OPENING ROUND – MATCH #14
Mai Shiranui vs. Nakoruru
The sun was shining much brighter here than most of elsewhere in the premises – this was the first fight of the tournament to take place in scenery that was at least mostly outdoors, on a balcony-like setting that was still wide enough to be considered a room of its own.
The theme of the upcoming fight was as clear as the skies on this now-afternoon – a far-past generation of Japanese warrior culture going up against the modernity of ninja culture nowadays.
Nakoruru was giving her attention towards the flowers lining the corners of the balcony barricade – unsurprising behavior for someone appointed as the guardian of Mother Nature. Mamahaha was perched on her right shoulder, looking elsewhere while Nako admired the expressive colors of the bloom around her, stopping soon after to squawk out in an alerting manner. The time-displaced young guardian looked towards where her hawk companion had called, and the reason was not too far to reach.
Positioned somewhat higher above and farther away from where Nako was standing was the other half of this clash of Japan's finest; looking far beyond fine in her iconic (in several ways) red-clad gear, Mai was reclining atop the rooflet leading out into the mostly-outdoors setting, a fan in hand hiding just a slight bit of her face. From how comfortably she was settled, it seemed she had been there for a little while, and her opponent hadn't noticed until now. Of course, who would you be not to expect something like that from a ninja like her?
Heeding the alerting caw of her companion, it took a little moment before Nakoruru finally recognized the sparsely-clad ninja atop the roof. "Ohh – I was wondering what's gotten Mamahaha so suddenly bothered; so you're my opponent, I assume?"
"Exactly right~!" As soon as she was given the attention of her opponent, Mai swooped down into the scene with beauty and grace fully intact. Swiveling about with her cloth happily flowing through the breeze, she settled on her pose with the fan open in her hand, and a whole lot of bounce in her chest. "Prepare to face off with the one and only – Mai Shiranui has arrived!"
While the sexy charisma was very clear within the poster girl of the Shiranui clan, it was only met with silence (including the relatively stunned state of Nakoruru before her) only graced against by the wind, as she stared confidently towards her opponent.
Eventually, that confidence on the smile upon Mai's face petered out into an expression fitting slight discomfiture to the awkward silence. "...Yeah, it's not as awesome without a crowd, I know," she admitted, lightly itching the half-folded fan against her shoulder. "But still, I'm quite a delight in your eyes, right?"
Nakoruru was a little hesitant in her response, as her innocent eyes were unprepared for what they were going to face in this tournament. "I... honestly don't know what to say about someone so generously proportioned, in such... interesting attire."
Mai held the fan closer to her face, unsure of which direction to take the younger girl's comments. "Were there not girls like me in... whenever your time was?"
"It just wasn't a common sight."
"Guess that means you're not all that prepared with the likes of me, then?"
Nako admitted with a sniff of slight pessimism, "It's far from my first encounter – though I would've preferred if things were different."
"Don't feel so bad about it," said Mai. "C'mon, come dance in the flame with me." She spun around dazzlingly before settling into her fighting stance.
Attempting to not let her opponent's looks get the better of her, Nakoruru reached behind herself for the handle of her sheathed kodachi. "If you insist..." Mamahaha hovered by her side as she slouched into position for the incoming battle...
FIGHT!
The two fighters circled around, both waiting for the other to make their first move.
Mai spoke up in the midst of the encircling encounter, "I hope you aren't too uncomfortable having to hit a pretty face..." The Shiranui maiden's curves and bounce were shamelessly out and about in her stance, even more with the continued movement she had to keep up with.
The jiggly presence before her made Nakoruru almost incapable of looking directly at her opponent. Regardless, she was willing to approach closer for the first strike, her left foot skittery before she made a first attempt at kicking forward. Her first lick of offense was quickly dispatched, though, as Mai blocked it with a strong leg forward, and spun in a half-circle to swing the other leg further in a kick that grazed by Nako's gut; 'Nature's Guardian' retreated slightly as her grip on her sheathed blade tightened, continuing the methodical crawl that the match was starting with.
Mai held an open fan close to her face, her eyes showing the eager patience towards her opponent's next move. She kept position with barely any budge as she kept her eyes locked onto the slightly reluctant rival – when Nakoruru finally chose to try and strike again, with an elbow thrusting ahead, Mai spun aside...
"Ryuu Enbu~!"
Twirling the ribbons tailing down her back-end across the face of her opponent, Mai summoned an aura of fire in front of her, forcing Nako onto defense. As the guardian bore witness to the lingering line of flame in front of her, she saw as cartwheeled through it...!
"Hissatsu, Shinobi Bachi!" Mai drove a pointed elbow forward in her soaring dash, and smashed into the blocking arms of Nakoruru, who braced against the attack with all her will-power and managed to come out of it with little damage done.
Afterwards seeing the minimal window of opportunity as Mai had her back turned slightly towards her, Nakoruru clung onto the back of the sparsely-clothed ninja and landed her first proper strike on her with a dropkick driving her two feet into the spine. Mai stumbled into one of the pillars leading out from the entryway going out from inside the mansion, and was left with lost focus. Before long, she saw Mamahaha flying her way, and sprung away off the pillar in a brief panic to evade the hawk's ordered offense.
Immediately following the first spiral flip away from the hawk's aggressive dash at her, Mai had to flip again as she sensed Nakoruru coming at her, targetting low, and made sure her ankles didn't get clipped by Nako's diving slice at her. After the missed attack, Nakoruru front-rolled back into position, only to be soon met with a spinning kick across the face from the Shiranui beauty. Springing up higher while her opponent staggered away, Mai jumped onto the edge of the rooflet just above where Nako was standing, and dropped down with knees aiming for another full-contact strike on her opponent. Avoided it, however, and Mai met nothing but concrete on the missed impact.
"Tch~!" Mai winced briefly. High risk, but no reward...
Nakoruru jumped back into the fray with a spinning dropkick, soles hitting Mai mostly in the gut – although the sexy kunoichi braced some of the impact with her arms, she was still pushed a sizable way back. Didn't help that she was still on her knees the whole way through, risking some bad scrapes on her knees against the hard, rough pavement beneath. Mai wasn't budged too badly yet, though – the fans flourished within her hands, and she was inbound for her strike as she did a hands-free cartwheel leap, lunging forward with the fans held tightly, and slashed down with both hands.
However, she only managed to clash with Nakoruru's blade alone – the fans crumpled somewhat against the short sword of Nako, and out of the corner of her eye past the young warrior out of time, Mai saw Mamahaha fluttering with a stare piercing out at her.
Moving swiftly but with an erratic edge, Mai wrapped an arm around Nakoruru's head and brought her down towards the ground with her, rolling backwards and booting Nako across with a throw that sent the girl closer to the stone barricade of the balcony. Afterwards, Mai heard the hawk's cry sound out loud, almost loud enough to be heard across the entirety of the tournament's premises. Mai kipped up from her grounded position, just in time to avoid the low sweeping dash of Mamahaha.
The hawk thankfully managed to land safely in the arms of Nakoruru, who was able to keep comfort with her companion despite having freshly taken a throw dropping her to the ground.
"Don't worry, I got you...!" she assured.
This moment of comfort to left Nakoruru to not see what came next before it was enacted right before her eyes; looking off into the distance before her, she was met with the sight of several fans, most definitely more than what she would expect someone to handle with just their two hands alone, soaring out in several curving paths that all led to just one target. The small realm of reaction during this moment left Mamahaha reacting quicker than who it was aligned alongside, hovering up beyond the shoulders of Nakoruru as she took a hold onto one of the hawk's claws and managed to ride away from the danger.
The fans – about eight in the whole bunch – met a single circle of landing in the middle of the barricade, slicing and smashing through the stone concrete. As a reminder, these fans were made primarily with simple paper, but they all individually carried the strength of a sledgehammer slamming down. Stone and dust exploded out in a small radius of messiness below where Nako was seconds before, and she looked more than relieved to have avoided the calamity.
Soon dismounting from her flight alongside her hawk, Nakoruru spun down at Mai in a rolling dive, catching her with two feet to the temple. Mai's mind swirled briefly like clothes in a washing machine, but the adrenaline of battle allowed her to recover just in time to block another attempted kick from Nako, and retaliate with a swift spin that culminated in her ribbon-tail whipping out at the Sakoku-era warrior. The ribbons caught contact with the left of Nakoruru's face, smacking across her like a disrespectful slap to the face, and it looked like it nearly rendered a cut on her face.
As Nako reeled from the ribbon assault, Mai urged another aura of flame onto the surface of the concrete floor, and she was about to fling it straight at the nature-lover – but Nakoruru quickly shielded herself from the flames with a cloak of fabric. That cloak seemed to somehow be able to shield away the fire without it spreading onto the color-matched fabric – in fact, it looked like it swiped some of the flames back at its sender, as the orange eruption snapped against the exposed skin of Mai's hefty bosom, feeling like a stinging whipping sensation of its own.
"Eyaaa~!" Mai yelped as the flames of fury were deflected straight against her chest – while she carried enough of it to physically block a bit of it, it was a little bit of an emotional weak point, as she didn't want her good looks to be messed with in such a way.
Dashing backwards and wrapping an arm around the skin of her chest, Mai was a little aggrivated to say the least. "Watch the goods, kid!"
Just as she said that, the Shiranui ninja was suddenly caught and wrapped into the holdings of the cloth, which stretched and retained its sturdiness as Nakoruru held onto it.
With her opponent temporarily entrapped, Nakoruru had a little bit of time to give her honest thoughts. "I'm not quite surprised someone like you would be so protective of your looks – but I would've figured kunoichi would rather not be noticed in the heat of battle."
Struggling to get some precise movement beneath the cloth, Mai managed to link together some sacred ninja hand-signs beneath what her opponent could see; with an eruption of flame, she phased out of the strong sheet's clutches, basically translocating out of her predicament, and when she physically returned to the fray out of her technique, she tackled Nakoruru down to the ground.
Pinning the priestess girl against the ground, Mai bought herself time to retort to what Nako had said the moment before. "You're clearly still thinking back to your time, kid – things have changed a lot nowadays."
"I suppose I'd have to admit it as true..." Even deep in the midst of the fight, the absurd jiggle of the older fighter's well-endowed chest.
Out of the line of sight of either lady, Mamahaha swayed in above Mai's position, and latched on with strong claws against the ropes and fabric wrapped around the back of her outfit; Mai didn't realize it until seconds later, but she felt herself being slowly lifted off the ground. She still held onto Nakoruru for a little bit longer as she started to be carried out and into the air, but the guardian of nature struggled out of the clutch,
Admittedly, the predicament Mai found herself in was weird as hell, for sure, but also somewhat terrifying in the case of how far up that hawk was taking her; thankfully, it wasn't too far beyond around 30 feet high up, but she was still rendered into an annoyed panic as she
"Ergh! Get off me, you little... feather... agh, fuck!" Mai was a bit limited with what she had to work with in terms of insults. Her mind was wandering closer towards possible methods to escape the high-height situation she was lifted into, and even deeper in her head, a third relative thought of 'How the hell does Elisabeth allow this?' was not too far behind; surely animal companions would be considered in a similar realm as a fighter's partner or an interfering party of people...
Someone was certainly bound to wind up in some significant pain coming from this situation, but it may not be for the one who would take the inevitable free-fall. Within a minute, Mai ultimately decided to break free on her terms and her terms alone – she grabbed against the white ropes wrapped across her back, clutched within Mamahaha's claws, and with a strong pull against the entrapping force of the talons, it culminated in those ropes snapping apart and falling away from the hawk's clutches. Surprisingly, her costume was still holding well despite the loose, broken binds alongside it...
Mai started to make her drop straight down from her dangerous height beyond the battlefield, but by this point, she was fully prepared. With another sacred hand-sign formed together with her precise fingers, she started to infuse her dropping aura with the all-too-familiar flames. As her fall accelerated, she was all but literally a meteor falling down to orbit, complete with the burning aura that surprisingly didn't do any damage onto herself.
Down at the ground, Nakoruru held her kodachi tightly in her hands, and raised it at its side above her head to block the airdrop of pure flaming femme fatale coming straight for her. Mamahaha was maybe a bit too late to catch the beauty that escaped from her grasp, so it was up to Nako to make good on her defense.
The collusion most certainly lived up to the short but intense build-up, as Mai clashed with a burning elbow against the short blade of the kodachi – and rather quickly, the blade snapped under the pressure, and the next thing that Shiranui smashed against was Nakoruru's face, front and center against her stubby little nose. Well, for sure, that nose probably wasn't the same shape anymore once the hard clonk of her opponent's elbow crashed against it.
Mai landed quite gracefully despite the whooshing soar downwards, with the return of that confident smile on her face as she dismounted into a fine half-kneel pose. However, as she took her pose, it was a moment before she glanced ahead at where her opponent would be standing at this point.
From that brief glance, she saw as Nakoruru gradually lost her consciousness from the devastating strike, all the while losing her footing as she stumbled towards the edge of the balcony, inconveniently over the previously-broken section – right as she faded away from her (albeit generally reluctant) fighting spirit, one of Nako's feet approached over the air beyond the combat zone, followed inevitably by the rest of her.
"Oh shit!" Mai panicked, quite rightfully, as she leapt out and caught one of Nakoruru's hands right as she started to fall off the platform beneath them. Swiftly reeling the young girl back onto the balcony, back to safety – well, as safe as the now-unconscious, potentially-nose-broken Nakoruru was, at least.
Although the fight was over by this point, at least it didn't end with such a bad stumble as there nearly was just now...
WINNER: Mai Shiranui
The kunoichi wouldn't be able to celebrate in any way just yet, however...
"Nngh!"
Quite abruptly, Mai felt a pain down her left arm that was impossible to ignore now, something that the adrenaline of the abrupt rescue had ignored for a minute beforehand. She looked down, and after seeing the staggered downpour of blood dripping just next to where she sat, she saw as a narrow but long cut enveloped across her elbow and upper-arm, slightly singed up from the flames that lingered for seconds longer after its formation.
Mai's first guess was that she must've hit the blade dead-on with that big finishing attack – Nakoruru's weaponry was no joke, as it became clear with how much it hurt like hell at the moment. Whatever – surely, someone on Elisabeth's payroll would patch her up sooner or later.
Though half-grimacing from the searing pain down her elbow, Mai had to laugh it off. "Yeesh," she sighed down towards the unconscious nature-guardian laying comfortably alongside her. "Didn't expect all this from you, kid." The silence returned to being awkward, since Mai was speaking to someone who was too busy being knocked-the-hell-out to respond properly. "Yeah... I think you'll thank me later..."
The victory, though bittersweet with the pure-of-heart opponent that she had to dispatch in this first round, was worth the hard competition just with that fight alone...
Next Chapter: Aoi, the Kusanagi prospect, enters the fray in the second-to-last match of what has been a wild first round!