Against the Abyss: Gaia Eden vs The Defiant Darkness

Gaia winced as time dragged on, her flailing seeming to not be working until her fingers brushed against something. The ropes? She twisted with a pained cry, swiping at the air again. This time her fingers hooked the ropes, curling around them as a desperate lifeline, hoping the referee had seen it.

“Rope break!”

Gaia grinned weakly, having a small chuckle. “You’ll have to try ha-” Then Akemi hefted her off her shoulders past the ropes. She was still holding on, but when it reached the length of her arm the cables snapped away from her leaving her to plummet into the ring apron with a hard crash. The audience cringed and gasped as Gaia took a nasty tumble that left her sprawled out on the ground, face down.

There was a stillness from the crowd as well as the official peering over the ropes. When Gaia stirred with a groan, turning over to clutch nurse her shoulder the referee had started to count. The crowd seemed to stir as well, the darkness having swallowed some hearts within the crowd who now turned to start booing and jeering at the heel.

As Akemi through her opponent over the side of the ring, she put her hands on her hips proudly, even when the crowd started booing and hissing at her. While she wasn't showing it, the booing did have an effect on her. She didn't like it at all. But she shouldn't care about that at all. She was being called a villain this entire match after all. She should embrace it!
"Hmph! I am the villain after all! Your boos and hisses do nothing against someone like me!" she yelled at the crowd, getting distracted by them.

She didn't think her opponent was getting up from a nasty fall like that anyways. Pretending to revel in their boos, she let out yet another laugh, but it was obviously fake because she took no pleasure in it. Should... Should she go see if her opponent was okay at least? No. She's a villain... Maybe just one check in... She didn't wanna go to jail after all.

She would hurriedly make her way out of the ring, looking down at her sprawled out opponent and kneeling next to her to check. But the counting of the ref made it so that she knew she wouldn't have enough time to actually check. "Hmph! It wouldn't be a real defeat if I let you lose by count out!" she would say, coming up with the excuse to try to pick up her opponent and roll her back into the ring.

If she managed to do that she would move to sit on top of the Hero's chest facing away from her for a pin. At the same time she would go to start really checking for any bad injuries.

One!

Two!

Three!

Four!

Gaia slowly pushed herself up to her knees, grasping the ring apron for support. While this hadn’t been the first time an opponent had dumped her over the ropes, this was probably one of the worst ones. She hadn’t been ready for the impact nor was she prepared to help arrest her fall in any way.

Five!

Six!

She reached up, hanging her head in a hand, trying to shake off the haze. She didn’t even seem to notice Akemi as the other girl rolled out of the ring until they had grabbed hold of her. She was able to stand, mostly with the other woman's help dragging her upright, speaking as Akemi shoved her up against the apron in preparation to lift her back into the ring. “Come to finish me off, have you, villain?”

She grunted being lifted onto the apron, rolling beneath the ropes when Akemi pushed her through. She lay on her back, sighing softly at the thought of getting back up again after how taxing it had just been. She decided to use this moment to recover and just take in air. When her opponent slipped back into the ring, she plopped down on top of her somewhat suddenly, catching Gaia off guard as she felt Akemi sat on her chest. The villainess would find, aside from being a bit battered, Gaia seemed to have no serious injuries. She bit her lower lip at feeling the other woman weigh her down like this and tried to ignore how much she liked it. The referee slapped the mat, cluing her in to focus.

One!

Two!

Break!

Gaia had turned her head away, a faint rosy hue on her cheeks. She hadn’t made an effort to kick out at all, preferring to let Akemi stay on top of her. What she had done was reach for the ropes again. It had been easy enough after just being rolled into the ring.

"Of course I did, you idiot hero," she replied to the other blonde girl before rolling her under the ropes. She had [/color]a lot of control over her opponent at the moment which was a good thing. It made sitting on top of her and going for the pin easy. Although she was confused as to why the hero wasn't even trying to break free. It wasn't until she heard "Rope break" did she learn why her opponent wasn't struggling at all.

"D-Damn you!" Akemi cursed while getting off her opponent. She could have just ripped her away from the ropes, but after the initial scare that she had from her heel move, she crossed her arms and let her opponent recover, looking away from her and tapping her foot impatiently.

Gaia had a small laugh at Akemi cursing her, the color on her cheeks fading as the other woman climbed off of her. To her surprise, the other girl was waiting for her. Slowly, she sat herself up and leaned against the ropes eyeing her curiously. She didn’t want to poke the bear, and despite not caring much for being shown pity, she was in pretty bad shape after that fall. She smiled a bit but hid it before tucking a few stands of hair behind her ear.

Using the ropes she climbed to her feet, still a bit unsteady, but upright on her own. It would have been easy enough to jump Akemi while she was looking away, but it wouldn’t have been terribly sportsmanlike of her if she had after the kindness she had just been given. Still… the crowd seemed a bit restless so Gaia spoke up to give them some threads to pull why Akemi had stopped her assault.

“I see, you wish to defeat me while I am shining my brightest then. How utterly diabolical of you! Does the darkness of your heart have no depths too low they cannot sink?” Gaia would lunge in, trying to initiate another tie-up between the two of them to get things back in action. She wouldn’t assert herself right away, waiting until Akemi put her own force into it to really apply herself so they were on even footing again. “Have at you!”

"Hmph! I'm shocked you can keep up with my reasonings!" Akemi exclaimed back at her opponent, pointing towards her before posing menacingly again to prepare another monologue. "FOR EVEN THE BRIGHTEST OF STARS CAN HAVE DARKNESS WITHIN THEM AND THUS, NEED TO BE PURGED OF IT BY BEING SWALLOWED BY IT!" she yelled out fiercely.

She took a step forwards and met her opponent within the tie up, the two of them fiercely pushing against each other with neither of them able to make the other move an inch. Akemi's feet would try their best to plant themselves into the ground while trying to push against her opponent, but the action just resulted in her boots sliding across the ground and forcing her to take multiple steps in place. "Nnngh nngh nnngh!!" she grunted during her efforts to win the test of strength.

Akemi wasn't conserving her strength anymore, hoping that this match would soon come to an end with her on the victor. Additionally, she deally wanted to win this teat of strength to prove how she is stronger than her opponent so she was putting everything she had into it.

They were back in business when Gaia locked them up again. Both women were jockeying for control once more but it appeared Gaia was on her back foot. She was constantly readjusting, struggling to hold Akemi at bay now. It was her arm holding her back, the heavy throbbing in her shoulder from the bad landing. It wouldn’t be long before the Defiant Darkness started riving her back, clearly overpowering her.

“Unnhn!” It would be Gaia this time that would try to break up their hold early, dropping down to the mat, she kicked her legs out to try and catch Akemi with a drop toehold to send the girl hurtling face-first into the man. If she managed to get her down, the blond would quickly scramble to try and throw herself across the girl’s back and apply a crossface hold with her legs scissored around one of Akemi’s arms and her hands pulling back on her chin.

"Ha... Hahaha..! Don't you see!? I am strong- EEP!" she yelped as she was once again interrupted mid-monologue when she was sent flying face first into the mat, groaning in pain as she attempted to pull herself up... Only for her opponent to belly flop onto her back and push her back down.

"Nnngh! Owww! It hurts!" she would cry out after being put into the crossface hold, one of her arms restrained by her opponent's legs while she was being bent backwards like a pretzel. Her body flailed around wildly, hoping to break the hold by brute force at first but nothing was working. Normally, a heel in this spot would just bite Gaia's hand, but Akemi didn't do that. Instead, she aimed to escape the proper way at first which was to scramble over to the ropes for a rope break.

But they were practically in the middle of the ring and with the pain becoming greater, Akemi wouldn't be able to make it to the side of the ring from here without Gaia noticing. So eventually, she would just attempt to use her free hand to attempt to rotate her body just enough so that she could use her free arm to throw some elbows at Gaia's head in the hopes to daze her enough to let go.

Gaia clamped her legs around Akemi’s arm and hooked her fingers over one another to lock in a cradle to cup the girl's chin. With a twist of her body, she cranked the hold, pulling her opponent back as hard as she could. With it was certainly possible for the Defiant Darkness to eventually make it to the ropes, it was a tough challenge dragging both of their weight with no telling how much gas she would have left in the tank after finishing. Gaia wasn’t doing anything particularly counter to that idea either, save for locking down an arm and just laying her weight on Akemi.

"Submit fiend of the dark and feel the radiant glow of goodness upon you!" Rivulets of sweat beaded on Gaia’s forehead as she worked the hold. It wasn't her muscles that were strained with effort, but the pressure she was putting on her shoulder to keep the hold locked in tight. The pain was getting harder to manage the longer she kept it going but she needed to make up ground by putting some hurt on her opponent. So focused was she on managing her own pain, that the subtle shift of the woman in the hold wasn't even noticed until an elbow winged her upside the head. The blow jolted her pretty hood, enough that her grip on Akemi’s chin loosed, enough for the girl to at the very least slip out of that part of the hold. The moment her opponent's head was free Gaia would release her arm as well, having no good transitions to go for.

Gaia chose to instead race the other girl to their feet. If Akemi did the same, she would find Gaia lunging at her with a drop kick when she managed to stand. If she attacked before standing up though, she might catch Gaia off guard.

"N-Never!" she shouted back through pained cries from the hold. Eventually, she was able to shift her body just enough to give her opponent a good elbow on the side of the head which seemed to just be enough to get them to let go. However, Akemi was still in pain and wanted to get onto her feet as soon as possible, not thinking that her opponent had the same idea in mind and more.

When Akemi managed to to just get onto her feet, her the last thing she saw before her vision shifted to being thrown back hard enough for her body to bounce against the floor and flop over back onto her stomach were her opponent's feet as she was dropped kicked. "GYUH!"

She laid there for a while, writhing in pain while clutching onto her chest. She hadn't quite experienced a kick like that before so she wasn't going to recover from the move easily. Though she would slowly start to show signs of recovering after a bit if left alone.