Tiki Lowell thought back to the last five matches that she had fought in LAW. Her opponents were Hanabi Kawai, Eirika Karlson, The Jaeger Sisters in a handicap match, PLC, and Omarun Polka. Every single one of them were rookies, and three of them made their debuts against her. Unless they were some amazing prodigious talent, rookies were simply beneath Tiki's ability. That wasn't something she believed out of arrogance, it was something she had proven time and again as fact. Hanabi was the only one who made her fight seriously, and even then Tiki wasn't truly pushed by her.
Tiki honestly had no clue why LAW management wanted to keep putting her against rookies that everybody knew that the veteran wrestler would squash. So Tiki eventually chose to take matters into her own hands. She put out a Tweet challenging any strong middleweight who wanted to fight her. Tiki didn't care about winning or losing, she just wanted someone to actually push her to her limit.
It took longer to get a response than Tiki would've liked, but when it came, it was exactly what she was looking for. A response from one Karla Ray Reinhardt. Tiki took on look into her LAW profile, and knew she was taking the challenge. A wrestler with plenty of experience, and not just a positive record, but an outright strong one. Tiki was going to get her fight. Music: Fire Emblem Awakening OST - 65 Tiki's Theme
When her theme came on, and Tiki walked down the ramp to the ring, she couldn't remember the last time that she was this locked in. She entered the ring with no big show or flourish, but she did have a massive smile on her face. She stepped into the ring, left her cape in her corner, and began to wait for Miss Main Event herself. Tiki's Oufit
The lights were suffocated, and the noise was white. Low thumps of instrumental dashed the soundscape, and the stage patterned with spotlights. They danced around, some coloured velvet, others a silver to impale the darkness. Karla’s music rose with choir, the strum of the guitar, and the crescendo that teetered the song over the edge into a brew of instrumental. She emerged not long after, donned in her self-loving two-piece. Spade-shaped coverings over her breast, black, red, and her insignia in purple. Latex covered the rest, around her collar and neck, plus more latex for sleeves, hugging those wealthy arms, forearms and lithe hands. Black short shorts marked her stride, red-trimmed, golden-laced and more emblems swathed across, just as they were across her thigh-highs, and crowning the Reinhardt’s legs were golden-black boots. She made each step deliberate as she reached the ramp, tipped down her red shades to look at the crowd; both sectors, scoffed, tipped them back up and continued down the ramp. Jeers rained down at the woman, boos and insults, plus the occasional dog whistle. Her hands lifted to shrug, laughed, and went up those steps. “Dogs…” Spoiler
Spoiler
She stepped on the turnbuckle from the outside, scaled it and planted her boot on the top pad, looking out to the sea of lesser-folk. Their flashing cameras, many faces, signs, and postures. Her nose could almost crinkle. She loaded a kiss on her latex palm and blew it, but formed the dreaded bird, to no one’s surprise, then hopped into the ring. Both boots landed as one, bounced as she jumped and stomped both backs down. The referee was by the ropes, seated on them, their hands on the top, ready to push it up. She walked over, and they seemed confused. A grin brandished, and she reached to grab their cheeks. One for each hand. “Next time… BE FASTER!!!” That joy turned into a snarling venom; her frown contorted, and the growls flicked on in her voice, and those eyes looked overwhelmed by a sudden bloodlust. She licked her palm and smeared it on their face, then turned away to walk towards the ring’s heart.
“You!” Karla thrust the finger out, then both hands came up to point to herself. “You’re the dog that wanted this, right?”
Tiki knew going into this match that Karla was a known heel with a mean streak. But it wasn't until she watched Karla's entrance that she understood just how much of an outright bitch this woman was. Sure, Karla jeering back at the fans and calling Tiki a dog was one thing. They were the kinds of things that made heels heels. But the blatant disrespect towards the referee was what crossed the line.
Now Tiki wasn't some wrestler of justice who fought to take down evil heels, and she understood that combat sports often attracted less savory personalities, but it always felt better to drive a bitch down into the mat or make them cry uncle. And that's exactly what I'm here to do, Tiki thought.
"I wanted a strong wrestler to fight, and you, Karla, answered my call. Now let's see if you can follow through on that, or if you'll get bit by this so called 'dog,'" Tiki said. She wasn't one to be outright disrespectful towards opponents, but she certainly chose to be a decent bit colder towards Karla than she would usually be.
When the bell rang, Tiki would give Karla the first move with a declaration, "Now show me your power!" Tiki would have her hands up and ready to fight. Whether Karla wanted a test of strength or to just attack, Tiki would be ready for her. Now it was time to see if Karla really was as great a wrestler as she acted.
The threat of danger brought her smile back like new spring, a lopsided one at the corner. Such a staunch tone, so terribly movie-like that Karla sneered, and when that bell rang, she didn’t move, arms still on her side, and one hand jutted on her hip. “Oh, is that your one-liner? Real spooky, Hundchen. You should audition for Shut-The-Fuck-Up 3, coming to theatres never.” Her hands came up to shrug, and she laughed. Those hands stayed up, and she shuffled near, inch-by-inch, all ten digits wagging, and her expression had soured to a glower. The size difference grew more apparent. She had to crane her neck to meet their stare. Her upper lip twitched, then that frown broke, and she swung her leg, seeking to clip the inner flank of their thigh.
Should the throwaway kick land, she’d jog in the opposite direction, then along the ropes from corner to corner, a hand wiping her forehead.
This woman, I swear. I'm just gonna assume Hundchen was her calling me a dog again, thought Tiki, who did not happen to speak what she assumed was German. But that didn't matter, because the fight was starting in earnest now. Karla slowly approached Tiki, hands raised like she wanted to enter into a test of strength. But then she kicked at Tiki's thigh.
Tiki braced her leg to block the hit. Karla's kick connected, but it didn't really do anything. After landing the kick, Karla then retreated back to ropes and started going from corner to corner, circling around Tiki. She had a feeling that Karla was trying to set her up for something, but she didn't have an idea as to what that was.
Tiki decided that she would now approach. She would time it so she would reach Karla when she was in a corner to trap her, and start hitting her with body blows. But if Karla was careful enough to not get stuck in the corner, Tiki would instead try to grapple her. She would try to wrap an arm around Karla and drag her down to the mat with Tiki on top of her.
She didn’t expect much from a blatant strike. A reflex test, maybe, but not one she’d note. Lifting the leg was a basic instinct. And when she jogged around the ring’s outskirts, she waved out to the crowd with an exaggerated pearly-white smile, eyeing down a few spectators to blow them a kiss. It made her sick… Perhaps getting trapped in the corner was a blessing. The punches stung, pinged off her ribs, and felt like they shook. Adrenaline buried it deep, and Karla reacted with hitched breaths, a twitch in her posture and a flinching eye. Both arms folded to absorb anything after the first punch. Karla’s body weaved into the turnbuckle on the third, then ducked under their arm to side-step onto their flank. Her foot stepped on the middle rope to leap for extra height, an elbow cocked back, then thrust like a piston, aimed to take a chip out of their jaw. She yelled out, “HAAH!”
Tiki had managed to catch Karla in a corner. And once she did so, she uncorked her fist clean into the redhead's ribs. And unlike the kick that Tiki had brushed off earlier, Karla definitely felt this. Tiki landed another punch in Karla's stomach, but she was getting her arms in front of the punches now and weakening the blows.
Then Karla started fighting to escape and counter. Even with limited space, the German still used what she did have to slip free and get to Tiki's side. Then Karla fired an elbow with a charge behind it at Tiki's jaw. The greenette moved her head to not get caught flush, but she still got hit hard enough to stagger back. As Tiki steadied her feet and prepared to defend herself as she expected Karla to push an attack, she was smiling. Karla may be a bitch, but she was a bitch who could fight.
A game of punches was her home. Her small size allowed snake-like maneuverability, exploiting the smallest hole, and using the rope to nick their face was a personal technique. The pain trickled on her fist like a small fire, but she smiled. She felt sixteen again. “It’s like you’re ASKING for me to knock you out! You punch worse than a grandmother!” She laughed loud and bounced foot to foot. Then decided now to test her strength. She stormed forward, her hands raised but faked as they dropped, and Karla’s upper body lowered, her shoulder becoming a spear that tried to impale Tiki in the stomach. From there, the momentum she built was now utilized, seeking to push them further back towards the adjacent corner. Her teeth could grit themselves to dust as those legs worked themselves down to the last fibre.
Tiki had decided to just stay quiet and fight, but that was an opening she just could not let herself ignore. "You can say what you will, but your body told me a different story. You're the one who couldn't even knock me down with an off the ropes elbow to the jaw," she responded. Karla did come at Tiki, faking a test of strength and then putting her shoulder down, wrapping Tiki up and trying to push her back.
But Tiki would not be moved easily. She planted her legs into the ground, grabbed Karla by the shoulders and pushed back into her as hard as the redhead was pushing. Both wrestler's calves and thighs were bulging with effort as each woman fought to overpower the other. Tiki was confident in her ability to win a war of attrition based on strength and endurance, so it was on Karla to either prove Tiki wrong, or break the stalemate by changing tactics. If Karla couldn't then Tiki would take a big advantage in the match.
Karla’s shoulder buried into Tiki’s waist. A marriage of bone and tissue. An arm wrapped around and claw-gripped their lower back, and then a second joined the fray as her opponent tried to push her off. Now it was war. Karla’s feet turned on their toes, slid, but those legs, the lower centre of gravity, helped the redhead maintain her position. Eyes and mouth clenched as she refused to give, a sharp breath exhaled out her maw as the exerted effort wrought new forms of strain. It was a solemn burn. The weight difference played its role and pushed her back. She couldn’t keep it, no matter if her position turned to steel. So she’d try something new…
One foot stepped forward, right beside Tiki’s outer foot, then a second right in-between them. She kneeled further, her shoulder tilted up, and those hands finger-locked into one grip. A squeeze followed to counter those pushes that Tiki tried to dislodge her with. Then with one thrust and a stand, she tried to put her opponent over-shoulder, then roar and run straight for the corner to smash their lower spine against the pads of the corner.
