Risk It Roulette: Keith Fox vs. Roulette [D]

[HotWheels]

Was she seriously going to knock him out?

The question flickered through Dinah's mind as she felt Keith's struggles weakening, his body going from frantic resistance to sluggish desperation beneath her grip. Was she doing too much? Being too harsh?

But then her ribs throbbed, a sharp reminder of that strap cracking across them, and her shoulders screamed their protest at the memory of being thrown. If he got loose - when he got loose - he'd do it again. And again. And she wouldn't last. She knew that with cold certainty. He was bigger, stronger, more experienced, and if this match turned into a straight brawl or battle of who could strap each other more effectively, she'd get demolished.

And she couldn't come out here and lose.

The doubt tried to claw its way back up, but she shoved it down hard, shut it away in whatever mental box she used to ignore her agent's panicked calls. She leaned back further, boots digging trenches into his back, biceps flexing as she pulled with everything she had. Her whole body strained - back arched, legs splayed for leverage. Sweat rolled down her temple and left her breasts shining in the arena lights. Her arms shook. The ref circled them, checking, hovering, but Dinah didn't look at her. She kept her eyes locked on Keith's shoulders, watching them sag, watching the fight drain out of him degree by degree.

And then suddenly his body went stiff. Just for a second. She pulled once more...

Nothing.

He went limp. Completely limp. Dead weight against her boots.

Her hands released immediately, the strap falling slack as she scrambled backward on her ass, gasping for air like she'd been the one getting choked. Her heart hammered against her ribs as she stared at Keith's motionless form sprawled on the mat. The ref was already checking him, and Dinah forced herself to breathe and not to... think about knocking someone out with a strap. Nope, nope, she'd unpack it all later.

Right. Four corners. She had to touch the four corners while he was out.

She crawled closer on shaky limbs, her hand hovering over Keith's shoulder before landing with an awkward pat as she pushed herself up to her feet. "Sorry," she muttered under her breath, quiet enough that he was the only one who could have heard her if he had been... conscious.

But apologizing wasn't going to win her the match. Dragging his unconscious ass around the ring would.

Dinah grabbed the strap with both hands, positioned herself at an angle, and pulled. Her legs churned against the mat, boots scrabbling for purchase as she hauled Keith's dead weight toward the nearest corner. He slid easier than she expected - thank God for the canvas - and she made it to the first turnbuckle relatively quickly. She slapped her palm against the padding, and it lit up with a satisfying ding. One down.

"Okay. Okay, three more. You've got this."

The second corner sat diagonally across the ring. Much farther. Dinah reset her grip, planted her feet, and started dragging again. This time, Keith's body felt a lot heavier as her adrenaline died down and progress slowed to an agonizing crawl. Her thighs burned. Her shoulders screamed. Sweat dripped into her eyes as she hauled him inch by miserable inch across the mat.

"Jesus Christ, what do you weigh?" she hissed through gritted teeth, giving another vicious yank.

Finally - finally - she got him close enough to lunge forward and smack the second turnbuckle. It lit up. Halfway there. She started to turn back, noticing that three seemed so far away.

[BlackAkuma]

Keith was on a beach. It was summer - or it felt like summer - and he was on some hot beach somewhere in some luxurious part of the world. He was hanging on the beach with his brother, lying back on a towel, enjoying the rays. He had a surfboard beside him, even though he didn’t know how to surf. There were a couple of girls waving at him as they passed him by, and he was enjoying a crisp, cold bottle of water from the cooler.

As Roulette dragged him around the ring, he basked in the sun’s heat, turned to his brother and said…

…wait.

Keith didn’t come out of the stupor quickly, instead returning to consciousness in bits and pieces, like a computer rebooting, one program at a time. The first thing he noticed was that he was being dragged. The mat was smooth, and he had already worked up some sweat, so it wasn’t as unpleasant a sensation as it would’ve normally been, but it was still disconcerting. To say nothing of the feeling that his arm was on the verge of being dislocated,

It took him another second to register who was doing it. His groggy, half-lidded eyes shifted up to see Dinah - Roulette, whatever - as the source, hauling him across the ring like an overstuffed trash bag. He came to just as she finished touching one of the lights, and then began the arduous journey towards the next.

She…did she knock him out? He was fuzzy on the details, but yeah, that was what it felt like. It would explain why his neck stung and his throat felt like he’d gargled motor oil. He remembered the strap now, how she’d wrapped it around his neck, pulled, how he had a hard time believing she would go that far even as she actively went that far. Keith had seriously underestimated just how seriously she was taking this whole thing. He didn’t know whether to be impressed or freaked the fuck out.

He definitely knew he needed to do something about it, though.

Keith waited - partly because he needed a moment to properly gather his senses and partly because he needed to catch his breath. When she touched the second corner and began to make the trek towards number three, that was when he sprang to life. Rolling over to his hands and knees, he crawled forward and slipped his head in between her legs, tucking it in tight. At the same time, he brought his arms around her thighs and caught them with a strong grip, making sure she stayed pressed to him.

From there, Keith stood up, rising with Roulette on his shoulders, powering her up despite his weary body’s protests. He got her all the way to full height, then spun kicked his legs out, and fell back, attempted to slam her into the canvas with an Electric Chair.

[HotWheels]

This part really shouldn't have been as hard as it was.

Dinah wasn't getting hit. Wasn't being thrown. Wasn't trapped in some submission she didn't know how to escape. She was just dragging someone, which should have been simple - grab, pull, repeat until victory. But hauling Keith toward that third corner felt like the hardest thing in the world, and every inch of progress came at the cost of her screaming muscles and burning lungs.

Her legs churned, boots scraping against the canvas as she leaned back into the pull, the strap cutting into her palms. The crowd noise was a confusing mix - cheers and demands for more violence blending together into white noise that didn't help her focus. Her midriff ached from the earlier shots with the strap. Her shoulders felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to them. Her thighs trembled with exhaustion. And Keith - Jesus Christ, he felt like he'd somehow gotten heavier, like the universe was punishing her for daring to think she could actually pull this off.

"Stupid shitty stipulation," she muttered under her breath, giving another vicious yank. "That's why you - hnnngh - picked this one isn't it..."

But she kept going because stopping meant losing, and losing meant proving everyone right - her agent, her manager, every Twitter troll who'd called this whole thing a publicity stunt.

But then the canvas jostled beneath her feet.

Dinah's head whipped around, pigtails swinging as she looked for the source, hoping it was the ref. But the referee was off to the side, watching, and the movement had come from-

Shit. She tried to turn, tried to see where Keith was, but she wasn't fast enough. His head snaked between her thighs from behind, pushing up right against her crotch, and the sudden intimate contact made her yelp in surprise. "What are you do- Stop!" The pressure was firm, insistent, his hair brushing against the inside of her thighs through the thin material she wore beneath her skirt, and the shock of it froze her for a precious half-second.

Then she felt his hands grip her thighs, and panic kicked in.

"You better let me... go..."

She threw her boot backward, trying to kick him, catch him in the ribs, something, but her angle was all wrong and her body too tired to generate real force. The kick was more of a calf bouncing uselessly off his chest.

Sadly, Keith responded by standing up.

Dinah found herself suddenly airborne, perched on his shoulders like some kind of involuntary victory pose, her thighs bracketing his head as he powered through whatever exhaustion he should have been feeling. She squeezed her thighs together instinctively, trying to crush his skull between them, and threw a wild punch down at the top of his head. Her knuckles connected with a dull thump, but it wasn't enough.

Inexperience won out once more. She had no counter, no escape, no idea what to do except flail and hope. The lights started spinning. The crowd disappeared into a blur of noise and color. And then gravity took over.

Her back hit the canvas with a sickening slam that drove every molecule of air from her lungs. Her head bounced once, hard, against the mat, and for a horrible moment the world went white, like someone had overexposed the film of her vision. Sound cut out. Sensation cut out. Everything just... stopped.

She lay, spread-eagled and motionless, her limbs splayed out like a broken starfish.

[BlackAkuma]

In hindsight, Keith probably shouldn’t have gone for the Electric Chair.

If you put a gun to his head, he couldn't honestly tell you why he favored the move in this instance. There were other moves he could’ve done. The German Suplex. Belly-to-Back Suplex, which he confused with a German Suplex all the time. Could’ve just put her in a sleeperhold or even wrapped the strap around her neck, for a small bit of spiteful revenge. Tempting, that.

Instead, he went for something needlessly complicated and difficult to set up. Blame it on the addled mind of a man just coming back to consciousness.

Or maybe he really wanted to put his head between Roulette’s legs. That was also a distinct possibility.

Whatever the case, he wound up paying for it, as Roulette did not go quietly or meekly. He took a punch on the nose for his efforts, one that left the faint scent of blood, and she proceeded to squeeze his head with her legs, a sensation that wasn’t entirely unpleasant if he was being honest. It actually gave him an idea for a future segment on his show, but he filed it away for later. Business to take care of, first.

He stood up after the slam to see that Roulette was lying out, doing a snow angel on the mat. A quick glance over to the corners showed she’d gotten two done while he was in La-La Land. Tempting as it was to just hammer her while she was down, the top priority was hitting those lights.

Seeing his opportunity, Keith stood all the way up, then threw his body into a roll, somersaulting over her prone form. As he rolled, he reached through her legs with one arm and caught her shoulder with the other, then pulled her along her shoulders as he came, rising up with her in the fireman’s carry.

Lucky for him, Roulette wasn’t all that heavy, so he’d have an easier time hauling her around than she did with him. He kept her tight, shuffled his way towards the nearest corner, and hit the first corner, lighting it up in his favor. With that done, he hurried over to the next corner, hoping he could hit them all before Roulette returned to her senses.

[HotWheels]

Dinah wasn't unconscious, but the parts of her not dulled by pain kind of wished she was.

Everything hurt. Her back, her head, her shoulders - God, especially her shoulders. The slam had driven the air from her lungs and scrambled her thoughts into a messy soup of complaints and worries. She just floated there for a moment, lost somewhere between acknowledging her pain and her mind drifting to the thousand other things that always competed for space but that couldn't quite take shape due to the aches and pains. She was listless. One arm dragged lazily down toward her side. Her ankles pushed closer together in some instinctive attempt at modesty even though her skirt had betrayed her four minutes ago. Her face, pretty even in defeat, showed how completely dazed she was - mouth drooped open to suck in shallow breaths, eyes half-lidded and unfocused on the lights above.

But the noise filtered back in. The crowd. And then the movement.

She groaned - a quiet sound of complaint that bubbled up from somewhere deep - as she felt herself being shifted, lifted, draped over something solid and warm. The movement made everything hurt worse, and she made another small noise of protest before finally settling into stillness again. Stationary. Good. She could work with stationary.

Her eyes blinked slowly, trying to focus. The crowd came first - a sea of faces and phones all pointed at her. Then the position registered. She was draped over Keith's shoulders like a sack of extremely attractive potatoes, her body folded in a fireman's carry that probably put her ass on full display for everyone in the cheap seats. She tried to squeeze her thighs together, tried to minimize the view, but the angle was all wrong and her body didn't have the strength to do much beyond weak adjustments.

What roused her, though, was the corner lighting up. He was hitting them while she was lying here.

Recognition slammed into her harder than the canvas had. He was trying to win. Right now. While she was too scrambled to stop him. She should fight him, she should...

But then a better thought cut through the haze. Be smart. He was carrying her to the lights too, wasn't he?

She forced her body to stay limp, kept her breathing shallow and pained - not hard, given how much everything hurt - and watched through half-lidded eyes as Keith shuffled toward the third corner. She could feel his shoulder digging into her stomach with each step, could track their progress by the shift in crowd noise.

When he got within range of the third light, Dinah struck.

Her elbow came down hard on the side of his head - not a technical blow, just a desperate thrust - and she wrenched her body with everything she had left, twisting and extending her leg like her life depended on it. Her boot shot out, reaching, stretching toward that glowing corner pad.

[BlackAkuma]

Keith had to say, he was kind of seeing why people didn’t do this sort of match too often. It was just weird.

It had all seemed fun enough in his head. Kind of like a gameshow mixed with a wrestling match. Instead of pins and submissions, he had to hit the corners and keep his opponent from doing the same, while they were tied up with each other. Fun stuff, the sort of craziness he got into wrestling to participate with. On paper, everything seemed solid enough.

In practice, though, it was…weird. Like, he was about to win by carrying a helpless woman on his shoulders and touching some lights. A little anticlimactic, he had to say, and it almost made him glad that he would have at least one more match after this to go with something a bit more dramatic. He was especially glad he hadn't decided to make it the last match. Would be a crap way to end things.

But this was almost over. Just had to carry Roulette for two more corners, and then the first fall was his. Easy, right?

Yeah, no.

At first, things seemed to be good. Roulette seemed out for the most part. He could feel her groaning a bit on top of him, but he didn’t think much of it as he made his way to the third light, figuring it was just her idly milling about in semi-consciousness.

All of the sudden, though, she got a lot more active. He turned his head to the side, feeling her movement, and earned an elbow on the forehead for his curiosity, one that left him seeing white for a flash. It all fell apart from there, as he let Roulette go, stumbled to the ropes, and leaned up against them as he tried to blink he was through the fog.

The lights. He could see hers lit up now, must’ve done it at the same time she struck him. Knowing that meant his own time was running short, he reached out, hoping to tag his own before she had the chance to stop him.