Dark Angel vs Cassie Elliot

Cassie screamed again, and this time she couldn't stay as quiet. She had the presence of mind to roll away toward the middle of the ring and ended up on her knees, with her upper body folded over and her forehead on the mat.

Everything just hurt so much! She was still dazed, her head throbbed, and she hugged both of her hurt arms against her chest, waiting for the splitting pain to subside so she could try moving them again. This couldn't go on for much longer. It shouldn't have gone on at all! What kind of a person does this?

Suddenly she had a burning need to find out what was under that mask. She turned her head to glare at Dark Angel, her mascara slightly smudged from the tears that had welled up in her eyes.

As Angel finished smashing both of Cassie's arms into the steel post, the orange haired girl retreated to the center of the ring. She could have kept going until one of the arms broke, but that would have gotten boring. For the crowd of course. She enjoyed every second of it while it lasted. "Seven!" Angel jumped to the side of the ring and yelled, "Oh, shut the FUCK up!" at the referee who just recoiled backwards before shaking her head and threatening to disqualify her. As Angel slid between bottom and middle ropes she just shook her head right back at the referee girl. Whatever. Like a predator stalking its prey, she circled around Cassie as she laid on her knees in the middle of the ring.

She waited for Cassie to get up, knowing full well how difficult it'd be for the girl to do so in the state she was in. She just wanted to see her try. But it didn't matter. Cassie turned her head to glare at Angel with tears in her eyes, and that alone ended the masked girl's patience. She couldn't have Cassie glaring, that meant she wasn't in enough pain yet. "Had enough yet?" Angel shouted down at the orange-haired girl. She ran up to her and kicked her in the side as if she was kicking a soccer ball out from underneath her...except the soccer ball was Cassie's lower ribs.

Cassie clenched her jaw shut and said nothing. She had nothing to say. She knew now that her opponent was crazy, and that she had no interest in "competition". She only wanted to hurt her, and she probably wasn't alone. Cassie wondered how many people there were like that in AFW. How many of them got away with it.

She was breathing hard while she picked herself up so that she was kneeling on the mat and sitting back, the balls of her feet planted on the mat under her butt. She kept her big green eyes locked on Angel. She didn't have it in her to get out of the way of her kick, and when it came she braced herself. She ate it, the toe of Angel's black boot digging into her ribs so hard it made her want to wretch. She buckled, but she had timed the kick and threw both of her arms around it when it came.

She threw herself forward, hugging Angel's leg as tightly as she could and using no real technique beyond her intuition. She was determined to put her down on the mat, and when she got her there she would regret every moment she spent prolonging the match.

Angel's kick connected right into Cassie's side brutally. She knew it was coming, as the girl didn't even try to move out of the way. She wasn't sure if Cassie couldn't move or had just given up resisting entirely. It turned out to be neither. Angel's foot never came back to her. Cassie had wrapped her arms around her leg and charged forward with it. It had caught her completely off guard and the girl immediately tripped over and down to the mat. She landed awkwardly on her shoulder and grunted in pain. But it wasn't that bad. At the very least it was nothing compared to what she had already put Cassie through. She looked down at her feet to see what the orange-haired girl was up to but really couldn't care less.

From her back and using her hands as balance, Angel kicked with her free leg at Cassie's head hoping to re-hit that spot she had softened with the steel pipe earlier. That had to have left a mark underneath Cassie's orange hair, and Angel had every intention of making her feel it.

Cassie narrowly ducked her head under Angel's kick and stood up. She whipped Angel's leg to the side and stepped over it to turn her forcibly onto her stomach. She trapped her ankle between her legs so that her leg was folded up behind her and laid down across her back, lacing her fingers under her chin for an STF. She'd seen them done, but never attempted one, though you would never be able to tell from the speed and precision with which she applied it.

She glanced quickly around for the ropes, and they weren't far from them, so she didn't have and time to waste. She cranked back on Angel's neck. Her arms ached from damage and exhaustion. She was tired and sweating and breathing heavily, but she pulled back with everything she had, her head thrown back, eyes shut, teeth clenched, and her body straining to force a submission out of this horrible girl before she could claw her way to the ropes.

Angel was even more surprised by Cassie's lightning reaction into the submission than she was about catching her leg in the first place. "What the fuck-" she barely even finished the phrase before Cassie pulled back on Angel's neck. The masked girl's hands grabbed hold of Cassie's in front of her chin to try and relieve the pressure. This was completely out of nowhere, Angel was still in shock by what the girl had pulled off to logically think of a way out of it. Suddenly the crowd was cheering for Cassie and everything was going the other way.

Angel groaned in pain but it quickly escalated into screaming. As confident as she had been, her neck still hurt from that first hold Cassie had trapped her in. And as much as Angel had hurt Cassie, the girl's ability to cause pain didn't seem at all lessened. If anything, Cassie had even more fire in her than before. Angel really thought she had broken the girl's spirit, she knew what Cassie was like anyways. Always expecting the best in everyone. This defiant, resilient girl that had her screaming yet again wasn't what she expected.

Somehow through the pain, Angel managed to catch a glimpse of the nearby ropes. It was the only salvation in sight. She managed to suppress the urge to try and pull against Cassie's hands and smacked her fist into the mat. She pulled with all her might to drag the two closer to the ropes. She did this over and over again, inch by inch. Every time they moved closer, though, Angel felt even more pain. Not resisting the hold only made it hurt that much more. Finally, though, after what felt like a year, the masked girl was in reach of the ropes. She swung her arm, only just grazing the rope twice before finally managing to grab it the third attempt. "Get her off-GET HER OFF!!!" she screamed at the referee, tearing up from the pain.

"No..." Cassie moaned.

She wanted to cry. She didn't have anything left, and she couldn't count on being able to keep catching Dark Angel in surprise submissions. She needed to put her down for good, and she had to do it now.

She slowly and laboriously worked her way back up to her feet and paced over to the corner. She slipped under the middle rope and climbed up the turnbuckles from the outside, facing Angel, and then waited. She waited for her to get back up, and then leapt off, lining up a dropkick aimed for her head.

Angel gasped for air as Cassie released her. As if fearing what could happen next, the masked girl huddled into a ball so all her limbs were tightly together. She really didn't want Cassie doing something like that again, even if she was next to the ropes. Slowly, Angel forced herself to her knees. She didn't want to turn around to look at Cassie. As necessary as it was, her neck was hurting so much at this point that she was afraid it was sprained or something. Cassie must have given up, as Angel had more than ample time to finally get to her feet without her interruption.

Or so she thought. Just as she turned around, her eyes widened as she saw Cassie flying through the air at her. But that was her old move. Angel knew it too well. Everything about it. At the last second, Angel rolled directly toward Cassie to dodge underneath the dropkick at the last second. As if finally using Cassie's own lightning reflexes against her, Angel's roll ended with her back on her feet and already getting into form for what came next. Without even looking to see where Cassie fell, Angel spun herself around in a roundhouse kick. She aimed high in hopes of hitting Cassie in the back of the head, but the move was executed so fast that she wasn't sure what she would hit.

Cassie hit the mat hard. She turned to land on her stomach, but without knee or elbow pads the impact hurt, and she rebounded back up off the mat for a moment before falling again. Her arms were almost useless from the pain.

She summoned the will to get up again, if only out of fear of what Dark Angel might do next, and was still on her way up when she saw the incoming kick. She quickly dropped back down and the kick whooshed over her head, the momentum of it carrying Angel around so that Cassie was almost at her back.

She lunged in, put her feet behind Angel's and slipped an arm between her legs to wrap it around one of her thighs. She rolled back, tripping Angel and rolling her up in a tight pin. She put all of her weight on top of the backs of the girls thighs as she was folded in half, and prayed for enough time.

The ref was more than happy to count it.

"One!"

Angel's kick was furious. She was getting frustrated. Why couldn't Cassie just stay down, it'd be easier for both of them that way. Then again, Angel had to learn that fact the hard way. Not giving up when she should have had caused her catastrophic pain in the past. So in a way, she'd be doing Cassie a favor by teaching her that fact of the AFW. If she could hit her, that is. Angel's foot flew right over Cassie, casually cutting through the air as if that was her intention from the start.

As Angel swung back around though, she stumbled forward off balance. She hadn't expected Cassie to dodge the kick entirely. Before she even had a chance to stand up straight, she fell backwards and to the mat. Unsure what had happened, the masked girl just assumed she had tripped over Cassie. Then she heard "One!" and realized something was very, very wrong. Oh god no. The orange-haired girl's weight was all on her thighs. She felt like Cassie's energy was ridiculous, how could she keep going like this? "Two!" But there was no time to think about this. Angel bent her legs down as far as she could while grabbing onto the girl's arm.

Then, with all her strength, Talia kicked upward with all her strength. Her body unfolded all at once to break the fall but it wasn't just about that. She held tightly onto Cassie's arm as she kicked out of the pin. As her body rolled to the side, she tried to trap her arm between her legs in some form of scissors to keep Cassie from staying so mobile. She was getting dizzy from all these sudden motions, and needed it all to slow down for a minute.