Gallium Heart vs. River Styx: Heartbreaker

The referee had a point. And giant balls. But mostly a point.

This was getting a bit much. Granted, Gallium had signed on for this, but the match was clearly over. She’d won, and the point was sent: fuck with WAR at your own peril. Styx shrugged and started to make her way to the back, as the medical team rushed past her and came to tend to the fallen heroine.

Styx could’ve just left. Walked up the ramp. Let it be.

She didn’t.

She set one foot on the ramp and looked over her shoulder, licking the corner of her lips as an idea began to form in her head. She acted on it immediately and turned back, running over to the medical team just as they started to crowd around Gallium.

”Out of the way.” She shoved the smaller women aside, pushing and clearing space, getting them off and ignoring the entire arena’s protests. ”Watch this, fuckers!”

Styx grabbed Gallium’s head, forced it between her legs, turned to the the steel steps, and-

-And Alicia Wells went to cut Styx’s lower body out from under her with a sweep of her legs.

Dressed in a black t-shirt proclaiming ‘Alea Iacta Est’ (despite her personal disdain for the man who supposedly said it) and leggings, the redheaded amazon was almost certainly the last person the crowd had expected to intervene on Gallium’s behalf. But there she was, having apparently followed the referees and EMTs down the ramp.

She’d been one of a bunch of wrestlers watching the ‘match’ backstage, more by luck than anything else. She’d not been booked for a match but, looking to learn more about how everything worked, Alicia had taken to being backstage whenever there was a show on. This’d be her last before flying out to Alaska for her PPV match, and she’d chiefly been curious about the Abattoir vs Liberty rematch.

Instead, she’d found herself watching Gallium Heart get torn apart in another mismatch that she’d apparently asked for – and got. This time, without the benefit of Silver Ace in her corner, because this was apparently some insane idea of getting revenge for her mentor and… She’d honestly lost track because that was when this River Styx put Gallium through a table with a power bomb.

It was anyone’s guess when she’d decided that someone needed to do something or exactly why the woman who’d choked Gallium out last time they’d seen each other felt the need to rescue her, but she had.

If she got Styx down, Alicia was going for the head. She’d watched the match. She could see how big this woman was, how thick with muscle, and it gave her an idea of how much punishment she might be able to take. Plus she’d seen her smash her way through a table. But repeated stomps to the skull had a way of evening out the odds, particularly when it was a steel floor the skull was being stomped into.

Styx honestly wasn’t sure what happened. It was all sort of a blur. But she did have some basic facts to work with.

She knew that it involved someone kicking the legs out from under her. Probably not a referee or anyone from the medical staff. She knew them pretty well, and none of them were strong enough or big enough or brave enough to consider hitting her.

It also involved a lot of stomping, which reinforced the idea that it wasn’t some stupid medic or ref attacking her. These stomps felt more professional. More practice. And they sure as shit hurt, each one driving Styx’s head into the floor. She tried to push her way back up, but each time she got hammered back down again, jackhammered by the piston blows.

”Fuck! Shit! Fuck!”

Pissed and panicked and confused all at once, Styx rolled away from her attacker, barreling through the med staff and trying to make enough space for her to get back to her feet, eager to see who her new friend was.

Styx had been busy focusing on Gallium, which let the incoming redhead score not only the first hit but the second and third and – you got the idea. This wasn’t the time for good manners, this was the time for hitting the big thug hard and fast and keeping her down where Alicia had the advantage. On the floor, dazed and confused and unable to fight back.

With the immediate threat distracted, the med-techs were cautiously moving in again but the Amazonian redhead didn’t let that distract her. Instead, she kept her eyes on Styx.

If this had been a match, Alicia probably would have given Styx space to get back up. As this wasn’t a match and fair fights in real life were for idiots, that didn’t cross her mind. Instead she kept right on after the bald woman, waiting just long enough for Styx to present the right opportunity before she took a running step forward, her foot coming up in a football style kick aimed right at the woman’s liver. Alicia put a slight upward twist on it, looking to hook it up to blast under Styx’s floating ribs on the right side.

Liver shots were pure evil. They hurt way out of proportion for the actual effect, they wrecked the other person’s breathing and the one time Alicia had been on the receiving end she’d been left barely standing. She didn’t care how big Styx was, if she landed that one she’d have the upper hand.

And, regardless, she’d followed up with a second kick aimed at her opponent’s skull. Whatever it took to put Styx down for the count, at least long enough to convince her to back off for the night.

Someone was going to die.

Styx had no earthly clue who this was - her first thought had been Ace, but she could see enough to tell it wasn’t her. Too big. Too tall. Too black. Whoever the fuck it was, though, Styx swore that she was going to give them back all the pain she was taking and so much more on top of it. She would unleash hell.

Just as soon as she got up off of the fucking floor!

Goddamn it, fuck!” She rolled away and made another attempt to stand, only to see her attacker advancing before she could even get up to both knees. There was a flash, and Styx wound up taking another motherfucking kick, right in the side. Not a pleasant thing under normal circumstances, but her assailant knew exactly where to place it for maximum effect.

To Styx’s credit, she managed to stand up after the painful strike, kept rising. She couldn’t do much more than that, though, and she stumbled forward, clutching her gut and gasping for breath in full retreat. Looking for a quick way out, she grabbed one of the announcers near the desk she’d wrecked earlier, yanked her away by the shirt, swung around and tossed her towards whoever was attacking her, trying to use her as a distraction while Styx made more space and caught her breath. ”Jesus fuck...fuck!”

Gallium had no idea what was going on at the moment. Probably because she was unconscious and being carted off by medical professionals.

Yay medical professionals!

If she HAD known at the time that Alicia was helping her and kicking Styx's butt though, she would have totally cheered her on.

There was a thin-lipped, severe set to Alicia’s features as she pursued Styx. It wasn’t the expression she wore in the ring; rather it was the look of a woman solely and wholly bent on battering the other fighter until they literally couldn’t stand up if that was what it took.

Hence going right for the liver – if they’d been in the ring, she’d have happily just kept on working the belly and ribs in general, because it’d get her the same general result and wasn’t so likely to just end the match. Here, well, she wasn’t here to have fun. She was out there because this River Styx thought it was a great idea to break another wrestler and Alicia – perhaps shockingly enough – wouldn’t stand for that.

So she drove her booted foot into the bald woman’s side and smiled a mirthless smile at the noises she was getting in response. But it also told her that she really couldn’t underestimate Styx. Most people didn’t keep on moving when you hit them like that, particularly not if they were already woozy from having their head slammed repeatedly into steel flooring.

It marked Styx as dangerously tough if nothing else. Alicia’s follow-up kick missed its mark as the other woman kept moving. Not walking, a sort of half-crouch, half-limp movement, but it was doing its job. Styx was able to get out of the way, retreating towards the wreckage of the announcement table.

Alicia wasn’t about to let her get there. Except she found herself with a face-full of gibbering woman and, by the time she’d shoved her out of the way, the redhead had an increasing number of other people between them. She could probably have got through but she didn’t need to, really.

So, instead, she just stood where she was, letting the chaos break around her as she stared at River Styx. Waiting.

Styx scrambled over to the barricade as security rushed to clear space, getting the crowd as far away from her as they could manage. She didn’t pay them much mind, since she wasn’t about to jump over the rail and run, anyway. Not until she figured out who the newest addition to her shit list was.

She spun around, squinted through one eye, and found herself staring at…

”Oh.” Styx’s eyes widened, then quickly narrowed as she realized just who this was. ”You.”

Her shit list wasn’t going to get any bigger today - after all, Alicia Wells was already on it. She’d been on it the moment Styx saw that the #1 Contender’s match for the hardcore title, her hardcore title. The mere fact that Alicia was even allowed to get that close to her rightful property was more than enough reason to fuck her up, but this little incident had certainly pushed her up on the list of priorities, right below Silver Ace and Angel. Styx didn’t know what possessed the kickboxer to mess in her business, but she’d gladly teach her the error of her way.

She took a step forward, looking to get it on, and the crowd started to rise up with the possibility of seeing a real fight...until Styx took a step back and shook her head, thinking over the situation. She could take Alicia, she was pretty sure on that, but it wouldn’t be easy. She was hurting from the sneak attack, as the blood running down her forehead showed. And with the med staff and security around, things were bound to get a little too dicey.

Be safe. Be smart. Fight on her own terms.

Styx huffed, pointed at Alicia, then ran her thumb along the base of her throat, giving her a good idea of what her future would entail. With the message sent, she jumped over the barricade and started lumbering through the audience, doing her best to shrug off the pain in her stomach as the crowd moved out of her way.

While Alicia couldn’t actually hear what Styx was saying over the roar of the crowd and the shouting of the officials closer to her, ‘oh you’ was more or less universal. She had no idea whether Styx knew who she was but, either way, this was pretty clearly not over.

That was fine by her, as it happened, whether that meant right here and now or down the road once Styx had licked her wounds and came back for more.

As Styx stepped towards her, Alicia matched it, perfectly happy to finish what she’d started - and then the bald woman apparently decided this wasn’t the best time. With a parting slash of her thumb across her throat that needed no interpretation at all, she pulled a vanishing act into the crowd, leaving a decidedly unintimidated Alicia in position of the field. She really had no plans to chase Styx into the crowd. As far as she was concerned, her job was done here.

Except, as she stood beside the ring, the redhead realised something. The crowd was cheering. Not all of them to be sure, but most of them were cheering and they were cheering her. For the first time since she’d stepped in the ring here, Alicia was the favourite.

The big redhead shrugged, but chose to raise her fist – the cheers intensified – before she backed away and turned to head up the ramp. She hadn’t done it for them. She’d done it because, idiot who shouldn’t be in a ring or not, Gallium didn’t deserve to be put in a wheelchair either.

And if that meant she’d be going up against River Styx again, well, Alicia wasn’t afraid of her. Maybe that was speaking out of ignorance, and she certainly wasn’t saying she’d win a fight, but she wasn’t afraid of River Styx.