24/7 Championship Match - Carmen Rodriguez (C) vs. Soledad 'Sola' Vega - Wake Up Call

Well, Soledad seemed to be impressed by Carmen’s living arrangements. Oddly enough, that filled her with a small burst of pride. She did put effort into making sure her home had a good feel, after all. Wanted to get the most out of her living space. However, she was regretting her decision to go with the titanium refrigerator. In her defense, though, there was no way she could’ve known a crazy, barefoot street rat would one day be ramming her face into it.

She hit the door with a dull thud and immediately dropped to her knees, grasping her aching head and biting back a scream. Didn’t feel like anything was cut, but she’d come close. There’d be a lump, there, and having the cutting board fall on her back right after didn’t help her mood.

”Por supuesto.” Carmen muttered, not able to think of much else to say as Soledad sipped her skim milk. She just focused on trying to get back up, pushing to her hands and knees…

”Guh!” She’d only begun to recover when she felt something big and heavy crash down on her back, flattening her once more. It took her a second to figure out what it was, but she when she looked back and saw the splatter across her bare back, it was easy to piece together.

Her melon. The little, ratty, conniving bitch hit her with a god damn melon

Other food products rained down on Carmen’s back shortly after. None of them physically hurt as much as the first one, but mentally, it was taking a toll. Many of the things in Carmen’s fridge were items from their home, shipped right from Puerto Rico - spices, herbs, dishes that you didn’t often see in Japan. They were expensive, and importing them was an annoying but worthwhile process.

And now they were getting splattered all over her back and across the floor. Ruined.

If Sola was trying to piss Carmen off, she was succeeding. If she wanted to know how well she was doing, all she had to do was look into the champion’s face as she slowly began to rise, and see the burning fury in her raging eyes and gritted teeth. ”Bitch, when I get up-”

With everything Soleadad was wrapping her hands around, with every object that she was whipping hard into Carmen's supine back, she allowed herself to get more worked up. The young woman was throwing everything she could, trying to empy Carmen's refridgerator out onto her, trying to make this as much of a 'Kitchen Nightmare' for the champ as she could. 'Kitchen Nightmare' was a show rich people watched, right? Whatever, Sola told herself. She just hit this bitch with a melon.

Then, Carmen started to stir. "Don't get up then, te sucia furcia!" With that, Sola would drop a heavy foot on the back of Carmen's head, trying to knock her right into those cool, expensive tiles. Damn, this place even felt good to kick someone's ass in! Far cry from those dirty Puerto Rican back streets she'd fought in, for all those years.

Sola placed a hand on her own jaw, used it to crack her neck. She grinned, ear to ear. This felt right, she told herself. This felt like the kind of fight she had wanted, ever since she'd left the streets of Puerto Rico. Ever since she finally went into wrestling. And she was getting a title out of it, to boot? Hell, it was like this place even smelled better than any of the weird places she'd gone to in Japan. Brushing the herbs and ruined vegetables out of her fingernails onto her pants, she couldn't figure out why the hell that was. She just knew that she had to keep going.

Carmen had looked up to her with all manner of hell in her eyes. Given the chance, the champion would fucking end her. So, Sola just couldn't give her that chance. With a quick thrust of her hand, Sola turned on the faucet, running the sink at full blast. Then, reaching down, she wrapped both of her hands around Carmen's neck, and started pulling her up. If she could, Sola would shove Carmen's head into the sink, letting the fast-running water pour over her head, nearly waterboarding the suffering champion while she leaned back and laughed.

Out of all the opponents Carmen had ever faced across the entire planet, out of all the insults she’d taken and all the damage she’d incurred, she had never, in her life, wanted to destroy another human being as much as she wanted to do with Soledad Vega. Right here, right now, she swore that she was going to annihilate this bitch at the first opportunity.

But that opportunity might’ve been a long time coming. She couldn’t win a fight if she couldn’t stand.

”No-” Was all Carmen had the time to get out when she felt Sola’s foot against the back of her head. Her face was driven hard into the cold, tiled floor, right on her nose for a little extra pain. It was a little hard to tell with the myriad of smells invading her nostrils, but she was fairly sure it was bleeding now, too.

This time, Carmen would be much slower to rise. Soledad would help her with that.

”Get off me.” Carmen groggily mumbled while she was dragged up for some new humiliation. ”Get off me, you-”

Carmen didn't realize what she'd been pulled into until the water began pouring over her face, splattering all over nose and mouth and draining down her bloody nostrils. To make matters worse, Sola had turned the left handle, so the water was getting steadily hotter with each passing second. It wouldn’t get to burning levels, but it was just more pain for to take in, searing her nerves.

She’d been stunned by having her face slammed into the floor, but this was bringing back life quick. Carmen’s body went into a flurry of movement, legs kicking and arms swinging every which way, wildly trying to get free as a blubbered scream rang out across the apartment.

Sola was not much in the mood for listening, as she got Carmen into position for her makeshift waterboarding. Part of her was kind of tempted to go back to the fridge, see what she could rustle up- damn, this room smelled good! Fortunately for her, she stayed on task. As tempting as raiding that fridge might have been, it was far more tempting to beat Carmen half to death, and help herself to that 24/7 Championship.

Forcing Carmen's head under the running water was one thing, but trying to keep her under it was more of a struggle. She'd done a decent job of softening her opponent up, coming after her the way she had. Unexectedly, laying it on hard from the moment she came in the door. But Carmen was a celebrated competitor for a reason, and Sola's curvaceous frame was visibly struggling under the effort of keeping Carmen in her control.

Water running across Carmen's face, Sola wrapped her fingers tight, locking in her crip on Carmen's close-cropped hair, and shoved her head harder into the sink.

"You said you wanted me to come over, puta," Sola said, mockingly. "Invite me over to your fancy apartment, so's we can hang out, n'shit, you think I wasn't gonna take a shot at that title? What you think was gonna happen, huh?"

There was a definite edge to her voice, a bitterness. "What, you just want me to come out, so you can show off your fancy shit, huh?" Sola didn't even know if the champion could hear her, at the moment. She pulled Carmen's head out of the sink, and dumped her to the floor. Arms straining from the effort she'd just expended, Soledad leaned on the counter to look down and watch the champion suffer, from her efforts. After a moment of that, absent-mindedly, Sola took one hand, pulled a melon across from the counter, and slowly rolled it toward the edge. Still huffing after her mini-rant, Sola let the melon tumble off the edge of the counter and tumble down toward Carmen, below.

God, Sola was talkative. Carmen had sort of gotten used to the way wrestlers liked to gab in matches, one of the more notable changes from boxing. She even got to the point where she did it a little herself. Not too much, but she could throw a taunt out every now and then. It had its place.

But, madre dios, Soledad just wouldn’t shut up. She went on and on, and the worst thing was that Carmen couldn’t even understand what she was saying while she had her head under a sink and running water was cascading over her head. Maybe Vega didn’t realize that, maybe she didn’t care. Whatever she was saying, though, the tone alone was irritating enough.

And was that the referee nearby, asking if she wanted to give up? What, did this count as a submission hold? Jesus.

Just like that, it was over, as Carmen was flung to her floor, smacking down on the tiles. She was a mess in all sorts of ways, covered in leftovers and all kinds of fruits and veggies, her hair wet and soaking. She laid there, gasping hard, but after a few second she started to pull herself up…

...until she felt something hard and round hit her back, dropping her down again. She looked over, and there was the melon she’d bought at market yesterday. Rolling away.

”Need to…” She spat to the side. ”Need to keep hitting me while I’m down, Vega.” Carmen raspily growled, her face still looking to the floor. ”Because when I get up, I’m going to punch you, in the face, harder than anything you’ve felt in your entire life.”

It wasn’t a threat, it was a promise. Carme spoke as if God himself had written it in the Bible.

"Yeah yeah yeah ..." Soledad said, using her hand to mimic a puppet, continually talking. "Don't you worry none, Carmen, I'm going to keep hitting you, that's not gonna be a problem!" With that, the challenger reeled back her leg, and swung a hard kick to Carmen's head, teeing off on her like she was a soccer ball.

Sola shook her head, walking away from Carmen. Here she was, bastard daughter of her country's professional wrestling scene, taking it to and taking down the champion. Putting her through all kinds of hell, actually. So why wasn't this feeling more satisfying?

Walking away, Soledad came out to the living room area, once again. She took a moment to size up some art, a hanging portrait on the wall. Yeah, she told herself, that would do nicely. Pulling it off its hook, Soledad took the painting in both hands. She shook it a bit, judging its weight and size in her hands.

Then, turned around, and swung hard with it. With all her strength, she swung right for Carmen's lower back. She'd keep swinging again and again, if she could, trying to tee off with her full strength and fury at the champion's lower back with the art, until it was nothing but tatters of canvas and broken splinters of wood frame, in her hands.

Carmen had a very faint memory of her grandmother. She’d died shortly after her sixth birthday, so there was only a few hazy recollections of her, fragments of a warm women. Short, a little pudgy, hairs that had been graying from eighty years of life. She was kind, Carmen knew that much, and she had a love for art that most of her family never cared for. Abstract stuff. Things that didn’t look like much of anything.

After she’d died, Carmen was given a painting of hers that she'd always liked. It was this weird swirl of colors, and she recalled spending a lot of time at her grandmother's television-less house, trying to imagine what it could be. A rainbow caught in a vortex, a tornado tearing through a paint shop, a close up of a poorly made loolipop.

Now that she was old, she thought it was kind of ugly. But it was her grandmother's, and it held a room together well enough. So she kept it and put it on display in her living rooms.

Until Soledad Vega came in one night, plucked it off the wall like she owned the damn thing, and beat Carmen across the back with it.

It was just wood and paper, so it wasn’t exactly a fierce bludgeon, but Sola swung it with enough force to make up for that. Carmen had been trying to stand back up, but each strike brought her lower to the floor until she was back on her hands and knees.

She was hurting, and it wasn’t getting much better. But there was no way she was going to let Soledad do something like this without a little retaliation.

Carmen brought her fist up drove it down onto Sola’s bare toes, pounding them into the floor with a quick burst of strength

Swinging down hard, again and again, using the painting to pummel and punish with as much strength as she could, Soledad put everything she had into punishing Carmen's back. She had no specific reason to go after her with that ugly little painting, no reason for using that specific weapon beyond her efforts to break down Carmen's home just as surely as she was breaking down her body. But still, Soledad committed. She put everything she had into beating her opponent down with that painting, right until Carmen finally thrust back.

"AAAAAaaaoowww!" Sola screamed, as Carmen's knuckles came down hard on her toes. "Bitch! Dammit, dammit bitch!" She groaned and swore, hissing the words as she backed off. Toes curling, Sola reached down, nursing her aching foot. "Aagh, you godawful puta," she spat. As she did so, however, some worry started to settle in behind Sola's eyes. Because if Carmen was recovering enough to start punching back, like that, she might be recovering enough to actually start fighting back! And that was something that Sola simply couldn't abide.

Turning back to Carmen, Sola lifted that aching foot, and brought it back down hard onto the small of Carmen's back. Then, she started slamming her foot down again and again. She began stomping heavily into Carmen's spine, wanting to plant Carmen hard against the once-pristine tile floor.

Soledad couldn't put her full strength into these stomps, with the muscles and tendons aching from Carmen's stiff blow. However, Soledad would throw her full weight into it, stomping from the center of her thick hips, completely upsetting her center of gravity in the name of planting Carmen against the mat, throwing herself blindly into that assault.

As much as Carmen was starting to utterly despise this woman who’d broken into apartment and ruined the sanctity of her home, as mad as she was about having her grandmother’s heirloom destroyed, as desperately as she wanted these cameras to leave so she could go back to bed and have the sleep she desperately needed...

”Heh. Pendeja.” Carmen chuckled, watching Sola hop around like she’d stepped on a hot plate. ”That’s what you get for fighting barefoot.”

She had to laugh. A little cough of a laugh. Even knowing full well how fleeting it would be. She was still firmly on the defensive here, and it would take a lot more than bruised toes to change that.

Carmen started rising again, but, no surprise, Soledad wasn’t having it. The first stomp brought her down to her hands and knees, the third made her drop flat, and all the ones after that just hammered the nail into the coffin. It was all Carmen could do just to roll her body up into the fetal position as Soledad continued to rain down blows, battering her with furious fervor. She just had to hold on until the fiery Latina ran out of energy, which would hopefully be soon.

Again and again, with increasingly ridiculous fervor, Soledad rained the blows down hard, onto Carmen. "Why! Won't! You! Fucking! Quit!" she shouted, with each blow she rained down. Really, Sola had expected that any moment, now, Carmen would utter her submission. The physical abuse, the emotional abuse. The trauma of being attacked in her own home. And still, Carmen held strong. She even kept talking shit, somehow!

Beads of sweat were beginning to run down Sola's curves, dripping down onto Carmen, below. She threw her head back, flipping her hair back over her shoulder. Even if she hadn't gotten Carmen to quit, Sola had beaten the hell out of her, right? She dropped a damn melon on her, for God's sake!

Sola took Carmen by the shoulders, and flipped her onto her back. Leaning down, Sola pressed her body against Carmen, tightly as she could, as she pinned her against the cool tile floor. Her nostrils filled with the scent of their own sweating, overworked bodies, as well as the myriad aromas of all the foods and spices that Sola had so unceremoniously dumped all over the floor, earlier.

"Count it, bitch!" Soledad called out over her shoulder, to the ref who had come along. If there wasn't going to be a submission, she figured, surely she could get a pinfall out of Carmen, at this point. She even slapped the tile once, herself, trying to get the count going.