The Fault in Our Shareholders

"Fancy." Masuyo-san said, marveling quite sincerely at the marvel of engineering and hardware unfolding before her. Koyuki, on the other hand, quietly regretted that, in hindsight, the interrupted death match between her and the traitor had not expanded to include the windows, so she could have 'accidentally' torn up this particular piece of digital excess before it ever had a chance to unveil itself. This had not been a good day. Actually, this might have been the worst day since that time she was goaded into a school play by, wait for it, the other presently far less annoying Masuyo in her life. And it wasn't even close to over. Like Sae, she did not lower herself to sitting on the floor, instead standing to the side of Masuyo-san while she stared at the futuristic set of holograms like it owed her money.

"Excuse me, Ko?"

Koyuki rolled her eyes. She did not bother looking down at what was surely a shit-eating smile on Masuyo-san's face

"Yes, your Supreme Excellency?"

"The pacifism box hungers for your nummy-nummy coat." Masuyo-san said cheerily. "It says aaaaaaaaaaah."

For a moment, Koyuki was acutely aware that she was the only one in the room armed. Her coat, tailored to her exact anal specifications to be a living armory, bristled with all manner of knives and blades. None large enough to parry the 500 and its absurdly large bullets, but Sae's trump card had long been taken out of commission. She could bring them all out to play. A very small (a lie: a very large) part of her wanted to say fuck the consequences, fuck the absurd showcase of humility on her part a minute ago, fuck that hug, and march over to Sae and shank her a thousand ways over. She would beg forgiveness rather than ask for permission, as she always did, but-

She took off her coat and tossed it over her shoulder. It crashed into the floor with a comically heavy boooooom. Anything heavier might have left a small crater in the floor. She brushed off the front of her white work shirt and said, "It can starve."

"Shame," Masuyo-san said. "Right, strategy. I like what you're proposing. We need to come in big, we need to set a precedent, and we need something to set us apart from the competition. Whiiiiich-" she turned to stare up at Koyuki. "-is why i brought you along for the ride."

Koyuki had a retort ready, but she bit it right back. The sooner this farce of a brainstorming session ended, the sooner she wouldn't have to see the faces of a gaijin, a traitor, and a pirate for the day. Her belligerence only prolonged it.

"My Ko here is a big honkin' nerd for this kinda shit. She's watched all the stuff, she's into this crap, so I just wanted to pick her brain for-"

"You want my opinion?" Koyuki said, her words were directed at Masuyo-san but she stare at Winterbourne. She mixed in English with Japanese. Just enough to get the point across, but fortified with enough Japanese so she didnt sound like an accented gorilla.

"I do."

Koyuki stared at Sae, as if she was considering whether it was worth revealing any other side of herself to the traitor whore, then her eyes went back to Winterbourne. The same mix of English and japanese followed: "Anyone with a deep enough pocket can do grandiose. One Championship has outstyled and out-produced the UFC for years now in terms of showmanship, and they're considered a 2nd tier organization with 2nd tier fighters, forever in the shadow of the UFC's global market share. Grandiose will lure the fools in, but it is the substance that will keep them. Stories is what will keep them. Your first PPV will set the tone of the promotion moving forward - but will it be the hodge potch of middling talent that Momentum currently has?" Koyuki scoffed. "The Sara Connors? The smattering of boxers from Momentum's hideous legacy as a boxing promotion? Pathetic. You will never stand out. You do not have enough and if you go ahead with this, you're just another Chatri." Koyuki took a breath, then continued. "What you want is a good ol' Pride-style tournament. 8 competitors. No holds barred. To the finish. Little to no rules. None of that watered-down UFC drivel where bloody Russian Muslims can overcentralize a meta centred around a very specific caged arena where they shoot every time the opponent foot touches the cage. What you want is the best of the best competing to be the best in vastly different fighting locales. What you want is what mainstream combat sports have not been for years: wild, unconcerned with health, and vicious. I look at the UFC and I weep. It is a shallow shadow of its vale tudo-inspired days, a commercialized nothing. What you want, again, is the story, and the story is going to be that 8 of the best women in-

"You're very passionate about this. It's cute."

"Kindly fuck off."

“...It is cute.”

“Indeed. Cute.”

“Like a little kid at show and tell.”

Sae nodded. “Very cute.”

Elizabeth nodded back with a smile a few shades brighter than the moment before. Undeniable cuteness aside, her compatriot raised some valid points.

Momentum was still growing as a roster at a meager rate despite their best efforts. What the talent agency scooped up went largely to Friction and Tension, leaving Elizabeth to make the most of the scraps left behind. If they were going to establish a new baseline for not only AFW, but the entire world of competitive combat, there was no reason to start with half-measures.

“So,” Sae crossed her arms with a pensive stare. “If I’m dissecting this right: you think in the coming weeks, Momentum should plan a large-scale event not with its existing roster, but with relative newcomers. Preferably with a variety of styles at our disposal, they will all compete for a grand prize in-"

“A rookie tournament! Brilliant!” Elizabeth exclaimed. In truth, she’d debated on the idea internally before deciding it wasn’t worth the months of projections, meetings, and convinced it would take the board of directors to open. She felt suddenly taken by the thought, hit with a burst of nostalgia that brought a finger to her chin. “I had the distinct pleasure of competing in one such tournament myself as a proud youth. During my first study abroad in Rio. The welterweights there were quite welcoming of a Welshwoman, though my Portuguese wasn’t quite as sharp as my pugilism then.”

Elizabeth brought shut her eyes in private contemplation. The Chief of Security continued in her place with only a second of silence spared between them.

“From where do you intend to bring in fighters to fill out the brackets? Since they're being brought courtesy of an affiliate agency, their background checks will be much more extensive. Time-consuming. I’ll refuse any request that inflates one of our core rosters with undesirables.”

‘Undesirables’ means yakuza and yakuza-affiliated. Anyone that could conceivably be under their payroll. It would be straightforward, if a somewhat lazy, and roundabout way to exert influence over their arena, but Sae did not intend to offer even the slightest inch to their new partners. Masuyo was a tricky lady; one of the most unpredictable crime bosses she’d met.

Knowing that Masuyo would take that as a compliment was reason enough to keep her entire organization on a short leash. And the woman at the top on the other end of the barrel.

It occurred to Koyuki that, certain annoying probably Masuyo-named associates aside, she had not spoken at length to anyone she didn’t terrify for a very, very long time. She commanded fear and reverence among the Kaitei rank-and-file, and Masuyo-san had employed her as the unofficial and liberally brutal party whip for so long that even the dozen or so Kaitei beauracrats and senior advisors that outranked her in Tokyo treaded lightly around her. Her bloody exploits as an enforcer and hitwoman in the Japanese underworld had earned her no small amount of notoriety amongst criminals and law enforcement alike, and her legendary xenophobia even by the standards of Yakuza kept the foreign illegal element on the backfoot. She was an efficiently brutal administrator, a vindictive overseer over any turf or business under her purview, and above all else, just kind of an unapprochable bitch. Hell, she only needed to lurk in the back of a shareholder’s meeting to force a KTGM-invested sub-company into full compliance.

In every aspect of her life, she was the dragon in the cave nobody wanted to enter. She was the sum total of every mangled corpse littered at the opening, each one its own unique cautionary tale, and she liked it that way. Fear was her clout and she had a lot of it going around where it counted.

On the flipside, it also meant she was woefully unprepared for the select few who did not fear her - and in this particular situation, whom she could not just beat, threaten, coerce, blackmail it into.

Winterbourne she sort of understood. Strip away the many, many, many differences between them and the fact that she was gaijin filth and they fundamentally had the same core: scions of great houses trying to find their own niche outside the empires they were suppose to inherit. She had a begrudging respect for that supposed fearlessness, that physical courage, that reach into esoteric techniques, and she sensed a kindred spirit of sorts in a shared love for martial arts. She didn’t like her. She would never like her, but she was at least the one person in the room in this for something resembling a common cause.

And Sae… She would never say it out loud, but it was a uphill battle to inspire that kind of primal fear in someone who knew you as a bratty 10-year old. Who begrudgingly babysat and played house with said bratty 10-year old. Who kicked the arse of said bratty 10-year old more times than she cared to admit.

But Koyuki Sanada was, despite it all, not a bully. Bullies faded at the slightest challenge; she relished it. No will was unshakable, no mind without falter. Every human being was a lattice of weaknesses. Some just hid it far better than others. Cute? She'll show them cute.

Koyuki let them say their piece before she continued. Winterbourne, as ever, made it about herself and one of her self-important escapades. Sae was already trying to cut this off at its root. Masuyo-san was content to just sit back and let everyone stew in their own agendas.

“‘Newcomers’.” Koyuki finally said, letting the word stretch out in accented English. “‘Rookies’. I am no marketing swine sitting in a cubicle waiting for death, but these are words of self-imposed defeat. You will lock yourself into the niche of the underdog, the unestablished newcomer. This is a tournament of Champions. Like everything else in life, you declare victory from the start, and then you work towards it. Business. Assassination. Urban warfare. Running a fight promotion. The core principle is similar.” Her eyes and words were directed at Winterbourne. Masuyo-san didn't give a crap so long as it made money and weakened the Osaka gumis. Sae was pushing back all the way for its own sake. Her words were lost on either of their ears. "As for selection, how fortunate we are that our Chief of Security is terrible at her job," Her eyes shifted to Sae's. "AFW's rosters is filled with the kind of rot any basic screening procedure should have filtered out, but if the chief chafes at actually doing additional work or exercising any kind of competence at all, I believe we can draw part of this tournament from the existing reserves within the Friction and Tension brand; select elite warriors that will fall nicely into the thematic branding of Momentum."

"So mean to Yams."

"Constructive," Koyuki said through gritted teeth. "Criticism." Koyuki lifted up both hands. "Consider two basic criteria for selecting candidates for this tournament: Martial competence." She lifted up her right hand. "And Celebrity." She lifted up her left hand in emphasis. "We take the best of the best of Martial artists - but they need to draw. They need to be of interest. They need to have something that sets them apart. Accolades. Notoriety. Unique backgrounds or stories. Off the top of my head, I can think of one or two such candidates that fit both criteria. You have a Russian with an eyepatch-"

Masuyo-san waved. Koyuki ignored her.

"-in Tension. Kana, our very late delivery person, has worked with her from time to time on matters of intel. Funny how the screening didn't pick that up." A quick dart of the eyes to Sae. "A master of Sambo and Sistema and, so the rumor goes, a deserter from the RAF. Or maybe GRU. She does not come off as a regular, from what I hear. With Russia's continued push into Ukraine continuing to headline even in Japan, her skill set, and her personality, I would say going in that direction would set you apart from the other big fight promotions; gives the opening PPV an edge that they're not willing to risk, showcase a fighter with a background the entire idiotic fuckin' world is fixated on at the moment, while maintaining martial credibility with fighter quality. Of course, we will not be expecting a tournament of only criminals. Nor do we want to. Legitimacy balances illicit notoriety. If you could get a top UFC turncoat or an Olympic medalist, Miss Winterbourne-"