AV 17 Tag Title: Imperial Order (c) vs. Masuyo & Valley Doll

Akiha was now on the ground, a bit stunned from the fall, the fact that she had just recently taken a DDT to the turnbuckle didn't help the situation either. While down on the ground, she would find her opponent getting on top of her and placing her in some kind of submission hold. Still, a bit dazed from all the combination of hits she had taken, the crimson hair wrestler would be unable to effectively resist her fellow Japanese wrestler attempt at placing her in a submission hold.

The pain would then start as felt all the pressure from the kimura lock being applied to her. Any part of her body that was free would attempt to reach out, trying to grab the ropes or attempt to escape the hold. Yet submission holds was not Akiha true specialty. Each second that pass by the pain started to get worse and worse, if she didn't do something, it would become too much to bear and this could prove to be the first time she would ever tap out.

She’d give the crusader credit, she was a lot more resilient than she looked. When Masuyo locked in the kimura, she didn’t hear the woman cry out or involuntary spasms that usually came with it. She bit down, she bore with it, and she immediately went for an escape. This was a real veteran she was grappling with.

If anything, it made her all the more determined to hear her submit.

When she felt Akiha struggling beneath her, Masuyo forced herself down all the harder, trying to keep the co-champion pinned beneath her heavier body and just out of reach from the bottom rope. Her elbow climbed further up Akiha’s chest before falling back down, digging in just beneath her collarbone as Masuyo asserted herself over the woman. She cranked the lock harder, wanting to send a shock of pain to deter her opponent from any idea of escape.

“Come on. You're out of your league without your partner in crime. Just give it up before something bad happens.”

Stealthily recovering whilst sitting on the floor at ringside, Gwendolyn stewed bitterly after having her fanciful farewell directed towards the defeated Californian be so rudely interrupted by Masuyo's flailing backhand. She gently massaged the point of impact on her cheek before she started rising up and began directing her incensed attention back inside the ring. Where the situation was far more dire than she would have preferred, her fellow aristocrat locked down in an arm submission that even made Gwen wince just from watching it unfold.

Gwen knew that submissions were not Akiha's true specialty, but luckily for her, for now they didn't need to be. Akiha's scrambling efforts to obtain a rope break weren't enough for her to reach her tethered salvation, but were close enough for Gwen to extend her upper torso over the bottom rope and tag Akiha's extended hand. It was a tag-in that Gwen purposefully attempted to keep out of Masuyo's line of sight, the heiress hoping that her incoming sneak attack would be the only thing cluing Masuyo in as to who was legal now.

After climbing up to the ring apron, Gwen would clench tightly onto the top rope before angling herself back. With a forceful pull and a nimble hop, Gwen would be briefly perched on the top rope before catapulting herself forward for an attempted springboard legdrop slamming down atop Masuyo's head.

Bit of a surprise that they were still in this position. Masuyo had expected to feel the tap on her side by now. She bit her lip, looking down at Akiha with an indignant glare. The kimura sucked plenty on its own, even worse with builds as separate as theirs, but her patience was being tested at this point. She’d been taught restraint her entire life. She wouldn’t think of pushing this farther than it needed to go, but...

At least the crowd seemed to be on her side. They became noticeably louder all of a sudden and Masuyo batted an eye to the side out to them for a second before focusing back on her opponent. Couldn’t afford to get distracted. Not when she was this close to getting the elimination. She was heavier, she was stronger, and she was on top. Even the crusader had to realize she was stuck, but she still wasn’t giving.

Cool. Whatever. She had nowhere to be. It’s not like Akiha was the first person she’d ever met who didn’t submit to her right away. Eventually, the pain would be too much to bear and she’d-

That’s her thought process ended for a good spell. From that moment on, her mind was operating on a combination of pure adrenaline and intense pain.

A hard blow to the back of her scalp brought her head straight down towards the ground, her face just barely scraping by the Akiha’s, instead meeting the floor full on. The force alone sent her mind reeling, making her unlatch the kimura lock as her eyes rolled into the back of her head for a moment. She fell to the side, bringing both her hands to the back of her head and rolling from side to side on her back, doing her best to numb the pain.

Akiha would grunt as she would try her best to bear with the pain but having a bigger opponent placing her in a well-executed look wasn’t something she could just easily get out of. Right now she had to deal with the pain the best she could and wait for a chance to escape while trying her best to go for the ropes.

As each moment went by, the pain would get worse and worse, soon she would have to either do something desperate or simply tap out. Luckily for her, she would be released from the hold as her partner sprang into action. With Akiha no longer being the legal woman and in a good amount of pain from the submission hold she would roll herself out of the ring so that she could have some time to recover from the brutal submission hold she had just been placed in.

Akiha's time spent in the arm wrenching submission mounted with throngs of ardent Imperial Order detractors hoping beyond hope that Akiha's submission was on the verge of happening. They cheered Masuyo on by repeatedly chanting "Tap!!" as their friendly bit of advice towards the flailing red-head having her arm bent out of place, their last hope for having the tag-team belts be freed of the aristocratic duo's wealthy hands now lying with a hopeful rookie currently taking the fight towards I.O. without anymore back-up or help of any kind.

But their hopeful cheers turned to words of warning amongst their garbled chanting, regrettably coming off as indecipherable towards the MMA maven who was glancing in multiple directions except the one that mattered. And that was from high above, as Gwendolyn performed some impressive aerial acrobatics before slamming the underside of her smooth thigh against Masuyo's blindside on the back of her head. The pompous noblewoman landing on her backside before spinning in place on her way towards her feet, waltzing towards her foe with the pulsating head pains.

"Well, something bad did in actuality happen...you just wrongly assumed for whom~..." Gwen snarkily quipped towards Masuyo while bending over her, both hands propped on her curvaceous hips as she reveled in finally having this rampaging brawler under control. It was with snickering glee that she clamped onto her raven-colored locks to haul Masuyo back up to her knees, than releasing her before elegant striding in front of Masuyo with an arrogant flick of her golden curls. After her pompous showboating, Gwen would rear her toned leg back for a stiff shoot kick straight towards Masuyo's modest chest...with two more being attempted to the audience's booing displeasure with each one. Though on her fourth attempt, Gwen would take a step back and rear her leg far behind her for a wound up strike intended to compound Masuyos headache.

There was a myriad of questions swirling around maddeningly inside of Masuyo’s head as she kept on cradling the back of her head, trying to make sense of everything around her. How close had she been to a submission before she let go? Where was her opponent now? How were either of them going to take advantage of the opening they’d made for themselves? And, above all, what even hit her in the first place?

She was on the cusp of an elimination not even two seconds ago, then all she could feel was pain and a faceful of the canvas beneath her. She could faintly remember a glimmer of gold in the corner of her eye as she fell away from Akiha….from Akiha. Damn it, she had her. She had her.

“Kuso...”

...alright. Focus. Still time to come back from this.

She didn’t entirely understand what was going on at the moment, but Gwendolyn was in play whether she liked it or not. She pushed herself forward, managing to sit up and bring herself onto two knees. She was moving to raise up to one when a swift kick to her chest stopped her dead in her tracks. Her body reeled back then sprung forward like a flex punching bag as she lurched over the ground, clutching her chest and wheezing slightly with her knuckles digging into the canvas.

But she couldn’t just keel over like this. No one was here to save her. Just her and these haughty imperialists that she was going to bring down with her if it was the last thing she did tonight. She bared her teeth, forcing herself to face the pompous noble once again, meeting a pair of lighting kicks to the chest that stung her to the core like pine needles.

But through one open eye, the MMA maven saw the windup for the next kick roaring towards her. For a brief moment, a memory from her debut match flashed before her eyes. As Gwen’s leg cut through the air and neared her head, Masuyo jerked up and reach out an arm, letting impact collide with her side. Drawing a harsh grunt from her lips, she snapped her arms down and wrapped it around the heiress’s toned leg, glaring up at her as she did so.

“...already sick of you.” With a wrench to the side, Masuyo twisted her body, aiming to take the blonde aristocrat to the ground at her side with a dragon screw.

Despondency reigned supreme over the crestfallen crowd after what appeared to be an imminent submission and unequivocal shift in momentum in Masuyo's favor...was snatched away in the blink of an eye by a perfectly timed and high-flying intervention. Hope was a rare commodity in this match ever since Valley was taken out of the equation, and despite Masuyo overwhelming the posh bluebloods at the beginning of her offensive salvo, she was still on the losing end of the numbers game. And unless she had eyes in the back of head, it was virtually impossible for her to notice the blind tag, or the skull rattling repercussions of not keeping her attention skyward.

Gwendolyn herself, however, couldn't be more fancifully elated at how fortuitous matters were swaying in their favor. As evidenced by her vainglorious posturing and smug smile on her pompous visage before she started reapplying pressure to the MMA maven who was still recouping from having her face slammed into the canvas after the leg drop from on high. The deadliest weapons in Gwendolyn's arsenal now utilized to their utmost striking capacity upon the increasingly clobbered chest of Masuyo, each kick earning a resounding chant of "Boo's" from the riled up audience.

The stinging smack echoing to the rafters and beyond from kicks that had been renowned and infamous for TKO-ing anyone who underestimated her due to her refined and aristocratic lineage. A common occurrence that Gwendolyn was happy to replay once more as she wound back her toned leg for what was clearly intended to be an improvised version of her Colère de Dieu finisher...which would stop on a dime right under Masuyo's armpit...earning the first booming cheer from any of Gwen's kicks.

*Uh-oh...*

The wide-eyed look of dreaded astonishment succinctly summarized what Gwen was thinking as she skipped and hobbled briefly on one leg. She raised her arms up with her palms open in a pleaful and stopping gesture towards Masuyo perhaps opting to graciously lower her leg so they could think things through like adults~...this of course that ended up stopping nothing as Gwendolyn was flipped mid-air for a full spinning rotation before crashing back down to the mat. She tucked her leg in with a pained grimace before beginning to shift over and attempt to shuffle back up at an understandably sluggish pace...

Gwendolyn could kick. That was what she took away from her brief impression of the heiress.

All of it brought back memories in droves from her debut. Valley had no shortage of kicks in her arsenal and they were more than enough to drive Masuyo into a corner on more than one occasion. From the very first move, even, those legs had the up-and-comer on the floor and reeling from the pain. It was an experience she didn’t think she’d be feeling again for quite a while. Not until she had her rematch.

Then along came Madame Bettencourt. But whereas Valley seemed to rely more on momentum, keeping herself and her opponent on their toes, Gwen was more elegant and refined in her style. Her legs had power Flowed like silk through the air and crashed like a raging flood, sending ripples across the MMA maven’s skin upon impact. One after another. Trying to put the Japanese native in her place in the most straightforward way possible.

But the Demon was only willing to let her get away with so much. Her dragon screw went off without a hitch and got a reaction from the blonde imperialist that may have made her chuckle if her chest wasn’t crying out in pain from the slightest breath already. After she sent her adversary to the mat, she put a hand to her chest as she stayed on her hands and knees. From the slight peek she could manage at them without taking her eyes off Gwen for too long, she could already see the skin radiating with red blotches. Her left side, in particular, ached from where the tip of the blonde’s boot dug square into the center.

She needed a second to herself. Couldn’t get carried away. There was still one more to deal with this after all. But Gwen was already on the rise. Was it worth it? Would she just be charging into a blunder? Could she afford any mistakes? What if she wasn’t as stunned as Masuyo would have thought? What if she reversed what came her way? What if...

Take it to them.

Masuyo bit down and felt every inch of power she could muster well up in her gut. Rushing like a tiger from all fours towards her waiting golden-haired prey, she lunged full speed towards the heiress from the ground, barely bringing herself higher than waist height in her sprint. Then, rearing her head back slightly as she gained on Gwendolyn, Masuyo would throw it forward in a vicious, diving headbutt towards the aristocrat’s temple.

Onlookers gazed and flinched with each blisteringly fast and thunderously impactful shoot kick that left it's reddened mark on the kneeling MMA maven and sole chance of dethroning the maligned noblewomen. The refined form and graceful technique to Gwen's kicks were of a different league altogether, and each one seemed to be bringing this irksome match to it's inevitable conclusion all the sooner. No one expecting someone of Gwen's civilized upbringing to best them in a game of striking ferocity. And yet for all of her frilly nature, uptight tea parties, and elegant wordplay, there were few who could withstand the level of damage Gwen had hidden behind those toned legs of hers. Gwendolyn had no reason to believe a scruffy-haired and vacuous MMA brute with a beastly appetite could withstand such a barrage and still have the mental fortitude and reflexes to rally any form of counter.

Gwendolyn ever despised being proven wrong...

This was an acute summation of her fleeting thoughts when her leg was captured to have her balance herself on one leg. Her half-hearted attempt to garner some leniency from Masuyo by raising her hands in objection ended about as well as you would predict...with the haughty aristocrat sent for a twirling tailspin before collapsing to the canvas with twinging leg pains. The jolting discomfort had Gwendolyn clenching her rotated appendage around the knee while pressing her forehead into the canvas. Those who had nothing to cheer for earlier now being given reason to cheer once more.

*One more blasted kick and this insufferable philistine would have been disposed of already.* Gwendolyn bemoaned how close she came to scoring the winning pinfall in between all of the pained jolts coursing through her leg, her golden ringlets splayed all around her head on the ring canvas. She would need several more seconds to stand once more, but she felt she had done enough damage to grant her some time to recover. The pompous noblewoman shuffling up to her hands and knees once the pain started to wane away in her twisted leg.

*Tch...No matter. I simply have to-...* Gwendolyn's planning for the future wouldn't get past the idea phase before what felt like a freight train came barreling towards noggin. Masuyo's skull slamming into Gwen's with enough rampaging to have her head be whipped to the side before flopping over and laying splayed out. Mumbling incoherently with her eyes sewn shut from the blinding roof lights which were only adding to her swirling confusion.