Summer Splash 2020: Friction World Title: Adrian Kytes(c) vs Death Bunny: Hell in a Cell

Scorched flareups in her kneecap inhibited any semblance of a balanced ascension. Death's arm hooked over the middle rope with her free hand applying whatever massaging care she could to her extended leg. She knew better than to start putting her weight back onto it just yet. Years of fighting for her life clued her into that useful tidbit of information. Years she'd spent conquering hellhole after hellhole, and years that had led her to this very moment. When the raw intensity was at it's most palpable, and when the winner of the match was on the cusp of being decided in the next fleeting seconds...

The Dead Woman gnashed her teeth from beginning to haul herself upward by tugging on the ropes, gingerly applying pressure to her battered knee but feeling those spiked twinges regardless of how steadily she took her ascension. Eventually she'd managed to start standing upright by fighting through the pain, albeit with a hobbled posture and unknowing of the Bullet Commando's gestured beckons before spinning towarda Adrian and being served a dynamite superkick exploding at the bottom of her jaw. Discharged spittle in the air with Death's head whipped backwards before the rest of the reaper followed suit, landing spread-eagled, dead to the world, motionless aside from a slight wiggle to her breasts, and kayoed.

Adrian knew as soon as she felt her boot smack into the Death Bunny's head that she had hit that kick as flush as she probably could, the way the resistance suddenly gave way as her foot smacked the Lupine jaw aside before moving the last few inches of her stretch. Even if the Bullet Club Commando regretted the force of the kick the damage had been done. The superkick was the old reliable big hitter in Adrian's arsenal even if it no longer had a special name, it could still wreck shit.

The champion staggered and stumbled forward into the ropes, panting heavily at the crowd through the steel with her ponytail coming apart into a dishevled mop but as she stood back up, she was safe in the knowledge that the Grim Hopper had gotten it way worse than her.

Regardless of it's name, given the jaw-crunching crack upon impact and it's devastating aftermath, Adrian's superkick had sealed the proverbial deal in the minds of the deflated masses. The cameraman at ringside perhaps capturing the unsettling scenario in it's entirety, at first having to reposition his footing and focus the camera lens upon the champion's fatigued but triumphant expression upon slumping herself across the middle rope...until in the background, a pair of fluffy bunny ears would rise upward into frame...

...the cameraman gulping down and tugging on his collar, but nevertheless followed Adrian beginning to ascend. Undoubtedly thinking herself safe from harm like a camp counselor in a horror film after trapping the masked butcher inside of a furnace. The Murder Bunny From Hell ominously appearing for one final jump scare once Adrian turned around, right into Death clinching her clawed hand onto Adrian's neck for yet another stalled ascension into the air before twisting about and chokeslamming the champion flush onto the flattened steel chair.

There was an unwritten rule in wrestling: If you introduce an element to the match and don't immediately end the match, there was a 75% chance it was going to be used on you. It was true for Death Bunny's table as much as it was for Adrian's steel chair.

The champion didn't even have time to yelp out in shock at the Rabbit's sudden resurgence before her hand was once again wrapped tightly around the former cosplayer's throat. No time to even try anything like a kick to the shin before Adrian was slung straight into the air and viciously slammed on the steel that she had driven into the challenger's leg. Every ridge in the chair's design dug into the champion's spine as she shuddered on the canvas, eyes closed and her legs jolting out as the pain overwhelmed her.

The Unwritten Rules Of Wrestling were a fickle set of universal laws, and ascertaining as to whether they were truly just or not would take an I.Q. far beyond the scope of any mere mortal. Death'd only vaguely went about aiming for the chair, although she have expected to miss her steel target given how being in a blinding rage tended to make thinking straight an unlikely prospect. All Death knew was that it was mighty cathartic to see the rule be brought back around.

Death leaned back against the ropes and gasped haggard breaths, passing a hand through her hair in taciturn contemplation for what needed to be done. "...fuck it." With that she'd spring off of the ropes with malicious intent fueling her progression. Once standing over the champion, Death performed the telltale cutthroat gesture across her neck before tugging Adrian upward by her no longer pony-tailed hair. And in a smoothly executed motion would have the commando flipped upside-down with D.B.'s head affixed between Ade's thighs and a commanding grip around her waist. A balancing act on her top-toes coming before Death's booming implementation of the Gravestone Piledriver squarely atop the steel chair that, if it connects, would by now have quite the indented depression right in the middle of it.

Writhing on the canvas, Adrian was getting flashbacks to her other PPV matches: where Alison Seong had done her best to paralyze the former cosplayer by dunking her spine on the edge of the ring, Alaina had squished her back into the ring post, and now this. Every opponent who had the size advantage seemed to delight in their efforts to put Adrian in a wheelchair. Only difference was, Death Bunny was making damn sure of it.

With how badly she was already hurting, the champion had no way to escape the challenger's grasp and no way to stop herself being driven head first into the steel chair and everything going numb. She didn't feel a snap with how her neck was compressed, she couldn't feel anything. Not straight away at least. It took a long few seconds before she could even whimper out in immense pain.

Poetic irony though it may have been, Bullet Club detractors and sympathizers alike braced themselves for the crowning and pile driving crescendo of what was becoming an escalation of one malicious offensive maneuver after another. The steel chair Adrian herself introduced into the match having twice now been used against her in destructive impacts that could very well have been karma finally coming back to collect from the deceitful champion on the cusp of getting her comeuppance, and losing the most coveted prize in the game as a result...

...were it not for Death's all or nothing gambit taking a brutal toll on her in a way that made covering the Bullet commando a nigh impossibility. Not with how savagely her previously afflicted knee smashed into the leg of the steel chair, and in effect sent the Reaper trashing off to the side with both hands cradling her throbbing kneecap. Gnashing her teeth with occasionally belted out screams, and utterly incapable of capitalizing on the splayed out champion merely a few feet away.

What was a blatant attempt at ending Adrian Kytes' career as an AFW wrestler had an un-intended side effect. The second time Death Bunny's knee had collided with the steel and this time she couldn't even blame the champion for it: she had been the one to try and piledrive Adrian on the chair, the fact that it was bigger than the top of Adrian's skull was something she should have thought about, and if the brunette could do anything other than lay flat on the canvas right now, she'd probably be making a quick quip about how it was karma that the Grim Hopper seemed to injure her leg.

Company lawyers backstage were checking the fine print of AFW contracts to make doubly sure there were no legal ramifications should competitors become paralyzed on the job, all while captivated onlookers gawked and held their heads from the carnage unfolding. Adrian having been down and out for what had been several dozen pin counts. The championship gold should have been handed to Death Bunny by now with announcer's heralding her ascension and the medics stretchering their third Bullet Club member of the night back into the infirmary. All capping off for Death a lifetime of violent savagery, inflamed tragedy, and undying persistence...which began to show itself once she started army crawling over towards the spread-eagled champion. Rhythmic stomping from those in her corner urging the undead avatar onward until she'd managed to fling an arm over Adrian's modest chest as the rest of her slumped face first against the canvas. All the misery and suffering of her existence about to be given it's purpose...

Whether it was an involuntary spasm or Adrian getting enough awareness and motion in her body to do it herself, but Adrian jolted to the side just as the third count was coming down, her shoulder twisting off the steel as it let Death Bunny's arm slump off as Adrian slowly opened her eyes. She was gasping for breath like she'd just avoided being drowned, her legs were seemingly the only things that could move without causing infinite pain to shoot straight through the champion as she rolled onto her front, still groaning out in agony. Still down, still not out to the absolute shock of everyone, and the relief of the medical & legal teams.