W Y V E R N vs ̶L̶e̶o̶n̶i̶e̶ ̶B̶o̶w̶e̶n̶ - Falls Count Anywhere

[FreestylePoet]

You can't become a world-renowned master thief for the modern age without learning how to read a crowd. Not that this crowd of one was a locked tome. It didn't take long for that chill to smother the sunny ocean day. The Impossible turned her back to ol' Wyvie, and even she could feel it. Save for one spot, of course: The back of her head, where she could feel her soon-to-be-opponent's burning gaze. If things went on like this, she'd become the second black-clad roof-runner in history to get killed by an Omega Beam. Thankfully, the referee decided to spare her from that grisly fate, albeit with a little prodding from Wyvern. The bell rang, and the Impossible turned around.

"Ahaah! Then we shall do--"

Ka-thump.

"Gyaaaah!" Hell of a clothesline, that. It slammed into the Impossible's torso, sending pink over black over pink, tumbling off the ringpost. Thankfully she was an avid freerunner. The way her shoulders bounced off the steel steps didn't matter. Neither did the subsequent ass-meets-floor thingy. Tuck and roll, baby. Thanks to those three words, none of those bad beats hurt at all. Nope. Not. At. All.

"Guuuh..."

Still, the Impossible rolled onto her stomach and started to crawl away. Still wincing (for no reason but comedic effect, mind you!), she stowed the glove away for safekeeping between her attire and her breast. Right where the hand of a beautiful lady -- lass? -- like Wyvern should be. "Sheesh!" she shouted. "What's your problem?" All the while, she was rummaging for something else. She was hurt and downed. No doubt Wyvern was bearing down on her. Impy needed a getaway plan -- fast. Finally, she found what she was looking for. Right when Wyvern got to her, the Impossible would flip herself right-side-up and clap two small pellets together!

"Aha! Smoke bomb!"

The Impossible would disappear in a puff of grey and white! Before the smoke cleared, though, Wyvern would hear a voice, loud and clear off to the side:

"As I was saying -- It's just a glove! I bet you have a hundred of them. Maybe a thousand! Just... some obscenely large even number of them."

[Hills]

Wyvern is not, as far as these things go, a particularly graceful wrestler. While she has the necessary skill and strength to clear the top rope of the ring and bring her opponent down, she has nowhere near the agility to make any kind of landing afterwards. In her current state of incandescent fury, the Irish hellion could hardly care less about consequences. Driving her arm into the Impossible's belly with a satisfying exclamation of surprise and pain from her opponent, Wyvern separates from the thief in midair and, despite mercifully missing the stairs, lands heavily on her side. It's only due to luck and absurd durability that nothing breaks. Before she's even regained her wind, Wyvern is already climbing to her feet, pure rancor suppressing any hindrance from pain.

Stomping closer to the downed Impossible, Wyvern prepares to pound her into the flooring before the graceful thief ceases playing possum and transitions an impressive flip into an obscuring cloud. Sensing her opponent has already escaped, Wyvern takes a moment to reassert control over herself, taking a few smoky breaths in and honing her senses to detect any trace of the Impossible. This quickly proves easier than expected when the spandex-clad acrobat's voice emerges right next to her. Swiveling her body, Wyvern reactively throws a full force punch towards the sound of the voice. But where conscious thought fails, instinct takes over. She was too close. She had been evasive, trying to keep out of reach. It was all too convenient. Moreover, the silhouette, barely visible through the clearing smoke, was a little too tall, the vague shape wrong.

Wyvern stops her fist shy an inch of an unsuspecting cameraman's nose, trying only to provide vision to the viewers at home through the smoke. Paralyzed in surprise, the man makes no effort to stop her as she grabs him by the shirt and hauls him a little closer before reaching into his breast pocket and withdrawing...a small bluetooth speaker.

Typical.

Roughly shoving the camerman away, Wyvern holds the speaker up and looks around for any sign of her flamboyant adversary.

"Was this expensive? Or did you just steal it, too?"

[FreestylePoet]

Funny what a little cornstarch could do. For the low, low price of one bulk order from the nearest superstore, a master thief could get set up to slip into the shadows at a moment's notice. Nothing short of night-vision goggles or superpowers could beat this low-tech trick -- and the Impossible guessed that Wyvern had neither.

Sadly, our lass of the hour had just enough fight sense to stop herself from plowing a fist into a poor crew member's face. All that was left when the thick white cloud dissipated was the raw-red fury written in Wyvern's eyebrows. The Impossible tossed her lavalier mic overboard, giving the crowd one last sploosh before her little misdirection died a short-circuity death. "Poo," she said.

She fumbled around her for a moment before finding exactly what she needed to kick this up a notch. Pool noodles! Immediately the crafty thief set to work. Once she'd torn a floatie in half, she charged out at her rather annoyed-looking foe, and-- "WATCHAAA! Sneak attack!" Two pieces of foam thwacked the Irishwoman, one across the rump and the other across the small of her back. Impy kept low, tucking her momentum into a roll and a kip before skittering back out of Wyvern's range.

And right into a block of the audience. She leapt the barricade, planted her palm on a poor baldy's shiner, then tiptoed across the tops of their metal chairs like it was a balance beam. Finally, she turned. Arms up. Ta-daa, motherfuckers!

"Please," she said. "I have standards! That there is an original Impossi-vention, right from my workbe- YOWCH!" She was interrupted by a hard chunk of metal cracking across her cheekbone! The Impossible fell atop the crowd, and as she began to surf, that very same Bluetooth speaker clattered onto her shoulder and dropped to the ground.

Half the crowd scrambled to grab the souvenir, while the other half set themselves on edge, waiting to see what would happen now that the action had spilled over to them. Impy clambered back to her feet, staggering backwards across the chairs as she rubbed her cheek. Finally, she stood at the center of this section of seats. "Fine. Have it your way. But what's next?" She swept her arms out wide. "There's no way you'd just... tear through a crowd of helpless wrestling fans just to get to little ol' me, right?" The crowd's sweatdrop was palpable. "...Right?"

[Hills]

The final sound of water that precedes the end of the speaker's other half does nothing to improve Wyvern's mood, with her opponent apparently unwilling to rise to her attempts to get a reaction. It would seem that she's legitimately cunning, not just a showboater with deep pockets. Indeed, even while straining her senses to try and catch a hold of her opponent, Wyvern is taken offguard by the Impossible's decision to take the fight to her, having a expected a more cautious approach from someone who, she is confident, she could crush in any kind of direct confrontation. The sharp slaps to her rear and rear elicit a sharp cry of surprise at a notably higher pitch than her usual contralto.

Growling under her breath in annoyance, the Irish wrestler directs her focus to the grandstanding gentlewoman thief. While her dignity had taken a hit on the way, her target had finally showed up, and her original plan was still entirely valid. Not even bothering to listen, never having been curious in the first place, Wyvern hurls the speaker with all of the considerable force she can muster, the improvised projectile rocketing through the intervening meters in the blink of an eye and striking her opponent square on the jaw, sending her on a brief and unplanned crowd surfing expedition. This was ultimately never more than an expression of frustration, though, a way to finally get one over on the frustrating wrestler. The Impossible is soon up, now well and truly entrenched in one of the seating sections at a distance not even Wyvern could force her way through to quickly.

"Fine. Have it your way. But what's next?" She swept her arms out wide. "There's no way you'd just... tear through a crowd of helpless wrestling fans just to get to little ol' me, right?"

By the time she's finished, the Impossible and the crowd alike can see that Wyvern was barely even paying attention, already halfway over the barrier in the process of closing with her prey. Sensing a shift in the crowd's attention, she looks up to figure out the cause. Seeing all eyes on her, she perches on top of the barricade and replays the last few moments in her mind, actually processing the Impossible's voice as words rather than highly irritating background noise.

"...Right?"

Wyvern smiles.

"Aw, hell naw!"

A man nearby adeptly summarizes the nearby audience's perspective on the subject, preceding a clatter of folding chairs and stomping feet as a path opens through the human sea. Now with nothing to slow her down, Wyvern pounces forward. Rather than the impressive display of agility shown by the Impossible, the Irishwoman keeps her feet firmly on the ground, plowing through the remaining chairs without hesitation. As she runs, she smoothly snatches and closes one of the chairs, leaving it gripped by the leg in one hand while she stretches her other out in an attempt to seize the Impossible by the collar.

[FreestylePoet]

Impy and her big mouth, huh? Someone once warned her about this. Reaping and sowing and stuff like that. In hindsight, the kind of wrestler who would put herself through a Falls Count Anywhere match on a cruise ship of all places wasn't the kind of wrestler to back down in the face of good-natured goading. Now Wyvern was bounding through the stands, and the crowd was quickly clearing out. Some stayed -- no doubt to grab a picture of the one and only Impossible before she got her skull crushed in -- but most dashed off.

Bodies and folding chairs jostled around the Impossible. She kept her balance as best she could, hopping from backrest to shoulder to bald, shiny head, but alas, there was no solid ground in the world that would stand firm before Hurricane Wyvern. The Impossible teetered on the back of an usher: one, two, three wiiiiide and ever-more-panicked circles, until finally she fell. Her back crackled across a jungle of fallen seats, and neither popcorn box nor fanny pack could cushion the landing.

Then the grumpy little Irish girl came up to her, cheap office-quality steel in hand. Things were about to get worse. The Impossible held her hands up with a sheepish grin. "Now, it might feel way too late to talk this out, but I for one am always open for negotiation!" She wheezed out a laugh. "And have I mentioned that you look positively stunning today?"

[Hills]

Wyvern was not, as a general rule, a sadist. She hadn't come to this profession to dominate or crush her opponents; that was boring. Usually, her interest in violence began and ended at her opponent's ability to fight back and challenge. The pain of someone weaker elicited just as much joy in her as it did pity. That is to say, none whatsoever.

For the Impossible, however, she was willing to make an exception.

The flamboyant thief had stolen something from Wyvern beyond the missing glove. Her chance at a dignified debut. As nervous as the setting had made her, she had been looking forward to this. A chance to prove her mettle in a real fight, on a stage higher than any she could have dreamed of before coming to LAW. Sanctioned wrestler or not, the Impossible would never give her that chance. She was fighting against a clown determined to run away, not another warrior able to give her the stiff resistance she was looking for. If the evening wouldn't give her what she had expected, however, she at least had a chance to vent her frustrations. She couldn't take back what the Impossible had stolen from her, but she could extract a pound of flesh in exchange. And establish a precedent for anyone who might think to emulate this little stunt. Her opportunity finally arises as her quarry makes a mistake and crashes to the ground, giving Wyvern the chance to barrel aside the final obstructions to loom over her.

"Sure. I get: satisfaction. You get...hm. Well, I'm sure we can figure something out. Here." She raises the chair up over her head in both hands. "Have a seat."

With that, she swing the chair down at full force, aiming to crush the Impossible's skull between it and the concrete!

[FreestylePoet]

"Ooooh, 'have a seat.' Clever, haha! It's a puuun. Cute, badass, and funny -- you got all the good genes, huh? Say, do you have any sib--"

Then the steel chair crashed into her skull, and the world went dead. It felt like her head collapsed into itself, leaving nothing but a black hole where the Impossible's brain used to be and a hollow, airy sound in her ears to match. Beneath that mask, Satsuki Hayano could only think one thing:

What a thrill. Like falling ten stories with nothing but the grappling hook in your pocket. It was no small thing for the world's most wanted gentlewoman thief to show up to a professional wrestling cruise. Hundreds of miles from any port, it was like a locked-room mystery on the grandest scale imaginable. And with a fighter like this ripe for the picking? It was all worth it.

The Impossible opened her eyes. Thank God Wyvern was such a loomer. Just the little rays of sun peeking from her periphery seared her retina. Danger signs flashed in her mind's eye, all pointing to the woman casting a shadow over her. But one moment, she was just a single woman, and the next, she was two or five. The wildfire inside her skull still raged, and all she heard past the ringing in her ears was her own breath.

Perfect.

It happened in an instant. Pure thieving instinct from years of evading high-risk security. In one whip-quick motion, she shoved the chair aside and swung out towards Wyvern's leg. One flick of the wrist sent a small end around Wyvern's knee and into the Impossible's free hand. Piano wire. Thin. Sturdy. In the right hands, deadly. Then, she yanked! The hope was to pull Wyvern's knee forward with the wire, bending that knee and staggering Wyvern forward.

When Wyvern was brought to one knee, Impy's empty, dazed, pink eyes stared into focused brown ones. The Impossible balled her fist. A quick sit-up would only bring her in range of so many fleshy bits. With her back on the ground, she couldn't generate much power, but she needed to do something to escape. Her punch was a flash -- aimed not at Wyvern's face but at her throat!

[Hills]

A slight twitch of the muscles in Wyvern's forehead is the only indication that she even heard the Impossible's frantic attempts at engaging her before she brings the chair down with a thundering crash of cheap metal. Drawing out even more of the Irishwoman's rage might have been a good strategy in the long term, leading her to make mistakes or charge in without thinking, but in the moment it only makes her lash out all the more ferociously. The chair's seat bends nearly to a right angle around the Impossible's skull. The Irish wrestler doesn't even bother lifting ruined seating back up, dropping it over the Impossible's face like a funeral shroud before she bends over to seize her target for what would no-doubt be an even more violent follow-up.

It's only after it happens that Wyvern realizes just how severely she had underestimated the Impossible.

A sharp flash of pain erupts from the back of her knee, forcing her to instinctively bend it to protect the vulnerable tendons under the lacerated flesh. While she successfully prevents the wire from cutting any deeper than a shallow surface wound, she was already bent over and unbalanced. The correction to her knee sends it, and her, slamming into the ground, skinning the surface with a patchwork of cuts and preventing her from mounting any kind of counterattack. While she's still processing what had happened, the Impossible's fist launches up to meet her, punching home into her throat. Even without much force behind the punch, the combination of its vulnerable target and the assistance from gravity as Wyvern falls makes it more than strong enough to stun the enraged wrestler.

*GHK!*

A choked hiss forces its way out of Wyvern's injured throat, taking away any chance she might have had of recovering herself from the fall. Shifting to the side as she collapses, Wyvern lands heavily on the ground beside the Impossible, clutching futilely at her impacted neck. She hacks out a few unpleasant-sounding coughs, trying to clear her airway again, but even through all of this, the Impossible can see the hate-filled eyes still locked onto her. Wyvern reaches out with her free hand, bringing it down claw-like onto the ground as she tries to seize hold of the Impossible. Her first attempt misses, but she doesn't stop, reaching out again in a scrabbling motion even as she struggles to recover!