AV 19 Hardcore Championship - Jessica Wright (c) vs. River Styx

Jessica regretted backing up so much now. River was climbing the ropes, giving the Violent Violet ample opportunity to strike. Even as she approached, Jessica realized how off balance she was, how easy it would have been to grab a leg and yank as hard as she could so that River would come tumbling down. But that wasn't an option afforded to her now. The only thing that she could really do was brace for impact. Had River been flying at her from the ground, she would have been able to lift her foot from the concrete and greet River's face as she came in and stop the momentum in its tracks, but as it was, there was not enough space and nowhere near enough time.

Her former lover came crashing down on her. She had her arms up, which spared her the worst of the brunt of the 200 or so pounds flying at her. What it could not prevent, however, was Jessica's backside slamming into the ground below her. The Violent Violet made sure that her head didn't hit the ground that hard, but there was nothing in the world that would have prevented all of the pain in her back.

It probably sucked for Jessica, but it wasn’t all roses for Styx, either. This was a big part of the reason that she avoided doing stupid shit like this 99.99% of that time. With a body like hers, there was just no way for it to end with anything but pain on her end, and while she didn’t have a problem putting her body at risk, she preferred to at least do so with her feet on the ground, where she could control things.

When she hit Jessica, Styx wound up smacking on the floor a scant second later, with enough momentum to keep her careering into the barricade. She hit and hit hard, sending an ache up and down her spine...but she was doing better than her opponent. Fuck it.

Rolling over, Styx swung her leg over Jessica’s prone body, mounting her, and started throwing out the heavy blows. One after the other, hit after hit, all aimed at her face. No technique, no skill, no defense - just wild, brutal clobbering, trying to batter the fight out of her foe in the quickest way possible.

Jessica lay on the ground, reeling from both the surprise of what River had launched at her, and the pain of it. She knew that she was a sitting duck, just lying there for River to attack. Yet the pain in her back all but glued the Violent Violet to the floor, a fact that River quickly took advantage of. Just like so many evenings before, River threw her leg over the Violent Violet. Unlike so many nights before, this action was done in anger. Punch after punch rained down on her like the hellfire that rained down at the twilight of the dinosaurs. Her head jerked to and fro as punches rocked her world. Her teeth gritted as River's hard knuckles slammed into her.

Soon, however, the Violent Violet found a sense of defense. She got her hands up in front of her face. While that was not the best defense she could have possibly imagined, but it was the best she could do under the circumstances. It defrayed the worst of the blows coming in, but Jessica knew that this was not going to work for very long as her defense was going to collapse under the weight of the blows sooner or later.

She planted her feet on the ground and tried to gather her strength. The blows galvanized her, but she only had so much strength left thanks to the power of the punches and the pain in her back. She tried to arch her back powerfully and give River a shove so that she was no longer underneath River.

Even with all of this, all the hate she was trying to muster now, Styx couldn’t help but be aware of how great Jessica’s body felt underneath her. She supposed this was a side effect of having a lover like this, one of the precious few she cared to remember past the morning. She was familiar with this body, this feel underneath her legs, and there was a strong part of her that was tempted to just take the Violent Violet here and now. Sex and violence were on the same coin, after all.

Had to focus. Had to nail this one. The belt was right, the thing she’d been fighting for since she’d come into this stupid sex league, and all she had to do was reach out and take it…

Jessica was doing her best to block the onslaught, but they both knew it was only a matter of time before that dam burst, and she was getting close. Styx decided to go for broke, bringing her arms above her head and clasping her fists together, preparing to drop the hammer. Jessica, as it turned out, was a little quicker on the draw...this time. She pushed off hard, and since she was one of the few people in the league with the power to pull it off, she sent Styx rolling overhead, nearly making her bust her head on the floor as she went. Never the most agile woman at the best of times, Styx flopped over to her chest and started to push her way back, drawing a bead on Jessica as she rose, hoping she hadn’t lost precious time.

So close...

Jessica had a second to breathe now. But she knew that it was only going to last a second. She was aching all over now thanks to the fatigue that she was feeling and the fact that River had been mauling her. The Violent Violet rose from the concrete, but that was the only opportunity at rest that she would lend herself. River was eyeing her, and she was eying River. The potential for violence was palpable, and Jessica felt that demand for destruction more acutely than most did.

The few feet between the two fighters disappeared quickly thanks to the burning desire in Jessica's heart and her long galloping legs. In Jessica's own mind, there was no belt. There was no wrestling ring. There was no audience. This was the exploration of what human being could do to another human being, and in this pursuit Jessica would not accept mediocrity from herself. That thought kept her pain and her fatigue at bay.

Jessica tried to time it so that her attack would come just as River was on her feet. She feigned a low kick. It was a bit funny to her that she would be faking a kick in towards River's crotch during the title match. She was hoping to get River to commit with her hands just enough that she could quickly change course and go for a superman punch towards River's head. That would get the ball rolling a bit more in her favor, she reckoned.

There we go. One foot on the floor, then another. Rise up. On your feet. Get moving. Get the title.

Styx was starting to enter a more primal place, feeding off the kinds of emotions that only really came out when you were focused, when a hardcore match was at its hottest. This was the kind of heat that she loved, that they loved, the sort of thing that most wrestlers never experienced, and she was happy to have this feeling...she’d just never imagined it would be with Jessica on the other side.

She managed to push past that thought long enough to focus on her opponent, and just in time - she was coming her way, going low, looking for a blow between the legs. Styx wasn’t known for her speed, but she managed to muster enough to get her arms up in defense to protect that region of her body.

Big mistake.

That was made plain when a thunderous fist cracked her upside the head. She knew her lover - now ex lover - could hit hard, but this was heavy even for her, a crushing blow that sent her clean off her feet. She went crashing into the side of the ring, back first, then slid down, flopping on her back. Groggy, she rolled over and started to push her way up.

Jessica felt the heat rising. Water must be introduced to the fire before it may rise and she was close to reaching her boiling point. She landed on her two feet. The superman punch had given her a lot of momentum and she was going to take that momentum forward with the inferno in her heart burning brightly. Sweat flew off her as the distance between the two vanished in an instant. The Violent Violet recognized that the punch had given her the opportunity of a lifetime, and she was not going to stop for even a moment until she had hammered River into unconsciousness.

It was perhaps because they had been so close that Jessica chose to be so brutal. Her leg rose again, this time not as a feint, only the ersatz of an attack, but a real one. Jessica's long legs had known River's body, having been wrapped around various parts and various times. But now something entirely novel was happening. Jessica sent her knee forward so that it could crash right into River's head with great force.

But she had no intention of stopping there. Unlike most wrestlers, there was no hair to grab. So Jessica would make do with steadying River's head with her hand as she sent another knee forward, and then another. Her leg was the piston of a hellish engine, bent on turning River's brains into mush.

As much as she would’ve loved to stay down and take a moment to rest after suffering a punch like that, Styx knew that it was of the utmost importance that she get back up and do it now. Why? Because she and Jessica, despite their current differences in life paths, still thought alike in a lot of ways, and there was no way that she would ever let an opening like this go unpunished. She only had a couple of seconds until-

Jessica was on her like a panther, pouncing hard and getting all over her, ramming her knee into Styx’s bare skull, hammering her with blow after blow. Each one seemed to hit harder than the last, scrambling her brain and leaving her in a fog of senses, threatening to knock her into unconsciousness if she didn’t do something, anything, to stem Jessica’s offense.

Growing desperate, she did the only thing she could think to at the moment and reached out, wrapping her arms around Jessica leg and pulling it close to her chest. Dizzy, half-blinded from the anger, with a growing trickle of blood going down her forehead, Styx stood, lifting Jessica with her, and charged forward in a mad attempt to ram the Violent Violet’s back into the nearest ringpost, making for a wild escape attempt.

Jessica kept pounding. Ever since the day she had left the womb, that was the only recourse left to the purple-eyed woman. Violence was really the sole option afforded to her. The Violent Violet did not particularly believe in anything like destiny or fate or fortune. Or really any other fancier word that she never cared to learn while the teachers still maintained the quixotic wish to foist an education on her. She did not follow the path of the squared circle and the chaos around it because she wanted to follow the path that the heavens laid out for her, but because that was the only path there could be.

And she was good at it. Remarkable, even. Jessica was not accidentally given the belt, a fact that she was testifying to by slamming her knee into the side of River's skull repeatedly. Jessica was a woman doing what she had practiced for so long, worked on so hard, dedicated her life to. It was like watching Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel, save for the fact that the ceiling was the concrete and Jessica's paint was River's blood.

Jessica's knee was a jackhammer. The pace at which she moved was the pace of a heartbeat. Quick enough that only a brief reprieve came between but slow enough that Jessica could really let the power build. With every impact came a bouncing of her long purple hair and the strengthening of the immense fire in her heart.

The Violent Violet was going to ride this until River could no longer open her eyes, if she had her way. Only, when Jessica's leg was seized, and the Violent Violet was suddenly rendered off balance and functionally useless. She was helpless against River as she was rammed into the corner, her back exploding with pain. Her cry of pain echoed throughout the arena as she slumped down, trying to free herself of River and get up.

Jessica had split Styx’s skull open, but she hadn’t just split her skull open. The stream from her skull was quickly joining with a seperate one come from her nose, and while it was a little hard to be sure at the moment, she was fairly sure her former love had just broken the damn thing. Not that this was a new sensation, she hadn’t gone a single year without a broken nose for over a decade. But it did further her heated mood, helped her tap into the blinding rage she’d need to win this. So that was something.

She put that seething, raging energy to good use, as she grabbed Jessica, hoisted her up, and barreled forward with a mad charge towards the ringpost. It was a feat of strength, even by her standards, and it wasn’t made any easier with this match wrecking her body, but she pulled it off and reaped the rewards, though she was a little too dazed to properly appreciate them at the moment.

The impact registered a moment after, and it told her all she needed to know, with Jessica’s anguished cry reinforcing the point. That had done some real damage, and if she’d ever have any chance at all at claiming this match, she had to take advantage of that.

Reaching over, Styx grabbed a handful of Jessica’s legendary, gripping it tight in her fist. She was still too groggy to do much after having her skull nearly caved in by that knee, but she still had to pull off something relatively simple - like, say, ramming the back of Jessica’s skull into the ring post. Twice, for good measure.