Abattoir vs. Alicia Wells vs. Liberty - Here Comes The Pain

The millisecond after the knee strike connected, Abattoir lunged.

She was considering following up on Liberty, who was basically a sitting duck at the moment, but after the ten or so seconds' worth of offense she'd seen from Alicia the nak muay was convinced of who her first target should be. That kind of opponent was the most dangerous - they started fast, hit the ground running, and could quickly swarm and overwhelm you if you didn't find your range and pace quickly.

Granted, all of that assumed a one-on-one fight...and one without the grand equalizer of weapons lying everywhere.

The running knee was really just the nail in the coffin; as soon as she saw that connect, Abattoir knew this one had to be dealt with fast. Fortunately, she'd been in her fair share of multi-person melees (albeit generally not in the context of a wrestling ring) and her experience illuminated the perfect opportunity to leap forward and try to snag the bigger girl around the throat with the kendo stick. It wasn't as much of an uphill battle as she might have thought, given that the height difference wasn't that much, but she jumped anyway. Just to be sure.

If she was able to get a grip - even if it was just around the shoulders rather than the throat - Abattoir intended to hook one leg around Alicia's and then drop back a moment later. The classic White Russian Leg Sweep. Hopefully it wouldn't get an "ECW" chant going, but you could never tell with wrestling fans.

Liberty was going to have to try more of this newfangled ‘patience’ thing she’d been hearing about. She hadn’t been a fan of it in the past, but in this sort of match, she was seeing the possibilities.

For instance, instead of charging out and likely taking a kick in the face for her troubles, she waited Alicia’s assault out and was granted with the sight of Abattoir taking out the redhead, seeing her put Alicia down with a Russian Leg Sweep when she peeked from underneath her guard. Which put them - both of them - on the floor.

Perfect.

A second after Abattoir dropped her with the sweep, Liberty stepped back, bounced off the ropes and charged forward, closing in with a long stride. She leaping forward and flew over them, kicking her legs out with her arms extended while she sailed.

Her best case scenario was to hit both of them with elbow drops to their chests, using her metal pads for maximum effect. Worst case scenario, Abattoir would move out of the way in time to avoid it, but that would be fine with Liberty - above all, she wanted to even the score with Alicia for all those kicks.

Whatever she was, Liberty didn’t seem to be a striker judging by how she walked right into Alicia’s trap. Ok, fine, going for the head was the smart move but it let the redhead drill her belly with that kick and then hammer the knee into her skull far harder than any punch she could have thrown. It left Liberty splayed across the ropes, hands up protecting her upper body but that left so many options for her to kick.

Of course she’d barely walked away from that when things went wrong.

For starters, Abattoir was really, really quiet when she wanted to be.

The first thing Alicia knew of the nak muay coming up behind her, despite her knowing she needed to pay attention, was when the unfamiliar feeling of the wooden stick brushed against her throat. Not good. Instinctively, her arms came up, managing to get her fingers wrapped around the weapon and trying to stop Abattoir turning it into a full-on choke. But that meant she didn’t really have the positioning to stop her opponent sweeping her leg out from under her and slamming her flat on her back.

The redhead hit hard, her hands releasing the stick the instant after impact to clutch at her head and neck. She was about to roll out of the way, looking to put some distance between her and the nak muay, when a shadow fell over her. And then she had the fun of having Liberty’s – metal clad – elbow slam into her sternum with the crazy woman’s weight behind it.

Alicia’s body jack-knifed up around the point of impact, the kickboxer gasping for air that wouldn’t come for a long moment. The best she could do was try to roll away before either of them decided to hit her again and, if they were interested, she probably wasn’t going to get very far.

The thrill of landing the leg sweep was very short-lived. It wasn't even perfectly-executed; in the split second between hooking the stick and going over, Abattoir discovered her would-be victim had some very impressive reflexes and combat instinct, because by the time she dropped, Alicia had already been gripping the kendo stick and probably preparing some kind of counter. Dangerous. Very, very dangerous.

This would be a hell of a fight.

As soon as she landed, though, she could see Liberty coming off the ropes in her peripheral vision, and by the time Abattoir figured out it was a double elbow drop it was already happening. She'd rolled a fraction of the distance she needed when the Italian's metal elbow pad slammed right into her shoulder, throwing her roll way off and eliciting a hiss of pain. At least she'd managed to hold onto the kendo stick.

....which, with her rising up to her knees and Liberty right in front of her, seemed like a pretty excellent consolation prize at the moment.

Hoisting the cane over her shoulders, Abattoir lashed out with a vicious overhead strike like a lumberjack with an axe. It was an interesting contrast to her unarmed fighting - when she used the science of eight limbs, she was all smoke and mirrors, conservative flurries and intricate feints masking the big shots and getting her into the clinch - but put a weapon in her hands and she was all follow-through. It was like she was trying to slam the stick through the center of the earth.

”Ha!” Liberty threw up some quick devil horns and called out, triumph filling her voice as Alicia rolled away. ”That’s for kicking me in the oh shit!”

The last part of Liberty’s little victory speech was cut short when she did quick look around and realized she had a more pressing problem than getting her full taunt in: Abattoir was up. On her knees. With the kendo stick. Holding it above her head, and she could be fairly certain it wasn’t to show the thing off.

Liberty wasn’t known for her swiftness or agility, but she could move fairly quick when wanted to, and this was a time when she really wanted to. She stopped, dropped, and rolled to the side, letting Abattoir’s kendo stick come down on Alicia instead, hammering the redhead’s already hammered body.

Busy trying to cope with the sudden rush of pain, Alicia naturally didn’t have a reply to Liberty’s little speech although a part of her was determined to show the crazy woman just how hard she could kick by booting some of her teeth down her throat. Metaphorically, but for once she was definitely feeling like a little retribution would be sweet. Not that it looked like it was happening any time soon, not when all she was concentrating on was getting the hell out of the crossfire. While she was pretty sure that elbow drop had caught Abattoir as well, there was every chance she still had that kendo stick and all she wanted was to get clear.

Which she didn’t manage before the kendo stick came down and – given how she’d rolled – caught her in the side. Hard. Alicia yelped in pain, curling into a ball reflexively in an almost certainly futile attempt to protect herself from any follow up strikes, doing her best to roll right out from between the two.

In the small part of her mind that wasn’t occupied with the pain in her ribs, she was bitterly debating whether she was going to break that stick over Abattoir’s head or Liberty’s. Either’d work.

Although blasting Liberty into the shadow realm with the kendo stick would've been an excellent turn of events - and her dive to the side was a bitter disappointment - Abattoir found that all the clouds in life tend to have silver linings.

Case in point: she instead managed to double Alicia up with the shot. Even unintentionally it seemed to have been pretty devastating. The thwack of the impact, the sudden cry of pain from the redhead, the roars of approval - satisfying, all in all. Of course, the opposite of that earlier saying was also true: every silver lining had its cloud. She'd brought the kendo stick down with such violent force that it wrenched itself out of her grip as it bounced off Alicia's ribs, twirling gracefully through the air and landing on the mat next to the three girls.

Priorities reasserted themselves. Liberty was the real problem right now; she had plenty of momentum and, unlike Alicia, hadn't just gotten clobbered with a foreign object. Abattoir whirled in place to deal with her other opponent, bringing her fists up and ready to throw down, but several seconds had already passed, and she'd been open for all of them. Chances were high that she'd be on the defensive real soon.

Liberty was feeling like one lucky, lucky bitch.

Not only did she manage to avoid Abattoir’s attack, not only did she manage to get Alicia smashed in the process, but her opponent had also managed to lose her weapon along the way, giving Liberty a lovely window to work with.

And she had so many ideas. So many lovely ideas.

Liberty had rolled a few feet away and popped back to her feet in the intervening moments, and by the time Abattoir turned around, she was already on the move again. She dashed straight towards her masked foe, covering the distance like only a long-haired Italian freight train could. When she was close enough, she ducked down and tried to plow into Abattoir with a fierce spear, looking to combine her mass with velocity and achieve some serious force.

Although she was expecting a headshot, and guarding her face accordingly, Abattoir turned around into a spear.  Her eyes widened just enough that anybody recording the show would have a hell of a reaction image, and then there was a great terrible crash.

She was on her back in an instant, briefly short of breath courtesy of Liberty's shoulder driving right into her solar plexus.  The back of her head bounced off the canvas, and although Abattoir was trying to pull guard as quickly as possible and get her feet up on Liberty's hips to prevent further damage or followups, she'd had the wind knocked out of her and wasn't in a great position to be proactive.

One arm guarded her face, while the other shot out next to her, searching blindly for a weapon.

The referee had been wisely keeping her distance from the carnage so far, but when Liberty impaled Abattoir with her spear and took her opponent to the floor, she circled in and prepared for a possible count.

She needn't have bothered. Liberty wasn't through tenderizing her meat.

The once - and perhaps future - hardcore champion crawled up as high as she could with her opponent's feet working against her, raised her chest up to make some space, and just went to work, unleashing a salvo on her silent foe. These weren’t precision strikes, either. They were IEDs - rough, lacking any real finesse, wild haymakers went after Abattoir’s chest neck, face, shoulder, anything she could get a clean hit on. They weren't fueled by hate, just the knowledge that her time was precious in this match and every advantage had to be exploited.

”Gotosleepgotosleepgothefucktosleep-”