Trudy Rae Calder vs Katsumi Oshiro - "Riot at the Rodeo"

[DJPow]

Trudy had gone for broke on that swing, hips turning, shoulder rolling, arm carving a brutal arc through the air. She felt the world tighten around the promise of impact, but then everything suddenly slid sideways. Katsumi wasn’t there. The windmill hook cut empty space instead of flesh and bone, Trudy’s boots skidding half a step with the force of her own follow-through.

Before she could fully course-correct, she felt arms cinch around her waist from behind, low and snug, locking against her hips. Trudy’s breath hitched, eyes going wide as instinct screamed for her to widen her stance, but it was too late. The world pitched backwards in a clean vertical snap as Katsumi threw her weight through the motion. and the canvas exploded against Trudy’s back a second later. Her spine slapped flat, boots kicking up from the whiplash, breath punched clean out of her lungs. A Northern Lights suplex. Trudy knew the feel of one even through the ringing in her ears. Her body bounced once, settling with her shoulders folded up toward her knees and her hips elevated, weight perversely stacked in Katsumi’s favor.

She heard the ref hit the mat somewhere to her right.

One!

Trudy’s teeth grit hard. Her ribs throbbed. Sweat beaded at her brow and rolled down the side of her neck, catching against the frayed strands of golden hair clinging to her cheek.

Two!

Trudy kicked, just a hard snap of her hips, a twist of her shoulders, and a violent bridge of her own in the opposite direction. Her boots hammered at the mat and her torso bucked just enough to slip one shoulder free and break the pinning angle. The ref pulled back from the impending three, arms rising as the count halted. She spilled sideways onto her stomach, coughing once, one hand planted against the canvas to steady herself while the other slid instinctively across her abdomen where the strain and suplex had left a hot buzzing ache before forcing herself up to a knee.

Her voice was low and ragged when it finally cut through, a crooked grin carving across her face despite the surprise maneuver.

“Heh… hell of a bridge ya got there,” she rasped, brushing loose strands back behind her ear as she rose another inch. “Reckon that’d win a rodeo if it was bulls instead o’ blondes.”

She didn’t wait for a reply. Trudy surged forward, trying to get her arms around Katsumi’s lower body, not in some grand maneuver, just a sudden, forceful tackle at the hips meant to disrupt her base and drag her down to the mat with sheer stubborn bull-headed brawler energy.

[CyanDimitrik]

The dark veil of the surrounding arena suddenly began to glitter and sparkle with flashing camera phones, immortalizing the moment between the two women; Trudy pinned down to the mat, reeling from the sudden shock of the suplex; Katsumi's lithe body arched tight over her, silky hair pooling upon the mat beside Trudy's head, the sleek tone of her thighs and abdomen flexed to sustain the position.

Katsumi wasn't sure if the surprise and shock of the impact would keep Trudy down for the full three. All she was focused on was keeping the bridge, keeping her arm snug around the blonde's waist to maintain that mandatory physical contact to keep it legal.

The mat trembles faintly under the impact of the referee's hand slapping the canvas for the first count.

Then once again for the second.

Katsumi could feel Trudy's core tighten, her muscles tense in preparation for the burst of resistance, but she couldn't do anything to reassert the hold. The kickout comes, and Katsumi's balance is disrupted, sending the Punk Princess toppling onto her side on the mat, most of her weight landing on her hip. But she's quick to turn over onto hands and knees, watching the cowgirl collect herself with a self-satisfied smirk.

That smirk blossoms into a pleased smile when Trudy gives her word, though. That sounded like a compliment. She wasn't really expecting that. But it recalls to her the other girl who resembled her - she also had a sweet streak buried beneath the feisty demeanor. It somehow seemed so fitting a cowgirl, so wholesome, and it made the match in some way feel more fun. Competitive, but not hostile.

"That almost sounded like a compli-AAH!"

She mistook the opportunity for a bit of back'n'forth. Trudy had no such intentions. Katsumi manages only to recoil a little when the other girl's form comes rushing in, rearing back onto her feet only to have her hips seized. She's taken up and barreled down to the mat with a hard grunt from impact. Her arms raise instinctively, presenting her forearms before her face in a defensive high guard in anticipation of a ground pound!

[DJPow]

Southern niceties didn’t completely stop at ringside for Trudy. Compliments weren’t charity in her book, they were earned. And Katsumi had earned that bridge. Hell, she had barely peeled herself out from under that bridge, hips snapping, core firing, a sharp twist of shoulder and instinct, before she lunged forward to keep the momentum alive. Katsumi was already rising in that sleek, coiled way of hers when Trudy crashed into her, arms cinching around the punkette’s hips and driving her down flat onto the canvas with a jolt of pure brawler’s urgency.

The cowgirl rode the bounce of the impact straight into mount, knees sliding wide along Katsumi’s ribs, weight settling heavy through her hips. The sudden shift earned a little pop from the crowd, the new position opening up a whole new realm of grounded possibilities.

Trudy planted her left palm beside Katsumi’s head to post, brought the right up short and tight, and dropped a hammerfist down against Katsumi’s raised forearms. There wasn't much technique or finesse behind it, just a hard, meaty piston of knuckles and wrist aimed to rattle bone and storm through guard. A second shot followed just as rough, shoulder rolling, elbow tucked close for maximum impact, followed soon after by a third.

“C’mon now,” she demanded through her teeth, her voice low and excited, “y’all ain’t gonna turtle on me all night now are ya?”

But Trudy wasn’t a fool. She knew that staying mounted on a seasoned technician was like sitting on a hornet’s nest, so she made her next move count.

Her posted hand slid off the mat, reaching instead for Katsumi’s wrist. With a sudden shift of weight she swung her leg high, heel slicing over Katsumi’s head as she tried to guide the arm across her centerline. Her hips pivoted and she rolled backward, aiming to drag Katsumi’s trapped limb between her thighs. The canvas rattled beneath them as Trudy extended her body, attempting to lock her ankles and hyperextend in a full armbar!

[CyanDimitrik]

Ruthless, wild aggression. Brawling. Katsumi used to be that person. It still runs in her veins like a dark undercurrent. It still gnaws at the edges of her nerves, urging her to abandon technique and precision for savagery. She remembers how satisfying it feels to take someone down to the mat and pound them senseless. To fight them to their knees, hold their arm, and stomp their face. The hiatus she underwent saw all that aggression and violence refined and shaped into a keen weapon, an artistic brutality. But those sharks still swim in these waters. And that's why when Trudy Rae Calder takes Katsumi down to the mat for a mount, her immediate instinct was to bunker up.

She knew.

The first hammering blow landing against her forearm sent a shock of pain from wrist to elbow. That could've been her head.

She twists slightly on the mat, and the second punishing blow sends another shock of pain down the other arm. Better she take bruising to the arms than the face. She doesn't intend to lose teeth or have her nose misaligned tonight.

Katsumi knows she can't stay on her back beneath her. She just needs one more blow to come in, predicting which arm it'll be. She just needs one more to snatch it like a trapdoor spider and make Trudy regret bringing it to the mat. So when the blonde makes her remark, the response from Katsumi is a conniving glare from behind the forearm gate, emerald eyes agleam.

But what comes next isn't a strike. It's a grapple. Her arm is seized, and Katsumi immediately locks her fingers together. The cowgirl gets her legs across her chest, the elbow pressed along her hips, and Katsumi growls her defiance as she struggles to hold on. But when it comes to brute strength, Trudy just edges her out.

"Nnghh'gah!"

With a frustrated cry that quickly becomes pained, the cowgirl locks Katsumi's arm back. The limb lies stretched between Trudy's thighs, the elbow propped to her hips, the forearm running the length of her abdomen, and the back of her hand somewhere between her breasts. And as she pushes upwards to hyper-extend the limb, the Punk Princess lets out a new desperate cry, her boots impulsively flutter-kicking against the mat.

[DJPow]

Two hammerfists later, and the punk princess’s arms were already reddening from the abuse. Trudy expected the next shot to be her window to crack the guard clean, but instead of knuckles meeting face, her fingers wrapped tight around Katsumi’s wrist and the whole fight shifted gears.

Katsumi clamped her hands together in a white-knuckled prayer grip, fighting like hell to keep the limb from being pried apart. Trudy wasn’t stronger by a mile, but she was stronger just enough, and that was all the math she needed. Her calf whipped over Katsumi’s head, hips rolled back, and the two of them hit the mat as legs clamped, spine bridged, and that stolen arm lay trapped between denim and inner thigh.

Now, on her back, Trudy arched long and mean, heels digging for purchase as she hauled back on the hyperextension. She let out a low focused grunt as Katsumi’s trapped wrist lay tight against Trudy’s sternum, her forearm drawn taut across the blonde’s abdomen, elbow framed perfectly against Trudy’s hips and her wrist tucked invitingly between her cleavage.

She didn’t yank wildly, Trudy wasn’t that kind of dumb brute. Instead she wrenched with rhythm. Short pulls and sharp tugs. Hips lifting. Ankles crossing tighter. Every motion was a silent reminder that the arm didn’t belong to Katsumi anymore.

The referee slid in close on their flank, eyes flicking between Katsumi’s tortured limb and her face. The audience’s noise swelled, half urging a tap, half daring a counter. The punk princess’s boots kicked against the canvas in a frantic cadence that sounded like desperation, just the kinda sound the cowgirl wanted to hear.

Trudy kept the pressure steady, then shifted her grip to create a little more bite below the elbow, thighs squeezing closer to the joint. In the process her shoulders brushed the mat and her peripheral vision caught the ropes, just a few feet a way. But Trudy didn't spare them more than a glance, after all, a few seconds more in this hold and she was bound to have her punk rival tapping in no time!

[CyanDimitrik]

Katsumi suffers in the hold, her expression written in pain and anguish, immortalized by the flashing cameras that had so graciously before captured the exquisite bridge of her body pinning Trudy down. The thrashing dulls out to strained, heavy breaths, her chest rapidly pushing against the bralet top in hastened beats, in turn pressing the gold studs of her top along Trudy's legs. She wallows at the hips, squeezing her eyes shut before the straining wrenches another pained scream from the punkette.

The thoughts of the ropes were the first to enter her mind. In the desperate haze permeating her mind, colored deeply and distressingly in pain, she can just see the ropes. She could potentially struggle her way there, having to drag Trudy's weight with her aching arm. The fingers of her captive arms unfurl from a fist, her fingers crooking and gnarled in pain. The prospect of using that limb as the leverage is utterly unappealing.

Her racing thoughts are derailed when the referee-girl does her job. "Do you give up? Tap out if you give up!"

Katsumi shakes her head with a feverish refusal, unable to vocalize clearly without terminating in a breathless cry. It satisfies the referee for just a moment, but she lingers quite close, ready to ask the question again. What a bizarre job - paid to watch people suffer and wait for them to give in!

Katsumi takes several hard, huffing breaths, steeling her resolve. Her hips twist against the mat, not away from Trudy this time, but towards her. In one of the moments of relenting pressure on the arm, the punkette bursts with effort, knees tucked to the mat and free arm pushing her upper-body in an effort to not break free, but force Trudy's legs to fold up over herself in a jackknife position. Her boots scramble on the mat to steel herself against her, pushing her torso hard against the blonde's rear and plying her full bodyweight against her foe's lower half.

If she can secure the sudden reversal, the predicament should be immediately clear - Trudy is now stacked on her shoulders, pinned. She has a choice to make. Keep the arm and suffer the three-count, or release the arm to struggle for a shoulder's lift!

[DJPow]

Trudy settled her weight into the armbar like someone cinching a saddle, patient and confident that time would do the rest. The punkette’s strangled cries threaded through the background roar of the crowd, sharp enough that the referee slid in beside them and started asking the necessary questions, waiting for any sign of surrender. Trudy didn’t rush it. She inhaled, tightened a touch more, and let Katsumi feel every inch of that pressure.

What she didn’t expect was for Katsumi to actually do something about it.

The panic and flailing died off all at once, replaced by a subtle shift in how her opponent’s torso moved against the mat. Trudy felt the change before she recognized it. Katsumi tucked in, posted herself and surged forward with her whole body so suddenly that the motion had Trudy practically folded over backwards. Her shoulders flattened to the canvas, her hips pitched skyward, and her own ankles were suddenly being bent toward her face as Katsumi stacked her into a jackknife pin.

"Wha - dammit!" Trudy barked a startled curse as her world flipped. Katsumi pressed down across her thighs, keeping the stack tight, and the referee didn’t hesitate before dropping into position for a count. Trudy’s stubbornness was working against her now. Her grip on Katsumi’s wrist kept the arm captured, but it also trapped her shoulders in place.

The referee’s hand hit the canvas for one.

For a brief, reckless second Trudy considered staying on the hold, figuring she could power out before three. Pride had a way of sweet-talking people into bad ideas, especially in the middle of a match. But as Katsumi leaned her weight forward and the ceiling blurred in Trudy’s vision, common sense finally elbowed its way in.

Two!

Trudy let go of the arm in a sharp shove and threw her weight sideways. She planted one boot, then the other, and wrenched her far shoulder up just enough to break the line before the referee could finish the count. The stack collapsed and the hold evaporated with it, leaving both women to scramble apart in a tangle of limbs and hair.

Trudy rolled to one hip and braced a palm against the mat, chest rising and falling in tight, quick bursts. Her spine ached from the bend and her core burned from the escape, but there was a glint in her eyes now that hadn’t been there before, a mix of frustration and an inkling of respect for her opponent's quick thinking. "Feisty little firecracker, ain’t ya?" Trudy said with a wink as she pushed up to a knee and squared herself toward Katsumi, dusting sweat from her brow with the back of her wrist. "Alright then, reckon I shouldn't be goin' so easy on ya from now on" Trudy raised both fists up as she began circling her opponent, ready to tussle once again. Whatever came next, she’d have to earn it the long way, and that suited her just fine.

[CyanDimitrik]

There was no smugness in the reversal, no smirk, no sneer. Just a growling effort to invert the confidence she felt radiating off of Trudy while she had her trapped in that submission hold. Their eyes would meet, and Trudy would see naught but that blazing electric green locked onto her, determined to keep her stacked on her shoulders. It would've been a fitting end, finding herself outwrestled after talking all her sass! And Katsumi, now that the strain isn't actively eating away at the limb in question, deeply wanted to make a point with the technique.

A solid one-count.

She could feel the muscles tensing, every twinge and twitch of the limbs beneath her triggering a shift in her balance from one foot to the other, tilting her weight heavier onto Trudy.

A solid two-count.

Katsumi can't do anything to press the pin more without grabbing Trudy's shorts. And though that's not something she's been known to do, she might've entertained the idea here and now but for two reasons - it wouldn't prove the point she was wanting, for one. For another, it wouldn't actually help the position. She has better leverage on the cowgirl's legs with her torso, and hooking her free arm partly around her hips. It probably would've risked showing the audience whatever undies Trudy was inclined to wear that night, though.

She can feel the potential energy storing in Trudy's body before the kickout. Muscles coiling, a breath being taken, the heart hastening just a beat faster - she's been wrestling long enough to feel physically in tune with her opponents when pinning them. It's always clear to her now when someone is about to burst with energy. And this time is no different.

Trudy explodes outwards, and Katsumi lands on her hip. She twists away from the cowgirl quickly, ending on her knees. She hesitates just a second to make sure she's keeping track of the blonde's position before pushing up to her feet. Her left arm crosses to the right shoulder, and she gently shakes out the limb as she steps back. The pain continues to radiate in her arm, particularly along the inside of the elbow, but if she can baby it for a bit, it'll hopefully dull.

She steps in a circle with Trudy, hastening a few steps here and there just to keep an equal distance from her. The words are, once again, sort of complimentary. Sort of not. But it reinforces that Katsumi's been on the back foot for this match so far - reactive. She's leaned heavily on technical prowess to counter what's been thrown at her, but she prefers being the aggressor. The instigator.

"Is that what you were doing?," asks Katsumi in English; the west coast suburban accent is strong in her delivery. That's not on purpose, per se. That's thanks to her teachers. "I'm so relieved. 'Cuz here I was thinking you came all the way out here to prove America sucks ass at wrestling!"

Poking fun at Trudy's western ways didn't work. Didn't seem to set anything off. Maybe poking fun at the country itself would yield some exploitable edge. ...Exploitable and entertaining, that is.

[DJPow]

The reversal had been an annoyance, sure, but not an unexpected one. The fight was young, and Trudy knew better than to think someone with Katsumi’s slick reflexes would lie down and let her run roughshod. Still, there had been a rush in that armbar, a thrill in nearly wrenching the punkette’s limb from its socket, and the way Katsumi was still gingerly testing it told Trudy one thing: that pain wasn’t going away any time soon. She allowed herself a sharp grin, chest rising and falling with the beat of the crowd around her. The roar of voices felt like heat against her skin, thick and heavy as a summer storm over the cornfields back home.

They began to circle, slow and cautious at first, each step calculated but light, almost casual. Katsumi’s hand flexed and retracted as she tested her arm, and Trudy mirrored her movements with a loose guard, boots drifting across the mat as she and her opponent traded barbed stares at one another. Sweat ran in rivulets down her spine, slicking her freckled skin, and Trudy could taste it in the back of her throat, bitter and sharp. Then came the voice.

She hadn't really noticed it until now, but it was sort of out-of-place. The clipped West Coast suburban twang cutting across the ambient noise like nails on a chalkboard to Trudy. City slickers were grating enough on a good day, but ones who sounded like spoiled brats from the so called golden state? Her blood was already heating before the insult even landed. And land it did, piercing like a dart straight into the rib meat.

Not the first time Trudy had been chirped at for being a farm girl from a corn-belt nowhere town. Not the first time she’d been ribbed for being an American, either. But that jab at the greatest country in the world was precisely the wrong mixture of smug and city-slick for Trudy’s blood pressure. Her jaw set. A spark lit under her sternum, the kind that started brawls at bars and Thanksgiving dinners alike. She didn’t need a second invitation.

“Sugar, you best keep my country’s name out ya damn mouth.”

The drawl dropped like a hammer, and before Katsumi could properly gauge distance again, Trudy lunged. No feints, no measured setup, just a straight-line, bullheaded charge befitting a girl raised on rodeos and Friday night football. She closed the space in a blink and snapped a stiff forearm to Katsumi’s jawline, short, mean, and thrown with the torque of her whole hip, aiming to have her seeing stars and stripes with a devastating forearm smash!

[CyanDimitrik]

Keep her country's name out of her damn mouth.

There it is.

The scent of blood.

Delicious.

Like a godless hybrid of shark and rottweiler, something inside Katsumi is unable to resist exploiting a weakness, sinking her teeth in, and refusing to let go long after the point of good taste. Whatever it is people have in their brain that helps separate online trolling from real life civility, Katsumi lacks. Her need to pick and tease people is downright extraterrestrial, and finding what sets someone off is sublime. Even if she doesn't intend to actually hurt them with it, it's so often the case that it's why she can count her number of friends on one hand and uncertain fingers.

In this specific moment, it serves a purpose; a tactical, surgical strike to create a bigger, better opening. To render a competent fighter into something less than herself. To dominate someone not only physically, but mentally. And it's going to be really fun doing it.

Katsumi's gaze hoods, and her smile spreads. Her nerves tingle. The pain in her arm suddenly doesn't feel so glaring anymore.

Trudy shoots off after her like a bottlerocket, minus the wick. She's swinging in like a wrecking ball, like a bull in a Japan shop. There are no feints, no diversions, nothing. Just the pure, very recognizable need to make something that has offended you hurt. It's how she exclusively used to wrestle, before the hiatus. Before the makeover. Before being refined. And in that wild-eyed, furious charge - she can finally see the reason it was needed.

The defense is sudden, sharp, and decisive to a deceptive level. Trudy comes in direct, and Katsumi drops suddenly to her side on the mat. Her legs snap out and scissor in, meant to catch Trudy at the ankles to lock up her feet. That forward momentum, paired with a torque of the hips, may see Trudy coming to the mat in a short, jarring THUD with the drop toe hold.

Just as quickly as it's set in, but not as abruptly as the impact itself, Katsumi quickly detangles her legs from Trudy's to tuck her knees beneath her. "Heehee!," she giggles, perched like an evil gargoyle on the mat beside her. "Whaddaya call that? The Niagara Flop?"