BJ Nash's voice echoed throughout the ring.  "Our next match-up is between the two wonderful ladies, the beautiful DOLL assassin, Julia, and the steamroller dragon, Makoto Rindou!!  Now I'll tell ya, we are in for an interesting match up tonight!  The assassin Julia has been specially trained in Shadaloo assassination techniques perfect for all types of illegal espionage and..."

A steel chair crashed in front of the announcer's face; the only thing preventing him from being hit by it was the now crached window in front of him.  "That's Juli, not Julia, you stupid idiot!  And how the hell did you learn all that?"

BJ Nash swallowed and struggled on - the show must go on, after all. "And our other contestant is Makoto Rindou, from the Rindoukan Dojo she hopes to bring out of dire financial straits. It's rumoured that not only does this firebrand have great strength and endurance, but she may know several *other* martial styles that she shuns for the glory of Rindoukan. She *may* even be in the midst of a crush on Y-"

A steel chair, thrown this time, went right through the cracked window and decked BJ. "Shut up!" Makoto yelled from ringside, then apologized to the timekeeper for snatching his chair.

"Umm... Fight!" the referee said flatly.

Finally drawing her attention away from the now chair-brained announcer, Juli took the time to survey her opponent.  "I wonder what 'Steamroller Dragon' is supposed to stand for, anyway..."

Behind her, her blonde haired partner, Juni, cheered.  "Come on, Juli!!!  You can take her!!!"

The girl next to her, one of Shadaloo's special scientists Janet, also had some inspirational words to say.  Though her tone wasn't very inspirational.  "Remember, pull out all the stops.  Do whatever it takes to win and don't hold back!"

Hearing the words but not paying too much attention to them, Juli stared at the girl known as Makoto Rindou once again and thought to herself, "Is she surveying me, too?  I'm not going to be able to do anything all the way over here."

Thinking that, Juli spun around and propelled across the ring in a fast jump kick, her sniping arrow strike making her dash across the ring so quickly that most of the audience were caught off guard and surprised by the sudden burst of movement.

Makoto, caught in the middle of dropping to a crouch, 'Eeep!'ed and took the hit, getting clipped on the temple as she tried to bring her defenses up.

Juli smacked her with paired fists (Close Standing Fierce) and slammed her into the turnbuckles with a post-kick (standing Roundhouse.) She moved to follow up, but was interrupted as Makoto *exploded* back out of the turnbuckles to a cry of:

"Hayate!"

As Juli staggered from the sudden blow, Makoto launched a verbal assault. "You're a good martial artist, that means you have to understand about honour at least a little. Why would you stay with Shadoloo and that creep M.Bison? Leave him, fight for yourself! You deserve better!"

The agent quickly leaped backwards, more surprised by Makoto's words than by her sudden counter attack.

"W... what?  How dare you!  My 'honour', as you put it, lies in serving Lord Bison!  After all he's done for me and what he means to me, to fight for myself would be the true betrayal of honour!"  Juli quickly dashed back up to Makoto, then did a quick spinning leap.  The spin was too fast for Makoto to knock Juli out of before Juli punched her in the gut with her spinning knuckle.  "Honour, by the way, is highly overrated."

Makoto straightened up  and scowled at the woman's words. "So you're one of those who willingly serves a group that tries to make lives miserable for their own gain? Fine."

Without another second wasted, Makoto took to the air. Juli did as well, but ran into a surprise as her attempted flying kick was smacked aside (*parry!*). What came next made Yang Lee, watching from the sidelines and the only other fighter present to have experienced this move, wince.

"Tsurugi!"

The flying ax-kick slammed Juli to the ground, and Makoto closed in with an overhand chop to follow up...

Cringing from the blow, Juli quickly regained her senses in time to see the hit coming.  With very little time to act and fully realizing that being pushed into the defensive by morality zealot girl would be extremely disadvantageous, she quickly channeled up her energy and dashed out of the way, passing right through Makoto and her overhand chop in a fast dashing teleport, thanks to her alpha counter mach slide.  Extremely angry that she from both the blow and that she was forced to expend energy on her emergency mach slide technique, Juli quickly punched Makoto in the back before Makoto could recover from missing the chop, then followed up with a cannon spike, kicking Makoto into the air and rebounding away from the impact.

Juli used the spare breathing space that resulted in order to address Makoto's query.  "Nice try, Miss Goodytushus, but if you're trying to make me question my own ethics, you'll have to back up your arguments with more than just mere words and semantics."

Makoto landed, still facing away from Juli, and slid her feet back under her. "If that's the way you want it..." she said quietly as she regained her balance. There was nothing quiet about her next word, though.

"Fukiage!"

The reverse uppercut smashed Juli right off the ground and into the air. Makoto leaped up after her, grabbing her and slamming her to the ground in an air throw, then went for the Karakusa as Juli got up. Unfortunately Juli saw it coming and grabbed Makoto's wrists, and as the two struggled they stumbled to, and fell over, the ring ropes.

The two crashed to the hard ground outside of the ring.  With her grabbing of Makoto's wrists more instinctive reflex than conscious choice, Juli had trouble stopping the ringing in her ears from the three recent slams to the ground.  Spinning and flipping up to her feet before Makoto could, she looked up, trying to regain her concentration.  At that instant, she saw Janet, who for some reason had an extreme look of dissappointment on her face.

"Remember, pull out all the stops.  Do whatever it takes to win and don't hold back!"

She slowly turned her head and noticed Juni, who obviously wanted to help but couldn't... or could she?

"Juni!  Psycho Charge Gamma NOW!"

The referees wouldn't be able to prove that Juni used her psychic healing powers on Juli in the middle of the match, but there was one problem...

As Makoto regained her balance, instead of using her psychic healing ability on Juli like she did before, Juni simply stared at Juli with a confused look on her face.  "What?"

Juli slapped her forehead, but couldn't give away the secret to everyone else.  She could only hint and hope Juni caught on.  "Rations!!"  She yelled, hoping that Juni would remember when she accidentally healed Juli while talking about the restoratative processes of packaged foodstuffs.

It wasn't successful.  "I didn't bring any rations.  Why didn't you pack any?"

By this time, the entire audience, as well as the now-standing Makoto herself, were simply staring, trying to figure out what the two were talking about.

Makoto stared as the two Shadoloo fighters fell to arguing in the ringside area. A quick glance up at the referee revealed that he wasn't counting them out of the ring, so Makoto listened, curious.

Her opponent, Juli, seemed to want Juni, the blonde one, to do something for her but couldn't say it outright, and the blonde was either clueless or was being deliberately dense. As she sat down on an unoccupied steel chair and began to munch popcorn, Makoto had to grin.

{The blonde, Juni, almost seems to be an innocent,} she thought as she listened.

"You see, this is what happens when you don't pack your rations.  And hey!  Eating restorative foods in the middle of battle is cheating!" the blonde berated her partner, who stood there with her face held in both hands, groaning quietly.

While this was amusing, Makoto *did* want to get the fight done... and besides, the crowd was getting restless. "Are you done yet?" she asked around a mouthful of popcorn.

Juli promptly turned around, snatched the chair out from under Makoto, and whacked her over the head with it. Makoto fell down.

"Do you mind?"  Juli yelled at Makoto, who was now back on the floor.  She then turned back to Juni to continue the conversation, but found that Juni was over at the referee talking to him about something.

"It's unfair!"  The blonde ignoramous cried.  "The Makoto girl gets popcorn but Juli doesn't have any rations!  Do you have any idea how lopsided that is?!?"

The ref was both confused and unhappy at the same time.

By now, Juli noticed that Makoto decided to take action about getting the fight done.  "Karakusa!"

Juli quickly performed the solo version of Operation Human Shield as she grabbed the unfortunate audience member closest to her and shoved him in front of her, making him take the brunt of Makoto's attack.

Makoto quickly backed up in surprise.  "Oops!  I'm sorry, sir!  I wasn't-"

"SPIN DRIVE SMASHER!!!"

As Juli cannon drilled into Makoto then multi-hit cannon-spiked her into the air, the poor audience guy got up and stumbled around for a bit.  "Did anyone get the license number of that steam roller?"

In the audience, Janet merely sighed.  "...when I told her to pull out all the stops in order to win, I didn't mean like THAT."

Makoto crashed to the ground after the Spin Drive Smasher, dazed and angry. Shaking her head to clear it, she nipped to her feet and grabbed the chair that Juli had dropped. "You want to use weapons? FINE!" she bellowed, levelling Juli with the chair.

Juni protested. "Hey! That wasn't fair! She only used the chair 'cause you interrupted us!"

Makoto blinked. "You seem too nice to stay in Shadoloo. If you ever get out, come to the Rindou dojo - there's a place for you there," she commented, dropping the chair a bit sheepishly.

Juni looked petulant. "How many times do I have to say it? Shadoloo's not evil! Just... Misunderstood!"

Then Juli got up, picked up the chair, and made Makoto forget all about the blonde airhead by whacking her in the back of the head with it.

Makoto kicked up to her feet, seeing red. "OK, I'm going to make you *eat* that chair!  HAAH! HAYATE!"

Surprisingly, the chair made a much worser shield than the audience member did as it exploded from the force of Makoto's attack and the pieces of it slammed into Juli's face.

Coughing, Juli spit some blood and random steel pieces to the ground.  Extremely beaten and tired but too angry to notice, she slowly glared at Makoto.  "Okay, that does it.  You get to eat the leftover shrapnel!!!"

Juli immediately grabbed all of the sharp pieces of what was left of the chair and used them as makeshift shurikans, quickly darting them at Makoto too quickly to be dodged or parried.

Several pieces stabbed into Makoto's arms before the large middle section crashed into her head.

Makoto also found her self spitting up some blood to the ground.  "B**ch! Take this!"

She grabbed another nearby chair and slammed it over Juli's head.  The steel chair folded up as it came crashing down and Juli ended up getting stuck in the thing.  Unable to see a thing with the chair in her face, Juli was completely caught off guard when Makoto executed her next move.

Noticing their location outside the ring and near a cornerpost, Makoto decided to use a finishing move she hadn't performed in a while.

Leaping backwards away from the chair-hooded Juli, Makoto hit the side of the ringpost and seemed to perch there for a second.

"HEEYAH! ABARE TOSANAMI KUDAKI!!"

The off-the-wall (well, post) leaping kick caught Juli right in the chair-covered head with a resounding *CLANG.*

Juli fell over. Makoto, realizing that victory could only be won in the ring, quickly dragged Juli back in and stood back as the referee began counting.

"... eight... nine... TEN! She's out!" the ref cried, grabbing Makoto's arm and thrusting it into the air. "The winner, Makoto Rindou!"

Makoto posed for the crowd, tipping an imaginary cap to Yun as her gaze passed over him, but she had to glance down to the distressed Juni, who was distraught as her partner was helped out of the ring, limping and dazed.

"Aaaaah!"  Juni yelled.  "Juli!  Are you okay?  Speak to me!!"

Juli slowly turned over to look at the direction where the voice was coming from, unable to focus enough to be able to see.  ".........no."

As the attendants helped Juli away from the ring, Janet merely shook her head, muttering something about expected results and unfortunate dissappointment.

BJ Nash, slowly recovering up in the announcer's desk, groaned and got up. "It's not my night... Whoa! I'm on! Heeeey folks, wasn't  that a GREAT fight? Bet you can't wait to see who's next..."