Putting Out Fire With Gasoline

Old habits died hard, even after years of Tension life and there was still a real part of Army that told him to hold back when it came to punching women - despite having his ass kicked by the ‘fairer sex’ on multiple occasions. It was a little weakness of his, a subconscious thing, and he suspected he would never truly outgrow it...but he could dampen it in a lot of ways. In that, he was glad Zoey came off so annoying, because goddamn was she making it easier.

The punch he gave her was no small one, either - it was enough to drop a guy his own size to his knees if he landed it right, and it felt like a solid hit on her. So, she would go down, he’d move in, and…

Oh. She was still standing. ”Huh.”

Not only was she still on two feet - hurting, but upright - but she had enough in her to come back his way again, not the least bit afraid of taking more of the same. He was ready to give it to her, too, as he reeled back for another hook, only for her to move into close range and smother it before he had the chance to fire.

”Fuck off me-” She cut his protests off with a knee to the stomach, driving it deep into his gut. It was his turn to reel back, now, but he wasn’t going alone - he brought his arm up as she did the same, clasping her by the back of her head and keeping her close.

”Okay, okay.” She wanted in close? He’d give her close. He reached down and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her in tight and crushing her body against his. It was only for a hard, rough moment, though, before he jerked back and sent her flying overhead, launching her with a belly-to-belly suplex.

Zoey wasn’t confident that she could ‘beat’ Armando, per se. Not easily. There wasn’t any single kick or blow at this point that could put him down for good. But she was confident that she could at least hurt him. Not just make this titan flinch. Zoey meant to hurt him badly.

It was all part of her education. There was a deeply intricate, yet fairly simple philosophy that Zoey had the chance to learn over the past few months when it came to one simple, inevitable reality about fighting: pain. There were so many ways to inflict pain. There were many places pain could surface. Army thought that he could best her in that particular lesson and that just made her determined to prove him wrong, even when she had nothing to prove at all. As if a little devil was whispering in her ear, ushering her forth along the path of blood and broken bones.

It was the most satisfaction she felt in months when she felt her knee finally bury into that toned six-pack of his. The Zoey Jae Oh of the past might have made a flea bite if she had attempted that little maneuver. This Zoey had the heavyweight boxer reeling. She was commanding this fight. She was in total control of what they were doing and where they were going. And the next stop was a one-way ticket to the floor with a mouthful of bl-

“Shit-!” In a snap, Zoey was folded in half like a pretzel. For a moment she thought that Armando would be going for a bearhug. That would be a new one for her between the kicks to the face and elbows to the back she'd taken to get to this point, but nothing Zoey thought she couldn't handle.

That was up until Army brought her skyward. By the time she realized what he was up to, her face was already making a pancake on the floor.  Her legs curled above her head from the impact into a scorpion before the rest of her body followed suit, flopping like a pancake once, then twice, before she ended up smacking against the cage wall, upside down with her butt in the air.

“Oh yeah!” Somebody small and Korean shouted as they jumped up in their seat. That wasn’t helping.

Oh, good hangtime on that one. Zoey was surprisingly tossable, let him get some good distance. Two rolls, too. Not bad. Not his best, but he’d give it a 9/10, easy.

He sat up fast after the impact and started to make his way up, only pausing when he heard Imugi call out from the audience. He had a flash of a dopey smile, before he wiped it off and put his serious one back on - this was a match, had to keep it straight, had to look cool. Having the approval was nice, though, especially when the crowd was already turning against him on the whole. Some real support making its way to him for once.

”Oh, man, that looked nasty.” Army called Zoey way as he pushed up and rolled over. ”Need me to help you up? I’ll help you up.”

As Army moved in after her pupil, Sin made her way through the shadows, slinking around out of sight as she scanned the crowd. A voice out there caught her attention, an accent that she didn’t often here in these stands - the kind that wouldn’t stand out to anyone who didn’t know it by heart. As vested as she was in Zoey’s performance, her curiosity couldn’t help but be piqued towards it as well, and she tried to hone in on the source, exchanging glances between the crowd and the match itself.

She redirected her attention just in time to see Army coming at Zoey from behind. He reached down and took her by the waist once again, lifting her up with ease, only to set her back on his shoulder and leaving her facing the sky, as if she were a log he was carrying through the forest.

With her up and steady, Army brought his hand over her chest and pulled down, letting her stretch over his back in a Canadian backbreaker rack, really putting her flexibility to the test...and, maybe, showing off. If he was being 100% honest. ”You got anymore shit to say? Now might be a good time.”

Okay, so Zoey was in trouble. She could admit that.

The plan was to keep her distance a bit more until she could feel him out. Armando was just a little faster than she was expecting for a guy who looked like a walking muscle bomb. But after the hell she had been through to get to this point, Zoey figured she would be able to tank most of anything he could dish out.

As looked out at the world upside down and a face full of rug burn, that turned out to be very much not the case. It occurred to her that she should probably flip over and get on two feet again before Gorilla Man stomped her into oblivion. That was until she noticed Armando did that for her, hauling her onto his shoulder like a beaten rucksack before the pressure came down on her all at once. Zoey choked on a yelp that tried to work its way out of her throat, only coming out as a few haggard coughs made all the worse by the awkward as hell angle.

What even was this move? Zoey flailed around uselessly for a second before she gave all that up. Calm down. Think.

That wasn’t going to get her anywhere. What she needed to do was what she was taught to do: attack the problem directly. Reaching one hand around to push at Armando’s face and force his head to tilt back. From the outside it may have just looked like she desperately was trying to get away from his bad breath - which he didn’t have to be fair, minty fresh - because the most she was getting out of this desperate struggle was maybe an inch or two. It was hardly an exit strategy.

That was all she would need. Her other arm would reel back and blast Armando in the face with the point of her elbow. She was aiming for the nose, but fuck, she’d take anywhere that stung at this point. If she could just get him to loosen that arm across her chest. That would give her the freedom she needed to move and throw her legs over her head into a backflip off Armando’s shoulder. But she wouldn’t hit the ground. Her arms reached out to grab his head as she slammed into his front and wrapped her legs around his waist. All at once she would seize the momentum and jerk her head back, slamming him into the floor facefirst with a...BBT? DGG?

What the fuck did Sin call this?

Crap.

A DDT. Huh.

Sin had to concede, she didn’t see that one coming. She had been on the outskirts, watching this unfold, and she’d started to lose some hope for her student after she found herself in the torture rack. Wasn’t a good spot for her - the move wasn’t just hell on the back, it made her look dumb as fuck, too. She didn’t weigh all that much, so a guy like Armando could probably bend her like that for an hour straight if he wanted to, and the only way she would get out was when the sweat and tears made her too slippery to hold on to.

Sin wasn’t sure how to get out of a hold like that. Mostly because she couldn’t see her getting caught by it in the first place. Zoey wasn’t creative enough to find her way out, and there weren’t any ropes to grab. Maybe if she raked his eyes or something…

But nope. A DDT. It was a slick maneuver, and it brought a smile to her face before she even realized it. She might have to use it herself sometime. But did it work?

Army would say ‘yes’. Being at the center of it, he was kind of an expert.

His thinking was that Zoey would give up if he cranked her enough in the hold. The girl - woman, whatever - was stubborn, sure. He was stubborn, too, but he’d tapped out to moves like this before. Everyone had their limits, it was only a matter of how long it took to reach them.

When she reached at his face and pushed it back, it wasn’t a surprise. It didn’t even take him off guard when she blasted him in the face with that elbow, cracking him on the eye. That sucked, but he knew what the next move would be - he was going to hit her with a powerbomb, pick her up, and go right back to that hold, only with her back hurting twice as much, now. That had to take the fight out of her.

He opened his arm, prepared to drop her, and that’s when things just went all wrong. Her arm wrapped around his head, he was being yanked forward with way more momentum than he thought possible, and his skull was promptly drilled into the canvas. A DDT. That would’ve been a pain in a wrestling ring, but this wasn’t a wrestling ring. The floor had a thin, white layer that made it look like a typical canvas, but where wrestling rings were forgiven and relatively soft this...wasn’t. There was wood under there, and while it wasn’t as hard as concrete, it was a fuckload harder than anything his head had been rammed in a long damn time. The sonorous crash echoed through the room, nearly drowning out the roaring crowd, and he could verify that it hurt every bit as much as it sounded.

”Shit...fucking DDT…shit.” Army clenched his teeth and rolled about on the floor. A stream of muttered curses came out as he clutched his battered skull, just trying to process the pain, not even thinking much about Zoey right now.

So this is what it was like to get mauled by a fucking bear. Zoey couldn't say that she was really curious about that, but guess now she had that reference from now on. Armando seriously had the strength to match. He was handling her solid weight like she was a goddamn throw pillow, like a fish dragged out of the river. Hell, after Jessica Wright completely wrecked her shit in that house fight, Zoey had been struggling to find a half-decent comparison.

This was pretty close. Damn close. As close as her spine was to breaking in half at the moment. But unlike back then, Zoey had the skills and the finesse to believe she could make this work. She had someone in her corner now, someone she had to impress like her life depended on it. Probably because it did.

Zoey wasn't thinking when she executed the maneuver. Her mind had entered an empty state where her body simply took over each motion in response to the rapid movement all around her. She grabbed Armando's neck before she fell, she steadied her breath and locked her legs, she threw entire weight into the offense and gave gravity everything she could offer in that perilous moment, and Zoey dunked his fat fucking head into the canvas. Armando rolled one way and Zoey rolled the other after the climatic collision. It wasn't looking good for him at the moment and the crowd seemed to agree.

Most of it, anyway.

"Boo! Cheap shot!” Imugi shouted to the ring from her seat with her hands cupped together. “Cheap like your outfit! Turquoise was so last century, circus pants!"

Zoey threw a middle finger in some general direction because God did she need to as she stood up to one knee. Focus, focus. She had the big bastard down, now what was she going to do to keep it that way. As much as Zoey hated to admit it, he’d fucked her up pretty bad for the moment. The world got a little wobbly when she thought about standing up, so that was out of the window. The Korean-American couldn’t go for anything fancy right now, but that didn’t mean she was out of options. It just meant she had to go simple. She slid her way over to the Puerto Rican and came up at the top of his head. She turned to face him, looking down the length of his body towards his feet as she sat down and reached out to pull his head into her lap.

"Hey, guess what?" Zoey slipped her new and improved legs around his head, bracing her shin against his neck before she reached over to grip her ankle. One pull and it would be like another twenty tons of pressure all from the comfort of her seat. A triangle choke. A classic, apparently. "Now I get to talk as much shit as I want. And you gotta sit there and fucking listen. Don't you feel like a dumb shit?"

Clap. Clap. Clap.

Unless Zoey had super hearing - which Sin strongly doubted - she would never hear the slow clap coming for a few yards away, popping out of the shadows. Sin was a hard woman to impress, but damned if that little stunt hadn’t done the trick, and it made a long smile creep across her lips. This was the Zoey Jae Oh she wanted to see. The one who talked way, way too much shit, but could take hits and keep getting back up again. The one who was actually somewhere close to being as good as she said she was. The dangerous Zoey.

She had him down. Had him vulnerable. But if she had any sense, she’d take the moment and use it to slow things down, put him in something painful, but allow her to catch her breath, too. So many options, and she knew what she’d go for. What would Zoey choose?

She’d figure that out in a moment. Not too long. Right now, there was a small mystery she wanted to solve.

Sin made her way out of the gloom and diverted her attention to the audience, searching for the source of that voice, that accent, that familiar little noise that was barking their way. She found it far faster than she ever expected. Picking out a Korean from a bunch of Japanese people wasn’t the easiest thing to do at a quick glance, even for a native. But a Korean with blue hair? Oh, that stood out. Curious, she stalked around the cage and looked towards the stands, locking onto Army’s cheerleader as she took a lazy stroll.

Army, in the meantime, was only half-aware of Imugi calling out to him. He’d heard her voice, knew it was her, but his brain was too scrambled for things like proper language recognition at the moment. Not done booting up.

Zoey wasn’t about waiting, though. Instead, she snatched Army up, wrapped those silly pants around his head, and - oh, this was a triangle choke. Great.

He’d suspected that she had a powerful set of legs, what with all the irritating kicks, but this was confirmation in the worst way possible. Those things clamped down on his neck and shoulder drew tight, and it was all pain from there. Tight, constricting pain, and the only thing worse than it was having to put up with Zoey’s taunt.

”Not...as stupid as…” He couldn't’ even find the breath to squeeze out his comeback, so he put it on the backburner and focused on the more important thing at the moment: not going to sleep. Rising up to knees, he tried to alleviate some of the pressure, but that was a stalling tactic at best - he was still fading fast, his energy leaving him in a hurry. He need a permanent solution, but right now, he didn’t have the first clue what that might be.

Armando was a proud man. A man with pride, so to speak. Zoey could recognize that because she still had that kind of pride inside of her. Before, she was too eager to let it all loose and lost focus on what she was doing. She wore it across her sleeve and acted like it was some sort of barrier that would keep her from falling. And if she did fall, it wasn't like she could fall any further.

Then along came a spider, a devious, dark creature that sunk its fangs into her neck and showed her just how thin and fragile that 'pride' really was. Look at where 'pride' got her. Facefirst on the ground and a mouth tasting like iron. She had the chance to taste that pain again and again. Taste it on her tongue, feel stab her in the bones and dig into the marrow. She was even fortunate enough to deliver the blessing herself on occasion. That was when Zoey realized something. Something she felt all those months back. When they first met. And Sin smiled back at her.

Hurting people? Was fun.

She cranked further back on the figure four, constricting around that thick neck. Zoey brought a hand up to her ear and leaned over just far enough to make eye contact. She was taunting him, but she was also curious about what color his face was changing and couldn't hide the long grin on her face. "Huh, what was that? I don't speak 'Dipshit', sorry. Tell ya what. I'll throw you my old English textbook so you can catch up on the first flight back to El Paso. Dig?"

If she just kept cranking on the pressure, it wouldn’t be long before he was out. She wasn’t as good as it as her more sadistic, better half, but Zoey’s legs were no joke even before she got serious about training. It wouldn’t take long from now. Not from the way the Kick Chick was seeing things.

From the audience, however, that position looked a little familiar to Imugi. It was funny. The Korean girl could actually put herself right into her opponent’s shoes. She knew what Zoey was dealing with and how hard Army was fighting her. Every second would be a fight but so long as he kept on with the brute force, he wasn’t finding a way out. Imugi wouldn’t say she was quite at the point of going nostalgic yet, but that didn’t stop some fun memories from sneaking into her head. Heck, every time she thought back to their match, she could still feel the aches in her back from when he fought free from her legs and slammed her right into the mat.

What did he do back then? What did the Wiki call it?

Electrifying...? Electrical...?

Imugi snapped her fingers and stood up for the tenth time. “Electric chair! Electric chair!”

”Paso...is in fucking…Texas…”

It occurred to Army that he shouldn’t have been wasting precious breath on correcting Zoey, but damn, he just could not let that one go. It was one thing to get choked out by this brat, slipped into unconsciousness while she looked down on him with that crazy smile, but it was another thing to take that and have her dishing out inaccurate information in the process. Just couldn’t have that.

Maybe it was the lack of oxygen or just the general pain, but he was having the hardest time thinking of a way out of this. If they’d been in an official match, he could’ve used a rope break or maybe even bridged her into a pin, but he was fresh out of options like that in the cage, and her legs were nothing to scoff out. Zoey was packing some impressive muscle underneath those silly pants of hers, and he’d been in this sort of position enough to judge. Where she was able to pick up strength like this, he couldn’t guess, but it was time well spent.

As it was, things were looking dark, in about all the ways that word could mean. His vision was dimming, limbs growing weak, and he was starting to hear things, too. Like...was that Imugi? What was she even talking about? A chair? An electric-

Oh.

Army fought the extreme urge to smack his own face, deciding his energy would be better used escaping this hold. Gritting his teeth, he wrapped his arm around her legs, gripped tight, and sat up, summoning all the power in his abs to get her vertical. One foot on the floor, then the other, and then he was rising up. A little bit more, a little bit more after than, and he was raising up, standing, hoisting her up to piggyback on his shoulders.

He took two steps back, measured the distance as best he could and fell back towards the edge of the ring, looking to slam Zoey with an Electric Chair into the cage’s metal.

It was an impressive show, really, but Sin wasn’t paying it much mind at the moment - instead, her eyes were focused on the source of that little suggestion. As much as she coveted her close view of the action, she was infinitely curious about Army’s fangirl. Deciding a quick trip was in order, she slunk back into the shadows and made her way to a side exit...

Alright. It was official. Zoey was finding whoever the fuck that was and beating the shit out of them.

She’d expected plenty of noise and disruptions tonight and she was getting plenty of that. It wasn’t like she was hanging out in a fucking library or anything. But it was this one voice. This one cheeky-ass motherfucker out there was just barely letting her get a word in edgeways and it was steadily motivating her second by second to walk out and kick their teeth.

In a way it helped. That frustration became motivation, and that turned into pure unadulterated energy that Army was feeling all around his neck and head right now. Every flex of her thigh was another pound of pressure she could add on without any trouble on her end. She could already feel the fight starting to drain from the rest of him. Those movements were getting a little less sharp and that massive body wasn’t flailing around quite as fiercely. Now the crowd was starting to get behind her, growing louder as the hot chick with the sweet outfit finally put this guy to sleep with record time.

Huh. Would this be the first time that Zoey had knocked someone out with just her legs?

So lost was she in that achievement that the Korean-American gasped when she suddenly felt him shift. At first she thought it was just Armando trying to buck her off but-

“Heyheywhatthehellareyou-” Zoey stopped talking and slammed her thighs around him, pulsing with all the strength she could muster to get him down and quick. It probably would have been smarter to just dismount but when she was this close to victory - a real victory, her focus wouldn’t allow for anything else. Besides, whatever he threw at her, Zoey was sure she could take it. God, was that fucking wrong.

The world whipped back and tugged her down with the force of a mighty anchor. Her head slammed against the cage fence with a solid smack like a frying pan. As her head fell away, a skull-shaped dent in the fence left some evidence from the fall for Armando to admire. He’d have the freedom to as Zoey’s legs fell away from his neck and left her laid up against the wall.