Sophia Nechiporenko vs. Senji Takijima - Cold Rage

It was nothing personal. Her psychiatrist had warned her about the inevitable consequences of compartmentalized trauma. Though she had to wonder if a sliced throat was one of the “consequences” she’d foreseen in her report. Senji would not have to meet that sort of fate. Yet.

A red haze controlled her vision and focused her pupil on the male adversary that beckoned for her unbridled fury so carelessly. The killer’s intent that had been honed by her motherland to a razor’s edge made its sudden appearance on this grand stage in the Land of the Rising Sun. For only the briefest moment, the Japanese boy was caught front and center with the Sophia Nechiporenko of days past. In the time of her glory, out from beneath a mountain of bodies. A place she had no desire of returning to.

Sophia forced herself to reel back, regaining some semblance of sanity even as her fingers continued to clench the back of Senji’s ruby hair. This match was the first she’d enjoyed in a while. Not since her exile has she found herself in a real fight. It would be cruel to her to end it so swiftly.

Sophia moved forward in an attempt to break him again. A decision that was far more premature than she realized. Her mind was given over to offense and did not so much as perceive the punch aimed for vitals. The blow to her sternum forced her to reel forward, bringing Sophia in range for Senji’s palm strike to her chin. Her head became light and felt disconnected from the rest of her. Her vulnerable head was the perfect target for a rare martial feat, one she hadn't experienced before: a one-inch punch.

Her right foot staggered back, then the other in an awkward reverse stride. Hazy colors and flashes of light flooded her unfocused eye. The Russian stood swaying uneasily on the spot, lulling back and forth with only enough sense to keep upright. A light breeze may have been more than enough to send her falling back first onto the canvas.

A chance presented itself. An opportunity he once again trudged through the mud for. The Dragon having struck once and true, both of Senji's eyes settled on his opponent's head as she reeled back out of his range. Incredible. Sophia's resilience was quite astounding. And truly, Senji was having fun too - albeit hampered by the polarizing aching in his side - yet, he was sure of it. He could seize his victory from this blood and sweat-stained canvas????!!!

Taking his turn at the offensive, tired and injured, Senji put all the strength he could muster into driving forward into the woman's middle for a tackle, his head briefly hooking underneath her right side by the ribcage. Despite his change from the initial style from the beginning of their match, Sophia hadn't made him revert into his old habits. This fight had not escalated to defeat meaning loss for the second time in his young life, nearly having been snuffed out several times before. Exclaiming to the cheer of the crowd as his loan finally began to draw its toll, Senji prepared for the next sequence.

"C'mon, Sophia!"

Grunting if the attempt made contact, Senji would finally tip the tantalizing Russian onto her back. His knees slammed into the white surface, pitched on either side of her stomach. Settled into an ambitious full mount, Senji raised his left fist into the air, seeing long brown hair and a bloody, gratified leer glaring back up from beneath him momentarily before the mind came back to the present. Nevertheless, this stoppage did not stop Senji from beginning a torrent of blows.

His knuckles cut through the air, aiming to damage whatever they hit. The canvas. Flesh. A guard. It did not matter even if Sophia had enough sense to get her legs around him. So long as he could move his fists, Senji pounded at his opponent while his limbs were beginning to burn from a good buildup of lactic acids. They were starting to feel very heavy, like lead, but the boy didn't stop until Sophia faltered or answered his challenge full-heartedly. In a hot-blooded contest of blows, it appeared Senji was going to finish this with his secondary style, rooted firmly on top of the Motherland's finest.

Sophia had hated Japan from the moment she’d arrived. Their food was horrible, their culture was reclusive and impotent, and the sights and sounds plagued her ears non-stop in this metropolitan nightmare. But most of all she hated the people; the utter weakness both mentally and physically of every wasted scrap of human life across this backward nation.

It was almost a relief when she didn’t have to see them anymore. Shapes had lost their form in the sudden haze brought on by Senji’s concussive strike. The pounding in her skull and the stillness in her breath failed to help her recover any faster. Even still, she was happy that she could not see them any longer. The vile people, living for nothing but to be pleased and coddled. It was almost too generous for her to kill them off for a livelihood one contract at a time.

Being denied sight of everything else, including her opponent, was a difficult trade-off. Difficult, but not impossible. She had lived for so long with only half of her vision, after all. What was one more eye? Sophia did not need it. She could smell him in the air, and feel the vibrations from his steps beneath her home. His shapeless colors inched closer and closer.

The Russian wanted to move, but her body was unwilling.

A firm strike to the midsection blew past her tensed, toned abdomen. Her back hit the floor even harder. Sophia bit her tongue, refusing to bend or break. She was past the haze now. There was a near darkness to her vision from the concussive blows that lingered steadily. The momentary comfort of being deprived of her sensations had been blissful, yet fleeting.

Senji’s fist on the side of her cheek knocked the pitch black away. The second shot to her lip busted it wide open, returning the color to her eyes even as a crimson streamed down her chin. The third and fourth to her cheek and temple rendered her fully cognizant. And immediately angry.

“You dead bastard!” Sophia swung a fist up past his downward striking hand, aiming a blow at his chin. That first step would give the former soldier the leeway she needed to push and shove Senji onto his back. Unwilling to waste the effort mounting, or simply being too impatient to think ahead, Sophia threw several punches at the Japanese fighter even as she maneuvered onto her knees. From her half-guard position between his legs, Sophia sought to meet her male opponent blow for blow, throwing every last scrap of strength and disdain into a slaughter of flying punches to his face and elbows to his chest and liver.

She would break him here.

Senji hit her. Again. Again. Again. But, Sophia would not succumb, and he would pay in kind. Ten minutes and 32 seconds into the match, a strike assailed Senji's head.

Mount ~> Strike! ~> Strike! ~> Strike ~> StrikeEkirtsEkirtsEkirtsEkirts

The noticed impact blurred Senji's vision as he was tilted to the right off of Sophia. After all, he was transfixed on taking the one opportunity that he did not foresee an easy retaliation from her based on what had happened only several seconds ago. His left arm came to wrap around her nape and throat as she took a position on top of him where she wanted to be. His best choice to fix this was the go for a Chokehold! Yet that did not happen. Senji's arm recoiled back to the front of his face as the elbow impacted his right side, sending signals of pain rampaging through his viscera. It wasn't even two moments that he was given to prepare for the next as his head banged against the canvas... repeatedly. Over and over. It was getting harder to see, harder to breathe.

He was full-on defending now through the impotent vision. The entanglement of her bodies helped, but this pounding did not. Senji coughed as his forearms returned to guarding his face.



But he could not be in two places at once.

The shots to his liver reduced his defensive ability, Sophia's blows now stretching into the double digits. A bitter sense of dread creeped into his spine, firing up to his brain, then the deciding moment came to pass. His guard shattered.

The Japanese fighter's face was slammed by the Russian's hits which drove him further into the descending darkness....

Finally...

Senji quit moving as his brain was rendered unconscious, shutting off. His muscles turned traitor on him while they locked tight and froze. That made him body freeze, and then relax. Covered in blood that wasn't his and his own, Senji's eyes lost that 'alive' look and the lids closed around his orbs. He was silent now, save for his inversely slowed rate of breathing so long as Sophia could hold herself back.

She had...managed to best him.