’t like she was unfamiliar with Manami’s body, she’d watched her matches enough and gotten a close, personal respect for it. But there was something about seeing it right before the fight that was different. About seeing those burning eyes, glittering in the darkness, hearing that collected tone in her voice, knowing there was so much boiling under the surface.

It was hard to explain why she wanted to fight Manami so much. Maybe it was something primal, like two predators recognizing a challenge to their territory. Maybe it was because the Wolf Mother reminded her of herself. Maybe it was as simple as her wanting the best fight of her life.

She didn’t know and it didn’t matter. Manami Kuroda and Makoto Takeda were in the same room, with nothing to stop them, a moment she’d craved for years. That’s all she needed to know.

”I was born in this.” Some might’ve said that with sadness or regret, but for Mako it came out like a pure fact, nothing much behind it. She started off life in the worst places Tokyo had to offer, the areas they didn’t show you in the brochures and the tourists avoided. If Manami was trying to shame her on that, she was picking the wrong tree to lift her hind leg over.

Mako brought her head back, rolled it around her neck, then pushed up and off the couch, bouncing to her feet as a cloud of dust swirled around her. She took a moment to wave that away from her face, then stepped out, making her way towards the center of the room with her arms swinging along. She could’ve been out for a pleasant stroll. Nothing too serious.

She came over to her opponent’s front, a few feet away, and spun on her heels to face Manami straight on. She smiled, this lazy, placid smile, and opened her mouth long enough to utter a single word.

”Let’s.”

There was no bell, no referee, nothing to signify the start of this match, and Mako didn’t need it. The moment she spoke, it was like a switch went off inside her head. Her features hardened, her body tensed up, and she rushed forward from a standing position at a pace that would’ve left most women falling flat on their face. She darted in, entering her range, and lashed out the second she was close enough, throwing out a right cross and hopping back to throw a shin kick at Manami’s knee.

No pause, no preamble, no warning. Zero to sixty, fuck the brakes.

Fundamentally, Manami knew nothing at all about Mako.

She knew what was in her profile, what her match history suggested, but the woman itself was something of an enigma. No family to dig up, no legitimate records that existed outside of a police precinct. The only story to tell existed with Mako alone. It made designing a viable strategy difficult without knowing what was inside of her head. What made her so competitive? What were the roots of her daunting ambition? Perhaps it was simply something that few people in this world could ever understand.

Unflinchingly brutal. Callous and unforgiving. Just some of the words used to describe Manami in the past were all the news she heard of Makoto on the falcon's beak. There was no doubt in her mind that Mako had earned her place on her own merits with no thanks to offer anyone. By the blood between her knuckles and the scars on her back. It was a look she knew well. Whether the Valkyrie still deserved that kind of respect would be decided in a matter of moments.

Her eyes studied Mako as the biker moved to meet her on the floor. As she thought, Makoto had found her zen. Relaxed, focused, determined with an unwavering gaze like steel daggers piercing the Wolf Girl through. Tiny she may have been, but her presence was irrefutable. Like a cannon ready to fire, its pin armed and pulled, and Manami stood directly in the line of fire and the smell of sulfur.

Come on.

Makoto came at her with a bang. Manami stood at the ready and brought her forearm up to swat away the strike aimed for her center. Obvious, but that was the point. Manami tensed as the kick from below cut her in the side of the knee. Her leg buckled slightly but not nearly enough to topple her over. A slight stumble and the Wolf Girl straightened, her eyes lingering back to the biker.

"Please." Manami stepped forward and chambered her right leg, unleashing it like a whip at Mako's knee responding in kind. Only she didn't stop at one. Her leg came back to her side and shot back out with a high kick that slammed her shin upside the Valkyrie's head, assaulting her with a quick and effective 1-2. Mako wasn't one to underestimate standing up, but if she wanted a kick-off, Manami would oblige her any day.

Mako knew enough about Manami to hunger for this fight. She wasn’t familiar with the woman’s pre-AFW career, but from what she heard, she’d been in combat sports for a long time. The sort of woman that she used to worship growing up, the kind of person that she’d emulated in her own fighting style. Though she’d never been formerly trained, she spent a lot of her childhood copying the moves she’d seen women like Manami do on television, mimicking the way they moved, their stances, their training. Most people would frown on that, but most people could fuck off - it was enough for her to get by so far.

But this? In a lot of ways, taking on Manami was the final test. The first time she’d ever taken on someone who was the real deal of the style she was aping. If she won this, if she could overcome the wolf…

Well. One more reason to win. Not that she needed more.

That impact on Manami’s shin was just a taste of what she craved, loving the feedback she got off this woman’s solid body. It wasn’t enough to make her fall, but it did have her buckling a bit. It was enough of an opening to make her come charging in fast, looking to follow up with a right cross for the brief window she’d created.

That window turned out to be smaller than she’d anticipated. Her path forward was brought to a hard stop by a kick of Manami’s own design. Two, actually. The first crashed into her knee, enough to make her hit the breaks, and the followup sliced across her face. Hard impact, enough to spin her all the way around, a full 180 degrees.

She didn’t stop going, though. Mako used the momentum from her turn and made it an attack, bring up her leg and shooting it out behind her, turning the movement into a spinning heel kick aimed at Manami’s sternum.

For once in her life, Manami didn't feel like thinking about this one. Strategizing didn't feel appropriate. To her there was no point in dedicating any substantial amount of brainpower to anything other than the sole destruction of the Ace Valkyrie who undoubtedly harbored a similar intent. Was Mako giving even an ounce of thought to how this would all play out? Or was it something much simpler than that?

Makoto was a crude and unforgiving woman with all the pleasantries of a rabid rottweiler with a motorist license. It wasn’t as though Manami found those traits uninteresting. Distasteful, perhaps, though she could say the same about many others she would call her ‘friends’ if she believed in the concept. No, at the core of it all, Makoto fought for herself. She had no ulterior motives. She wanted to utterly destroy Manami. The way she wore that sentiment on her sleeve stirred something unseen inside of the former champion. Was Manami stooping to her level?

It didn’t matter. The result would be the same regardless of how this insect decided to hack away at her. At least that was what Manami went on believing, ever so carefree.

Two of the Wolf Girl’s kicks drilled into Makoto. Her bare shin tore into the biker’s rough garb repeatedly. The reward was two satisfying smacks and the sight of Makoto reeling in pain. The Wolf Girl smiled as her foot came down to the floor. Her mind was already thinking two steps ahead to the jumping knee that would set Makoto up perfectly for an efficient ground game. The former champion was too busy weighing the options between the kimura and a front-facing choke to notice the Valkyrie’s roundhouse an inch from her face.

The laces of her boot dug into Manami’s cheek first before the pressure of her kick slapped through. She felt her skull shift inside of her head and her body spin to one side before she caught herself. Even so, she still had her instincts. Her back was exposed to Mako and it would take an unfathomable fool to not seize the advantage. Manami twisted and threw an elbow behind her in the widest arc she could manage on reflex alone. Where her opponent was, what she was doing, or where she was going was an afterthought.

Survival was what was paramount.

There was that smile. Mako had seen that smile more times than she cared to count, on the faces of dozens of jackasses over the years. Being short, 99% of the time she was going up against someone with the height advantage, who thought they were going to steamroll her and that everything was in the bag. Underestimating her, thinking she couldn’t back up all the talk, and she used to live to knock that fucking smirk off faces.

It had been a while since she’d seen it, though. Definitely not since she joined the AFW and started making waves with the Valkyries. Having Manami bring it back was kind of refreshing. The bitch thought highly of herself, sitting pretty with her own little cult, calling themselves fancy names, and making her bleed was going to be a new kind of satisfying.

When Makoto’s kick connected, she couldn’t resist a triumphant release of her breath, a small yell as the impact traveled through her bones. That was a good hit, even if she couldn’t see the result from this angle, and her senses were confirmed when she turned about and saw her opponent reeling. An open back, a stunned opponent? Makoto could do so much with that, and she moved in for the kill without a second of hesitation, arms wide open to wrap around her opponent’s neck. Taking Manami down would be good, but choking her out less than two minutes into the fight would be golden.

A pretty picture, but it wasn’t happening. Makoto caught a flash of movement in the corner of her eye, and that was all the warning she got before Manami’s elbow crashed into her eye, knocking her far off course. She came down hard, dropping to one knee for an instant before she forced her way back up on wobbly legs.

So much for that advantage, but it didn’t mean she could pull back all the way. Knowing she needed to close the gap, no matter what, she threw herself back into the fray, rushing into Manami’s range and letting loose with a barrage of quick punches, striking out in rapid succession, aiming for her chest. An offensive barrage to push her back, wanting to seize as much ground as she could and put the Wolf Mother on the backfoot.