Bashira Matsumoto vs. Masuyo Ai - Food Wars

Bashira's eighth grade reading level meant that her vocabulary didn't exactly entail an encyclopedic abundance of words and phrases, and quite frankly she wouldn't know the meaning of the word "harken" even if you asked. But after explaining it to her carefully and not condescendingly should you cherish the teeth in your mouth, even she would agree that right about now the Bear-Woman was "harkening" back to a far less complicated point in wrestling history. Back when pipsqueaks like Masuyo didn't know any of this flippy floppy judo crap and got outright mauled by their massive brick shithouse of an opponent, a scenario Bash fully intended to replicate tonight had this noodle waitress simply get with the program already and stop wasting everyone's time already.

The Beer-Bellied Beast still had confidence to spare in spite of her discombobulating plummet, Bashira still not figuring how this noodle brained nuisance managed to trip her up so seamlessly after getting her haymaker swatted off target. The entire ring-wobbling descent didn't hurt so much as disorient Bash as she started making a concerted effort to lurch up off of the canvas like she's was first starting to get up out of bed for breakfast. Except instead of omelet’s surrounded by toast and bacon, all Bash would get is a booming knee strike right to her chubby jowled mug that laid out the ursine with her arms spread and a mesmerizing sway to her belly. Those who rallied behind the maven when ushering her back into the ring let their cheering voices be heard once more as the splayed out behemoth started counting the warbled lights with a shuffling of one leg up by the knee.

Oh yeah. Slow.

Bashira could bellow and throw her strength around all she wanted. She was far from the first person that the Demon had to go toe to toe with that surpassed her bodyweight seven times over. What they gained in power, they lost in control of their center. Masuyo didn’t have to evade anymore. She could see right through it most of it now.

Her feet landed on the mat right after the back of Bashira’s head sent a tremor through it. The damage she’d inflicted spoke for itself with the impression on her kneecap and the crowd roaring all around her. It was a welcome feeling. After getting thrown around the better part of the match, it was an unbelievably refreshing relief to finally see the mountainous belly belcher slammed hard against the floor with the positions thoroughly reversed.

But Masuyo didn’t feel any closer to winning just yet. Her body was still a wreck. Straining herself came at a cost, but it made the opportunity the Demon was hoping for. She looked over her shoulder at her dazed adversary, shuffling absent-mindedly beneath the stage lights. Masuyo's head worked through a dozen possibilities in a fraction of a second until she saw the submission that would do the trick.

Masuyo turned herself around and came down to both knees at the top of Bashira’s head, facing down the length of the wrestler’s rotund body towards her feet. She reached out and grabbed the bear’s right arm that was so conveniently left limp and useless at her side and raised it high Bahsira’s head. In one swift motion, Masuyo let herself fall forward and looped her close arm over, around, and under the woman’s thick neck to connect with the Demon’s other hand waiting beneath. She laced her fingers tightly together, binding Bash’s arm helplessly against her head as the MMA maven brought herself as low to the floor as possible. Any enthusiast would recognize it. The Demon was tightening in an unforgiving D’Arce choke. A submission hold with two goals: keep Bash’s superior weight on the floor, and drain the everlasting life from her big body.

Being as "robust" an athlete Bashira was, she typically appreciated any and all opportunities to be off of her feet. Packing around this much weight muscle can be quite taxing on the rest of her body. Hence why being splayed out like this was, in actuality, a relaxing reprieve for Bashira. The Bear-Woman having effortlessly fooled the scrawny noodle waitress into giving Bash exactly what she wanted in the first place~...now if Bashira can just try and rationalize all of the other instances in this match where Masuyo was swatting her about with hard-hitting strikes and judo flipping her around the ring, she can perhaps walk away from this match with her bruised ego unblemished. The exact opposite of her battered and pudgy face after getting rocked by Masuyo's full tilt knee strike that had the brutish bully scrunching her eyes shut to blot out the gahdamn roof lights from being so gahdamn bright, gahdammit...

"...anyone catch the name of that bitch..." Bashira blurted out in mid-tizzy, tasting the metallic twang of blood that usually comes with a busted lower lip which Bash confirmed with rolling her tongue around the inside of her mouth. That stark realization coming right on the heels of another much more dangerous realization upon feeling her arm tugged off of the canvas and elevated upward to be nudged right against the side of her head. Bashira not caring in the slightest what the maneuver was called, but recognizing it as more of the Demon's MMA judo bullshit which Bash rebelled against all too late. Scarcely managing to roll over onto her side before the grappling submission was inevitably locked in. The seething Bear-Woman's head and entrapped arm tucked underneath Masuyo's upper torso, stretching out her leg and stamping her foot bitterly with all requests from a submission being answered with her gloved hand flipping off the referee.

It was everything that Masuyo could do to simply block out the cheering all around her. Everyone was clearly hoping for the best case scenario that saw the smaller, technical wrestler stuck between the ropes managing to eek out an early submission from her oversized ursine adversary. As much as she could appreciate the support - use it to push herself forward and bring more power to bear - she also had to focus. Bashria had a thick neck. It was good for scarfing down stolen lunches, belching at the top of her lungs, and keeping mixed martial artists from getting a decent grip. There was just enough room for her to loop her entire arm across before she started constricting. She had to push her way through each and every centimeter between her and the larynx. Masuyo clenched her teeth and knuckled down.

She laid her stomach flat against the round and pressed her forehead into the canvas. She might not have had the strength to keep Bashira down on her own but she definitely had the leverage. The muscles along her back and around her shoulders flared with the furrows along her brow. Even the slightest breath, the tiniest bit of air, she wanted to deny. Bashira had a big body with a lot of room and resources to share. In this moment, she might as well have been trying to choke out a literal bear.

A Herculean task for some. Impossible for many. Masuyo simply steeled herself and faced the storm, giving her arms another crank as she tightened the choke even further.

Throughout the breadth of her entire wrestling career, all those so called "medical professionals" warned her about how unhealthy her eating habits were. Stuff like how veil parmigiana does not constitute as a light lunch. Well those poindexters could take their master's degrees and shove them right up their ass, because the method to Bashira's food inhaling madness was to purposely pack on that extra bulk and use that girth as a wellspring of pot-bellied power. Much like how sumo wrestlers made usage of their own sizeable weight through training regiments, making them rotund boulders incapable of being bullied around except by others of the same ilk. And that's one think all these scrawny beauty queens calling themselves wrestlers didn't understand when they thought they could just outpace Bash. Which was that all of that weight was just as much an advantage as a disadvantage.

Bashira chortled but remained prone, spittle flying from her mouth as she wheezed from beneath the MMA maven who worked the hold as masterfully as could be expected. Always keeping an arm in the air to wiggle her index finger "No" at the referee. Which may have been a tapping "Yes" had Bashira's jowels not made clamping down upon her windpipe all the more troublesome. Seconds ticking off the clock as fans hollered and waited for the referee to call it a kayo finish already, until the Bear-Bellied Beast abruptly stomped her foot onto the canvas and pivoted onto her front side and summoned that aforementioned strength to shuffle up to her knees with Masu still latched on from above. Bash's face going red with raging bull stubbornness as she clamped onto the back of Masu's knees so when the beast finally arose back on her feet, the maven would be perched upside down with the back of her neck settled on Bash's shoulder. The precursor to a muscle-buster, and it's meteoric implications as the Beast sank right down to her ass and slumped to her back in exhaustion afterwards.

It was kind of funny. Masuyo was just thinking about how a normal person would try and get out of this.

They would likely fight the grip where it was weakest, grab for her hands while working their neck into a more comfortable position. They could also just try forcing their way out, though trying to pull that on the Demon of Shibuya might leave those efforts wanting. If anything, Bashira's thick head just made that option even harder, like fitting a thumb through a pinhole. Masuyo torqued even harder, seconds away from striking her out. For a second there, it all seemed like a given.

Masuyo suddenly found herself being turned over. It took her a moment to realize Bashira was turning on the spot like a log. It wasn’t too clear to the Demon exactly how that would help her. She had no problem keeping the hold locked and shuffling her feet to keep the position right. Being on her knees might give the ursine woman a bit more leverage but Masuyo was going to make sure to give her hell before she got out. That was until everything turned upside down for the Japanese girl.

For Masuyo, the entire world seemed to flip on a dime as she was suddenly turned into a human slinky, her legs dangling high into the air on Bash’s shoulder. She wasn’t sure where Bashira was hiding this hysterical strength but it hardly mattered in the next moment. The back of her neck was struck by paralyzing force as Bash's leap to the floor shook the ring to each of its four corners. Masuyo's body unfurled and flopped to the floor in a heal, her chest flat to the floor and sputtering a lifeless gasp beneath her messy raven locks.

Fuck this. Bashira was now most definitely making it a Number One priority on her goddamn agenda tomorrow. First thing in the morning, to march right into Maximilian's freshly refurbished office and make that smooth-talking shyster add some zeroes to the end of her paychecks if he wanted to keep all of his shimmering teeth in his mouth. She wasn't gettin paid nowhere near enough to summon this much Herculean strength and willpower, especially in what was supposed to be a by the numbers geek squash which had now escalated into a genuine match that was far too competitive for her liking. The audience at large were liking it plenty regardless, some applauding the action in spite of the dire situation it meant for the stupefied underdog.

"...*cough*...*gasp*...Fuckin bullshit..." Between chortled breaths and snarling profanity, Bashira began stirring back to life as her gigantic belly expanded with each inhalation of air previously denied to her by Masuyo's chokehold. Clearly sweating up a storm before schlepping her elephantine carcass upward by tossing her not insubstantial weight over to one side to more easily enable her to sit upright. Tender care taken to massage her windpipe before peeking behind her at the comatose demon looking like she was dead to the world. Bashira would test that theory by crawling over towards Masuyo and flipping the noodle nuisance onto her back. It'd take a Herculean effort on Masuyo's own part to break out of this hefty pin attempt, especially with her leg angled upward and a tubby wall of back-fat squished against her head and upper torso.

"One!"

Masuyo was far too comfortable with nearly getting knocked out at this point. Between her old career and the slew of powerful opponents she'd faced since joining AFW, there were ample opportunities for her to test her endurance. Getting moonsault by Valley, elbowed in the gut by Kyoko Akan, slammed into oblivion by Vritra Savage. In only a few months, Masuyo traded blows with the kind of competition she could only dream about. She wanted to be pushed to the limit, yearned for it in every stubborn muscle that kept her alive and a smile stuck on her face without even remembering how it got there.

Now she didn't remember any of that. She wasn't sure about anything. She didn't know what to do next, if she could win this fight, or if it would even mean anything after all was said and done. But then remembered something very important.

It wasn't her choice.

"Hngh!" The Demon planted her foot and burst up from the floor, leaping into Bashira from underneath like a human piston. Her free arm shot up in a wide hook as she sprung, an errant blow to the side of Bash's massive, stuffy face. Masuyo didn't have the strength at the moment to fully dislodge herself from under the bear's thick body fat, but the effort would hopefully be enough to spring her leg free and get Bashira to slip off-center, breaking the pin momentarily before Masuyo dropped back to the floor again.

Breathing what felt like her last, Masuyo looked at Bashira and flashed her trademark grin.

Alright Bashira was beginning to get a little bit really fucking pissed off here. She'd been cracked in the face by continuous knee strikes, somehow judo-flipped (she still hasn't quite pieced together how Masuyo managed to pull off that goddamn miracle), and was on the verge of being throttled into submission in a chokehold that Bashira probably couldn't even pronounce correctly. The Brawling Behemoth was freaking done and ready to put this Demon down for the count, clock out and hit the showers. But not even a goddamn muscle buster and close to three hundred pounds of sweat sheened misery kept Masuyo down. Bash mouthing more profanities after slovenly shifting up to one knee before arising once more, breathing through puffed cheeks and a gaping mouth as she gazed downward. Noticing the return of that same shit-eating and delirious grin back from when Masu trudged back inside the ring.

"...*pant*...You know what?...*pant*...Think I had you pegged wrong all along, Noodle Maid...*pant*...Youz one badass bitch...*pant*...Thing is...you just ain't got what it takes ta hang with the big girls...*pant*...and it's high time I sent you packin..." Bashira concluded her monologue while casting a towering and rotund shadow over Masuyo, afterward reaching down to help herself to two clenching handfuls of the Demon's raven haired locks in a hair-raising ascension. But one that kept Masuyo arched over before assertively slotting her head betwixt the decidedly unwelcome confines of Bash’s flabby thighs. One final bit of demeaning theatricality taken at Masuyo's expense as Bashira mimicked herself taking an extended draw from a cigarette before stubbing out the cigar on the side of the MMA Maven's presented backside. Signaling this was the end and foreshadowing Bashira's hooking of Masuyo's arms before hauling her into the air and upside down. A stalled positioning before getting savagely plastered onto the canvas in the Bear-Woman's Implant Buster finisher...

Just one more punch, one more kick, one more something before anything else.

Bashira was hurt, out of it, beyond reeling. In an octagon, those telltale signs would have been the end for her and the start of Masuyo’s bitter road towards victory. It wouldn’t have mattered who they were. Three-hundred-pound ball of bear fat, a two-hundred-pound titan of muscle, a one-hundred-pound dancer flying circles around her. Masuyo would always win, no matter what it took, in those crucial last moments. Yet every time she tried to lift her arm, she’d only get a twitch. Her heart was pounding relentlessly, she couldn’t keep the air in her lungs long enough to form another word. The best Masuyo could do was keep her eyes focused up and hear Bashira’s last rites, digesting them with all the care she did with her lunch.

It was in those lingering moments of consciousness that she realized she’d felt this way before. During her debut, right up to the end. Her heart wanted to move, her mind knew she could keep fighting. But the body was unwilling and so she had no choice but to accept the inevitable. With Valley, that left her heart filled with nothing but respect and admiration. It renewed Masuyo’s vigor to continue onward and come back even harder and stronger no matter what stood in her way.

This was not then. Not here, not with Bashira. Not as she looked out at the world from upside down, catching faint strays of flashing camera lights and horrified expressions looking back at her from a parallel world beyond the confines of the ropes. Blood rushed to her head, welling the heat in her cranium to a boiling point as she felt her eyelids growing heavy. The corner of Masuyo’s mouth flicked upward, still keeping a weak, final grin about her face. The last thing she saw was the floor rushing towards her in a blur.

Her soul was crushed into a thin line, and then nothing.