SD III: The Dasher Challenge

Carmen was far from being a stranger to pain, but even by the high standards she’d built up in the boxing ring, Dasher was pushing it. It wasn’t just that his attacks were brutal - though, damn, were they - but there was an efficient precision to it. Each blow not only hammered her ribs, but worked away at her spine. The same spine he’d begun to work on when he first surprised her.

He was a bruiser, but to compare him to someone like Killer King wouldn’t do justice. That man didn’t have a strategic bone in his body. Dasher was brutal, but with a purpose, as he effectively wore away at Carmen. She could see it clearly - he was trying to get her to a point where she wouldn’t be able to kick out of a pinfall, even if she was fully conscious for the attempt.

She had to get up. She knew it. As futile as it was, she started to push up off the floor. There was chance, a small chance, that she could roll out of the ring and make an escape, buy some time to recover. A slim hope, but a hope.

It vanished the moment the Dasher came crashing down on her back with both knees. Carmen let out a roar shriek as her back arched, flaring up with apex agony, and then all the life went out of her arms. She collapsed on her chest and that was where she stayed, breathing heavy and laying still.

Culminating his vitriolic salvo by driving the full brunt of his muscled weight into Carmen's repeatedly tortured spine, Dasher would shuffle to the side and shove himself off of one knee to resume his foreboding stride around the flattened Latina. His threatening movements and mannerisms resembling a vulture circling it's languishing prey on the verge of being put out if it's misery. Imagery that was largely apropos considering the circumstances.

Dasher's patience having been duly exhausted after having to endure this impudent woman's refusal to accept her genetic inferiority. Dasher now intending to remind Carmen of that uncomfortable truth after having specifically targeted the Latina's lower lumbar with ruthless efficacy. His brutal actions up to this point having been coldly calculated to bring this match to it's inevitable conclusion, and make this delusional shrew experience what a manly wrestler is capable of, starting with an exaggerated stomp to Carmen's spine to truly ensure she was going absolutely nowhere.

"Inobaaaaa.....Cluuuuuuuutch!!!"Dasher's bellowing proclamation heralding the onset of his infamously dreaded finisher while he flexed his arms ahead of him. A slim minority of hardcore Dasher faithful in the audience sounding off in tandem with the chauvinistic yet still world renowned grappler before he than straddled Carmen's lower back. Affixing her arms over his bent knees came before interlocking his meaty fingers right below her chin. The sheer amount of muscled torque being applied to the maneuver causing Carmen's curved spine to be bent unnaturally along with Dasher's muscled mass now weighing her down.

Dasher gnashing his teeth with a crazed and wild-eyed ferocity in his eyes as he attempted to bend a submission out of Carmen, and make this insolent shrew...humble.

”Carmen! Carmen! Carmen!”

In the front row, Army was watching this all unfold, but he wasn’t doing it in silence. He had to resists his instinct to jump the barricade and start pummeling Dasher in his face - the guy was an ass, but he wasn’t a cheating ass, not doing anything overtly against the rules. He knew Carmen would never forgive him if he stepped in without just cause, remembering the promise they’d made to each other years ago to let them fight their own battles in the AFW.

But there were other ways to help. Like rallying the crowd.

”CARMEN! CARMEN! CARMEN!”

The rally was appreciated, and she couldn’t help but smirk a bit when she heard it. But this wasn’t a movie. There wasn’t any magical way she could siphon the crowd’s enthusiasm and channel it heal her wounds. She was hurting, her body was breaking, and nothing could change it at this point.

A stomp in the back drew a pained cry from Carmen’s aching throat, a sound that quickly drowned out by his boisterous yell. She knew what was coming when he straddled her and started to pull her head back by her chin, but even so, there was no preparing for it. Not with pain like this.

The Inoba Clutch. For a moment, she wondered why he bothered to give it a special name, but the reason immediately became clear. Carmen had been in Camel Clutches before, but nothing quite like this. Dasher put so much torque and power into the hold that it almost felt like a different move altogether. Bones were cracking. Ligaments were reaching their breaking points. Her whole body was crying out for release, with her mind being the sole holdout.

And even it couldn’t hold out much longer...

The methods to Dasher's madness were now unfurling in as ruthless a manner he could conceive. The deliberate targeting of Carmen's lower spine having all been leading up to the application of a finisher he knew was as spirit crushing as it was body breaking. A finisher he had put a lifetime of grappling expertise into to hone to perfection, and one that had brought grown men to tears of pain with.

Dasher yanking back on her bald head with his interlocked fingers around her chin, while thrusting his pelvis forward to bring the immense contradiction of forces directly upon Carmen's contorted spine. He compounded the strain by flexing his biceps and making his application iron-clad, his muscled mass now weighing Carmen down like an anchor strapped to her back. His methodology being to either overwhelm the insolent woman into tapping out immediately, or simply have her be slowly sapped of her remaining energy until she was a sagging shell of who she was. Either outcome being sufficient in his book.

”CARMEN! CARMEN! CARMEN!”

Dasher grit his teeth from the sudden well-spring of support overheard in the audience, but that only served to have the sweaty grappler pour on the pressure with several tweaking jerks back of Carmen's head. He had planned Carmen's downfall to perfection, including having Carmen be facing the hard camera in the audience to put her anguished face on perfect display in the humiliating position. The referee now checking in on Carmen while also badgering her with questions of surrender...

Army had been chanting a moment ago, but now he very well might have been the only one staying quiet, as he watched Carmen’s body get bent into an uppercase U. He was all for supporting his sister, but this was starting to go beyond the pale. Carmen was many things - a good cook, a tightwad, bald - but she was, above all else, a proud and stubborn woman. At this point, she had to give up, needed to tap. Even if she miraculously escaped this hold, she would be in no condition to win. But would she be able to look past her feelings and realize that?

The referee was clearly showing the same concern, as she got down on her knees nearby the wrestlers and examined Carmen form. Saw every pulsing vein, the way her teeth clenched tight, struggled for every breath.

”Carmen!” She called out like Carmen was a mile away instead of a foot. ”Carmen, do you submit!”

It seemed unneeded to be so loud, but Carmen wasn’t sure she’d have heard him otherwise. The whole world seemed so far away, so distant and sereen. The pain muted everything, and it was just her alone with her thoughts, debating what to do next. She knew what she had to do here, but the thought churned her stomach. Giving Dasher what he wanted and letting him prove his, submitting to his pig of a man…

It hurt. In so many ways. But it wasn’t worth her career just to prove a point.

After one more, stubborn moment, Carmen tapped out, furiously patting her hands against the side of Dasher’s swelling thighs.

In actuality, Dasher was quite appreciative of the sudden rallying cries urging the downtrodden fan favorite to overcome the seemingly insurmountable odds. To him, it only helped accentuate just how devastating this humbling loss was going to be for the languishing Latina. Carmen now getting a front row seat towards all the fans she was letting down at this singular, defining moment. Carmen having eluded him for long enough with her incessant and cowardly stick and move maneuvers, but his grappling expertise told him that she couldn't keep up that pace forever...and eventually he would get his meaty, grappling mitts on her...

Dasher could tell from Carmen's slowed and fatigued panting against his fingers that it was only a matter of time now. And the fact that the longer someone was subjected to his Inoba Clutch, the smaller the chance of them breaking free. Dasher's prediction being proven true when he felt the familiar tapping against his muscled thighs, signaling the end of the match along with the clanging of the ring bell, the announcer declaring him the winner, and the ref to begin patting his shoulder to coax him into releasing the hold...none of which worked to stop the heartless submission.

Dasher remaining centered on Carmen's arched lower back even longer, a deliriously wild-eyed look on his face as the sweaty and enraged grappler rode out her tapping submission. He was quite clearly in a deliriously frenzied mindset as he continued the torquing of her spine to the crowd's booing disapproval. Dasher's intentions being to send a message to any other hapless soul foolish to consider taking his next challenge, and to truly engrave the pain and humiliation of this loss into Carmen's psyche.

Stampeding officials were rushing the ring before Dasher finally relented and shoved his adversary forward. He stomped away from Carmen who was now being swarmed with medical officials. Dasher himself standing beside the swirling chaos of personnel tending to Carmen before he yanked the referee away and demanded he raise his arm, who would begrudgingly do so while pointing in Dasher's direction to the crowd's booing disapproval. Aside from one more burly yell and strongman flexing of arms, Dasher didn't spend one more second in the ring before rolling out and making his way backstage. Not wanting anyone to see how much Carmen's strikes continued to leave him with wavering balance issues...