Less is More

[Shione "SURGE" Ōshima]

"Million dewdrops

Sparkle. The sun burns away

The rusty morning."

Setting down pen atop pad, Shione remains propped upon one arm as she surveys her awakening handiwork. Her elbow is lost in the marshmallow fluff of a tubular pillow, her mind just as errant in the field of dreams. Every word holds meaning; every phrase, yet more. Within the realm of a simple haiku can be found so much meaning, so much insight in an apparent frivolity.

But, she suddenly reasons with a surfacing laugh, she's probably kidding herself. If she was a poet, she'd know it.

How about them dewdrops?

Shaking her head, she pushes herself upright and slips down from the lofty mattress. Her temporary abode on the outskirts of Richmond, overlooking a verdant bend in the James River, is more lavish than she's used to - something of a welcoming gift, perhaps, from her new employer. Experience and a short lifetime of hard lessons have taught her not to become accustomed; but that doesn't mean she won't strive to enjoy every second of it. Including the breakfast that awaits her.

The maid has brought said breakfast into the large, open-plan apartment, setting it out carefully upon the glass table fifteen feet from the bed. Shione placed the order the night before, knowing her own tastes well enough that she remains thrilled by what she finds. The manner of food she'd never be allowed back home - sausage, bacon, fried egg, waffles, and the most glorious sin of them all...

Shione inhales deeply, releasing the giddying scent with a heave of her chest and a self-satisfied stretch of toned arms. The mug is practically brimming over, and so is she as she slips away briefly to haul on a comfortable cotton robe, returning to the table and taking her seat with one last gaze at what awaits.

Coffee, thick with cream and invigorated by a scoop of brown sugar. She's never lacked for energy, but enjoys the added buzz; like an electric smile from one's careless inner child, a means of awakening the slight and secluded savagery so many tend to forget. Passion. It's always been about passion, to Shione. More is better. More is good.

At once sickly-sweet and bitter, super-charged with the pangs of eluded guilt... what's more passionate than a big, caffeinated bearhug from a boisterous and clandestine lover? It's all she can do to take a mouthful of food before her attention roves.

Almost primly, she sips at the frothing mug, enjoying the blend of tastes - the symphonious conflict - before she moves to risk the sheer gluttonous delight of a fully-fledged gulp. But there she pauses, her wandering hazel gaze finding a half-forgotten distraction.

On the far end of the table lies an envelope, abandoned as though it were nothing. In shape and in size, it's the perfect match for a dozen others safely stowed in a manilla folder at the bottom of her largest suitcase. But it's different. Different enough to perturb.

Setting the scandalous beverage down with an instinctively-muted sigh, basking in what stoicism she can, Shione reaches instead for the crisp, clean material of the envelope. Machine-made and folded, every line culminating in an angle measured countlessly. Her name is printed, the font passionless and absolutely functional. Most would take it for a bill, or an efficient doctor's reminder.

Shione knows better. At the top right of the envelope, a small and equally-efficient logo. No wasted space. No ostentatious display of creativity. Personally, she'd call it 'dull'. Has. Ōshima Industries, it says. She snorts.

What lies within is something she's dodged for months now - it may even be years, she's ceased to count as a matter of course. A quick mental fact-checking sees the fast recollection that she's close to entering her third year Stateside, that it may even be her second anniversary in the next few days. She wonders; is it this that makes the thirteenth letter come, or is it the change of ownership? The others, in all other ways equal, have been addressed by Mr. Yokohama.

Old man Yokohama was judged decrepit when Shione was but ten or eleven; his time, they said, was over. But without sons to carry his name forward into the brave new millennium, he refused to appoint a successor to his business assets. Nobody could budge him. His finger had found too many pies, and too many allies in similarly dirty business. Yokohama had been another, particularly stubborn, facet of her father's living hell. A hell in which she could not - would not - join him. A hell she left behind.

She thinks, perhaps, it's time to open the letter. Her thumb brushes the smooth line where paper meets paper, digging for the tiny opening she knows she'll find placed just-so in a disregarded corner.

And then she jumps as the table vibrates.

The envelope is discarded with willing immediacy, and she reaches instead for the tiny, fashionable cellphone now jolting and jiving atop the polished glass. Calloused digits brush the screen. The number's not recognized, but the dialling code is. She answers.

Shione: Moshi moshi.

So many others open to the unknown with a question, a querulous upturn to their greeting that betrays their innermost frayings. Shione doesn't do that. Unintimidated, and unbroken, she just says, "hello". Let others feel awkward; Shione, is just Shione.

?: <Ah...>

Silently, she savours the misstep. Let them squirm.

?: <Warm greetings to you, Miss Ōshima.>

She doesn't recognize the voice. She knows the tone.

Shione: <I'm not doing this with you. Get to the point.>

There's another hesitation, more prolonged, and when the voice comes back - male, and reedy, for what little the information is worth - it's with a sinister undercurrent that wasn't present before. No longer wheedling with the cautionary strains of one who wishes to befriend and betray; now it's just insidious. Nasty.

?: <Two years, Miss Ōshima. Two years too long. You had no right to leave, and if you don't return then we'll extract our price in other ways. Do you believe you can run from us? Hide from us? You're nothing but a stupid whore. You are shameful. And you will-->

She's heard enough. Too much. She snaps back, her tone raising in both pitch and volume before she can fully control it - but she searches for that place, the iron core inside the molten heat of fire and fury. Finds it.

Shione: <Shame? Shame is the burden of one who cannot know themselves. If you perceive shame in me, then you're a fool. If you seek to feed on that shame, you're a vulture. A stupid, desperate vulture feeding on rotten carrion. I left my shame behind a very long time ago, and now I'll do the same to you. Have a nice day.>

Unceremonious is the hand that pulls the phone from her ear and sends it haphazardly out over the table. Rarely has a grip seemed so uncaring and dismissive, the gesture absolutely private - she is alone, after all - and all the more scathing because of it.

She doesn't hold onto it long. There's an oddly muted *plop* as the small, expensive cellphone finds itself submerged in thick cream and brown sugar. Until her aggravator's ear is greeted by a *glubglubglub*; the burbled protest of hot coffee on reluctant circuitry.

Shione's gaze sweeps the table, the desecrated coffee and the unfinished breakfast and the envelope now lying accusingly beside it all. She doesn't wish to look at any of it for a moment longer; so she pushes back her chair and stands, moving through the cloying warmth of the apartment toward the rooftop access.

En route, she divests herself of her robe, then takes the metal staircase two steps at a time. She doesn't need to run far - and when she gets to her location, she doesn't need to hide. Only jump. Leap. Into a swan-dive she goes, the eruption of cool, chlorinated water a blissful awakening from the descending nightmare. There's nowhere she feels safer, or more free, than she does a moment later as she surfaces upon her back. The pool is rocked by the gentle ebb and flow of artificial waves, and it's by these she is buoyed aloft. The burning cascade of the sun touches the warm, earthen tones of her flesh. This... this is home.

Perhaps a half hour later she hears the buzzer on the third or fourth attempt. Her sanctuary is being invaded; but as she remembers why, the momentary grimace gives way to an expression of absolute calm and the conviction of molten steel. Perhaps there is one other place she feels so free. Hauling herself from the pool with a single kick and a like-minded shove of strong forearms, she exchanges discarded robe at last for large, fluffy towel. She takes her time drying - she knows the caller will wait.

But the morning's over. It's time to face the day.

=============================
APW Presents: Shione "SURGE" Ōshima
Less IS More
=============================

The ever-heedful eyes and ears of Action-Packed Wrestling join a newly-costumed Shione back upon the rooftop, offering a brief journey about the surrounding panorama before coming to rest. It's a beautiful area, tangled greenery yielding ultimately to the river plain to the east, with but a small scattering of upscale buildings neighbouring this one to the west.

The rooftop itself is well-appointed, several chromed sun-loungers arrayed about the small, heated pool, waves still lapping to and fro as the mechanism grinds away in the background. The burgeoning Megastar herself sits to the fore, clad in her blazing ring attire with arms resting at ease inside her thighs. Her hair, no longer sodden, cuts a fire-touched swathe to either side of features that hold a relaxed intensity. One that should become familiar in the months to come.

"Chaos."

She speaks but a single word, at first, a dark brow arching as if to ask 'any questions?' of the viewer. A slow blink of hazel eyes precedes any further offerings, the energetic brawler seeming content to take her time.

"It's the word I keep hearing, the word on everybody's lips and the word ringing in my ears. I have said I need to find my place; and I do, that's true, but sometimes a person is lucky. Sometimes, a place finds them. If APW sits on the verge of chaos, if it needs change, then it's found the right woman for the job..."

Settling back, she rolls her shoulders, cricks her neck. Her tone is just as clipped as always - each word extracted from a studiously-composed onboard dictionary, the accent and tone betraying her origins. But it makes her sound more certain, the words no haphazard tumble. She has to think about them, so she has to mean them.

"I am an agent of change. Like the ocean itself, I cannot be stopped - if I break, I ebb away and come again. Given time, the tide washes away all sins. It takes the old and forges it fresh and new. But..."

Lips framing a smile, she glances off-camera and then leans forward. Mischievously conspiratorial, her hands link between her legs, forefingers steepling.

"Change, is controversy."

Her smile twitches, and broadens. She relishes this.

"To be a part of that controversy, to make a change, I first have to prove that I'm capable of holding my own. To prove I'm capable, I have to show you - all of you - what I've got. My first obstacle: Kurt Styles. A man most of you know no better than you know me. The man they call 'Million Dollar'. I think it's pretty clear what he's got, isn't it?"

Her hands unwind, one pulling at the fingers of the other, extending one in turn as she rattles off her opponent's perceived strengths.

"Speed, agility, athleticism. Perhaps even power? And of course, the bank balance. I've come here from a place where I was allowed next to nothing for myself, where I was kept down because my dreams were 'improper'. But this is America, isn't it? Where our dreams should matter. Where every one of us matters, so long as we do dream. I say, should, because rich men - men who have money and therefore all the 'power' they could need..."

She lifts a hand to make the requisite 'bunny ears'.

"They have everything, don't they? They definitely like to think so. Let me show you, then, what I have got."

With a bold smile, expression open and cheery, the colourful powerhouse reaches off-screen and rummages briefly, her head bobbing back and forth in an impatient rhythm before she pulls something back into view. A small but heavily-decorated, almost laughably flamboyant purse, to which she's already working the zipper.

The purse boasts a multiplicity of multi-tinted tassels; it's the Warrior Hellwig of purses, capable of hoisting all other weak and feeble purses above its garishly-garbed structure. A mighty receptacle for the mighty dollar. And yet the similarly-bright and powerful young woman whom bears it aloft bares only a fleeting pout as she turns it upon its unbound head.

A small wad of lint flutters out, followed by a tiny, gray-winged moth.

"I have got nothing, Kurt Styles, but the strength of my body and the conviction in my heart. Not a single, shiny American coin to spare. We are separated not by one, or by two, by three or by four..."

With each utterance of a number she lifts a finger on her free hand, holding them up at her side before twisting them around to face the camera. With a dismal fluttering of digits she lowers the hand, breathing a mock-wistful sigh that quickly gives way to a tiny grin.

"A million, Kurt Styles. But what if dollars were muscles, or limbs? What if dollars were arms? Fingers, even? If a million fingers separated us, do you know how far apart we would be? How far I'd need to run to reach you? How far I'd have to throw you to send you packing back to where I came from?"

With a broad grin, the woman throws her purse away. Suddenly the camera pulls back, momentarily tracking the up-flung purse as its multitudinous tassels flutter in the summer breeze. Then it zooms in - which is to say, upward - rushing at dizzying speed past the rooftop and toward the few lingering cotton-tail clouds in the heated air. A dramatic pivot brings us to a bird's eye view of Richmond, Virginia. In the corner of the view, a colourful logo that's (almost) entirely familiar to just about anyone.

Boogle™

A pinky-red bubble appears on the screen with a retro Windows-style *ba-bloop*, with a bold letter 'A' emblazoned inside. There's a barely-discernible flicker from this exact location as a teeny, tiny Shione waves her minuscule (if relatively over-sized, for effect) arms in the air. Her voice can be heard a moment later, as if she's calling from a vast distance.

"This is me!"

Another *ba-bloop* and a second pointing bubble appears. Anyone native to Richmond with a passing knowledge of local geography should be able to recognize the location - 601 East Leigh Street, the Richmond Coliseum. For those who aren't immediately sure, the venue's name helpfully pops up. A line is drawn between 'A' and 'B', bearing the legend '22km (approx.)'.

"And there is you! To beat Mr. One Million Fingers, I have to bridge this distance."

The camera zooms back in, in stuttering steps at first and then smoothly as the logo and the annotations fade. In a blur it descends to street level, finding the front of the Richmond Coliseum - and the billboard proclaiming Thursday's show - before turning away. In a giddy rush it sweeps along streets and roads, finally spiralling upward until with one last tilt we find ourselves back upon the rooftop, the sun-struck pool still lurching in the throes of its wave machine. Shione is now standing, her arms folded, wearing a smile of barely-contained excitement. A slow shake of her head greets her rejoined speech.

"Half a marathon just to touch you, Kurt Styles. The smart money is certainly on you. Many congratulations!"

Disentangling her arms, she brings her hands together in a short applause.

"You are the book-keeper's 'Chosen One'. But, wait..."

A finger lifts to her bottom lip, expression shifting to a playfully-frowning mime of deep thought.

"I've come twelve hundred kilometers just to be here. I should be tired. I should be lagging my jets. But twelve hundred? It's nothing. A million, even?"

She shrugs her shoulders, the rise and fall of deceptively-powerful muscles mimicking the wash of the wave-struck pool behind her. Her smile re-emerges.

"Just another drop in the vast ocean. The tides carry me closer and closer, across countries and continents. Like a tsunami, the Crashing Wave always reaches her mark. Did you ever wonder why they call me SURGE?"

Her lips tweak, hazel eyes gleaming merriment at the camera, the smile not fading once until with a matter-of-fact little nod she flashes first all of her fingers, twice, and then just two upon her right hand. These she leaves raised to the camera, grinning behind them.

"In approximately twenty two kilometers you'll find out. You're between me and chaos, Kurt Styles. The change comes, and it comes through you. Over you."

Expression sobered, the Asian dynamo lowers her jubilant v-sign and pivots upon her heel, tracked by the camera to a set of glass swinging doors mounting the building's stairwell. The view cuts abruptly to street level, where she marches back into the lens.

"I'd better start running."

It's the last thing she says, before she spins in a clash of whipping vibrancy, and takes off down the quiet road, footfalls rapid and body soon all but blending into the blinding brightness of the midday sun.

Her form, dashing in vibrant orange and yellows, further blurs as more trick photography overlays loosely-matching footage of several sprinting clones. As she hits the haze of heat upon the horizon, it's these others that take precedent. Live action becomes recollected footage of matches past, one approaching with fluid rapidity behind the other. Each of three takes place in a different wrestling ring, against a different opponent; first, the sprinting powerhouse approaches another woman whipping off the ropes. Her leg flies up at the last possible instant, meeting her opponent's face with a vicious kick. Wham.

Second, a man, not much bigger, dazed in the centre of the canvas. Wham. A second, nigh-identical kick sends him spinning heels over head to a messy collision. Dimly echoing, the shocked expulsions of the crowd can be heard.

Third, a big brute of a ring warrior slumped in the corner. Hitting the third beat of a staccato rhythm, the approaching Shione nails her third and final Yakuza Kick. Wham. This one about rips the man's head from his shoulders, but this time the view doesn't cut away; he rebounds from the turnbuckle, and seems about to fall when a wildly spinning Shione scoops him up over one shoulder, gripping him tightly as she turns toward the middle... and then violently drops him between her thighs, the collision rattling the entire ring.

The 'Zilla Driller struck, the expected pinfall is academic.  But as the diving referee's third strike hits the canvas, the vision freezes and then fades. Blackness overcomes only briefly, invaded by crisp white text.

Boogle™ Analytics:

1,000,000 > 1200 > 22 > 1, 2, 3

This text fades, and is replaced with the following:

"Million dewdrops

Separate a girl and boy.

Sometimes, less is more."

I am coming.