What's Wrong with Being a Tengu? What's So Bad About Being a Tengu? Senka vs Chi Chi

Sareee-ISM ​Chapter XI 8/24/06

Senka Akatsuki vs Chi Chi

MD: It's Chi Chi's world. Everyone else just lives in it. She moves in lockstep with society and society follows her lead. Fashion, pop music, social media. We live in an increasingly digital existence where style rules over substance, where influencer is not just a profession but a college degree, where we're judged by likes, reposts, followers. Reality is getting overtaken by the slick, sticky veneer of AI slop and aggregated information and Chi Chi is perfectly positioned to profit.

She comes out to the ring with Aqua's Barbie Girl blaring over the loudspeaker. She carries with her a handbag. She blows kisses to the crowd. She's carved her niche and created her following and is a potent force poised to disinfect professional wrestling of everything out of place and recreate it in her image.

Yet Senka exists.

Senka is the outer dark to Chi Chi's outer light (though maybe the inner light to her inner dark). Senka wrestles in her singlet, carrying the weight of generations of tradition before her. She charges forward. She kicks out. She never quits. She never stops. She is unrelenting, incessant. She's a storm. Depending on her opponent, maybe she's just a squall, but she's a force of nature nonetheless.

So she exists. Should that bother Chi Chi? Plenty exist beneath her. The majority exists beneath her. That's the point of the majority. They need to exist in order to serve as contrast that highlights her all the more. 

But Senka does not exist quietly. She could wear grey or brown and might blend in, might fit her station in life. She does not. She wears red. She walks with pride. She moves with determination. She will not be pushed aside. She will not be hidden away. She will show the world her merit and make the world remember her name. 

There is no room in Chi Chi's world for a Senka Akatsuki who doesn't know her place. She is a blemish that cannot be tolerated, a burr that must be yanked out, a lump that has to be stomped down. She is not just an imperfection, but is instead a celebration of imperfection. Chi Chi has pride. Chi Chi has determination. Chi Chi is a force. 

But Senka represents another path to success, one wreathed in substance instead of style. She is the exception who demands the world see her as exceptional. 

In the press conference leading up to this match, Chi Chi bemoaned Senka's pride, admonished her brazenness to wrestle in red, suggested she might prune the world of her, and most of all, named her as a Tengu. 

Instead of being properly chastised at the insult, one of the worst possible in Chi Chi's reality, Senka dared to take pride in it. What's wrong about being a Tengu? What's so bad about being a Tengu? 

Opposing forces, opposite poles. Neither could possibly suffer the existence of the other.

Fate (and very likely mirth, whether it be Sareee's or Chigusa's) put the two of them together, forced them to associate as a team against Spark Rush. At first opportunity, Senka kicked Chi Chi in the gut and slammed her onto their opponents. When Senka went to tag out, Chi Chi took the tag and then threw a punch for good measure. They were handedly defeated. A house divided can't stand against Spark Rush.

But that just positioned them, one week later, here against one another. 

At the bell, Chi Chi hung back in the corner, refusing to come meet Senka in the center. This was about pride. It was about a difference of lifestyles, of world views, of what the world should be. She'd hold her nose up and not give an inch. She demanded Senka come to her instead. Chi Chi might be bullheaded, but you can't outstubborn Senka. Senka dropped to the mat, sat cross-legged, and Chi Chi was forced to come to her. The first skirmish went to Senka.

After scrambling on the mat, Senka got the first real advantage as well, surviving a double wristlock to hit a few slams and lock in a crab. Her face, as always, was the portrait of effort and strain, but for a split second, it seemed like the tiniest of smiles flashed across it, a brief hint of joy for the damage she was doing to her opposite. 

Chi Chi honed in on the arm, turning a Senka fireman's carry into a flying Octopus Hold and then really sinking it in on a second attempt off the ropes. Senka survived it but came out damaged, clutching her arm and her side. With almost any other wrestler, you would want to see their offense hindered there. She shouldn't have been throwing a lariat with that arm, shouldn't have tried to use both arms to lock in a choke, or to hit multiple suplexes in a row. But, of course, that's exactly what she did. 

Unlike every other wrestler in the world, however, she made it work. It wasn't about fighting spirit or adrenaline. She emoted pain. She radiated pain. You could feel her pain burst from the screen, just as you had when she recoiled in the corner like a wounded animal. It was still there when she was on offense as well. It was pure stubbornness that made her use that arm despite the pain. How dare Chi Chi attack it? How dare Chi Chi think that it would stop her? That it would slow her down? There was a clear cost to Senka's offense, but it was a cost that she bore as opposed a cost that she ignored. 

Since she didn't ignore it, we could not ignore it either. Likely Chi Chi could not as well. Likely she was all the more frustrated and aggrieved because of it. Why couldn't Senka just stay down? Why couldn't Senka just shut up? Why couldn't Senka just go away? 

Of course, Chi Chi didn't go away either. She endured the choke and rolled to the floor putting them at another impasse. This time, she wouldn't give Senka what she wanted. This time she found it in herself to be the more stubborn of the two and forced an increasingly irate Senka to come after her. She was ready and fought her way back into the match by eating a headbutt and hitting an exploder off the apron to the floor. 

She couldn't put away Senka however. She couldn't keep up the pace, not with Senka constantly dragging her back down to her level. She threw kicks into Senka's face. Senka came back with lariats. Things devolved into wrestling's most basic form, headlocks. Senka strained to hang on while Chi Chi fought for a Saito Suplex. Chi Chi hit it but to no avail. Then when she tried to contain Senka with a headlock of her own, the strain was mirrored back the other direction. As time ticked down, Senka finally powered her over to hit a huge suplex, but the bell rang before she could full capitalize on it. 

The last minute of the match saw the two as truly mirrored images, two very different sides of what looked increasingly like the same coin. Chi Chi grabbed the mic post-match, spent, exhausted, and noted how disappointing and unsatisfying that was. Yet when Senka demanded more, Chi Chi slipped out of the ring and headed to the back. They traded insults one last time and our last image of the match was that of Senka rushing after her.

The world is a complicated place full of competing pressures. A wrestling ring has traditionally served  as a wonderful canvas on which to paint the clash of social and cultural differences. While on this night, the clash between these two primal forces proved woefully inconclusive, we were left with the promise of more battles to come. After all, the world simply isn't big enough for the two of them.