Violeta 'Eztlicoatl' Ayala vs. Spider Kikuchi - Tangled Web

Perhaps it was Spider’s imagination, but she could’ve sworn the crowd was actually getting louder by the moment. They were actually rallying behind this little wastrel, as if they truly believed she had a chance.

Spider knew better, as she gritted her teeth and endured the armbar. Yes, she was in a poor position at the moment, but there was still a good deal of match left to go. Her natural flexibility was an asset here, allowing her some degree of resistence, but even so, it behooved her to escape as soon as possible. Aside from the rising pain, it was simply embarrasing to be dominated by this wastrel of a wrestler, to endure her taunts, to have her silly little hairbraid dangling in Spider’s face…

...hm.

Spider reached up and tried to grab Eztlicoatl’s hair braid, trying yank it and given the impudent avatar some incentive to let the armbar go.

Excellent. Take out the arm, and you take out the ability to slam, the ability to tighten a jointlock. A little more work and she'd have a distinct advantage in this ow ow OWOWOWOWOW.

Despite her size, Etzlicoatl was scrappy. If she was feeling confident in herself, once she grabbed an arm or leg (or suplex) it was difficult to get her to let go of it. But if something happened that she didn't expect, or her delusional optimism was shaken somehow, it could be surprisingly easy to get her off her game.

Such was the case here, when Spider tried a less-than-orthodox counter. Despite the protests of the referee, the braid-grab was remarkably effective; Etzli cried out in pain and her grip on the other girl's wrist noticeably slackened. Owwww. The braids looked spectacular when she was flying through the air, but they made for a hell of a target sometimes.

The referee was chiding her and started a five-count, but she might as well have been talking to herself. Spider knew the rules, and more importantly, how to skate around them. Besides, it was the little whelps fault for having her hair like this in a wrestling match. It practically begged to be yanked. Granted, Spider’s own hair trailed the length of her back, but at least most of her opponent’s didn’t have the intelligence to take advantage.

With the grip weakened, Spider took the opportunity to slip free, pulling her arm from between Eztlicoatl’s legs and cackling - yes, cackling - all the way.

She rose up and finally let go of the hair, right before she could be disqualified, but that hardly meant she was done taking advantage of the situation. Kneeling behind Eztlicoatl, she brought her arm up and drove the elbow down into the small of her back, making sure to really drive it home.

Etzlicoatl was no stranger to playing dirty. She'd probably set some kind of record for cheating in her Entropy shot, actually.

With that said, she hadn't really been expecting the hair grab, and Spider was out of the hold in an instant, driving an elbow down into her back and really digging in there. The luchadora hissed in pain, squirming from side to side. There was...not a lot she could do from this position, to be totally truthful. It was pretty much either 'shell up and wait for an opportunity' or 'try to explode out and risk getting caught in a hold'. For the moment, she chose to do the latter, glaring balefully over her shoulder at the other girl and looking for her chance to reverse the situation.

Spider was, herself, very proud of her cheating abilities. In her mind, skirting the rules was the purest form of competition, doing everything she could to score a win. After all, she wanted to be victorious. Why wouldn’t she do everything possible to get there?

The point was, she had no regrets as she turned the situation to her advantage. Particularly when she looked down and still saw fire in her opponent’s eyes. She was a spirited little snowflake, Spider would give Eztlicoatl that much.

Spider once again pressed her knee into Eztlicoatl’s back, but this time she had something a little more painful to apply than a chinlock. Instead, she whipped her arm around the pretender’s throat from behind and roughly pulled her into an inverted facelock, going a tight dragon sleeper.

If the little runt wanted to glare, she could do it towards the ceiling. Spider had no interest in seeing it.

The dragon sleeper came on quickly and cinched in tight, much to Etzli's dismay. She was quite familiar with the move and what it was capable of, since she used a variant for her stretch plum, and that meant she knew it was important to get out ASAP. The standard defense was to lean forward, decreasing the leverage, and then roll free by 'unspooling' the arm, but Spider had clearly been around the block a few times and had the foresight to plant a knee between her shoulders, preventing her from taking the usual escape route.

The Nahuatl girl thought carefully. She was a fairly accomplished technician herself, after all; an alternate way out would be easy enough to find. Soon, hopefully, because Spider's arm had a vice grip around her jaw, cranking her neck in a direction it definitely wasn't meant to turn with crushing iron force. At last, Etzli planted her boots on the mat and bridged, seemingly putting herself even further into the hold. She reached her hands up, gripping the tops of her opponent's shoulders, and started to pull down. The crowd murmured with interest, probably wondering what kind of intricate counter she'd put together...

...and then she bared her teeth and bit Spider, hard, on the underside of her bicep. Hey, one good turn deserves another.

Hopefully that'd loosen the sleeper a little bit, which was all Etzli needed to shove off with her legs and try to essentially backflip herself out of the move. If all went well, they'd be down on the canvas in the north/south position - prime territory for her to return the favor.

Spider cranked the hold, milking every bit of pain she could out of it. A little vindictive, yes. Maybe she was enjoying the feeling of cranking, but there was no shame in enjoying your work, was there? In fact, she could enjoy it a little more.

”So you’re aware,” She dug the knee in just a bit deeper. ”I expect more than a standard submission from you. You will apologize for your insults, and then, and only then, will-”

Spider had been contemplating adding a stomach claw to really exacerbate the pain, when she felt a sharp, horrid, searing pain underneaht her arm. She shrieked and immediately let go off the hold as she rolled away, nursing the sore spot. The sudden surprise meant that it took a moment for the reality of the situation to dawn on her, but when it did, she glared daggers straight at Eztlicoatl.

”You bit me! You horrid urchin! Filth!" Spider looked over to the referee and lifted her arm up, showing the marks on her pale skin. ”Disqualify her, immediately!”

The referee, idiot that she was, merely blinked and looked confused, as if Spider asked the strangest request in the word instead of merely requesting the rules to be followed. ”Seriously?”

There was not much regret going on. Having just had her braids yanked on, Etzlicoatl felt entirely justified in getting a mouthful of sensitive bicep skin. Plus, it'd caused Spider to roll away and start protesting to the referee, which meant her back was wide open...

Despite her goofy persona and tendency towards overly elaborate suplexes and ill-advised aerial maneuvers, Etzli was a classically trained mat technician honed through years of lucha apprenticeship in Mexico. She knew exactly how to capitalize when an opening came her way. There was a brief moment while she rubbed at the side of her neck (that dragon sleeper had been much tighter than she was used to), and then she pounced, trying to grab the wrist that Spider was showing the ref as she protested.

"Aha!" she crowed triumphantly. "You were japed! Hoodwinked! Baffled! Ensnared! You've fallen into my diabolical scheme!" With that, Etzli tried to grab the other wrist and, if successful, cross Spider's arms in a straitjacket hold - sort of like a sleeper, but really focused more on keeping control of one's opponent than inflicting much more than discomfort. "FROM WHENCE YOU SHALL NEVER RETURN."

It may have been a bit hyperbolic.

”Yes, seriously!” Spider continued to protest with the referee, who seemed to have strangely forgotten what her purpose inside the ring. Perhaps she believed herself to be a lucky but oddly dressed fan, allowed to watch the match closer than any of the others. ”Do you see this? She could have broken skin! Do you have any idea how many germs the human mouth houses?”

The referee blinked. ”...a lot?”

”A lot.” She tapped her bicep for emphasis. ”And if this bite had cut deep, there’d be no telling-”

The craven Eztlicoatl apparently decided to take advantage of the lull, pulling Spider back while she was busy correctng the idiotic referee. She tried to struggle, but the wannabe goddess - or avatar or whatever her gimmick was - was spry, catching her other arm and quickly moving into a very solid hold.

Spider groaned as she was wrenched back and bent to an unnatural angle, even for her tastes. The groan was mostly because of the pain coursing through her spine, growing stronger and stronger, but it was also because of Eztlicoatl’s inane, insane babbling.

”I swear,” Spider vowed through clenched teeth. ”I am going to find your thesaurus and burn it.”

It was extremely clear that there would be no quarter given, judging from how things had gone so far.  No, this match was probably going to be a scrappy, unpleasant affair.

So be it!  Etzlicoatl was more than happy to play as unpleasant as Spider wanted to make things.  She'd looped the other girl's arms around her throat, and as Spider pushed back to try to alleviate the hold, Etzli used the momentum to roll them both over and tried to get into the camel clutch position in order to really torque on the hold, looking for all the world like she was riding into the sunset.

"Ha.  Already my machinations are leagues ahead of yours," she answered haughtily, "for you cannot burn a thesaurus app.  Contemplate this upon the tree of woe"