The First Step: Aizen Yuzuriha vs. WYVERN

[BlackAkuma]

This was a gamble, and they both knew it the moment Aizen attempted the take down. Wyvern didn’t just have the edge on him in terms of strength, but she had good instincts, and she was, bare minimum, just as fast as he was. There was always the real chance that she would catch him before he got too close, bring him to the floor, and get on top, where she could work him over and whittle him down at will. This was a high-speed Chess match, where the wrong move at the wrong time could ruin the whole game.

This time, though, the gamble worked in his favor. She was brought down hard, but she made a good attempt to mitigate the damage, curling up before they hit. She also made sure to make him pay for the progress - a harsh elbow up top, a harsher knee from below, making him cry out from the crushing impact, caught in the Wyvern’s jaws. A stiff, painful reminder that he needed to do something about those strikes of hers before they caused real, lasting damage.

As much as it hurt, they were on the floor now, the advantage he wanted was his, and he wasn’t letting it go so easily. Move. Now.

With them on the floor, Aizen worked his way forward, vying for position on top in a mad scramble. It wasn’t just to hold her down and get her under control - as soon as he reached the right position, he raised his leg up and brought it crashing down, trying to drive his knee into her solar plexus with all of his weight behind it, a brutal attempt to force the air out of her body and pacify her, if only for a few seconds.

[Hills]

Wyvern grits her teeth as she's forced to the ground by her heavier opponent. Aizen was proving himself to be exactly what she wasn't. He wasn't as strong or as tough as her, but he was strong enough, and tough enough to endure her attacks without folding and enable his moves to be effective. Wyvern could outdo him in her own fields, but she couldn't crush him in them, Demonstrated nowhere better than when her jaw-like strike hurts him but does not stop him from connecting with his takedown. Meanwhile, she finds herself massively outmatched when the fight transitions to one of her weaknesses.

Aizen quickly learns that Wyvern has brute force and little else when it comes to grappling. The Irish wrestler isn't an outright amateur, her motions showing the signs of training, but for participation in an elite combat sport she could be called "adequate" only if the evaluator was feeling particularly generous that day. With Aizen having started out on top, she has little chance of overturning him so long as he makes no obvious mistakes. At this range, even the extraordinarily minimal windup she requires for her strikes is too much, neutering her primary counter to grappling attempts.

Aizen's knee strike connects easily. From this position, Wyvern has no real way to block it, and the hiss of the air being forced out her lungs is unmistakeable at this range. As Aizen separates his legs, though, Wyvern snakes her own around the one that remains on the ground, attempting to secure a half guard that will not disengage even through the impact to her stomach. Overall, however, the strike does its job, and much of Wyvern's monstrous strength leaves her for a few moments as she tries to recover her breath.

[BlackAkuma]

The referee dropped down beside them, getting close enough to have a good look at Wyvern’s shoulders. Smart move by him, but that wasn’t Aizen’s play. He wasn’t sure whether or not he could win this match by pinfall or not, but he was sure that the time to try wasn’t anytime soon. This woman had far, far too much stamina and stubbornness for that at this point. He was a good enough judge at these things from a wealth of experience, with the experience needed to gauge what she would be capable of, and he wagered he was only just scratching the surface.

It made for an enticing thought.

Despite her strength advantage, Aizen was making good progress against her, here, getting on top and nailing her with the knee, knocking the wind clean out of her. His first thought was to move over her and secure an armbar or slid downwards and work over her legs, but both of those ideas were nixed where she caught him from below, wrapping him up below the thigh and keeping him from making any drastic transitions.

But limiting his options wasn’t the same thing as erasing them entirely. Instead of pulling away, Aizen dove forward and brought his arm around her shoulder, scooping it behind her neck and pulling her towards him. At the same time, he brought his arm underneath her opposite shoulder, then locked her hands behind her back.

Aizen pulled her in, cranked up the pressure, and there they had it - he was going for an arm triangle, a simple but effective move that could sap some of that impressive power and even the field, choking the life clean out of her. The choice would either be to submit or pass out, and he didn’t have much of a preference.

[Hills]

Despite almost exclusively focusing on trying to prevent Aizen from ending the fight, Wyvern still maintains enough awareness to keep one shoulder off the ground at all times, and the referee gets no chance to even begin the count. While her control in this position is limited, she has that much, at least. It was smart of Aizen not to attempt a pinfall at this juncture. Wyvern knows just as well as he does that he wouldn't be able to keep her down between her strength, endurance, and sheer, spiteful stubbornness. That ultimately puts the Irish wrestler in a worse position, however, as it means Aizen is leaning his efforts towards a submission or chokeout, which is going to be far more effective.

As Wyvern's wind briefly returns to her, she sees Aizen's face approaching and does the most sensible thing in the situation that she can: drive her own head upwards to meet him. The headbutt is delivered too late to get up to full speed and at a partly deflected angle, but Wyvern is able to put a shocking amount of force behind it. If Aizen can maintain his focus through the pain, he'll still be able to secure the arm triangle, but he's most likely going to be dealing with a nasty headache tomorrow. Wyvern also defiantly clamps her legs down even tighter on Aizen's thigh, applying bruising force but not providing any method of escape for her.

[BlackAkuma]

Someone - a few someones - in the audience were making catcalls, whooping and hollering at the sight of a guy on top of a woman. The jokes wrote themselves, he supposed, but this was a case where they didn’t apply. Not that Wyvern wasn’t attractive - as little interest as Aizen had in such things, even he could tell that she was. But his focus was purely set on one thing - beating her. His position on top was nothing but function and form.

It wasn’t without problems, however, a fact he learned as Wyvern jerked up and smashed their heads together, rocking his skull. Skin had broken on that, he was sure it would be bleeding, and it gave him pause - but it wasn’t enough to stop him altogether, but it took some of the wind out of his sails as he settled into the hold, taking power away at the worst moment. He wrapped her up in the hold, locked it in, and went about trying to ramp things up as fast he could, shaking off the hit and applying more power by the second.

It wasn’t perfect, but he was confident this could work. He could put her down like this, he just had to stick with it.

Aizen gritted his teeth, closed his eyes, and continued to ramp up the pressure.

[Hills]

If the entirety of Wyvern's senses hadn't been caught up in her current predicament, she would have been far more annoyed than Aizen at the catcalling. Fights like these were pretty much the only time she could be in such close proximity to another person without feeling embarrassed, and the audience crossing the streams like that had always bothered her more than it logically should have. Fighting was one thing, and intimate contact was another beast entirely.

To Wyvern, at least. There were plenty of people in LAW who would not doubt enjoy the opportunity to prove otherwise to her, but she'd had some very specific stipulations to her contract about such things.

Wyvern clamps down harder than ever on Aizen's leg. Meanwhile, she somehow manages to twist her free arm into a position that allows her to sink her elbow painfully into Aizen's ribs. From her current position, however, she can't do much more than hurt without causing real damage; the blows are a far cry in effectiveness from her ferocious strikes earlier in the bout. The elbow drives in once. Twice. Three times. But each time, Aizen can feel a slight weakening in the impact. Wyvern's resistance to the blood choke was near-superhuman, but it had been locked in correctly. Tough or not, there was only one outcome.

"She's out!"

The referee declares the end of the match, firmly pushing on Aizen to separate the two combatants before calling for the bell.

[BlackAkuma]

Aizen clamped down as hard as he could, putting his full force into the choke. He gritted his teeth as she fought and laid into him with those elbows, struggling, fighting for all she was worth. It was like trying to hold down a live wire, as she jerked about and bucked and fought for all she was worth, making him work for it every step of the way. But it would be worth it. He just needed to wear her down, work her over, and then-

“Aizen, that’s enough! Get off her!”[/color]

Aizen’s eyes shot wide at the referee’s call, noticing that, yes, Wyvern was out cold. The abruptness of it all took him wholly off guard, so caught in the exchange that he hadn't noticed. He let go of her as if she had suddenly transformed into hot metal, rolling away and giving her space so the referee could check on her.

The crowd broke out in a strange cacophony, some booing, some cheering, but most just confused. The match had shifting into a high gear, they could all feel the moment, and to see it all end so suddenly…

Aizen rarely cared for the pageantry of it all, just wanting to win and call it a day. But he had to agree with the crowd for once. This felt off. Wrong. Like a song that stopped two verses too early. Unsatisfying. Incomplete.

But there wasn’t anything to be done about it. All he could do was crawl back over and join the referee in trying to rouse her.

[Hills]

When Wyvern comes to, she doesn't even remember the last few seconds before she was put to sleep. With the referee shaking her and her position splayed on the floor, however, she quickly puts the pieces together. This wasn't her first time in this position, but it was easily the most humiliating. It could have...should have been a good fight. They were both well matched, equally determined, and lived for such battles. To exceed their limits, to snatch victory from an opponent who can fight back. Stone or metal sharpens by grinding against another such surface.

But she hadn't sharpened. She had just broken.

Wyvern can feel her jaw quivering as she nears a rare display of open emotion, the mounting frustration of her continuing failures threatening to overwhelm her in this moment. She feels humiliated. Weak. And most painful of all, for the first time, unworthy of her opponent. For once, she has no answer, internally or externally, to the jeering of the crowd. In this moment, she knows she deserves it.

One hand shoots out, pulled only at the last second as the Irish wrestler controls herself to avoid harming the referee, instead firmly pushing them away without excessive force. She begins to sit up before thinking better of it, instead rolling out of the ring and striding briskly towards the back, not even looking at Aizen. A display of poor sportsmanship, perhaps, but not deliberately; she doesn't trust herself to be able to keep her composure.

Ten Minutes Later

As per usual, Wyvern sought out an isolated section of the building's guts as soon as she wasn't needed for the show. Seated on a bench up against one of the corridor walls, the Irish wrestler hunches over. Her elbows rest on her knees, with her hands draping limply between. A half-drunk bottle of water is loosely gripped in one. She'd barely had time to break a sweat. Although her hair has fallen forward to conceal her face, an unmistakeably threatening aura still seeps through intensely enough that the rare passers-by have thought better of trying to disturb her, no doubt helped by her reputation for unfriendliness and unpredictable behavior.

[BlackAkuma]

For a man who spent his days fighting, Aizen was, by most estimations, a strict and routine person. There was a way he liked to do things, a schedule he tried to keep, and he stuck to it as much as possible to maximize his time and training. He woke up at such a time, ate, trained for whatever time he needed to, studied, trained more, ate again, cooled down, then slept. There would be variations, of course, depending on his needs for the day, but that was the general gist, and he was religious about it.

Even his post match routines were rigid. After a fight, he always showed respect to his foe, then left in as prompt a manner as possible, both to save time and avoid altercations with anyone who’d lost money on his fight. He never cared much for speaking with them after the match, seeing their business as concluded. They fought, he won, what more was there to be said.

Today, however, was different.

He and Wyvern never spoke to each, not saying one word during the entire fight, but something about the expression she wore after she woke up said volumes. The match had reached an unsatisfying conclusion for him, and he’d won. But what if he’d lost? He didn’t like to think he was a prideful man, fighting was all about self-improvement. But he would be lying if he said the experience wouldn’t nag at him. Making one, simple mistake, and having it all fall apart like that…

Aizen could’ve left after the match. He could’ve gone home, tended to his wounds, popped an Aspirin for his headache, and called it a day. He’d won his debut, he was off to a great start on paper, and more matches would be coming.

Instead, he asked around until he found where Wyvern was hanging out, finding her in some grimy corner of the building that maintenance didn’t pay enough attention to. She was sitting there, alone, and not looking like she was in the mood for any kind of company. Even so, he came closer, looked her over for a moment, then sat down beside her, hunching over in a pose that almost perfectly mirrored hers.

He didn't say anything for a few moments, only stared forward, and it wasn’t for dramatic effect. Aizen had learned many styles, but the art of conversation wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t too sure what to say, or even why he’d come down here in the first place. Pity? Concern? It was hard to place a finger on, and the words wouldn’t form.

As they approached the awkward point of no return, he decided to just go with what came natural to him. ”You’re good. Extremely. Arigato, Wyvern-san. I’m honored to meet you.” He straightened up by a few degrees and exhaled. ”But, if you would see fit to honor me again, I would have another match.”

[Hills]

Wyvern does nothing to acknowledge Aizen when he sits down next to her, seemingly oblivious to his presence. While she does, technically, feel him taking a seat, her thoughts are in such chaotic torrent of emotion that it is noticed only briefly and discarded as irrelevant. Blame, hatred, inadequacy, frustration, and a bleak emptiness all turn inward in her mind, struggling with each other for dominance. This inner turmoil was something she had long thought behind her, but this latest loss had brought back feelings that had been buried for years. When Aizen speaks, however, Wyvern's head twitchs towards him, the curtain of hair splitting apart to reveal a single green eye staring out at him. For a single instant, every ounce of Wyvern's pain and emotion flows out towards a single target, and the younger wrestler tenses up as if about to strike.

Her control, however, quickly reasserts itself, and she almost immediately breaks eye contact. A sweep of her unoccupied hand pulls the hair out of her face and back, allowing her to see and be seen properly as her gaze drills into the opposite wall of the corridor. The only sign she can even hear Aizen's words is a continuous working of her jaw, clenching and unclenching involuntarily. When he finishes, there's a pause before she responds.

"Don't apologize. The strong owe nothing to the weak."

There's only the faintest trace of bitterness in her words. Otherwise, it is the same monotone that Aizen will eventually learn characterizes Wyvern's usual pattern of speech.

"Any place. Any stipulation. But I need some time, first. You deserved better than this. Next time, I'll give it to you."