AJ Shay vs. Spider Kikuchi - Arachnophobia

Spider, on the other hand, was a very violent person. It wasn’t about competing for her, not really - she loved to be on top, to be in control, to be dominating. That was what wrestling was really about at the end of the day, wasn’t it? Outfighting your opponent and mastering them, humbling them underneath you.

The thought alone could give her shivers, and she craved the chance to do it to AJ, to grind her into dust. Which made the current situation all the more frustrating - she was a hungry dog with her meal dangled above her head, just out of reach.

She had just started to rise up, eager to bring the fight back to AJ and regain control, when she felt that grubby arm of hers wrap around her head and clench tight. She tried to pull away, tried to twist out of the hold, tried to do anything, but she was too late on all fronts.

Spider was moving forward, Spider was flying, and Spider’s face was getting rammed into the floor, a move that left her laid out, arms spread wide, with her hair falling all over her head.

It was not the best look. And the referee…

”5!”

Still counting.

Alexa hissed softly as her backside bounced along the ground. In her mind because she was the one performing the move, she thought she would somehow land a bit lighter. There was no debating who between them had it worse however, she made sure of that. The bulldog had gone off without a hitch, she wasn't sure how great it looked to everyone else, but she was feeling good about it. It was still hard to breath, she was still sluggish, sloppy.

In her moment of aggression the count had been lost on her. Now, as she tucked a leg beneath her to rise, she was acutely aware. While she had brought Spider to the ground to slam her face down, she hadn't completely let her go and now she was dragging her up.

“Six!”

Alexa turned to face her foe, only helping Spider rise as far as her knees. She dipped the woman’s head, attempting to teck her neck under her arm to hook her in. She threw one of her legs back then kicked it forward, using the momentum to drop herself back to the floor again, attempting to drive Spider’s head into the thinny padded floor with a snap DDT.

The rookie would give her adversary a shove, trying to roll the other woman off of her. Her palms pressed off the ground as she rocked her forward wobbly rising up. She took a staggered step towards the ring, leaning herself forward to lay her hands on the apron.

“Seven!”

She wasn't happy about winning via countout, but she wasn't about to risk a loss by remaining outside the ring or trying to get Spider back in. Her fingers wrapped themselves round the bottom rope, her arms straining as she dragged herself up off the floor. She swang a leg up and over, starting to shimmy her way back into the ring to beat the count. This was almost over. She could put this behind her and actually have a win to her name...

The pain should’ve stopped after the bulldog. Spider thought for sure it would. She fully expected AJ - sweet, innocent, stupid-as-a-brick AJ to believe that her initial attack had been enough to keep Spider down, and that she wouldn’t have to do anything else to keep her down. That lull would give her ample time to recover, reset the count, and perhaps even get the jump on her insipid foe before she knew what was happening.

A grand plan,with one flaw: AJ wasn’t that stupid. Stupid, yes, but not that stupid. Instead of giving her the time to recover, she went for a double tap, leaving Spider wide-eyed and astonished as she was dragged up and brought down into the cold floor with a vicious DDT.

Spider’s body flopped over, and for one surreal moment, she seemed frozen in a perfect headstand. Then gravity got the better of her and she flooped down on her back, stunned, stupefied, and staring up at the lights.

In the distance, she could hear the referee counting. In the corner of eyes, she could see AJ fighting to regain her foot, and make a desperate crawl for the ropes. An escape. The insufferable twit was trying to escape. After all this, she would settle for a simple countout victory. And no, Spider was no less irritated by this in light of the fact that she’d do the same if the roles were swapped.

The sight alone lit a fire in her, one that overrode the pain, the searing headache, the fuzziness. With teeth grit hard enough to bite through skin, she rolled over and forced her way up. Crawling at first, then standing, then reaching out as AJ started to stand up in the ring. Her face twisted into a madness as she reached in under the ropes, grasped her opponent by the ankle, and yanked her back with all the strength she could spar, looking to dump her back on the floor. On her face. Below her.

Where she belonged.

“Eight!”

Alexa slipped back into the ring beside the referee, paying them a small glance before attempting to stand. She had fought pretty hard, gotten in a lot of offense early on so she didn't feel too terrible about ending the match in such an anticlimactic way. On paper a win would do her good, lend some credibility to her as a competitor. Was the means really that important. Pushing herself to her feet she decided it was, selectively. She hadn't cheated or done anything questionable. This was all part of the rules.

“Nine!”

The brunette turned to glance back to Spider. When this was all over she would see about talking to the woman. No need to burn a bridge… She felt something on her ankles even before she had finished pivoting. In an instant she found herself face down on the canvas, her legs pulled right out from under her. Her body slide along the mat as she was ripped straight out of the ring beneath the ropes, sent falling to the floor to reset the count.

The first fall had been a surprising affair, one that left her breathless and sore, but ultimately did little to hinder her. Being thrown back out onto the harder ground herself had hurt, something made readily apparent by a gasping scream of pain as she hit the floor.with a dull smack. Her chest and chin had been the biggest victims, though her hands only sought out to cover her face hoping pressure would somehow contain the hot pain. It didn't.

Ryoko chewed lip as she looked on, relieved that AJ was out of danger, but not loving the countout victory. She’d come to know the American pretty well, enough to know they had about the same feelings when it came to winning and losing. A win like this would be better than losing, and yeah, it wouldn’t make a difference on any official record, but it wasn’t the win they wanted. Wasn’t satisfying. And…

”Huh?” She’d been so caught in the moment that she only just now noticed Spider’s hurried rise, saw her reaching under the ropes with a maddened glare painted on her face. ”Shay!” She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted. ”Shay, behind you!”

Too late.

Spider yanked AJ out hard and sent her for a nasty spill, one that she exacerbated immediately with a rough round of stomps, hammering the younger wrestler in her back, shooting down with the edge of her heel and shouting to punctuate each word. ”You miserable little waste! You’re done when I say you’re done, understand? When I say.” Ryoko had seen Spider angry before, but never quite like this. She stomped away on AJ like she was a bug on the floor, a roach that crawled back to life after each crushing blow.

She had paused for just an instant at a familiar voice that cut through the crowd like a knife. The warning. A precursor to the disaster, but helpless to avert fate. Like that, she had been brought back to the outside, laid out before her enemy. The pain had been crippling, leaving her shaking against the thin mats, paralyzed in a stupor as her opponent lorded over her. While she couldn't see her oppressor, Spider was more than willing to make her presence known through snarled words and the stab of her heel into the brunette's back.

Alexa grew up with a stern father, one that would often raise his voice or cast threats. Never once had he raised a hand to her however. A was a powerful man, driven, with a far better head for dishing out pain to those he faced. She felt as though this was much what it would be like as a child if she were to have had parents with a greater propensity towards being physical though. She felt small, weak, pathetic, like a child. Helpless to keep her adversary from raining down blow after blow her only solace coming in the former of a hope that it would stop soon. Reaching out her fingers gripped the edge of the apron cloth, holding tightly even as her attempts to drag herself away were turned to ash with each fall of Spider's boot.

Writhing in agony every twist, every turn she made seemed like the wrong one, strategy had fallen to the wayside as panic took hold, reducing her mental facilities to that of an animal trying to escape. There were no words, only scream as she suffered through her tormentors whims, finally managing to roll herself over onto her side. her arms wrapped out around the blond woman's weapon of choice, attempting to hug her shin close, curling up as a means to protect herself as her body shivered. Desperation was all she had, the only defense she could muster in this time of need.

Spider stomped away, driving her heel harder with each moment, putting all of the force she could muster into each strike, driving down with all her hate, all her venom, all her fire. It wasn’t just AJ she was attacking, though she was a clear source for the bulk of her rage. No, these stomps were made for the sniveling suits in the back who put her in this position in the first place. The ones who only put her in a match like this so a cute rookie could have a dragon to slay and get the fans cheering.

Sick of it. So sick of it. Without even realizing it, she’d started screaming with every stomp.

To Ryoko’s eyes, it didn’t look like a wrestling match anymore, but something that would’ve been happening in a dark alleyway with no police watching, a merciless mugging. She clenched her teeth as AJ writhed about, looking on, helpless, as she clung to Spider’s leg as if her life depended on it. ”Shay!” She gripped the steel barricade so hard that it hurt. ”Shay!”

Spider wasn’t amused by this little burst of defiance. If anything, having Shay on her like this stoked her fires, repulsed her at the touch. ”Get. Off. Me.” She drove her fist into AJ’s head with each punch, hammering away at her skull, oblivious to the referee’s count above.

”4!”

As much as Ryoko didn’t want her friend to lose like this, she found herself hoping that Spider would just go into the ring and take the count. Anything to cut this short.

Alexa gasped and choked on each struggled gulp of air, being dragged forward with the initial tug from Spider pulling back to remain balanced. She clung so close to her opponent’s boot, holding on with all her fading strength as if he life depended on it. A leg pulled itself up under her, then the other, curled up in a ball on the floor at the feet of the veteran.

Her head snapped forward with the first blow to the back of her head, rattling her teeth. She almost lost her grip but somehow found the will to hold on as another fist came down upon her, and another. Her body quaked, threatening to give out on her at any moment. The brunette rose up on her knees, her wild unkempt ponytail half torn from the band that held it in place as she looked up at Spider for a brief moment. She looked tired and hurt as sweat beaded on her brow. Eyes half lidded, almost pleading for this to end.

"FIVE!"

It seemed for a moment she was about to pass out, standing to fall forward past the leg she held. At the last moment, her arms tensed as her legs pushed off the ground to shove herself forward. She tried to rip Spiders leg out from under her, throwing it back behind to woman to take her off her feet and plant her face first into the ground before promptly collapsing on the floor beside her.

There was something eerily familiar about the woman looking up at her now, staring at her with those watery eyes, that pleading looking, that quivering face. Spider had been here before, hadn’t she? On the other side. It seemed like so long ago, but there was a time when she was the fresh young rookie, trying to make it in the often unforgiving world of wrestling. Oh, she’d found her footing soon, learning how easy life could become when you just didn’t care all that much, but there was a rough period when she was trying to adjust.

Maybe AJ would see this as a growing experience, as she did with those times.

Or not. Frankly, she didn’t care much, but it did make her all the more determined to squash this little idiot. For both of their futures.

She raised her fist again, intent on hammering this woman into the mat and scurrying back into the ring when she had a chance, but it seemed the little firecracker had a few sparks left before she fizzled out, enough to snatch Spider’s leg and send her flopping to the floor on her face. A less than graceful moment.

”6!”

And there was that, too, yes.

Grunting with both annoyance and pain, Spider gave AJ a spiteful push and started to crawl for the ring apron, looking to crawl her way back in, if need be. ”God, you are a pain in the ass.”

Any sense of self growth Alexa might have felt had take a far back seat to just about everything else laid out before her. Pain acted as the driver while desperation sat shotgun. Self worth was wedged between doubt and frustration, the endless patsy for their ire. Growth may have been stored in the trunk someplace… at least her imagination remained intact enough to make a far reaching car analogy. She should probably be focusing on the match though.

She took this time wallowing in agony on the ground to at least celebrate one small victory. The sound of Spider slapping against the thin mats beside her was a triumph enough for now. The only thing she missed was the look that must have been on her face… maybe she could see it later in a recording. She grunted softly as the other woman gave her a hard shove, enough to roll her over onto her back. She had to squint and turn her head from the bright lights glaring down at her.

Spider’s angry comment hit her somewhere deep. She had been tossed around for the last few minutes by this terror of a woman, fighting not only to win, but to survive. In this moment though, battered and beaten on the ringside floor she couldn't help but let out a pained laugh. “Heh… eh heh heh heh… ow...ugh.” The brunette choked back her misplaced amusement, face scrunching up.

Her head lulled to the side, watching as her opponent made for the ring. She knew she had to do the same, time was drawing in around her. A hand reached out, fingers. Swiping to grab for Spider’s boots but the distance between them was far too great. Has she been fully their mentally, it would have been an easy enough thing to discern. This felt like opportunity, her foe was on the run, now was the time to take her out from behind. She just needed to get up.

She was clumsy and slow, having difficulty with something as simple as rolling over. She pushed, straining her body to listen as Spider gained ground on her. There was a chance she wouldn’t be able to make the count even if she was trying. There had been a brief moment when she had wanted this all to be over, win or lose she just didn't want to be here anyhow. Now? She felt it burning in the back of her mind. This small speck of determination grew within her. She wanted to win… she wanted to hurt this woman who had hurt her. She could feel this black ball of envy and anger welling up inside her chest. She found power in it, drawing enough energy to stagger from her knees to her feet to limp her way to the apron.

“Seven!”

She raised her arms high, clutching her hand together in one giant ball of destruction, throwing a clubbing axe handle blow at Spider’s back. The attack seemed to take just as much out of Alexa though, fumbling forward to fall into her opponent directly after. The normally technical minded girl who started this match was no more, reduced to a desperate girl scraping at any and all offense she could muster. Her hands sought out the back of her opponents head, attempting to clutch it firmly squeezed between her palms, trying to throw it down over and over into the hard edges corner of the apron both women seemed to support themselves on.

Her hands blindly elseached somewhere to find purchase along Spider’s collar and waistband, expending some of her last bits of energy to heave the other woman up onto the apron and roll her beneath the bottom rope. Not what she would look back on as one of her finest moments to be sure, but she seemed to be living in the moment for better or worse. One focus, keep Spider down.

Leaning up against the ring apron she could feel her legs threatening to buckle. She couldn't afford to rest, so she dragged herself slowly up olinto the ring, moving like a wounded animal towards Spider. She would butt up against the woman with her shoulder, sloppily attempting to roll her onto her back before collapsing on top of her in an unceremonious pin attempt.