Post by bigfan on Oct 31, 2016 22:21:27 GMT
The FAWNamania crowd were still settling back into their seats, most laden with snacks and drinks and settling in for the greatest night’s entertainment that most could possibly imagine. The buzz was gentle, but rose sharply when the lights dimmed and a spotlight picked out the tuxedo-clad announcer in the centre of the ring.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, the following match is the third and deciding match of a series and features two fighters recently graduating from our sister promotion, The Jungle!” The crowd gave a low pop. While a Jungle match was a long way from main event material, FAWN’s youtube channel had shared highlights of the two surprisingly intense matches leading up to this point, and most of the excited fans had at least some idea of who they were watching. “First, standing at five feet ten inches tall and weighing in tonight at 130lbs, hailing from Los Angeles, California, please welcome…ARIELLA CASTA!”
ARIELLA CASTA:
The FAWNtron cut to a sweltering beach scene as the opening panpipes of Shakira’s ‘Wherever Whenever’ announced the arrival of one of Miami’s lovliest exports. Ariella strutted out onto the FAWN stage as if she had never been away, her lovely tanned legs and hips gyrating to the Latin beat and a huge bright white smile plastered over her face. Behid the curtain Ariella had been feeling anxious. Not about the match (she’d already beaten the bitch once before after all), but about the huge step she was taking in her career. Any wrestler in North America regarded a Fawnamania appearance as the pinnacle of their careers, and it had taken seven years in the promotion to achieve hers...
But now that anxiety had all gone, melted away into joy by the explosion of fan noise which greeted her. For the biggest night of her life Ariella was again clad in a stunning royal blue two piece which highlighted her Cuban pride with stripes of red and white, and accented with pure white boots and pads. And it was clear from the audience reaction that they were happy to see her back and loving her choice of outfit, a chorus of wolf whistles joining the loud cheers from all sides.
Ariella waved, blew kisses, and posed for selfies with the crowd on either side of the ramp, her usual enthusiasm ramped up even higher as she entered her sport’s greatest stage for the first time. And while she took extra care to slap every outstretched hand around her, loving every second with the fans but seemingly looking for someone even more important within their ranks. The reason for this became clear as she reached the end of the ramp and gestured to one of her own Jungle fans bearing a sign which just read ‘ASTRID IS A SORE LOSER’. “This time she’s just going to be sore!” Ariella shouted down the camera. Point made, she offered a quick high five to the sign holder then dashed over to the ring and slid under the ropes, popping up quickly and busting out another big wave to all sides of the arena before moving towards her corner.
Her shoulders had just settled into the top buckle when the music cut off and the lights dimmed to twilight, while odd insectoid clicking noises emerged from the speakers. Heavy grey smoke began to pump into the entranceway, combining with the low light to obscure the view of even those audience members closest to the ramp. Hurriedly, the announcer raised the mic again; “And her opponent, weighing in at 139 lbs and standing at six feet and two inches in height, please welcome…the Stranger…ASTRID WHITE!”
ASTRID WHITE:
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A loud feminine gasp leaped out of the speakers, followed immediately with the droning bass and tom-tom of Radiohead’s ‘Climbing Up The Walls’. Astrid White’s long lean form slowly emerged from the receding smoke, the low lights making her seem impossibly tall. Then, in perfect time with the music, she stepped forward into a pure white spotlight. By now the fans could see a pair of loooong and creamy-white legs, feet covered with muay-thai boots which went up to the knee, and a good half-inch of derriere visible beneath the line of her black lycra shorts. But aside from a few glimpses of creamy, toned stomach and a white halter, Astrid’s upper body was entirely obscured by a dark leather jacket, its huge hood throwing all but the lower half of her face into shadow.
As her entrance music reached a chorus the Stranger paused, the visible lower half of her face spreading quickly into a megawatt smile, made all the more sinister by her obscured eyes. Previously Astrid had flashed this smile and then moved on, but tonight, in only her fourth televised match on the continent and at the centre of the biggest stage of them all, she seemed to savour the moment, hood shifting quickly to take in either side and that beaming smile spreading even wider than normal. Then, like a passing cloud, it was gone, replaced with the carefully neutral expression The stranger wore during most of her public appearances.
And now the tall girl’s pace quickened, approaching the ring at and moving toward the…
SMACK! As White ascended the first ring step, Ariella shot across the ring into a dead sprint and launched herself into a baseball slide which took the taller woman in the stomach and sent her to land hard on her butt beside the ring, jacket flapping open and hood falling back. With the lights still low there was little visibility for anyone, and within the few seconds it took the director to frantically scrabble the house lights back on Ariella had rolled out of the ring and dived full length at the Icelander, the combination of adrenaline form the atmosphere and anger from their previous contest making her reluctant to wait for the bell.
By the time the referee had made it over Ariella was glaring furiously down at the prone Stranger, using a handful of chestnut locks to control the other girl’s head while trying to smash the other arm into her face. Despite the speed of the attack Astrid was making things difficult for her, first bringing both arms quickly together to guard most of the blows and then crunching up her stomach and working those long legs into the gap between the two women’s bodies. Sensing that this could be dangerous, Casta briefly paused her assault and dropped her striking arm down to ward against a body scissor, but White had a different idea, simply planting her feet onto the other girl’s waist and pushing hard so that the two bodies finally slid apart.
Pleased with the exasperated look Ariella gave her as she slid away, Astrid popped her elbows open to give the Angelino a good view of her own face, and particularly the beaming smile plastered across it. Casta took a second to register this act of smugness and then tried to dive straight back in again only to have one long Icelandic leg pushed out in a grounded thrust kick which impacted hard into the tawny battler’s chest and rocked her back onto her haunches.
After a frantic thirty seconds the two grapplers finally had some space between them, and the referee quickly stepped into this gap and demanded that both girls get the hell back into the ring. Ariella was still feeding from a well of bottled up frustration after the treatment she got at the end of the last match, and this only increased as she watched Astrid rise fluidly to her feet and shake off her jacket without ever breaking eye contact, or that infuriating smile. Her whole body was itching to just dive straight back in and rip White’s face off, but the ref was now shouting pretty loudly and pretty close to her face.
Since she was a little girl Ariella had never been able to defy authority figures, something which every referee in the company knew very well. As such the stripes was completely confident in his request being obeyed and thus completely unprepared when Casta faked turning away, then spun back and reached round with a ringing SLAP which caught Astrid on the cheek and turned her head. She had almost muscled past the man to take a second shot before he recovered from the shock and again pushed his body in the way, finally causing the Latina to step back.
“Stand up and fight me, puta! Fight me face to face and I’ll rip yours right off!” Ariella had one more go at getting to the Icelander, who had turned back to face her and was still smiling, albeit in the coldest way imaginable. Then, finally acknowledging the referee’s authority, she stepped away rolled back into the ring. In fact she even backed off to the other side, leaning into a wrestler’s crouch and beckoning the taller girl to come and get her.
The delay in getting Ariella back in the ring meant that Astrid, standing silently at the bottom of the steps, had a good twenty seconds to regain any composure she might have lost after the blindside. She shook out her hair and snapped the waistband of her togs back into place before the ref started beckoning her into the ring, and even had time to raise one hand to her eye and flash her ‘A’ sigil towards the camera as she moved up the steps. Then once on the apron she made a great display of turning her back, deliberately providing another target to Ariella who immediately surged forward before being intercepted by the referee, before stepping through the strands and allowing the timekeeper to officially start the match.
Astrid had assumed that her hot-headed opponent would charge as soon as the bell rang, and she was proved correct when the Latina immediately hit a dead sprint in her direction, arms up for a collar and elbow. Astrid accepted this invitation but then didn’t seem to contest the clinch, just walking straight backwards with Ariella’s momentum to end up in the ropes. The ref, already busier than he would have liked to be at this point in a match, stepped in and demanded a break which White immediately provided by tucking one leg up and pushing her knee into the shorter girl’s abdomen. The push wasn’t painful for Ariella whatsoever, but the sudden pressure made her stumble back and once again left her frustratingly out of range and with the ref in her way.
This time, however, White didn’t prolong her annoyance, pushing straight back out from the ropes and ploughing into a second collar and elbow which moved both girls back to centre ring. Ariella immediately pushed back with all her strength and the two formed a brief still-life; arms locked, leg muscles straining, faces inches apart. “Who do you think you are, puta?” Ariella hissed from this close range. “Get your ass kicked then hit me from behind? That was a Bitch move. And I put bitches down.”
No verbal response was forthcoming from the Stranger, but Ariella felt the pressure against her changing direction, spinning them both until Astrid’s back was directly opposite the nearest corner. Then the Icelander just stopped pushing again, letting herself be walked backwards into the corner for the rope break. Ariella had had quite enough of foreplay by this point, and immediately broke the clinch to throw another slap which White smoothly ducked under and stepped around behind. Casta had a second to feel strong arms snaking around her waist and an uncomfortable closeness on her back, then she was popped up and over in a quick bridging German suplex.
Ariella’s neck and lower back impacted into the matt with a meaty THUD, and she instinctively brought her legs up to roll through the impact. But White’s arms were still locked tight around her waist and the tall girl had bridged up on her toes to leave Casta stacked on her shoulders. The ref quickly slid in for
ONE
TW
Ariella bicycled her legs to land on her side, immediately scrambling to her knees as Astrid rolled away. “What the f**k, puta?” she snarled, “you’re meant to be some sort of badass and now you’re trying to sneak one early?” Ariella was back to her feet by this point and was readying another charge when the Stranger broke her silence.
“The fact is that I simply don’t want to fight you any more, Ms Casta. You and I already know each other far better than most people will ever know anyone in their lives. I have to admit that the low blow was unexpected, but that aside the experience has been tediously predictable, and now I would like to be done. Frankly, I am as bored of you as the executives in this promotion seem to be.”
“BITCH!” Ariella had been angry before, now she was apoplectic with rage. She charged headlong at the smug bitch, throwing herself into a full length tackle which bore more resemblance to something seen on a football field than anything wrestling related. Unfortunately for her the rage made her intentions perfectly clear.
Any striker’s instinct would be to just bring up a foot or knee and bury it into the Latina’s onrushing head. But Astrid’s years of training had taught her that the top of the skull was the hardest part of a person’s body, so hitting it was unlikely to do much damage. As such she performed a neat pivot to take most of her body out of the way of the dive, using the angular momentum to drive an elbow down into the far more vulnerable back of Ariella’s head as she came past and following her down to complete a sort of augmented elbow drop onto her neck. The Latina crashed down head first, hurting from the bruising blow as well as the blood pounding in her ears, while Astrid stood back up from her knees and loomed over her.
“The problem is that while I have no enthusiasm for it, I still have to beat you.” Astrid continued her monologue calmly even as she fired off a short kick to Casta’s taut midsection. “FAWN has some of the best in the world and I want to get to know them. So I have to beat you again.” Another kick punctuated the speech, and Ariella rolled over to get away from her. “I’d like to do that as quickly as possible so we can both move on, but you seem very angry.”
Another kick, although this time Ariella had recovered enough to get her arm in the way. Astrid regarded this interestedly for a second, then reached down and grasped both hands around the offending wrist, quickly spinning and rolling back to lock in a simple but nastily effective armbar.
Despite being a little hurt from the elbows and kicks she’d accumulated over the last minute or two Ariella had far too much gas left in the tank to just let this happen to her. She very quickly powered her other arm up and over her body and reached out to grasp her captured hand, linking the two together to relieve a lot of the pressure. The Icelandic bitch still had one of her arms locked up but they were now in a bit of a stalemate, neither really in control of the other.
Astrid didn’t seem to be too bothered by this, and Casta quickly worked out why; whilst she was using a lot of energy to keep her hands locked together, her opponent just had to lie back and let gravity do her work. Astrid seemed to have gone silent again for the moment, so Ariella took an opportunity to respond whilst simultaneously reefing back with her free arm in an attempt to break free.
“I am angry, puta. Girls like you swan in here, handpicked by management, and just expect to roll over people who’ve earned far more.” Astrid’s grip didn’t seem to be shifting, so Ariella tried a new tactic, bringing her body around so her legs had leverage while also trying to distract her assailant.
“Then when one of you learns that girls like me are far better, stronger, and tougher than you realised, you have a hissy fit. You hit people when their back is turned like a little bitch. You start spouting excuses, and then you pretend you don’t care…” Ariella suddenly powered up through both legs, tipping both girls so that Astrid’s shoulders were pressed down to the matt with the weight of them both. The ref quickly slid in for:
ONE
TWO…
Astrid let go of her arm grip and kicked hard with her bent legs, sending Ariella rolling off her and into the safety of the ropes. The Latina slowly stood up, back to the strands, eyes locked on the white-clad bitch a few feet away. “You obviously do care or you wouldn’t be here, chica. A girl like you could be off being a model or a psychologist or whatever other freaky crap you’re into. But instead you’re here getting frustrated because a proper wrestler won’t lay down for you.”
Astrid’s eyes narrowed a little at this last comment, but Ariella was more concerned with her educated feet, one of which immediately snapped up into a low thrust kick. Casta had been expecting some sort of shot and managed to get her hands up to block, but she couldn’t help from stumbling back and into the ropes. This in turn rocked her forwards again, leaving no time to find her balance before White whipped her other leg up and landed another knee to her already hurting midsection.
Ariella doubled forward, throwing her arms up and managing to grasp a messy clinch around the taller girl’s neck. Immediately she pushed forward, powering through her legs to send the surprised Stranger into a backpedal which wasn’t quite coordinated enough to stop from tripping. Momentum suddenly on her side, Casta pushed off her feet and sent the two of them crashing down, Astrid landing on her back hard enough to drive all the breath from her lungs.
Now that she finally had the bitch within her grasp Ariella was determined to keep her there. Taking advantage of Astrid’s distractions he planted her knees either side of the Icelander and quickly shuffled up to a full mount. White growled and flexed her arms, but Ariella had been careful this time to make sure they were trapped securely under her shins, so she had no way to protect her face from…
WHAM! A hammerfist dropped out of the sky and smashed flush into Astrid’s cheek. Her faceslammed to the side, presenting an easy target for Ariella’s other hand to THUMP into. White’s head jarred against the matt, her eyes involuntarily closing from the sudden pain and arms flexing but still pinned by Ariella’s bodyweight as another fist THWAMMED into her temple. Thankfully for her the referee was alert, immediately warning the Latina about closed-fist shots although not before Casta fired off one last punch which connected squarely to the jaw.
Instead of protesting the ref’s call Ariella simply opened her hand and swung down again, delivering a powerful SLAP which swung White’s head around the other way. The blow clearly carried a lot of pent-up frustration but didn’t quite have the venom of her punches, which might be why Astrid was finally able to put up some resistance. Through her perch on the brunette’s chest Ariella could feel a shifting in her musculature and dropped her hands temporarily to retain her balance. But Astrid had a different kind of attack in mind, curling up her lower body to deliver a surprisingly effective knee to the blue-covered expanse of Casta’s upper back.
Ariella rocked forward with the momentum of the blow, lifting up into a high mount to prevent from toppling and allowing Astrid to squirm up a few feet to free her arms. But the brunette was still clearly feeling the effects of those hammerfists, a somewhat dazed look in her eyes and noticeable reddening and swelling already on her cheekbone. And she had only just gotten her arms free when Ariella reached down with a look of thunder her face and grabbed a handful of hair and another handful of her meshed halter top before starting to haul her up.
The top was sturdy enough to survive the expected jostling of a wrestling match but Astrid knew it had no chance of holding against her full weight. The Icelander seemed desperate to prevent it from ripping, ending up on her feet via a mad scramble and with a small chunk of hair sacrificed to Ariella’s vice-like grip. Casta brushed those chestnut strands off with a look of malevolent glee. “Feeling self-conscious about your top, puta? Then you really don’t belong here.”
Astrid’s eyes were cold fury, those expressive eyebrows narrowed to a glare. But she still had one hand checking her top and the other feeling for missing patches of hair, leaving her unable to respond when Ariella flicked up a quick toe kick which bent her at the waist. This presented her head as a target and Casta quickly took advantage, grasping two more handfuls of chestnut locks and then taking a second to gyrate her hips, salsa style, before kicking both legs out and dropping to her butt. White’s head came along for the ride, her face and upper body driven hard into the canvas courtesy of the Sitout Facebuster.
Another impact to her already hurting noggin was enough to keep Astrid down and motionless, her eyes unfocussed and blinking. Ariella, on the other hand, was riding a wave of adrenaline, her signature move feeding the crowd noise to its highest point of the night so far.
A few months ago Casta’s girlish excitement would have probably pushed her into doing something even more spectacular in response, but her last war against Astrid had been won because of a newfound discipline, and as such she did the sensible thing, which in this case was to just keep on hurting the icy bitch as much as possible.
But Ariella was still feeling hot with anger, and so decided that it was time to return a favour from earlier. As such she took another handful of white halter to pick Astrid up to her knees. Then she transferred both hands into a grip on Astrid’s near arm, smoothly snaked one leg over the shoulder so that the pit of her knee fitted into the pale hollow of the Icelander’s neck, then dropped harshly backwards again, leaning back as she did so to complete the augmented armbar known as the Triangle Lancer.
Astrid’s head was still full of fog from the multiple impacts, but she could feel a fire building in her shoulder as the Latina tried to separate the joints. And Ariella was quite happy to crow about it. “Aww, are you feeling a bit hazy, honey? Don’t worry, just a little more ass kicking and then we’ll put you to ARRRRGH BITCH!”
Eschewing the traditional way of defending an armbar, Astrid had instead decided to force a break through nastier means, working her free hand up under the legs running across her torso and digging four nails deep into the lighter-coloured flesh in the pit of the Latina’s knee. The immediate shock of pain wasn’t enough to get Ariella to let go, but it did give her some room to work as the blue-clad beauty wriggled those long legs and tried to escape the claw.
And Astrid used this space to great effect. Displaying a level of core strength and flexibility achieved only through years of yoga, the tall girl crunched up her midriff and brought both legs up and around, settling them down so that her creamy hamstrings framed Casta’s stunned face. She then proceeded to squeeze her legs together as hard as she could. The odd angle of this impromptu headscissors meant that’s he couldn’t get anything like full power, but the uncomfortable pressure was more than enough to get Ariella to release the trapped arm and put both her hands to work loosening the clamp.
Enclosed in darkness, Ariella had no way to see where her hands were going, so instead she moved by feel, running along the pale length of White’s thigh and then trying to work her hands into the clench. She felt an immediate lightening of the pressure, but also a shift from underneath; Astrid had apparently pushed out and up from under her legs. In fact the Stranger was now in a stance which no-one in the audience had seen before, her upper body in an almost yogic headstand position, legs at a right angle as she tried to crush Casta’s head like a nut.
The position didn’t seem to be sustainable for long, and so it proved when Ariella began to prise her hammy prison further and futher apart. In response Astrid began to push up on her arms, the motion bringing her feet back to the canvas so she ended up on her feet but bent double with Casta’s head and torso carried along for the ride. This standing reverse headscissor looked quite rprecarious given how hard Ariella was fighting, and so it proved when White abruptly snapped her legs open and her gasping prey fell back to the matt.
Ariella was certainly feeling uncomfortable after this experience but she also knew that she had six feet of angry Scandinavian standing over her, and that things could get a lot worse if she didn’t get out of the way. She scrambled over onto her knees and was halfway through rising when a strong hand reached into her hair and helped her the rest of the way. Casta quickly got both hands up to defend herself and glanced up. Astrid’s face was less than a foot away, a trickle of blood running down one swollen cheek and murder in her eyes.
Ariella’s instinct was to get upright and away as soon as possible, but on this occasion it betrayed her. She’d been so preoccupied with getting distance from Astrid that she’d failed to take account of her bearings in-ring, and as such a single unstable step took her into the ropes at an angle. White followed her and lashed up a lightning-fast side kick which CRASHED into her chest, standing her up straight.
Ariella knew that another kick would be following the first, those kick sequences were a core part of the Stranger’s arsenal in their last two matches. But the stumble into the ropes meant that she just didn’t have time to get her hands up as Astrid White’s black boot whipped up and caught her square on the point of her chin. Casta’s head rocked back and, with nowhere else to go, she toppled backwards over the ropes and into a headfirst tumble to the floor via the apron.
The crunch as Ariella landed on the back of her head was sickening, and there was a moment of sympathetic silence from the crowd and referee before both roared in shock. The stripes rushed over with a very concerned look before he remembered his professional expectations and started a count. Out on the floor Ariella was feeling like she’d just been hit by a truck, but she still had plenty of adrenaline in her system.
Hearing the ref count THREE was worrying for the Angelino, but she was far more concerned about whether or not her opponent was intending to capitalise on her vulnerable position. She was back up to her feet in an instant, spinning round and scouring the ring even as she felt a rush of dizziness from her quick ascent. The referee was there in the ring, still shouting about getting back inside, but there was a conspicuous absence of six-foot-tall Icelandic bitch. Casta had just begun to turn back when she felt those arms again wrapped around her waist.
This suplex had none of the technical flair of her last one, Astrid merely hauling up, falling back and letting go in a slightly sloppy release German. But this was no comfort to Ariella, who flew out of the taller girl’s grip and CRASHED headfirst into the barely padded crowd barricade behind them with an audible THUMP. The crowd ‘ooohed’ in sympathy as Casta came to a stop slumped on the floor, head lolling forward and eyes full of stars.
Moving quickly now, Astrid clambered to her feet, took a few steps back and then sprang forward, accelerating along the barricade into a low running knee which took Ariella in the temple and sent her into a woozy sprawl on the floor. By this point the referee’s count was beginning to sound urgent, so White stepped back to the apron and rolled into the ring. The ref bit down his shout of nineteen with an audible sigh of relief and moved away to start calling for Ariella, all of which was completely ignored by Astrid as she rolled straight back out again to continue the punishment.
Ariella had barely moved in the intervening seconds, although she’d managed to focus a somewhat vacant stare at the approaching Stranger. She even managed to reach out and swipe for the taller girl’s legs. Astrid stepped over the dropping to one knee and POUNDING a vicious short elbow into Ariella’s stomach.
“You think that everyone else has had it easy and that you’re somehow owed something, Ms Casta. It’s a depressingly common belief. I’m sure it helps you feel safe and warm at night, but it can’t help you here.”
Sprawled and aching, Ariella still a showed little sign of resistance or acknowledgement, but she had enough life to stay up when Astrid pulled her to vertical, one Icelandic hand buried in her hair, the other hooked threateningly around the waistband of her blue swimsuit bottoms. White pounded a short knee lift into the tawny girl’s gut and then used her twin handholds to push her into a stumbling run which ended a short distance away with another head-first collusion, this time with the outside of the ring post.
“We’re outside the ring, away from anything beautiful or technical. This is where you chose to start this match by attacking me. That might have been a mistake.” Astrid paced back as she spoke, then sprinted forward again, this time jumping slightly off one foot while the other swung up and SLAMMMED Ariella’s head into the steel ringpost in a brutal variation on the Yakuza kick Astrid called White Heat.
The crunching noise from the impact was enough to elicit a second of silence and then a roar of grudging ‘holy shit’-style respect from the audience members around the area, mixed with a healthy dose of concern for their girl Casta. Astrid paid no attention as usual, instead noticing that the referee had reached sixteen in his new count and was getting perilously close to calling the whole thing off, which really wouldn’t be the outcome she wanted. And the reproachful glares she kept getting from the man made her think that another in-out trip to reset the numbers wasn’t going to be enough.
Ariella had fallen in a boneless heap by the ringpost and needed an awful lot of ‘help’ from Astrid’s grip on her arms to even get to vertical. The insensate girl just about managed to hold her weight as White transferred her grip and pushed her messily under the bottom rope before sliding back in herself. Thankfully this meant that the ref had stopped shouting numbers at her, but he was now crouched over Casta with a worried expression.
Before Astrid had even finshed her first step towards the puddle of Cuba-American wreckage the referee had raised a hand to ward her off. “Back off right now, White” the man snarled, “I need to know if she can continue.” By this time the Stranger was standing above them both, but she did at least pause to give some semblance of respect to the man. And then she reached down and caught one of her own legs, looking for all the world like a runner stretching at the end of a marathon.
“I am sure she wants to continue.” Astrid had pulled her leg up and out further, now reaching another yoga pose, this one far more flamingo-like than the headstand she’d produced earlier. “She will continue, as soon as she has sufficient motivation.”
White pulled her leg up one last time, her boot sole now almost level with her head, then let go, the Arabesque kick delivering the toe of her boot with gravity-augmented force until SMECK! It collided with the brown expanse of skin over Ariella’s liver. Regardless of head trauma, Casta yowled in pain, body brought to life and writhing after the sickening shot.
All logic would dictate that the referee should have been pleased to learn that his charge was still conscious, but the red-faced man was now practically screaming in her face and threatening disqualification next time she disobeyed his instructions. Astrid accepted this in stony silence, the look on her face clearly telling the crowd that she had no interest whatsoever in what he was saying, but apparently wanting to give the illusion of politeness.
On the matt, Ariella could only just hear these shouts over the throbbing in her head. The pain of the liver shot had cut through most of the fog but replaced it with a sickening burn which hovered in her side, threatening to make her spill her lunch at any moment. At least the skinny bitch had kicked her when she wasn’t meant to, so she’d been given a little time to recover while the ref told her off.
Ariella quickly felt the inevitable hands in her hair again, but let herself go limp knowing that while White might be tall she’d have to use a lot of strength to lift dead weight. Astrid certainly seemed a little surprised at receiving no help to get Casta up, and there was no doubt that her skinny-strong frame had burned up a lot of energy in the last few minutes. As such she called an audible, abandoning her plan to go straight to her finisher and instead leaving Ariella to flop over the middle rope but keeping a firm grip on the dark hair next to the Latina’s scalp.
“The reason I don’t want to lose my top is because I’m a wrestler, Ms Casta, not a ‘Girl Gone Wild’.” Astrid’s usually flat voice changed significantly to pronounce the inverted commas, which perhaps suggested how she felt about said girls. “I had judged that you were of a similar disposition until you chose to kick me in the groin last month.”
The Stranger then reached down with her free hand and slightly repositioned the rope so that instead of running over Casta’s throat, it was directly level with her left eyesocket. And then she started pulling, draaaaagging Ariella’s pretty face along the rough length of thinly coated steel. The Latina immediately had both hands up and was frantically trying to push herself away from this torture, but White’s grip was iron and she had the leverage to keep going.
Boos poured down from all sides of the crowd, and the referee was immediately in her face shouting for a break. Astrid calmly ignored both, instead carrying on her conversation with the thrashing girl in her clutches. “Do you know how hard it was to even find a sparring partner to train for crotch shots? None of the women had experience and the men who showed interest were all perverts. The last month of training was the most unpleasant of my life.”
By this point the referee had managed to count to four, so Astrid released her hair hold. She kept her other hand tight on the rope though, standing up fast and yanking so that Ariella had one last unpleasant bump from the steel cable. The taller girl stepped away and ran a hand through her hair, still seemingly oblivious to the cacophony of anger raining down on her from the audience. Finally freed of her torture, Ariella staggered sideways to the nearby corner buckles, both hands rubbing at the nasty red marks around her eye.
“Ariella, are you ok?” The referee had physically stepped in this time, shielding Ariella in the corner, although she could see the beanpole bitch a few feet away smiling at her over his shoulder. For a second Ariella was tempted to lay into the harassed man about how he had let this happen to her, but looking into that smile she could only think of revenge. Hoping that her voice didn’t betray her pain, she croaked “I’m fine, get out of the way, “ and watched his concerned face nod and move back.
As soon as she saw the referee moving Astrid was running, coveringthe ground in a dead sprint and then jumping off one foot to deliver a second blast of White Heat to Ariella’s…
...the Cuban ducked out of the way at the very last possible second, leaving Astrid’s boot to fly harmlessly over the ring post. Her thigh was not so lucky, colliding hard with the top buckle as all of her built up momentum drove her body into the empty corner. White was left in an awkward-looking slump, her legs caught in a painful looking split as one caught up above the turnbuckle.
Nobody in the arena would have possibly begrudged Ariella some recovery time at this point, particularly as her opponent was mostly alternating between massaging her impacted thigh and trying inefficiently to extract her leg from its trap in the ropes. Casta did take a second to get unsteadily to her knees, but with her eye and her liver both still throbbing in pain she could think of nothing but a desperation to be done with this match.
As such she spun back in a kind of desperate frenzy, grasping at the back of White’s head and slamming her face-first into the buckle. A second, third, fourth, and even fifth head smash followed, by which time the referee was urgently demanding that she get out of the ropes. Ariella definitely agreed with this but decided to do it on her own terms.
Standing behind a groaning and stuck Stranger, Ariella reached her hands around her white-clad abdomen and linked them together, with the Icelander’s leg hooked inside the loop of her arms. Then she hauled her captive up, stepping abck as she did so, and dropped down to one knee, leaving the other posted so that Astrid’s tailbone came down hard upon it in a nasty version of an Inverted Atomic Drop.
Both of Astrid’s hands immediately went between her legs, her training apparently not helping to deal with the pain from the unorthodox slam. But Ariella, drawing on reserves of strength and adrenaline she didn’t know she had, maintained her grip around the Stranger’s ribs and leg, using the power of her own stems to get back to standing and then bridge up, over and back in a vicious reverse Fisherman’s Suplex.
The hooked leg meant that Astrid’s whole body was effectively packaged up through the move, and after impacting hard on the back of her head she concertinaed back open, coming to rest in a sweaty sprawl on her back. Ariella had so much adrenaline in her system by this point that she was barely aware of her previous aches, so she fairly bounded back to her feet and even gave the crowd a quick bicep flex in response to the deafening roar of their praise.
But Ariella had one more trick up her sleeve and she was determined to use it. Turning her back on the creamly pile of limbs that was all that remained of Astrid White, she dashed back to the corner and scrambled up the buckles. Then, pausing for a second in a crouch on the top rope to give a wordless yell which fired the crowd up even higher, she launched herself off into a twisting backflip which seemed to hang in the air for far longer than it should.
Then she SMASHED down, back first, onto the Stranger’s gulping tummy, the top-rope Double Helix finding its target perfectly. Astrid sat up a little as every breath of air was driven from her body, but the redlining Latina pushed her back down, hooked a leg and spread her tanned torso across the Icelander’s chest as she and the crowd counted together:
ONE
TWO
THRNOOOOOoooo
Astrid threw her far shoulder up at the last possible moment, flopping wetly back down and coughing as air flooded back into her compressed body. Ariella spun around to the ref, three fingers raised more in weary hope than expectation, but she still looked devastated when he responded with a shake of his head. The old, overexcitable Ariella would probably have given him a bit more argument after a 2.9 count like that but instead she remembered what had won her the last match and got right back onto her opponent.
For her part Astrid was just barely getting to all fours. This worked fine for Ariella, who stepped one leg over her exposed head and then chelnched those lovely tanned gams in tight. The Latina then reached down and caught Astrid’s long arms by the elbows, bringing them up into the double underhook position so that she was finally ready for the Dye Casta, the move which had finished the Icelander in their last match.
And Ariella couldn’t deny the pleasure she got from feeling White’s head once again trapped between her thighs, those long arms useless as she struggled against the inevitable. Winning a series against someone whom management had seen as a high value import would catapult Ariella Casta’s name back into the main roster like a rocket, and she couldn’t help but think of another lightweight title shot even as she bent her knees slightly and launched over into the final part of her finisher.
Underneath her however, Astrid wasn’t feeling nearly so certain about anything. She could remember being trapped in this position before, but last time it was after receiving her first ever low blow and with a lot more damage to her back. This time she had far more flexibility and power left in her core, and she used this to great effect.
As Ariella left her feet to start her somersault, Astrid poured her strength into her lower back, using this to stand up straight even while bearing the latina’s weight. This had a devastating effect on Casta, her beautiful somersault becoming a much higher and slower spin with no opponent to catch her.
To her credit Ariella managed to change her rotation mid-flight, landing uncomfortably on her knees instead of devastatingly on her back or face. The crowd gave a huge pop in response to this unexpected aerial prowess from their favourite, but the noise died in most throats when Astrid, now fully upright, turned around and CAROMED a sickening Buzzsaw Kick across the back of the kneeling Latina’s head.
Ariella’s visions of her name in lights had given way to nothing but stars as she fell forward after the vicious blow. As such she was pretty much defenceless as Astrid took a grasp of her shoulder and her blue bottoms and hauled her up to a woozy approximation of standing. Her predicament got even worse as White lowered one of her own shoulders, looped on arm around her leg and the other around her neck, and lifted her into a fireman’s carry before standing to full height.
Usually the Stranger would just drop an opponent immediately once she had them set up for her finisher, but on her first night in front of a lie FAWN audience Astrid took just a second, stepping two paces into the centre of the ring and turning to make sure the hard camera could see her face. Then she spun her torso slightly, lifting her burden up and over before sitting out hard. Ariella fell the full 6’2”, impacting onto the matt with her whole bodyweight over her head and neck courtesy of White’s ‘Fear Itself’ finisher.
And then her body slowly unwound, the ungodly impact spreading Ariella out on her back between Astrid’s spread legs, eyes closed. White regarded her for a second as if contemplating a pin which would surely be academic, but then she seemed to change her mind. Instead she scrambled around to a losoe seat on her stomach, looping one long pale leg across the tan hollow of Casta’s throat, then reaching down and lacing her hands into Ariella’s sweat-matted hair behind her head. Astrid smiled down for a second, then rolled over on her side, arms and legs suddenly tightening so she pulled Ariella’s head along for the ride to lock in her ‘Whiteout’ gogoplata finisher.
Casta’s dark eyes snapped open as her windpipe was constricted by the Icelander’s, but after one too many head traumas she seemed to have nothing left to combat this final hurt. One arm raised briefly, swinging a few ineffectual swipes into the expanse of Astrid’s back. But very quickly those eyesbegan to flutter and close, and the only visible movements were some shaking of her long legs she finally stretched out. Then even these were stilled.
The ref had been hovering concernedly since Astrid’s first finisher had hit home, and now the Icelander glanced up at him and nodded once, seeming to spur him to action. Following the time honoured way to check fro consciousness e reached down, raised one of the Angelino’s wrists and let it fall once…
…twice…
…and three times. Then he quickly stood up and waved urgently at the timekeeper. His bell rang out a moment later, and Astrid immediately released her hold, rolling on to her back to take in her win and hear the announcer’s words. “Ladies and gentlemen…your winner by way of KNOCKOUT…ASTRID WHITE!”
Astrid rolled up to her knees and lifted one hand to her face, fingers spread around her eye, the tilted ‘A’ sigil she liked to use accentuated by the prominent redness and swelling around her cheekbone. Then, looking pleased but tired, she kneewalked over to the corner where her jacket had been left and reached into its recesses.
The crowd shouted in urgency at the prospect of Astrid bringing some new weapon or torture implement into play post match, and the ref briefly paused his checking of Casta to flash her a wary glare. And then his look changed to one of surprise, eyes bulging, as White held up what turned out to be an old-fashioned tape Dictaphone and a small roll of electrical tape.
Having retrieved her prizes Astrid held out one hand to wordlessly demand a mic. This was initially met with no response from the ringside technicians, but after fixing one with a stare they scrambled around and managed to get one live microphone handed over.
White initially looked as though she was going to speak to the audience, which was something of a surprise as she had never uttered a word in public since her debut. But it turned out that she had other ideas, holding her mic next to the Dictaphone speaker and then wrapping tape around the two until she had jury-rigged it into a rudimentary PA system. Still ostensibly ignoring the ref, her slowly recovering opponent and the rest of the commotion around her, Astrid pressed the ‘playback’ button on her voice recorder and sat back cross-legged while the audience quietened down to hear.
The first few seconds of the tape were just static and record crackle, but then a quiet, high pitched but assertive voice (Astrid’s, although up until that point the audience had no idea what she sounded like) came through, sounding tinny through the underpowered Dictaphone speaker.
“In the dojos of Tokyo and Kyoto, new recruits are known as young lions. This is because young lions must stay as part of a pack, must wean and suckle and remain as just one of many in order to survive. So it is with a dojo. Younger fighters must stay together, must be generic, must show their command of the basics only, before they may be allowed to flourish.”
“A young lion must stay close to others until they are ready to live alone, hunt alone, and survive alone.” The voice paused, apparently for effect. “From this moment, the eyes of each of these people around me and all of FAWN will see a lioness, full grown and ready to hunt.”
Astrid’s own eyes had strayed to the entrance ramp as her voice had been played out, and she seemed to be expecting something, although quite what was unclear. Certainly the crowd seemed more confused than excited by this proclamation, and Ariella, being helped out of the arena by the medics and working hard not to cry in front of her still-loyal fans, did not look back.
White stayed motionless for a second, her face unreadable, before reaching down and pressing stop on her makeshift device. Then she pulled the two pieces of technology apart, swung the jacket smoothly over her shoulders, and stashed her voice recorder back into a pocket. Pausing for a few more seconds as if to make sure nothing else was going to happen, Astrid White dropped to roll out of the ring and walked calmly but somewhat gingerly off in the direction that her opponent had taken.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, the following match is the third and deciding match of a series and features two fighters recently graduating from our sister promotion, The Jungle!” The crowd gave a low pop. While a Jungle match was a long way from main event material, FAWN’s youtube channel had shared highlights of the two surprisingly intense matches leading up to this point, and most of the excited fans had at least some idea of who they were watching. “First, standing at five feet ten inches tall and weighing in tonight at 130lbs, hailing from Los Angeles, California, please welcome…ARIELLA CASTA!”
ARIELLA CASTA:
The FAWNtron cut to a sweltering beach scene as the opening panpipes of Shakira’s ‘Wherever Whenever’ announced the arrival of one of Miami’s lovliest exports. Ariella strutted out onto the FAWN stage as if she had never been away, her lovely tanned legs and hips gyrating to the Latin beat and a huge bright white smile plastered over her face. Behid the curtain Ariella had been feeling anxious. Not about the match (she’d already beaten the bitch once before after all), but about the huge step she was taking in her career. Any wrestler in North America regarded a Fawnamania appearance as the pinnacle of their careers, and it had taken seven years in the promotion to achieve hers...
But now that anxiety had all gone, melted away into joy by the explosion of fan noise which greeted her. For the biggest night of her life Ariella was again clad in a stunning royal blue two piece which highlighted her Cuban pride with stripes of red and white, and accented with pure white boots and pads. And it was clear from the audience reaction that they were happy to see her back and loving her choice of outfit, a chorus of wolf whistles joining the loud cheers from all sides.
Ariella waved, blew kisses, and posed for selfies with the crowd on either side of the ramp, her usual enthusiasm ramped up even higher as she entered her sport’s greatest stage for the first time. And while she took extra care to slap every outstretched hand around her, loving every second with the fans but seemingly looking for someone even more important within their ranks. The reason for this became clear as she reached the end of the ramp and gestured to one of her own Jungle fans bearing a sign which just read ‘ASTRID IS A SORE LOSER’. “This time she’s just going to be sore!” Ariella shouted down the camera. Point made, she offered a quick high five to the sign holder then dashed over to the ring and slid under the ropes, popping up quickly and busting out another big wave to all sides of the arena before moving towards her corner.
Her shoulders had just settled into the top buckle when the music cut off and the lights dimmed to twilight, while odd insectoid clicking noises emerged from the speakers. Heavy grey smoke began to pump into the entranceway, combining with the low light to obscure the view of even those audience members closest to the ramp. Hurriedly, the announcer raised the mic again; “And her opponent, weighing in at 139 lbs and standing at six feet and two inches in height, please welcome…the Stranger…ASTRID WHITE!”
ASTRID WHITE:
i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll185/bigfan877/Astrid%20White_zpsdrruvlwm.jpg
A loud feminine gasp leaped out of the speakers, followed immediately with the droning bass and tom-tom of Radiohead’s ‘Climbing Up The Walls’. Astrid White’s long lean form slowly emerged from the receding smoke, the low lights making her seem impossibly tall. Then, in perfect time with the music, she stepped forward into a pure white spotlight. By now the fans could see a pair of loooong and creamy-white legs, feet covered with muay-thai boots which went up to the knee, and a good half-inch of derriere visible beneath the line of her black lycra shorts. But aside from a few glimpses of creamy, toned stomach and a white halter, Astrid’s upper body was entirely obscured by a dark leather jacket, its huge hood throwing all but the lower half of her face into shadow.
As her entrance music reached a chorus the Stranger paused, the visible lower half of her face spreading quickly into a megawatt smile, made all the more sinister by her obscured eyes. Previously Astrid had flashed this smile and then moved on, but tonight, in only her fourth televised match on the continent and at the centre of the biggest stage of them all, she seemed to savour the moment, hood shifting quickly to take in either side and that beaming smile spreading even wider than normal. Then, like a passing cloud, it was gone, replaced with the carefully neutral expression The stranger wore during most of her public appearances.
And now the tall girl’s pace quickened, approaching the ring at and moving toward the…
SMACK! As White ascended the first ring step, Ariella shot across the ring into a dead sprint and launched herself into a baseball slide which took the taller woman in the stomach and sent her to land hard on her butt beside the ring, jacket flapping open and hood falling back. With the lights still low there was little visibility for anyone, and within the few seconds it took the director to frantically scrabble the house lights back on Ariella had rolled out of the ring and dived full length at the Icelander, the combination of adrenaline form the atmosphere and anger from their previous contest making her reluctant to wait for the bell.
By the time the referee had made it over Ariella was glaring furiously down at the prone Stranger, using a handful of chestnut locks to control the other girl’s head while trying to smash the other arm into her face. Despite the speed of the attack Astrid was making things difficult for her, first bringing both arms quickly together to guard most of the blows and then crunching up her stomach and working those long legs into the gap between the two women’s bodies. Sensing that this could be dangerous, Casta briefly paused her assault and dropped her striking arm down to ward against a body scissor, but White had a different idea, simply planting her feet onto the other girl’s waist and pushing hard so that the two bodies finally slid apart.
Pleased with the exasperated look Ariella gave her as she slid away, Astrid popped her elbows open to give the Angelino a good view of her own face, and particularly the beaming smile plastered across it. Casta took a second to register this act of smugness and then tried to dive straight back in again only to have one long Icelandic leg pushed out in a grounded thrust kick which impacted hard into the tawny battler’s chest and rocked her back onto her haunches.
After a frantic thirty seconds the two grapplers finally had some space between them, and the referee quickly stepped into this gap and demanded that both girls get the hell back into the ring. Ariella was still feeding from a well of bottled up frustration after the treatment she got at the end of the last match, and this only increased as she watched Astrid rise fluidly to her feet and shake off her jacket without ever breaking eye contact, or that infuriating smile. Her whole body was itching to just dive straight back in and rip White’s face off, but the ref was now shouting pretty loudly and pretty close to her face.
Since she was a little girl Ariella had never been able to defy authority figures, something which every referee in the company knew very well. As such the stripes was completely confident in his request being obeyed and thus completely unprepared when Casta faked turning away, then spun back and reached round with a ringing SLAP which caught Astrid on the cheek and turned her head. She had almost muscled past the man to take a second shot before he recovered from the shock and again pushed his body in the way, finally causing the Latina to step back.
“Stand up and fight me, puta! Fight me face to face and I’ll rip yours right off!” Ariella had one more go at getting to the Icelander, who had turned back to face her and was still smiling, albeit in the coldest way imaginable. Then, finally acknowledging the referee’s authority, she stepped away rolled back into the ring. In fact she even backed off to the other side, leaning into a wrestler’s crouch and beckoning the taller girl to come and get her.
The delay in getting Ariella back in the ring meant that Astrid, standing silently at the bottom of the steps, had a good twenty seconds to regain any composure she might have lost after the blindside. She shook out her hair and snapped the waistband of her togs back into place before the ref started beckoning her into the ring, and even had time to raise one hand to her eye and flash her ‘A’ sigil towards the camera as she moved up the steps. Then once on the apron she made a great display of turning her back, deliberately providing another target to Ariella who immediately surged forward before being intercepted by the referee, before stepping through the strands and allowing the timekeeper to officially start the match.
Astrid had assumed that her hot-headed opponent would charge as soon as the bell rang, and she was proved correct when the Latina immediately hit a dead sprint in her direction, arms up for a collar and elbow. Astrid accepted this invitation but then didn’t seem to contest the clinch, just walking straight backwards with Ariella’s momentum to end up in the ropes. The ref, already busier than he would have liked to be at this point in a match, stepped in and demanded a break which White immediately provided by tucking one leg up and pushing her knee into the shorter girl’s abdomen. The push wasn’t painful for Ariella whatsoever, but the sudden pressure made her stumble back and once again left her frustratingly out of range and with the ref in her way.
This time, however, White didn’t prolong her annoyance, pushing straight back out from the ropes and ploughing into a second collar and elbow which moved both girls back to centre ring. Ariella immediately pushed back with all her strength and the two formed a brief still-life; arms locked, leg muscles straining, faces inches apart. “Who do you think you are, puta?” Ariella hissed from this close range. “Get your ass kicked then hit me from behind? That was a Bitch move. And I put bitches down.”
No verbal response was forthcoming from the Stranger, but Ariella felt the pressure against her changing direction, spinning them both until Astrid’s back was directly opposite the nearest corner. Then the Icelander just stopped pushing again, letting herself be walked backwards into the corner for the rope break. Ariella had had quite enough of foreplay by this point, and immediately broke the clinch to throw another slap which White smoothly ducked under and stepped around behind. Casta had a second to feel strong arms snaking around her waist and an uncomfortable closeness on her back, then she was popped up and over in a quick bridging German suplex.
Ariella’s neck and lower back impacted into the matt with a meaty THUD, and she instinctively brought her legs up to roll through the impact. But White’s arms were still locked tight around her waist and the tall girl had bridged up on her toes to leave Casta stacked on her shoulders. The ref quickly slid in for
ONE
TW
Ariella bicycled her legs to land on her side, immediately scrambling to her knees as Astrid rolled away. “What the f**k, puta?” she snarled, “you’re meant to be some sort of badass and now you’re trying to sneak one early?” Ariella was back to her feet by this point and was readying another charge when the Stranger broke her silence.
“The fact is that I simply don’t want to fight you any more, Ms Casta. You and I already know each other far better than most people will ever know anyone in their lives. I have to admit that the low blow was unexpected, but that aside the experience has been tediously predictable, and now I would like to be done. Frankly, I am as bored of you as the executives in this promotion seem to be.”
“BITCH!” Ariella had been angry before, now she was apoplectic with rage. She charged headlong at the smug bitch, throwing herself into a full length tackle which bore more resemblance to something seen on a football field than anything wrestling related. Unfortunately for her the rage made her intentions perfectly clear.
Any striker’s instinct would be to just bring up a foot or knee and bury it into the Latina’s onrushing head. But Astrid’s years of training had taught her that the top of the skull was the hardest part of a person’s body, so hitting it was unlikely to do much damage. As such she performed a neat pivot to take most of her body out of the way of the dive, using the angular momentum to drive an elbow down into the far more vulnerable back of Ariella’s head as she came past and following her down to complete a sort of augmented elbow drop onto her neck. The Latina crashed down head first, hurting from the bruising blow as well as the blood pounding in her ears, while Astrid stood back up from her knees and loomed over her.
“The problem is that while I have no enthusiasm for it, I still have to beat you.” Astrid continued her monologue calmly even as she fired off a short kick to Casta’s taut midsection. “FAWN has some of the best in the world and I want to get to know them. So I have to beat you again.” Another kick punctuated the speech, and Ariella rolled over to get away from her. “I’d like to do that as quickly as possible so we can both move on, but you seem very angry.”
Another kick, although this time Ariella had recovered enough to get her arm in the way. Astrid regarded this interestedly for a second, then reached down and grasped both hands around the offending wrist, quickly spinning and rolling back to lock in a simple but nastily effective armbar.
Despite being a little hurt from the elbows and kicks she’d accumulated over the last minute or two Ariella had far too much gas left in the tank to just let this happen to her. She very quickly powered her other arm up and over her body and reached out to grasp her captured hand, linking the two together to relieve a lot of the pressure. The Icelandic bitch still had one of her arms locked up but they were now in a bit of a stalemate, neither really in control of the other.
Astrid didn’t seem to be too bothered by this, and Casta quickly worked out why; whilst she was using a lot of energy to keep her hands locked together, her opponent just had to lie back and let gravity do her work. Astrid seemed to have gone silent again for the moment, so Ariella took an opportunity to respond whilst simultaneously reefing back with her free arm in an attempt to break free.
“I am angry, puta. Girls like you swan in here, handpicked by management, and just expect to roll over people who’ve earned far more.” Astrid’s grip didn’t seem to be shifting, so Ariella tried a new tactic, bringing her body around so her legs had leverage while also trying to distract her assailant.
“Then when one of you learns that girls like me are far better, stronger, and tougher than you realised, you have a hissy fit. You hit people when their back is turned like a little bitch. You start spouting excuses, and then you pretend you don’t care…” Ariella suddenly powered up through both legs, tipping both girls so that Astrid’s shoulders were pressed down to the matt with the weight of them both. The ref quickly slid in for:
ONE
TWO…
Astrid let go of her arm grip and kicked hard with her bent legs, sending Ariella rolling off her and into the safety of the ropes. The Latina slowly stood up, back to the strands, eyes locked on the white-clad bitch a few feet away. “You obviously do care or you wouldn’t be here, chica. A girl like you could be off being a model or a psychologist or whatever other freaky crap you’re into. But instead you’re here getting frustrated because a proper wrestler won’t lay down for you.”
Astrid’s eyes narrowed a little at this last comment, but Ariella was more concerned with her educated feet, one of which immediately snapped up into a low thrust kick. Casta had been expecting some sort of shot and managed to get her hands up to block, but she couldn’t help from stumbling back and into the ropes. This in turn rocked her forwards again, leaving no time to find her balance before White whipped her other leg up and landed another knee to her already hurting midsection.
Ariella doubled forward, throwing her arms up and managing to grasp a messy clinch around the taller girl’s neck. Immediately she pushed forward, powering through her legs to send the surprised Stranger into a backpedal which wasn’t quite coordinated enough to stop from tripping. Momentum suddenly on her side, Casta pushed off her feet and sent the two of them crashing down, Astrid landing on her back hard enough to drive all the breath from her lungs.
Now that she finally had the bitch within her grasp Ariella was determined to keep her there. Taking advantage of Astrid’s distractions he planted her knees either side of the Icelander and quickly shuffled up to a full mount. White growled and flexed her arms, but Ariella had been careful this time to make sure they were trapped securely under her shins, so she had no way to protect her face from…
WHAM! A hammerfist dropped out of the sky and smashed flush into Astrid’s cheek. Her faceslammed to the side, presenting an easy target for Ariella’s other hand to THUMP into. White’s head jarred against the matt, her eyes involuntarily closing from the sudden pain and arms flexing but still pinned by Ariella’s bodyweight as another fist THWAMMED into her temple. Thankfully for her the referee was alert, immediately warning the Latina about closed-fist shots although not before Casta fired off one last punch which connected squarely to the jaw.
Instead of protesting the ref’s call Ariella simply opened her hand and swung down again, delivering a powerful SLAP which swung White’s head around the other way. The blow clearly carried a lot of pent-up frustration but didn’t quite have the venom of her punches, which might be why Astrid was finally able to put up some resistance. Through her perch on the brunette’s chest Ariella could feel a shifting in her musculature and dropped her hands temporarily to retain her balance. But Astrid had a different kind of attack in mind, curling up her lower body to deliver a surprisingly effective knee to the blue-covered expanse of Casta’s upper back.
Ariella rocked forward with the momentum of the blow, lifting up into a high mount to prevent from toppling and allowing Astrid to squirm up a few feet to free her arms. But the brunette was still clearly feeling the effects of those hammerfists, a somewhat dazed look in her eyes and noticeable reddening and swelling already on her cheekbone. And she had only just gotten her arms free when Ariella reached down with a look of thunder her face and grabbed a handful of hair and another handful of her meshed halter top before starting to haul her up.
The top was sturdy enough to survive the expected jostling of a wrestling match but Astrid knew it had no chance of holding against her full weight. The Icelander seemed desperate to prevent it from ripping, ending up on her feet via a mad scramble and with a small chunk of hair sacrificed to Ariella’s vice-like grip. Casta brushed those chestnut strands off with a look of malevolent glee. “Feeling self-conscious about your top, puta? Then you really don’t belong here.”
Astrid’s eyes were cold fury, those expressive eyebrows narrowed to a glare. But she still had one hand checking her top and the other feeling for missing patches of hair, leaving her unable to respond when Ariella flicked up a quick toe kick which bent her at the waist. This presented her head as a target and Casta quickly took advantage, grasping two more handfuls of chestnut locks and then taking a second to gyrate her hips, salsa style, before kicking both legs out and dropping to her butt. White’s head came along for the ride, her face and upper body driven hard into the canvas courtesy of the Sitout Facebuster.
Another impact to her already hurting noggin was enough to keep Astrid down and motionless, her eyes unfocussed and blinking. Ariella, on the other hand, was riding a wave of adrenaline, her signature move feeding the crowd noise to its highest point of the night so far.
A few months ago Casta’s girlish excitement would have probably pushed her into doing something even more spectacular in response, but her last war against Astrid had been won because of a newfound discipline, and as such she did the sensible thing, which in this case was to just keep on hurting the icy bitch as much as possible.
But Ariella was still feeling hot with anger, and so decided that it was time to return a favour from earlier. As such she took another handful of white halter to pick Astrid up to her knees. Then she transferred both hands into a grip on Astrid’s near arm, smoothly snaked one leg over the shoulder so that the pit of her knee fitted into the pale hollow of the Icelander’s neck, then dropped harshly backwards again, leaning back as she did so to complete the augmented armbar known as the Triangle Lancer.
Astrid’s head was still full of fog from the multiple impacts, but she could feel a fire building in her shoulder as the Latina tried to separate the joints. And Ariella was quite happy to crow about it. “Aww, are you feeling a bit hazy, honey? Don’t worry, just a little more ass kicking and then we’ll put you to ARRRRGH BITCH!”
Eschewing the traditional way of defending an armbar, Astrid had instead decided to force a break through nastier means, working her free hand up under the legs running across her torso and digging four nails deep into the lighter-coloured flesh in the pit of the Latina’s knee. The immediate shock of pain wasn’t enough to get Ariella to let go, but it did give her some room to work as the blue-clad beauty wriggled those long legs and tried to escape the claw.
And Astrid used this space to great effect. Displaying a level of core strength and flexibility achieved only through years of yoga, the tall girl crunched up her midriff and brought both legs up and around, settling them down so that her creamy hamstrings framed Casta’s stunned face. She then proceeded to squeeze her legs together as hard as she could. The odd angle of this impromptu headscissors meant that’s he couldn’t get anything like full power, but the uncomfortable pressure was more than enough to get Ariella to release the trapped arm and put both her hands to work loosening the clamp.
Enclosed in darkness, Ariella had no way to see where her hands were going, so instead she moved by feel, running along the pale length of White’s thigh and then trying to work her hands into the clench. She felt an immediate lightening of the pressure, but also a shift from underneath; Astrid had apparently pushed out and up from under her legs. In fact the Stranger was now in a stance which no-one in the audience had seen before, her upper body in an almost yogic headstand position, legs at a right angle as she tried to crush Casta’s head like a nut.
The position didn’t seem to be sustainable for long, and so it proved when Ariella began to prise her hammy prison further and futher apart. In response Astrid began to push up on her arms, the motion bringing her feet back to the canvas so she ended up on her feet but bent double with Casta’s head and torso carried along for the ride. This standing reverse headscissor looked quite rprecarious given how hard Ariella was fighting, and so it proved when White abruptly snapped her legs open and her gasping prey fell back to the matt.
Ariella was certainly feeling uncomfortable after this experience but she also knew that she had six feet of angry Scandinavian standing over her, and that things could get a lot worse if she didn’t get out of the way. She scrambled over onto her knees and was halfway through rising when a strong hand reached into her hair and helped her the rest of the way. Casta quickly got both hands up to defend herself and glanced up. Astrid’s face was less than a foot away, a trickle of blood running down one swollen cheek and murder in her eyes.
Ariella’s instinct was to get upright and away as soon as possible, but on this occasion it betrayed her. She’d been so preoccupied with getting distance from Astrid that she’d failed to take account of her bearings in-ring, and as such a single unstable step took her into the ropes at an angle. White followed her and lashed up a lightning-fast side kick which CRASHED into her chest, standing her up straight.
Ariella knew that another kick would be following the first, those kick sequences were a core part of the Stranger’s arsenal in their last two matches. But the stumble into the ropes meant that she just didn’t have time to get her hands up as Astrid White’s black boot whipped up and caught her square on the point of her chin. Casta’s head rocked back and, with nowhere else to go, she toppled backwards over the ropes and into a headfirst tumble to the floor via the apron.
The crunch as Ariella landed on the back of her head was sickening, and there was a moment of sympathetic silence from the crowd and referee before both roared in shock. The stripes rushed over with a very concerned look before he remembered his professional expectations and started a count. Out on the floor Ariella was feeling like she’d just been hit by a truck, but she still had plenty of adrenaline in her system.
Hearing the ref count THREE was worrying for the Angelino, but she was far more concerned about whether or not her opponent was intending to capitalise on her vulnerable position. She was back up to her feet in an instant, spinning round and scouring the ring even as she felt a rush of dizziness from her quick ascent. The referee was there in the ring, still shouting about getting back inside, but there was a conspicuous absence of six-foot-tall Icelandic bitch. Casta had just begun to turn back when she felt those arms again wrapped around her waist.
This suplex had none of the technical flair of her last one, Astrid merely hauling up, falling back and letting go in a slightly sloppy release German. But this was no comfort to Ariella, who flew out of the taller girl’s grip and CRASHED headfirst into the barely padded crowd barricade behind them with an audible THUMP. The crowd ‘ooohed’ in sympathy as Casta came to a stop slumped on the floor, head lolling forward and eyes full of stars.
Moving quickly now, Astrid clambered to her feet, took a few steps back and then sprang forward, accelerating along the barricade into a low running knee which took Ariella in the temple and sent her into a woozy sprawl on the floor. By this point the referee’s count was beginning to sound urgent, so White stepped back to the apron and rolled into the ring. The ref bit down his shout of nineteen with an audible sigh of relief and moved away to start calling for Ariella, all of which was completely ignored by Astrid as she rolled straight back out again to continue the punishment.
Ariella had barely moved in the intervening seconds, although she’d managed to focus a somewhat vacant stare at the approaching Stranger. She even managed to reach out and swipe for the taller girl’s legs. Astrid stepped over the dropping to one knee and POUNDING a vicious short elbow into Ariella’s stomach.
“You think that everyone else has had it easy and that you’re somehow owed something, Ms Casta. It’s a depressingly common belief. I’m sure it helps you feel safe and warm at night, but it can’t help you here.”
Sprawled and aching, Ariella still a showed little sign of resistance or acknowledgement, but she had enough life to stay up when Astrid pulled her to vertical, one Icelandic hand buried in her hair, the other hooked threateningly around the waistband of her blue swimsuit bottoms. White pounded a short knee lift into the tawny girl’s gut and then used her twin handholds to push her into a stumbling run which ended a short distance away with another head-first collusion, this time with the outside of the ring post.
“We’re outside the ring, away from anything beautiful or technical. This is where you chose to start this match by attacking me. That might have been a mistake.” Astrid paced back as she spoke, then sprinted forward again, this time jumping slightly off one foot while the other swung up and SLAMMMED Ariella’s head into the steel ringpost in a brutal variation on the Yakuza kick Astrid called White Heat.
The crunching noise from the impact was enough to elicit a second of silence and then a roar of grudging ‘holy shit’-style respect from the audience members around the area, mixed with a healthy dose of concern for their girl Casta. Astrid paid no attention as usual, instead noticing that the referee had reached sixteen in his new count and was getting perilously close to calling the whole thing off, which really wouldn’t be the outcome she wanted. And the reproachful glares she kept getting from the man made her think that another in-out trip to reset the numbers wasn’t going to be enough.
Ariella had fallen in a boneless heap by the ringpost and needed an awful lot of ‘help’ from Astrid’s grip on her arms to even get to vertical. The insensate girl just about managed to hold her weight as White transferred her grip and pushed her messily under the bottom rope before sliding back in herself. Thankfully this meant that the ref had stopped shouting numbers at her, but he was now crouched over Casta with a worried expression.
Before Astrid had even finshed her first step towards the puddle of Cuba-American wreckage the referee had raised a hand to ward her off. “Back off right now, White” the man snarled, “I need to know if she can continue.” By this time the Stranger was standing above them both, but she did at least pause to give some semblance of respect to the man. And then she reached down and caught one of her own legs, looking for all the world like a runner stretching at the end of a marathon.
“I am sure she wants to continue.” Astrid had pulled her leg up and out further, now reaching another yoga pose, this one far more flamingo-like than the headstand she’d produced earlier. “She will continue, as soon as she has sufficient motivation.”
White pulled her leg up one last time, her boot sole now almost level with her head, then let go, the Arabesque kick delivering the toe of her boot with gravity-augmented force until SMECK! It collided with the brown expanse of skin over Ariella’s liver. Regardless of head trauma, Casta yowled in pain, body brought to life and writhing after the sickening shot.
All logic would dictate that the referee should have been pleased to learn that his charge was still conscious, but the red-faced man was now practically screaming in her face and threatening disqualification next time she disobeyed his instructions. Astrid accepted this in stony silence, the look on her face clearly telling the crowd that she had no interest whatsoever in what he was saying, but apparently wanting to give the illusion of politeness.
On the matt, Ariella could only just hear these shouts over the throbbing in her head. The pain of the liver shot had cut through most of the fog but replaced it with a sickening burn which hovered in her side, threatening to make her spill her lunch at any moment. At least the skinny bitch had kicked her when she wasn’t meant to, so she’d been given a little time to recover while the ref told her off.
Ariella quickly felt the inevitable hands in her hair again, but let herself go limp knowing that while White might be tall she’d have to use a lot of strength to lift dead weight. Astrid certainly seemed a little surprised at receiving no help to get Casta up, and there was no doubt that her skinny-strong frame had burned up a lot of energy in the last few minutes. As such she called an audible, abandoning her plan to go straight to her finisher and instead leaving Ariella to flop over the middle rope but keeping a firm grip on the dark hair next to the Latina’s scalp.
“The reason I don’t want to lose my top is because I’m a wrestler, Ms Casta, not a ‘Girl Gone Wild’.” Astrid’s usually flat voice changed significantly to pronounce the inverted commas, which perhaps suggested how she felt about said girls. “I had judged that you were of a similar disposition until you chose to kick me in the groin last month.”
The Stranger then reached down with her free hand and slightly repositioned the rope so that instead of running over Casta’s throat, it was directly level with her left eyesocket. And then she started pulling, draaaaagging Ariella’s pretty face along the rough length of thinly coated steel. The Latina immediately had both hands up and was frantically trying to push herself away from this torture, but White’s grip was iron and she had the leverage to keep going.
Boos poured down from all sides of the crowd, and the referee was immediately in her face shouting for a break. Astrid calmly ignored both, instead carrying on her conversation with the thrashing girl in her clutches. “Do you know how hard it was to even find a sparring partner to train for crotch shots? None of the women had experience and the men who showed interest were all perverts. The last month of training was the most unpleasant of my life.”
By this point the referee had managed to count to four, so Astrid released her hair hold. She kept her other hand tight on the rope though, standing up fast and yanking so that Ariella had one last unpleasant bump from the steel cable. The taller girl stepped away and ran a hand through her hair, still seemingly oblivious to the cacophony of anger raining down on her from the audience. Finally freed of her torture, Ariella staggered sideways to the nearby corner buckles, both hands rubbing at the nasty red marks around her eye.
“Ariella, are you ok?” The referee had physically stepped in this time, shielding Ariella in the corner, although she could see the beanpole bitch a few feet away smiling at her over his shoulder. For a second Ariella was tempted to lay into the harassed man about how he had let this happen to her, but looking into that smile she could only think of revenge. Hoping that her voice didn’t betray her pain, she croaked “I’m fine, get out of the way, “ and watched his concerned face nod and move back.
As soon as she saw the referee moving Astrid was running, coveringthe ground in a dead sprint and then jumping off one foot to deliver a second blast of White Heat to Ariella’s…
...the Cuban ducked out of the way at the very last possible second, leaving Astrid’s boot to fly harmlessly over the ring post. Her thigh was not so lucky, colliding hard with the top buckle as all of her built up momentum drove her body into the empty corner. White was left in an awkward-looking slump, her legs caught in a painful looking split as one caught up above the turnbuckle.
Nobody in the arena would have possibly begrudged Ariella some recovery time at this point, particularly as her opponent was mostly alternating between massaging her impacted thigh and trying inefficiently to extract her leg from its trap in the ropes. Casta did take a second to get unsteadily to her knees, but with her eye and her liver both still throbbing in pain she could think of nothing but a desperation to be done with this match.
As such she spun back in a kind of desperate frenzy, grasping at the back of White’s head and slamming her face-first into the buckle. A second, third, fourth, and even fifth head smash followed, by which time the referee was urgently demanding that she get out of the ropes. Ariella definitely agreed with this but decided to do it on her own terms.
Standing behind a groaning and stuck Stranger, Ariella reached her hands around her white-clad abdomen and linked them together, with the Icelander’s leg hooked inside the loop of her arms. Then she hauled her captive up, stepping abck as she did so, and dropped down to one knee, leaving the other posted so that Astrid’s tailbone came down hard upon it in a nasty version of an Inverted Atomic Drop.
Both of Astrid’s hands immediately went between her legs, her training apparently not helping to deal with the pain from the unorthodox slam. But Ariella, drawing on reserves of strength and adrenaline she didn’t know she had, maintained her grip around the Stranger’s ribs and leg, using the power of her own stems to get back to standing and then bridge up, over and back in a vicious reverse Fisherman’s Suplex.
The hooked leg meant that Astrid’s whole body was effectively packaged up through the move, and after impacting hard on the back of her head she concertinaed back open, coming to rest in a sweaty sprawl on her back. Ariella had so much adrenaline in her system by this point that she was barely aware of her previous aches, so she fairly bounded back to her feet and even gave the crowd a quick bicep flex in response to the deafening roar of their praise.
But Ariella had one more trick up her sleeve and she was determined to use it. Turning her back on the creamly pile of limbs that was all that remained of Astrid White, she dashed back to the corner and scrambled up the buckles. Then, pausing for a second in a crouch on the top rope to give a wordless yell which fired the crowd up even higher, she launched herself off into a twisting backflip which seemed to hang in the air for far longer than it should.
Then she SMASHED down, back first, onto the Stranger’s gulping tummy, the top-rope Double Helix finding its target perfectly. Astrid sat up a little as every breath of air was driven from her body, but the redlining Latina pushed her back down, hooked a leg and spread her tanned torso across the Icelander’s chest as she and the crowd counted together:
ONE
TWO
THRNOOOOOoooo
Astrid threw her far shoulder up at the last possible moment, flopping wetly back down and coughing as air flooded back into her compressed body. Ariella spun around to the ref, three fingers raised more in weary hope than expectation, but she still looked devastated when he responded with a shake of his head. The old, overexcitable Ariella would probably have given him a bit more argument after a 2.9 count like that but instead she remembered what had won her the last match and got right back onto her opponent.
For her part Astrid was just barely getting to all fours. This worked fine for Ariella, who stepped one leg over her exposed head and then chelnched those lovely tanned gams in tight. The Latina then reached down and caught Astrid’s long arms by the elbows, bringing them up into the double underhook position so that she was finally ready for the Dye Casta, the move which had finished the Icelander in their last match.
And Ariella couldn’t deny the pleasure she got from feeling White’s head once again trapped between her thighs, those long arms useless as she struggled against the inevitable. Winning a series against someone whom management had seen as a high value import would catapult Ariella Casta’s name back into the main roster like a rocket, and she couldn’t help but think of another lightweight title shot even as she bent her knees slightly and launched over into the final part of her finisher.
Underneath her however, Astrid wasn’t feeling nearly so certain about anything. She could remember being trapped in this position before, but last time it was after receiving her first ever low blow and with a lot more damage to her back. This time she had far more flexibility and power left in her core, and she used this to great effect.
As Ariella left her feet to start her somersault, Astrid poured her strength into her lower back, using this to stand up straight even while bearing the latina’s weight. This had a devastating effect on Casta, her beautiful somersault becoming a much higher and slower spin with no opponent to catch her.
To her credit Ariella managed to change her rotation mid-flight, landing uncomfortably on her knees instead of devastatingly on her back or face. The crowd gave a huge pop in response to this unexpected aerial prowess from their favourite, but the noise died in most throats when Astrid, now fully upright, turned around and CAROMED a sickening Buzzsaw Kick across the back of the kneeling Latina’s head.
Ariella’s visions of her name in lights had given way to nothing but stars as she fell forward after the vicious blow. As such she was pretty much defenceless as Astrid took a grasp of her shoulder and her blue bottoms and hauled her up to a woozy approximation of standing. Her predicament got even worse as White lowered one of her own shoulders, looped on arm around her leg and the other around her neck, and lifted her into a fireman’s carry before standing to full height.
Usually the Stranger would just drop an opponent immediately once she had them set up for her finisher, but on her first night in front of a lie FAWN audience Astrid took just a second, stepping two paces into the centre of the ring and turning to make sure the hard camera could see her face. Then she spun her torso slightly, lifting her burden up and over before sitting out hard. Ariella fell the full 6’2”, impacting onto the matt with her whole bodyweight over her head and neck courtesy of White’s ‘Fear Itself’ finisher.
And then her body slowly unwound, the ungodly impact spreading Ariella out on her back between Astrid’s spread legs, eyes closed. White regarded her for a second as if contemplating a pin which would surely be academic, but then she seemed to change her mind. Instead she scrambled around to a losoe seat on her stomach, looping one long pale leg across the tan hollow of Casta’s throat, then reaching down and lacing her hands into Ariella’s sweat-matted hair behind her head. Astrid smiled down for a second, then rolled over on her side, arms and legs suddenly tightening so she pulled Ariella’s head along for the ride to lock in her ‘Whiteout’ gogoplata finisher.
Casta’s dark eyes snapped open as her windpipe was constricted by the Icelander’s, but after one too many head traumas she seemed to have nothing left to combat this final hurt. One arm raised briefly, swinging a few ineffectual swipes into the expanse of Astrid’s back. But very quickly those eyesbegan to flutter and close, and the only visible movements were some shaking of her long legs she finally stretched out. Then even these were stilled.
The ref had been hovering concernedly since Astrid’s first finisher had hit home, and now the Icelander glanced up at him and nodded once, seeming to spur him to action. Following the time honoured way to check fro consciousness e reached down, raised one of the Angelino’s wrists and let it fall once…
…twice…
…and three times. Then he quickly stood up and waved urgently at the timekeeper. His bell rang out a moment later, and Astrid immediately released her hold, rolling on to her back to take in her win and hear the announcer’s words. “Ladies and gentlemen…your winner by way of KNOCKOUT…ASTRID WHITE!”
Astrid rolled up to her knees and lifted one hand to her face, fingers spread around her eye, the tilted ‘A’ sigil she liked to use accentuated by the prominent redness and swelling around her cheekbone. Then, looking pleased but tired, she kneewalked over to the corner where her jacket had been left and reached into its recesses.
The crowd shouted in urgency at the prospect of Astrid bringing some new weapon or torture implement into play post match, and the ref briefly paused his checking of Casta to flash her a wary glare. And then his look changed to one of surprise, eyes bulging, as White held up what turned out to be an old-fashioned tape Dictaphone and a small roll of electrical tape.
Having retrieved her prizes Astrid held out one hand to wordlessly demand a mic. This was initially met with no response from the ringside technicians, but after fixing one with a stare they scrambled around and managed to get one live microphone handed over.
White initially looked as though she was going to speak to the audience, which was something of a surprise as she had never uttered a word in public since her debut. But it turned out that she had other ideas, holding her mic next to the Dictaphone speaker and then wrapping tape around the two until she had jury-rigged it into a rudimentary PA system. Still ostensibly ignoring the ref, her slowly recovering opponent and the rest of the commotion around her, Astrid pressed the ‘playback’ button on her voice recorder and sat back cross-legged while the audience quietened down to hear.
The first few seconds of the tape were just static and record crackle, but then a quiet, high pitched but assertive voice (Astrid’s, although up until that point the audience had no idea what she sounded like) came through, sounding tinny through the underpowered Dictaphone speaker.
“In the dojos of Tokyo and Kyoto, new recruits are known as young lions. This is because young lions must stay as part of a pack, must wean and suckle and remain as just one of many in order to survive. So it is with a dojo. Younger fighters must stay together, must be generic, must show their command of the basics only, before they may be allowed to flourish.”
“A young lion must stay close to others until they are ready to live alone, hunt alone, and survive alone.” The voice paused, apparently for effect. “From this moment, the eyes of each of these people around me and all of FAWN will see a lioness, full grown and ready to hunt.”
Astrid’s own eyes had strayed to the entrance ramp as her voice had been played out, and she seemed to be expecting something, although quite what was unclear. Certainly the crowd seemed more confused than excited by this proclamation, and Ariella, being helped out of the arena by the medics and working hard not to cry in front of her still-loyal fans, did not look back.
White stayed motionless for a second, her face unreadable, before reaching down and pressing stop on her makeshift device. Then she pulled the two pieces of technology apart, swung the jacket smoothly over her shoulders, and stashed her voice recorder back into a pocket. Pausing for a few more seconds as if to make sure nothing else was going to happen, Astrid White dropped to roll out of the ring and walked calmly but somewhat gingerly off in the direction that her opponent had taken.