Bachiko the Grappler Ch. 04

It was hard to watch. This was the first time he had seen Bachiko looking so limp and lifeless, her heavenly body so rubbery, all the tension gone, seemingly too weakened to even flex... Polina clutched Bachiko by the hair, holding up just about Bachiko's entire weight with her arm. Once again, Bachiko's head went in between Polina's massive thighs. This time she was putting up no resistance that Kaito could see.

And all of a sudden Fujiko laughed and clapped her hands with glee. "Good girl! Good girl!" she began repeatedly exclaiming, in between her whoops of delight.

Kaito stared. Had the old lady gone insane? Had the sight of Bachiko being pummeled and smashed caused something to snap in her?

"Open your eyes, boy! Don't be a fool! Give our Bachiko more credit than I did! Hahaha!"

All he could see was Bachiko's body once again jackknifing up, before landing with a meaty splat for a 3rd time. There she lay, while Polina stood over her glaring down. And then... he saw it. The look on Bachiko's face. The sarcastic feral grin. Bachiko raised a finger, and slowly wagged it from side to side at the stunned Soviet superwoman.

"The perfect way to resist... is not to resist!" Fujiko cackled. "It must've been sheer fighting instinct. The Hanma lineage is strong... very strong! Yuriko should be happy..."

Then it clicked. Bachiko wasn't injured. She had, in fact, been barely hurt at all, as devastating as those powerbombs had looked.

At the top of her jackknifing movement, she had aligned her back with the floor, and then completely relaxed every muscle. All the force Polina was applying had been spread evenly over the sheath of muscle covering her back, and transferred through her entire body. The back of her head was protected because as she was being slammed down, her neck was unstiffened and her head naturally went up higher, negating any cranial impact. Over the years, one occasionally heard of some "miraculous" survivor of a plane crash, or a fall from a great height. Kaito had come across a few articles in physics journals touching on the subject, and now he recalled a smattering of what he had read. It was even possible, Kaito thought, for someone like Bachiko to survive a fall from a tall building with this technique!

But Polina moved fast. With a lunge, she threw herself on top of Bachiko before the latter could twist away. Her arms and legs snapped into place around Bachiko's on the outside – the Iron Curtain had descended!

Already she was pulling out all the stops, unleashing her signature move, and Bachiko was trapped solidly in it. Once again there was doubt in Kaito's heart. The size disparity just looked too huge, on the face of it! His rational mind could not overcome the reality of what he was seeing – Bachiko was being crushed on all sides by this far larger woman. Muscle relaxation techniques surely couldn't help her now – if she could relax her muscles, her internal organs would be crushed. No, this was now a test of pure brute force, muscle against muscle, body against body.

And now he realized what all those adapted exercises had been all about, the ones Bachiko had been doing lately. Polina's bearhug and leg clamp technique had been perfected through long practice – her upper arms squeezed on Bachiko's, but her forearms were locked tightly around Bachiko's trunk. Her thighs and calves were perfectly aligned with her victim's, and her ankles had locked securely in place just underneath Bachiko's, in a way that allowed her to apply pressure to those joints as well. Bachiko had been training various muscles to exert pressure for outward movement – because she knew she would have to counter the immense crushing pressure of the Iron Curtain.

They lay, nose to nose, seemingly with no movement except a slight occasional trembling that ran through one or both bodies. But everyone in the Arena knew what was happening and what they were really looking at. Somehow, Bachiko was just managing to create a smidgeon, a hair's breadth, of space between her own arms and her body, and also between her legs. If one could've slid a credit card in between Bachiko's thighs right then, one would have been able to do so smoothly.

"But this isn't a winning strategy!" he exclaimed in a harsh whisper. "She can only resist, without any room to move or counter!"

"She will simply have to outlast her opponent," Fujiko remarked grimly, taking a sip of tea.

He swallowed hard, his throat suddenly dry. Outlast that blonde juggernaut, who had dragged huge wagons laden with boulders through knee-deep snow for miles, who had climbed sheer cliff faces with weights attached to her wrists and ankles, who had tamed a bear by wrestling it into submission, in a contest of sheer strength and will? But then... Bachiko was a girl who could do the Iron Cross for 5 sets of 5 minutes. There was hope. He just had to overcome his natural negativity.

The sound of both women's labored breathing, amplified by the hidden microphones, became increasingly audible. The sweat was pouring off both their bodies. Polina had gravity on her side; just with her weight bearing down on Bachiko, she could hinder Bachiko's air intake. Not by much, though, thanks to Bachiko's torso muscles. She seemed to be breathing just as easily as Polina could.

Then Polina turned her head, opened her mouth and plastered her lips to Bachiko's, in what looked like a passionate kiss, but was in fact an escalation of intensity. She was doing everything she possibly could to cut off Bachiko's air supply! And now it seemed as though she was pitting her lung capacity against Bachiko's – her torso expanded as she sucked on Bachiko's mouth with all her might. She was trying to literally suck the air from Bachiko's lungs!

Bachiko visibly fought back, and their duel took on this extra dimension. They were literally fighting each other for breath now. They looked like sculpted statues – rock-hard muscle bulged everywhere the gaze could land along the length of their twined bodies. Their faces gradually reddened, as they fought over the drastically reduced and rapidly diminishing shared air supply. Whatever they could inhale through their nostrils was negligible – in fact, the woman who took the time to breathe in through the nose would lose, as her opponent greedily sucked the air for herself. Kaito had never seen nor heard of such a way to fight – but here it was now, right in front of him. And all the time, Polina squeezed... and squeezed... and squeezed...

Nobody could tell how long it was before this duel of endurance concluded – recorded time said it was a few minutes, but to everyone it felt much, much longer. But when it finally ended.. Kaito remembered it as if it was a dream. The two wrestlers' postures did not change at first. It happened so slowly – the gradual relaxation of Polina's muscles as she stopped flexing them to squeeze, and also of Bachiko's muscles as her resistance dissipated. It was only when Polina's face suddenly slid off Bachiko's and to the side that the winner of the duel became apparent – and even then, not very much so.

Bachiko's mouth was open, like that of a koi fish. Her eyes were gazed and her face was deeply flushed. It seemed like such a long time before she could muster the strength to roll Polina off and to the side. Polina flopped onto her belly, with only a weak moan to show she was still half-conscious, and there she lay. Bachiko lay flat on her back, her torso heaving slowly, tremors running through her entire body.

She had done it. She had survived – no, not only survived – overcome the Iron Curtain, and beaten Polina in that bizarre duel of lung capacity and inhalation. Kaito realized he had been holding his own breath for way too long, and with coughing and spluttering he resumed breathing again. He certainly wouldn't have lasted two seconds against Polina... or even his own girlfriend, he thought.

The duel wasn't quite done yet. Neither was fully incapacitated, and neither had voiced or tapped her submission. But Bachiko could still move. With agonizingly slow movements, she turned and slipped her right arm around Polina's neck, applying an underarm choke. Her thighs snaked around Polina's waist. Then she rolled onto her back, trapping Polina in a combination dragon sleeper and rear body scissors.

"And she finishes this in style," Fujiko murmured. "I don't see how her mother can complain, really. At this age, being able to come this far... but Yuriko-chan's expectations have always been so high for her daughter... Still, this move ought to please her. You haven't seen it before, have you, Kaito-kun?"

"N-No... I have not..." he stammered. It was breathtakingly beautiful, somehow. Not merely sexy in a crude way, to see one strongly muscled woman perform this move on another. Somehow, this move looked... epic. Heroic. Legendary.

"This is known as the Hanma Dragon Tamer," Fujiko told him quietly. "It is the signature wrestling hold of the Hanma women through the ages. In myth, it is how the first Hanma Gozen defeated a river dragon – she trapped it in this very hold. Mythology, of course, mere folklore. Dragons are not real. But... looking at Bachiko now, Kaito-kun... can you not see, there may be some element of truth to the tale?"

"The... Hanma Dragon Tamer..." Kaito whispered. Polina writhed with the very last dregs of her strength, and Bachiko squeezed with what seemed like the very last dregs of hers. It did seem... if he squinted... if he made his vision blur... if he let his mind wander a little bit off the straight and narrow path... it did seem like a woman warrior of old, subduing a giant serpent.

And when finally Polina went limp, and Bachiko slowly released the hold and rose to her feet shakily, put her foot on Polina's chest, and raised her trembling arms in the air... she did look like an onna-bugeisha from out of the mists of legend, who had subdued a larger woman warrior from the northern wastes. The cheering and applause washed over her like a wave.

Polina slowly came to, stirring slightly. She looked up, at the victorious Bachiko towering over her, and her expression was hard to read, but he saw Bachiko look down and extend her right hand to her defeated opponent. Polina reached up and met Bachiko with a solid handshake. Instead of pulling Polina up, though, Bachiko knelt down, pinning Polina to the floor in a schoolgirl face-sitting pin, still holding on to Polina's hand.

This was the rule of this Arena, after all... to the victor went the spoils.

Polina seemed to know and accept this as much as anyone else – she kept her handshake grip on Bachiko's hand while eating her out with gusto, gladly licking and slurping away. Bachiko arched her back with the ecstasy and turned her face up towards the VIP box. First she met Tachibana Fujiko's approving gaze and smiled as the venerable old mistress nodded. Then her eyes turned to Kaito who suddenly wished he had brought along an extra pair of underwear, as she cocked her left arm up in a flex which he knew, even though it was on display for all, was meant for him alone. She orgasmed in this pose – the power and sensuality she possessed was burnt into Kaito's memory forever.

And he knew that later that night he'd be in for a little taste, just a very little, of the Iron Curtain himself. She would do just a very tiny bit of it for him – just shy of crossing the threshold from pleasure to pain. More would probably kill him.

He simply could not wait.