Debut RP: Giddy Grasshopper

[Shione "SURGE" Ōshima]

"Giddy grasshopper

Take care. Do not leap and crush

These pearls of dewdrop."

The sunlight sizzles through the thick glass window of the lurching Greyhound as Shione sets aside her book with a gentle smile, unbroken by the sudden bump as the bus collides with an unexpected pothole. She's taken bigger bumps, after all - and she'll do so again, and again...

Nobody sits beside her on the little coach, only a hefty rucksack keeping her company. It's onto this she lays the book, still open as she mulls the haiku over, her smile widening until she almost laughs. Across the aisle, a young boy watches her sidelong, chewing laconically on a wad of over-chewed gum. Shione responds by looking at him directly, arching a dark brow and baring her teeth in a half-grin. He matches her stare for a moment before hurriedly looking away. It prompts a good-humoured roll of the eyes from the Osakan powerhouse, and then she too looks away toward the neighbouring window. Buildings roll past, baking in the heat, almost beading with sweat themselves - it's a surreal thought, and this time she does laugh. A private giggle, the sharing of which she disregards; she's never been so inhibited as to feel embarrassed of what she is. It's why she had to leave.

And now Yuuichi Ōshima's wayward daughter has found a new home in America. Homesick? No. Lonely? Never. It's with the warmth of optimism she meets the rolling landscape of this brave new world, matching the heat wave with a tremendous fire of her own. A giddy grasshopper, indeed, playful in mien but passionate in nature. The truth of Shione is both a far cry from the persona she displays in the ring and yet... they are two halves of the same. The brutality in slam and suplex reflects itself in her drive and ambition, the need to win manifest in her attitude to others; not that she needs to beat them. That she already has, by grace of being herself, lest they do the same.

There's the warning. She leaps, that she might crush. But it's too easy to miss the most startling gems when locked in a stampede, to overshoot too much beauty in search of an imagined goal. Clearing her throat, expression suddenly sober, she reaches for the top of her bag, unclipping the straps and rummaging for the folded papers carefully stowed down the front. Her contract.

Unfolding it, she looks upon the myriad terms and conditions - all of which she's read, with occasional assistance from a dictionary - and then her dramatic flourish of a signature. She's practiced it a hundred thousand times, reworked it perhaps a half dozen. It's the penmark of a superstar, or one to be. A glance to the top of the paper, and the logo emblazoned there...

Shione wonders, has she chosen correctly? All the blood she spilled in Osaka, the injuries - and the enemies - she left behind, then the sweat and the tears as she stamped her neglibile fortunes Stateside... she should only be able to hope that it's been worth it, for this moment and all that follow in the months to come.

Action-packed? She grins. She's nothing but. Has never been - could never be - anything else. She should have quit years ago, she should have been married and now tending an apartment in Osaka or even Tokyo. She should have done a lot of things. But she chose to bleed. She chose to break and be broken, as needed. Overdriven? Perhaps she is. Or maybe she's just driven enough.

She should only be able to hope.

Yet she knows, and she trusts.

The world had better be ready for Shione "SURGE" Ōshima, because she's ready to leap and-- no, she thinks, her grin spreading once more upon her lips. Tucking the contract away, she glances across the aisle and finds the boy staring at her again. As if trying to place her. Tossing her hair, strands both dark and fiery whipping about her cheeks, she looks back to the window.

She's the Crashing Wave, and she's ready to crash.

===========================

During this past month, several videos have been released over the internet teasing the debut of a new Mega Star. Footage from various, carefully-unbranded independent shows depict a powerful young woman dishing out pain to her predominantly female opponents. An array of slams and suplexes is on offer, though one video simply shows her applying the same, devastating finisher (a Fire Thunder Driver) to numerous unlucky foes. Energetic and explosive in the ring, the Crashing Wave is showcased to be something quite special and exciting - aided by a driving hard rock soundtrack, the last of which will soon be revealed as her entrance theme, 'Big Time Changes' by the popular Japanese metal group Sekima-II.



Tonight, another video goes up, opening with the same theme and what seems to be another montage of 'greatest hits'. Until the track fades and the view is replaced by a shot backstage at a house show, where the familiar Cindy Shannon stands alongside the mystery girl - though at this point every discerning fan knows her as the youthful veteran of a half-dozen garbage promotions in Osaka and - more recently - several less extreme indies Stateside, following a two-year tutorship under Jessie Clinton of the PRIDE Wrestling Academy, something of a cult legend herself. The powerhouse is clad in vibrant oranges and yellows reminiscent of flamboyant 80s American wrestling, and has her hands clamped to her hips confidently as the mic is presented.

Cindy: I'm backstage here with soon-to-debut Mega Star, Shione "SURGE" Ōshima, and I have to say... Shione, the buzz about you is very interesting. We've got comments on Twitter and in our official forums, and some people clearly feel very strongly about your addition to our Overdrive roster. My only question for you today is: exactly who is Shione Ōshima?

The fiery girl seems to think about this as she echoes the question.

Shione: Who am I? Ah...

A smile brushes her lips, and she turns dark eyes toward the camera, gazing levelly at the viewer. Her English isn't the greatest - she's very clearly not a native speaker - but she holds it together well, albeit with the clipped, rather unnatural tones of one still thinking through every word before she says it.

Shione: I'm not the daughter of a great man. I'm not even the daughter of a good one. I come from a place where I would have been nothing but a cooker and a cleaner, a dutiful daughter and a wife with no destiny of her own. Everything I am, I made myself. Everything I do, I do because I am what I am; a fighter, in all senses. I fight for what I believe in, I fight for what I want, and I fight to show others that it is worth fighting. Who am I?

Shione pauses to slap at her left bicep, tensing the muscle briefly before pounding the same hand at her breast.

Shione: I'm this, and I'm this. The Crashing Wave is about power, and about having the courage and passion to use it. There are a hundred thousand things wrong with this world, and not a one of them cannot be corrected by the right person standing up at the right place and time to say, "No! We are not going to take this!"

Her voice rises with the last, until she's just shy of shouting, an outburst she drifts away from with a sigh and a flash of a grin that's just a little too fierce to be entirely tempered by babyface mannerisms.

Shione: But I'm also a girl who needs to find her place, and I'm going to start with my first opponent, next week in Richmond.

Her shoulders roll in a shrug, as if to say 'it's that simple'. But Shannon isn't done, pulling the mic back to speak.

Cindy: Any word on who that's going to be? Who will you be facing in your first matchup?

Shione doesn't need to think about this one, quickly shaking her head.

Shione: It does not matter. I'll fight just as hard whoever it is, and whoever they are... they had better be prepared.

Once more she lifts an arm, pounding bicep and then heart, her expression tight and focused.

Shione: I've got all the weapons I need, right here, and I bet at least one of them...

Suddenly she flashes her teeth, pulling her hand away with a disarmingly-girlish wave as she finishes:

Shione: Is bigger than yours.

Cindy Shannon suppresses a chuckle, ending up in a wide-eyed smile before she closes out the interview and a sequence of clips - repeated from the videos earlier this week - flashes past to that same, bombastic J-Metal tune.