Julia Rogers vs. Valley Doll - Light Up the Sky

It had been a long time since Valley had even gotten an opportunity to bring this move out - when the last time? Luci Lucha, in that ladder match at Fall Brawl, she was pretty sure. It had taken her then-rival off guard, and she always enjoyed watching the expression on her face right before it hit, the wide-eyed surprise of a woman who’d just learned she wasn’t nearly as safe as she thought she was. She was a little ashamed to admit, but she was looking forward to the same opportunity with Julia.

But Julia wasn’t Luci Lucha. There were some similarities, sure - the mask, the style, the moves. But this particular luchadora had better reflexes, ones that would’ve put a cat to shame, a hard truth that Valley learned as her picture-perfect dragon whip missed its mark.

Valley swung her leg all the way around and slammed her foot down awkwardly, grinding the momentum to a halt. She looked down for a split second, saw Julia rising up from below, and knew damn well that she’d be on the attack in the next moment. She had to greet her with something. Something fast, but powerful.

Valley leaped straight up, tucked her legs in, shot them out...and connected with Julia’s dropkick, hitting at almost the exact same time in the exact same spot. The recoil knocked the Slamazon away, barely giving her enought time to backflip and land with one knee on the mat.

Valley looked up and stared at her living double, not quite sure what to make of the moment. That had been intense. She knew this was going to be a barnburner, but even she had underestimated tight it was feeling. Her heart was racing, beads of sweat were forming, her blood was racing through her veins.

The match was only one minute old.

When Julia threw her boots out to send a dropkick at Valley, the kick connected, though not in the way she’d intended. The cowgirl had hoped her speedy counterattack after evading her foe’s potentially lethal kick would drop the Slamazon and possibly provide an opening so she could really start pressing the offensive. But instead of Valley’s chest, her attack struck a second pair of feet. The two dropkicks collided, and Julia’s body nearly mirrored Valley’s as it rolled backward through the air before landing with a knee on the mat.

The crowd exploded into applause and cheers as the opening sequence of lightning-quick flying ended in a stalemate, with both blonde fliers staring each other down. Julia grinned and waited there a moment to let herself get some more air back in her lungs. Moments of rest like this weren’t likely to come often, so she’d need to take advantage of them whenever they came.

“Heh. Not too shabby.” Julia said to her foe. But that was the last moment of rest she allowed, both for herself and for Valley. And as soon as the last word was out of her lips Julia kicked off the mat to rush forward, then attempted to sling an arm around the back of Valley’s neck to quickly put her in a side headlock.

Valley was all smiles on the outside as she and Julia faced off once more, feeding into the crowd’s infectious energy. Inside, though, she was just a tinge annoyed. She’d really expected that dropkick to hit, thought she might’ve been able to catch Julia off guard. If that was an indication of things to come, they would be here for a while, and she wasn’t terribly crazy about trying to match Julia’s endurance…

She shook it off and moved in, this time going straight for Julia, hoping to catch the younger wrestler in another lockup. But the cowgirl was just a little bit quicker on the draw this time, and before she had the chance, Valley found herself caught in headlock. And a good one, too.

”Not too shabby…” Valley echoed as best she could while getting squeezed, and worked herself around in the headlock for a couple of seconds, feeling it out. Julia had locked it on with more power than she would’ve expected from a lightweight, and there wasn’t a flaw in the form to be found. While Valley had mixed opinions on the Dojo, she could admit that they trained their ladies well. But…

Valley decided to put it to the test. She backed up, pulled Julia along with her, bounced against the ropes, then strode forward and pushed away at her back, trying to yank her head free and send her opponent off running at the same time.

Chain grappling had never been the strongest point of Julia’s ability. Granted a side headlock like this was one of the most basic holds in wrestling, if not the most basic. But still, the fact that she had it in as tight and secure as she did was indeed just one product of god only knows how many hours of seemingly relentless training in the Higurashi dojo. Still, neither woman expected the hold to be in place for long, which it wasn’t.

When Julia felt Valley pulling her back toward the ropes, she knew what was going to come next. And when the Slamazon pushed forward on the rebound Julia took off in a dead sprint into the ropes ahead, using the momentum of Valley’s push to increase her already high speed. And her body then bounced off the ropes and came dashing right back toward Valley.

From there the Slamazon had only a split second to act. Though with this girl that was certainly possible, if her opponent hadn’t already done anything by then, Julia would again jump and bring her boots up to throw another dropkick, this time aiming right for Valley’s right knee.

Valley took a hot second to shake her head as she pulled it free from the headlock, getting a couple of precious moments to regroup. Julia was nimble, Julia was quick, and Julia was coming her way at blazing speeds - the only question was what she’d be coming with?

Valley couldn’t be sure what, not exactly, but she could make a few educated guesses and knew how to deal with them. So she kept her position, waited for Julia to move in, and focused on her with ready eyes, looking for her to commit to something…

”There!”

Valley jumped to the side as Julia’s basement dropkick went towards her knees, avoiding the sort of attack that could’ve made the remainder of this match exceedingly difficult. It was only by the narrowest margin, but that just meant she had all that much more time for a counterattack. She had the perfect move in mind.

As Julia slid beside her, Carmen hopped back, raised her hands in the air, then threw her body forward with in a wild flip, dropping back-first on her wily foe with a somersault senton!

In many ways it was the small things that were bound to determine how this match went. For example, a few centimeters possibly being the deciding factor in whether Valley would be spending the rest of this match with only one good leg, or Julia would wind up on her back in a very vulnerable state. These kinds of gambles were the very essence of Julia’s style, but unfortunately the dice don’t always roll in her favor. Such was the case now.

With a grunt the cowgirl landed flat on her back right after her dropkick hit nothing but air. Lying on the mat, there were no ropes to jump off of and no ground to cover on her feet. The best she could do, knowing Valley would likely be hot on her tail, was try to roll away. However, she only made it onto her stomach before the Slamazon came crashing right onto her back with a senton.

“Ugh!” she grunted out as Valley’s weight crashed down on her, stopping her right in her tracks. While a hand moved over her back, the luchadora winced in pain while rolling onto her back again. That senton had winded her enough to stop any more speedy escape attempts for the moment. With the fast pace of the match thus far combined with the effects of Valley’s move, the best Julia could do for the moment was try to recover some breath if she could, and hope to be ready when the next opportunity to move presented itself.

Valley felt a raw thrill shoot up her spine as she scored the first real hit of the match, landing a perfect somersault senton. It would take more, much more, to put Julia away. She knew that, everyone knew that. But in a tight contest like this Valley’d take every advantage she could get her half-gloved fingers on.

”Not done!”

With that in mind and a quick lick of her lips, Valley didn’t pop up to her feet after the senton connected, instead choosing to do a quick forward roll on the mat. The referee barely had time to jump out of the way as Valley tumbled in a full circle, let her feet touch the mat, rose up to a low squat, then leaped straight up and backwards, turning her body into a living spring.

Valley’s hair was flying, her body arched, and her arms were spread wide as she did a backflip and tried to land chest-to-chest with Julia, hoping to followup her senton with a standing moonsault before the luchadora could catch her breath.

Julia had been in Valley’s position more times than she could probably count. Even as Valley rolled off of her, the masked blonde understood she was not by any means safe from the Slamazon. Quite the opposite, in fact. Flat on her back like this, Julia was wide open to everything ranging from submission holds to explosive aerial assaults. And just knowing what kind of wrestler Valley Doll was, she could guess which end of the spectrum the next move would come from.

But knowing where something’s coming from and being able to do anything about it aren’t really the same. And as she saw Valley’s frame gracefully flipping backward and descending right over her, the whole thing felt like it was happening in slow motion. Julia’s eyes widened and her mind told her to get her knees up now! Her legs tried to comply, but...

“Umph!” Julia gasped out as Valley came crashing onto her torso with a picture perfect standing moonsault! The cowgirl’s legs had started moving up, but had acted too slow to protect her from the impact. And just like that the small amount of breath she’d been able to get back, and then some, was blasted right out of Julia’s sails!

Despite Julia being fairly gifted with padding around the chest area of her body, the landing was a bit rough for Valley, too. Even though she’d been out of her reduction surgery for months, landing moves like this still felt weird. For ten years she’d gotten used to one sensation from her moonsaults, now she had to cope with another one.

But the payoff was worth it, as whatever pain she took wasn’t near Julia’s suffering. And since they’re colliding bodies were in the perfect spot for it, anyway, Valley figured it couldn’t hurt to put her shoulders on the mat. Very small chance of it working, but stranger things had happened. Especially in wrestling.

She laid her chest across Julia’s, pressed her forearm against the luchadora’s face, hooked a leg with her spare hand and pressed down, going for a pinfall. The referee wasted no time and quickly went for the count, with the audience following along.

”1…!”

The pin attempt that followed Valley’s moonsault made plenty of sense, for both strategic and practical reasons. The positioning was right there, and considering how fast everything had started out this was a perfect chance for the Slamazon to catch a breath. Julia would’ve done the same.

This situation reminded her of a similar one, in her AFW debut match against Domino. Normally this would be a chance for Julia to try to take advantage of the count, use the first couple seconds to rest and recover before bursting out. But she hadn’t done that. And she wasn’t about to here either.

Almost immediately after the ref’s hand smacked the mat for the one count, Julia let out a grunt while kicking her legs forward and jolting her right arm up, lifting the shoulder off the mat. It made Valley's forearm grind roughly against her masked face, but Julia didn't give it much thought. Though not a word came from the prone luchadora’s lips, the quick kickout was also a near-silent message that could simply be translated as something along the lines of, That all ya got?