Alicia Goon 043: Not the end

Content warning, highlight the hidden text between the lines: 

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Extremely graphic descriptions of blood and extreme violence

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Squeak. Squeak. Squea-

The rocking horse came to a stop as Party Girl dug her heels into the wood chips. Her expression turned as she rose from the spring-mounted horse and stepped closer. "You killed my cat. You know that, right?" asked Party Girl, her voice thick with disappointment. 

"What?" Alicia squinted in confusion as she adjusted the strap of her gym bag and tightened her gloved hands around her hockey stick. About two more steps and she’d be at the edge of swinging range.

"I told you to fight Black Violet, but you waited and waited, and you left me no choice. I’d still have my presh-presh if you fought stupid Black Violet the first time I said so!" What began in an accusatory tone had turned to an angry shout by the end. Party Girl took a moment to compose herself. "Why couldn’t you be more like Janice? She did what I told her even though she didn’t want to. I’d give her the day off, but unfortunately I had to let her go. She killed my cat."

A half-laugh escaped Alicia's lips as she shook her head. "You're flippin' crazy."

"Yeah, well you talk weird," Party Girl retorted. She unzipped the right pocket of her tracksuit, slipped her hand inside, and extracted a fistful of hot pink brass knuckles. Her eyes flitted playfully to her reinforced right hand, then back at Alicia. "Oh look! It's still covered in your frien-"

Fury seized control of Alicia’s limbs from her better judgment as she stepped forward and hacked at her giggling opponent with the hockey stick. Party Girl danced under the swing, stutter-stepped, and leap at Alicia, catching the former hockey player 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. Alicia heard two quick footfalls on the soft surface behind her and saw the ground racing to meet her as Party Girl grabbed her by the back of the head and dragged her face-first to the ground with a flying Bulldog.

A stomp to the back of the head treated Alicia to another mouthful of wood chips. "Oww!" Why did that hurt so much? Alicia rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding a follow-up stomp that landed where her head had been. Oh, thought Alicia, glimpsing her opponent's footwear. Cleats. The encroaching cold made the mere thought of them hurt.

Alicia crawled to the misery-go-round, ripping aside fistfuls of wood chips as she scrambled for space to recover. She grabbed a push-handle for support and started to pull herself to her feet, but Party reached out and gave the misery-go-round a spin, causing Alicia to lose her grip and one of the metal bars to smack into her temple.

The fashion icon cackled at her own slapstick gag as Alicia lay writhing on the ground. Party Girl grabbed one of the push-handles and spun the misery-go-round again, turning the demented playground equipment into a game of pain roulette. The haze hung thick in the champ’s head as the living brand name grabbed both of Alicia’s braids and pulled her upright. Before she could react, rows upon rows of hard, plastic teeth bit into Alicia’s chin as Party Girl sent her flying backward onto the misery-go-round with a dropkick.

Crash!

The roulette wheel chose broken glass. Alicia's jaw peeled open as she let out an anguished scream that failed to fully convey her feelings. She spun helplessly aboard the misery-go-round and slowly, delicately tried to sit up from the razor-sharp surface inch by excruciating inch. Shockwaves of pain exploded through Alicia's chest as Party Girl struck her with the heel of her own hockey stick squarely in the sternum, blasting the air from her lungs. Another crash followed as her mutilated back once again hit the glass. 

Party Girl grabbed one of the push-handles to stop the misery-go-round and pressed the shaft of the hockey stick into Alicia's throat. Her 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. Alicia gasped and coughed as she gulped precious air as Party Girl hefted the hockey stick in her hands. "I can see why you like this thing. What were you thinking with the color, though? Plain wood?" chastised the frowning fashion mogul.

The pretender to the throne tossed the lumber to the ground and pulled Alicia off the broken glass by the arm and her jersey, dragging 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, sending the socialite 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. Slowly, painfully, Party Girl rose to her knees. Alicia booted the rocking horse as hard as she could, causing it to snap back and smash into the fashion icon’s skull, sending her once again to the ground.

As Party Girl lay on the wood chips clutching her aching head, the goon picked up her stick and smashed it into Party Girl’s right ankle, causing her to shriek in pain. Alicia yanked Party Girl to her feet and drove a right hook into her stomach. It wasn’t a Gut Check, but the blow still turned the celebrity’s legs to jellies. Alicia trapped Party Girl in a side headlock, captured her right leg, and hoisted the celebrity up into a Fisherman’s Brainbuster position. Alicia aimed to plant her former tag partner headfirst on 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 down onto the crown of her captor’s noggin.

The desperation offense allowed Party Girl to escape her predicament and land on her feet behind her property theft victim. She grabbed two handfuls of braids and slammed a set of cleats into the back of Alicia's injured right knee, causing it to buckle. The saddle zoomed towards her at a thousand miles an hour as Party Girl attempted to slam Alicia's face into it, but the champ got her hands up in time to stop her nose from meeting the steel half an inch from disaster. On instinct, she threw a back elbow at Party Girl, who deflected the strike with her forearms.

Suspicion confirmed. The plan was a go.

Party Girl's two-handed effort to protect her face allowed Alicia to get away and create some distance as she stumbled towards the thumbtack swing set. Manicured fingers tightened around her shoulder, but Alicia spun around of her own volition and swung her forehead down at the bridge of Party Girl's nose. Two deceptively powerful arms got between Alicia and her target, blunting her headbutt at the last moment. Meanwhile, two visibly powerful arms coiled around Party Girl's waist as Alicia threw her overhead with a Belly-to-belly suplex.

The star shot through the air, sailing into the swing set and landing almost perfectly on the small of her back across one of the swings. Party Girl dangled in place for exactly a second before processing all of it at once and shrieking like a howler monkey that had fallen onto a swing covered in thumbtacks. "AAAAAAAAAAA! AAAAAAA! AAAAAAAAAAAA-AAAAA!!"

An extremely motivated Party Girl extracted herself from the swing with several souvenirs still stuck to her and fell to her knees on the other side of the swings. She lay writhing in agony grabbing at her back and backside. Where's my stick? 

Alicia turned in the direction of approaching footsteps to find Party Girl back on her feet and charging. Alicia leaned back, swung out her arm, and hooked it under her opponent’s armpit, sending her sailing back-first onto the barbed wire nest inside the pair swing with a crisp armdrag.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!" screamed Party Girl as she thrashed in the mound of jagged metal.

The champ pushed with all her strength, sending the pair-swing high into the air and causing a Party Girl to lose her balance while trying to escape and tumble back into the snarl of wire.

Alicia hobbled to her stick and limped towards the gym bag she left at the end of the runway. She dropped the hockey stick at the edge of the playground where the runway ended and buried it in the wood chips. One fistful of wood chips after another cascaded onto the stick until it was fully obscured, then she grabbed the puck from her gym bag, slapped it on the runway, and laid the gym bag on top of it. She turned around and saw the door to the thorn room and the warped, barbed wire wicker parody of furniture within. Perfect place to line up a shot—she just wasn’t sure how to set it up.

The sound of uneven, limping footfalls drew closer as Party Girl sprinted toward Alicia. The champion unloaded a two-fisted salvo of wood chips into her opponent’s face, but Party Girl already had her hands up. The Hard Times graduate used the opening to thrust her shoulder into Party Girl’s midsection and drop her with a double-leg takedown. Alicia rolled the celebrity onto her belly and cinched in an ankle lock on the challenger’s right ankle as tight as she could manage in her hockey gloves and cranked the appendage violently out of position, wrenching at the socket and joint and causing Party Girl to cry out in pain.

"Your missing tooth looks stupid!" spat Party Girl between painful wails with her face and stomach flat against the ground. 

"You're just jealous," Alicia offhanded back. 

Another hard wrench of the ankle, but this time Alicia cried out as pain exploded through the back of her right knee as Party Girl hammered it with yet another cleated kick that sent the goon to the ground. Both competitors were down, but Alicia could already hear her opponent starting to rise.

Ten or so feet from the action, the bespectacled referee monitored the violence with microphone in hand. His only role in the match 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. Alicia could feel blood soak through the bandage on her forehead as she lay on the ground.

Party Girl tossed the mic aside and stalked towards the champion and then past her, heading for the gazebo with a hitch in her step. She looked over her shoulder, calling back to her bleary-eyed opponent, , "I got myself a present. After everything I went through for this belt, I deserve it. You're gonna be so jealous!" She raised her thumb and forefinger in an an "L" gesture. 

Scintillating pain ripped through Alicia's kneecap as she pressed herself up off the ground and limped--mostly hopped--in pursuit, but too much distance lay between them for the champion to overtake the challenger. Party Girl topped the ladder just as Alicia approached the rungs and started climbing, heavily favoring her injured knee. 

Alicia poked her head up to find a three-foot-long pink, rectangular box with an even pinker bow and a soccer shoe racing towards her nose. Half-intuition and half-reflex saved Alicia from disaster as she dipped her head back down to safety. She wondered how good the traction was on those cleats and popped out of cover, snaring Party Girl’s ankles and forcibly seating her on the wooden plank floor. The celebrity squealed as the thumbtacks she hadn't removed reintroduced themselves. 

Alicia pulled herself up and over the ledge and onto the second floor of the gazebo while Party Girl retreated, bicycling wild kicks at her pursuer. There wasn't as much force behind them as Alicia expected; the ankle was clearly bothering the mogul. She shoved the smaller socialite to the floor and reached for the hot pink gift box.

"Um, no? That's mine!" shouted Party Girl. She spun to her feet, scraping her cleats against the hard surface as she threw herself at Alicia. The two women toppled into the barbed wire-wrapped railing and nearly over it, crying out in unison as the pitiless metal jabbed into their sides.

Alicia felt her head pitch forward as Party Girl snagged one of her braids and tried to drive her head into the barbed wire. The former hockey player grabbed the railing with her gloved hands to stop her momentum, much to the dismay of her opponent. She feigned a back elbow to Party Girl's face and 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 the 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, much to the dismay of her palms. Alicia lunged for the gift box and grabbed hold with both hands, then rolled onto her back and heaved it over the edge of the gazebo. 

"Hey! What the hell? God! You're so annoying," whined Party Girl as she glanced down at the gift box, which lay a few feet from the thorn room entrance. With an angry grunt, she blasted the champion in the back of the head with a loaded rabbit punch, sending the champ to the ground in a heap as every bodily faculty shut off at once.

When Alicia’s senses returned, she found herself buried in a faceful of pink polyester. Party Girl had 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 sprang to life, hooking her captor's leg to block the suplex before slamming two gloved lefts into the smaller woman's side. Party Girl answered back with a metal-reinforced blow to Alicia's injured kneecap, causing the champion's to scream in pain as her knee nearly gave out again. 

It was the opening Party Girl needed. She lifted the larger woman into the air, holding her upside-down long enough to allow her a good look at the landing zone. It was the bouncy bridge. And those were fluorescent light tubes.

CRAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHH!

Every single tube exploded into thin blades of glass shrapnel, peppering Alicia’s back with millions of tiny pinpricks. 

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 pitiful whimper escaped her quivering lips as she lay 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," she scolded.

The fashion icon grabbed the rope handrails and walked over her opponent, stopping partway to grind her cleats into the side of Alicia's head and her sternum. The plummeting temperature made the cleats feel like masonry nails digging into her bones. After a journey of too many steps, Party Girl arrived on the other side of the bridge. She pulled the shellshocked TV Champion up by her wrists and hoisted 193 pounds of dead weight onto her shoulders. Alicia got a good look at the bloodstained hot pink boards and powderized glass where she landed as her opponent carried her to the edge of the sandpaper slide.

Party Girl steeled herself for a massive display of strength and hurled Alicia down onto the hard, coarse surface. The champion's back and head crashed onto the sandpaper-coated steel from a Sit-down Powerbomb that rattled structure to its frame. Once again, Alicia's ruined back took the brunt of the impact, and every flayed nerve screamed for mercy as she slid helplessly down the incline.

Party Girl got to her feet, but she had clearly lost some zip. Carrying Alicia's weight on that hurt ankle must have done some damage, but the challenger still moved with purpose. She secured a grip on Alicia's ankle, held her left knee flush to the back of Alicia's right knee, stepped over, turned into place, and fell backward, trapping her in a Figure Four Leglock. Tendons stretched past their limits and muscle pulled taut, eliciting a scream from the champion that threatened to rip apart the night sky. 

The referee stuck a microphone in Alicia's face and asked, "Alicia Goon, do you give?"

Alicia thought she had already made her opinion on the subject quite clear. From her inverted position, it wouldn't do much good to try for an escape, but maybe she could reverse the hold. She rocked her weight side to side, picking up momentum little by little as Party Girl fought to flatten herself out and lower her center of gravity. The powerhouse threw her right shoulder up off the course surface, pouring every remaining ounce of core strength into the effort as she rolled onto her stomach. Party Girl cried out in frustration more so than pain as Alicia turned the hold around on her. Alicia pushed up with both hands, applying even more pressure, but the plan wasn't to win with a submission hold. 

She reached one gloved hand in front of the other and wheelbarrow-walked down the slide, using gravity to her advantage to pick up the pace. With one adrenaline-fueled surge of power, Alicia threw herself down the remainder of the sandpaper slide, landing on the wood chips at the bottom and dragging Party Girl along with her. A shriek of pure agony echoed throughout the compound as her unwilling cargo scuffed her face on the grit all the way down. 

Alicia batted a few wood chips out of her hair as she crawled from the tangle of limbs that used to be a submission hold, dragging her throbbing, mind-bending ache of a right leg behind her. Party Girl sat on the edge of the slide, eyes wide, mouth agape, face frozen in shock. That once-perfect beach tan looked sunburnt. The sandpaper road rash had given the cover girl 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?" the owner of the Playground of Dreams seemed genuinely shocked to have fallen victim to her own masterpiece. The scuff marks nearly vanished as her entire face turned a bright tomato red. "I swear to God I'll kill you!"

Alicia crawled for the gift box, but the challenger limped faster. Party Girl closed the gap but stopped several feet short and helped herself to a stiff kick to 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 alight with a hatred purer than Alicia had ever seen. "I'm not going to stop just because you give up. I decide when you're done. That'd be a fly headline, right? 'Party Girl Goes Too Far!' Smaller print: 'Fans Stunned but Effluvient.' And on the cover, a photo of me standing over your body holding the belt while they try to decide whether to call an ambulance or an ambulance for dead people. Do you think I'll get in trouble? I don't." 

The fight had sapped Alicia of the strength to pry the multimillionaire's moisturized, workshy hands from her neck, but Party Girl left her face wide open. The powerhouse reached up and honked her opponent's clown nose, drawing 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 eyes.

A frustrated scream echoed through the rapidly cooling night air. The facade fell away as Party Girl sneered in disgust at her gasping opponent and wiped--smeared, really--the thick, gooey mucus away with the sleeve of her tracksuit. Party Girl swung a vicious open-palm slap in retaliation. Alicia’s cheek burned as she lay sputtering on the ground as a pair of pink soccer shoes stormed past in the direction of the gift box.

With a groan of pain and exhaustion, Alicia rolled onto her stomach, pushed off the ground, and used that bad leg just one more time to launch herself at Party Girl and wrap her up with a shoestring tackle. The celebrity wrestler cried out in pain as Alicia twisted the injured ankle once more. Alicia crawled past her downed opponent for the mystery box, briefly taking the lead. It wasn't much of a head start. She had only crawled a few feet when a pair of hands wrapped around her left ankle, forcing the champ to drag the terminally famous star behind her. Alicia's fingertips brushed the gift box, but she couldn't quite grab hold.

"AAAAAAAAAA!!" wailed the TV Champion as stabbing, crushing, pinching pain tore deep into her calf. Alicia glanced back to find Party Girl chomping 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 a weak kick into the rabid Party Girl’s raw, scraped-bloody forehead that looked like it had started oozing something clear. Again, the challenger covered up at the expense of her hold. Alicia yanked her leg free of Party Girl’s grip and pulled herself toward the package. She grabbed it tight and forced 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? 

Alicia pitched Party Girl’s present through the door and watched it slide to a stop just in front of the throne of thorns. A pair of cleats collided with the side of the TV Champion’s skull, sending her to the ground as Party Girl landed her signature flying kick, the Unvitation.

Alicia heard a scream, but to her surprise, it wasn’t her own. Party Girl lay on the wood chips clutching her ankle for several precious seconds before slowly standing up and limping gingerly toward the thorn room. Now or never, thought Alicia as she dragged herself toward her buried hockey stick and pulled it out of the woodchips. 

Venom poured from Party Girl’s mouth as she vented her fury at her former tag team partner. "You're worthless! Completely worthless! You're fired! You can't be The Goon anymore!"

Alicia pressed the blade of her hockey stick into the wood chips and pushed herself to her feet while Party Girl stood with her back to Alicia as she peeled the bow from the package and peered inside. Once again, Party Girl's mood swung on a dime as she gasped in performative delight and withdrew 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. Make it count.

Party Girl stood at the throne as she called out in a furious sing-song. "You're gonna leave in a body bag, Gretchen." 

Alicia replied, "That's not my name, Pickle."

Boiling, unbridled scorn creased the fashion icon's face as she spun around to shout something back. Her enraged expression turned to horror as she dropped the bat and covered her face as the crack of a slapshot cut through the night air. 

"HHHHHHHhhhhnnnnnnnhhhhh..." gasped Party Girl, sinking to her knees as the puck clattered to the wooden gazebo floor.

Alicia Goon abandoned her weapon and limped toward her gasping opponent. She scooped Party Girl up by the hair from her breathless, agonized coughing fit on the floor and shoved her face into the barbed wire throne.

At first, 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 Goon rubbed the cover girl’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 pushed and grabbed at the seat and armrests trying to get free.

The champion released her defeated opponent and stumbled backwards out of the gazebo, collapsing onto the wood chips outside. A few feet away, the vanquished challenger sat on her knees, clutching her face with blood-soaked hands as crimson spilled through her fingers.

"Here is your winner, and still Queens of War TV Champion, AAAAALLLLLIIIIICCCIIIIIAAAAAA GOOOOOOOOOOOONNN!!" announced Helene over the loudspeakers before leaving the commentary desk to help Alicia to her feet. Moments later, the referee raised the retaining champion’s hand in victory.

Another scream. Alicia Goon 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! Let me go! I'll fucking kill her!" she screamed, throwing herself against the wall of security and crew. "I hate you! Nobody even wants 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! You didn't beat me! You CHEATED!"

"Okay," said Alicia Goon. Polite little wave.

"AAAAAAAAAA! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!" screamed the beaten challenger behind a bloody mask of torn flesh, incoherent with rage as Tryystynn'n and Xaun joined the procession of security and staff corralling her into the medical tent.

The referee approached Alicia Goon the title belt. 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.