SS 14 Best 2/3 Falls: Taylor Parker Vs. Adrian Kytes

Taylor clenched her fists and arched her back as she lifted slightly off the mat, momentarily paralyzed by the agony shooting through her spine. It hurt so badly she just wanted to roll over and cry, but she was still awake. She was alive. And for Adrian, the jury was still out on that.

Slowly, she rolled over onto her hands and knees, and crawled two horrible steps to where Adrian was laid out. She didn't have the energy to get into position for a pin. She only let her body fall on top of Adrian's, with the former cosplayer's head under her belly and her cheek resting on Adrian's midsection while her arms hugged her as tightly as they could.

In the back of her mind, she heard the sweetest sound in the whole world.

"ONE!"

"Two!" The referee called as the crowd counted along with her, everyone waiting to see if Adrian was going to dodge defeat by the skin of her teeth yet again, but as the referee's hand came down, Adrian still didn't budge: only the light heaving of her chest giving any indication as to whether she was alive or not, but there was nothing left. She had given everything she had to give: blood, sweat and tears, bus still came up just short of Taylor.

"THREE!"

The roar of the crowd drowned out everything else, and for a while Taylor could only stay flat on top of Adrian, with the only movement coming from their breathing. Her back heaved with each breath, and one after another they became shorter, they caught in her throat, and by the time she managed to roll of of her opponent and onto her back, all she could do was cry.

She put her hands over her face to give herself the closest thing she could have to a private moment, in the ring, under the lights, in front of tens of thousands of people, being watched by thousands more. She was dimly aware of the sound of the bell ringing somewhere far, far away, and the match was over. The longest, most brutal grind of her career was over, and in spite of everything everyone had always said about her losing her nerve and not being able to finish the job, she had won.

She knew her mother-in-law would be there, at some point, though her ankle would slow her down. For the time being she laid still and soaked in the moment, her body racked with pain, her eyes stinging with tears that mixed with the crimson mask of her own blood, bleeding into her hair and on the mat, while the crowd roared and somewhere inside her was a part of her that knew, beyond any doubt, that she had something that no one else did.

She was unstoppable. She was unbreakable. She was relieved.

Junko was on the apron by the time the second count hit, just so she could roll in easier when the third came. She KNEW it was coming and when it did, she tucked herself under the ropes and did an unceremonious roll. She slowly got to her feet, her leg dragging as she looked down at Taylor.

She was crying hot tears but her face and the brightest smile ever on it.

"Oh, my daughter." She said and knelt down.

Junko reached out and took Taylor's hand and pulled her off Adrian and into a tight hug, squeezing Taylor with all her might as the crowd continued to cheer. She didn't care that her kimono was ruined, slick with Taylor's, and probably Adrian's, blood. Her free hand slipped into Taylor's sweaty, blood soaked locks and she pressed her the girl's head into her shoulder.

"You did it, I'm so, so proud of you."

Taylor cried as much out of relief as anything else, but the tears dried up quickly as Junko held her. The elation she should've felt from the gruesome, hard-fought victory was waiting somewhere inside her, hidden under a mask of blood and exhaustion.

She began to turn her head to look up at her mother-in-law, but a sharp twinge of pain in her neck stopped her. She settled for looking down at her palm, armored in a black, fingerless, leather glove.

"Are you okay?" She asked. She still wasn't quite sure what part of Junko had been hurt in the fall, or how bad it was. Her eyes drifted over to Adrian's body, still lying on her back in the middle of the ring. "Is she?"

Junko gasped as she watched Taylor's neck force a grimace on her. "Oh no!" She said. "Don't turn your neck, Taylor-chan!" She said with her worried voice, ignoring Taylor's questions for the moment before turning and looking at Adrian. "Oh my..." She whispered sorrowfully.

She turned back to Taylor. "I'll be fine, dear." She said. She'd probably limping and it might suck to stand up but she'd live. She wasn't sure if she could say the same for Adrian and Taylor. She slid away from Taylor and crawled over to Adrian. She let her long sleeves curtain their faces so that Junko could only see Adrian and vice versa.

"Don't move if you're in pain, Adrian-chan." The older woman sopke in a motherly tone. She lowered one hand and ran it through Adrian's hair comfortingly. "I'm proud of you too, Adrian-chan." She said, smiling softly. "You gave my daughter the hardest fight of her life and you have nothing at all to be ashamed of. I'm sure you've made your family very, very proud as well."

Junko leaned down and kissed Adrian's cheek before she flopped onto her butt and then struggled to stand up. She bit her lip so she didn't yelp when she put weight on her foot and after a moment, tenderly set it on the canvas. "If either of you can get up without killing yourselves, we've got some hands to raise in the air, I think, fufu."

"Okay..." Taylor said, blinking until her eyes cleared and she could see her manager's face. "Cool."

Time for the next part. She'd had her little private moment, now it was time to get up and face the crowd. She drew a deep breath and found her nerve, and then forced her body to move, painfully, upward until at last she was standing on her own two feet in front of an adoring, thundering, American crowd. It was pretty cool.

She hobbled her way to the middle of the ring. Now that the adrenaline was tailing off, everything hurt more. She didn't play to the crowd or showboat or talk any trash, instead she only put her hands on her hips and waited to see if Adrian would get up too. It didn't seem right without everyone accounted for.

Adrian's eyes blinked open, almost to be immediately blinded by the lights and the creeping realization as to what happened. "N....no..." She groaned, rolling over on to her side, quickly paying for it via a shooting pain in her back and the drips of blood from her face. She had come so close to proving that she could win against the best without having to rely on cheap tricks and cheating that to come up short after all that she'd gone through, it just made her want to curl up into a ball and cry, and Junko was not helping.

"S-shut up." She croaked out, trying to weakly shove the Japanese woman away as the tears started to flow, the absolute last thing she wanted to be thinking of right now was how her parents would react to her wrestling career. If she had won she might have been able to talk about it with a bit of pride in her voice, but now? What was she supposed to say about it? That she spent 5 years going behind their backs to pursue a dangerous career that she still wasn't good at? She wanted to scream "I would have won if you weren't here!" at Junko as she planted a kiss that just made her want to retch.

Grimacing as she pushed herself off to her feet, the cheering crowd offering nothing to the former cosplayer, there were only two people she wanted to talk to right now, and the only one here was standing in the middle of the ring, waiting for her. Limping her way across, one hand covering up the mess that was her nose she met Taylor dead center, wiping away the tears in her eyes while her free hand balled into a fist before relaxing back to normal, she really didn't have the energy to fight Taylor anymore.

The crowd was still cheering from the epic match and now that both girls were on their feet, they were back to being rowdy loud. Junko grinned and took both girls hands and raised them into the air. The crowd roared to life, giving them a standing ovation for their grueling efforts.The bespectacled mother beamed brightly and fresh tears dripped down her cheeks.

"Take it in, girls, you earned it, fufu."

Junko lowered Adrian's hand but held onto it tightly. "TAY-LOR! TAY-LOR! TAY-LOR!" They cheered in unison. Junko let it soak in before lowering Taylor's hand and raising Adrian's.

"A-DRI-AN! A-DRI-AN! A-DRI-AN!"

The crowd cheered equally as hard for the former cosplayer, knowing the match could have just as easily been hers. Junko let the brunette soak it up before raising both hands up once more for one final standing o.

"This business is about making magic, girls. You two just pulled off one doozy of a trick!"

Little by little, the overwhelming support from the crowd rekindled Taylor's smile, until she wore her trademark grin, big, bright, and razor sharp. She waved to the crowd with her free hand and squirmed cutely under the attention in a way that seemed so inappropriately girlish after the brutality of the match. Managing to be adorable while blood dripped from her face was a new feat.

She and Adrian had all but grown up together in Friction, as bitter rivals and as enemies and once even as something like friends. Adrian had achieved success in a way that had always filled Taylor with caustic jealousy. She had hated her, she had always wanted what Adrian had, because she knew she deserved it and Adrian didn't.

But here they both were, as veterans of the industry and as Friction stars, on their feet after a match that tested every inch of their toughness and will, and Taylor knew she had to let that jealousy go. The years of hard work and setbacks were just what she needed to grow, and Adrian had proven what she was made of beyond what Taylor could ever have imagined. She could never say again that Adrian was overrated, because now she had her respect.

"Mom," she said, just so Junko could hear, and kept smiling. "I really am gonna be champion. I'm gonna change everything."

She pulled her hand back from Junko and extended it toward Adrian. She had no expectations of how the once-cosplaying and still nerdy brunette would take it, but it didn't matter. It was Taylor's to give.