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

From just behind the ramp’s curtain, a tall, slender figure watched the ongoing match, standing in the shadows, just enough that she could see out without being seen in. She could’ve watched the match on one of the TV screens in the back, but she decided on watching it live instead, wanting to get as close to the action as she could without drawing attention.

”Always flying, aren’t we, Blade?” She chuckled and pursed her blood red lips. It was tempting to pop the cork right now, but no. Just a little while longer…

Maiden was considerably more panicked than the woman backstage at her current predicament. She knew what was coming, a blind man could’ve sussed this out, but that wasn’t the problem. She could move, but the question was whether she could do it fast enough and with the right time to avoid Blade’s heavenly assault. Too soon and Blade would just hold back. Too late, and she’d crash down on her anyway, just awkwardly. She had to do it at just the right time in just the right way.

She heard the crowd roar, opened her eyes enough to see a purple blur flying through space, and tried her best to roll off the table in time to avoid it - a noble effort. A failed effort. Down came Blade, crashing into her with devastating force before she could even turned halfway, utterly obliterating her and the announce table beneath. Everything went black for a moment, and when Maiden came to, she was laying there with filth all around and Blade on top, unable to move a single inch. Maybe she could move again in a minute, but it was doubtful she would get that time.

Half a second of airtime could sometimes feel like an eternity to a high-flyer. It felt sort of like seeing you're entire life flash before your eyes before you bite the big one, which kind of made sense considering you had to have a certain degree of damn near suicidal and reckless abandon to pull off half the shit in Blade's repertoire. There was a damn good reason why they called her an "innovator" among high-flyers back when she was at her peak conditioning in Wrestle Angel. And having no fucks to give in regards to her own well-being combined with her being unnaturally spry and agile around the ring added up to dynamic wrestling style that always had fans cheering wildly for her over the top spots. Much like they were doing now...

"Mmnn..."

It was just a shame Blade couldn't really appreciate the applause. The Aerial Artist swimming in her own heady daze and completely slackened beneath the pile of rubbish that was formerly the main announcer's table. Blade's eyes remaining closed while she rested rather comfortably atop the immobile maid, the scattered debris they were buried underneath was thankfully shielding the public eye from witnessing Blade snuggling up to what she thought was a pillow, but was actually Misaki's well-endowed boobs.

...

Close to thirty seconds passing before Blade lethargically rose upward to her hands and knees and started shaking off the cobwebs from her disorienting collision. She tried really hard not to think about where she had just been nuzzling her face, though the slight blush to her cheeks indicated that her attempts were rather futile. Staggering back up to a vertical position came with a wincing groan as she stretched her back and took a second to be grateful that this time her aerial assault didn't end with her stumbling into an embarrassing pratfall and than getting kicked in the face as the icing on the cake.

She eventually stepped towards Misaki and gingerly hauled her up by the wrist before she began tugging and directing the prim handmaiden back towards the ring to roll her under the bottom rope. A cocked back slap to Misaki's frilly backside would help usher her back inside the ring as Blade than began scouring the outskirts of the ring for that goddamn set of handcuffs...

"C'mon...the hell is it..."

What was the worst thing about Maiden’s situation? It’s wasn’t the immense pain going through her body at the moment, as bad as that was. It wasn’t the way she kept fading in and out of consciousness, as her brain tried its level best to make sense of the madness going on. It wasn’t even the way Blade was laying her head against her chest like it belonged there, which is most certainly did not.

No, the worst part of it all was the way the audience cheered on Blade’s display, applauding her insufferable indiscretion like it jumping off something high up was a show of great skill and acumen. Maiden always hated when they did something like that. It was a just glorified stunt, and all that made Blade was a glorified stuntwoman.

That being said, it was hard to argue against the efficacy of such a move when she was the one laying under Blade, getting hauled back up to her feet and roughly dragged along. For the moment.

Maiden yelped after Blade’s indignant slap to her behind, just another sign of Blade’s flagrant disrespect for her opponent. Surprisingly enough, though, she didn't follow up on her attack after hurling Maiden inside - for whatever reason, she was rooting  around outside the ring, giving  away her valuable time.

Maiden didn't question it. Instead, she rolled to to the side, grabbed the ropes, and used these precious seconds to pull her way back up, trying to get back on two solid feet before her foe could come back her way.

Blade really didn't have anyone else to blame but herself for not being able to find the instrument of her impending victory. A seasoned bloodhound probably couldn't find those silver handcuffs amidst the scattered refuge of wooden panels from the announcer's table and lingering dust-up from unloading an entire fire extinquisher on Misaki's face. The Aerial Artist already regretting having these handcuff stipulations in the first place, knowing full well that she could have pinned Misaki ten times over by now after that last bit of aerial chicanery.

"C'mon alrea-Ah!!...And Bingo..." Blade merrily perked up upon finding the silver handcuffs beneath one of the ring apron tarps before reaching over to pick them up and twirl them in her fingers "...Was his name-o~..."

It took a few seconds but she finally found the silver bugger, a chipper smile on her face as she rolled under the bottom ropes and began a steady approach towards the cornered Maiden clamping onto the nearby ropes. Blade was walking over at a somewhat stunted foot-pace considering she was still very much winded and beaten up from the match so far, but that still didn't stop her from exercising any opportunity to taunt and tease at any given possibility.

"You...have the right to remain...an irritating, prissy, bootlicker who couldn't beat me on her best day..." Blade mocked with her own impromptu version of the Miranda rights while she snuck up behind Maiden and began to hopefully snap some cuffs on her while yanking one of her arms behind her...

Maiden was in a bad way. She was hurt, seriously so, with the Blade’s kamikaze attack doing a number on her stamina. This was part of the reason she avoided these no-rules, anything-goes sort of matches like the plague - they invited this sort of lawlessness and destruction, favored recklessness over traditional wrestling. Perfect for a garbage wrestler like Blade, less so for Maiden.

Still reeling from the attack, she stood up with wobbly legs and tried to figure out where her opponent was off to, looking about in a panic. Not left, not right, where’d she go where did she-

Ah.

It was no small surprise, really, that Blade was talking as she tried to sneak up on Maiden from behind, failing the effort altogether. The only thing bigger than her eyebrows was her mouth, after all. Regardless, her mistake was one that Maiden would have little qualms with punishing.

The second she felt Blade grab her by the hand, Maiden jerked back, pulled the arm underneath her shoulder to trap it there, then snapped her head backwards, attempting to hit Blade in the middle of her face with her skull.

Concepts such as stealth and tact didn't have much use to someone whose primary offensive strategy was speed, strikes, and jumping off of ludicrously tall structures. There wasn't much room for methodical strategies when she did her best performances in the ring while going for kamizake dives and top rope shenanigans. Blade fed off of those habitual instincts of hers at all times...

...and right now, those natural tendencies were telling her to irritate and annoy the stuffy handmaiden as much as possible. To really savor snapping the cups on Misaki and have as much as fun as she could at the handmaiden's expense. Again, not because there was any tactical advantage to be had from any of this.

She just really...really hated Misaki.

"Anything you say, can-GAH!!!" Blade's dislike for Misaki unfortunately turning into underestimating the maid, her right arm getting easily ensnared under the handmaidens shoulder before getting her face rocked by the snapped back headbutt. Misaki clocking Blade squarely against the bridge of her nose and causing a world of pain to overcome her senses. A flash of white in her hazy vision came before everything going all woozy and fuzzy. Blade's slackened form briefly leaning against Misaki's back before she collapsed to her knees in a disoriented stupor. Her groaning head tilted down and her right arm still in the maiden's grasp with the silver cuffs in her hand dropping down to the canvas...

Oh. That worked.

Maiden’s headbutt had been a shot in the dark, an act born of sheer desperation, certainly not something that would’ve typically found its way into her repertoire, so she was quite glad to see that her flirtation with a more wild style of wrestling had paid off. Even moreso because she could feel the impact, clean and solid, along with accompanying sound of pain from Blade’s unworthy lips.

Good, good. This was the perfect chance to show Lady Bettencourt her resiliency, how she could be a continual asset to the Primol operation and serve her in and out of the ring. An opportunity such as this would not be ignored.

With Blade’s arm clutched tight, she held her in place for a moment, then reached up to snag her head instead, bringing it down into a hold under her shoulder. From there, Blade twisted her hips, fell to the floor, and attempted to bring Blade down on her back in the same motion, looking to secure her with a headlock takedown and keep her pinned.

So much for keeping your grace under pressure...

Blade finding out the exceptionally hard way that even someone who is as obsessively sanitary as Misaki is still has what it takes to get her hands dirty when the situation called for it. Blade briefly wondering if it was the constant quips, constant taunting, unloading a fire extinguisher in her face, or whether it was elbow dropping her through a table that was the breaking point for Misaki to expand her arsenal of moves to include stiff as fuck headbutts.

Whatever the catalyst was, it left Blade just as stunned all the same. Her eyes watering up from being clocked in the nose as she slumped against Misaki heavily in her swirling daze, a numbing sensation in her face with the smell of what she could have sworn was blood. All sensations that Blade had little time to explore before being seamlessly chucked overhead to now be laying sprawled out on her back. Blade grit her teeth to help stifle any further pained noises from being uttered while she was pinned beneath the handmaiden, one of her legs curling up before flattening back down as she sputtered wearily into Misaki's annoyingly soft sideboob.

It was unseemly, to be so rough. Wholly unlike Maiden’s more refined, thought-out style, but that was simply the sort of beast that Blade brought out of her. Even as she managed to get the ruffian down on the floor, Maiden could still feel her blood boiling, her inner demons fighting to bring out baser instincts.

She could resist. She would have to. She was representing Gwendolyn, now, and her mistress would not tolerate such behavior from her associates.

Besides, she had to keep the rules of the match in mind. She wasn’t out to beat Blade to a pulp, merely to incapacitate her using the handcuffs. Speaking of which…

With one arm securing Blade by her unruly head, Maiden reached and grasped the nearby pair of handcuffs, the very ones that Blade had attempted to use a moment prior. Knowing there would be few better chances, she tried to slap one of the cuffs on her foe’s wrist. It would be nearly impossible to do the other from such a position, but it was a start.

Maybe a small victory Blade that could have taken from all of this was that she finally got the stuffy handmaiden to abandon her sanctimonious shtick for one brief, head-rattling moment. Having Misaki lose her calm and cool composure was only a matter of time really. Blade just tended to bring that out in people, she supposed. Still...Blade would have much rather have an actual victory instead of some superficial, moralistic one. Those types of victory's unfortunately don't count towards her win/loss ratio.

...*clap*...*clap*...*clap*...

Blade struggled half-heartedly with a wincing groan and sluggish pedaling of her legs as the stifling constriction of the headlock whittled away at her, the dazing headbutt scrambling her thoughts and making her that much more complacent. She could overhear the rhythmic clapping from the audience willing her onward as the match slowed to a veritable crawl. Leave it to the stuffy and boring handmaiden to take all the excitement out of a match in favor of a dull, plodding rest hold. But it was one that was working in her favor, with one of Blade's wrists being easily cuffed down on...