Abattoir vs. Alicia Wells vs. Liberty - Here Comes The Pain

Abattoir wasn’t the only one taking some damage at the moment. Every movement Liberty made seemed to worsen her state, as precious energy was spent. Every punch was a little harder to through, every moment spent balancing on the apron drained her, and it was all starting to take a toll.

Just a little more. Just another punch. Almost…

Liberty’s persistence paid off, as one of her last, brutal hooks did the job. Abattoir was sent falling and flailing off the apron, right onto the same table that she’d intended to drive the former champion through. Oddly enough, the damn thing didn’t break on impact, either. Strong craftsmanship, in Japan. They built to last.

But would it hold up when 175 pounds of brawling Italian bitch was added to the equation? Liberty was itching to find out.

Without a single second of hesitation or concern for her or others well-being, she leaped off the apron with her arm raised and the point of her metal elbow coming down right on Abattoir, along with the appropriate scream to acompany it.

”MARKET CRASH!!”

Much has been written about the infamous tendency of Japanese tables to hold up under increasingly heavy impacts, but there was simply no way this one was going to hold up to a Market Crash off the apron. To its credit, the table tried, and instead of splitting neatly it really sort of exploded and collapsed, sending chunks of wood everywhere and letting out an earth-splitting CRACK.

Granted, some of that noise might've been Abattoir's ribcage. She'd already taken one elbow drop with the metal pads, but now it felt like it'd just been the prelude to this one from a much greater height. Fuuuuuck. It was like being stabbed (and yeah, she'd been stabbed before, so she had a frame of reference), and the crash to the floor was a concussive cherry on top. Abattoir jerked in place, convulsing and clutching at her chest, and finally rolled over onto her side in the fetal position. Her legs thrashed in impotent agony like a child throwing a tantrum.

Eyes squeezed shut, teeth clenched together under the mask, the nak muay tried to work up the energy to get back up to her knees and start recovering, but for the moment it just wasn't coming. There was too much noise she couldn't drown out, with the thunderous 'holy shit' chants and the air horns and and the ever-building static inside her head.

She stayed on her side for the moment, trying to get her breathing back to something resembling a normal pattern.

Perfect. Absolutely perfect.

Liberty couldn’t have scripted a better moment. The crowd was cheering, going nuts for the second time in two minutes. Another ‘holy shit’ chant, always appreciated. Loud noise, lot of scattered debris, some asshole jumping nearby jumping around so much that he was spilling popcorn on Liberty’s face. It was all just the most amazing, greatest, most awesome thing ever, and the only thing that could’ve made it moreso would be if she could actually take advantage of the moment.

”Come on, just-” Liberty tried to roll over, but the crash had taken a good deal out of her body, too. Couldn’t do it on the first. Not the second.

After the third failed attempt, she simply laid back, took a deep breath, summoned up some will and forced herself to roll over. Grabbing hold of Abattoir’s shoulder, she pulled the nak mauy over and flopped on her, chest to chest, pinning her to the floor and hoping her weight would be enough.

The referee slid in under the ropes and dropped down near them, taking care not to cut herself on the scattered fragments. ”1…!”

Unlike most pinfall type situations, Abattoir was wholly cognizant of what was happening to her. She hadn't been knocked out or even driven loopy; she was still entirely conscious. Whether that translated to being able to actually do anything, though....well, that was up in the air. As Liberty rolled her over and dropped across her chest, her muscles seemed to respond as if she was in a swimming pool. Something about the trauma from the elbow drop and the plummet to the floor had locked everything up.

"Two!"

Abattoir tried to bring her legs up to kick out. For whatever reason, they weren't responding at the moment. Lactic acid burned in her muscles, and the momentary concern flashed in her head that this might actually be how it ended; her body seemed to be in something resembling a hard reset and mustering up the ab strength to properly muscle out from under the bigger girl was coming a lot harder than...

...right, she actually just needed to get a shoulder up.

"Thr--"

One arm burst upward frantically, getting her shoulder about a half-inch off the ground, and then immediately flopped back into its normal position. Despite the crowd's approval, Abattoir was not feeling anything approaching a huge comeback at the moment; the Market Crash had taken a lot out of her, and it was any woman's game now.

Three.

Three.

Liberty had been so close to clinching this thing. She could taste it. Could feel it in her big bones. Abattoir was not a small woman, but she wasn't exactly a tank, either. She should’ve been able to put her down with the Market Crash. End game. Period.

But no. It just wasn't enough. Liberty wasn't sure whether to be impressed, angered, or legitimately afraid because she was apparently fighting a damn cyborg. Would explain the mask.

”Okay…” Liberty sat up on her knees and ran a hand over her face, nodding. ”Okay, let's switch this up a bit.”

Liberty stood up - which was harder than it sounds - and grabbed Abattoir’s head, lifting her. She didn't have to go far with the cruel kick boxer, just needed to lift her up enough to make her sit on the apron. Get her in position for what she was planning.

Before she went about that, though, she gave Abattoir a slap in the face. Felt right. ”Time for you to wake up.”

Unlike Liberty, Abattoir didn't take any particular offense to being slapped. Palm strikes here and there were just part of the game - granted, fists were better, and elbows were best, but you used the tools you had available to you, not the ones you wanted. She didn't really take it as an insult so much as part of the offense coming her way.

(This is not to say thing were all sunshine and roses between the two girls. Oh no. The bitch had fucking bitten her. Wars had been started over smaller insults.)

Regardless, the shock of Liberty's palm across her cheek was enough to jar her back to lucidity, setting her thoughts on a vengeful track. As the brawler grabbed her around the waist and hoisted her up to the apron, Abattoir growled under her breath, slamming back against the ropes. She got an arm up against Liberty's collarbone, trying to push her off and keep her away for the moment, and in the middle of the struggle, as she was hauling to one side and trying to get loose, her eyes fell across a pair of brass knuckles glimmering on the apron next to them. There was a pause, and time seemed to stand still for a moment as she glanced back to Liberty.

Their eyes met.

Abattoir dove for the knuckles.

The plan had been for Liberty to drag the konked-out Abattoir to the ropes and trap her with a rope-assisted dragon sleeper. That plan fell to shit when it turned out that Abattoir wasn’t nearly as konked-out as advertised.

”Shit, you-” Liberty paused when she noticed that Abattoir’s dark eyes had caught onto something more interesting: brass knuckles. Great.

Liberty was the only one who’d come to the fight with metal tacked on her body, and she wanted to keep it that way. Abattoir had too much of a head start, was too fast, so she wasn’t at all confident about her ability to get to knuckles first. But maybe she didn’t have to.

Instead of going for the knuckles, she went for Abattoir’s waist and wrapped her arms around the smaller woman, pulling her tight against her chest. Had this been earlier on, Liberty might’ve hit her opponent with a suplex, thrown her right into the audience. Now she was just content to fall, pull Abattoir with her, and let gravity sort things out on the way down.

At some point the supposed dignities of her office as Herald of the End Times had fallen away and the true Abattoir, the thing she tried to keep in check, had been exposed - a seething, vicious maelstrom of sadism and outright spite.  Probably right about the time Liberty had taken a chunk out of her thigh.

Her lunge for the brass knuckles came up short before it'd even really began, as Liberty's strong arms encircled her waist and the added weight dragged her right back down to the floor.  Abattoir slammed down hard, smacking roughly against the padding on the outside, and ended up a full four or five feet away from the fallen knucks.  She reached, and it seemed almost ridiculous at first (there was no way she was going to come even close), until that hand came down hard on the floor and dragged her towards the weapon.  Another arm reached out, and again, she pulled herself forward.  It was very slow going with Liberty on her back, but it was going.

At some point the steady, low glossolalia rasping under her mask had started giving way to actual words, interestingly enough.  "--motherfucking--" she spat between coughs, clawing steadily towards the knuckles.  "--tear you apart--"

There was a very real chance she'd make it, even in this less-than-ideal situation, if something didn't happen fast.

Though everything about Abattoir pretty much screamed ‘bad guy’, Liberty could hear a section of the AFW fanbase clapping for her as she crawled along the floor. Easy to see why, too. This woman refused to stop.

She was dragging Liberty along the floor. Liberty. Between the two of their bodies, there was over 300 pounds of hardcore wrestler between them, but Abattoir pulled it along, scratching and clawing her way to the brass knuckles. It was almost inspiring, in a way, and the romantic side of Liberty was tempted to let her have it and be all sportsmanlike.

The common sense side of Liberty was more pragmatic, however, and knew that as tough as Abattoir was to deal with, she’d get worse with metal around her fists. Fuck that noise.

Crawling up Abattoir’s body, Liberty brought her mighty, meaty arm around her fierce foe’s neck and went for an inverted facelock, looking to pull her back with a dragon sleeper and really work away on the neck and spine. If she wanted those knuckles so badly, every inch towards them would be torture.

Almost there. Two more and she'd have the knuckles within arm's length. Two more. Come on. Reach--

Like nearly all of her habits, Abattoir's monomaniacal focus was deeply unhealthy. She would unquestionably be dead before she was thirty. In the shorter term, it wasn't doing as much for her performance in the match as she'd like, particularly because Liberty's power advantage was making this very difficult indeed. With that said, she had no idea just how difficult it could get, as the solid force of a thick arm wrapping around her head demonstrated a second later.

The dragon sleeper...it was really more of a camel clutch dragon sleeper, considering their position...was hellish. Abattoir wrenched backwards like a scorpion, twisted in place by the hold. It wasn't the pain that was the problem - it was permeating every nerve from her toes to her scalp, but she'd been compartmentalizing physical pain since her childhood - but instead the leverage. She had absolutely no momentum in this position, and her own muscles would resist any attempt to get any closer to the knuckles.

She tried anyway. They made it about halfway there, impossibly, but it was no use. There was no way she could make it to salvation, and it felt like Liberty was about to snap her spine if she was in this much longer. Abattoir took a deep breath, tried to center herself, and...promptly started playing rough. Her left hand snaked up the side of the sleeper, palming Liberty's head, and promptly tried to grab her face like a bowling ball. Eyes, mouth, anywhere she could jam her fingers in knuckle-deep, they were going.

Hey, Liberty'd bitten her. Queensberry rules were out the window.