Description: After a brief, hot exchange of words between Kurow Kirishima and Rock Howard, Kurow gets Rock to put his money where his mouth is. It doesn't go so hot for one of the parties involved. (Winner: Kurow)
Having put out the challenge mere hours ago, Kurow Kirishima is pleased, if nothing else, that the fight itself has gotten approved and ready in such a short time; it is one of the numerous upsides of instant communication across continents. It wasn't much trouble to get to the Slam Masters Arena, from there; everything does seem to be ready for this early-evening match, one of the new Neo League season's first (though not /the/ first).
Kurow Kirishima stands in the center of the ring, addressing the crowd -- amazingly, in spite of the short notice, the building is already at half capacity. "First, I want to say that I'm not intimidated by Rock Howard," he says, cracking a wide smile as he addresses the crowd. "I'm not going to let him get under my skin. It's true what he says -- I'm a clawfighter. You all know that by all It's an old art. Saturday Night Fight and Neo League have always been encouraging of the old arts -- look at Balrog. Ryuji Yamazaki. Tenma Kiryuu. Sada Asai. There aren't as many with weapons as there are bare-knuckle fighters, but that doesn't make those arts any less valid."
That smile gets wider. "But if Rock is so insistent that it offers some sort of advantage? Fine," he says, slipping his clawed gloves off, holding them in one hand. The other hand, meanwhile, slips into his pockets, and retrieves that flute that so many like to talk so much about; he holds it in his other hand, before walking to the edge of the ring -- and addressing a pair of Pacific High students who walked out to the ring with him. He hands the flute and the gloves over, before walking back to the center of the ring, starting to unbutton his modified Justice High uniform.
"I'll show him just how much I outclass him. He thinks the only reason I can handle him is because of some claws, or a flute? I'll show him that I understand even the basics better than he does." Removing that jacket, and the mesh shirt underneath it, he tosses both out toward those students before taking up a position at one corner of the ring. "No foreign objects. No weapons. Just the power of our bodies until someone's placed hors d'combat." He certainly sounds confident.
"That's because I'm fighting a guy who says 'hors d'combat' and uses a flute to bash people in the jaw," comes a immediately familiar voice from the edge of the arena -- amplified over the PA system by small camera team in Ken Masters Productions red t-shirts. The crowd spins to find the source, the Slam Masters Arena Jumbo Tron showing the main broadcast camera spinning wildly over the crowd. It finally settles on the perimeter entrance way, behind rows of floor seating.
The second the camera focuses on Rock, wearing a freshly purchased red leather jacket, a pair of black pants, and his favorite black t-shirt -- the son of Geese Howard breaks into a rushing run forward. He sprints right down through the crowd, surfing on a sea of flashbulbs and cheers. People love a good antihero and Rock Howard, being the son of the owner of Saturday Night Fight and generally well known malcontent, fits the bill.
Hitting the edge of the ring, Howard dives forward and slides across the mat. He ends up a few feet from Kurow in the ring, locks his red eyes on the other kid over the brim of a crackling wide grin, and pushes himself to his feet with his arms. "Did you miss me, Kirishima?" he says, adjusting one of his gloves. "I promise I'll visit you in the hospital this time."
Kirishima looks to Rock Howard as coldly as he can, once the Jumbo Tron locks on the man's entrance; the anti-hero certainly gets the villain's attention, and as those flashbulbs keep going off and the cheers get louder, Kurow just stays in his corner, allowing Rock the necessary time to slide into the ring, meeting those red eyes with his own cold steel greys.
"The only time I'm going to see you in any hospitals," Kurow says, cracking his knuckles, "is when you're eating through a tube." This prompts the usual mix of intense, focused cheering from pockets of the crowd and wide-scale booing that villains on fighting productions usually get; this, to Kurow, is a sign he's doing his job right, so he only feeds on the noise. "Anyway, since I'm so generous, I'll even stay right here until you make the first move."
Kurow takes a step toward Rock, saying, "Just remember. The second you so much as twitch, Howard, it begins. You're not going to get any breaks -- after all, if I'm going to fight without my chosen weapons, if what you say is true, I'll have to be twice as focused tonight, won't I?"
Rock squints at Kirishima. He wants to give him the first move and he's going to fight without his claws? There is either some subliminal motive here that he hasn't picked up on yet or the guy has lost his mind. Either way, he lifts and drops a jacketed shoulder in a shrug back at the other teenager. "Whatever," he says, turning to take a few prowling steps around the perimeter of the arena. "It's your funeral."
With his back deliberately turned to Kurow, Rock grips the ropes of the ring with his two gloved hands. He looks out into the crowd -- and while the joint isn't full -- people are still pouring into the stands as word continues to spread through the city that the fight is about to begin. There's a lot of people out there who would love for him to show Kurow a thing or two. And with the guy fighting without his claws, there is that much more incentive to win the match. It's beyond just Neo League standings -- he's got his honor as a fighter on the line here. And this is a bad man. Rock knows, better than almost anyone on the planet, just how bad.
Slamming one fist into a palm, he nods his head at the audience. He's ready.
His movements from there on are fast. Planting his foot into the ring floor, he half-twists at the waist to come squaring off with Kirishima. His other leg lifts and drives itself into the ground, launching his thin body foward with a sudden velocity. One more full step takes him into a skimming leap forward, his right elbow cutting forward with the weight of his momentum coiled behind it.
COMBATSYS: Rock has started a fight here.
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Rock 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: Kurow has joined the fight here.
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Rock 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Kurow
COMBATSYS: Kurow blocks Rock's Medium Punch.
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Rock 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Kurow
For once, there are no high-flying acrobatics as Rock's punch comes in, no rapid whirling of the body in directions it should never go -- just a full-force stop of Rock's hand with Kurow's forearm. It seems he's really discarded /all/ pretenses of using his Imawano-ryu training tonight... perhaps in favor of a different system entirely? Or perhaps... no system at all.
The youth grins even wider as he takes a quick step back, saying, "I barely felt that. You're slipping -- but then, you've been slipping for a long time, Howard." The young man glances to the crowd for a second, noticing the simultaneous desire for blood and the sudden confusion at his new tactics -- this is certainly getting less and less typical of Kirishima by the moment. You can't teach an old dog new tricks... but a talented young pup can assimilate more than his fair share of tactics. And there are some, of course, who would say you're /never/ too young or too old to learn.
Shaking his arm out a little, Kirishima decides to start with a technique drawn from a man he's impersonated recently: Roy Bromwell. The youth takes two quick steps forward, then suddenly shifts his weight to his left foot; the reason for this becomes clear as he snaps his right foot up toward Rock's jaw, trying to launch him into the air in a near-perfect mirror of the Leg Launcher, giving a wordless, "Rrryaaah!" In addition to being out-and-out vicious, the technique also offers Kurow a second, small advantage -- it puts him in a surprisingly ideal stance to deal with anything Rock tries to throw out.
COMBATSYS: Rock dodges Kurow's Strong Kick.
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Rock 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Kurow
There is one thing Kurow might not have factored in about his desire to emulate Roy Bromwell's hard knuckle style. Rock Howard fought and beat Roy. It was a brutal match, but Roy's fighting spirit draws a high degree of influence from someone Rock's studied for longer than almost anyone else on the planet: Terry Bogard, the Legendary Wolf. It just isn't going to work on him.
Glaring at Kirishima over the length of his arm when he swallows the flying elbow, Rock's body tenses and his muscles coil as he waits for the response; even as Kurow backs up a pair of steps. The words don't sting as bad as they might have back in Thailand when the entire reason for their altercations was born from him failing to beat Alex in a cage fight. But since then, Rock's reconnected with Terry and with himself. He feels incredible.
With a smooth tilt of his body, Rock tilts back as Kurow's leg comes whizzing by his head. It narrowly misses planting him good on the jaw. And the second that leg reaches it's full extension and leaves that brief opening in Kurow's defenses -- Howard seizes it like a predator in the wild. Doing his best Sagat impersonation, he takes a half a step forward and then sends his other leg's knee driving up straight for Kirishima's groin. "Feel this one!"
COMBATSYS: Kurow dodges Rock's Medium Kick.
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Rock 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Kurow
Feeling incredible doesn't always mean performing incredibly -- as Rock comes in for that kick, Kurow decides to forego his original plan in favor of a quick whirl to one side, using that upturned leg of his own to add a little speed in getting out of the way of Rock's, the attack grazing his chest painlessly rather than whizzing into his groin.
"Sorry, not tonight," he replies smoothly, deciding that using Roy's tactics -- Terry's tactics, he's reminded, now -- is probably a bad idea here. Rock was raised to be the anti-Terry, and now has twice the understanding of his moves, having learned under the Legendary Wolf himself. Kurow won't get far using anything even remotely derived from that man, no matter how many reinterpretations it's gone through.
He has other knowledge to draw on, of course -- in this case, a man who has beaten him twice before. He closes his eyes for a moment, changing his tactics to those of Gedo's greatest brawler, and rejoins the fray yet again. Perhaps if he keeps switching tactics, switching styles, it'll keep Rock off his balance -- a fact Kurow counts on when fighting without his claws, especially here.
Daigo Kazama's style is many things -- elegant, straightforward, brutal. Everything the man himself can claim to be. What it is not is complex. All that tapping into that knowledge requires is a particularly well-focused left jab and right cross delivered with as much raw, punishing force as Kurow's body can put out, his stance becoming more aggressive, yet more grounded.
COMBATSYS: Kurow successfully hits Rock with Fierce Punch.
- Power hit! -
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Rock 0/-------/----===|=------\-------\0 Kurow
Rock's head snaps back and to the left and then back and to the right with two thunderously crude clobbering noises of bone meeting bone. He ends up pushed against the ropes of the wrestling ring, his jacketed back bouncing off the steel straps and sending him falling forward. He catches himself before he face plants, ending up on one knee with his fist grinding into the mat for support. His other hand rubs his jaw with an approving look on his face.
"That was a good one," he says while rising back up to his feet; using one of the ring ropes for leverage. "Daigo, was it? Fought him, too." And lost. Twice. But Rock doesn't vocalize that fact -- hell, Kurow probably already knows about it anyway. One of them was a very prolific fight in the finals of the last school tournament. It'd be hard for someone as plugged in as Kirishima to have forgotten about that.
Armed with this new knowledge that Kurow isn't so much using anything he's developed himself so much as a Rugal-like hybrid of different techniques, Rock knows that he can't plan for what the guy will lob at him next. The only option, then, is to beat the crap out of him faster -- to the point that he can't keep thinking through each of these stolen attacks.
And to do that, Howard relies on old faithful: the first real thing he learned from his father after being taught to punch and kick. Ripping his grip free from the ring rope, his arm extends down his side and he takes a threatening step towards the Justice Higher. His arm follows the movement, suddenly spiking with color as golden chi splays outward from his palm. By the time Rock is cutting his hand up through the air, it's a blistering shear of curling energy that rips across the ring -- lighting the arena up on its way.
COMBATSYS: Kurow overcomes Reppuken from Rock with Fireball.
- Power hit! -
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Rock 0/-------/----===|=------\-------\0 Kurow
"I wouldn't call that a fight -- the word 'massacre' comes to mind," Kurow quips back at Rock, when the topic of the young man's past fights with Gedo's Don comes up. He knows about the finals of the school tournament -- they're the first match he studied when he took an interest in Howard, after all. It was a nice refresher on Daigo, too -- and one that Kurow is putting to great use here.
Daigo isn't the only person Kurow can borrow from, though, and it's certainly not the massive man that comes to mind when Kurow thinks about fireballs. When that old, faithful Reppuken starts to come at Kirishima, he spends only the smallest amount of time considering his options. In the end, he goes for the simplest one.
As the wind-ripper comes across the ground, Kurow whips his own hand up quickly; no sooner has he done it than a rapid-moving blossom of purple chi begins to travel across the ground, meeting Rock's, consuming it in its entirety, and plowing through it as if it never existed. "What's wrong?!" he demands of Rock, loudly, as he watches his own forceful chi completely annihilate Rock's familiar burst.
COMBATSYS: Kurow successfully hits Rock with Fireball.
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Rock 0/-------/--=====|===----\-------\0 Kurow
Fighting Kurow is like spinning the wheel at a roulette table. You really have no idea what you're going to get. One day, it's black black black. The next day, red, black, red. Today, it might just be double zeroes. But it doesn't matter because the minute Kurow steps into the Reppuken with his own fireball -- Rock gets a hot flash back to the jungles of Thailand. He remembers Kurow showing him what he'd learned from pretending to be Rock. It was not a very good day.
The fireball explodes into Rock's body even as he braces himself for the impact. It burns like a thousand suns, the energy of the chi exploding up and around him in a flash of light. When it clears, his eyes are creased with pain, his beloved red jacket shooting quaffs of curling smoke up towards the rafters. A ring of charred mat surrounds Howard, echoing the coils of smoke.
"Okay," he says to himself. Maybe changing his style to fit what Kurow is doing is the /wrong/ idea. "I deserved that one." For being an overconfident screw up, mostly. Breathing out, Rock pulls a half burnt sleeve off his coat and tosses it into the crowd behind him. Adjusting his weight, he forms up a perfect Hakyokusaken stance -- readying himelf for anything and everything.
The little silver ball rolls through the wheel.
COMBATSYS: Rock focuses on his next action.
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Rock 0/-------/--=====|===----\-------\0 Kurow
When Rock stops moving in on Kurow, he instantly knows what's coming -- what Rock is going to /try/, at the very least, is to catch him when he's on the offensive, putting his synthesis of Terry and Geese's moves to brutal effect. Crack counter. Crack counter. Crack counter. He's seen it before. He watched Rock put the thumbscrews to Sakura that way. He /could/ run right into it, certainly.
After a moment's consideration to pulling something out from under Slam Masters' ring and throwing it at Rock, Kurow remembers the stipulations he put on the battle -- none of that flies here in the ring. No foreign objects tonight -- it seemed like such a small concession, but right this second it seems like far too much to have given away. Still, though, there are other ways to keep Rock off his balance.
Kirishima grabs one of the ropes, bracing himself on it for a minute as he considers his offensive plan. The reprieve Howard gets doesn't last, though -- the second it seems like Rock might get off scot-free for re-centering himself, Kurow launches his whole body forward and down, trying to snag Rock's leg and bring him down to the mat. After all, that period of re-centering is all but completely worthless if he loses that perfect stance immediately.
The little silver ball begins to slow...
COMBATSYS: Rock interrupts Quick Throw from Kurow with Raging Storm'.
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Rock 0/-------/------=|======-\-------\0 Kurow
Crack Counters are well and good but they aren't quite what Rock Howard has in mind. Kurow's brief respite gives him all the time he needs to draw his chi to his center. He remembers the words of Terry Bogard about being at peace with his surroundings -- but they are drowned out by the much more familiar hard bass fussilade of Geese Howard. He hates his opponent. Kurow Kirishima's done more in the last six months than anyone else -- short of Geese himself -- to make Rock's blood boil. Not even the knife to the gut by Yamazaki can compare to the bubbling anger that spills from Rock's chest whenever he just /looks/ at Kurow's smug little face.
It's good that he finds the Anger Zone so easily. By the time Kirishima is advancing, he'll feel the sudden charge in the air and note the closing fingertips of Howard's fists. The latent energy around Rock is swallowed, converted, and then channeled in a sudden corona of the most intense golden light. It ribbons in all directions around Rock; a swirling storm of energy and power the shakes the entire arena. When Howard's fists slam down for the ground a half a second later, a strange grin splitting his features, the shockwave supernovas into a blossoming chasm of power.
No matter how much Kurow Kirishima uses the Raging Storm, no matter how much he learns it inside and out, it always catches him off guard when /Rock/ uses it. The maelstrom tears into his entire body, the golden chi a perfect mirror of Kurow's own. For all that they are different, for all that they hate each other, at their core very little seems to divide them.
Both are products of impossibly cruel, hated masters, using every one of their tricks in spite of their hatred for the men who taught them; both synthesize the techniques of multiple fighters; both thrive on that negative energy, that fury they've built up by being kicked so many times. Perhaps, had Kurow met someone like Terry the moment he was out from under Mugen's thumb, they could have been allies, could have shared a cause rather than been at each other's throats for everything either's ever wanted.
Unlike Rock, Kurow stops smiling. He doesn't have quite the control he had moments ago -- the fight is starting to shift, and the momentum is once again favoring Rock. It seems that he, too, would be well-served by a moment of re-centering... or perhaps, reevaluation.
His eyes pass over Rock Howard, scanning up and down the slightly older boy's form over and over, up and down, as if reading some great tome on the arts of combat. "Show me more!" he demands, as he straightens his posture, clenching and unclenching one hand as he studies.
COMBATSYS: Kurow focuses on his next action.
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Rock 0/-------/------=|======-\-------\0 Kurow
Rock lets Kirishima run his eyes over his immaculate awesomeness all he wants. After the Raging Storm, he needs the time to regain his wind anyway. Breathing long and deep, he watches Kurow start to recover from the maelstrom of chi power. It's such a satisfying thing to spring on someone -- it's one of the best things his father ever taught him -- but it comes with it's price. The emotion that fuels it drains your mind and the chi that powers it drains your spirit.
But that's what makes fighting great. Each time, it's just a little bit easier. Each time, you get a little bit better. A little bit stronger. You push yourself to the limit and find that bar grows each time you enter the fray. It's what Rock Howard lives for. Despite the fact that he mirrors the footsteps of his father, he loves fighting. He was born for it.
"You need to learn some patience," Rock says, starting to pull the remnants of his coat off like someone unwrapping a fortune cookie. All the assaults have made it a mess of fabric and leather. "Play your flute, find your inner peace, buddy. You can't keep living like this. It's not healthy... It's never healthy to suck so much for so long." He readopts his stance. "I'm just looking out for you."
COMBATSYS: Rock gains composure.
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Rock 0/-------/-------|======-\-------\0 Kurow
What sounds like genuine concern at first turns out to be nothing more than another taunt, and when Kurow hears that, he decides to aggress. At first, he was going to wait for Rock to come in, and punish him -- but the opportunity never comes. Instead of punishing Rock for going on the offensive, he'll have to punish Rock for going on the /defensive/. Fortunately, the rough method is the same.
Kurow breaks into a surprisingly fast run, leaning forward and rushing across the ring at Howard in a posture designed for someone slightly taller, slightly more powerful than himself. Perhaps Rock has seen it before; perhaps he hasn't. He's certainly seeing it /now/. The youth doesn't slow down, even when he gets close to Rock; his intent appears to be to go for a quick blitz.
That familiar black ball of chi forms around Kirishima as he dashes in, but what comes is not the barrage of claw strikes and chi slashes that Rock may be used to -- at least, not in the Yasha Guruma's usual form. Kurow's leg swings up toward Rock, coated in the cutting chi of the Demon Wheel, as he cries, "GENOCIDE --"; if he catches the man, the force will start to take them both up into the air...
COMBATSYS: Rock fails to counter Yasha Guruma from Kurow with Joudan Crack Counter.
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Rock 1/-------/=======|=======\-------\1 Kurow
And as the pair are carried into the air with the forceful, chi-coated kick, Kurow's other leg swings up to propel them even higher... and then the real pain comes. The leg that Kurow started the strike with comes around again in a complete circle around the edge of that black orb around Kurow's body, slamming down into Rock's head with the sort of force that could cut through solid stone as Kurow cries, "WHEEL!" The Howard scion is sent flying down to the ground, where Kirishima himself lands a moment later, clenching his hand one last time as he lets that grin cross his face once more.
Rock got his ass kicked by Rugal like most of the rest of the planet. He's also gone toe to toe as equals with the man's son, Adelheid Bernstein. He knows that Kurow is trying to do. But he doesn't think he can pull it off. He sleeps on Kirishima's skill because he hates him. He doesn't respect him as a fighter or an opponent because... He's a very bad man. He kidnaps girls and twists their minds with ancient ninja arts.
So when the move actually starts to happen, Rock wasn't totally ready for it. He expecting it'd be sloppy -- full of holes he could punish Kurow through. Full of openings like the one he's make in Kurow's spine with his fist. Instead... It's almost perfect. Eyes bulging at the last second when the dark chi swirls, Rock knows he's fucked.
The word Genocide pings off his head just a second before the demon chi-coated leg pings off his jaw. Thrust up into the air, he knows what comes next. It wasn't too long ago that Rugal gave him the real thing. And he knows, as he feels himself lose control of his body in some sort of out of body experience, that it's going to hurt like hell.
Rock craters into the center of the ring. The wood-reinforced foundation snaps from his impact, visible shards of splintering plywood shooting up in the air as Howard's back slams into the cement beneath the ring. The turn buckles yaw and bend, ropes losing their full tenacity, as the entire SlamMasters Pits starts caving in on itself.
There is an upside to spending time with a man, learning from him, even being beaten into the ground by him like Kurow was so many months ago in Thailand. You begin to really understand his moves, see where they overlap with your own -- synthesize. Rock knows this all too well, no doubt; after all, Kurow certainly synthesized Rock's own Raging Storm out of his own Shinkuu Yamiarashi, didn't he? While Kurow is not quite the perfect mimic that Bernstein is, he is perhaps one of the best in the world at finding the midpoint between the power he has and the power he wants to take.
The youth takes a second to get his footing as the Slam Masters arena begins to cave in. That's fine by Kirishima; it's not his ring, and besides -- this is the kind of thing they no doubt expected when they opened the arena to promotions like Neo League and Saturday Night Fight. "This is all the Howard family has, then?" Kurow asks, grinning like a maniac as he turns for a second to the crowd. "You're not even worthy of your lineage," Kurow says, reaching down toward Rock to grab him and toss him up into the air unceremoniously, retrieving him from the center of the cratered ring.
COMBATSYS: Rock fails to counter Ankoku Nage from Kurow with Joudan Crack Counter.
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Kurow 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: Rock can no longer fight.
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Kurow 0/-------/-------|
Hefting Rock, Kurow tosses him into the air, and then moves his hands in a manner that Rock no doubt finds familiar -- it's the same sweeping motions that are used in his own Shinkuu Nage... and his father's Rashoumon. "It's over," he declares, as Rock reaches the apex of his flight into the rafters and begins to come back down. Centering himself firmly in the middle of the crater, Kurow waits for the precise moment that Rock reaches the height of his shoulders...
... and then suddenly thrusts both hands out in a Hadouken-like motion. Unlike the 'true' version of this technique, no chi issues forth from his hands; instead, Rock is simply shoved forward and up, into those slackened ropes. Under normal circumstances, they'd keep him in the ring -- but now that they've been so damaged, they just obstruct his sliding out for a few seconds.
Rock go up. Rock go down. Rock does not go under the limbo stick. Instead, he crashes right into the bar that is Kurow Kirishima performing a... Rashoumon!? Something is terribly wrong with the world when this ninja flute-boy is uses techniques you've spent your entire life trying to master against you like it was an afterschool rumble in the schoolyard after Tuesday classes. When those twin hands find his ribcage on his path down, it's soft and vulnerable -- bending against the thrusting force.
Rock shoots back from the impact point; his body out of control. He slams into the ropes of the ring and they snap apart, the turnbuckles ripping from their foundations to go with him as he is shot straight through them. He lands in the crowd of people seated on the floor, a good six or seven of them diving out of their steel folding chairs as he goes crashing into them.
Skidding along the cement floor of the arena in a mess of ropes, buckles, and chairs -- Rock doesn't get back up. A little girl nearby starts crying at the violence. It's like when Ken Shamrock killed the Rock while the man was in a stretcher. Just horrifying. Purely horrifying.
Only once he has waited a full internal ten count -- the local custom, of course, for deciding the end of a match in a situation like this -- does Kurow finally extract himself from the cratered ring, pacing around it one time. His steps are even, crisp, leisurely -- like he doesn't even care about how badly Rock is hurt, how much raw pain has just been inflicted. He'll reach Rock eventually.
And when he does -- when he sees Rock lying there, vulnerable, he decides to go for the coup de grace. After all, if he cements himself as a villain, firmly, on television, but nothing so seriously /threatening/ as Rolento Schugerg (a man who'd /kill/ his Saturday Night Fight opponent)... then he has some deniability for /real/ acts of cruelty. Just putting the persona over, after all.
He breaks into a run toward Rock's prone form. It happens lightning fast. The crowd is left to wonder if Kurow is going to run to help, or run to hurt -- but Kurow makes that all clear when he finally reaches Howard. One foot comes forward, and does not stop until it makes a hard, cruel impact with Howard's head. "In the future," Kurow says, looking down at his fallen opponent, "perhaps you would do well to remember that /using/ a weapon does not mean /dependence/ on it."
Point made, Kirishima -- having nothing else to say -- just starts to walk away from the spectacle, moving through the assembled crowd. It knows better than to get in his way. It parts for him. Better to let him leave than obstruct him and give him time to consider doing even /more/ to Rock.
Rock is half conscious when Kurow kicks him in the face. He's alert enough to get out a, "Fuuuuu--" before his head snaps back and he's knocked fully end over end again to land in a crashing mess on his back. The Neo League EMS team comes out a minute later, while every boos Kurow and throws the usual stadium runoff at him from the upper decks. Mission accomplished.
Log created on 17:57:28 09/02/2007 by Kurow, and last modified on 01:15:31 09/03/2007.