Nathan Weed vs. Kozue Kaburagi - First Strike: Standard Match

The landing wasn't exactly pleasant for Kozue. That was one of the problems with the high-risk style - even when you actually did manage to hit what you were going for, you were always taking a little bit of yourself away with every move. It was like beating yourself up so you could beat up your opponent even more. Mutually Assured Destruction on a small scale.

It didn't help things that her stomach was still batttered from the blows, and landing on Nathan's gut was like taking another punch. She lost her wind on impact and her abs started to seize up, giving her a painful contraction for the effort...but it did work. The crowd ate it up, happy to see a new move in her repetoire, and most importantly, it felt like Nathan had been properly softened. Now, she just had to seize the opportunity.

With her knees still on the mat, she reached over and forced Nathan's folded body back down, pressing his shoulders to the mat. Kozue dropped her chest across his and pressed down on him with what little weight she had, hoping it would be enough. "Just stay down, Nate." She gave him a sympathetic pat on the side.

The referee dropped down beside them and counted along with the audience.

"1...!"

Nathan meant to kick out after one, but, by the time he’d collected the energy to manage it, the ref had already passed two and was halfway on her way to three. And, rather than use the broken pin as a means to escape or retaliate, Nathan settled back into the mat. He was fine, and he was good to fight; he just needed a moment to properly orient the world around him. To that end, he shut his eyes and willed his brain back to proper working order. He groaned freely, too. He didn’t know if that was helping or not, but it felt good to do.

A close count. Kozue hated when she got the close count.

"2...!"

And Nathan kicked out. It wouldn't have been so bad if she'd just gotten the two, but two-and-a-half? It was like getting the meat dangled in her face, then cruelly snatched away. Made her mad. Made her hungry. But she kept her temper down, managed to stay with a level head. Wasn't his fault - she just had to tenderize things a little further.

"All right, that's how it is." She stood up and grabbed his arm, bringing him along for the ride and making him stand up. As soon as they were up, she spun around put as much of her power and weight as she could into an Irish Whip, tossing him off towards the farther corner.

“Wait-” Nathan wanted to say. Kozue was yanking him up just a little too fast. He could feel fluids in his brain sloshing around, and it was making him feel a little quea- hold on, did he say that out loud?

If he did, Kozue didn’t hear, or she wasn’t inclined to show him any mercy. Instead, she jerked him forward again, this time throwing him by the arm in an Irish Whip, one that he had to end with another nauseating spin to avoid getting slammed in the chest by the turnbuckles. His head was a muddy whirlpool, and he could hardly stand straight for how dizzy he was; jawbreakers, it turned out, were no fun at all. But his eyes remained defiantly open, and his arms came up in a loose shield about his body. He may not have been entirely lucid, but he knew enough to know that he didn’t want to leave himself entirely defenseless against someone who was turning out to be a relentless wave of human momentum.

Unfortunately for Nathan, Kozue had no intentions of waiting, stopping, slowing down, or any synonyms thereof. She'd already got a good taste of what he could do when he was allowed to run wild for a while, and she had no intention of going down that road. She preferred her ribs attached to the rest of her body.

She put so much force into the throw that she wound up falling to a knee after she let Nathan fly, but that worked just fine for her needs, since she was in the perfect position for what came next.

"Target locked." She huffed out underneath her breath, as she looked up at Nathan. Her body was poised and prepared, like a runner getting ready for a sprint. Which wasn't too far from the reality. "And...fire."

Kozue bolt towards him and broke into a handspring, flipping towards him, building up momentum, her hair twirling about in wide arcs until she finally came to him. She spun around, turned away from him, and tried to him with a back elbow. Nothing easier to hit than a stationary target.

Nathan’s vision was refocusing. His ears had finally stopped buzzing. His head still felt like a cracked walnut, but the pain had stopped getting in the way of his thoughts. The first thing that his returning senses perceived was Kozue down on the other end of the ring in a dangerous-looking runner’s crouch.

But even if he hadn’t recovered, he certainly would have known from the crowd’s sudden crescendo of excitement that Kozue was preparing something big and painful. They made eye contact- her hazel eyes were determined; his brown ones had to make her out through winces. He took deep and measured breaths. He probably couldn’t move all that fast at the moment, but Nathan was ready for her; if Kozue came rushing at him, she’d supply the momentum he needed to put her down with a real knockout punch.

Kozue broke the stance, and Nathan tensed up. She picked up speed, and Nathan clenched his fist. Then she started tumbling, and Nathan went white. Nathan immediately aborted his plans and instead pushed himself along the ropes out of the corner, and hopefully out of the way of whatever body part the rapidly spinning ninja had decided to throw at the end of all of those acrobatics.

The world turned in a whirling, twirling, flipping, spiraling blur as Kozue came at Nathan with the handspring, flipping his way and gaining momentum with every tumble. Aside from the effectiveness of the move, it was just thrilling to do. Putting her agility to good use, getting the crowd behind her, showing off the training she'd been going through. In a company like this, it was nice to have some things to stand out with.

She prepared for the impact as she went for the final flip, getting her elbow in just the right position, and then it happened. That one, brief second where Kozue saw Nathan out of the corner of her eye, not behind her where he was supposed to be. The gears turned in her head, and the realization struck: what was about to happen in the next second was going to mightily suck.

She hit the turnbuckle with a resounding smash as the audience recoiled, and her elbow wound up taking the bulk of the impact, right on the bone. She cried out as her back hit and hit hard, then immediately fell forward on her chest. A single second was all it took for her to go from brief control to being flat on the mat with her hair splayed about her head. Not a proud moment.

"Shit..." She groaned and rolled over, grasping her aching elbow. Kozue shook her head at the pain and started to sit up, even though she doubted she would be able to get back to a good position in time. "Shitshitshit..."

Nathan lucked out there, and he knew it. Kozue was two levels faster than he was, and he knew that if he had been just a little more worked over, or if she'd telegraphed her attack just a little bit less, he'd have taken that elbow right in the solar plexus, and he'd be too busy trying to breath to kick out of her next pin.

Of course, Nathan had both the time and the energy to get out of the way, and Kozue delivered all of that momentum into, not a human body, but a much less forgiving turnbuckle. Nathan flinched right along with the audience; it was like watching a sedan crashing into a brick wall. And with the elbow out in front like that, it was a wonder that Kozue was already trying to sit back up.

But she was, and Nathan saw it as proof enough that her elbow wasn’t shattered, and felt comfortable capitalizing. He moved in, helped her stand all the way up, then spun her around so that she was facing the corner. He swallowed the instinct to push her into it and start pummeling her again; instead, he put one arm across her neck, then used his other hand to press her throat gently into it; gently, because you don’t need all that much force in a properly applied sleeper hold.

Needless to say, that could've gone better for Kozue. If it had just a regular back elbow that she missed,  she could've recoverd fast, maybe even seen his escape coming and thought up some way to turn the tables back around. But no - she had to come at him with so much momentum that her whole body was put on the line. She gambled on Nathan not moving, and now that he had, Kozue was paying up with pain.

Luckily for her, Nathan didn't seem like the type to kick a girl while she was down. He was, however, the the type to pick a girl up and choke the shit out of her, and she learned this about him when he did exactly that. Breathing became a much more difficult affair all of the sudden.

Kozue started to thrash about, twisting this way and that, but Nathan had the hold expertly applied, perfectly constricting her windpipe. The best Kozue could do was pull at his arm and try to steal a few furtive gasps, shaking her head from side to side. Anything and everything to hold on for just a ltitle while longer.

The elbow notwithstanding, Kozue was still full of fight. Even as he pressed into her throat, she flailed about like a fish on a line, twisting and writhing and pawing at his arm to keep from falling victim to the hold. Nathan grit his teeth and endured. Kozue was winning an inch here, a centimeter there, but at the end of each battle, there was still a stiff, unyielding forearm pressed into her neck, and it was only a matter of time before the hold bled the rest of her energy out of her.