Laxia von Roswell vs. Sheila Morgan - Lightning in a Bottle

[BlackAkuma]

If Laxia thought she'd get anything more than a disrespect-flavored ‘ma’am’ out of Sheila Morgan, she didn't understand the sort of woman she was dealing with. Her own parents hadn't been able to get that out of her, and she actually halfway liked them. Laxia was starting to feel real passion, and she had only scratched the surface of the disrespectful words she wanted to hurl at this woman. She was saving the really good stuff for the right moment.

For now, though, she was content to just take her by surprise and turn this thing around, if only for a few moments. The jawbreaker had been a bit of a gamble, but one that turned out paying off - while she couldn't guess what the look on Laxia’s face was, the sound in her voice told the whole story, as the shock of the moment got the better of her. It was just a matter of lifting up, getting the right leverage, and then…

Bam.

Not that any of that was easy, and Sheila was almost as surprised herself to pull it off, but the results spoke for themselves. Laxia was sent flying, coming down on her back, stunned, while Sheila rolled off and gasped a few feet away, still aching from the hold. Much as it hurt, much as her body was begging her to take a few moments to recoup and recover, she pushed past it. She had her own payback to dish out.

Growling - a coarse, feral sound - Sheila forced her way up and dragged her way across the ring. If she had the energy, she would’ve gone for all kinds of things - maybe a Coffin Drop or a Moonsault, or maybe she’d ever Herc Laxia up and hit her with a piledriver. But after the pummeling she’d just taken, options were limited for the moment.

So she went with the simple choice - pulling her over on top of Laxia, mounting her at the waist, and raining down heavy punches on her face. ”Fucking! Stupid! Bitch!” She punctuated every with a blow, each one directed towards her opponent’s face. No technique, no subtlety, just hammering lefts and right and lefts. ”Say it again! Say that shit again!”

[Letta]

Laxia groaned, cradling her aching jaw. She blinked a few times and cautiously shook her head, but the dizziness lingered. Just as she tried to gather her senses, a rough, animal growl drew closer. By the time she turned to look, Sheila was already climbing on top of her.

“Uuugh...”

As Sheila’s weight settled across her waist, Laxia’s breath caught. She could not even tense her stomach. Above her, the arena lights formed a halo behind Sheila’s face and tangled mane. There was nothing merciful about the expression beneath it.

“Kyaaah...!”

The first punch struck her mouth, snapping her head to one side. There was no trace of consideration for a fellow wrestler in that blow. Before she could even register the first impact, another fist came down, with a generous helping of F-words and B-words on the side.

“Guh...! Uugh...!”

No finesse, no restraint. Just punches from the left, the right, then the left again. One caught her near the eye, another struck her nose. Her eyes watered, and a metallic taste spread through her mouth. Laxia hurriedly raised both arms to shield her face. But that alone could not stop the onslaught. Fists battered her forearms and slipped through the gaps in her wavering guard.

Had she ever been beaten like this in her life...? Outside the ring, keeping trouble at bay was usually the responsibility of her burly butler, who doubled as her bodyguard. There would be no one stepping in for her here. As the punches kept coming past her raised arms, that difference became painfully clear. And it had to be her face.

Countless steps in her skincare routine. Regular facial treatments. She had lavished the sort of care on her face that others might consider excessive. It was like the garden of a grand estate, tended by gardeners down to the very last leaf. And Sheila had just driven a bulldozer straight through it. Not even the suitors she had reluctantly met had been allowed to touch her face so casually. Yet this woman was pounding it with her fists. As though trampling her chest had not been enough, now she was going after her face, too.

“Nnngh....!”

A low sound escaped through Laxia’s clenched teeth. Too feral to be merely a groan. She did not realize how much it resembled the growl Sheila had made only moments earlier. Anger surged through the pain. Planting her feet against the mat, she struggled and twisted her hips from side to side. Every twist sent pain through her abdomen and made her breath hitch, but she had no intention of remaining meekly pinned beneath this woman. Seizing the moment when Sheila’s weight shifted to one side, she pushed with both hands and rolled them over...! Sheila lost her balance, and this time, Laxia came out on top.

“You... vulgar little thing...!”

There was no composure left for another lecture. Her orange hair was thoroughly disheveled, and a smear of blood marked her mouth. With her teeth bared, she looked nothing like her usual poised, dignified self. If anything, she looked closer to the very woman she had been regarding with such disdain.

“How dare you do this.. to my face...!”

Laxia went for the cheek first. She struck it with a sharp slap, then tried to drive her opposite fist straight into Sheila’s face. Then another.. But the next punch cut through empty air. She had swung one arm before drawing the other back, leaving them awkwardly crossed in front of her. This kind of fighting was unfamiliar territory for Laxia, too. Straddling someone and wildly throwing punches had little in common with the techniques she had spent so long refining. In her mind, she had already paid Sheila back several times over. Her body simply could not keep up with her anger.

“Nnnngh...!”

The thought of the state her face must be in was infuriating. So were the arms that refused to do what she wanted. To fumble like this, with the woman who had just been pummeling her now lying beneath her, was more than she could bear. Finally, Laxia unclenched her fists. At least this was something she had already done today. She seized fistfuls of Sheila’s disheveled blonde hair with both hands. Precise timing and fluid combinations slipped from her mind. All that remained was the desire to give back everything she had taken.

“IYAAAAH...!!”

Laxia hauled Sheila’s head up and slammed it into the mat. Still clutching her hair, she did it again, and again. Once was nowhere near enough...!

[BlackAkuma]

Now, this was a fight. This was what Sheila Morgan was fucking born for.

She wasn’t completely without technique. She knew the wrestling basics, and the crazier shit took a keener mind than most people would ever give her credit for. You had to have good timing to be a daredevil, know the exact right moments to throw yourself off insane heights, and have a level of mental fortitude many couldn't touch. Sheila could learn when forced to.

But this - getting in the mud, the dirt, the blood, the sweat - this was what made her day and kept her coming back for more. It was the kind of beautiful chaos she lived for, and she was oh-so happy she got to share it with a certain special someone.

Laxia, unsurprisingly, didn’t much care for the gift.

The woman got her hands up at some point in the barrage, trying to absorb the blows, but that went about as well as an umbrella with holes in it. Some got blocked, but enough got through to satisfy Sheila, and before long she had her opponent good and tenderized.

As with all good things, though, it wasn’t meant to last, and soon enough Laxia bucked her off, and sent the Wild One rolling away, coming over with her on top. Despite the sudden shift, Sheila couldn't but laugh at the indignation in Laxia’s voice, as if she’d crossed some get line by daring to smack her in the face. ”Bitch, it’s a fucking improvement!”

Now it was Sheila’s turn to take punishment. Or, more accurately, it was Laxia’s turn to fail at punishing Sheila. The first slap was hard enough, but everything else was a muddled mess that barely connected. After a moment, the woman just resorted to grabbing Sheila by her mane and ramming her head into the floor. Crude, but effective, so points for her.

Sheila wasn’t going to endure it for long, though, and she planted her feet and threw them into a roll of her own, one she hoped would send them under the ropes and tumbling to the floor - back to her territory.

[Letta]

Even after Laxia had snapped at her like that, Sheila laughed. An improvement, apparently. Laxia’s eyes narrowed further. The sting around her mouth irritated her. So did the tangled hair falling across her face. But that laughter was what she could not stand. Sheila had done this to her and still found it amusing. Her fingers tightened in the blonde’s hair. Ordinarily, Laxia would have seen it coming. If she could roll Sheila off and take the top position, Sheila could do exactly the same to her. Anger alone was not enough to keep an opponent under control. But balance and her next move were the last things on her mind. She wanted that laughter to stop. As she bent over to slam Sheila’s head into the mat again, her weight shifted farther forward. Sheila did not miss the opening. Bracing her feet against the canvas, she suddenly rolled to one side, taking Laxia with her.

“Ah...!”

One knee lifted off the mat. Her view tipped sideways, and her shoulder struck the canvas. Rather than reaching out to catch herself, she stubbornly clung to Sheila’s hair. If anything, her grip only tightened.

“Go on, then- laugh...! I’ll shut that mouth of yours...!”

The two women began rolling across the mat, their bodies tangled together. Laxia landed on her back, then tumbled onto her side again. She twisted, trying to get Sheila beneath her, but only succeeded in tangling them up further. Her disheveled orange hair clung to her cheeks and lips. Whistles and cheers erupted from the audience. The woman who had been lecturing her opponent only moments earlier was now clutching her hair and rolling around with her. The technical exchanges had given way to an outright catfight, and the crowd loved it. This time, however, Laxia was too caught up in her anger to enjoy the cheers.

There was only Sheila. All she wanted was to get back on top and make her regret those words. Which direction they were rolling, or how close they were to the edge of the ring, never entered her mind. She did not even catch the rope as it brushed past her shoulder. Their tangled bodies passed beneath the bottom rope and rolled to the edge of the apron. Just as Laxia tried to twist around again, she suddenly felt herself hanging in empty air. A brief, sickening sensation of weightlessness. Only then did the ringside floor appear at the edge of her vision.

“Ah- AAAAH...!!”

Unfortunately for Laxia, she was the one underneath when they fell. Her back and shoulders slammed against the cold ringside floor. Before she could absorb the impact, Sheila’s full weight came down on top of her.

“Guh...!”

Sheila’s weight pressed her into the floor, forcing the air from her lungs. Pain flared through her already aching abdomen, and her grip on Sheila’s hair briefly slackened. She gritted her teeth, but another groan escaped her lips. Laxia squeezed her eyes shut, then struggled to open them again. Sheila’s face and disheveled blonde hair filled her vision, with the arena lights shining beyond them. The view was exactly the same as before. The only difference was that the mat beneath her back had been replaced by the cold ringside floor. She had fought so furiously to turn the tables, only to find them turned on her again. Trapped beneath Sheila’s body, Laxia struggled to catch her breath.

[BlackAkuma]

This was honestly starting to veer more into catfight territory than a wrestling match, but you know what? Fine. They didn’t just call her ‘the Wild One’ because it was a catchy nickname. It was a state of mind, one she stuck to rigorously, more than willing to throw hands from any direction at any time. She fully intended to keep swinging on Laxia as long as she had the energy, and she wasn’t nearly out. Not just yet.

She still had enough energy to get the two of them rolling, even as Laxia raged on top of her, and their path took them over and over and over again, until Sheila got the result she wanted - the two of them tumbling out under the ropes. Once they fell out, it was all on fate to decide how they landed, and thankfully, the coinflip turned out in her favor - they came down with her on top. While she was far from a heavyweight, she still had enough solid poundage to drop square on another human being, and the sound Laxia made told enough of a story. That one had sucked.

She was lucky - that fall could’ve ended with a clump of her hair getting ripped out, and maybe some scalp along with it, but she landed mostly unfrayed. Laxia, on the other hand, was quite frayed, reeling from the crash and giving her a moment of initiative. She had a fun idea on what to do with it, too.

Sheila gripped Laxia’s wrist, stood up, and dragged her over a few feet to the steel ring steps. She got her close, just close enough that she could take the woman’s hand and force it into the small space between the steps and the ring, where she held it in place for a moment.

”Hang here for a sec.”

Sheila abruptly stepped back and gave the ring steps a sharp kick, attempting to smash Laxia’s fingers with the harsh metal, crushing them with the unforgiving steel.

[Letta]

Laxia was not usually quick to lose her composure. She knew that when emotion clouded her judgment, even a small mistake could prove costly. Being punched in the face and told she looked better for it had made that rather easy to forget. Her anger had not faded, but reality was becoming harder to ignore.

The first sign that she was in trouble had been the cold ringside floor beneath her back. The fall would have hurt even without Sheila landing on top of her. Her opponent’s relatively light weight was a small mercy, but it hardly softened the impact. Her back throbbed, and her abdomen tightened with every breath. Getting up was out of the question. Even catching her breath was a struggle.

“Uuugh...”

Sheila’s weight lifted, but no respite followed. A hand closed around Laxia’s wrist and pulled. She tried to resist, but could do little more than groan as Sheila dragged her across the floor on her back. She could barely make sense of where Sheila was taking her. The steel steps came into view beside her, and her hand was pulled forward. Cold metal brushed her fingertips as Sheila forced her hand into the narrow gap between the steps and the ring. She felt the pressure but did not yet understand what it meant. The shock of the fall and her lingering anger still muddled her thoughts, and Sheila’s instruction to wait drew nothing more than a shallow breath. Laxia turned onto her side and tried to bring her hand to her aching abdomen, but when she pulled her arm back, her hand would not follow.

“Ah...?!”

Only then did she realize exactly where her hand had ended up. She tugged again, but it would not come free. She caught her wrist with her free hand and was about to pull when Sheila’s foot moved.

CLANG - !

Sharp pain shot through her trapped hand as the metal rang out.

“AAAAH...!!”

Laxia’s body jerked backward. The pain in her back and abdomen, even the curses she had wanted to hurl at Sheila, vanished from her thoughts. Nothing mattered except getting her hand out. She pulled back desperately. Barely aware of how she had freed it, she drew her injured hand close to her chest. It was out, but the pain lingered as though the metal still held it fast.

“Nnngh...! Ah...”

Laxia stared down at her trembling hand. Her fingers stung and tingled, and her carefully maintained manicure was chipped and scratched. Yet she was in too much pain even to be angry about it...! Nothing in her textbooks had prepared her for this kind of wrestling, where anything could become a weapon. The pain in her trembling hand was another unmistakable reminder- she was back in Sheila’s territory...!

[BlackAkuma]

On some level, Sheila knew she shouldn’t be too mad at Laxia. It was just a wrestling match, nothing sacred about it, and while she might have disapproved of a woman like this being in a hardcore match, it wasn’t as if Laxia had chosen to be here, as far as she could tell. They were just two employees doing a job at the end of the day. It didn’t have to be personal.

And yet…and yet...

Call it pettiness, call it class warfare. She’d grown up poor, and while she’d never been the type to care much about politics, she’d be lying if she said something about the woman’s shine, her opulence, was kind of grating on her, making her a little patient than she typically was, and she was not a typically patient woman. At all.

All that to say, she got a bit more of a sadistic thrill out of crushing Laxia’s fingers than she typically would’ve. But it was effective, and it would pay dividends, right? If the woman’s hand was shattered, that would take away a lot of her options. On top of that, all that pain had left her distracted, staggering around the ringside area, clearly out of it for the moment. Maybe, just maybe…

Screw it.

Sheila ran into the ring, scrambled to her feet, and sprinted to the far side, hitting the ropes at top speed. She bounced off, came rushing to the other side, bounced off, then rushed to the opposite side and bounced off one final time, building up so much speed and momentum that she was turning into an orange blur, her feet scarcely touching the canvas, her hair flying out long behind her.

She waited until the last moment then ducked and threw herself out of the ring between the top and the middle rope, soaring out of the ring like a human missile as she tried to strike Laxia with her high-energy version of the tope suicida: Across the Border.

[Letta]

Feeling seemed to be returning to Laxia’s hand, though flexing her fingers still hurt. Keeping it tucked close, she braced her good hand against the floor, drew one knee beneath herself, and struggled onto unsteady feet. Her back and abdomen protested, but she could not stay down forever.

Sheila was nowhere in sight. Laxia frowned and looked around, more uneasy than relieved by her opponent’s disappearance. What was that woman plotting now? The creak of straining ropes drew her attention upward. Sheila was already sprinting across the ring. She hit the ropes and rebounded toward the opposite side, her boots drumming rapidly against the canvas.

Is she... warming up right now..?

Laxia watched, bewildered. After everything she had suffered at ringside, seeing Sheila return to the ring came as something of a relief. Whatever the reason, she could not crush Laxia’s hand again from over there. If she wanted to keep running around up there, Laxia certainly would not stop her. Yet she could not look away. There was something familiar in the way Sheila used the ropes, carrying their recoil straight into her next movement. Laxia relied on that same spring and speed herself. Sheila’s style was much rougher, but the power building behind her movements was unmistakable. And she was not slowing down. The ropes stretched again. Sheila rebounded. This time, straight toward her. Laxia straightened her aching back and narrowed her eyes. She expected Sheila to stop or turn as she reached the ropes. Instead, the woman ducked.

“Wait-”

Laxia’s eyes widened. Sheila had not been warming up. She had been building speed for her next attack. She shot between the top and middle ropes. The woman who had been inside the ring a moment ago suddenly filled Laxia’s vision. There was no time to retreat, or even raise an arm. Sheila slammed squarely into Laxia’s torso with her modified tope suicida- Across the Border...!

“UWAAAH...!!”

Both feet left the floor. She was not just being knocked back. She was flying. Laxia was used to being airborne, but not like this. The direction, the height, even where she would land.. none of it was up to her. The ring receded before her eyes. There was nothing beneath her, only Sheila’s momentum carrying her backward. There was no way a landing at this speed would end well. Before she could finish the thought, her back slammed against the ringside floor.

“Guh...!”

The impact drove the air from her lungs. Her back, still aching from the earlier fall, arched reflexively, then settled against the floor again. She had barely managed to get up, and now she was sprawled at ringside all over again. Laxia twisted to one side, reaching behind her with her uninjured hand.

“Nnngh...”

[BlackAkuma]

The best part of it, for Sheila anyway, was the moment. The moment. That moment between the time when she leapt out of the ring and the moment where she crashed into her opponent. Time slowed to a crawl for a second. The crowd didn’t know whether or not you would land the attack or miss and wipe out or worse. You didn’t know, either. You were just flying, beyond gravity. Beyond everything. Weightless.

Then, BAM.

It was like that with Laxia right now, and Sheila loved every second of it. Their bodies collided in this glorious, human car crash, a moment of extreme violence, as Sheila body sent Laxia flying back and left her laid out, totally wrecked.

Of course, it wasn’t a pleasant experience for Sheila - they didn’t call the move a tope suicida because it was conducive to your continued health. She hit the floor hard and went into a tumble, ass-over-teakettle, rolling and rolling and rolling until she smacked up against the barricade, hitting her back hard against it. Sheila had to grit her teeth to keep from crying out, but when she looked over and saw Laxia's state, she knew it was all worth it.

”Fuck yes, fuck yes!” Sheila pulled herself up onto the barricade, laughing through her coughs as she spotted Laxia sprawled nearby. It was hard to believe, but it looked like the woman was finally done for. Easy prey, and she knew exactly what to do with her. She could feel it in her bones.

Sheila marched over to the ring, slapped the apron with both hands, and slid her way back in under the bottom rope, with Laxia still in her sights, she walked backwards until she was standing near the middle of the ring. Eyes focused. Locked. Waiting. Watching as her opponent recovered and stood up. Higher. Higher.

Sheila reached behind her back, pulled out an invisible shotgun, cocked it, fire, and then she was off.

One side of the ring. Then the other. The back again. Building up speed once more, the same motions, the same sprint, ignoring her heart as it threatened to beat out of her chest.

She hit the ropes one final time, rushed towards Laxia, and launched herself through the top and middle rope once more, looking to nail her with one more Across the Border.