Party Hard vs. Novae - Starstruck

The knee worked. Oh boy, did it work. Far better than Tatiana could’ve hoped.

She’d just been looking to make the bigger, stronger woman back off before she wound up getting pushed into a corner. Instead, the blow sunk in deep, finding a home in that plush chest of hers, and after a little tumble, down she went, flat on the canvas.

”Whew!” Tatiana was celebrating the second her feet touched the canvas again. ”Party up!”

As much as Valerie appreciated her sister’s momentary advantage and enthusiasm, this was one of those instances where she needed to be reminded that a) this was a match and b) her opponent was far from finished. ”Tat, focus!” She centered her with a hard snap of her fingers. ”штрафной удар!”

The translation for that was ‘Penalty Kick’, and that was precisely what Tatiana went for in the next moment, after a quick yelp of surprise from her sister’s outburst. She bounced off the ropes, then came charging forward as she sat up, attempting to kick Belle in the chest with a strike that looked like it was meant to hit footballs, not the human body.

"Look out!" Kaylee shook the top rope as she bounced up and down on the bottom. Her attention was laser focused on Tatiana, watching her body closely. As the girl charged in and reared back, she shouted again. "Kick!" She wasn't sure of Belle could even hear her, that knee looked like it had done a number on her partner. It was times like this she couldn't just idly sit and watch, not if making a callout was going to help.

Belle had pushed herself up into a sitting position groggily, the call from her partner scratching at the back of her mind. The second one however, snapped her back into the moment. One eye narrowed as Tatiana was coming in fast. She threw her arms up in a cross, forming a blockade to her head and chest. If that kick was meant for her legs, she was about to be in trouble. The loud sick slap of Tatiana's kick against Belle's defending arms was enough to draw a gasp from not only the crowd, but Belle as well.  The blow stung the outside reaches of her arm, the site of impact numb almost the moment contact was made.

As soon as they collided, Belle threw her arms outward, uncrossing them with a scream, trying to throw Tatiana off balance before she had a chance to take back her leg. "Ryaaaah!" She had taken the brunt of the strike, dispersed it into her arms, but the force still needed somewhere to go. Even as she hurled out her arms to send the Redhead away, she had been falling back, driven back to the mat. This one, save for her arms  shaking from the aftershock had been a more manageable fall. She rolled onto her side, almost immediately moving to get to her feet hoping to have an opportunity to mount an offense to break up Tatiana's momentum.

Kaylee glared across the ring at Valerie. "So you're the ringleader, huh?" She slipped her phone from the pouch on the ropes, tapping the screen. She was going to do a bit of impromptu digging. She held up her phone, snapping a quick picture of the woman across the ring from her before getting to work. All she had to go off of was their team name and Valeria's and Tatiana's pictures. She hadn't been listening either time the women had been introduced enough to spell their names. She deep dived into searching the web for anything she could dig up about the siblings, looking specifically for something she could use to get into Valeria's head. She needed this woman off her game.

Valerie wasn’t completely oblivious to her counterpart on the other side of the ring, even though she was mostly focused on the match and her sister. Aside from trying to decide which submission she would make Kaylee tap out with - the STF was the frontrunner at the moment, with the Crossface Crippler being a possible runner up - she was annoyed by the blonde’s apparent inattention, as she twiddled away with her phone. She found people like that annoying, people who couldn’t stop messing with their cell phones no matter what, but in the middle of a match? That was beyond unprofessional.

If she’d known what Kaylee was doing, truly doing, she would’ve had a much lower opinion, along with some choice words, delivered in multiple languages.

Kaylee would find the Cosmic Circus in her searches, a big traveling circus in Europe and Asia, where the two sisters and their parents preformed as a star attraction. Their trapeze act was a high point of the show, performing numerous fancy flying feats. Impressive stuff. Tatiana had the works: Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, even a Myspace page, though that hadn’t updated in years. Valerie, not being much into the internet, had comparatively little, though there was an entry on MatchAlarm, a Japan dating service…

Back in reality, Tatiana was jumping for joy after her successful hit, glad that their first match in the AFW was going off to such a good start. ”Goal!”

Excited as she was, she didn’t want to take her eyes off the prize, knowing that this was a long way from being finished. As Belle got up, she moved in and grabbed her opponent by the wrist. ”Sorry about the rough stuff.” She twisted about and tried to send the brunette off running with an Irish Whip, throwing her full weight behind the  move. ”Nothing personal!”

Kaylee's face lit up at Valerie's Match Alarm. She had to make a dummy account actually view her profile, but was more than happy to take the extra time to get started on that. Her focus was split between the match at hand and her phone. She was shirking her role as cheerleader and shot caller to do her underhanded prying, but this would search them well in the end. If she could dig up something good, something really juicy on this woman to throw her off guard when they were both tagged in... oh it was going to be delicious!

If worse came to worse, she could always spread the page to her fans, they would have a ball setting up dates with the Russian. She smirked devilishly, tongue sticking out from the corner of her mouth as her thumbs typed.

Belle had kept her eyes on her opponent almost the entire time, it was strange then that she made no move to try and avoid Tatiana as the girl took hold of her arm. As the smaller woman pulled, she followed, but when Tatiana tried to release her to send her across the ring, Belle was having none of that. Her wrist twisted in her grasp, trying to clamp her fingers down on the other woman's wrist.

At the end of the whip, she planted her feet, throwing her own weight into the already built momentum to reverse the whip. The two would twirl like dancers in a very awkward ballet within the ring. Though when Tataina reached the end, there was no release, just a sudden powerful pull as Belle tried to yank her back towards her. Her arm would coming hurdling in a powerful wide horizontal swing, like the blade of a battle axe looking to behead Tatiana with a massive lariat.

...in all seriousness, what was that silly woman doing in the corner? Valerie couldn’t help but be suspicious. What could be so engrossing on that ridiculous device that Kaylee couldn’t pay attention to what Belle - her partner and ostensibly her friend - was doing? It was just one more reason for her to want to give this woman a good bending.

She was only distracted for a moment, but that turned out to be a moment too long. When she turned back, she saw Tatiana lifting up her foe, moving her into position for a Irish Whip. ”What?” Her eyes widened enough for a hard pat on the back to knock  them out. ”Tatiana, don’t! Don’t-”

Too late.

The problem with this was that, while there was nothing wrong with Irish Whipping at face value, Belle was the stronger one between them by far, and she hadn’t been nearly worked over enough for that strength to no longer be a problem. Sure enough, Belle managed to reverse it with ease, and this was how Tatiana ended up: on the floor, staring up at the ceiling, feeling as if a truck named Belle had just hit her at 60 MPH, groaning as the pain washed over her.

Valerie was groaning for a different reason.

As Belle pulled Tatiana in towards her, her eyes narrowed. It was rare she got an opportunity like this so early in a match, where she could put everything she had behind a blow and do it relatively safely. She was certain pulling the other girl back would secure a hit. There was nothing standing between them now. No fancy acrobatics, not games of whack-a-mole... She stomped inward, cleaving her arms through the air to catch the redhead with her lariat, powering on her body to follow the motion through with as much as she could muster. She let out a scream as she threw out the attack fueling her fire. As the girl fell beneath her, she had to take another step to keep herself from falling forward.

She didn't need to look to Kaylee for instruction, she knew what she had to do. She shifted her weight up onto her back leg, letting the other fall away from her. She descended directly down at Tatiana to slam the girl beneath in the abdomen with a heavily weighted elbow drop. If she caught the dazed girl, she would immediately roll over top of her chest, raking a forearm over her face to press her cheek to the canvas as she went for an early pin. "Sorry." She murmured softly.

Kaylee glanced up from her phone, blinking at the commotion. "Ah hahaha! Yeah! You get her Belle!" She made sure to snap a picture, a nice keepsake for later. She grinned across the way at Valerie, resting lazily against the ropes with a grin. She whistled for the girl to look her way, waiting to gesture a cut throat gesture her way. "Hope you like two for the price of one! Fire sale baby~!"

Valerie had come to love Tatiana as if they were flesh and blood, perhaps even better. She was a bright spot in what could’ve been an otherwise dismal and depressing life, working so hard for people who appreciated you so little. An optimism she envied, an energy she craved. Her missing pieces, in one convenient package.

A good sister. A good person. But God, the woman could not think three seconds ahead to save her life.

She sighed as she went down, then sighed again as Belle took advantage of the opportunity to score and elbow drop. Simple, yet effective, it came crashing down on her sister’s chest and left her flopping on the mat. With impressive forethought, Belle moved to pin Tatiana soon after, bringing the referee in for a count.

”1…!”

”It’s okay.” Tatiana murmured back, coming out with a slight garble through the groans.

”2…!”

She kicked out hard the instant the referee hit the mat again, escaping the pin despite the pain and her position, she couldn’t keep a smirk off her face as she looked up at Belle. ”I’ll get you back for it.”

Valerie and Kaylee, meanwhile, were engaged in a Battle of the Blondes. The Russian gazed across the ring at her American counterpart, eyelids narrowing to slits at her mockery. She didn’t yell back, however. Instead, she just pointed at Kaylee, then motioned with her hands, as if she were snapping an invisible twig. A perfect summary of the way she saw her foe.[/b]

Belle bucked as Tatiana kicked out to the pinfall. She gave the woman a smirk at her words, taking them as a challenge. "That so?" She mused as she started to stand, trying to drag Tatiana to her feet along with her. She didn't bring her to a full stand, no, instead she tried to get her just about to her knees before pulling her forward, trying to lock her head under one arm, giving it a torque. She's reach down, trying to clench grab hold of the bottom of her ring gear, hooking her fingers up along the outside of her leg to get a good hold on her. Belle was strong enough to dead lift someone from a pretty low position, as such she didn't need to risk getting them completely standing before attempting a big move.

If she got her this far, she'd throw herself upright, trying to hoist Tatiana straight up into the air, to point her directly up to the rafters above in a delayed showboat of her physical strength. She'd try to hold there there for awhile, perhaps a bit too long in hesitation to obliterate this woman's world with the move she was about to do. If Tatiana couldn't break free, she'd roll her shoulders before popping the girl up a little higher before falling back, bringing Tatiana head vertically down at the mat in a sheerdrop brain buster.

"You almost got her! Get her again!" Kaylee hooted and hollered to Belle before catching Valerie's gesture. She climbing up on the second turnbuckle, still on the outside, pointing to Valerie.
"Nyeh!" Kaylee blew a raspberry across the ring at, tugging a finger under her eye to expose a bit of of red below it. A few of the fans in the audience reacted with wild applause and laughter seeing the American make use of the gesture. Kaylee was eating it all up.

Something about Belle’s smile both excited and terrified Tatiana, straight to her core.  This was part of the reason that the brunette was her favorite - she had this cool, collected way about things, like she was always the smartest person in whatever room she was in. Episode after episode, she would give it her all, and it wouldn’t matter what they were doing. Bricklaying, swinging on poles, tossing someone around a wrestling ring with ridiculous strength…

Ah. About that.

Even Valerie was taken aback by Belle’s feat of strength, as she lifted her sister up in a maneuver that most men wouldn’t have been capable of.  She wasn’t just doing it, either, but doing it in style, putting on a show that could have been a decent act in their circus. Valerie clenched her teeth as she looked on, knowing there were a number of ways this move could’ve ended, and they would all be incredibly painful.

She chose a brainbuster, as it turned out, and a hellish one, too, spiking her poor sister’s head into the mat. ”Tat!” She cried out, the move’s impact following her voice around the room. ”Tat, are you okay?”

The only response was a few half muttered words in both English and Russian, that combined to create absolute gibberish. Tatiana laid there, blinking in rapid bursts, as her world came together again.

The match had changed dynamics in an instant, and now Valerie was leaning over the top rope, her hand outstretched, making a point to ignore Kaylee’s taunts. ”Tatiana, hang in there! Focus on getting back to the corner, you can do it!”

Kaylee cupped a hand beside her mouth, calling out to Belle. "Don't even bother pinning! Drop the beat! Do it!" She had given Belle the kill order. The match had only been going on for a few minutes and she was already looking for Belle to put Tatiana away with her finisher. It was a perfect opportunity, the redhead just ate two big moves that would clean anyone out. It was only a matter of time before they could make this a two on one affair and show that other Party Poser who the REAL dream team here was.

Belle had been mid way through covering Tatiana again when Kaylee gave the order. Her jaw clenched as she looked between her partner and the redhead. With a resigned sigh she pushed herself up, again trying to drag the redhead with her. This felt wrong. She hated this. She should have let Kaylee go in first, that was she wouldn't have to sit here and break this poor girl over and over against the mat. But that was part of the job. It had to come to this one way or another.

She scooped up one of Tatiana's arms, tucking it behind her own neck as she hooked the redhead's neck. With a grunt, she attempted to lift the girl vertical once again, this time twisting her so she was hugging their chests together as she suspended her up. Ordinarily... she would sit out from here, and spike the girls head and neck on the mat. It was a brutal move...

Rather than complete her finisher, she converted it into an Oklahoma stampede, hiking the girl up onto her shoulder. She charged the the corner nearest Valerie, attempting to smash Tatiana into the middle and top turnbuckles before turning to send her crashing down to the canvas in a giant powerslam. She hoped her sister had the wherewithal with make a blind tag in that moment. It was the only thing she could think of that would save her from having to murder this poor girl in the ring. She could make up some bullshit excuse for it later and spoon feed it to Kaylee. The only way it would really wind up mattering was if it cost them the match in the long run... which she sincerely hoped it wouldn't.

Kaylee slapped her hands to her forehead, pulling back her hair in frustration. "What are you doing!"