Liberty/Abattoir II - Hell On Earth

Singles match.  One fall.
Hell in a Cell.
No DQ, no mercy, no survivors.

Unwisely, a large chunk of the staff had migrated to Alaska to set up for Summer Splash 2016, leaving a skeleton crew running the AFW Arena.  Perhaps even more unwisely, this was not just limited to production, but also included most of the security, nearly everyone in charge of arena inventory, and all the people whose job it was to look at a format and say 'Wait, we booked what?"

There was a shriek of static, a flicker of "W.A.R." on the titantron, and a burst of red light, and everyone left on the production team was left to realize what a tremendous mistake they'd made as Abattoir came storming down to ringside with a heavy trash bag in her hand.  There was already an astounding amount of plunder - nearly all of it hellishly sharp and likely to do incredible damage - lying around, presumably at her orders.  Fluorescent tubes, barbed wire, gusset plates, even what looked like some kind of jury-rigged explosive board.  A moment later, the ringside wasn't the only place filled with weaponry, because Abattoir hoisted the bag over her head and hurled it into the ring, where it promptly exploded into thousands and thousands of thumbtacks.  The first few rows were at a very real risk of getting spiked with flying objects as glittering bits of pain went flying everywhere, covering the canvas and spilling over into the ringside area.  When the cage hovering over the ring was lowered, there would be quite literally no safe haven whatsoever.

The crowd seemed uncertain as to how they should react.  It was cool to see people do crazy things, sure.  On the other hand, Abattoir had made her allegiance clear with a dishonorable attack on Angel and Silver Ace, and in addition to that, there was something uniquely visceral about her idea of hardcore wrestling compared to most of the roster, even within her division.  Most of the girls in Friction seemed content with tables, ladders, and chairs, and then here was Abattoir, dual wielding lighttubes as she climbed through the ropes.

None of her usual serenity was present.  The nak muay stalked back and forth in her corner like a caged tiger, tubes in hand, eyes locked on the entryway.  It was clear that some serious animosity had been formulated during her previous encounter with Liberty - some very undignified slapping and biting had taken place, and in the eyes of each girl, the other had cost them a win that was rightfully theirs.  It was time to settle up.

As the cage loomed overhead, Abattoir - scarlet eyes brimming with hate over her mask - continued to pace with obvious intent.  There was an almost-palpable tension in the arena's atmosphere while the fans awaited their nominal hero.  

This match was headed for some real unpleasant places.

After Abattoir got settled in, it wasn’t long before Liberty’s music started up. It was loud and raucuos, fast-paced and furious, a perfect match for her style, and the audience was getting into it. Some of them were bouncing in their seats, nodding their head, while a few shameless individuals were getting up and dancing for the former hardcore champion. It was a good way to start a hardcore match off.

Now they just needed an actual hardcore wrestler to go with it.

The crowd stared down at the entryway along with Abattoir, expecting Liberty to come out, bounce around, scream like the spitfire they all knew her to be and run down the ramp with the fury of a woman possessed. Instead they got...nothing. No sign of her. No sign of anything. Whispers started to spread through the crowd as the music played on. Did she no-show? Was this a trap from Abattoir, eliminating the competition before she could start the match?

Those question were answered as a resounding ‘fuck no’, when the crowd’s attention shifted to the other side of the arena. There, sifting through the throngs with a gymbag strapped around her back, a kendo stick in one hand and a can of fine Sopporo Draft in the other, was none other than Liberty. She held her stick high and screamed along with the audience, crying out with them in a defiant howl.

”RIOOOOOOOOOOOOT!”

Down she came, descending through the crowd on her way to the ring, weaving through the masses like a ship through the sea. Hands were slapped, fists were bump, one energetic man even exchanged a headbutt with her before security dragged him off. This was where she belonged - with the people. In the thick of it all. The natural way of things.

When she came to ringside, she made one final stop - a fan had his mouth wide open, asking for a drink, so she gave it to him - pouring it right down his throat. A little weird, but he and his buddies seemed to think it was awesome enough, and she wasn’t inclined to disagree.

Liberty leaped over the guardrail and was immediately glad that she’d landed on her feet, instead of coming down in some superhero-landing thing where knees touched the floor. Thumbtacks were embedded into in the bottom of her boot. And they were scatterd about the ring. And ringside. And around the announcer’s table, where the commentator looked like they couldn’t wait for the cell to lower.

Abattoir had done a little decorating. Liberty had to admit - for all the things she didn’t like about the nak muay, certain aspects of her personality and taste were appealing.

Liberty sat her gym bag on the floor and made her way up the steps, eyes never leaving Abattoir for a single second. Not her, and definitely not those light tubes of hers. ”Funny thing about those,” She nodded at Abattoir favored weapons and stepped in the ring. ”They break easy.”

Liberty brought the kendo stick up and slammed it hard into the mat, making the thumbtacks bounce all at once. ”This won’t.”

The fans' fondness for Liberty was heartening - a morale boost she could find strength in, with her populist slant and hard-partying nature.  Abattoir couldn't relate; a friendless ascetic, she found her fulfillment only in the Eternal Crucible.  Perhaps this was part of the resentment she held against the other girl, but if it was, she could hardly be expected to recognize that in herself, let alone give voice to it.

She paced, tacks crunching beneath her boots, until at last Liberty hopped into the ring and slammed her kendo stick down onto the mat.  A shower of glittering brass leapt into the air all around them from the impact, gleaming under the arena lights.  An appropriately dramatic gesture - sort of a gavel, the nak muay thought with something vaguely approaching amusement.

"That," she answered in a low rasp, stepping up to the center of the ring, "is not what you should worry about breaking."

As Abattoir reached the center, the cage began to lower.  Fifteen feet tall and covered in chainlink, it was a diabolical structure that promised nothing but agony for anybody within.  But all the more ominous, considering how out-of-place they were, were the strong-smelling lengths of white rope threaded through its sides.  Gasoline, judging from the scent they gave off.  Abattoir had apparently had some extensive modifications made not just to the weaponry, but to the cell itself.

She took a slow, deep breath through the mask, closing her eyes and letting her head hang back.  There was a single moment of serenity - her mind racing with cryptic, unknowable truths - and then her gaze snapped into place, and Abattoir stepped back in a dramatic, sword-like flourish with both lighttubes.  There was a gasp from the crowd - they'd seen her give a tube to her opponents so many times that this was a startling change in behavior.  

"Ready yourself for judgment."  Oh good, she wasn't totally different.  "Omicaolz aai om."

The cell was very, very close to the floor now.  Any second.

As much as Liberty wanted and needed to keep her focus locked on Abattoir, she couldn’t help but glance at the referee, too. The young referee, with her hair up in a cute ponytail and her elbow and kneepads on, looking up and watching the cell descending on them like the angel of death. From her understanding, the referees had all gotten together and drawn straws to see who would handle this match. Luck could be cruel.

The poor thing looked like she wanted to be anywhere else on the planet other than inside this ring. Liberty didn’t blame her - she was getting paid to stand at ground zero. When she signed on to be an AFW official, this was probably the last thing she’d expected to be a part of.

Speaking of which, what was up with the white rope around the cell? Was that gasoline she smelled? That was new.

She could worry about it later. Her focus returned to its proper place now that the cell was nearly lowered, watching as Abattoir did her little flourish. Showing off. Still trying to intimidate her with the whole grim reaper act.

Liberty wasn’t falling for it. Whatever Abattoir thought she was, she wasn’t. This whole act, her whole look, her crazy-pants philosophy, none of it meant a dime to Liberty.  She’d stopped being afraid of the boogeyman when she was five year old, so the boogeywoman would be no problem.

Liberty was all about substance. Hard hits and hard knocks. She didn’t need fancy kicks or a weird look or fancy rambling in screwball languages to make enemies fear her. Her actions accomplished that all by themselves. Those same actions got her to the top of the division once, and they’d get her there again, reaching the top while she stood on Abattoir’s back.

”Li mortachee tua.” She didn’t understand what Abattoir said, so she returned the favor with a dip into her native Italian. Two could play that game. ”Get ready for it.”

The cell lowered. The bell rang. The fight began.

Liberty charged forward before the bell’s echo had even finished resonating, stomping her way across the ring and picking up more tacks in her boot along the way. She lashed out when she was close enough, coming at Abattoir with a horitizontal swing, going for the torse - in truth, she really hoped her opponent would try to block with the tubes. Longshot, but she could dream.

The instant the bell sounded, Abattoir charged.

Tacks kicked up into the air all around them as the two girls bull-rushed each other, weapons in hand. Normally, the nak muay was quite content to hang back and pick her opponents apart at a distance, but the time for that had passed. They'd gotten enough of a feeling-out process last time. Now it was war.

She lowered her shoulder, lighttubes trailing out behind her like a ninja, and barreled right into Liberty's oncoming assault. The bigger girl was already hauling back for a baseball swing with her kendo stick, and being as Liberty wasn't exactly a master of misdirection, it was pretty clear exactly what was coming. Her best bet was to dead-angle the shot - to rush right into it and get well within the stick's 'dead zone' of effective range so she could get some offense in. Granted, that meant she was still going to get hit, but Abattoir relished that. Only cowards shied away from trading in order to get an advantage.

And they definitely traded. The middle of the stick bounced off Abattoir's shoulder with a resounding thwack - not nearly as dangerous as it would've been if she was standing at full range, but still hard enough to turn her arm momentarily numb and shatter the tube it was holding in a cloud of dust and glass shards. Unfortunately for Liberty, that was why Abattoir had two.

Ramming shoulder-first into her opponent's midsection, Abattoir used her newly-free arm to hook a leg and drive Liberty towards the corner in something vaguely approaching a single-leg takedown. It didn't have enough momentum behind it to actually bring her to the mat, but it was definitely enough - especially since she was off-balance from swinging the kendo stick - to get her up against the turnbuckles, and that was really all she needed to get this thing kicked off.

One arm braced herself in place, and a moment later she popped up into a fighting stance and started throwing a barrage of elbows in the corner, the first of which was lighttube-assisted and therefore basically guaranteed to be even more razor-sharp than her normal elbow strikes were. There was definitely no warmup process, the match was going from zero to a hundred miles per hour in the opening ten seconds.

Maybe it was just Liberty’s imagination, but as she and Abattoir charged towards each other amidst a field of thumbtacks, she could’ve sworn she heard someone singing in Latin.

The collision was every bit as glorious and nerve wracking as Liberty hoped it would be. There was the expected cloud of dusts and glass, littering the ring and making any contact with it even more perilous than it already was. The sonorous crash that made everyone from the referee to the crowd five seats back wince, tickling their ear drums. So much sound and fury, all in one glorious moment.

It wasn’t all good - the impact left Liberty’s hefty arms aching, not something she’d look forward to again. But she’d hit Abattoir, so hell, mission accomplished. Yes, she wound up taking some glass against her upper arm, but her opponent definitely came out worse. Good, great, perfect. ”Like that, you whoa!”

Whatever taunt Liberty was aiming for got interrupted, as Abattoir barreled into her and drove her towards the corner, grabbing her leg and forcing the former champion to hop on one leg. She wasn’t in that much danger of falling over, but she couldn’t resist some panic - she’d made peace with the likelihood that she would be taking a dive into those thumbtacks eventually, probably more than once, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t fight the inevitable tooth and nail.

‘Luckily’, she wound up getting pressed in the corner instead. Not the place to be. Certainly not when her opponent still had one lighttube left to swing. Which she did.

Liberty managed to get her shoulder up in time to avoid getting hit with the lighttube assisted elbow, but that was a small mercy - her upper arm was bloodied instantly, some of the dust had gotten in her eye, and she was wide open to all of the blows that follow, and, for an added, bonus, it made her drop the kendo stick. Over and over, Abattoir rocked her clock, rattled her with the hellish blows.

But Liberty didn’t fall. It hurt, yes, but she could work through the pain. Especially today.

”Fuck…” Liberty waited for Abattoir to draw for another elbow, then took the opportunity to grab her by the collar.

”...off!” She pulled Abattoir close and moved forward with a sudden jerk, ramming their skulls together with a headbutt. It wouldn’t be all that pleasant for either of them, but Liberty was willing to wager that her head was a bit harder than the nak muay’s.

The rights came hard and fast, glass-assisted.  The lefts...well, they left a little to be desired.  Abattoir's arm was still numb from the kendo stick.  Still, it was hard to deny the overall effect; a blitz of elbows had left Liberty on the defensive, and Abattoir knew the other girl could feel every hit, even the ones she guarded herself against.

It wasn't often she fought like this; more often, she was conservative in the early parts of a match, and preferred to get an impression of her opponent while conserving her energy.  Here, though, the cell was a swirling vortex of spite and hatred, with Abattoir right at the center.  She was going full-bore right from the get-go, and if it ended up costing her the match, she'd flame out gloriously rather than fade away without ceremony.

"Dead.  Dead.  Dead.  Dead--"

All things come an end, though, and Liberty posted off her a second later with a fistful of lapel.  Out of elbowing range, Abattoir was drawing back to throw a roundhouse punch at her before, unexpectedly, the Italian jerked forward and the world exploded into a searing burst of white light.  Her head was reasonably hard when it came to striking, but the ideal way to take a headbutt was on the top of the forehead, where the skull was thickest - she hadn't been expected it, and Liberty had caught her right around the eyebrows.

Everything flashed hellishly for a moment.  There was probably a valid reason AFW's medical staff kept trying to give her an MRI, not that she'd ever acknowledge it as valid.

Although Abattoir wasn't out on her feet (or even all that wobbled), the opening had been thoroughly exploited, and Liberty was free from the onslaught of elbows.  The nak muay stumbled back out of the corner, blinking and swiping awkwardly at her eyes with the back of a hand.  Fuck, that hurt.  She'd get her vision back in a moment, but for right now, she was very much off-guard and couldn't do much more than get her arms up to defend herself.

The audience collectively winced - something they’d likely be doing many times tonight - as the headbutt connected square on Abattoir’s brow. It wasn’t all that pleasant for Liberty, really, since her mouth had caught a bit of the nak muay’s gas mask, cutting her lip a bit. Oh, and her skull had slammed into a hard object, never too fun.

But she was lucid. Lucid enough to realize that Abattoir was wide open before her, begging to be knocked clean out of her boots.

Time for a one-second inventory check.

She’d dropped the kendo stick. It wasn’t far away, and she could just pick the damn thing up, but Abattoir would only be stunned for a second. If she wanted to use that window, she needed something she could use fast.

But she didn’t want to hit her rival with a regular wrestling attack, either. Bitch had cut her shoulder up with a goddamn lighttube, and all those elbows deserved fitting retribution.

...of course. Situations like these were why Liberty always came equipped with some built-in nastiness.

She stepped out of the corner and spun around as she neared Abattoir, doing a full twirl and building momentum. With the turn complete, she used that momentum for a Roaring Elbow, targetting the nak muay’s face. Top half, bottom half, she didn’t much care where it landed. Just face.

What did matter, though, was the metal pad on her elbow, adding to the damage. That would matter a lot, she figured.

Okay. Liberty wasn't exactly a technical striker, she was going to come in winging hooks and throwing wildly. Keep the guard wide, Dutch style, and the worst of whatever was coming would just bounce off her forearms - not ideal, exactly, but better than nothing. As the world started clearing and the blurry shape in front of her stepped forward and began turning fully into the motion, she let herself relax very slightly, content that she'd correctly predicted the haymakers.

The problem, of course, was that Liberty had faked her out and was spinning into a rolling elbow out of the corner - into her finisher. There was a split second, right before the impact, where the realization clicked. It was easy to tell because she spent her time with her eyes widening in shock instead of, say, ducking, or trying to half-block it effectively, or even stepping back.

She was on the mat a moment later. The shot knocked her clear off her feet (it probably would've done so even without the metal elbow pad) and the nak muay dropped in a blur of black and red, crashing down among the tacks and sending metal flying every which way. She'd landed on her back - a sharp spike of pain shooting through every inch of it - and compounded that by rolling over onto her front, slamming a fist down (again, into the tacks) and forcing herself up to a knee. Patches of her body glittered with brass under the ring lights, almost dazzling, and when Abattoir raised her head, there was a swiftly-blossoming bruise on the left side of her jaw, accompanied by a jagged cut. Liberty's elbow pad had caught the skin and torn it, rather than simply slicing through.

Perhaps most notable of all, though, was the change in her expression. Formerly dead eyes blazed with unbridled, furious hatred. At last, Liberty had found a way under the frigid, apathetic exterior. The bite in their last match had clearly provoked a response but now, at last, she'd found the Big Red Button, and oh boy had she ever pressed it.

"That's mine," Abattoir snarled, smearing the blood from her gashed cheek all the way down to the base of her mask.

Oh, that was goddamn glorious. Not just the way she’d hit Abattoir with the elbow pad, but the way she tumbled and the tacks bounced and she got pricked all over and…

Liberty raised an a bloodied eyebrow when Abattoir started to raise up, looking like the devil himself had suddenly taken over her black soul. Sheer hatred was in those eyes, which...well, they were far, far from being bosom buddies, hatred had already been there. This was a degree about, though, and Liberty couldn’t quite figure out what had trigged this sudden burst of intense, red-hot loathing from the previously frigid ice queen. ‘That’s mine’? What was she talking about? Was this more crazy-goth, demon-child loony talk?

Liberty blinked, and then it dawned on her. A sly smile spread over her lips as she connected the dots: the rolling elbow. That was hers.

It hadn’t even occured to her as she did it. Her entire thought process had just been along the lines of hitting Abattoir with her elbow pad, and adding a spin to it because everything was better when you spun in wrestling.  She’d seen enough of the nak muay’s matches to recognize her finisher, but theft wasn’t intentional.

Happy accident, though, so Liberty would roll with it. She leaned forward, threw her hands up and cackled with a wide grin. ”Pfft, don’t give a fuck!”

With her lack of fucks firmly established, Liberty came bounding toward Abattoir, looking to knock that evil right off her face. She stormed towards her with a long stride, raised her boot  and sent her thumbtack-studded heel flying towards the little hellion’s chest. She wanted to be mad, she could keep on being mad. On the floor. On her back.