Party Hard vs. Novae - Starstruck

Then she heard the whistle.

For a second she looked around, confused, trying her best to place where the piercing noise had come from. It didn’t take long, thankfully, for her to see the source - Belle, who’d just dropped down and was coming around to her partner’s aide. Was it a warning? If Tatiana went for a dive, she was sure to get hit by Belle even if she did hit it. And Valerie wouldn’t be able to help.

Plus, honestly, Tatiana didn’t want to fight Belle anymore. Not if she could get away with it.

With a groan, she made a split-second decision. She ran forward at top speed, the audience cheering louder and louder, anticipating the moment of flight, cameras at the ready, all eyes on her…

...only for her to drop down, slide under the ropes, and came to an abrupt stop, standing right in front of Kaylee. With a loud cry, she swung her arm out like a whip and sliced into Kaylee’s chest, hitting her with a fierce chop.

Belle grit her teeth as Tatiana broke into a run. "God damn it Tat..." She had subconsciously already picked up her sister's shorthand for her. She picked up her pace, whirling around the ring post on her way to Kaylee. Tatiana had stopped her run at the last minute to instead slide from the ring instead. She was already half way there. She HAD to do something now. With narrowed eyes she slowed her pace, stalking towards the two on the outside. She made a big show of it, rolling her shoulders and cracking her neck. A few of Novae's fans shouted warning to Tatiana, unaware she knew of the looming threat of Belle. Arnold would be pleased with Belle, the newest model of terminator as she trudged towards the pair.

Kaylee pulled herself up, flopping from front to back to lean against the barricade. Tatiana was charging her from inside the ring. She scrambled to get up, boot heels kicking wildly against the floor in a sudden panic. No matter how small the woman was, she would skewer her against the barrier, she had to get up! her elbows had gotten so far as to pull her upright against the barricade when Tatiana slipped from the ring. She stared at the girl, a bit flabbergasted. She cracked a small thankful smile. She really had been joking about liking Belle more and was  being an incredibly good spot about it.

Before she could speak and tell Tatiana she had good taste in who to idolize the redhead screamed at her leaving her baffled again. The chop cleared the air, more then any words. The impact rang out as fans cried out.

"OOOOOOOOO!"

Kaylee's legs bucked as she clutched her chest in stunned silence. Her scream of pain so high pitched it made no sound, except for one lone dog roaming the parking lot outside the arena who lifted his head. Her eye twitched as she dropped back against the barrier, hands shaking as she touched where she had been hit gingerly to a chorus of pain within their body. How on earth had she hit her this hard?! She took back all the nice thoughts she may have had about this one. She was just as bad as her rotten sister!

Belle picked up her speed after Tatiana had laid into Kaylee, running with heavy steps to sound off her coming. She even growled, breaking into a yell as she telegraphed another massive lariat, arm held back. As she neared she threw her weight and her arms forward into it, the blow was placed higher than normal, with enough warning she hoped the woman would be able to slip under it. She sure as hell knew she could, and by most accounts Belle wasn't terribly fast. She told herself this one was the freebie. If Tatiana decided to stay outside the ring still, she was going to actually engage her. She was being more than fair here.

From the apron, Valerie - who had just now managed to pull herself up to a leaning position on the ropes - was ecstatic. Tatiana was about to fly, and that was always a sight to see. They were both skilled when it came to defying gravity, but her sister had a way of making it into a form of art, soaring through the air with a grace that she couldn’t match, even at her best. What was better, she was about to turn herself into a human missile, with Kaylee as the target. The contemptible toad was about to be plastered against the ring, the tide was about to turn, Novae was about to claim this match.

So she was, perhaps, just a wee bit miffed when Tatiana didn’t go for the leap, for some unexplained reason that only God knew.

”What?!” She cried out, shaking the ropes. ”Срань господня! ты сумасшедший?!

Just a wee bit. Without going into much detail, the translators would need to throw in a few bleeps.

Tatiana couldn’t hear Valerie at the moment, and wasn't’ paying much attention, anyway. Her focus was more on Belle, who was still coming her way. She was worried at first, knowing the damage Belle could do, but she lightened up when she realized what was happening. Belle’s ‘attack’ couldn’t have been more obvious if she sent her a notice about it a week in advance. The only way to make a move so blatant was to do it on purpose, which left one conclusion: she was doing it on purpose.

She ducked under a lariat that she almost didn’t need to duck under, and it could’ve been as simple as that. Tatiana added a small touch, though, and ran her hand along Belle’s stomach as they passed, a brief and intimate caress, one that would slip by even the closest observer. It came with a whispered word, too. ”Thanks.”

From there, Tatiana took the hit and rolled back into the ring, rolling all the way to the center. She popped up in the center and beckoned Kaylee on, waving her up with one hand while she tapped her feet. Waiting, with a smile. She wasn't the only one who could play mind games.

Belle had followed through on the lariat as it missed by design, that had been the intention to buy Tatiana time to escape. The last few stumbled steps and the faint color in her face hadn't been part of it. She was slow to turn, half expected to take a blow to the back only to be relieved Tatiana had retreated back to the ring. belle hurried to Kaylee, helping to prop her blond partner back up as the girl cried out in pain and anger.

"She punched my boobs!" She looked positively incredulous.

"It's... called a chop, but yeah, she did that thing you said. Time's wasting, lets get you back in." Belle casually dusted off Kaylee's ring gear from whens he took her ride to the outside of the ring. as she led her back to the ring by the arm. With a raised arm she assisted Kaylee to climb back up on the ring apron, watching Tatiana carefully while she hurried back to her corner, hoisting herself up onto the apron with a grunt.

Kaylee stood glaring at Tatiana from the apron, watching the girl very carefully, waiting to see what she did. Rather then slip through the ropes, she bounded up over the top one, hopping on her landing to work her legs back out. This was fine. She was fine. It only hurt every time she moved... She hadn't hated the redhead, only because she hadn't given her any thought until now. All her malice had been pointed towards Valerie. She started to circle, footwork becoming more seeping and agile. She wan't about to tag Belle back in yet, she wanted a piece of this one now. It kept coming back to what she had said though. Liking Belle more. Why was that even something she would say. Had she said the opposite to Belle? Was it meant to get them at odds with one another. She wasn't going to fall for it.

She held her hands up, wiggling her fingers. "Alright. You have my attention." It seemed as though getting thrown around the ring had caused her to buckle down a bit and start taking this as serious as she could have from the start. It also by in large was the nicest thing she had said to either of their duo since even before the match had started.

Hm. Belle and Kaylee were taking a moment on the outside, Tatiana observed. Time that her foe could recover, but there wasn’t much to be done about that at the moment.

So, what could she do, aside from just standing there and waiting for Kaylee to enter? Well, how about some healthy marketing?

”Hey, Stargazers!” Oh, she liked the way the sounded out loud, her thin Russian contralto stretching it out in just the right, sexy way. ”How am I doing?!” She got back a decent response, a few cheers from her fans, and they spread out through the audience and scattered. Party Hard’s fans didn’t seem to content with it, though, and she imagined that would apply to Kaylee, as well.

The blonde was circling her now, looking more serious than she’d been when taking on her sister, probably because she hadn’t gained an advantage yet, hadn’t put her on the floor. She’d caught Valerie when she wasn’t at her best and started taking her apart, but that was something Tatiana was absolutely not allow. That meant she wasn’t going to take the slower and steadier approach that had failed her sister. No, she would go for something far more direct.

She started to circle along with Kaylee, raising her arms, looking like she might move in for a lockup. She even took a step forward, as if she were going for it...only to rapidly break away and come straight at her opponent, charging in hard. Up came her leg, and out it lashed, sending a quick roundhouse aimed at the side of Kaylee’s knee. She pulled it back immediately after the first attempt, chambered it, then lashed out again, this time going for the same kick with a different, higher target: Kaylee’s ribs.

Kaylee narrowed her eyes to the point she might as well had them shut. If Tatiana was trying to get her angry, she was already well past that point.She hadn't been put up against something or someone that pissed her off that she couldn't out negotiate her entire career. She didn't intend to start rolling over for the haters now, or ever. She was capable... just as much as Belle she liked to think. Kaylee's brand of combat was just more indirect and nuanced. It took precision and grace Belle couldn't handle. To others she may have come across as all talk, but she was always quick to shut people down who wanted to underestimate her.

Kaylee hadn't wanted to lock up, not really. She had all the intention in the world of taking a cheap shot at Tatiana if she had tried. As the girl rushed her, Kaylee cut a hard strafe, trying to backpedal away from her. The redhead was fast, just as fast as her though. trying to back off from her forward movement was proving fruitless. She lowered her frame, preparing to leap when Tatiana caught her knee, buckling it our from under her. She dropped down with a cry of pain, eyes locked on the woman for what would come next. I see. She drew in a deep hissing breath, wincing preemptively as she raised her arms...

The timing was tough, the execution rough. She had never done this from her knee, or standing flat before. Only from the air, but even then that wasn't where the move had originated. She twisted her back towards the direction of the incoming kick, arm hooking down and around as her body moved with the motion, to travel along side the kick without it finding her. As it passed by her, the arm she had hooked on it jerked back against it as she pulled herself to the ground, twisting Tatiana's leg in a very odd variant of a dragon screw, trying to flip the girl down onto her front of the mat.

If Kaylee had grounded her foe, she would curl up at her thighs, trying to coil her legs around the girl's knee to squeeze her leg, to retain it. The hold itself was using the ankle as had captured and twisted from the beginning as she pulled the girl's leg backwards, using her own Kaylee's own legs locked around the crook of Tatiana's knee as a leverage point to wrench down her calf onto while applying an ankle lock to her with both her hands. To any onlooker this hold looked like a damn mess... because it was.

The first kick landed, and for a moment, everything looked okay. It struck home, solid and strong, and the effect was immediate. Tatiana didn’t hate Kaylee, of course - even with everything that had gone down tonight, she would still be following her on all the relevant social media mediums. But she could be a little annoying sometimes. A little too smart-alecky. A little. Just a little. Plus, she didn’t appreciate the glee with which she’d worked Valerie over.

So, payback time.

Her vengeance lasted only until she tried to land the second kick, which turned out to be one too many. When she did, Kaylee did...a thing. A rolly, spinny, corkscrew thing. That was the best way Tatiana could think to describe it. It ended up with her on the floor and Kaylee hugged her leg, twisting it an unnatural painful way that she wanted no part of.

Getting desperate in a hurry, Valerie tried to roll over, raise her free leg, and kick her heel against Kaylee’s knee, aiming for the same spot she’d kicked just a moment ago. If that didn’t work, there was always a made crawl to the ropes, but she preferred to get free this way. The way that hurt Kaylee, too.

Kaylee made a rather pathetic cross between a grunt and a squeal as she was booted, defenseless to really protect her knee. The coiling hold she had to hold Tatiana's leg steady was noticeably weaker, but both the blond's hands still clutched at her ankle, twisting as hard as she could in a desperate attempt to make their next standing encounter more favorable to herself or Belle. She was committed to clinging to her leg like some sort of demonic monkey, knowing full well that she was at a distinct disadvantage against Tatiana. While Kaylee was slick in the ring, capable of dodging a good deal of what came here way, the redhead was fast enough that she would hit her eventually, and hard.

She in no way thought that she could submit Tatiana in this unorthodox hold, but she knew that cutting down her mobility or making her unable to kick without hurting herself was a worthy trade off. Sometime wrangling a snake you were going to get bit. You might as well see what you were planning through at that point. Though she might have just been influenced by watching too much Brave Wilderness on the internet.

It was clear to Belle that Kaylee needed to get out of there. There normal gameplan of tag early and often hadn't worked this match. It couldn't. Valerie and Tatiana were both too quick and mobile to give them the run around. She leaned herself over the apron, a hand on the turnbuckle as she bounced on the top rope, waving her hand ready for a tag.

"Kaylee, come on! Put me in!" Her partner had put herself in a terrible spot. For what? neither she nor Kaylee were submission artists. They had agreed pretty early on that any submission that left you open to getting pummeled was beyond dumb. Here she was, exposed. Tatiana had already gave her one kick. If she decided to stop and just keep kicking Kaylee? That would be bad news.

Valerie was sweating heavy now out on the apron, chewing her lips hard as she watched the fight unfold. This was not going quite the way she’d envisioned it going when her sister took the reigns.

This was something she would give Kaylee: she was annoying, idiotic, and more than a little vain, and while she wasn’t the worst person Valerie had ever met, she couldn’t remember anyone she’d come to dislike faster. Still, despite all that, she was a tenacious woman, perhaps to a fault. She fully expected her to drop the hold when Tatiana struck her knee, but the blond held on with the stubbornness of a limpet, refusing to cede an inch.

She didn’t like the idea, but there wasn’t any way to ignore the situation. ”Tat!” She called out, once more drawing her sister’s focus. ”The ropes, get to the ropes.”

Tatiana had been considering that very thing, believe it or not. She was wondering if she should try and fight this hold, or if she should attempt to shake. After a moment to compose herself, she made her decision, with her sisters words helping to solidify her decision.

Wanting to shake Kaylee off, Tatiana started a mad crawl towards the ropes, towards their side of the ring. She made sure to give that knee a few kicks as she went to, giving her foe plenty of incentive to let go early.

Kaylee to her credit lasted pretty, hunched up on Tatiana's leg, twisting, pulling and jerking at the girls ankle. She weathered two more kicks before it had become to unbearable and she was forced to let go prematurely. She tried to roll herself free from the downed redhead, clutching her leg that had managed to soak each of those blows. She could only hope the effort had paid off, as she suffered in a similiar way to achieve the ground she had wanted to gain.

The blond had attempted to get back to her feet but was struggling. She hadn't take all three in total kicks to the knee directly but her left leg in general had been through the ringer in the exchange. It was enough though. She definitely needed to tag now. There was no way she could continue to fight like this without a chance to rest up.

Belle continued to shout for Kaylee, making sure she knew which direction she needed to move to, and that she was ready for a tag. Her partner hadn't looked to bad, that was until she started to try and stand. She was hurt, pretty bad she figured. Kaylee's legs were her her second most important asset in the ring next to only her mind. She lived and died by her mobility for both offense and defense. This was bad.