Post by HIJOU on Nov 13, 2023 1:20:32 GMT
Contrary to what she may attempt to gaslight people into believing, Hijou has experience losing matches. Who doesn’t? Everyone gets beat now and again, it’s just a matter of ensuring it doesn’t happen as often as the inverse.
Unfortunately, this does little to stem the tide of pain that Hijou feel following every single defeat.
‘Fucking shit.’
She grumbles to herself, vocalising her frustration in an ultimately vain attempt at letting off some steam: she remains at boiling point. Presently, the Tokushima native hangs the back of her head over the edge of her bead, staring up at the ceiling as she tries to come to terms with her defeat.
It wasn’t a fair fight. The ridiculous carnage of a match with so many competitors was never going to be indicative of actual in-ring skill, rather, it serves only as a demonstration of how far blind luck and good timing can get you in the business. Yes, that’s a good explanation.
‘You’re making excuses again, Kanna.’
Just as she’d come close to allowing herself the easy way out, the grave voice of Hijou’s mentor is there to drag her kicking and screaming back into the depths of self-reflection. She huffs, sitting up and shoving some hair out of her face.
‘Well why did I lose then?’
She questions, though she’s very quickly reminded of the fact that she is totally alone. There is no answer coming here, no sage words of advice that she’d ignore anyway, no lecture to bore her, nor punishment to stifle her. Hijou has everything she wanted; independence, freedom, and a nonexistent list of people to answer to.
So why does she now feel so lost?
‘I need to get out of here,’ she muses.
Hijou really isn’t the type of person to just sit around watching professional wrestling in her spare time, an attribute of hers that frustrated her mentor to no end. ‘Do you really think you have nothing to learn from others?’ Fujita had asked incredulously, only to be driven into further hysterics upon Hijou’s response. Apparently, ‘yes’ wasn’t the correct answer to that question.
If only Fujita could see her now. Ugh.
The crowd is sparse enough that she doesn’t need to worry about sitting next to some smelly, mouth-breathing weirdo, but regardless Hijou finds it hard to really concentrate on what’s happening in the ring. Two middlingly-talented no-names go at it, and those in attendance cheer accordingly, but Hijou just… drifts through it.
She’s not entirely sure why she’s come here, but perhaps it’s some desperate attempt at applying one of her stupid mentor’s lessons, if haphazardly. Old Hiroto had always stressed the importance of studying; when you aren’t in the ring, you should be living and breathing professional wrestling.
‘There is always something to learn, even for someone with 30 years of experience.’
Personally, Hijou simply can’t understand what it is she’s supposed to learn from watching two people who are clearly not as skilled as she is. One of them locks in a sloppy-looking Boston Crab and she’s sure she can feel her eyes threatening to roll to the back of her head.
The match closes. Someone tapped out, Hijou thinks, though she was only half paying attention.
‘I need to get out of here.’ She determines. It had been a silly plan from the start, hoping she could half-follow her old mentor’s advice without any actual preparation or belief, just in case it delivered upon her some sort of epiphany or clarity. What a waste of time.
She begins to stand just as the next match is about to begin, an upbeat pop song hitting the PA systems. Through the warped tones of the ‘affordable’ sound system, Hijou can just about make out the lyrics as being… Japanese? Bit of a surprise, but whatever.
‘On her way to the ring, from Tokyo, Japan: Emi Ito!’
Hijou’s eyes widen as her attention snaps to the ‘stage’ (if you want to call it that). Smiling her way down to the ring is all five feet one, ninety-nine pounds of the girl she kicked the crap out of just before leaving Japan. Wrestling Ito was her final match in the country, in fact.
What the Hell is she doing here?
Whatever the reason, Hijou returns to her seat. She’s certainly interested now.
Well, that had been a massacre.
Not in a cruel way, of course. It’s not as if Ito had been especially aggressive, or had intended to go out there and inflict needless pain on her opponent. If anything, Emi had appeared embarrassed about what she was doing. She had simply been way too quick and way too good for the poor sap across the ring from her.
Tch.
‘How is it possible to find someone so bad they make that girl look so good?’ Hijou muses. She’d beaten Ito handily back in Japan, so if she’d DOMINATED a match start to finish, what does that say about the level of competition around here?
‘Hijou?’ The confusion in Ito’s voice is pretty fair, considering just how utterly bizarre this particular coincidence is. Hijou hadn’t needed to wait very long for Ito to depart the building, much to her own surprise.
‘Not staying ‘till after the final match? Tsk.’ She snickers, shaking her head with faux-outrage. A few mere months ago, Emi had been furious with Hijou for that very same offence.
‘What do you want from me?’ Ito questions, her earlier tone of confusion quickly swapped out with a guarded edge. ‘Not selling shirts today, if that’s what you were after.’
Hijou snorts. ‘No, just thought I’d come along and watch your match.’ She smirks. Obviously, this entire turn of events is an accident, but Ito doesn’t need to know that. ‘Y’know, being on tour with the world’s largest wrestling company, I get about. I couldn’t resist the chance to see you in action.’ She explains, the on-the-nose air of mockery bordering on suffocating. ‘You looked great out there against... uh... that woman.'
Ito presses her tongue against the roof of her mouth, determined to brush off Hijou’s mockery. Her response may not be immediate, but what she trades in snappiness she makes up for in clarity of thought. ‘Thanks. I actually watched your most recent match too. You looked great, even if you lost.’
Much to Ito’s delight, Hijou has a much harder time hiding her irritation, her nostrils flaring at the comment.
‘At least I’m wrestling actual competitors. What the fuck are you doing out here anyways?’
‘It’s called an excursion. Maybe you should have considered it.’
‘Ha!’ Hijou scoffs, folding her arms. ‘Breaking my back wrestling in front of 20 people? How do I sleep at night knowing I missed out on such an opportunity?’
‘That’s your problem.’ Ito responds, shaking her head. ‘The whole point of this is learning! It doesn’t matter how many people I wrestle in front of, I’m actually getting better. Can you say the same?’
‘Please!’ Hijou frowns. ‘I could still kick your ass today.’
There’s a brief pause, and then, a smile from Ito. ‘Want to bet on it?’
‘What?’
‘I don’t have anything lined up for next week. I’m sure we could find a company willing to book us, since you’re such a big star.’ Ito smiles. ‘You and I, one on one.’ She raises an eyebrow. ‘Unless you’re scared?’
‘Course I’m not fuckin’ scared.’ Hijou snaps, snarling. She knows she has little to gain from this, besides the joy of caving Ito’s face in once more, but fuck it.
‘You’re on.’
‘Chris Diamond.’
Hijou addresses the camera directly, her eyes of copper flickering with amusement. She finishes taping up her left hand, before lifting both it and her right up into the air and wiggling her fingers.
‘Welcome to the Hijou Maniac Minute!’ She teases, snickering along the way. ‘Which seems to almost universally exceed a minute every time. Bit silly, when you think about it.’ She shrugs, folding her arms across her chest as she leans back against her locker.
‘You seem like a nasty piece of work, truth be told. You strut down to the ring with your-’ She makes the devil horns gesture with her right hand, whilst also sticking her tongue out for exaggerated effect. ‘-Really, really cool-’ And, back to normal. ‘Biker jacket. You’ve got that barbed wire bat over your shoulder, probably scratching the shit out of your own jacket, not to mention your skin.’
She chuckles. ‘Then in the ring you’re a bit of an asshole too. Watching some of your offence gives me fuckin’ spinal stenosis, and I’m like 22 dude!’ A shudder. The image of that brute slamming Hijou onto her back over and over again is not a nice one, truth be told.
‘To top it all off, you spend all your mic time in some competition with yourself to be more crass than the last time you spoke. I mean, the last video I watched of you, you told your opponent to fuck off and die! Sheesh.’
She nods to herself, falling silent as she recalls the intensity at which Diamond had verbally dismantled his opponent the other week. And then, well, physically dismantled him too.
‘To be completely honest with you, Chris, I love it.’ She grins. ‘There’s too many vanilla-ass nice guys in this industry. But there’s also too many weirdo psycho monsters, or whatever. It’s nice to see just a regular piece of shit like you, in the nicest way possible!’ It may not sound like a compliment on paper, but eh. ‘Professional wrestling was made for people like us; it’s a profession based around physically beating someone to the point that they can’t go on, you’ve got to be pretty fucked in the head to take any sort of pleasure from that as a career.’
‘The bad news for you though, Chris?’
‘I love my job.’
She giggles. ‘I think that’s why I’m so excited for this match. Sure, beating the will out of anyone is pretty fun, but half the time it’s people who have no business being in the ring. They’re people who should be out baking cakes, or walking dogs, or some other generically kind form of employment. They’re not sickos who live to inflict pain.’
‘I need to make you bleed tonight. I need to see you drown in that ring tonight. It’s all I care about at this moment, and believe you me, I’m going to do everything within my power to make sure it happens. I’ve picked up a few wins so far in the IWF, but I’ve also picked up a few too many losses for my liking.’
‘Tonight, though?’
‘I claim my first real scalp.’
‘...And I prove that I’m a diamond in the rough!’ Hijou half-cringes, half-laughs. ‘Sorry, sorry! I bet you hear that line way, way, way too much. I just couldn’t resist it. Seriously though, Chris.’
She smiles.
‘I’m expecting a gross fight out there tonight. Don’t let me down.’
She winks.
Unfortunately, this does little to stem the tide of pain that Hijou feel following every single defeat.
‘Fucking shit.’
She grumbles to herself, vocalising her frustration in an ultimately vain attempt at letting off some steam: she remains at boiling point. Presently, the Tokushima native hangs the back of her head over the edge of her bead, staring up at the ceiling as she tries to come to terms with her defeat.
It wasn’t a fair fight. The ridiculous carnage of a match with so many competitors was never going to be indicative of actual in-ring skill, rather, it serves only as a demonstration of how far blind luck and good timing can get you in the business. Yes, that’s a good explanation.
‘You’re making excuses again, Kanna.’
Just as she’d come close to allowing herself the easy way out, the grave voice of Hijou’s mentor is there to drag her kicking and screaming back into the depths of self-reflection. She huffs, sitting up and shoving some hair out of her face.
‘Well why did I lose then?’
She questions, though she’s very quickly reminded of the fact that she is totally alone. There is no answer coming here, no sage words of advice that she’d ignore anyway, no lecture to bore her, nor punishment to stifle her. Hijou has everything she wanted; independence, freedom, and a nonexistent list of people to answer to.
So why does she now feel so lost?
‘I need to get out of here,’ she muses.
*****
If only Fujita could see her now. Ugh.
The crowd is sparse enough that she doesn’t need to worry about sitting next to some smelly, mouth-breathing weirdo, but regardless Hijou finds it hard to really concentrate on what’s happening in the ring. Two middlingly-talented no-names go at it, and those in attendance cheer accordingly, but Hijou just… drifts through it.
She’s not entirely sure why she’s come here, but perhaps it’s some desperate attempt at applying one of her stupid mentor’s lessons, if haphazardly. Old Hiroto had always stressed the importance of studying; when you aren’t in the ring, you should be living and breathing professional wrestling.
‘There is always something to learn, even for someone with 30 years of experience.’
Personally, Hijou simply can’t understand what it is she’s supposed to learn from watching two people who are clearly not as skilled as she is. One of them locks in a sloppy-looking Boston Crab and she’s sure she can feel her eyes threatening to roll to the back of her head.
The match closes. Someone tapped out, Hijou thinks, though she was only half paying attention.
‘I need to get out of here.’ She determines. It had been a silly plan from the start, hoping she could half-follow her old mentor’s advice without any actual preparation or belief, just in case it delivered upon her some sort of epiphany or clarity. What a waste of time.
She begins to stand just as the next match is about to begin, an upbeat pop song hitting the PA systems. Through the warped tones of the ‘affordable’ sound system, Hijou can just about make out the lyrics as being… Japanese? Bit of a surprise, but whatever.
‘On her way to the ring, from Tokyo, Japan: Emi Ito!’
Hijou’s eyes widen as her attention snaps to the ‘stage’ (if you want to call it that). Smiling her way down to the ring is all five feet one, ninety-nine pounds of the girl she kicked the crap out of just before leaving Japan. Wrestling Ito was her final match in the country, in fact.
What the Hell is she doing here?
Whatever the reason, Hijou returns to her seat. She’s certainly interested now.
*****
Not in a cruel way, of course. It’s not as if Ito had been especially aggressive, or had intended to go out there and inflict needless pain on her opponent. If anything, Emi had appeared embarrassed about what she was doing. She had simply been way too quick and way too good for the poor sap across the ring from her.
Tch.
‘How is it possible to find someone so bad they make that girl look so good?’ Hijou muses. She’d beaten Ito handily back in Japan, so if she’d DOMINATED a match start to finish, what does that say about the level of competition around here?
‘Hijou?’ The confusion in Ito’s voice is pretty fair, considering just how utterly bizarre this particular coincidence is. Hijou hadn’t needed to wait very long for Ito to depart the building, much to her own surprise.
‘Not staying ‘till after the final match? Tsk.’ She snickers, shaking her head with faux-outrage. A few mere months ago, Emi had been furious with Hijou for that very same offence.
‘What do you want from me?’ Ito questions, her earlier tone of confusion quickly swapped out with a guarded edge. ‘Not selling shirts today, if that’s what you were after.’
Hijou snorts. ‘No, just thought I’d come along and watch your match.’ She smirks. Obviously, this entire turn of events is an accident, but Ito doesn’t need to know that. ‘Y’know, being on tour with the world’s largest wrestling company, I get about. I couldn’t resist the chance to see you in action.’ She explains, the on-the-nose air of mockery bordering on suffocating. ‘You looked great out there against... uh... that woman.'
Ito presses her tongue against the roof of her mouth, determined to brush off Hijou’s mockery. Her response may not be immediate, but what she trades in snappiness she makes up for in clarity of thought. ‘Thanks. I actually watched your most recent match too. You looked great, even if you lost.’
Much to Ito’s delight, Hijou has a much harder time hiding her irritation, her nostrils flaring at the comment.
‘At least I’m wrestling actual competitors. What the fuck are you doing out here anyways?’
‘It’s called an excursion. Maybe you should have considered it.’
‘Ha!’ Hijou scoffs, folding her arms. ‘Breaking my back wrestling in front of 20 people? How do I sleep at night knowing I missed out on such an opportunity?’
‘That’s your problem.’ Ito responds, shaking her head. ‘The whole point of this is learning! It doesn’t matter how many people I wrestle in front of, I’m actually getting better. Can you say the same?’
‘Please!’ Hijou frowns. ‘I could still kick your ass today.’
There’s a brief pause, and then, a smile from Ito. ‘Want to bet on it?’
‘What?’
‘I don’t have anything lined up for next week. I’m sure we could find a company willing to book us, since you’re such a big star.’ Ito smiles. ‘You and I, one on one.’ She raises an eyebrow. ‘Unless you’re scared?’
‘Course I’m not fuckin’ scared.’ Hijou snaps, snarling. She knows she has little to gain from this, besides the joy of caving Ito’s face in once more, but fuck it.
‘You’re on.’
*****
Hijou addresses the camera directly, her eyes of copper flickering with amusement. She finishes taping up her left hand, before lifting both it and her right up into the air and wiggling her fingers.
‘Welcome to the Hijou Maniac Minute!’ She teases, snickering along the way. ‘Which seems to almost universally exceed a minute every time. Bit silly, when you think about it.’ She shrugs, folding her arms across her chest as she leans back against her locker.
‘You seem like a nasty piece of work, truth be told. You strut down to the ring with your-’ She makes the devil horns gesture with her right hand, whilst also sticking her tongue out for exaggerated effect. ‘-Really, really cool-’ And, back to normal. ‘Biker jacket. You’ve got that barbed wire bat over your shoulder, probably scratching the shit out of your own jacket, not to mention your skin.’
She chuckles. ‘Then in the ring you’re a bit of an asshole too. Watching some of your offence gives me fuckin’ spinal stenosis, and I’m like 22 dude!’ A shudder. The image of that brute slamming Hijou onto her back over and over again is not a nice one, truth be told.
‘To top it all off, you spend all your mic time in some competition with yourself to be more crass than the last time you spoke. I mean, the last video I watched of you, you told your opponent to fuck off and die! Sheesh.’
She nods to herself, falling silent as she recalls the intensity at which Diamond had verbally dismantled his opponent the other week. And then, well, physically dismantled him too.
‘To be completely honest with you, Chris, I love it.’ She grins. ‘There’s too many vanilla-ass nice guys in this industry. But there’s also too many weirdo psycho monsters, or whatever. It’s nice to see just a regular piece of shit like you, in the nicest way possible!’ It may not sound like a compliment on paper, but eh. ‘Professional wrestling was made for people like us; it’s a profession based around physically beating someone to the point that they can’t go on, you’ve got to be pretty fucked in the head to take any sort of pleasure from that as a career.’
‘The bad news for you though, Chris?’
‘I love my job.’
She giggles. ‘I think that’s why I’m so excited for this match. Sure, beating the will out of anyone is pretty fun, but half the time it’s people who have no business being in the ring. They’re people who should be out baking cakes, or walking dogs, or some other generically kind form of employment. They’re not sickos who live to inflict pain.’
‘I need to make you bleed tonight. I need to see you drown in that ring tonight. It’s all I care about at this moment, and believe you me, I’m going to do everything within my power to make sure it happens. I’ve picked up a few wins so far in the IWF, but I’ve also picked up a few too many losses for my liking.’
‘Tonight, though?’
‘I claim my first real scalp.’
‘...And I prove that I’m a diamond in the rough!’ Hijou half-cringes, half-laughs. ‘Sorry, sorry! I bet you hear that line way, way, way too much. I just couldn’t resist it. Seriously though, Chris.’
She smiles.
‘I’m expecting a gross fight out there tonight. Don’t let me down.’
She winks.
Well howdy there pardner.