Kyouko 'Blade' Uehara vs. Misaki 'Maiden' Sakurazaki - A Painful Reunion

And now they were clapping. Because of course they were.

As petty as it might’ve been, Maiden felt a tinge of jealousy as the crowd rallied around their struggling heroine. They certainly never did that for her, and while she understood why, it was certainly disheartening. She didn’t cheat, always fought fairly and cleanly, but they loved the rambunctious Blade more, simply because she liked jumping off of high things like a maniac. They didn’t respect technique and instead championed reckless wrestling.

More than a little infuriating, yes, but she managed to push past such thoughts for the moment. She had a job to do, and with that little click, it was clearly half-way done.

Eager to get the other half, Maiden released the hold and pulled Blade along the mat, moving her a short distance to the ropes. From there, she tried to loop the brat’s arm around the bottom rope, then secure the other wrist from there - a way to win and show full dominance at the same time.

Fan support was a fickle thing, at least as Blade perceived it. Back in her Wrestle Angel glory days, it took everything she had to make sure sure her star burned just bright as the perennial fan favorites. When you're claim to fame was death-defying leaps and suicidal dives, that meant putting your ass on the line for nearly every match and keeping the ticket buyers satisfied and in good spirits. Which was kind of important, since they were the ones who bought your merch and kept the promoters from regulating you to the undercard.

But it was times like this where all the extra effort paid off. Blade overhearing the stirring claps that helped her stir back to life that much faster. She noticed the steel handcuff now slapped on her wrist and knew she was halfway towards losing this whole thing. She remained relatively inert for the duration of her journey towards the nearby ropes, but once the maid would bend down to reach for Blade's other arm, the weary high-flyer would reach up to clasp onto Misaki's hair and place her foot into the handmaiden's stomach. All before Blade would attempt to tuck and roll backward to pitch the handmaiden through the ropes and back outside of the ring.

In Maiden’s mind, she was already doing a checklist, feeling this match was thoroughly in hand. After she left the arena, she would reconvene with Gwendolyn and present her with a Floating Island, a fine french dessert of meringue floating on crème anglaise. After that, she could possibly persuade her mistress to indulge in a pedicure/foot massage - one of her favorite tasks, if she were being honest - then see to any other matters that needed tending. She might give the other maids a surprise inspection, too. They’d became notably sloppy in recent weeks, neglecting the proper alphabetization of the bookcase and misplacing some of the cutlery…

Important thoughts, but perhaps Maiden would have been better served saving them for another time. She underestimated Blade’s stupidity - the waif wasn’t smart enough to know when she was beaten.

In her typical, despicable style, Blade reached up and grabbed Maiden by her perfectly primped hair, grabbing tight handful to yank her head down. Her desperate gambit paid off, however, as Maiden found herself being hurled out of the ring before she could hope to react, unceremoniously tumbling onto the apron, before spilling out on the floor below.

Most unseemly.

People don't really regard doing nothingas a viable wrestling strategy nowadays, since it genuinely sounds like it means throwing in the towel. But after years of flipping around in the indie circuit, Blade's come across a ton of wonky strategies that ended up saving her ass in the end. And right now, doing nothing just meant allowing your opponent time to give you an opening you wouldn't normally come across if you just started spastically panicking like a freshly tazered cat. And that certain opening came in the form of Misaki hauling them both to the side of the ring, where a rudimentary flip toss with little effort put into it sent the prissy handmaiden rather comically being chucked out of the ring.

Blade groggily ascended once more with the gripping aid of the nearby ropes with some exaggerated snorting of her nose to make sure her nasal passages weren't obstructed after the the handmaidens headbutt. Once back on her feet, Blade would raise her handcuffed wrist to have the referee unlock it with her key before placing it on the canvas. The thing was just going to get in the way, especially with what Blade had planned.

"You cheap-shottin sack of..." Blade grumbled with fiery intensity in her eyes as she backpedaled until she felt the ring ropes pressed against her back. The Aerial Artist going on rage-induced auto-pilot as she took off sprinting towards the beleaguered Misaki rising back up. A prime target for another indie classic, an over the top rope senton suicide dive attempt that had the crowd stirring up in heightened anticipation for it...

This was why Maiden always wore boy shorts under her skirt, instead of going for bare panties like some hussy.  When she went tumbling and came crashing outside the ring in a less than dignified fashion, she wound up flopped down on her chest with her skirt flying up, enough to give the undeserving crowd an eyeful - or it would’ve, if she hadn’t bothered to protect her modesty. As it was, the perverts in the crowd were sorely disappointed. Just the way she liked them.

That was a small comfort to her, one she gladly took as she laid on the floor and groaned with pain.

But she would be okay, she was going to pull through, and she began to push her way back up with determination. It was slow going, wibbling and wobbling along the way, but she managed to stand up, turn towards the ring…

...just in time to see Blade flying towards her.

Maiden opened her mouth to shout in surprise, but didn’t even have time for that before the human missile slammed into her at ramming speed. She was brought down to the floor hard, making an ugly pile along with Blade.

Blade honestly couldn't keep up with half of the names the marketing teams thought up for her on any given day.She had been branded with tons of trademarked monikers such as The Okinawan Eagle, The Aerial Artist, and probably a few others that were slipping Blade's mind at the moment. While not entirely proud of a few of those cheesy titles, she couldn't deny that they described her fighting style to a "T". Her own heart soaring just as high as the rest of her as she nimbly vaulted over the top ropes to crash once more atop the wide-eyed handmaiden.

The resounding pop from the audience brought the stadium alive from it's low doldrums, Blade herself cringing slightly as she rolled off of Misaki and hoisted herself back up. She was banged up with residual wooziness, but luckily for her, Misaki was still just as pleasantly soft to slam down on than ever. The Aerial Artist eventually bending down to clasp onto Misaki by her well-maintained hairdo and tuck and roll her back into the ring. Blade following soon after scooping up the handcuffs to than straddle Misaki's upper back while facing her legs.

"S'over Misa, the better lady won. You're lucky I'm not the type to enjoy having a handcuffed maid all to myself...and I don't mean just tidying up my room~..." Blade quipped from atop her perch. With the handmaiden's arms pinned to her sides and Blade weighing her down, the Aerial artist felt this arduous match finally begin to wrap up as she motioned to snap the handcuff on one of Misaki's wrists...

It was all over now. Maiden had put up a rousing spirited fight against Blade, done better than many would, and even controlled the match more than once. But there was only so much someone like her could do against the unpredictable tempest that was Blade Uehara. In the end, it proved to be too much, and now the bushy-browed vixen was one step away from claiming the victory.

Now. Now was the right time.

A familiar tune began to play over the loudspeakers, blaring out the soulful sounds of Queen. A familiar figure appeared at the top of the ramp, with familiar golden locks and a familiar white outfit. That figure began to walk down towards the ring with a familiar gait, all while her familiar eyes scanned the audience and an eerie, creepy, devious - but familiar - smile crossed her lips.

The crowd cheered, hissed, and booed as none other than Beauty Ichigaya made her way to the ring. The World’s Most Stuck Up Woman was now in the AFW, and she was making her way towards the ring with a hand on her hips and gaze aimed straight at Blade.

Considering that Blade's first match-up against a certain obnoxious Chinese nationalist ended with her needing to be assisted backstage with only a miserable DQ win for her efforts, she was definitely looking forward to finally having a clear and concise victory. Something she could point to as her true, official welcoming back to the squared circle. And she was already savoring that sweet taste of victory as she began to nearly clamp down on Misaki's wrist.

"Almost there...this should teach you not to bring up that egotistical blonde b-"

Blade's grumbling than being interrupted by a pretentious theme and the devil herself as Blade was just talking about her. A deadening, hollow, yet intensively heavy feeling swelling up in the pit of her gut as she slowly relinquished the cuffs in her hands, a part of her hesitating from looking at the ramp until she tilted her head and had her worse fears realized. Blade unseated herself from the prissy handmaiden to stand center stage and assign all of her attention to the snobbish elitist casually waltzing down the ramp. Blade's thoughts going a a mile a minute as she brought both her hands to clench onto her scruffy hair as she struggled to form a cohesive sentence with the tension rising in her chest.

"Nonono...fucking fuck shit fuck...I can't...I can't even...deal with this right now..."

This was unexpected. Not altogether unpleasant, but unexpected.

Maiden hadn’t even known that Beauty was on the Friction roster - true, the AFW had a penchant for hiring former Angels, and she was one that they’d been keen to add, but the blonde was waist deep in other endeavors, last she heard. Whatever her business, it had obviously concluded. Either that, or she’d deemed joining the AFW worth her time, if only to mess with Blade.

If the latter was true, it had proven to be worth her time. Blade look positively apoplectic, as if nothing in the world existed besides her and Beauty, as if she wasn’t in the middle of a match that she’d been on the verge of winning.

Something that could be easily exploited.

Pushing her way back up to unsteady, Maiden reached over and grabbed Blade by the shoulder, yanking her hard to make her spin around. The second she was in position, she launched her foot out and sunk it deep into the bratty wrestler’s breadbasket, attempting to make her bend over.

It was time to end this.

As if clamping onto her scruffy-haired head was the only thing that was keeping her scrambling thoughts inside of her noggin, Blade remained rightfully numb to the world as she fixated her dilated pupils on the towering blonde power house bee-lining it straight towards the ring. The living embodiment of what was undeniably one of Blade's greatest failures was just casually sashaying her way down the ramp and back into Blade's life. Blade's headstrong nature and confident composure were now crumbling in spectacular fashion upon being reminded of that dreadful day and the royal beating she had taken by the time it was over.

"Goddamn it...Why now?...Why fucking now?"

Blade's mumbling becoming more erratic with every second she divorced herself from her immediate surroundings. Not exactly the smartest thing to do when you were right in the middle of a match against a particularly vengeful handmaiden. Blade than gasping from the sudden turnaround that had her facing Misaki before her was gut stomped in, the Aerial artist coughing out the air in her lungs as she arched over while cradling her sore stomach. Blade winced and remained stunned, but at least she was brought back to reality...though not in a way she would have appreciated.