In the Crosshairs - Samiya Kusanagi vs Valley Doll (Non-Title)

Come on, Samiya was thinking, come on. She’d started the Irish Whip, was extending her arm and she was just waiting to see if Valley would take the bait…

And she did. Hook, line and sinker.

Which was why anyone able to see Samiya’s face as the shorter of the two wrestlers was sent for a run would see her grinning as she raced across the ring. Unusual. She hit the ropes, bounced back again.

Just to keep playing the game, the tattooed fighter did her best to take the champion’s head off with a clothesline but to nobody’s surprise – least of all Samiya’s – Valley had dropped to the floor.

Not being new to this dance, Samiya promptly hopped over Valley’s prone form and kept going, managing to twist in time to bounce off the other ropes and come right back at the blonde. Except she didn’t. Instead, Samiya hit the ropes and grabbed on firmly. It wasn’t the most fun for her arm but it killed her momentum stone dead.

That turned out to be the right choice though, as Valley went for a dropkick that would have blown her right off her feet. Funnily enough, Samiya had seen that particular surprise coming before she’d gone into the Irish Whip. Equally funnily, she’d almost been counting on Valley being that predictable when she embarked on this tactic.

Grinning like the cat that had just spotted a rather lame mouse, the Schoolgirl Assassin waited to see if Valley was indeed going to faceplant. Then she’d advance.

On paper, there was nothing wrong with Valley’s execution. It was a sequence of moves that she’d done all the time back with the Slamazons, the sort of thing that caught rookies off guard all the time. The misdirection, the timing, the dropkick itself, all of it worked in perfect order. It had to. She’d done it hundreds of times.

But, when her feet hit nothing but dead air, it occurred to her that might’ve been the problem itself: she’d done it too much. If there was ever any doubt she was being scouted, it was gone now. Samiya was reading her like a storybook.

The Slamazon grunted with frustration as she fell, then grunted with pain on the impact. She was able to twist about and come down on her hands, keeping herself from a hard smack in the face, but that was the only saving grace.

The crowd went into a murmuring frenzy as she started to stand back up, unsure whispers that threatened to turn into full boos, and she couldn’t blame them. Dark match or not, a champion should’ve done better work than this, especially against someone who hadn't even been in the league for a year.

Ignore it, push it away, focus.

Gritting her teeth, Valley got to her feet and spun around, knowing Samiya wouldn’t let the opening go. If she had to take her lumps, at least they wouldn’t be to her back.

See, there was the thing. A veteran worked on a sequence of moves. Honed it to perfection. Worked out how they could use it in any given match. And forgot that it was all there, on film for anyone with the time and interest in seeing how they fought.

For someone with Valley’s respectable career at Friction and in the Slamazons, well, there was plenty of footage of her pulling just this stunt on more than one rookie. Samiya truly did not understand why anyone wouldn’t do their research before heading into a match.

It’d saved her in moments like this more than she cared to remember.

”Sounds like your fans want their money back,” She taunted, in the silence that briefly followed the crash of Valley… Well, crashing and burning so spectacularly.

Not today, champ, she might as well have said. Not today.

But that certainly wasn’t going to keep the veteran blonde down for long and the Schoolgirl Assassin hadn’t earnt her nickname by sitting around, watching opportunities slip through her fingers.

As Valley started to get up and turn around, Samiya was already in motion. The little powerhouse pushed back against the ropes to bounce her forward, accumulating momentum as she raced forward. Timing an attack like this was harder but she was going to do her best to use Valley’s own knee to get the height she needed, height to slam the blonde in the face with a Shining Wizard.

Again, not a move Samiya used all that often but with her tightly-packed physique and strength she could definitely make it work for her.

And, with any luck and if there was any justice in the universe, it’d put Valley down on her back for long enough to get some more work done on those legs. Those legs were dangerous weapons and Samiya knew that, if she was going to win this battle, she had to neutralise them.

The pain wasn’t what bugged Valley the most, here. She could handle that well enough, and indeed, she’d been put through far worse, just in her time with the AFW. It wasn’t her inability to get a solid run going on Samiya, either. That was ticking her off, yes, but it was hardly the time to start waving a white flag. She could recover. Maybe she didn’t have an exact plan yet, but the match wasn’t even five minutes old.

What was starting to wear on her, though, were Samiya’s words. Not even what she said, but the way she said them. That sly, knowing tone, like this match was already decided and they were just working towards an inevitable end.

It was that turn which put a sneer on her face as she turned around, though she had no time to show it to her opponent. Samiya was already moving in, going for her next strike, moving as if she expected Valley to be in the current position. After she planted a foot down on the Slamazon’s knee, the realization hit home just as hard as the knee to her skull.

She’d been scouted. Extremely well scouted.

Valley to her back as the blow rocked her skull, but even so, she had enough mind to realize she couldn’t stay there. Samiya had a plan here, and the more she played into it, the worse off she needed to be. As much as Valley loathed a retreat, that was her best option. Maybe her only one.

She let the momentum carry her down, then went into a sloppy roll for the ropes, trying to get under them and out of the ring, hopefully before Samiya could stop her. It wouldn’t make her look good, but the time-out was essential. Just a few seconds.

There was something particularly rewarding about catching Valley with a move she had to have pulled on dozens of opponents. Something even more rewarding about thinking that maybe she was starting to get the veteran’s attention.

Well, a Shining Wizard to the skull tended to make people sit up and take notice regardless. Samiya’s was in no way the best but, like any move she used, it was irreproachably professional – it might not be the best, the sharpest in execution, but there was nothing wrong with it either.

It certainly did its job in putting Valley down and the Schoolgirl Assassin scrambled to follow up.

Valley Doll by contrast clearly wanted out.

”Where do you think you’re going?” Samiya’s turn to sneer, chasing after Valley in an attempt to keep the veteran in the ring – the last thing she wanted was to give the blonde a chance to regroup and change her strategy.

No, she knew she was still the underdog here and she needed to keep Valley in the ring where she could keep the champion dancing to her tune.

Under normal circumstances, Samiya was sure she’d never win a footrace with the other wrestler. Here, however, neither of them was on their feet and all she needed to do was get a good grip on her opponent. If she’d got the distances right, she’d be able to catch the blonde before she got under the ropes and pull her back to centre ring.

Once there, she’d got some submission holds with Valley Doll’s name on them.

In her earlier days, Valley wouldn’t have dreamed of trying to escape the ring like this. When she first entered the ring, she was so intent on being like her mother, becoming this dominating, powerful force between the ropes...despite the fact that she had none of Valley Doll Sr.’s upper body strength, skill, or experience. She wanted to be the best, and the best didn’t run.

Time and many hard, harsh lessons had taught her different, though. A few seconds to think could turn an entire match around.

Valley knew that, and whoever taught Samiya seemed to have instill a similar lesson. The purple-haired punk was determined to keep her inside. Valley was determined to get out.

Samiya had her way at first. She managed to grabbed Valley just as she turn on her back, trying to pull her back into the ring. Valley didn’t know what she had in mind, and she didn’t much care. It was ending.

Valley resisted Samiya’s pull at first, before sitting grabbing the younger head, and throwing a hard elbow towards her face. Not exactly her usual style. Just a quick thing to hopefully make her back off.

It felt almost as if the outcome of this match depended on her keeping Valley Doll in the ring. A bit overdramatic, perhaps, but that was how she felt as she raced to do just that.

Somehow she made it over to grab the Slamazon before she slid under the ropes, putting all her strength into yanking the blonde back into the ring and away from safety.

Not that Valley went willingly. She tried to resist, first just trying not to be pulled and then going for an elbow to the face.

Striking wasn’t Samiya’s thing really.

So she took the elbow to the face because she wasn’t able to block it, rocking her head back. It hurt but she didn’t let it throw her off Valley. Instead, she tried to use it.

Grabbing at the offending arm, the Schoolgirl Assassin did her best to pull Valley forward, looking to trap the blonde’s head under her own arm in a tight headlock. At the same time, she threw her weight to the side, looking to put her short but thick legs to work in squeezing the champion’s ribs.

She doubted she’d be able to eke a submission out here. Her legs were short, meaning her leverage on the bodyscissors would be limited. But she could put a lot of power into both holds and she could still make Valley’s life as miserable as possible. She’d rather have been going for Valley’s legs more but, as the saying went, when life handed you lemons…

And she wanted to keep the fight down on the mat, where she felt she had an advantage.

It felt so good to hit Samiya in the face. So good.

Valley rarely used her arms in such a manner, so it was a weird feeling, having her elbow crack against  the younger wrestler’s face like that. Given the chance, there were more powerful ways she would’ve struck, sure. But this worked. It hit and for a brief, brilliant moment, Valley got more satisfaction then she’d gotten for this entire match.

It didn’t last.

The move cost her, dearly. One moment, she was making a shadow of headway, the next she was getting yanked forward, put into the headlock, held tight on the floor. That would’ve been bad enough by itself, but the real problem came immediately after, when a pair thick legs wrapped around her thin waist, and clamped down like giant vice grips.

Valley hissed as the felt the pain in her ribs, suffering through the crushing, intense force. Her body still had some lingering pains from the last bodyscissor she’d had to endure, and Samiya was reawakening those olds hurts and making new ones. She needed space. She need to get away, just long enough to catch a breath.

Her instincts told her to go for a pin, but she canceled that thought immediately - Samiya was too prepared, too skilled for that to work. Instead, Valley rocked forward, looking like she might try it...only to change directions and start dragging Samiya along the mat, making a rapid push to get one of her long legs on the rope.

It was fair to say that holding a bodyscissors reduced a wrestler’s ability to control movement on the mat. It did mean that the victim of the hold had to move both their own and the scissorer’s weight but it limited Samiya’s (in this case) ability to actively control how Valley was trying to roll.

Limited but didn’t negate it and, feeling Valley about to roll them up into a pin attempt to force the break, Samiya proved that. She smirked, full lips almost pressed against the back of Valley’s skull, shook her head and rolled them decisively back the other way, countering the pin attempt before it even got off the ground.

Only to find that Valley had – for the first time in the match – outsmarted the Schoolgirl Assassin. With both of them contributing to the roll, the pair went considerably further in the other direction than Samiya had planned, ending with Valley’s foot firmly on the ropes and the ref demanding that she break the hold.

Well. Damn it.

Pressing her lips together to hold back a noise of frustration, Samiya focused on eking the most out of her twin holds with every drop of strength in her short, thick frame. With her legs, she pummelled Valley’s waist as much as she could. Meanwhile, she put her relatively big and definitely solid biceps to work, doing her best to crack the blonde’s head open like a melon with the headlock even as she torqued the neck as well.

She made the most of them, but she only had four seconds before she had to release and back off, giving the ref a decidedly unfriendly look as the official enforced the break with – in her view – considerably more enthusiasm than if the positions had been reversed.

This could be a problem.

Finally, a lucky break.

Valley had no way of knowing which way Samiya would toss when she got her shoulders up, but it just so happened to be in the direction she wanted to go - towards the nearest set of ropes, to be specific. Not that she didn’t have to work for it. Nothing was easy with this woman, she was finding out.

When she snagged the rope, she suspected that Samiya wouldn’t let it go with ease, and while she doubted her foe would be foolish enough to throw away the match on it, a small part of her hoped her luck would go a bit further. That wasn’t the case. Samiya put her through four, maybe four and a half, seconds of hell, pumping and squeezing and wrenching with all the force she could muster, getting the most bang for her buck.

But she did let go. Right before the referee could call it, but she did.

Valley gasped and flopped to her back, taking in lungfuls of air as her body’s structure roughly slipped back into place. She couldn’t have been fighting Samiya for longer than five minutes, but it felt like three or four times that length. Right from the start, one constant rollercoaster of pain. It was crystal clear that this 'newcomer' had read her book cover to cover, that she’d been scouted hard. It wasn’t like there was any shortage of  media out there with her name on, particularly if you did some Youtubing for Slamazon matches. She’d done her homework.

But, then again, Alaina likely had done similar. If just studying Valley was enough to guarantee a win, she would never have gotten the Entropy Title in the first place.

Some members of the audience started up with a chant for her name, egging her to rise, and she responded to it, sitting up a moment later. She licked her lips, grabbed the middle rope, and pulled herself up again, glaring Samiya’s way with a laser focus. ”Okay,” She muttered as she rubbed her neck and stepped forward. ”Let’s try that again.”

Valley began to circle around the ring, moving with slower, more careful steps as she lowered  her stance. She didn’t pounce just yet, but she looked like a coiled spring, ready to shoot out at any moment. For now, though, she waited, wanting to see how Samiya would proceed.