Showdown VI: Facesit War Match: Kozue Kaburagi vs Mariko Ishii

Mariko hadn’t been able to witness Kozue’s display of aerial mastery in real time, having been facing the mat when it happened. But while scurrying toward the ropes, she happened to catch a replay on the titantron. It was amazing, though she quickly had to tell herself she’d have to wait and be impressed about it later. She’d taken the points of two knees straight onto her back at high velocity. It was painful as shit, and it had effectively driven a significant amount of air out of her lungs in one go. That was all that mattered right now.

She’d made it to the ropes, but movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. Just as Kozue was starting to drop down, Mariko was quickly rolling herself under the bottom rope to stand right by the ring. The ninja’s feet slid through the space where she had been half a second ago…and the right leg slid right under Mariko’s waiting arm, which latched onto it around the ankle.

Without any hesitation, she dropped down while twisting her body as well as Kozue’s leg to try to execute a sudden dragon screw! The move was already quite a painful one when done right. But on top of the way she’d be twisting the leg, the motion would also cause the inside of Kozue’s knee to slam hard against the edge of the ring.

Simple plan, nice and clean. Kozue was going to hit Mariko with a sliding dropkick, knock her off the apron, and send her tumbling to the floor. From there, she’d hop up, grab the ropes and leap over while her opponent was up. Maybe hit her with an Arabian Moonsault off the top rope. Or, or, she could get really crazy and go for the Sasuke Special. Risky, but something about Mariko had her wanting to break out the fine china.

Yeah. Yeah, that all sounded good in her head, she could picture it, and she was already working the details out in her head, when Mariko went and shot it all to hell by simply moving out of the way at the wrong.

Moving out of the way and grabbing her leg, trapping her on the apron. ”Ah, shit.”

‘Ah, shit’ indeed. Kozue had only a couple of seconds to realize how figuratively she was screwed before she was literally screwed. The Dragon Screw sucked normal, but in this spot, it had the nice effect of hammering her leg into the edge of the ring, which hurt every bit as much as it sounded. Kozue shrieked at the impact and went rolling to the floor straight away, coming down rough on her back. She stayed there, too, taking the time to reach down and give her leg a furious massage, desperate to get feeling back into them as Mariko closed in. ”Comeoncomeonfuckfuckfuck-”

The dragon screw served as a nice momentum stopper, preventing Kozue from going on a wild flurry that Mariko wouldn’t have been able to keep up with. And, as much as she hated hurting those beautiful legs of the ninja’s, she knew doing so would limit both her speed and her high-flying offense. All things that worked to Mariko’s favor at the moment, except that it didn’t make it any harder for Kozue to breathe.

This was a facesit war, after all. A gameplan based in technical wrestling would only get her so far here. If she really wanted to establish an advantage, she needed to knock some wind out of Kozue’s sails, the same as the ninja had done with her huge knee drop a moment ago. And Mariko had a fairly good idea how to do that.

Climbing back onto the apron behind Kozue, she took aim at the woman nursing her leg and starting to pick herself back up. But before she made it too far, Mariko would take a couple running steps before leaping off, aiming to slam the soles of both boots down onto Kozue’s back with a double foot stomp!

Oooooh, that was nasty. And worrisome. Extremely worrisome.

Having her legs targeted would never be a good thing for Kozue. She was a highflyer, a kunoichi, her style revolved around movement and flipping abou and being mobile. But having it done so early in the middle of the longest match in her entire career? That was a problem. A big problem. She needed to make distance, get her leg right, then start building momentum again, so she could-

…wait, where was Mariko?

That was a very important question, and she got the answer when a pair of familiar boots slammed into her back. Mariko wasn’t all that heavy, thank God, but you didn’t really need much weight to make an impact with from that height. Kozue’s body jackknifed, only for her to flop back down a second later.

”Aaaaaaah. That sucked. Shit.”