Tag Elimination: The Valkyries Vs. Blaise Cameron, Amy Poford & Mariko Ishii

Amy’s elbow dug in so deep that she was almost surprised that it didn’t get stuck, nestled there among the various organs that her limbs were becoming fast friends with.

But of course it didn’t. The elbow stayed just long enough to do its damage then continued merrily on its way, pushing into and across Stone’s body, designed to swing Amy’s own around to face her opponent when it had finished its course, ready to deliver the next strike in what was going to be a truly fine series.

Then there was a sudden silence. Every sensation hushed, every thought stalled as the whole of Amy’s existence came to a narrow focus on her gut- and on the knee that was suddenly inside of it. It didn’t even hurt at first; Amy would even remember looking down at the invader in a sort of curious shock.

Then a choking noise escaped her mouth- a small cough; an understatement- and the world rushed back in again. Her eyes squeezed shut, so she couldn’t see anything. But she could hear just fine. Cheering from the sections of the audience too slow to react to what had just happened; distress from those that weren’t. Her own breathing, loud, shallow, and coming from what sounded like the inside back of her head, instead of the nose and mouth. Weird.

And she could feel. Little things- the feel of Stone’s body against the side of her face and shoulder (Amy had apparently collapsed forward after the blow. She didn’t remember that at all), the sweat soaking her shirt and her hair. And, naturally, the big things. The one big thing, really, the one that had knocked the rush clean out of her.

Amy knew she had to move. Instinct screamed, consciousness commanded. But body stayed stubbornly put. One arm cradled her stomach, the other latched on the center rope, and her face pressed against Stone’s stomach in a vulnerable sort of hug as she worked through the pain-wrought paralysis.

”Yes!” Makoto nearly fell off the ring apron when she jumped for joy, ecstatic at the sight of Amy losing the seemingly infinite wind from her sails. She was sure she could handle business if Stone lost, but fuck, she shouldn't have to. ”Keep on her! Keep on her!”

Stone closed her eyes and rolled them in private as she enjoyed a nice, long exhale. ”Like I need to be told.” She muttered, letting out a little frustration. When this was over, they’d need to have a little heart-to-heart about thier leader’s motivational skills.

She didn’t need instruction. At all. Like a real rock tumbling down a hill, she only got stronger and hit harder and moved faster with each moment. It hadn’t been easy finding a hole in Amy’s relentless offense, but now that she had, she could start taking the match. Going by the audience’s claps, they realized it, too, as they started to rally their cornered hero. It wouldn’t help, but she gathered that Amy would appreciate their sentiment.

Stone grabbed Amy by the hair and spun around, switching places with her, putting her opponent in the corner and trapping her there. She immediately lashed out with a kick to Amy’s tight and taut stomach, hammering her with a vicious stomp. Another followed right after, and another after that, as she attempted to grind the tiny brawler into the mat and wear her down to the nub.

Through her suffering, Amy bravely tried to step backwards, away from and out of reach of her snowballing opponent. It would have been a less-than-elegant step, closer to a stumble, and she’d have been hunched over the whole time, her body still fighting its way upright from collapsing around Stone’s surprise knee. Maybe if Stone were more of a showman, or something closer to an idiot, Amy would have managed it.

But Stone was neither of those things, and so any effort Amy made at escape was forever lost to history. Instead, Stone seized Amy by her hair, forcing a sudden yelp from deep within her captive, and threw her back into the corner that she had just vacated. Before Amy could orient herself, Stone moved in again.

Stone’s first stomp was perfect. It dug in exactly where Stone’s knee had tenderized her not five seconds before, blowing right by Amy’s abs and making a home for itself there. It brought Amy’s head back down low, drawing out another pained grunt as the compounding agony in her stomach forced her closer and closer to incapacitation. It drove the air right back out of Amy’s chest and, as a bonus, even made Amy feel a little queasy.

Stone’s second and third stomps were exactly the same.

By the time Stone had delivered stomp # 4, though, Amy collected enough of her wits to defend herself, pulling her arms away from where they had tethered themselves to the ropes to around her midsection in an attempt to absorb some of the strength of Stone’s attacks. And it worked; subsequent stomps hammered away at her forearms instead of her stomach. It still hurt, but, she knew that protecting her aching body from the line of fire was the start to recovery.

However, without the support of the ropes, Amy’s body ate the full force of each kick. Rather than bleed into the ring through the ropes, the raw kinetic energy from Stone’s attacks shot right into Amy’s arms, through her body, and out her back, dribbling her violently against the post, making her gasp in pain. Then when Amy bounced forward, there was that damned boot again, ready to start the process all over. Amy’s eyes darted urgently for an opening, an escape, but Stone loomed menacingly in all directions. Amy’s breathing came out in raspy wheezes.

Finally, a particularly vicious stomp managed to pierce Amy’s guard, and Amy’s legs gave. Amy collapsed onto the mat, her legs straight in front, her arms back up in a shield but clearly worn. Sweat poured down her face, and her shoulders heaved with the effort of breathing. But Stone kept going, her jaw and eyes set, determined not to stop, it seemed, until Amy was just a smear on the canvas.

Hey!” The referee called out, as Stone continued her wild and reckless assualt, hammering Amy into the corner. ”Out of the corner, Stone! Now!”

Stone heard the referee’s words, loud and clear, but she might as well have been a million miles away. She was focused, determined, and more than willing to use every second she could get out of this.

”1!”

Stone kept on hammering.

”2!”

She kept on hammering.

”3!

She hammered harder.

She only relented when Amy finally dropped down and her legs gave out. It took longer than she expected, longer than it would’ve taken for someone twice Amy’s size, but she gave in and Stone punctuated the moment with a feral scream to the heavens as she stepped back. The audience booed and jeered, she didn’t care and couldn’t have cared less. She had tried to be gentle about this, and it was shoved in her face. Now they did it the hard way.

Stone decided to take advantage of the situation. She dashed across the ring, making her way to the opposite turnbuckle. She turned to face her opponent, twenty feet away, and reeling, and centered on her with a hawk’s eyes.

A deep breath, a sneer, and she was off, running across the ring faster than any woman her size had a right to. She crossed the distance with a few powerful strides, ducked down into a somersault, and tried to crash her back into Amy’s fallen form with a vicious cannonball manuever, turning her body into a living weapon of destruction.

Without warning, the stomping disappeared. Amy expelled an involuntary gasp of relief, though it was a desperate sort of relief. Yes, the attacks had stopped, but they were immediately replaced with a severe, whole-body ache that racked every fiber of her being. There was little she could do- or wanted to do, really- but close her eyes and slump against the post to recover.

Then Stone screamed, and everything changed. First, Amy’s eyes popped right back open, suddenly vitalized. Amy knew that cry- it was a roar of victory, of triumph, the sort you might hear from a lioness standing over a fresh, still-bleeding carcass. And Amy resented it- she wasn’t dead just yet. She stirred.

Second, elsewhere in her brain, in a place that evolution had seen fit to lock away all of her most rudimentary social tendencies, the cry activated some sort of primitive tribal defiance. Stone’s was a howl of dominance, and, to the vestigial ancestral alpha-female neurons that responded to such things, it was a challenge, a dare. Amy might not have realized any of this consciously, but cavewoman Amy wasn’t fucking having it, and she flooded Amy’s blood stream with an extra injection of overdrive hormones for the cause.

So, with both subconscious and conscious united behind the decision to fight, Amy abandoned the notion of rest to grasp the ropes on either side of her. Even though she knew that there wasn’t anything she could do standing, even though her abs were giving her significant, almost blinding grief, she began the long journey back to her feet, if not energized, then certainly motivated.

It was here that Stone terminated her avalanche, crashing heavily into Amy’s struggling form and crushing it right back into the turnbuckles. Amy’s head snapped back into the post, then she crumpled to the mat, eyes squeezed shut, unmoving but for the trembling caused by the inhale and exhale of distressed breaths.

The crowd was already recoiling as Stone made her way across the room, carrying her 200 pounds at high velocity and building more and more momentum with every step. They knew what was coming, and they empathized with Amy. It was going to hurt. There was no way around that, no avoiding it, and it was like they were the headman’s axe coming down.

Stone connected. Full force, flush against the smaller woman’s body. It was just as bad as they’d pictured.

She moved back and gave the smaller woman some room, just enough for her to fall away, and fall she did. Amy oozed off the turnbuckle and fell to the floor, coming down beside Stone’s boots. That was it. That had to to be it.

”Pin her!” Mako cried, jumping up and down on the apron. ”Fuckin’ pin her!”

Stone simply growled and dropped down her knees beside Amy, quickly rolling her over to her back. ”Like I need to be told…”

She muttered and laid her chest along Amy’s, while she pulled the leg in and secured the pin. The referee dropped down and started the count, slapping the mat beside Amy’s head.

”1…!”

Each impact of Stone's unrelenting assault shudders the ring, vibrates the ropes, and creates a very loud pounding sound easily heard on the sidelines. And each one makes the only representation of testosterone cringe a little more. His hands lift, covering his mouth; his eyes widen and round, overcoming the majority of his facial real-estate. It looks like that Valkyrie jerk is crushing her!

"Ohmigod," breathes Blaise as his wrestling bestie falls, limp, to the mat. She's pulverized; that shaking is hard to even look at.

But.

This match is her big chance to really make a statement. He knows she knows that. And a part of him knows if their positions were reversed, she might be yelling at him to stay down - their original tension. But that's not him. He doesn't know where the needle rests on her determination gauge right now, but he won't weigh it down. By the time Stone's lying across Amy, the spunky teen is leaning in under the bottom rope, as close as he can get without obstructing the match.

"Amy! Hey! Amy! You're one of the most stubborn chicks I've run into, and just crazy enough to not lie down and take this! Get up! Get up!"

Despite all appearances, Amy was awake. Whether or not she was awake for every second following Stone’s splash, she couldn't say, but she was definitely conscious when her opponent rolled her over to her back, and she was definitely conscious when Stone went for the cover.

Not that it mattered much. The crowd tried to rally Amy with begging and pleading, cries and cheers. But no matter how hard they yelled, Amy gave no response. She couldn’t- sounds washed over her in an incoherent eddy, a mishmosh of sensation that swirled around a pulsing, crippling pain.

ONE!

Then a single voice of clarity sliced through the haze- Blaise’s voice, coming from a place that sounded impossibly close to her ear. She couldn’t make out the individual words, but he spoke with enough urgency and concern that even she, in her fog of incomprehension, was able to get the gist.

TWO!

Amy’s eyes remained closed. But, with considerable effort and through considerable pain, she managed to lift a single arm- the heaviest thing she had ever lifted in her entire life. With a fading grunt, she reached off to the side, fingers stretching out towards Blaise's voice... until her waning energy finally bottomed out, and her arm simply dropped.

And the ref… maybe it was a professional’s intuition, maybe it was pure dumb luck. But, whatever the reason, something compelled the ref to look up at the wrestler heap while her hand was well on her way to 3. And what she saw caused her to stop the count. The ref pulled her hand back up- inches from where it would have disqualified Amy from the match- then swung it back out in a sweeping motion with a shout, one rendered nearly inaudible by the crowd’s sudden frenzy:

“ROPE BREAK!”

Stone had this won. She could feel it.

She could feel it in Amy’s body as she went for the pin and covered her. This wasn't the way a body moved when it was about to get back up and make a big comeback, this wasn't the slowly rising chest of a woman getting ready for a surge. She was done, and everyone knew it. The referee, Makoto, Blaise, the audience, everyone.

Everyone except, it seemed, Amy Poford.

”Come on!” Stone pounded her fist on the mat as the referee called for the break, saving Amy from the brink. How? How? She was hammering this little girl harder than she’d ever hammered anyone before, but she just kept getting up again and again. What was it going to take?

”God,” With a frustrated grunt from the pit of her stomach, she grabbed Amy’s hair and stood up once more, forcing her back to her feet. It was a rough lift, too. Nothing gentle. Nothing considerate. She would put Amy back to her feet whether she wanted to or not. ”Stay down. Just stay down!”