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Extremely graphic descriptions of blood and extreme violence
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Squeak. Squeak. Squea-
Party Girl's ride came to a stop as she dug her right heel into the wood chips. She rose from the spring-mounted horse, and her expression turned as she took a few steps closer. The Look disappeared from her visage, replaced by disappointment. "Why couldn't you be more like Janice?" said Party Girl, her voice matching her appearance. "You killed my cat. You know that, right?"
"What?" Alicia's face screwed up in confusion as she adjusted the strap of her gym bag and tightened her gloved hands around her hockey stick.
"I told you to fight Black Violet, but you waited and waited until you left me no choice. I'd still have my presh-presh if you fought stupid Black Violet the first time I said so!" Party Girl's angry growl turned to a heated shout by the end. "Janice didn't want to, but she did what I told her," explained the millionaire. "I'd give her the day off, but unfortunately I had to let her go. She killed my cat."
An incredulous half-laugh escaped Alicia's lips as she shook her head. About two more steps and she'd be at the edge of swinging range. The former hockey player continued to circle clockwise as her opponent closed the distance. "You're flippin' crazy."
"Yeah, well you talk weird," retorted Party Girl, who unzipped the right pocket of her tracksuit, slipped in her hand, and pulled out a fistful of hot pink brass knuckles. Party Girl's eyes flitted playfully to her reinforced right hand, then back at Alicia as the Look returned. "Oh look! It's still covered in your frien-"
Fury seized control of Alicia's limbs from her better judgement as she stepped forward and hacked at her giggling opponent with the hockey stick. Party Girl danced under the swing, took a stutter-step and a leap forward, and caught Alicia in her bandaged forehead with a loaded flying haymaker. The world spun 180 degrees, and the champ only remained on her feet with the aid of her stick. The dazed wrestler heard two quick footfalls on the soft surface, and next saw the ground speeding upward to meet her as Party Girl grabbed Alicia by the back of her head with a flying Bulldog and pulled her face-first into the wood chips.
A stomp to the back of the head treated Alicia to another mouthful of ground. "Oww!" she cried an instant-and-a-half after impact. Why did that hurt so much? thought-screamed the downed wrestler. She then slipped her arm free of her gym bag and rolled to safety a split-second before a follow-up stomp from Party Girl landed where Alicia's head had been. Even accounting for the rapidly cooling temperatures, that hurt far more than expected. Oh, thought Alicia, glimpsing her opponent's footwear from the ground: cleats. The sting of winter's chill made the mere thought of them hurt. She crawled on all-fours to the misery-go-round, ripping aside fistfuls of wood chips as she scrambled for space to recover. Party Girl grabbed one of the push-handles and swung it around as hard as she could, slamming it against Alicia's temple and sending the champion sprawling while the celebrity cackled at her own slapstick gag.
Party grabbed one of the push-handles and spun the misery-go-round again, turning the equipment into a game of pain roulette. The living brand name grabbed both braids and pulled Alicia upright. The haze in the dazed champion's head hung thick until she heard Party Girl take a two-step run-up followed by rows upon rows of hard, plastic teeth biting into Alicia's chin from a dropkick that knocked her off her feet and sent her sprawling backward onto the misery-go-round.
Crash!
Alicia's jaw peeled open in an anguished scream that failed to capture her true feelings. With arms and head frozen in place for fear of further injury from the glass, Alicia swung around in a circle aboard the misery-go-round as she carefully peeled herself off the razor-sharp surface inch by inch with a mighty sit-up. Something struck her dead-center that sent shockwaves of blunt force agony through her chest and blew all the air from her lungs. Another crash followed as her sliced-open back once again met the glass when she fell.
Party Girl reached out a hand and stopped the misery-go-round, bent down, and pressed the hockey stick across Alicia's throat. The suffocating competitor thrashed for air on the bed of shattered glass. "You know what I haven't done yet? The match where I 'go too far,'" pitched the celebrity as she grabbed her opponent by the wrist and dragged her stumbling up off the glass. "That'd be a fly headline, right? Party Girl Goes Too Far! Smaller print: Crowd Stunned but Effluvient. And a cover photo of me, holding up my title over your body while the crew tries to decide whether to call an ambulance, or an ambulance for dead people."
Alicia's thrashing had grown weaker, but she had to be conscious to say the words to end the match, forcing Party Girl to reluctantly let go of her prey. Alicia gasped and coughed as she gulped precious air. The human brand name grinned as she hefted the hockey stick in her hands. "I see why you like this thing. What were you thinking with the color, though? Plain wood?" chastised the fashion mogul with a frown. She tossed the lumber onto the wood chips and watched Alicia groan and roll on her side.
The pretender to the throne grabbed Alicia by the arm and the back of her jersey and dragged her towards a steel-plated rocking horse for some head-to-head contact. At the last possible moment, the TV Champion slammed on the brakes and swung Party Girl around to take the impact instead. The socialite went head- and shoulder-first, into the horse's steel-reinforced blonde hairdo. The horse creaked once again on its spring as its former rider went down beside it in a heap.
The crossover star clambered upright on uneasy feet, and Alicia socked her in the gut. It wasn't a Gut Check, but it turned Party Girl's legs to jellies. Alicia trapped Party Girl in a side headlock, captured the celebrity's right leg with her arm, and hoisted an upside-down Party Girl into a Fisherman's Brainbuster position. Alicia aimed to plant her opponent headfirst onto the reinforced saddle of the playground abomination. From her inverted position above Alicia's head, Party Girl drove a withering barrage of knees with her free leg into the crown of her captor's noggin.
The desperation offense had the intended effect of allowing Party Girl to slip out of the predicament and land behind her property theft victim. Alicia's right leg buckled as Party Girl slammed a cleated kick into the back of Alicia's knee. The saddle zoomed into Alicia's view at a thousand miles an hour, but somehow the champ got her hands up in time to stop her nose from planting into the steel half an inch from disaster. On instinct, she threw a back elbow at Party Girl, who deflected the strike with her forearms on similar instinct.
Suspicion confirmed. The plan was a go.
Party Girl's two-handed effort to protect her face freed Alicia from her grasp, allowing Alicia to stand up and create some distance in the safest direction: the direction of the thumbtack swing set. A set of powerful, manicured fingers tightened around her shoulder, but Alicia spun around of her own volition. The former hockey player shot her forehead into the bridge of her opponent's nose, but two deceptively powerful arms got between Alicia and her target at the last moment. Meanwhile, two visibly powerful arms coiled around Party Girl's waist as Alicia hauled her opponent up and overhead with a Belly-to-belly suplex.
The star shot through the air, sailing into the swingset and landing almost perfectly on the small of her back across the lower of the two swings to the ground. Party Girl dangled in place for exactly a second before processing all of it at once. She shrieked like a howler monkey that had fallen onto thumbtacks. "AAAAAAAA! AAAAA! AAAAAAAAAAA-AAAA!!"
An extremely motivated Party Girl extracted herself from the swing with several passengers in tow and tumbled to her knees on the other side of the swings from Alicia. Where's my stick? There it was, on the ground a few feet from the neon green sports duffel - easy to find in the dark. Behind it, framed by the gazebo's first-story doorway, lay a warped, barbed wire wicker parody of furniture: a throne of thorns. Perfect place to line up a shot. She just wasn't sure how to get Party Girl in there.
While Party Girl lay writhing in agony grabbing at her back and backside, Alicia limped for her stick and bag and hobble-hurried toward the edge of the playground, dropping the hockey stick on the ground and burying it in the wood chips by the end of the runway. One fistful of woodchips after another cascaded onto the stick, burying it in the ground. She grabbed the puck, slapped it on the runway, and laid the gym bag on top of it.
Footfalls drew closer as Party Girl sprinted toward Alicia from behind. The champion turned around and unloaded a two-fisted salvo of wood chips into her opponent's face, but Party Girl already had her hands up. Alicia thrust her shoulder into her opponent's midsection and wrapped her arms around the backs of Party Girl's knees, dropping her with a double-leg takedown. The Hard Times graduate rolled Party Girl onto her belly and cinched in as tight an ankle lock as she could manage in her hockey gloves as she cranked the appendage violently out of position. The challenger cried out as Alicia wrenched away at the socket and joint. "Your gap-tooth looks stupid," spat Party Girl, flat on her face and stomach on the ground.
"You're just jealous," the champ offhanded back. Another hard wrench of the ankle, but this time Alicia cried out as pain exploded through the back of her knee as Party Girl steadied herself enough to hammer it with a cleated kick. Alicia's equilibrium left her as her knee buckled, sending her tumbling face-first to the ground. Both competitors were down, but Alicia could already hear her opponent start to rise.
The stripes hovered ten or so feet away from the action, being worn tonight by the head referee, Anthony what's-his-name. He wore a pair of spectacles upon his round nose and a black stocking cap over a shaven head and held a microphone in a rough, light auburn hand. His only role would be to ask a competitor if she wanted to say "I quit." It presented a philosophical quandary, then, when Party Girl snatched the handheld microphone, turned around, and blasted Alicia with an overhand shot to the forehead. The blow sent the champ instantly to the ground, and Party Girl tossed the mic aside as she stalked towards Alicia, and then past her.
Party Girl said as turned and beamed down at her bleary-eyed opponent, "I got myself a present. After everything I put myself through for this belt, I deserve it." That sounded bad–but more importantly, it sounded important. Alicia found her bait. Party Girl limped towards the gazebo before turning around for one last gloat. "You're gonna be so jealous. Sorry, scrub!" she taunted while flashing an "L" gesture. Party Girl turned and strode with a hitch in her step for the ladder to the second floor, which hung to the right of the door to the thorn room. Alicia tried rolling to her hands and knees, but scintillating pain shot through her knee all the way up to her brain stem the moment she put weight on it.
Alicia pressed herself up off the ground and gave pursuit at a hurried limping hop, but too much distance lay between them for Alicia to overtake the challenger. Party Girl had already topped the ladder before the champ's hands had touched the rungs. With a one-footed vertical hop, Alicia gobbled up as much of the distance as she could at once before climbing the rest the hard way. The hobbling wrestler poked her head up over the top of the ladder just in time to see a three-foot-long rectangular box with an even pinker bow - and a soccer shoe racing towards her nose.
Half-reflex and half-intuition saved Alicia's face as she dipped her head back down to safety. She wondered how good the traction was on those things. Once again, she popped out of cover and snared the back of Party Girl's right ankle with one hand while pushing back on her left shin with the other, managing to forcefully seat Party Girl on the wooden plank floor of the gazebo. Alicia pulled herself up and over the ledge and onto the second floor while Party Girl retreated while bicycling wild kicks at her pursuer. There wasn't as much force behind them as Alicia expected; the ankle was clearly bothering her. The powerhouse shoved the smaller socialite aside and reached for the hot pink gift box.
The moment Party Girl noticed Alicia's eyes on her personal present, the tabloid darling's demeanor turned hostile. "Um, no? That's mine!" Party Girl spun to her feet with a scraping of cleats against the hard surface and threw herself at Alicia, colliding with her larger competitor at bone-crunching speed. The two women toppled into the barbed wire-wrapped railing and nearly over it, gritting their teeth as the pitiless metal stuck in their sides. Alicia felt her head pitch forward toward the barbed wire as Party Girl snagged one of Alicia's french braids. The former hockey player grabbed the railing with her gloved hands and stopped her momentum, much to the dismay of her opponent. She feigned a back elbow to Party Girl's face make her flinch, then stomped the heel of her size 14 wrestling boot onto the toe of Party Girl's soccer shoe, causing her to instinctively retract her foot and loosen her grip on Alicia's braid.
The champion reached for the back of Party Girl's head and attempted to slam her face-first into the barbed wire. The Party Girl brand mascot stopped her momentum with her hands, also, much to the dismay of her palms. A quick look back confirmed the gift box was within arm's reach. Alicia turned, grabbed it with both hands, and casually tossed it over the edge of the gazebo. It landed on the wood chips between thorn room entrance. "Hey! What the hell?! God! You're so annoying," whined Party Girl as she glanced back in the direction the box went over, then cracked her opponent in the back of the head with a loaded rabbit punch. The champ went to the ground in a heap as every bodily faculty turned off and restarted at once.
Alicia's senses returned with her head buried in a faceful of pink polyester as Party Girl held her in a side headlock and appeared to be setting up for a suplex. The moment Alicia's boots left the gazebo floor, the powerhouse grappler sprang to life, hooking her captor's leg to prevent the suplex. Alicia slammed two gloved lefts into Party Girl's side. With a growl of frustration, Party Girl cocked her right fist back and hammered Alicia's kneecap with a metal-reinforced blow. The powerhouse yelped in pain as her knee nearly gave out again. It was the opening Party Girl needed as she managed to get below Alicia's center of gravity and lift the larger woman into the air. Horror washed over Alicia's face as she hung upside-down and got a good look of the landing zone. It was the bouncy bridge. And those were fluorescent light tubes.
CRAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHH!
Every single tube seemed to explode into millions of pinpricks, peppering her with thin blades of glass shrapnel. The referee reached between the supports of the rope and plank bridge with a microphone and asked, "What do you say, Alicia Goon?" A stark silence followed, and then a whimpering moan of a scream escaped her lips as she lay beneath the floodlights staring wide-eyed at the washed-out moon.
Before the devastated champion could clarify, Party Girl kicked the microphone away. "I'm not done with her," scolded Party Girl. The fashion icon grabbed the rope handrails and walked the runway across her opponent, grinding her cleated heel into the side of Alicia's head and sternum. The plummeting temperature made each individual cleat hurt like an icepick digging into her bones. After a journey of many steps, Party Girl arrived at the other end of the bridge. She pulled the shellshocked TV Champion upright by her wrists and hoisted all 193 pounds of dead weight onto her shoulders. Alicia got a good look at the bloodstained hot pink boards and powderized glass where she fell as her opponent carried her to the edge of the sandpaper slide.
Party Girl steeled herself for a heroic burst of effort as she knelt down and pressed her opponent up off her shoulders and spun Alicia into position. The champion's back and head crashed onto the sandpaper with a Sit-down Powerbomb that rattled the nauseatingly pink structure to its frame. Once again, Alicia's ruined back took the brunt of the impact, and every flayed nerve screamed for mercy as her weight slowly slid down the incline.
Party Girl got to her feet, but she had clearly lost some zip. All the weight on that hurt ankle must've done some damage, but the challenger still moved with purpose. She secured a tight grip on Alicia's ankle as Party Girl secured her left knee flush to the back of Alicia's knee, stepped over, turned into place, and fell backward, locking in a Figure Four Leglock on the champion's aching knee and eliciting a scream that threatened to rip apart the night sky.
The referee stuck a microphone in Alicia's face and asked her, "Alicia Goon, do you give?"
Alicia felt she had already made her opinion on the subject quite clear. Tendons stretched to their limits and strained the muscle taut. From her inverted position, it wouldn't do much good to try for an escape. She rocked her weight from left to right, picking up momentum little by little as Party Girl fought to flatten herself out and lower her center of gravity to keep Alicia in place. The powerhouse threw her right shoulder up off the course surface and poured every ounce of core strength into the effort as she rolled onto her stomach and reversed the hold. Party Girl cried out in frustration more than pain as she had the hold turned around on her. Alicia groaned as she pushed up with both hands, applying more pressure to the submission.
The plan wasn't to win with a submission hold. Alicia lifted her left hand and slowly crept forward, using gravity to her advantage. It worked--Party Girl didn't have the weight or the grip to stop her. Full speed ahead. Alicia wheelbarrow-walked on her hands, dragging her gloved fingers down the slide step by step and picking up pace. A cry of agony and shock rose up from behind her as her unwilling cargo scuffed her face on the grit, unable to keep her hands up to protect herself the entire way down.
Alicia tumbled face-first into the wood chips and batted a few out of her hair as she pulled herself from the tangle of limbs that used to be a submission hold. She crawled on all-threes as she dragged her throbbing, mind-bending ache of a right leg behind her. At the edge of the slide behind her sat the wide-eyed Party Girl, mouth frozen open in shock. That perfect beach tan looked sunburnt. The sandpaper road rash had given her a clown nose, an angry patch in the shape of Hawaii below her left eye, and one of Montana on her forehead.
"You-" stammered Party Girl. "Wh- wha?" She seemed genuinely shocked to fall victim to her own masterpiece. "I swear to God I'll kill you!" The scuff marks nearly vanished as her entire face turned bright tomato red. Alicia continued crawling toward the gift box, but the challenger limped faster. Party Girl closed the gap but stopped several feet short of the gift box and helped herself to a stiff kick in the champion's ribs that put Alicia on her back. Party Girl dropped to her knees next to her former enforcer and secured a tight two-handed grip around her throat.
The challenger leaned in close, her ice-blue eyes aglow with hatred purer than Black Violet's stare. "I'm not going to stop just because you give up. I decide when you're done," she whispered. "Do you think I'll get in trouble? I don't." The fight had sapped Alicia of the strength to pry the millionaire's callus-free, workshy hands from her neck. It meant Party Girl left her face wide open. The powerhouse reached up and honked her opponent's clown nose, prompting a bloodcurdling shriek from the grown-up brat as both hands instantly retracted from Alicia's throat to protect herself.
"Pfffttt!" spat Alicia Goon, blowing a loogie into Party Girl's face.
A frustrated scream ripped through the rapidly cooling night air. The facade fell away as Party Girl sneered in disgust at her gasping opponent. The celebrity reached up and wiped–smeared, really–the mucus away with a polyester sleeve. A brass knuckled fist perched high above the nearly spent champion, but something stopped Party Girl from swinging - at least with her fist. She swung an open palm instead. Alicia's cheek burned as she lay sputtering on the ground as a pair of pink soccer shoes stormed past, headed for the gift box on its side in the wood chips.
With a roar, the former hockey player rolled onto her stomach, pushed off the ground, and used that bad leg just one more time to launch herself after Party Girl and wrap her up with a shoestring tackle. The celebrity wrestler cried out in pain as Alicia once again went to the ankle. Firing purely on adrenaline, she crawled for the mystery box past her downed opponent. It wasn't much of a head start, and a pair of hands wrapped around Alicia's left ankle, forcing the champ to drag the terminally famous wrestling star behind her. Her fingertips brushed the gift box, but she couldn't quite grab hold.
"AAAAAAAAAA!!" shrieked Alicia. A stabbing, crushing, pinching pain shot up her calf. She glanced back to find Party Girl had chomped down on the back of her leg through the denim of her worn-out jeans. Another mistake. The powerhouse pulled back her ailing right leg and shot weak kick into the rabid Party Girl's forehead–her raw, scraped-bloody forehead that appeared to also ooze something clear. Again, the challenger covered up at the expense of her hold. Alicia used her momentary freedom to pull herself to the package, wrap both arms tight around it, and force herself into a sitting position. It would be a tricky throw; the thorn room door stood about fifteen feet away and the weight in the gift box wasn't balanced. So what?
With a grunt of exertion, Alicia pitched the gift box through the door and watched as it slid to a stop in front of the throne of thorns. A split-second later, cleats collided with the side of her skull, sending Alicia to the ground as Party Girl landed her signature flying kick, the Unvitation. The next sound Alicia heard was a scream--surprisingly not her own. Party Girl lay on the wood chips clutching her ankle before slowly standing up from the ground and gingerly limp-hopping toward the thorn room.
Now or never, thought the champion as she rolled onto her stomach and dragged herself the opposite direction toward her buried hockey stick. Darkness poured from Party Girl's mouth behind her. "You're worthless! Completely worthless! You're fired! You can't be The Goon anymore. Go back to being Gretchen," taunted the pop culture sensation.
Alicia pressed the blade of her hockey stick into the wood chips and pushed herself to her feet while Party Girl peeled the bow from the package and peered inside. The gift-giver and recipient stood in the thorn room with her back to Alicia as she gasped in performative delight as she produced a pink baseball bat wrapped in an obscene coil of barbed wire. "It's perfect!" fawned Party Girl. "I love it!"
Alicia hobbled onto the runway and batted aside the gym bag covering the puck. She tightened her grip and cocked the stick back. One shot. Be patient.
Party Girl stood at the throne as she called back in a furious sing-song. "You're gonna leave in a body bag, Gretchen."
Alicia replied, "That's not my name, Pickle."
Boiling, venomous scorn creased the fashion icon's complexion as she spun around to shout something back. "Dead-center," muttered Alicia Goon. Party Girl dropped the bat and covered her face as the crack of a slapshot cut through the night air.
"HHHHHHHhhhhnnnnnnnhhhhh..." gasped Party Girl as she sank to her knees clutching her solar plexus from the rocket-fueled Gut Check. The puck clattered to the wood plank floor as Alicia Goon gouged the blade of her hockey stick into the ground like a crutch and limped toward her downed opponent. As the wounded champion reached the thorn room entrance, she discarded her weapon and scooped Party Girl up by the hair, pulling her up from her breathless, agonized coughing fit on the floor. The former hockey player shoved Party Girl face-first into the barbed-wire seat.
For the first second, Party Girl didn't react as red seeped onto the pink metal barbs and trickled down the connective wire. Suddenly aware of her own distress but still too shocked to act, another harrowing second passed in flailing, grasping silence. Metal teeth dug into the tender, exposed flesh as Alicia rubbed the fashion icon's face back and forth along the jagged surface like a cheese grater. Screams. Screams, and screams, and screams poured from the thrashing, frantic millionaire as her survival instinct finally kicked in. "I quit! I QUIT!!" shrieked Party Girl, tearing her fingers to ribbons as she grabbed and pushed the thorny seat and armrests trying to get free.
The champion released her defeated opponent and stumbled backwards out of the gazebo, collapsing onto her back in the wood chips right outside the door. A few feet away, the vanquished challenger sat on her knees, clutching her face in both bloodsoaked hands as crimson poured from her face through her fingers.
"Here is your winner, and still Queens of War TV Champion, AAAALLLLIIIIIIIICCCCCIIIIIAAAAA GOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNN!!!!" announced Helene over the loudspeakers as the referee reached down for Alicia's hand to help her get upright. Nothing doing. A second hand reached down to assist–this one pale. Helene joined in hoisting Alicia upright as the referee raised the retaining champion's hand in victory.
Alicia heard a scream and looked over her shoulder as her defeated opponent tried to break through a pair of production crew and a half-dozen security guards as they forcibly ushered her from the battlefield. Her hands dropped from her face as she tried to push her way through the crowd, revealing the bloody thatch of lacerations and angry red gouges crisscrossing her once-flawless complexion. "I hate you! I hate you! AAAAAAAAAAAAAA! Let me go! I'll fucking kill her!" she screamed, throwing herself against the wall of security and crew. "I hate you! You didn't beat me! You CHEATED!" The referee jogged toward the champion, TV Championship belt clutched in his hands as the beaten challenger ranted screaming, "I didn't even want your stupid TV belt! Who are you?! Nobody cares! You're no one! I'm going to win way bigger championships in way better companies!"
"Okay," said Alicia. Polite little wave.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAA! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!" screamed the beaten competitor behind a bloody mask of torn flesh, incoherent with rage as Tryystynn'n and Xaun joined the procession of security and staff fighting to corral her into the medical tent.
The referee approached Alicia Goon with arms outstretched, title belt in hand. Black leather. Ten pounds of gold and silver with "Queens of War TV Champion" stamped on the face in red steel. Breathe in, breathe out. The champ shed her hockey gloves and hoisted the prize in her callused hands. It was the heaviest ten pounds she ever lifted.
