Kamikaze (Akashi+Taylor) vs Shiro Shinde (Naoko+Stephanie)

Taylor grimaced, watching Stephanie again threaten with a lazy right hand. She was a quick learner, and she wasn't going to let her keep throwing fakes and backing her up into the ropes. As Stephanie came in with her right hand up high, Taylor's left hand darted out to slap her palm against Stephanie's face, pushing her back while her arm kept the chop from coming down.

As she went to put her other hand against Stephanie's stomach and shove her off, Stephanie's uppercut slipped through and dented her ribs. Taylor grunted and winced from the pain, but she shoved as hard as she could to create some space between her and her opponent. She planted a foot on the middle rope for leverage and dove to Stephanie's right side, landing in a forward roll and coming up to sprint the rest of the way to Akashi.

With a grin, she slapped Akashi's waiting hand. "Warmed her up for ya, 'Kashi."

Akashi had been watching the match intently while Taylor and Stephanie battled it out. She was pleased to see Taylor's speed had put her in a mostly advantageous situation in the beginning. And Taylor's ring awareness and agility allowed her to tag out before things got out of hand. Holding out onto the length of the tag rope and bouncing on her heels, she had her hand outstretched to make the tag as easy as possible.

"Gotcha! Good Work!" She said as she bounded through the ropes and squatted on her haunches. She eyed up Stephanie and with a shout and a charge, launched herself at the red headed Yanki and aimed to send a powerful sumo palm slap into the girl.

"GYAAAAH!"

As Taylor climbed through the ropes and Akashi made her way into the ring, Taylor gave her a hard, sharp smack on the butt.

"Go get 'em, champ." She said with an infectious grin.

Stephanie's face got smacked loudly by Taylor's slap, but it felt more insulting than damaging. Still it forced the gangster to turn her face to the side, losing sight of Taylor, who took the chance to push Stephanie back away and sneak pass her to tag Akashi in.

Naoko, who seemed like she was falling asleep on the corner, raised her head, showing a little more interest now that the champion was getting in the ring.

Steph groaned frustrated that Taylor had fled, leaving her fingers marked on the redhead's face. Stephanie raised her fists to defend herself as Akshi charged, holding her left arm up to block the champ's palm strike, but despite being able to prevent the slap from hitting her directly the force of the hit was more than enough to make Steph stagger back, groaning pain.

The redhead took a few more steps back than what she needed to recover from the hit and took a second to rub her aching arm, and then start circling to the left, not wanting to get trapped against the ropes.

Akashi grinned when she felt Stephanie's arm hit her palm. She wanted an actual hit but she knew that even blocking one of her strikes wasn't truly enough to mitigate away all effects. But she wasn't about to let Stephanie just back off and when the Yanki made to stagger away, Akashi tried to close the distance and ram her shoulder into Stephanie's chest to try and knock her to the ground.

Stephanie couldn't get much distance between the champion and herself when Akashi ran right into her like a freight train. The sumo cutie moved way faster than Stephanie though someone that big should be able to, making it impossible for the redhead gangster to get out of the way; with the champion's shoulder hitting her right between her breasts, Stephanie was taken down cleanly of her feet and down to the canvas with a loud smack.

"ughhhh!" groaned the redhead landing on her back, her arms coming to her chest instinctively. The pressure that Akashi had put on Stephanie's solar plexus with that shoulder block, made her cough painfuly, which had been made only worse by the hard hit on her back; having her ribcage hit from both directions in such quick succesion drove a lot of breath out of Steph.

But despite the pain and the lack of air, the redhead wasn't going to just lay there and wait for the champ to keep hurting her. Although Stephanie's upper body was still feeling the effect's of the powerful attack, her legs were still quite lively. Stephanie spread and stretched her legs, twisting her body to one side as she tried to scissor Akashi's own legs; aiming her right leg to kick on the back of the champion's knees and hopefuly make the sumo cutie fall face first.

Akashi let out a grunt as her shoulder rammed into Stephanie. Putting the Yanki to the ground was good for her and hopefully allow her to get down and dirty with Stephanie. She liked to be on the ground and up close and personal. But the gangster was crafty and swung her legs out. Akashi's eyes widened as she felt the foot in the back of her knee. She let out a somewhat embarrassing squeak as she hit the ground on her hands and knees.

She was used to staying on her feet from being a sumo but Stephanie's move wasn't exactly a classic sumo tactic. She grunted and looked over at Stephanie. Though her knee was sore, the rest of her was still fine. Akashi shifted her body and tried to drop her weight and drop an elbow onto Stephanie's chest.

Stephanie allowed herself to smile despite the pain. But although she had taken down the champ, Akashi had landed on her hands and knees, which left her in a good position to attack the redhead, who was laying flat on her back, again. This convinced the Yanki girl that is was a good idea to get away and as far as possible from the sumo cutie, so Stephanie set her body in motion to roll back, and that proved to be the best idea the redhead could have had, for had she decided to do so one second later, she would have ended crushed under the champions elbow and weight. The ring trembled as Akashi dropped on the canvas but Stephanie wasn't there.

The redhead had had enough for a start, and although she was hungry to prove her worth, specially after the humiliating start with Taylor, she knew trying to do so against Akashi may not be a very good idea. So she kept rolling and rolling, away from Akashi until she got close to her corner and then she stood up, extending one hand to Naoko... who slapped it and tagged in with the same expresionless attitude she loved to portray.

While the redhead gang-girl rolled under the bottom rope out of the ring, the Japanese slid between the ropes into it.

Taylor's face lit up with delight, watching the redhead log-roll her way to safety. She burst out laughing, in cackling, high pitched, hysterical sobs. She couldn't help it. For a moment she tried to settle herself down, but then the laughs came back and she hung from the top rope while her knees went weak.

"You...looked...so... STOOO-PID! Haaahahahahaha!" She kept laughing until her face was red and she felt it in her stomach, and then eventually her fit settled back down into a more sporadic giggle. A big smile still remained imprinted on her face as she watched with gleaming eyes as the boring Japanese girl faced off with Akashi.

"Go Kashi..." She managed weakly in between giggles.

Akashi didn't chase after Stephanie when she rolled away. She grunted as the elbow missed but took a moment to watch Stephanie crawl back to her corner. She stood up to a crouching position, testing her knee as she saw Naoko get into the ring. She let out a sigh, sweatdropping a bit at Taylor's laughter. She didn't turn back to look. Instead, she focused a steely gaze at Naoko.

"Naoko-san." She said and bowed her head slightly.

She then dug her fingers into the canvas and bent her knees. She growled out a yell and charged towards Naoko to try and send a sumo slap as hard as she could into Naoko's chest.