CHAPTERS
SEGMENT
PCW CRUCIBLE CHAMPION
MARISOL VILARO
VILAROFIT
The camera opens up in a pre recorded segment where we see the brand new PCW Crucible Champion Marisol Vilaro, the fans boo as she is lounged in a purple VilaroLux robe, this one looks like a personal one her name is on the back says Marisol she has someone rubbing her face, giving her a proper facial. The fans greet this with boos the pompous CEO can’t help but smile as if she can hear them and knew how they’d be reacting as she speaks in a cool, smug tone as if the biggest worry she has is what technique they be using, product for her skin.
MARISOL VILARO: You know what I love more than anything? Winning.
The staff continues to work her face, her eyes are covered by cucumber slices. The Catalonian is in her element.
MARISOL VILARO: Against all the odds, how hard I worked the executive level thinking I showcase day after day, and night after night, all the matches I fight against people like GinaThaLoser, who was so bad after dealign with her I had to take time to recover reminder to always make sure you wash off any mediocrity you are forced in contact with others than anything most of you watching are the mediocrity that winners like me are forced to deal with on a daily baises and last show you saw in the main event hat Marisol Vilaro now has more gold.
Marisol soon showcases her Crucbile championship the fans boo even louder, the insults, the title, the arrogance of it all, and how she walked out. She had it all and they knew it The Billion Dollar Woman was feeling herself.
MARISOL VILARO: 14 other women thought they had a shot; they thought they could outcompete me? And look what happened: this lovely beauty is now MINE! Now, the fact that I have to defend it is amusing on every show? But the more I think about it, the more it makes sense it guarantees ratings because you put LaMarvilosa on each and every show. After all, people need someone to aspire to and who better than me? I know how unfair it is, and tonight in a fifteen-minute submission, it will be even more unfair for Morgan LaChance.
The fans boo, though they cheer at Morgan’s name; the Fitness Queen snickers as if she can hear it and could anticipate the reaction.
MARISOL VILARO: A woman who decided bravery was more important than using her brain after finding herself electrocuted instead of staying home, so that she may live another day and spend another day with her boo, decides to continue on with this match. A big mistake for her because she doesn’t have the LeChance to win this; she’s dealing with a top-tier athlete in this ring, and she is the fifth-best member of Tigress at best. A tryhard who barks on Twitter, who keeps putting herself in unwinnable situations, and that is what this is for you. Unwinnable try and convince the failures around you; try to convince the people of New Orleans; have them all behind you it won’t make a difference, because tonight you will do one thing and only thing.
Marisol does a brief pause before speaking.
MARISOL VILARO: ENTRUST IN MARI! Now if you excuse me the money maker treatment isn’t finished.
Marisol points to her face as the fans boo as the scene then fades to black.
MATCH
THE SWEET ASSASSIN
LILY BRIAR
BLACK RAINBOW
vs
HELEN BECK
ONE FALL
REFEREE: NATHAN “ATREYU” MACKAYE
The ring announcer introduces Nathan “Atreyu” MacKaye as a PCW original and the newest member of the PCW officiant team. A sustained roar cascades down from the tiers of the Municipal Auditorium as MacKaye raises an arm in acknowledgment, steps between the ropes, and checks both competitors in turn. Outside, Selene Pyre leans against the steel guardrail, hands cupped around her mouth, screaming encouragement into the ring. In her corner, Lily Briar bounces on the balls of her feet, flashes a quick glance at Selene, and snaps her eyes back toward the opposite turnbuckle.
Helen Back stands rooted in the far corner. Hands loosely clasped at her waist. Silent. She stares across the canvas without blinking, letting the noise wash over her like ambient static.
The camera pulls wide, framing the two combatants anchored in opposing corners while MacKaye stands small and central in the ring.
MacKaye signals the timekeeper. DING. DING. DING.
Lily circles out cautiously to her left, tracing the perimeter while looking for an angle or a hitch in her stance. Helen does not chase. She pivots on the balls of her feet in tight, economical arcs, staying planted in the center of the ring. Lily feints, lunges forward, and extends her hands to offer a collar-and-elbow tie-up. Helen steps into the pocket and locks fingers, meeting her forearm to collarbone. Lily tries to drop her hips to wrench the arm, but Helen slips the contact instantly. Without a single wasted motion, Helen slides around Lily’s flank and sinks her hands deep into a rear waistlock.
Lily feels the clamp, pivots her hips against Helen’s ribs, and twists her torso hard to break the hold. She catches Helen’s lead wrist, whips her hips across, and snaps Helen down over her shoulder with an arm drag.
Helen takes the bump, rolls through the kinetic momentum immediately, and pops back to her feet. She stands perfectly motionless. No defensive panic. No reset step. Lily flashes a cocky grin toward the front row, drawing an appreciative cheer from the crowd. Helen sizes her up, her face an unmoving porcelain mask.
Lily steps forward, pressing the advantage. Helen does not back up. The instant Lily enters striking range, Helen whips a stiff shin kick into the meat of Lily’s lead thigh.
THWACK.
Lily hops back on one foot, grimacing as she shakes the dead weight out of her leg. Helen advances one measured pace and drives a snapping thrust kick dead into Lily’s solar plexus. Lily folds in half, wheezing for air as her hands clamp over her ribs. Helen does not swarm. She tilts her head slightly, letting the silence sit, waiting until Lily manages to pull her chin up. When Lily’s eyes meet hers, Helen snatches the left arm, pivots inside, and launches her across the canvas with a clean hip toss.
Lily crashes hard on her back. MacKaye steps in to verify she is coherent, but Helen raises an open palm—a tiny, precise flick of the wrist that dismisses the referee. She steps back to give him room without taking her eyes off the mat.
Lily scrambles toward the ropes, dragging her torso along the mat. Helen trails her at a stroll, matching the distance stride for stride. Before Lily can grab the middle strand, Helen reaches down, gathers her left wrist, and hoists her upright. Helen winds up and buries a blistering forearm strike straight across Lily’s jaw.
CRACK.
Lily staggers into the turnbuckles, shoulders slumping against the pads. Helen corners her, rears back, and cracks an overhand chop flush against Lily’s chest.
Selene pounds her palms against the guardrail, screaming at Lily to fire back.
Helen steps in and uncorks a second overhand chop, but Lily ducks underneath the swing. Coming out of the crouch, Lily lunges forward and drives a running forearm smash into Helen’s jaw. Helen takes the direct shot, yet only gives up half a step. Lily pivots, hits the ropes, and springs off the middle strand to snap a springboard dropkick into Helen’s chest.
The impact sweeps Helen off her feet. The arena roars.
Lily drops straight into a lateral press, hooking the leg.
ONE…
TWO—NO!
Helen powers her left shoulder up with room to spare. Lily rolls backward onto her knees, blowing hard through her teeth and darting a glance toward Selene. Helen gets to her feet unhurried, runs the back of her wrist across her bottom lip, and resets. Unbothered.
Lily shoots back to her feet, scrambles into the ropes, and leaps onto Helen’s shoulders for a tilt-a-whirl headscissors. Helen stays centered. She absorbs the forward momentum, catches Lily out of midair by the waist, and halts the rotation dead. Helen scoops her over her shoulder and hammers Lily spine-first into the canvas with a scoop slam. Without letting Lily roll, Helen rebounds off the ropes, leaps, and drives a stiff kneecap into her exposed ribs.
THUD.
Lily arches off the canvas, gasping for breath and clutching her midsection. Helen drops down, gathers the far leg, and leans her weight across Lily’s chest.
ONE…
TWO…
Lily thrusts her left shoulder off the mat just before MacKaye’s hand slaps three.
Helen sits up. She does not slap the canvas or question the count. She simply studies Lily’s labored breathing with methodical calm.
The camera pushes in tight on Helen’s face: quiet, measured, unreadable.
Helen grips Lily by the hair, hauling the dead weight back up. She shoots Lily across the ring into the opposite ropes with an Irish whip. Lily rebounds off the cables and sprints forward, but Helen sidesteps the line of charge, wraps her leg over Lily’s shoulder, and traps the arm. In one fluid sweep, Helen drops Lily down and wrenches her into the center of the ring with an Octopus Clutch.
The torque bends Lily sideways. The tendons in her neck strain as her face flushes dark crimson.
MACKAYE: Give it up, Lily! Do you quit?
Lily thrashes her head violently, refusing to yield. At ringside, Selene slaps the apron canvas repeatedly, shouting for Lily to find the ropes. The crowd picks up the rhythm, clapping in unison to pull Lily forward.
Lily fights against the leverage, taking small, agonizing steps toward the ropes while Helen stays anchored across her back. Sensing the shift, Helen cranks back on the trapped wrist to cut off the momentum. Lily winces, wrenches her free arm back, and drives a hard elbow into Helen’s ribs. The pressure slips for a split second. Lily lunges out of the pocket and drapes her forearm over the bottom rope.
MACKAYE: Break it! ONE!
Helen uncoils her limbs and releases the hold cleanly before the second count. She steps back into the center of the ring, looking down at Lily without offering a word of complaint.
Helen reaches down and drags Lily up by the collar. As Lily clears the canvas, she uncorks a desperation open-palm strike that connects square with Helen’s nose. Helen’s head snaps back. Lily immediately springs up, wraps her legs around Helen’s head, and snaps down into a hurricanrana. Helen takes the whip, rolls through the landing, and plants one knee into the mat.
Lily lunges from behind, wrapping Helen’s legs and hooking the cradle into a small package.
ONE…
TWO…
THR—NO!
Helen bridges her hips and kicks free. Both scramble upward on instinct. Lily charges hard, looking to capitalize on the scramble, but Helen plants her feet and unloads a short-arm clothesline.
CRACK.
Lily is taken clean off her feet, crashing face-first into the canvas. Helen stays upright. She inhales slowly through her nose, glancing across the arena as an anxious murmur ripples through the seats.
Helen drops to one knee and hoists Lily off the canvas by her left arm. Lily dangles limp. Helen snaps a violent European uppercut straight into Lily’s jaw. Lily folds like an empty suit, crumbling flat to the mat.
Helen steps around behind the prone body. She reaches down, hooks both of Lily’s arms, and pulls backward, wrenching Lily’s chest entirely off the canvas. Helen lifts her right boot, plants the sole against the base of Lily’s skull, and drives downward with absolute finality.
HEXADECIMAL (Wicked Stepsister)!
Lily’s face is driven violently into the mat. Helen rolls her limp body over, covers her with a forearm across the throat, and hooks the outside leg.
ONE…
TWO…
MacKaye’s hand hovers in the air, the count hanging agonizingly long.
At the absolute split-second before the canvas is struck, Lily jerks her left shoulder upward.
Outside, Selene covers her mouth with trembling hands, gasping in relief.
Helen sits back up slowly. She glances at MacKaye, then shifts her gaze down to Lily. Her expression remains unchanged. No frustration. Just cold calculation.
Lily drags herself along the mat, crawling onto her hands and knees while dark crimson trickles from her split bottom lip. Helen rises to her feet and stands directly over her, hands clasped, waiting for her to move.
The camera holds low on Lily’s white knuckles gripping the canvas as Helen’s black boots step into the frame.
Helen reaches down, gathers Lily’s wrist, and levers her upward to set up a second hip toss. As Helen pivots to throw, Lily kicks off the mat with both feet and torques her body mid-air. She slips the throw entirely, lands on her feet behind Helen, and immediately spins around to Helen’s front. In one blur of motion, Lily traps Helen’s left arm, hooks the inside leg, and yanks Helen down into a tight cradle.
SWEET ESCAPE (Small Package)!
MacKaye drops flat to the canvas.
ONE…
TWO…
THR—NO!
Helen violently thrusts her shoulders off the mat, barely escaping the pin. She sits straight up, her eyes wide with shock for the first time all night. The arena erupts into a thunderous roar as Lily springs to her feet, wiping the smear of blood from her lip with the back of her forearm. Outside, Selene thrusts both fists into the air, screaming at the top of her lungs.
A tight push-in catches Helen’s face as the serene, untouchable mask violently cracks.
Lily dashes forward without giving Helen a second to breathe. She launches her right leg, drilling a running knee strike flush into Helen’s jaw.
CRACK.
Helen collapses flat onto her back, arms splayed across the canvas. Lily drops immediately into a cover.
ONE—NO!
Helen kicks out hard. Lily wastes no time. She grabs Helen by the collar, hauls her dead weight upright, hooks the head, and snaps Helen over into a crisp snap suplex. Lily hooks the leg again.
ONE—NO!
Helen kicks out once more. Lily glares at MacKaye, teeth clenched in visible frustration. She yanks Helen off the mat by the hair, shoves her hard into the corner turnbuckles, and unloads a rapid-fire flurry of open-hand strikes and forearm shivers against her ribs and jaw. Helen slumps into the corner pads. Lily backs up two steps, charges in, and buries a running forearm smash into Helen’s temple. Lily presses an open palm against Helen’s sternum, smothering her against the turnbuckles.
MACKAYE: Break it, Lily! ONE!
MacKaye steps between them and breaks the hold cleanly. Lily backs off, her eyes darting between the buzzing crowd, Selene’s frantic gestures at ringside, and the dazed figure of Helen slumped in the corner.
Lily advances, cocking her right arm, but Helen tracks the movement and snatches Lily’s wrist out of the air. Helen steps forward and delivers a blistering overhand chop to Lily’s chest.
THWACK.
Lily stumbles backward, eyes watering from the sting. Helen presses forward instantly, burying a crisp boxing left hook into Lily’s ribs, followed by a heavy right cross to the jaw. Lily shakes off the impact and answers with a hard palm strike to the bridge of Helen’s nose, but Helen slips underneath the follow-up. Helen chambers her right leg for a thrust kick, but Lily reads the trajectory and knocks the foot aside with her forearm. Capitalizing on the opened guard, Lily drops down and snaps Helen’s throat across her shoulder with a sitout jawbreaker.
CRACK.
Both wrestlers stumble backward to opposite ropes, chests heaving. The crowd roars as they rebound and collide dead center in the ring, trading savage forearm shivers and blistering palm strikes toe-to-toe. The impacts echo off the rafters. Helen’s blows carry raw, heavy thudding weight, and after three stiff shots, Lily’s knees buckle and she hits the canvas first.
Helen stands over her, dead still, chest rising and falling in slow, measured rhythm.
Lily pushes herself up off the canvas, digs her boots into the mat, and springs upward. She leaps onto Helen’s shoulders, whips her hips around, and snaps Helen to the mat with a lightning-fast tilt-a-whirl headscissors takedown. Lily dives across Helen’s shoulders for a lateral press.
ONE—NO!
Helen kicks out instantly. Before Helen can roll over, Lily grapevines the left leg, snatches the heel, and torques the joint into a standing ankle lock. Helen grimaces in silence, using her forearms to claw along the canvas toward the ropes. Lily sits back, dragging Helen’s dead weight back toward the center of the ring. Helen arches her spine, lunges forward with everything she has, and wraps both hands around the bottom rope.
MACKAYE: Rope break! ONE! TWO!
Lily holds the pressure until the count of three before releasing, shouting right down at Helen’s face.
MACKAYE: Back off, Lily! I said break it!
MacKaye steps between them and shoves Lily back toward the opposite side of the ring.
Helen rolls out under the bottom rope, dropping to the ringside floor to create space. She gathers herself on her hands and knees by the apron. Inside the ring, Lily slips through the ropes and steps out onto the ring apron.
MACKAYE: ONE!
Lily charges down the apron, launches herself off the edge, and drops her right knee squarely across Helen’s upper back.
THUD.
The impact drives Helen violently into the steel guardrail.
MACKAYE: TWO!
Selene pounds on the canvas apron, cheering at the top of her lungs.
MACKAYE: THREE!
Lily grabs Helen by the hair, drags her limp body across the ringside padding, and rolls her back under the bottom rope. Lily slides in right behind her, hooking both legs in an immediate cover.
ONE—NO!
Helen powers her shoulder up. Lily transitions immediately, trapping Helen’s left arm, dropping her hips across the chest, and wrenching the elbow into a deep cross-armbar. Helen barks a sharp breath through her teeth, her facial muscles tightening.
MACKAYE: Do you submit, Helen?
Helen shakes her head, refusing to tap. Lily grins, leaning her full body weight back to crank the shoulder socket. Rhythmic stomping echoes through the arena as the crowd rallies behind Helen. Gritting her teeth, Helen bridges her hips, drags her lower body across the canvas, and jams the toe of her boot firmly against the bottom rope.
MACKAYE: Break it! ONE!
Lily breaks the hold cleanly at two, rising to her feet and glaring out at the crowd as if daring any spectator to challenge her tactics.
Lily yanks Helen upright by the wrist and runs toward the ropes, setting up for a springboard attack. Helen plants her boots and tracks the motion with icy precision. Lily leaps onto the second rope, but Helen steps inside the arc of descent. Helen catches Lily clean out of mid-air by the waist and shoulder, absorbing the forward momentum. With brutal torque, Helen pivots and slams Lily flat across her spine with a bone-jarring scoop slam.
THUD.
Lily writhes across the mat, clutching her lower back. Helen does not follow up. She stands perfectly motionless, staring down as the seconds tick away. Lily drags herself to the ropes, using the strands to haul her battered frame upright; at ringside, Selene’s cheers quiet into tense, nervous mutters. Helen steps forward to finish her with a thrust kick, but Lily catches the boot against her ribs, twists the leg, hooks Helen’s neck, and spikes her head into the canvas with a snap DDT.
CRACK.
Both women lie motionless on the canvas.
Lily is the first to stir, crawling on hands and knees toward Helen. She drags Helen upright by the arm and violently whips her into the corner turnbuckles. Helen slumps heavily into the pads, dazed. Lily steps in and fires off three rapid corner strikes, snapping Helen’s head back and forcing her to stumble forward into the center of the ring.
Lily scrambles up the turnbuckles, scaling the ropes until she balances on the top wire. The crowd rises to its feet across the Municipal Auditorium.
Lily launches herself off the top rope, hooks Helen’s head mid-flight, and snaps her down into the canvas.
CANE CUTTER (Diving 3/4 Facelock Neckbreaker)!
The arena shakes with the impact. Lily immediately hooks the outside leg, burying her weight across Helen’s shoulders.
ONE…
TWO…
MacKaye’s hand descends for the three, hovering agonizingly close to the mat.
At the absolute final microsecond, Helen heaves her left shoulder off the canvas.
A collective groan rolls through the arena. Outside the ring, Selene clutches the guardrail with both hands, eyes wide with disbelief.
Lily sits back on the mat, staring at her trembling palms before shooting a desperate look at MacKaye, chest heaving for breath. Helen lies motionless on her side for three full seconds before slowly rolling onto her back, staring at the rafters.
The camera pulls back to a wide shot: Lily on her knees in the center of the ring, Helen stirring slowly on the mat behind her, and MacKaye watching them both from between the ropes.
Lily pushes off the mat, scrambling onto her feet, and pivots back toward Helen lying flat on the canvas. Lily reaches down, gripping Helen’s forearm to haul her dead weight upright.
Helen’s free hand snaps out like a steel trap, locking around Lily’s wrist.
In one continuous motion, Helen rises to her feet. Cold eyes. Locked in. Lily tries to yank her arm free, but Helen’s grip does not budge. Helen chambers her right leg and fires a stiff thrust kick dead into Lily’s midsection.
THUD.
Lily’s knees buckle, and she drops to the canvas on one knee, gasping for air. A heavy groan rolls across the crowd as the momentum shatters. At ringside, Selene grips the steel guardrail with white knuckles, watching in silence.
Helen rolls her left shoulder once—a slow, clinical rotation to test the joint after the earlier armbar.
Helen stalks in a slow, methodical circle around the kneeling Lily. She steps in and drives a stiff kick squarely into Lily’s exposed ribs. Lily curls inward, groaning on the mat. Helen stops. She stands back, giving Lily the space to drag air into her burning lungs. Helen pulls Lily up by the arm, spins her into the ropes, and whips her hard across the ring. Lily rebounds off the cables and sprints back, but Helen lowers her center of gravity and launches Lily skyward.
THUD.
A high back body drop sends Lily crashing violently into the canvas. Lily bounces off the impact, rolling onto her back. Helen does not cover. She tilts her head slightly, waiting. MacKaye steps between them, checking Lily’s responsiveness. Helen steps back without a word, clasping her hands loosely at her waist.
Helen steps forward, hooks Lily’s ankles, and drags her limp frame back into the center of the ring. Helen steps through, turns her hips, and sits deep into a Boston crab.
Lily screams, her fingers clawing desperately at the mat.
MACKAYE: Do you want to quit, Lily?
Lily violently shakes her head. The arena swells as the crowd begins a rhythmic, unified chant:
LI-LY!
LI-LY!
LI-LY!
Selene leans over the rail, screaming at the top of her lungs for Lily to reach the ropes. Dragging herself with her forearms and elbows, Lily crawls toward the bottom cable. Sensing the escape, Helen resets her footing and sits back harder, dragging Lily a foot back into the center. Lily grits her teeth, throws her upper body forward with one last surge, and slaps her palm against the bottom rope.
MACKAYE: Rope break! ONE!
Helen releases the pressure at the count of two, stepping back into the center.
Helen inhales deeply, steps in, and hauls Lily back to her feet. Lily uncorks a desperate open-palm strike, but Helen ducks underneath the swing. Helen steps inside the pocket, hooks Lily around the neck, and wraps her arm tight under the shoulder. Helen arches her spine and hurls herself backward.
WEIRD BETTY (Exploder Suplex)!
Lily lands with a sickening crunch across her neck and upper back. Helen rolls straight through with the momentum and hooks the far leg.
ONE…
TWO…
THR—NO!
Lily thrusts her shoulder up just before the three count. Helen sits up, meets MacKaye’s eyes, and then glances down at Lily. Still unbothered. Lily lies flat on her back, her chest heaving violently. At ringside, Selene presses both hands over her mouth, barely breathing.
Helen grabs Lily by the hair, dragging her upright, and chambers a heavy forearm shiver. Lily swats Helen’s arm aside, slips underneath the angle, and drives a stiff forearm smash flush into Helen’s jawline.
CRACK.
Helen stumbles back a full step. Lily leaps onto Helen’s shoulders, snaps her hips around, and drives Helen down with a hurricanrana. Helen crashes to the mat. Lily rolls through and traps Helen’s legs in a small package.
ONE—NO!
Helen powers out immediately. Lily rolls backward, springs forward, and stacks Helen up into another roll-up.
ONE…
TWO—NO!
Helen kicks free again. The crowd roars to its feet. Lily sprints to the ropes, leaps to the second strand, and launches back with a springboard dropkick. Helen takes the boots to the chest and stumbles back into the turnbuckles, barely staying upright on rubbery legs. Lily shakes the numbness from her arm, charges into the corner, and unleashes a rapid-fire combination of forearm strikes and palm thrusts.
Helen absorbs the barrage against the pads, and something behind her eyes violently shifts. Her jaw locks. Her breathing turns sharp and jagged.
Selene screams from the rail, urging Lily to finish it.
Lily backs up and charges in with a running knee strike, but Helen snatches the flying leg out of the air. Helen wrenches Lily around, clamps an arm tight around her throat, and drops her hips to lock in the hold.
GGGGRRRRRRR (Guillotine Choke)!
Helen violently thrashes and shakes Lily’s body back and forth, her jaw clenched in a silent, furious snarl. Lily’s face darkens to deep crimson as her boots kick frantically against the canvas.
MACKAYE: Lily, do you submit?
Lily shakes her head, drops her hips toward the canvas, and lunges forward until her arm drapes over the bottom rope.
MACKAYE: Rope break! ONE!
Helen ignores the referee completely, torquing the hold tighter.
MACKAYE: TWO!
Lily digs an elbow backward into Helen’s ribs.
MACKAYE: THREE!
Lily drives a second elbow into the same spot, fracturing the clamp.
MACKAYE: FOUR!
Helen finally releases the hold just before the five-count, shoving Lily’s limp body away. MacKaye steps between them, jabbing an index finger toward Helen’s face with a stern verbal warning. Helen raises both open palms, exhales, and returns to total stillness.
The camera holds tight on Lily rolling onto her stomach, gasping raggedly for oxygen.
Lily pulls herself onto hands and knees, coughing violently against the mat. Helen stands over her, chest rising and falling heavily as she recenters her posture. Selene screams at the top of her lungs for Lily to get up. Shaking with exhaustion, Lily drags herself to her feet and lunges forward.
Helen meets the charge with a vicious big boot.
CRACK.
Lily’s head snaps back, her body staggering into the ropes. She drags herself up to the second strand, climbs to the top turnbuckle, and balances on the top wire. The entire arena rises to its feet. Helen stands motionless in the center, waiting.
Lily launches herself off the top rope, spinning through the air for the strike—
LILY LASH (Spinning Roundhouse Kick)—
Helen ducks beneath the arc of the kick. Lily lands off-balance, stumbling as her boots hit the canvas. Lily spins around, but Helen snatches her wrist. Helen twists Lily’s arm overhead, plants the sole of her boot flush on Lily’s jaw, and drops backward to yank her straight down into the raised foot.
WITCH KICK (Inverted Stomp Facebreaker)!
CRACK.
The impact flips Lily backward through the air, crashing flat across the canvas. Helen rolls over, drapes her torso across Lily’s chest, and hooks the leg tight.
ONE…
TWO…
THREE!
DING. DING. DING.
HELEN BACK WINS
PINFALL VICTORY
MacKaye takes Helen’s right wrist and hoists it high into the air. Helen does not celebrate. She stands in the center of the ring, staring up at the arena lighting with an unreadable, distant expression.
Lily lies completely motionless on her back, blood smearing her lower lip and one hand resting weakly over her battered ribs. At ringside, Selene climbs onto the ring apron, clutching the ropes and calling Lily’s name in distress.
Helen turns to MacKaye, offers him a small, precise bow, and steps away toward the ropes.
The camera lingers on Lily’s bruised face on the canvas while Helen ducks through the ropes into the aisle, the sound of the New Orleans crowd washing out into the background.
SEGMENT
JENNA JILLIAN WALKER
HOPE RUSSO
MORGAN LECHANCE
DELILAH HART
TIGRESS
A more focused than usual Tigress are preparing for their upcoming matches tonight. Jenna Jillian Walker and Delilah Hart are going over their game plan while the Hopes are both using exercise bands, while Morgan LeChance is shadow boxing. Jenna looks up and around at the rest of the locker room.
JENNA JILLIAN WALKER: Everyone good? Seems like we’re all in our own heads…
Hope Russo finishes with the exercise band, and wipes her forehead with a towel, she grabs a bottle of water and takes a sip.
HOPE RUSSO: I’m great, just thinking about Lex Von Douchebag running her mouth like I’m supposed to be scared of her big dumb ass.
She chuckles and walks up beside Jenna and rests her arm on her shoulder.
HOPE RUSSO: She moves like a mummy, probably smells worse than one too. And I gotta be in the ring with her for 30 minutes. I don’t know If I can hold my breath for that long.
She takes her arm off Jenna’s shoulder
HOPE RUSSO: Von Douchebag thinks because she’s big I’m supposed to be scared of her or something….bitch please. She don’t know me very well then. I mean I smack your ass all the time in front of Morgan.
Before Jenna or Morgan can say anything, Hope gives Jenna’s ass a playful smack before laughing and walking off. Morgan chuckles and shakes her head, she drapes a towel around her neck.
LECHANCE: I’m bringing that belt home with us. Vilaro is going to have to kill me to make me tap out. She’s not woman enough to do either. I gotta admit, she’s crafty, but she’s been talking a lot of shit.
A slow, almost cruel smirk spreads across her lips.
LECHANCE: It’s going to be a good night for us. You and Delilah are gonna kick some ass, I’m bringing home gold, and Russo is gonna do what Russo does.
She chuckles and kisses Jenna’s cheek.
LECHANCE: It’s gonna be a good night.
JENNA JILLIAN WALKER: It’s going to be a great night because we are united and a united Tigress is ultimately unstoppable! So Mari, LVD, Bia, Taeler, and Vespera will all find that out tonight. While my beloved and Hope each bring home more PCW gold, Delilah and I will make sure the Voodoo Pac Championship remains with us.
Jenna picks up her championship belt and looks over at Delilah.
JENNA JILLIAN WALKER: Let’s get it, girl…
Jenna and Delilah begin exiting their locker room.
MATCH
THE BAYOU BADASS
MORGAN LECHANCE
TIGRESS
vs
PCW CRUCIBLE CHAMPION
MARISOL VILARO
VILAROFIT
SUBMISSION MATCH
15 MINUTE TIMELIMIT
PCW CRUCIBLE CHAMPIONSHIP
REFEREE: GRADE GARRETT
Garrett plants himself at center ring and turns his head from Morgan on one side to Marisol on the other. Two hands raised. He chops them together.
The bell rings.
Morgan explodes out of her stance and crosses the ring in three strides. Marisol is already gone—spinning away, diving through the ropes, hitting the floor before Morgan can close the last step. The roar hits like a wave breaking over the ring. All of it pointed one direction.
Morgan doesn’t hesitate. She spills through the ropes and gives chase.
Marisol rounds the first corner at a full sprint, grease-slick hair flying, Morgan ten feet back and closing. Garrett walks the ropes inside the ring, tracking them around the turnbuckles. Second corner. Third. Marisol’s lungs are already working harder than she wants anyone to see—and then she breaks for the announce desk.
Reno Nevada sits alone, headset on, papers in front of him. Marisol slides in behind the desk and plants him between herself and the Bayou Badass like a human sandbag.
RENO NEVADA: It’s Tiananmen Square and I’m caught in the middle!
Morgan rounds the desk and steps in behind it. Slow now. A stalk. She shifts left. Right. Reno’s eyes pinball between the two of them, hands up, nowhere to go, while Marisol mirrors every step on the other side of his chair.
Marisol’s feet twitch. A feint.
Morgan bites. She bolts around the front of the desk—
And Marisol is gone the other way, doubling back, reversing the whole route. Morgan plants a boot, cuts the angle off, and snags a fistful of hair at the roots.
Marisol shrieks.
Morgan drags her. Ten feet of floor, Marisol stumbling boot over boot, clawing at the wrist that owns her scalp, hauled by the hair straight toward the ring post. Morgan plants her feet and hurls her face-first into the steel.
CLANG.
The sound rings down to the floorboards. Marisol rebounds off the post like she’s been shot, and the building comes unglued—raw, howling approval from twelve thousand people who came here specifically hoping to see exactly this.
Marisol staggers along the apron, both hands cupped over her face, backpedaling on legs that have lost their map. She tilts her head up at Garrett and screams through the ropes.
MARISOL: DISQUALIFY HER!
Garrett leans over the ropes and barks it right back down at her.
GARRETT: The ring structure is not a foreign object.
Marisol stares up at him. Genuinely stunned. Like the concept of a rule not bending her way is a foreign language.
Morgan takes her by the back of the neck. One heave. Marisol goes under the bottom rope and skids across the canvas on her stomach. Morgan climbs the apron and steps through the ropes. Thick bands of black kinesiology tape crosshatch her right shoulder beneath the strap of her gear, the edges of a bruise still yellowing out from under them. The chase is over.
Marisol crawls for the far ropes, one hand pressed to the cheek the steel rearranged. Morgan stalks after her and rolls her right shoulder—once, twice, a hitch in the rotation that she works out with a hard breath through the nose. Every sting of pain a reminder of being thrown off a catwalk only five days prior by Yelena Gorgo.
The first low kick lands flush in the meat of Marisol’s thigh as she pulls herself up.
THWACK.
The second drives into the inner thigh, same leg, and it buckles. Marisol’s knee dips and she snatches the middle rope to keep from going down. Morgan circles. Hands high. Weight balanced. Nowhere to be.
Marisol comes off the ropes with a wild, looping slap—everything on it, nothing behind it. Morgan slips inside the arc, clamps a body lock, and takes her down to her back hard enough to bounce the ring. The landing jars that taped right shoulder and Morgan’s face twists with it. She shakes it off. Pushes through. Settles into top position and drops three short, clubbing fists into Marisol’s ribs. Thud. Thud. Thud. Garrett drops to a knee beside them, eyes on the arms, watching for the tap.
Marisol gets a forearm across Morgan’s jaw and bucks her hips out sideways—ugly, desperate, effective. She scrambles up and collapses back-first into the corner, chest heaving, ribs hugged tight.
Morgan comes to collect her.
Marisol lashes out with a low kick of her own at Morgan’s knee. It catches. Morgan staggers a half step—stays standing—and the glare she levels at the corner could cut glass. Marisol surges off the ropes in the same breath, snatches a headlock, and drags Morgan down into a headlock takedown. She cranks it. Cinches the arm. Turns her painted face to the crowd and soaks in the avalanche of hate coming back at her, smiling through the bruise already blooming on her cheek.
Wrong decision.
Morgan stacks her feet flat, bridges her hips, and powers straight up through the hold until the grip peels apart. She’s vertical before Marisol’s eyes finish widening—and a knee drills straight into Marisol’s midsection, folding her in half. Morgan rips her forward, whips her into the corner, and follows in with two more knee strikes. The first takes the ribs. The second lands higher, under the sternum, and drives every ounce of air out of the Billion Dollar Woman’s lungs.
Marisol slumps into the turnbuckle. Dazed. Wheezing. One arm draped across her midsection.
Morgan peels her out of the corner into a tight waist clutch and spins her through—
BOURBON STREET BREAKDOWN (Swinging Side Slam)!
The ring rocks under both of them. No pause. No admiration. Morgan threads the near arm and drops straight into an armbar before Marisol’s eyes can even refocus, hyperextending the elbow across her hip.
Marisol’s teeth bare. Her free hand claws the canvas, stretching, fingertips skating inches short of the bottom rope. Garrett flattens himself beside them.
GARRETT: You want to submit?
A furious shake of the head. Sweat flicking off her chin. The hand digs, pulls, drags her whole body those last few inches—until her finger hooks the bottom strand.
GARRETT: Break the hold. ONE! TWO! THR—
Morgan releases at three. Rolls to her feet. Gives the shoulder another rub—deeper this time, thumb digging into the joint, worrying at the edge of the tape—and grants Marisol the mercy of distance.
Garrett rises with her, eyes locked on that right arm.
GARRETT: How’s that shoulder?
Morgan rolls the joint twice, jaw set, and nods him off.
Marisol claws her way up the far ropes, spine against the strands, desperate for a single inch of air space Morgan isn’t occupying.
She doesn’t get it.
Morgan closes in, rips her off the ropes, and snakes her into a front facelock before her feet even plant. A snap yank drops them both to the canvas—and Morgan’s legs whip shut around her waist.
Guillotine.
The grip torques down and Marisol’s face floods crimson. Her nails rake Morgan’s forearm. Digging. Tearing. Finding nothing. Morgan’s jaw locks, shoulders bunching as she fights to cinch the final inch of the grip—the one that ends this—but Marisol’s hands are everywhere, frantic, prying at the elbow, refusing to let the noose finish closing.
And then her neck wrenches free.
The crowd lets out a wounded groan as Marisol spills on top of Morgan and swings a wild overhand fist down across her jaw. A second cracks home. Garrett hovers over the scramble, hands out, reading Morgan’s arms for any flicker of surrender. Marisol starts raining them down—every ounce of the beating she’d planned to walk through the ropes and avoid—and Morgan shells up, covering with her one good arm, riding it out.
Waiting.
There.
Morgan’s hand darts through the storm and snares Marisol’s wrist mid-swing. She drags the arm across her own throat, pivots her hips, and her legs scissor up and over—locking shut around Marisol’s head and captured arm.
Triangle choke.
Marisol plants both hands on Morgan’s thighs and pulls. Shoves. Tries to stack her. Morgan angles her body, locks her ankle behind the knee, and cranks. The frame tightens like a garrote.
The crowd climbs to its feet as one.
Marisol’s movements slow. The slaps at Morgan’s legs lose their authority. Her arms sink. Her body goes heavy—slack—and her hand flutters down and pats the canvas once. Weak. Then again.
She taps. Just before the lights go all the way out.
MORGAN 1 – MARISOL 0
Garrett signals for the release.
Morgan holds on.
Garrett signals again, sharper, voice cracking over the roar—and Morgan’s legs finally fall open. Marisol sags flat to the canvas, motionless, eyes half-lidded. Garrett plants himself between them and gives Morgan a hard, finger-jabbing warning about releasing on the first signal.
The crowd couldn’t care less about his warning. Twelve thousand strong, on their feet for the hometown girl.
MOR-GAN!
MOR-GAN!
MOR-GAN!
Morgan rolls to all fours, breathing in hard pulls, and cradles her right arm against her ribs—thumb working that taped shoulder, jaw tight, staring down at the woman sprawled flat beneath the storm of her own making.
Marisol stirs first. Barely.
She drags herself sideways across the canvas, one sluggish pull at a time, fingers finding the bottom rope and hauling her half-conscious body up onto the apron. She tumbles off the side and lands on the floor in a heap of unsteady legs, swaying upright, both hands glued to the apron edge to keep the building from spinning.
The crowd thunders as Morgan rolls under the ropes after her.
Morgan slides out right in front of her and snaps a grip on the head and arm—and Marisol’s hands shoot up, blocking it cold. Her eyes narrow. Focused now.
Her fingers jab into Morgan’s eyes.
The boos hit like a jet engine. Morgan recoils on the spot, both hands flying to her face, stumbling blind on the floor. Garrett hangs over the top rope, jabbing a finger down at the Billion Dollar Woman.
GARRETT: Hey! Watch the eyes! That’s your only warning!
Marisol doesn’t acknowledge him. She has more important business.
She snatches Morgan by the taped arm, pivots, and whips her—shoulder-first—into the steel ring post.
CLANG.
The taped shoulder. The one Gorgo and Bia left wrecked five days ago.
Morgan’s scream is immediate and wet and awful. She crumples against the post, clutching the arm to her body like it’s hanging by thread. Marisol wrenches two fistfuls of hair, walks her howling opponent to the apron, and shoves her under the bottom rope. In after her.
Morgan hasn’t even finished rolling before the first stomp lands. Square on the shoulder. A second one grinds down through the tape into the joint.
Then Marisol straightens. Runs both hands slowly down her own body. Soaks in the hatred raining down from twelve thousand people.
MARISOL: Billion dollar discipline. Billion dollar body. ZERO EXCUSES!
Morgan rolls toward center ring, trying to crawl out of the blast radius. Marisol follows. Stalks. Stomps her again. Then plants a boot and drives one more directly into the meat of the taped joint.
Morgan curls around the arm. Her breathing has gone ragged, hitching, every exhale a short gasp through clenched teeth.
Marisol measures her. Drops a full-body elbow across the shoulder—and then, beside her fallen opponent, she drops to the canvas and cranks out a tidy round of push-ups. Perfect form. Sneering at the front row between reps. Counting each one loud enough to be heard over the boos.
Morgan is crawling. One-armed. Dragging herself toward the ropes on her left side alone, the right arm dead cargo.
Marisol pops up, walks a lazy half-circle, and hauls her back to center by the ankle like she’s collecting luggage. Up by the hair. The bad arm gets wrung into a spinning wrist lock, torqued up behind her—and Morgan’s teeth bare as she swings her shin low into the side of Marisol’s knee to buck the grip apart.
Marisol hops on one leg, grimacing—
Then snaps around with an enzuguri that cracks off the side of Morgan’s skull.
Morgan drops to her knees. Glass-eyed. The bad arm dangles loose at her side like it belongs to somebody else.
Marisol circles behind and traps it.
She hooks the wrist, sits out hard, and wrenches into a seated armbar—elbow hyperextended, the full pull of the hold funneled through five-day-old damage. She leans her entire body across Morgan’s back, stacking her weight onto the leverage, dragging the shoulder toward a place shoulders don’t go.
Morgan’s shriek rattles off the rafters. Her free fist pounds the canvas in furious, useless rhythm—and twelve thousand people answer it. A slow clap. Then faster. Building. A wall of hands trying to physically push their hometown girl out of the hold.
Garrett flattens himself in front of her.
GARRETT: Morgan! You want to submit?
She shakes her head violently. Teeth grinding. Sweat dripping off the point of her chin onto the mat.
Marisol sneers down at Garrett over Morgan’s shoulder—then hikes her base forward and drives a knee into the trapped joint. Then a second. Each one nested deep into the hollow of the shoulder while her own arms keep the armbar cranked.
The clap swells into a roar.
Morgan digs her boots into the canvas. Flat. Then arches. Her thighs start to shake beneath her—and inch by ugly inch, hauling dead weight and her own wreckage, she powers up off the mat. Marisol refusing to let go the entire way up.
They’re on their feet. Marisol converts on the fly—wrist lock maintained, arm wrenched up into a hammerlock behind Morgan’s back. She twirls her free elbow high overhead as the crowd howls for blood.
MARISOL: You’re feeling a little stiff, Morgan! Don’t worry. The Vilaro System has a special technique that can loosen you up!
She drives the elbow into the shoulder.
Then again.
Then a third—and on the way down from that third blow, Morgan’s free hand shoots back and snares Marisol’s wrist.
Morgan rolls forward through the grip, folding Marisol’s escape window shut. She pops up and twists the captured arm, torquing Marisol bent at the waist. The crowd detonates. Marisol howls, swinging wild with her free arm while Morgan wrenches the hold up another notch—
Marisol plants a palm on the canvas and cartwheels clean through the pressure, landing square. Before Morgan can adjust, Marisol ducks her reach, wraps both arms around her ribs, and buries her ear into Morgan’s chest.
She hoists. Flips her overhead. Northern lights suplex—and Marisol holds the bridge, hips high, shoulders of her opponent pinned to the mat.
Garrett stands there. Hands at his sides.
The bridge holds. One second. Three. Five—Marisol’s legs start to tremble, then buckle, and the bridge collapses with no slap of a count anywhere in the building. She scrambles up red-faced and plants herself nose-to-nose with the official.
MARISOL: Why aren’t you counting?!?
GARRETT: It’s a submission match.
MARISOL: This match is rigged!
The crowd howls with laughter at her. She wheels back toward Morgan—hungry, furious, stomp cocked.
Morgan’s hand shoots up off the canvas and catches the leg.
Marisol’s eyes go wide. Morgan surges for the single-leg—and Marisol hops backward in panicked little skips, six feet of desperate one-legged retreat, until she tumbles spine-first into the ropes and tangles up in them. Arms caught. Trapped. Morgan still welded to the leg.
Garrett’s on it instantly.
GARRETT: Let it go! She’s in the ropes! ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!
MARISOL: ROPE BREAK, YOU IDIOT! DO YOUR JOB!
GARRETT: FIVE!
Morgan doesn’t release. Garrett wades in and physically wrenches her off—and the angle of it tweaks the bad shoulder again. Morgan yowls, a raw open-throated sound, and sinks to her knees with the arm folded against her chest, rocking.
GARRETT: Ignore my count again and I award a point to your opponent. You hear me?
That’s when Marisol gets free.
She spills out of the ropes and shoulder-checks Garrett aside on her way through.
MARISOL: If this were MY company you would be FIRED.
She hits the far ropes. Full sprint now. Morgan on her knees in the center of the ring, one-armed, head swimming—
CRUNCH TIME (Somersault Cutter)!
Marisol flips clean over her, catching the head on the way down, and spikes Morgan’s face into the canvas with the full whip of her body weight behind it. Morgan bounces once off the mat and goes flat.
Marisol scrambles around behind her. Snares both arms. Drags them back and threads her legs through—
MAXXED OUT (Rings of Saturn)!
The hold cinches in and every bit of it is precision-targeted violence—both shoulders cranked backward, the taped one bent at an angle nature never signed off on. Morgan was half a breath from the gray. Not anymore. The pain comes through her like a live current and her eyes snap wide, her whole body arching against the hold.
The building screams at her. Not wildly—desperately. Begging her to hold on.
Morgan lifts her head. Squints through the sweat and the dark. Finds the big screen hanging over the crowd.
Five minutes and change left on the clock.
Her face does the arithmetic. Everyone close enough can watch it happen—the jaw unclenches, the fight drains out of her shoulders by choice, not by force. The shoulder tears if she stays. Five more minutes is a lifetime in that hold. A point is a point.
Her eyes find Garrett.
She nods.
MORGAN: I submit!
Garrett signals instantly, calling for the break, and Marisol lets the hold wrench one final beat too long before her arms fall open. She backs away with both hands raised in mock innocence, the sweetest smile in Louisiana plastered across her face, while Morgan collapses flat to the canvas—cradling the arm, chest heaving, furious at the only decision her body left her.
The crowd gives her everything they have anyway.
MORGAN 1 – MARISOL 1.
Marisol finally lets the hold die and rises over Morgan, chest heaving, hair matted across her face. Behind her, Garrett raises one finger toward the timekeeper’s table. Point registered. Score level.
Marisol rolls her neck slow. Glances up at the screen. Five minutes to keep what’s hers. She shoves the sweat-plastered hair off her forehead and drags Morgan up by the roots of hers.
Double underhook. She snaps Morgan up and over, and the landing wrenches both arms across her own body on impact. Morgan hits hard and immediately curls inward, wrapping herself around the bad arm like a wounded animal shielding the injury.
Marisol smells it. Drops to a knee and threads the wounded limb—arm extended across her thigh, hips driving in for the cross armbreaker—and Morgan’s good hand clamps down over her own wrist in a white-knuckled death grip, keeping the arm bent, refusing the extension. Marisol pulls. Pulls harder. The elbow starts to creak open—
Morgan’s boot hooks the bottom rope.
GARRETT: Break! ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR—
Marisol releases. Stomps the canvas beside Morgan’s head and fixes Garrett with a long, simmering look—lips moving, soundless, whatever she’s mouthing dying before it reaches him.
She turns back to work. Snares the wrist, wrenches Morgan up and spins her into a wrist lock, twisting the taped arm up behind her back. Morgan drops to one knee under the torque—then slams a low kick into the same thigh she’s been tenderizing all match. The grip loosens a beat too early for Morgan to capitalize. Before her feet can even set, Marisol snaps her over with a headlock takedown and cranks it deep, grinding her forearm across the jaw.
The crowd answers for their girl.
MOR-GAN!
MOR-GAN!
MOR-GAN!
Morgan fights up. Knees first. Then her boots. Fingers prying at the cord of forearm locked around her throat—almost through, almost—
Marisol drives a knee into her midsection and launches her backward into the corner.
Morgan hits the turnbuckles spine-first. Marisol backs all the way across the ring, sets her feet, and charges—three striding steps, both hands planting the canvas, legs cartwheeling through—
VILARO EXPERIENCE (Corner Handspring Elbow)!
The elbow detonates into Morgan’s jaw and sternum. She stumbles out of the corner on legs made of smoke and drops to her knees.
Marisol slips behind her and coils in a rear naked choke—sloppy at first, then corrected, performed, framed and presented like she’s demonstrating technique for a seminar audience. She leans back into it, chest out, showing the crowd exactly how a professional finishes.
Morgan’s face darkens. Her good hand claws at the forearm crushing her windpipe. The nails find nothing. Her pulls get weaker. Her lids get heavier.
Twelve thousand people rise in unison, on the verge of something they don’t want to name.
Garrett drops flat in front of them and lifts Morgan’s left arm—the good one.
It drops.
He lifts it again.
It drops.
He lifts it a third time. Holds it. Lets go—
The hand hovers. Clenches into a fist.
The building erupts.
Morgan shakes that fist at the lights as Marisol shakes her head behind her, panic finally cracking through the Billion Dollar composure.
MARISOL: No! No!!!
Adrenaline floods the tank. One leg posts under her. Then Morgan is rising, dragging Marisol’s entire body weight up with her on pure fury—and she blasts her good elbow backward into Marisol’s ribs. Once. Twice. A third time, buried to the point of the bone.
The choke peels open. Marisol staggers away, gasping, both arms wrapped around her own midsection.
Morgan turns. Plants her feet.
A roundhouse kick detonates against Marisol’s ribs. Then a low kick, same thigh, third time she’s found it tonight—and the leg buckles, sending Marisol stumbling into the ropes. Morgan circles her. Patient again. The bad arm tucked against her ribs, her eyes cold and level and reading everything.
Marisol comes off the ropes and rakes at the eyes. Morgan turns her head and takes the nails across her cheek instead. Marisol throws a desperate kick at the dangling bad arm—and Morgan steps inside it and spears a knee into her midsection.
Marisol folds. Morgan marches her backward into the corner and pins her there, good forearm barred across her chest, and drives two knees into her ribs. Each one lifts Marisol’s boots off the canvas.
The Billion Dollar Woman slides down the turnbuckle. Winded. Furious. Losing.
Morgan backs off and stalks, weight swaying, waiting. Marisol claws up the ropes strand by strand, her eyes flicking to the screen—the clock, the dwindling clock—
Morgan fires another low kick.
Marisol snatches the bad arm and wrenches it savagely. Morgan’s howl tears out of her—and then she slams her forehead straight into Marisol’s painted face. The grip dies. Marisol stumbles backward, blinking through fireworks, pawing at a nose that might be crooked.
Morgan takes one step back. Launches.
ZEPHYR KICK (Super Kick)!
The boot cracks across Marisol’s jaw like a rifle shot. Marisol falls backward off her feet, bounces off the ropes, and trampolines forward, crashing to her knees, arms limp, head lolling.
Morgan looks up at the screen. Sixty seconds.
Her eyes come back down—and something in them has gone absolutely flat. Kill time. She steps back and launches forward, knee first, full sprint—
VOODOO CURSE (Running Knee Strike)!
The kneecap obliterates Marisol’s jaw. Marisol drops flat onto her back like the strings got cut.
Morgan rises, fists clenched, the crowd roaring around her—and then she sees it. The screen. Fifty seconds.
She drops. Rolls Marisol’s dead weight onto her stomach. Threads the left leg through hers, figure-fours it tight—
CALF CRUSHER (Calf Slicer)!
She reaches back with her good arm, traps the left foot, and reefs it backward toward her own hip. The pressure on Marisol’s knee joint is obscene. Structural. Career-relevant.
And Marisol hangs there. Out. Comatose. No scream, no scramble, no tap—nothing to give.
Morgan wrenches harder anyway.
MORGAN: She’s out!
Garrett is down beside them in an instant. He lifts Marisol’s wrist off the canvas and lets it go.
THUD.
The crowd’s roar swells into something hungry. They can see the new championship coming down out of the lights.
Garrett lifts the arm a second time. Releases it.
THUD.
Morgan’s own face is contorting now—every crank of the hold forces her foundation through that mangled shoulder, pain crawling up her arm and blooming behind her eyes. She holds on through it.
Garrett lifts the arm one more time.
It falls—
—and hangs. A breath above the canvas.
Marisol’s eyes blow wide open. A scream rips out of her throat, raw and animal, torn free by the agony blooming in her shredded knee. Awake. She is horrifyingly awake.
And Morgan stops holding back. Everything she has. Every ounce. The whole building feels her lean into it.
Ten thousand voices fuse into one relentless wall of sound. Marisol’s hand claws into the air, trembling above the mat. Garrett is flat on the canvas in front of her, bellowing over the noise.
GARRETT: Do you submit?!
Marisol shakes her head. Sobbing. No.
Morgan tries to double down—reaches across for the two-handed grip—and pain explodes out of the bad shoulder, white-hot, forcing her back to one arm. She screams and holds the crank anyway.
Marisol’s hand hovers. Inches now. She can’t see the screen. Her face is a ruin of sweat and snot and agony.
THREE…
TWO…
ONE…
Her fingers curl. Her will breaks. The hand accelerates toward the canvas—
DING DING DING
—and slaps the mat. Then again. Frantic. Repeated. Tapping, tapping, tapping.
Morgan releases the hold and surges to her feet, both fists raised, one arm sagging—and the building goes supernova. Confetti-loud. Champions-made loud. The whole thing over and out and theirs—
And Garrett is waving his arms. Crossing them. Wiping it all out.
No fall. No hand raise. He signals the timekeeper hard and beelines across the ring to the far side, where Fred Hayes Jr. waits beside a monitor, headset half off, glasses pushed up on his forehead. Reno Nevada leans so far forward at the announce desk he’s nearly standing, both hands gripping its edge, narrating the chaos to everyone watching at home.
In the ring, Marisol writhes on her back, howling, both hands wrapped around her ruined knee.
Across from her, Morgan stands cradling the taped arm against her ribs. Confused. Then furious.
MORGAN: She tapped! She fucking tapped!
The arena noise drains away to a hush as the screen above the ring blazes to life. Everyone—twelve thousand in the building, everyone at home—watches what Garrett sees.
The final seconds, frame by frame.
A close-up of Marisol’s hand. The timer burning in the corner of the footage. Garrett and Hayes lean over the monitor, motionless. In the ring, Morgan stares up, chest heaving. On the canvas, Marisol props herself up on one elbow and watches through the pain.
Frames tick. Agonizingly. Slow.
The hand begins to dip.
The crowd stops breathing. All that’s left is the faint electric hum of the lights.
The clock hits zero.
And then—a fraction of a second later—the hand touches canvas.
Garrett rises slow. Straightens. Looks up at the ring and delivers the ruling. Hayes nods once, lifts the microphone, and gives the people the worst sentence they’ve ever heard in their lives.
FRED HAYES JR.: Ladies and gentlemen… after official review, this match has exceeded the time limit. It is ruled… a TIME LIMIT DRAW.
TIME LIMIT DRAW
AND STILL PCW CRUCIBLE CHAMPION—MARISOL VILARO
The place comes apart.
There is no word for what pours down out of those seats. Not hate—hatred, industrial-grade, aimed at Marisol Vilaro for escaping, at Garrett for the ruling, at Hayes for carrying the sentence into the microphone. Cups and jeers and pure venom rain toward the ring in one unrelenting wall.
Garrett climbs back through the ropes with the PCW Crucible Championship in his hands.
On the mat, Marisol sees it. The pained grimace melts off her face like wax and what rises underneath it is the most unholy grin this building has ever produced. She scrambles upright, plants the bad leg, winces once—then literally waves the pain away with a flick of her hand. It’s nothing now. Everything is nothing now.
Garrett extends the belt. Marisol snatches it with both hands.
She crushes it to her chest, eyes wide and shining like a woman reunited with a lost child. Then she hoists it overhead and screams—long and ragged and triumphant—and twelve thousand pairs of lungs answer her with a thunderhead of boos.
She turns in a slow circle. Basking. Drinking every jeer like it’s standing ovation. She presses her lips to the center plate, long and lingering, then thrusts the belt at the nearest camera lens with a smile bright enough to need its own power source.
Up onto the second rope, favoring the leg, belt raised to the cheap seats. Down again. Belt pressed against her heart. And she mouths two words to an audience that exists only in her own head.
MARISOL: Thank you!
Morgan stands across the ring. Arm cradled against her ribs. Not moving. Not blinking. Just watching this happen with her jaw welded shut and her breathing slow and level and terrifying.
Marisol glances over her shoulder and finds the stare waiting for her.
It doesn’t slow her down. She lifts the belt high between them, blows Morgan a kiss, and turns away.
Morgan doesn’t blink.
Garrett slides between the two of them, hands half-raised, reading both women at once.
And Marisol climbs the corner ropes, bad leg and all, and raises her championship into the storm—queen of a kingdom that would burn the whole building down to get her out of it.
SEGMENT
THAÏS EMPRISTIKÍ
HOPE LEVITT
TIGRESS
The camera moves backstage to a locker room door. Nudging open slowly, the camera reveals none other than Hope Levitt, dressed in some simple sweats and a hooded sweatshirt, as she paces back and forth, eyes glued to the ground as she walks back and forth, swinging her hands and breathing heavily. The Star Dragon is speaking softly as she paces back and forth, almost like a simple mantra trying to psych herself up.
HOPE LEVITT: I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. I can do th—
Hope stops on a dime as she seems to hear something, turning to the doorway and raises her fists, eyes looking toward the doorway.
HOPE LEVITT: Whose there? I heard you, ya know. Don’t make me come out there and f—-fight you, because I will!
Her hands are trembling slightly, but there’s a fire behind her eyes as she glares and waits. She might be nervous but she’s definitely ready to fight. Thaïs comes in with their hands up and a look that says don’t shoot as they look at their niece.
THAÏS: No worries, sweetie, it’s just me. I just came to talk to you before the match. So save that fighting energy for later ok? I just wanted to see how you were doing with everything.
Hope lets out a deep breath as she sees its Thais, hands falling slightly, and eyes closing for a moment. When she opens them again, there’s a small smile on her face as she looks at her Auntie and gives a small nod.
HOPE LEVITT: I’m…..I’m okay. I was worried you might be Taeler or Nyx. I don’t know what those girls want with me, but it doesn’t seem nice.
Hope rolls her shoulders but then turns and starts swinging her arms again before looking back at Thais.
HOPE LEVITT: Theia……do you think I have a chance tonight? Against Bia?
THAÏS: I don’t know those two creeps well enough to say, but they seem like bad news for sure. That said, I don’t think they do much knocking.
Thaïs chuckles a little, trying to break up the tense atmosphere as they put an arm around Hope’s shoulder.
THAÏS: I won’t lie to you and say that she’s not tough. She’s hard to beat even in a regular match. But in a death match, anything goes and that means you need to be prepared to do anything. A stipulation like this can be used to your advantage because you don’t have to wrestle her. You just have to hit her hard enough to keep her down for a few seconds. That’s all. I admit I was a little terrified of you doing this at first. But the stipulation can go both ways. She’ll want to hurt you to hurt me. Don’t let her. Keep her chasing after you instead. And swing hard when she comes at you.
Hope smiles at the reassuring words from, Thais and gives a nod of her head. Punching into her other hand she grins as she looks up at her Auntie.
HOPE LEVITT: Run her ragged, then hit her quick. I like that plan.
Hope grins but then her smile falters as she stares at Thais.
HOPE LEVITT: And Thaïs, no matter WHAT happens or what she does to me……You don’t touch her, okay? You deserve your chance. You have EARNED your chance. I don’t want you losing your shot at the title because of me, okay?
Thaïs looks at her. Really looks at the girl for what feels like the first time. Despite only being five years older, they feel the need to protect her.
Hope meets their gaze. There is a strength behind her eyes that Thaïs has not seen before.
HOPE LEVITT: I want you to promise me. No matter what happens, no matter how bad it might get, you will not touch her. This is my fight.
Thaïs is struck by young woman. Every instinct is screaming that no title shot is worth something happening to her. They take a long sigh and then look at the floor before they look at her.
THAÏS: …Ok. I’m going to let you handle this on your own because you’re grown and you deserve it. I know you can handle this. It’s tough for me not to be protective. I feel like I need to take care of you and the others because I’ve endured so much. I always tell myself I can handle it. I can take it so that you and everybody else don’t need to. But I have to let you fight this on your own. I can’t take your growth from you
HOPE LEVITT: No. You can’t.
Hope stares at Thais for a moment but then steps in and wraps her up in a tight hug.
HOPE LEVITT: But I like that you’re always willing to do it anyway. You’ve always got my back and I appreciate it.
After a moment Hope steps back and then grins again as she starts hopping on her feet.
HOPE LEVITT: Now, go check in with Big Hope and the others, okay? I’ll be alright. I’ll see you out there.
Thaïs squeaks at first. Not expecting the hug. But they are used to physical contact a lot more easily now. It has taken quite a bit of therapy to get them this far. They relax and hug her back. As she steps back, they get up also and run a hand through their curly hair.
THAÏS: OK! I have to get changed anyways. But I will be back one last time to see you before the match. Σ ‘ αγαπώ, I love you, Desiree. I believe in you.
HOPE LEVITT: Thanks Theia. Stay HOPEFUL, alright.
Hope grins and flashes a big thumbs up before darting back to head back towards the wall, her feet lighter and throwing some punches as she goes through her warm-up.
Thaïs reaches the doorway, but pauses with their hand on the frame. They turn back around, eyes scanning the hallway outside before locking onto Hope with a sudden, sharp seriousness.
THAÏS: Hey. Hope.
Hope pauses mid-strike, lowering her hands.
THAÏS: Stay in here. You lock this door the second I step out, and you don’t open it for anyone. Not until I come back for you. I don’t trust that Yelena or Taeler won’t come looking for you before the bell rings.
Hope starts to open her mouth, but Thaïs steps back forward, cutting her off.
THAÏS: You made me promise, Hope. Now I need you to promise me. Don’t open that door.
Hope meets their gaze, seeing the dead-serious look in their eyes. After a beat, she gives a firm, solemn nod.
HOPE LEVITT: I promise. Locked tight until you get back.
Thaïs nods, lets out a measured breath, and slips out into the hall, pulling the door shut behind them. From inside, the sound of the deadbolt sliding into place echoes through the room, and the scene cuts to black.
MATCH
THE V.I.P.
CHRIS MOSH
vs
THE MISSOURI RIVER AMAZON
SAM TOLSON
ASYLUM RULES
PCW ASYLUM CHAMPIONSHIP
REFEREE: STEPHANIE MARSHALL
The crashing opening chords of STARSET’s “Kashmir: Instrumental” rip through the Municipal Auditorium PA system.
Samantha Tolson steps out onto the entrance stage. She plants her boots at the top of the ramp, resting both hands firmly on her hips while surveying the arena with complete, unshakable composure.
Behind her, the curtain parts. A shadow steps into the light.
Chris Mosh emerges with a cold, predatory focus, gripping a heavy steel folding chair by the frame. He steps forward without a sound and unloads a brutal overhead swing across Tolson’s spine.
The blow lands with an ugly metallic clang. Tolson lurches forward down the ramp incline, losing her balance completely before skidding hard across the corrugated steel plates on her hands and knees.
The building comes unglued with furious, guttural boos, the crowd instantly turning hostile toward the assault.
Mosh stalks downward behind her. He lines up his target and brings the flat face of the chair down across her lower back a second time. The concussive strike flattens Tolson out completely against the steel.
Mosh flips the weapon, clutching it vertically by the legs. With zero hesitation, he drives the sharp bottom rim of the chair straight down into the meat of Tolson’s right thigh.
Tolson whips over onto her spine, letting out a sharp scream while clutching the battered quad with both hands.
Mosh raises the vertical edges again, setting his sights straight on her exposed ribs. Tolson stays grounded, but her instincts kick in. She whips her left shin across the floor in a desperate, sweeping arc that clips Mosh across the lower shins.
Mosh absorbs the blow, staggering back half a step to reset his base. His sneer deepens. He steps back in and unleashes a stiff soccer kick directly into the bruised, throbbing flesh of Tolson’s injured leg.
The blunt impact snuffs out any chance of a base. Tolson claws at the steel, dragging herself back up toward all fours.
Mosh stands over her, raises the chair, and cracks her across the spine with a third vicious strike.
Tolson forces herself upright to her knees, her back visibly seizing under the blunt-force trauma. Mosh steps around to face her. He winds up and drives the broad flat of the chair directly into her forehead.
CRACK!
Tolson collapses forward, dead weight, bouncing off the steel ramp completely limp.
Mosh throws the chair aside, drops low, and heaves Tolson’s dead weight over his right shoulder in a fireman’s carry. He marches down the slope, flashing a smug smirk at the sea of enraged fans screaming profanities over the front-row barricades. Reaching ringside, he dumps Tolson’s limp torso onto the apron edge and shoves her forward, rolling her battered frame beneath the bottom rope.
Mosh slides beneath the middle cable, stands up, and walks straight into the face of referee Stephanie Marshall.
MOSH: Name the stipulation, idiot!
Marshall stands completely frozen, processing the wreckage inside the ring before pointing sharply toward the timekeeper’s table to signal the audio feed.
Mosh bounces on his heels, wildly waving his hands in the referee’s face.
MOSH: Come on! Faster!
The arena speakers crackle to life, cutting through the chaos with the cold, measured tone of PCW Owner Yelena Gorgo.
YELENA GORGO: Tonight’s Asylum Championship stipulation is… two out of three falls.
DING!
DING!
DING!
Mosh shoves Marshall aside, throws himself chest-first across Tolson’s inert frame, and hooks the undamaged leg.
Stephanie Marshall drops down, sliding across the mat into counting position.
ONE!
TWO!
THREE!
MOSH 1 – TOLSON 0
Mosh keeps his arm locked tight beneath Tolson’s knee, staring down at Marshall to demand an immediate count for the second fall.
Marshall refuses. She crouches low with her counting hand pinned back against her ribs.
Mosh notices the delay, releases the hold, and springs to his knees with both arms thrown wide in fury.
MOSH: Do your job!
He lunges forward, clapping his open palms together three times an inch from Marshall’s nose.
MOSH: Imbecile!
Stephanie Marshall glares directly back at him, her face hardened with total disgust.
MARSHALL: She has fifteen seconds to recover. And every time you interrupt me? I start over.
Mosh surges forward, fingers tensing as if to grip her throat, but slams the brakes on his momentum when the rule sinks in. He sits back on his haunches, forced to swallow his rage, lips silently ticking off the seconds.
The auditorium erupts into desperate, urgent chants, trying to breathe life into the motionless body on the canvas. Mosh clenches his fists until his knuckles whiten, his jaw grinding as he glares at the clock.
Stephanie Marshall raises her right hand high in the air, showing five fingers to the building, counting down each beat as her fingers close one by one.
FIVE!
FOUR!
THREE!
TWO!
ONE!
The instant her hand forms a fist, Mosh drops his bulk over Tolson’s chest, sweeping up the leg once more.
Marshall drops chest-down to the canvas.
ONE!
TWO!
THR—NO!
Tolson’s shoulder explodes off the canvas.
The auditorium erupts in a deafening wave of stunned disbelief and sheer catharsis.
Mosh bolts upright, smashing a closed fist down into the ring canvas in pure disbelief. Marshall flashes two fingers right in front of his eyes.
Mosh snarls, buries both hands into Tolson’s hair, and drags her limp body upright.
Tolson sways on jelly legs, her eyes glassy and hollow, moving purely on muscle memory. Suddenly, her arm drives forward. A closed fist buries deep into Mosh’s midsection.
She fires another piston right hand straight into his floating ribs. Mosh doubles over with a dry wheeze.
Tolson drops her hips and drives a flush European uppercut right under his chin.
The blow snaps Mosh’s jaw back, stumbling him several paces toward the ropes. The crowd roars as her raw fighting spirit flares to life, but her mechanics are clearly degraded. The impacts lack their regular concussive force.
Tolson torques her entire upper body at the waist like a ball joint, winding up her right arm for a final haymaker.
She unloads the punch with every scrap of adrenaline left in her system. The punch travels through the air in slow motion, heavily telegraphed.
Mosh tracks the trajectory instantly and slips inside the incoming swing. He plants his foot and snaps a brutal kick right into her exposed liver.
The impact shuts down Tolson’s nervous system. She instantly folds forward, gasping for oxygen in cold shock.
Mosh wrenches her down into a tight front facelock. The crowd showers the ring with vitriol as he pulls her arm across his shoulder, hooks inside her near thigh, and arches straight backward.
MOSHPLEX (Bridging Fisherman Suplex)!
He holds the bridge, driving his neck into the canvas while keeping the leg hooked in an iron grip.
Stephanie Marshall drops flat, eyes glued to the pinned shoulders.
ONE!
TWO!
THREE!
DING!
DING!
DING!
CHRIS MOSH WINS
2/3 FALLS VICTORY
AND NEW PCW ASYLUM CHAMPION
A hail of trash, half-empty cups, and vocal hatred rains down from the stands toward the apron.
Marshall takes the Asylum Championship title from the timekeeper and shoves the leather directly into Mosh’s chest, refusing to hold up his arm.
Mosh clicks the belt around his waist, strutting along the ropes with a broad, obnoxious grin. He climbs the second turnbuckle, throwing both fists into the air as the crowd roars with venomous disgust. He hops down, loudly mocking the front row while patting the gold plate on his hip.
Marshall drops to her knees beside Tolson, checking her vitals.
Tolson stays down on her side, trembling hand pressed tight against her skull, mumbling through the referee’s questions while completely unable to find her feet.
Mosh slides out to the floor and backs up the ramp, hoisting the title high into the lights as the broadcast cuts away.
SEGMENT
ASHLYN GRACE
The Woods, Late at Night
The screen fades in from complete darkness. At first, there is nothing. No music, no commentary.
Only the distant sound of wind moving through the trees.Then… CRACK.
A branch snaps somewhere in the darkness.
The camera slowly moves forward through a dense forest. Tall trees surround the narrow path, their branches twisting overhead and blocking out what little moonlight manages to break through. A thin mist hangs close to the ground.
The deeper the camera travels, the quieter the world becomes. Until a faint orange glow appears between the trees.
The camera moves toward it.
A fire. The flames rise and fall violently, sending sparks into the night sky. Beyond the fire, standing perfectly still, is a woman.
“Night Queen” AshlynGrace.
The firelight catches the details of her attire. She wears a striking black-and-blue leather wrestling outfit. The blue sections of her top shimmer against the orange glow of the flames, while the black leather absorbs much of the surrounding light. The design is sharp and angular, giving her appearance a dark, commanding presence.
Her matching black-and-blue wrestling trunks sit high on her hips, decorated with silver-white detailing that catches the firelight.
Everything about the outfit feels deliberate dark, regal, and intimidating. Her long black hair frames her face as she stares directly into the camera.
She doesn’t smile, for several seconds, she simply watches.
Then, slowly, she speaks.
ASHLYN: There are places in this world where people go to be seen.
She takes one slow step toward the fire.
ASHLYN: A wrestling ring.
Another step.
ASHLYN: An arena. A spotlight, a roaring crowd screaming your name because, for a few precious moments, they believe you are important.
Ashlyn looks toward the flames.
ASHLYN: But there are other places…
She pauses.
ASHLYN: Places where the darkness doesn’t applaud, places where the darkness doesn’t care who you are and places where the darkness simply waits.
A gust of wind blows through the trees. The flames bend sideways.
Ashlyn’s eyes return to the camera.
ASHLYN: I’ve always preferred those places.
She slowly circles the fire.
ASHLYN: Because darkness tells the truth. It doesn’t pretend, it doesn’t flatter and it doesn’t lie to make you feel important.
She smirks, as she continues to circle the fire.
ASHLYN: It simply reveals what you become when nobody is watching.
She stops.
ASHLYN: And I’ve spent a very long time learning exactly what I am.
A faint smile finally appears.
ASHLYN: I am Night Queen Ashlyn Grace. And soon…
She leans slightly toward the camera.
ASHLYN: I will be arriving at PCW.
The music begins, barely audible, a low, ominous rumble underneath her voice.
ASHLYN: Now, I’ve heard the stories, I’ve heard about the wrestlers who believe PCW belongs to them.
ASHLYN: I’ve heard about the champions who walk around believing those championships make them untouchable. I’ve heard about the veterans who believe their experience makes them dangerous, and I’ve heard about the young stars who believe their potential makes them special.
She looks into the fire.
ASHLYN: You know what I hear when I listen to all of that?
Silence.
ASHLYN: Fear.
She turns back toward the camera.
ASHLYN: Because underneath all those championships…underneath all those accomplishments…underneath all that confidence…every single one of them knows the same thing.
Ashlyn slowly raises her eyes.
ASHLYN: Night falls on everyone.
The fire suddenly erupts, sending a shower of sparks upward.
ASHLYN: You can run from it, you can hide from it you can convince yourself that it isn’t coming. But eventually…the lights go out.
She takes another slow step forward.
ASHLYN: And when they do…that’s when I arrive.
Her voice becomes quieter.
ASHLYN: I don’t need to scream, I don’t need to threaten you. I don’t need to tell you how dangerous I am…because the dangerous ones don’t need to announce themselves.
She looks over her shoulder toward the darkness behind her.
ASHLYN: They simply appear.
Ashlyn turns back.
ASHLYN: And when you finally realize they’re standing behind you…
Pause.
ASHLYN: It’s already too late.
She walks around the fire again, her boots crunching against the dirt and leaves.
ASHLYN: PCW…
She says the name slowly, almost as though tasting it.
ASHLYN: You have built yourself a kingdom, you have filled it with warriors and uou have crowned champions.
She stops.
ASHLYN: But kingdoms have always had one problem.
The camera slowly pushes closer.
ASHLYN: Eventually…someone comes to take the throne.
Ashlyn’s expression becomes colder.
ASHLYN: And I’m not coming to PCW to ask for permission. I’m not coming to shake hands. I’m not coming to make friends.
A slow, almost cruel smirk forms on her lips.
ASHLYN: And I’m certainly not coming to stand politely in line and wait for someone to tell me when it’s my turn.
She looks directly into the lens.
ASHLYN: I’m coming because I have decided that PCW needs a Night Queen.
The wind grows stronger.
ASHLYN: And whether PCW is ready for me or not…whether the locker room welcomes me or fears me…whether they believe my name deserves to be spoken…
She smiles.
ASHLYN: They won’t have a choice.
Ashlyn turns away from the camera and stares into the fire.
ASHLYN: So enjoy your daylight while you have it, enjoy your championships an enjoy your celebrations. Enjoy walking into that arena believing that you know what tomorrow is going to bring.
She looks back one final time.
ASHLYN: Because when I arrive…
The fire crackles.
ASHLYN: The lights will dim, the temperature will drop, and somewhere in the darkness…you will hear my footsteps.
She pauses.
ASHLYN: And you’ll know.
Another pause.
ASHLYN: Night Queen Ashlyn Grace has come to PCW.
Ashlyn’s smile disappears.
ASHLYN: And when the night belongs to me…everyone bows.
The screen abruptly cuts to black.
NIGHT QUEEN ASHLYN GRACE…COMING SOON TO PCW
One final sound echoes through the darkness.
CRACK.
The sound of a branch breaking, then silence.
MATCH
LEXUS VON DRACHENBERG
vs
NICKNAME
HOPE RUSSO
TIGRESS
30 MINUTE IRON WOMAN MATCH
REFEREE: GRADE GARRETT
Nearly the full width of the ring separates Lexus Von Drachenberg and Hope Russo, with only referee Grade Garrett standing between them. Beyond the ropes, a sea of rabid, maniacal fans bays for violence, their collective roar vibrating right through the ring canvas. Lexus stands six feet tall and two hundred twenty-five pounds of cold muscle, staring down Hope over the top of her mask like the dinner bell is about to be rung. Across from her, Hope bounces lightly on her ankles, a cocky smirk plastered across her face.
Garrett turns toward the timekeeper’s area and slashes his hand downward to signal for the opening bell.
DING. DING. DING.
At that exact moment, Hope bolts across the canvas behind Garrett’s back and fires a low dropkick straight at Lexus’s thigh. Lexus jerks her leg up just in time to absorb only a fraction of the impact. She immediately lunges forward, heavy hands snapping out to snare the smaller woman. Hope hits the deck and squirrels away across the canvas, barely evading the powerful grasp of the powerhouse. Springing back to her feet, Hope dances backward around the ring, waving both hands toward her chest to mockingly invite Lexus to bring it.
Lexus walks calmly to the center of the ring. Her sharp eyes remain locked firmly on Hope. As Hope circles wide around the perimeter, Lexus steps forward with sharp, economical footwork to cut off the ring. She lunges in, heavy arms reaching to clamp on a collar-and-elbow lockup. Hope ducks cleanly underneath Lexus’s outstretched arms, drops to her hip, and rolls straight under the bottom rope to the arena floor.
Lexus walks over to the ropes and glares down at the floor. Garrett steps in immediately, throwing an arm out to direct Lexus back toward the center of the ring before turning to administer the ten-count.
GARRETT: ONE!
Outside on the protective mats, Hope begins jogging casually around the perimeter of the ring. Halfway around her lap, she thrusts her hand up into the air, flipping her middle finger directly at Lexus without breaking stride. Inside the ring, Lexus glares down over the top cable, her eyes tracking Hope like a turret as the Tigress member rounds the corner back toward where she first exited. Hope slows up and pauses, grinning as she slaps the outstretched hands of several fans in the front row.
GARRETT: FIVE!
Right as Garrett’s count reaches five, Hope turns and climbs up onto the ring apron. Gripping the ropes with both hands, she stares across the ring at Lexus before ducking her head between the cables to re-enter. Lexus explodes past Garrett and snaps a heavy kick through the ropes toward Hope’s head. Hope anticipates the strike and drops safely back down to the arena floor before the boot can connect.
Garrett wedges himself against the cables once again, ordering Lexus back away from the ropes. Because Hope broke the plane of the ring, Garrett wipes the slate clean and restarts his count from one.
GARRETT: BACK UP, LEXUS! (turns back, throwing a hand in the air) ONE!
Out on the floor, Hope wanders casually over to the timekeeper’s table and snatches up a live microphone. She brings it to her lips, tapping it once before glaring up at the ring.
HOPE: You picked this match, right? Well, joke’s on you, bitch. I’m going to walk my ass to the back and you can enjoy your fake fucking victory.
Hope flips the microphone carelessly onto the ground. THUD. The sharp pop echoes loudly over the arena PA system. Turning her back on the ring, Hope begins walking down the length of the ringside area toward the entrance aisle.
Left with no other choice, Lexus rushes to the ropes, drops to her hip, and executes a sharp baseball slide out of the ring, hitting the floor right behind Hope. Hope hears the boots hit the mats and proves faster, sprinting around the steel ring post corner and slipping beneath the bottom rope right back into the ring.
She pops up and trots around the canvas with both middle fingers aimed directly down at Lexus just as the larger woman climbs back onto the apron at the count of five. Retreating a step, Hope sticks both arms straight out in front of her chest and begins stomping stiff-legged around the mat like Frankenstein’s Monster, letting out exaggerated, mocking moans. Above the mask covering her lower face, Lexus’s eyes remain completely devoid of emotion—not even a surface hint of anger.
Lexus climbs methodically through the ropes, officially ending Garrett’s count at eight. She walks straight to the center of the ring while Hope circles around her, crouched low and ready to attack. Suddenly, Lexus quickens her footwork, circling back with terrifying lateral speed to cut off the angle in an instant reminder that she is no lumbering giant. The distance between the two women rapidly shrinks.
Hope snaps a sharp kick into Lexus’s outer thigh. SMACK. Before Lexus can grab her, Hope immediately springs backward out of reach. Both competitors circle each other once more as the space between them closes again. Lexus reaches out to snare Hope by the collar, prompting Hope to fire off a second low kick toward the thigh.
Lexus is ready this time. She snatches Hope’s ankle cleanly out of the air with one iron hand. Trapped on one leg, Hope’s eyes go wide. With her free arm, Lexus steps in and uncorks a swinging lariat that nearly decapitates Hope.
CRACK.
Hope flips inside out and slams flat onto the canvas, the heavy thud of her body cutting straight through the collective groan of the crowd. She writhes on the mat, clutching desperately at her throbbing head and jaw. Lexus towers over her, reaches down, and plucks the one-hundred-forty-eight-pounder off the canvas as if she weighs nothing, locking both arms tightly around her waist. Lexus bridges backward, launching Hope overhead with a devastating German Suplex.
Hope lands squarely on her neck. Her spine folds over at an ugly, awkward angle before her body flops into the base of the corner turnbuckles.
Lexus releases the waistlock and rises. She walks a slow, measured circuit around the PCW ring, her breathing completely steady and her skin having barely broken a sweat. Rounding the perimeter, Lexus stalks back over to the corner, hauls Hope up from behind like a rag doll, and arches backward into a second German Suplex that rattles the entire ring frame.
BOOM.
Hope rolls onto her stomach, her fingers clawing weakly at the canvas as a sharp tremor runs down her spine. The initial bloodthirsty roar of the PCW crowd begins to curdle into an uneasy hush as they watch Hope struggle just to push herself up onto her elbows. A few paces away, Lexus stands motionless. Her shadow stretches across Hope’s trembling shoulders under the harsh overhead lights while she lets the agony settle deep into Hope’s joints.
Gritting her teeth, Hope tries to crawl toward the ropes, her boots scraping uselessly against the taut canvas. Lexus steps in without haste, plants a heavy boot directly between Hope’s feet to halt her crawl, and reaches down to cinch a gutwrench waistlock around Hope’s midsection. With Olympic-level power, Lexus deadlifts Hope off the mat, holding her suspended horizontally in mid-air for an agonizingly long beat so the entire arena can see her dangling helplessly. Lexus arches her back and hurls Hope overhead with a high-angle Gutwrench Suplex.
Hope crashes down onto her upper back and neck, her legs whipping violently over her head before slapping flat against the mat. A sharp, involuntary gasp tears from Hope’s throat as she curls onto her side, one hand trembling against the base of her skull. Garrett drops to one knee a few feet away to check on Hope, while Lexus simply takes two steps back to give the official room to witness the suffering. Lexus neither paces nor postures; she stands with her hands resting loosely at her sides, her cold eyes tracking the rapid, shallow rise and fall of Hope’s ribcage.
Reaching out blindly, Hope uses the middle rope to pull herself halfway upright, her knees buckling inward as her equilibrium betrays her. Lexus closes the gap in two silent strides, slipping her head under Hope’s arm and locking her hands tightly around Hope’s torso. Hope beats a closed fist weakly against the side of Lexus’s broad shoulder, each strike lacking the leverage or snap to budge the larger woman. Lexus pops her hips and launches Hope across the ring with a snap Saito Suplex.
Hope’s neck and shoulders absorb the full brunt of the landing, sending her skidding across the canvas as a collective wince ripples through the front rows. The cocky defiance that defined Hope’s opening minutes has completely evaporated, replaced by the hollow, wide-eyed stare of a competitor realizing just how much time remains on the thirty-minute clock.
Hope tries to push up onto her hands and knees, but her left arm gives out beneath her, dropping her face-first back onto the canvas. Lexus walks a slow half-circle around her downed opponent, forcing the ringside cameras to capture the stark contrast between Hope’s sweat-matted hair and Lexus’s pristine, unhurried composure. Stopping at Hope’s head, Lexus reaches down, hooks one arm beneath Hope’s chin in a front facelock, and drapes Hope’s limp arm over her shoulder.
With a powerful heave, Lexus lifts Hope straight up into a vertical stall, holding her upside down as the blood rushes to Hope’s head and her boots twitch helplessly in the air. After stalling for several brutal seconds, Lexus falls flat backward, driving Hope down into the canvas with a thunderous Vertical Suplex.
Hope’s back arches violently off the mat on impact, a ragged groan escaping her lips before she goes limp on her side. A heavy, suffocating tension settles over the venue, punctuated only by isolated shouts from fans begging Hope to either stay down or find a way to survive. Hope lies nearly motionless for several seconds, her chest heaving in uneven gasps as sweat stings her eyes.
Lexus steps directly over Hope, looking down with clinical detachment as the arena clock continues its merciless tick downward. Bending at the waist, Lexus threads one arm between Hope’s legs and the other around her neck, hauling her upright into an Exploder position. Hope’s head lolls backward over Lexus’s shoulder, completely unable to raise a defensive guard. Lexus pivots toward the edge of the ring and launches Hope backward with a violent Exploder Suplex.
Hope crashes down hard near the ropes, her body folding awkwardly from the whiplash before collapsing parallel to the bottom cable. Lexus walks slowly over to the edge of the ring and wraps both hands around the top rope. Looking out into the crowd rather than down at her opponent, Lexus places the sole of her boot against Hope’s ribs and shoves her under the bottom rope to the floor like she is nothing.
Hope hits the ringside mats in a heap. Garrett immediately exits the ring to check on Hope on the floor, leaning down close to her face to ask if she can continue. Hope nods weakly in response, unable to summon the breath to speak. Satisfied that she is still conscious, Garrett rolls back into the ring and begins to administer the count.
GARRETT: ONE! TWO!
Lexus climbs methodically through the ropes and drops down to the arena floor. Completely ignoring the angry fans shouting inches away from her mask, Lexus reaches down and picks Hope up off the mats like dead weight. She turns and hurls Hope straight into the steel ringside barricade.
CLANG.
The steel rattles along its hinges. Hope slumps heavily against the barrier, held upright only by a single arm hooked awkwardly over the top rail of the barricade. Lexus stalks in, grabs a fistful of Hope’s hair, turns toward the apron, and hurls Hope back into the ring. The throw carries such violent momentum that Hope rolls all the way across the canvas and slips straight out under the far ropes, landing in a heap on the floor mats on the opposite side of the ring.
Lexus is already up on the apron when Hope hits the floor on the far side. Stepping through the ropes, Lexus walks methodically across the width of the ring, climbs out through the far cables, and drops heavily down to the floor beside Hope. Refusing to rush a single beat, Lexus slowly pulls Hope up from the floor by her wrist and neck. Turning toward the apron, Lexus pushes Hope back under the bottom rope into the ring rather than throwing her this time.
Hope’s limp body turns over twice across the canvas before settling in the center of the ring. Lexus pulls herself up onto the apron, steps through the ropes, and walks calmly over to her prey. She stares down with her head tilted slightly—not deciding what to do next, merely observing as Hope tries to push herself up on trembling wrists while the pain eats away at her.
Lexus reaches down slowly and wraps one hand around Hope’s neck, hauling her upright into a front grapple. Locking her arms around Hope’s torso, Lexus arches her back and launches Hope overhead with a Belly-to-Belly Suplex. Lexus rises smoothly back to her feet as Hope rolls across the canvas, clutching her lower back in agony.
With confident, unhurried strides, Lexus walks toward Hope, every heavy step landing on the boards like the beat of a war drum. She reaches down and picks Hope up once again, lifting her completely off the canvas and trapping her midsection in a vise-like Bear Hug. Hope groans aloud from the crushing pressure as her body compresses, the massive arms forcing the air from her lungs and tightening her ribs so she cannot draw enough oxygen back in.
Legs dangling off the mat, desperate to break free, Hope pushes frantically against Lexus’s masked face and rakes her fingers hard across Lexus’s eyes. Lexus absorbs the eye rake without loosening her grip an inch, continuing to squeeze harder and harder until Hope’s spine pops. Suddenly, Lexus pops her hips and flips backward, executing another Belly-to-Belly Suplex that launches Hope toward the perimeter.
The ringside camera closes in tight on Hope’s face as she hangs draped over the bottom rope, her eyes glassy and staring out at nothing. In the background of the shot, Lexus’s imposing frame emerges, bearing down on Hope from the center of the ring.
Lexus bends down and tangles her hand into a tight fistful of Hope’s hair. Without an ounce of mercy, she drags Hope’s limp body away from the ropes and back to the center of the canvas. Still holding Hope by the hair, Lexus looks slowly around at the crowd, soaking in their vitriol. She bends her arm at the elbow as if curling Hope purely by the scalp, raising Hope’s limp body upward until only the tips of her boots touch the mat.
Lexus clamps her hand around Hope’s throat, hooks a leg behind hers, and hoists her high into the air before driving her straight down with the SAMBO CHOKESLAM (Leg-Sweep Chokeslam)!
Hope is driven straight into the canvas—not flat on her back, but squarely on her neck again, the exact area traumatized by every suplex before it. Hope goes completely flat on the mat as Lexus stays pressed heavily on top of her for the cover. Garrett drops to the canvas and slaps the mat.
ONE…
TWO…
THREE!
LEXUS 1 – HOPE 0
20:10 REMAINING
Grade Garrett steps in immediately to order Lexus back, initiating the mandatory fifteen-second post-fall cooldown. Beneath the side of her mask, the muscle in Lexus’s jaw clenches tight—a small, physical act of defiance to alleviate her simmering urge to keep punishing Hope. Lexus ultimately obeys Garrett’s command, refusing to hand Hope a cheap point via disqualification for disregarding the official’s orders.
As Lexus rises to her full six-foot height and backs away toward the neutral corner, Garrett drops down beside Hope to check on her condition. The ringside camera pushes in for a tight close-up on Garrett and Hope lying motionless on the canvas.
GARRETT: Russo. Russo, talk to me.
Garrett reaches down and lifts Hope’s limp wrist a few inches off the mat. The moment Garrett releases his grip, Hope’s arm falls dead weight back against the canvas. Her eyelids remain shut as her lips barely part to mutter a response. The packed arena has fallen into such a breathless, pin-drop silence that the ringside microphone clearly picks up Hope’s whisper on the broadcast feed.
HOPE: I… can’t… move…
Garrett stands straight up, turns toward the entrance stage, and crosses both forearms high above his head in the dreaded X signal.
Across the ring, Lexus immediately steps forward out of her corner, her posture rigid as she demands answers. At the top of the stage, emergency medical personnel burst through the curtain and hurry down the entrance aisle pushing a wheeled stretcher. Seeing her calculated revenge about to be cut short, Lexus steps across the canvas to intervene. Garrett rises up to his full height and plants himself directly between Lexus and the fallen Hope.
GARRETT: Corner!
Garrett points firmly past Lexus toward the turnbuckles, refusing to budge a single inch. Lexus stares directly into Garrett’s eyes and immediately clocks that this is not just any ordinary official. The PCW Original stands his ground without blinking and orders Lexus back a second time. Lexus says nothing, slowly stepping backward until her broad shoulders return to the corner pads.
As the medical team reaches the base of the ring and slides a rigid spine board beneath the bottom rope, another figure comes sprinting down the aisle. Thaïs Empristikí, Hope’s wife, bolts past the paramedics at ringside. Thaïs slides under the bottom rope past the medical crew and hurries straight across the canvas to Hope’s side. Garrett makes no move to hold Thaïs back, his inaction making the terrifying severity of the situation more evident than ever.
The entire arena watches with bated breath, thousands of fans standing on their feet in hushed, anxious silence as four paramedics slide into the ring with trauma kits in hand. The lead paramedic drops to his knees at the crown of Hope’s head, immediately placing both hands on either side of her skull to establish manual cervical spine stabilization. Thaïs drops to their knees right beside Hope’s hip, immediately lacing their trembling fingers around Hope’s cold, limp hand. Quiet, frantic reassurances spill from Thaïs’s lips as they lean in close, brushing damp strands of hair away from Hope’s forehead while begging her to stay calm.
Across the ring, Lexus remains stationed in the far corner, observing the medical intervention.
A second paramedic leans directly into Hope’s line of sight, shining a small penlight across her dilated pupils while speaking in a calm, clinical cadence. The paramedic asks Hope if she knows what city she is in, what day it is, and whether she can feel any tingling or numbness in her extremities. Hope’s breath comes in shallow, ragged hitches as she gives the faintest blink of acknowledgment, her fingers unable to squeeze Thaïs’s hand back.
Lexus lifts a hand to the side of her mask, pressing a hidden button hear her jaw. A dark, modulated laughter fills the arena speakers, the mask of Lady Drachenberg commandeering them as the unconscious Hope is carefully placed upon a stretcher. Lexus stands in the center of the ring, her body not hiding anything as she shakes from the twisted, delightful laughter. She gestures towards her fallen foe as if to present her to the crowd.
LEXUS: Hope Russo, ladies and gentlemen. Freedom of speech does not give one freedom from the consequences of that speech. Far too long people such as herself have let their mouths write checks that their weak, frail bodies could never hope to cash. This is what happens when the one allows her Alligator mouth to overrun her Mockingbird ass; Ruin.
Thaïs’ jaw clenches but they don’t look up, refusing to give Lexus the attention better focused on Hope.
Working in practiced unison while the lead medic holds Hope’s head completely still, the second paramedic measures Hope’s neck and slides the back half of a rigid cervical collar beneath the base of her skull. The medic wraps the front foam panel around Hope’s throat and pulls the Velcro straps tight. RIP. The sharp tearing sound cuts straight through the dead silence of the venue. The paramedic runs gloved fingers firmly down the length of Hope’s shins and squeezes the arches of her boots, asking if she can feel the pressure or wiggle her toes.
Lexus looks down at Thaïs, then shifting her gaze out to the crowd, to the people in the seats staring back in unified judgment.
LEXUS: She spoke to me like an aggressor and became a victim, another name to add to my ever growing resume… of destruction. Perhaps now, young lady, you will learn a measure of respect for your superiors. No one speaks to the Queen of Spades as you have and escapes my wrath. I am the reckoning, I am Lexus Van Drachenberg.
Her proclamation is met with abject hatred.
Hope’s boots remain completely still against the canvas, prompting a visible wave of dread to ripple through the front rows as fans cover their mouths in shock. Thaïs presses the back of Hope’s hand against their cheek, their voice cracking as they tell Hope how much they love her and promise not to leave her side.
Three paramedics position themselves along Hope’s left side while the fourth aligns the rigid orange backboard flush against her right hip. On the lead medic’s three-count, the team executes a synchronized log-roll, tilting Hope slightly onto her side as a unified unit so her spine never twists. The fourth medic slides the backboard beneath her back, and the team gently lowers her flat onto the plastic surface.
Thaïs stays crouched inches away, keeping their fingers intertwined with Hope’s while the paramedics pull the spider straps across Hope’s chest, pelvis, and thighs, clicking each heavy buckle into place. CLICK. CLICK. CLICK. The medics secure padded foam blocks on either side of Hope’s immobilized head and tape her forehead down to the board so she cannot shift a millimeter.
Only when the paramedics prepare to hoist the backboard to the edge of the ring does Thaïs reluctantly let go of Hope’s hand. Thaïs scrambles out through the ropes and drops to the floor first, waiting anxiously beside the wheeled gurney. The four paramedics lift the heavy backboard in unison and carefully slide it out beneath the bottom rope, transferring the board onto the waiting stretcher with practiced precision. The instant the backboard locks onto the stretcher frame, Thaïs reaches right back in to take hold of Hope’s hand once more. The medical team and Thaïs begin moving up the entrance aisle together, pushing the immobilized Hope toward the back.
Lexus walks over to the ropes as Hope is carted off to the back.
LEXUS: Abandon all Hope, ye who enter my domain. They all seek glory, but all I shall give them is the gift of despair…
Lady Drachenberg pushes off of the ropes and turns back to the crowd, arms spread at her sides.
LEXUS: These are your heroes? This Tigress faction? I know them in two different companies and all they do is whine, complain, make thirsty posts, and talk about Thais’ wild hair. How can anyone follow such vapid people? How can you cheer for them when often they are worse than the alleged villains they stand against? A corrupt society at its core will always go against their own interests. That is why you need new leaders to inspire and guide you.
Garrett turns his attention back toward Lexus and the ticking match clock. Left with no other choice, Garrett climbs through the ropes and drops to the floor to confer with timekeeper John Broady and ring announcer Fred Hayes, Jr. The ringside camera moves in close on the timekeeper’s area to capture the exchange.
GARRETT: This match is over. Russo can’t continue. Win goes to Lexus.
Fred Hayes, Jr. raises his microphone toward his lips to make the official announcement. Beside him, John Broady picks up the steel hammer and poises it over the ring bell.
GARRETT: Stop.
Garrett’s hand shoots out sharply, freezing both Broady and Hayes in their tracks. Garrett reaches his left hand up to the side of his head, pressing a finger against the wireless earpiece monitor hooked over his ear.
HAYES: What is it?
Garrett speaks aloud, addressing not Hayes, but the voice coming through his earpiece from the back.
GARRETT: What do you mean, she wants to continue?
Seconds after Grade Garrett asks the question at ringside, the broadcast feed cuts backstage to Gorilla Position, where Hope Russo lies motionless on the stretcher in a rigid neckbrace. One of Hope’s eyes remains shut while a backstage doctor holds the other open, shining a penlight across her pupil to test for neurological response. Thaïs Empristikí stands right beside the gurney, clutching Hope’s hand tightly against their chest.
THAÏS: Tell me she’s going to be okay, doctor.
Before the doctor can utter a single word, Hope suddenly shoots forward, sitting straight upright on the backboard after the paramedics had unbuckled the body straps to examine her. Hope sucks in a massive, ragged lungful of air, gasping as if she hadn’t taken a single breath the entire ride up the aisle.
THAÏS: Hope! You’re awake!
Every person crowded into Gorilla—production crew, stagehands, and paramedics alike—had been staring in silent dread, terrified that Hope might never get back up; now, an audible wave of relief washes through the room.
Hope turns her head stiffly and looks directly at Thaïs. Thaïs beams a tearful, relieved smile back at her.
Hope does not smile.
She reaches both trembling hands up to her throat and rips the Velcro of the cervical collar apart, tearing the neckbrace completely off. RIP. Thaïs immediately reaches out to stop her—they know exactly what Hope is doing, having seen that stubborn, wild-eyed look hundreds of times before. Even though they already know the answer in their gut, Thaïs asks the question anyway.
THAÏS: Where are you going?!
Hope presses the discarded foam neckbrace firmly into Thaïs’s hands against their chest.
HOPE: Hold this for me.
THAÏS: No…
HOPE: I’ll need it later.
Hope pulls Thaïs in by the collar and kisses them hard on the lips. Breaking the kiss, ignoring a chorus of frantic shouts and medical orders from the doctors, Hope swings her legs over the edge and slips off the stretcher onto the concrete floor.
THAÏS: No! Come back to me!
Hope starts moving through Gorilla toward the curtain—not walking, but dragging herself forward in a heavy, agonizing limp. She tucks one arm tightly across her stomach, though it hardly matters where she holds herself; every inch of her body is screaming in pain. Just before reaching the heavy black stage curtain, Hope stops and snatches a folded steel chair from a production stack. She snaps the steel frame flat in her grip and limps straight through the curtain out into the blinding arena light.
The instant Hope emerges onto the stage, the entire venue comes completely undone, the ambient murmur exploding into a deafening, walls-shaking roar. A camera at ringside pans across the front row, catching a lifelong fan in a Tigress shirt slamming both palms repeatedly against the steel barricade with tears streaming down his face. Halfway up the lower bowl, a woman leaps onto her seat with both hands tangled in her hair, screaming at the top of her lungs while the stranger beside her shakes her by the shoulders in pure disbelief. Along the entrance aisle, fans lean dangerously far over the guardrails, veins bulging in their necks as they pound the aluminum siding into a thunderous, chaotic drumbeat.
Hope limps slowly down the aisle toward the ring, holding the steel chair low at her side so the top edge scrapes a harsh metallic trail across the floor. SCREEEECH.
Inside the ring, Lexus readies herself at the center of the canvas. She does not retreat an inch at the sight of the steel chair; instead, her posture stiffens as she welcomes the challenge. Off to the side of the ring, Grade Garrett stares up the aisle in utter disbelief.
Lexus’s cracks a little chuckle over the public address system.
LEXUS: Back for more, Darling? Very well. I shall take from you everything and leave NOTHING!
With a press of a button on the underside of her mask, her microphone connection is cut.
Hope finally reaches the base of the ring, prompting Lexus to take a single, deliberate step forward. Hope smirks through the pain. With five minutes remaining on the arena clock, Hope swings her arm back and hurls the steel chair over the top rope directly at Lexus.
Lexus sidesteps the flying steel with effortless ease. Her eyes track the chair as it clatters flat onto the canvas before her head rotates slowly back toward Hope on the floor.
LEXUS: Foolish simpleton. This is an Iron Woman match. Attempts to harm me with an implement will not grant you victory. It will only earn you further punishment, and we are not even done addressing your prior insults. Nor shall we be, until I am satisfied.
Hope, having listened to every word from the floor while nodding her head slowly, raises a single index finger into the air.
HOPE: Hold that thought.
Hope grabs the fabric of the ring skirt, yanks it upward, and begins rooting around in the shadows beneath the ring frame. Inside the ropes, Lexus’s head slowly rotates until her cold eyes fall directly onto Garrett.
LEXUS: You should be counting.
Garrett—a thirty-year veteran who has seen both the very best and the very worst of professional wrestling—stands frozen, having never gone from believing a competitor was paralyzed to watching her rummage under the apron for a weapon—all in under five minutes.
The harsh overhead arena lights catch the glint of metal first as Hope slowly straightens her back on the floor. Clutched tightly in Hope’s right hand is a dirty Louisville Slugger with thick coils of barbed wire strung tightly around the barrel. With a Black Rainbow Death Match scheduled as the night’s main event directly after this contest, the space beneath the ring is crawling with lethal implements—and Hope chose her favorite.
For the very first time all night, Lexus takes a single step backward—not out of fear, but out of cold, strategic caution.
Hope pulls herself onto the apron and steps through the ropes into the ring, bat in hand. Lexus pivots sharply toward Garrett and grabs a fistful of the official’s striped shirt. Garrett looks back at Lexus as if jolted awake from a trance.
LEXUS: I suggest disarming her, for if I am forced to, her arms will detatch with the weapon.
Garrett yanks his shirt free from Lexus’s grip and moves quickly to intercept, planting himself squarely in front of Hope.
GARRETT: Give me the bat, Russo.
Hope keeps limping straight toward him, eyes locked past his shoulder on the masked giant.
HOPE: In a minute. I have to use it for something.
Across the ring, Lexus drops her center of gravity into a coiled ready stance, making herself a smaller target and priming her legs for explosive movement. Hope hoists the barbed-wire bat high above her shoulder. Garrett shouts another warning, but he is forced to bail out of the path to avoid being sliced open as Hope breaks into a limping, desperate charge.
Hope swings the barbed-wire bat straight down toward Lexus’s head. Lexus darts sharply to her left. The barbed-wire bat misses Lexus entirely and crashes deep into the top turnbuckle pad behind her. THWACK. Hope tries to pull the weapon back for a second swing, yanking hard on the handle as the barbs snag deep inside the vinyl and foam. With a violent tug, Hope rips the bat free, sending torn white turnbuckle stuffing floating into the air.
Before Hope can reset her grip, Lexus’s hand slaps like a vise over Hope’s wrist, her fingers and thumb sealing the joint inside an inescapable fist. Lexus yanks Hope out of the damaged corner and slams her forehead squarely into Hope’s face for MIND OVER MATTER (Powerful Headbutt)!
CRACK.
Hope’s fingers instantly go slack around the bat handle as she stumbles backward across the ring, falling chest-first into the ropes before bouncing down onto the mat. Lexus stands holding the barbed-wire bat in her hand, staring down at the weapon for a beat before the realization suddenly hits her.
LEXUS: A diversion.
Behind her, Hope is already back on her feet and moving at full tilt with the forgotten steel chair raised high above her head. Lexus spins around with the word diversion still a faint whisper on her lips. Hope swings the flat of the steel chair flush against Lexus’s forehead, the loud metallic ring echoing like music across the rafters as the crowd erupts.
CLANG.
Garrett immediately waves his arm toward timekeeper John Broady to call for the disqualification fall.
DING DING DING
LEXUS 2 – HOPE 0
Hope yanks the dented steel chair back to her chest, her lungs heaving as she glares through the sweat stinging her eyes. Incredibly, Lexus remains standing on her feet, though her equilibrium is visibly shattered—every micro-movement drifting slightly past its destination as if she were wading through deep water. Even in her dazed stupor, Lexus’s fingers remain clamped tightly around the handle of the barbed-wire bat.
Garrett steps toward the periphery of the exchange, shouting the rules of the match at the top of his lungs toward both women. Lexus is no longer concerned with the Rules of Engagement; running on pure predatory instinct, she swings the barbed-wire bat horizontally at Hope’s head. Lexus’s compromised balance betrays her mid-swing, turning what would normally be a precise act of violence by Lexus Von Drachenberg into a slow, off-target arc.
Hope ducks cleanly beneath the whistling barbed wire, pops up directly behind Lexus, and brings the steel chair crashing down hard across her broad back. CRACK. Lexus’s shoulders hitch upward and withdraw inward as a shockwave of raw pain radiates down her spine.
DING DING DING
LEXUS 3 – HOPE 0
Refusing to let the machine reset, Hope hoists the chair overhead again and cracks the steel down over the crown of Lexus’s skull. CLANG. Every single impact draws an immediate wave of Garrett’s arm toward the timekeeper’s table.
DING DING DING
LEXUS 4 – HOPE 0
Lexus stumbles forward across the canvas, throwing an arm over the top rope to steady her buckling knees as the barbed-wire bat finally slips from her loosened fingers and hits the mat.
HOPE: You walk around like you’re invincible.
CRACK! Hope unleashes another vicious chair shot flat across Lexus’s spine. The packed arena cheers even louder, the bloodlust reaching a fever pitch as the unstoppable monster is finally brought to heel. Garrett slashes his arm toward the timekeeper’s table once more.
DING DING DING
LEXUS 5 – HOPE 0
03:00 REMAINING
As Hope limps past the discarded barbed-wire bat to line up her next strike, Garrett steps in and kicks the lethal weapon safely out beneath the bottom rope to the floor. Lexus staggers into the corner and turns around to lean her back heavily against the turnbuckles, her chest heaving as she draws deep, labored breaths through the fabric of her mask, appearing thoroughly dazed.
HOPE: I’m going to put that to the test!
Hope has Lexus trapped dead to rights in the corner while the crowd sustains a deafening roar. Hope raises the steel chair high above her head, lets out a raw, primal scream, and swings it straight down toward the center of Lexus’s forehead.
Before the steel can reach its target, Lexus’s boot lashes upward and drives directly into the flat seat of the chair. BANG. The heavy steel dents inward under the force of the kick and ricochets violently backward into Hope’s own face.
LEXUS: Defiant to the last, but a weak gesture.
The ecstatic cheers of the crowd are instantly torn apart into ugly, visceral boos as the steel chair clatters to the canvas. Hope staggers backward across the ring with blood pouring profusely from her shattered nose, kept upright only by a desperate one-handed grip on the top rope.
Garrett immediately reaches down toward the canvas to snatch up the steel chair and exile it from the ring. Lexus slams the sole of her boot down onto the frame of the chair, pinning it against the mat and stopping Garrett cold. As Hope slumps down into the opposite corner clutching her bloody face, Lexus bends down and wraps her hand around one side of the chair while Garrett holds tightly to the other. Both Lexus and Garrett straighten up with the chair suspended between them, neither one relenting an inch.
GARRETT: Let go, Lexus. You’ve won.
Lexus violently rips the steel chair free from Garrett’s hands like an adult snatching a toy from a child.
LEXUS: This is not about victory, darling. Victory is merely the byproduct of the le—
Lexus cuts her own sentence short as her eyes flick upward toward the entrance stage, where the scoreboard graphic glows brightly above the ticking digital clock on the main video screen.
LEXUS 5 – HOPE 0
02:00 REMAINING
Lexus pivots back toward the ring just as Hope bursts out of the corner in a desperate, low charge to tackle her around the waist. Lexus snaps a brutal kick straight into the center of Hope’s chest, landing with a dull, hollow thud that sends Hope flying backward into the turnbuckles.
LEXUS: Clever trick with the bat, but the weak so often mistake a parlor trick for genuine intellect.
Lexus lowers the steel chair horizontally like a battering ram and drives the top edge straight into Hope’s gut. Garrett immediately waves his arm toward John Broady at the timekeeper’s table.
DING DING DING
LEXUS 5 – HOPE 1
01:30 REMAINING
Hope doubles over in the corner in complete agony, clutching at her ruptured midsection. Lexus pulls the steel chair back to her hip and drives the edge forward a second time, aiming with surgical precision directly into Hope’s liver.
DING DING DING
LEXUS 5 – HOPE 2
01:20 REMAINING
LEXUS: You traded your own survival for a fleeting moment of superiority, only to discover that cleverness is merely the wisdom of fools.
Hope slowly lifts her chin, her face a crimson mask of blood from her broken nose mixed with pouring sweat.
HOPE: No… not… superiority.
Hope sucks in a ragged, wet breath through her teeth.
HOPE: I just… was tired… nnngh… of hearing… your… fucking… voice…
Powered by Lexus’s heavily muscled arms, the upper arch of the steel chair rushes forward a third time, burying itself deep into Hope’s gut. Hope lets out a loud, guttural groan as her knees buckle beneath her.
DING DING DING
LEXUS 5 – HOPE 3
01:00 REMAINING
Without a flicker of hesitation, Lexus draws the weapon back and drives the edge of the chair into Hope’s abdomen a fourth time.
DING DING DING
LEXUS 5 – HOPE 4
00:50 REMAINING
Hope sucks at the air in frantic, shallow gasps as if her lungs refuse to expand, her entire torso locked stiff before she stumbles blindly forward toward Lexus. Lexus calmly sidesteps the forward lurch, allowing Hope to crash face-first onto the canvas.
Lexus turns her attention toward the exposed corner, rotating the dented steel chair sideways and shoving it tightly between the middle and top turnbuckles until the tension of the cables locks the steel firmly in place.
LEXUS: You wish for silence, Russo? Look how generously I accommodate you.
Lexus turns back around, reaches down to grab a fistful of Hope’s hair and the waistband of her trunks, and deadlifts Hope off the mat like a body in a bag. Lexus pivots toward the wedged chair in the corner while Garrett steps up right beside her, urgently warning her that another strike will trigger a fifth consecutive disqualification fall.
LEXUS: Where I am sending you, you will hear nothing at all.
Lexus takes a single step back for momentum and lunges violently forward, lawn-darting Hope head-first straight into the wedged steel chair.
CRACK!
Already compromised by Lexus’s earlier boot, the steel chair completely caves in around Hope’s skull and collapses to the mat as Hope crumbles into a motionless heap.
DING DING DING
LEXUS 5 – HOPE 5
00:30 REMAINING
Lexus reaches down, grabs one of Hope’s limp wrists, drags her unconscious body to the center of the ring, and flips her onto her back. Standing tall at the center of the canvas, Lexus plants the sole of her heavy boot squarely atop Hope’s chest. Shaking his head in quiet revulsion at the calculated cruelty of the math, Garrett drops to his knees and slaps the canvas.
ONE…
TWO…
THREE!
LEXUS 6 – HOPE 5
00:10 REMAINING
No chants rise from the crowd to count down the final ten seconds of the match—only total, abject disgust hanging thick in the arena air. The realization settles coldly over the thousands in attendance: Lexus deliberately matched Hope’s four chair shots plus one more, calculating the exact number of disqualifications she could afford to bring the scoreboard dead even before taking the final fall with a single boot.
The digital match timer hits 00:00.
DING DING DING!
LEXUS VON DRACHENBERG WINS
IRON WOMAN VICTORY
Even after the final bell echoes through the rafters, Lexus remains standing tall over Hope’s motionless body, her heavy boot still pressing firmly down on Hope’s chest. Grade Garrett immediately steps up into Lexus’s personal space, barking orders for her to step off the downed competitor.
Before Garrett can physically pry her away, Thaïs Empristikí rockets back down the entrance aisle and slides under the bottom rope into the ring. Thaïs marches straight up to Lexus and shoves the towering woman in the chest as hard as they possibly can. The shove barely moves Lexus’s two-hundred-twenty-five-pound frame, but the sudden impact is just enough to knock her planted boot off of Hope’s chest.
As the boos from the crowd somehow swell to an even louder, deafening volume, Lexus’s hand snaps out to snatch Thaïs by the throat. Garrett dives directly between them, wedging his body into the gap to intercept the grab.
At the top of the stage, more bodies suddenly come pouring through the entrance curtain and sprinting down the aisle: Jenna Jillian Walker, Delilah Hart, and Hope Levitt. The remaining members of Tigress slide under the bottom rope into the ring and immediately form a protective human wall between Hope’s unconscious, bloodied body and Lexus. All four members of Tigress stand shoulder-to-shoulder, fists clenched and ready to fight, while Garrett uses both hands to shove Lexus backward toward the ropes.
GARRETT: Match is over. Out of my ring.
On This Rock I Will Build My Church by Lord of the Lost blasts over the arena PA system. Above her mask, Lexus’s cold eyes shift from Garrett’s defiant glare to lock directly onto Thaïs standing behind him.
LEXUS: Tomorrow.
A single word hangs heavy between them—a chilling reminder of tomorrow night’s scheduled four-on-four clash at Black Label Pro Wrestling, and a promise of the violence awaiting Thaïs, and Hope if she can even make it to the ring.
MATCH
TAELER VIRELLE
VESPERA NYX
vs
PCW VOODOO PACT CHAMPIONS
JENNA JILLIAN WALKER
DELILAH HART
TIGRESS
ONE FALL TAG TEAM MATCH
VOODOO PACT CHAMPIONSHIP
REFEREE: NATHAN “ATREYU” MACKAYE
Referee Nathan MacKaye raises his arm and calls for the bell to officially begin this Voodoo Pact Championship bout.
The Municipal Auditorium detonates. Twelve thousand fans rise to their feet, their roar fueled by white-hot fury after the vicious assault that saw Hope Russo carried out earlier in the evening. In the ring, Delilah Hart stands rigid, her jaw clenched tight as she locks eyes across the canvas with Taeler Virelle. Out on the challengers’ apron, Vespera Nyx grips the turnbuckle cable, lips peeling back into a wide, predatory grin. Across from her, Jenna Jillian Walker grips the top strand on the champions’ corner, knuckles whitening beneath cold, stoic resolve. The pall of Hope’s brutalized condition hangs over both titleholders, a heavy shadow anchoring every breath.
Taeler drops low, settling into a calculated stance with open hands extended mockingly toward the Golden Girl.
Delilah does not bite. She shakes her head, lifts a stiff right hand, and points past Taeler directly at Nyx.
The crowd erupts into an explosive burst of cheers.
Taeler straightens up. She offers an indifferent shrug, stepping backward with an unhurried, rhythmic sway of her hips Without pulling her gaze off Delilah, Taeler extends a hand behind her toward the corner Nyx slaps the open palm, vaults over the top strand, and lands flat-footed in the center of the ring in a feral crouch. Taeler slips between the cables to the apron, drags an emerald-gloved index finger across her lips, and blows an icy, mocking kiss toward the champion
Delilah steps forward, meets Nyx in the collar-and-elbow lockup, and the fight is on.
Nyx snaps her grip down to Delilah’s left wrist, twisting the arm over into a deep armwrench. The Blood Queen yanks downward with vicious torque, levering the shoulder joint once, then wrenches it a second time with raw leverage. Delilah bends to absorb the strain, drops her center of gravity, and flips forward in a smooth handspring. She lands squarely on both boots and immediately whips her hips around, reversing the leverage to lock Nyx in an identical standing armwrench
A low, guttural growl rips from Nyx’s throat.
She does not scramble. Slowly, unnaturally, Nyx straightens her spine directly against the torque. Delilah’s eyes widen as the Nagaraja vampire twists her trapped forearm outward, wrenching Delilah’s grip apart with sheer, monstrous physical power. Nyx flashes a bared-teeth grin into Delilah’s stunned face and uncorks a wild right haymaker.
Delilah ducks the whistling blow
Nyx halts her forward momentum on a dime, planting her heel and firing a sharp backward elbow that cracks flush against Delilah’s left temple. Delilah stumbles sideways, boots scraping canvas, hands clutching the side of her skull as her balance shatters Nyx lunges forward, snakes her arm around Delilah’s throat, and snaps her down with a crisp, jarring neckbreaker.
Nyx drops to her knees beside the fallen champion. She tilts her head sideways, silently studying Delilah’s ragged breathing before stomping a heavy boot squarely into Delilah’s floating ribs.
Hauling Delilah up by the wrist, Nyx drags her across the canvas and tags Taeler with a firm slap to the chest.
MacKaye steps in to administer the mandatory five-count. Nyx traps Delilah’s arms behind her back, leaving the champion defenseless as Taeler stalks forward, trails her fingernails slowly across Delilah’s jawline, and buries a hard running knee lift deep into her sternum. Delilah doubles over, air exploding from her lungs Taeler pivots sharply, unleashing a spinning back elbow that crashes across Delilah’s jaw and drops the Golden Girl flat onto her back.
Taeler sprawls dramatically across Delilah’s chest for the pin
MacKaye drops flat.
ONE…
Delilah heaves her shoulder off the canvas with a desperate surge.
Taeler gets up unhurriedly She yanks Delilah into a seated position, wrapping her forearm across Delilah’s throat in a tight rear chinlock while dragging her sharp fingernails down Delilah’s bare collarbone to grind down the tempo On the Tigress apron, Jenna leans over the top rope, violently clapping her hands and stomping the apron boards to ignite the building.
The rhythmic roar swells across the arena.
Feeding on the noise, Delilah claws up to one knee and drives two sharp, desperate elbows into Taeler’s midsection The grip slips. Delilah hits the ropes, rebounds, and catches Taeler flush on the jaw with a spinning back heel kick Taeler staggers back into the center; Delilah steps into the pocket and snaps off a stiff European uppercut that drives the Red Rose into the corner.
Looking to reach her corner, Delilah grabs Taeler by the wrist for an Irish whip toward Jenna. But she hesitates. For a split second, her gaze flickers toward the empty entranceway where Hope was carted out, her mind fractured by the earlier trauma
Taeler smells the doubt instantly She counters the whip, reversing the momentum and sending Delilah crashing spine-first into the challengers’ turnbuckles. Taeler follows the impact in an instant, driving a crushing knee right into Delilah’s exposed ribs.
Behind Taeler’s back, Nyx reaches across the cable and makes a blind tag.
Before stepping through the ropes, Taeler grabs Delilah by her hair and snaps her down into a seated position on the mat. Taeler anchors the champion in place just long enough for Nyx to leap to the middle cable and launch herself outward, driving both boots squarely into Delilah’s sternum with a springboard missile dropkick.
Nyx hooks the far leg, leaning her weight over the cover.
ONE…
TWO—
Delilah thrashes her shoulder up and rolls onto her stomach, coughing hard against the canvas from the blunt trauma to her chest.
Nyx slithers over Delilah’s back like a serpent. She jams two hooked fingers into the corner of Delilah’s mouth, tearing at the cheek with a vicious fishhook while yanking Delilah’s head backward.
MACKAYE: Break it! That’s one! Two! Three! Four—!
Nyx releases the grip at the count of four, a sinister grin plastered across her face. She drags a gasping Delilah to her feet by the arm and tags Taeler back into the match. On her way through the ropes, Nyx drives a stiff knee into Delilah’s midsection, folding the champion forward straight into Taeler’s low-angle running clothesline.
Taeler hauls Delilah back to her feet, ducks under the left arm, cinches a vice-like waistlock, and arches backward with textbook grace, driving the champion into the mat with IVY LEAGUE (Bridging Northern Lights Suplex)!
Taeler holds the arch, back curved high, chest lifted in a cold display of dominance that pins Delilah’s shoulders to the canvas
ONE…
TWO…
Delilah twists her hips with violent desperation, kicking out at two-and-a-half.
Taeler breaks the bridge with a mocking laugh She rises and drapes her torso backward over the middle rope in her signature Garden Claim, head tilted back, gazing lazily at the bruised Golden Girl like a spider watching its meal struggle. Taeler pushes off the ropes, stalks forward, and buries a hand into Delilah’s blonde hair.
Delilah drops her weight like a stone, driving the crown of her head upward in a sudden desperation jawbreaker
Teeth click together. Taeler stumbles back, clutching both hands to her jaw Delilah scrambles on her hands and knees toward the Tigress corner, but Taeler dives forward across the mat, clamping onto Delilah’s left ankle. She drags the champion back across the canvas toward the challengers’ post and tags in Nyx.
Taeler keeps the leg trapped from the apron until MacKaye forces her back. Nyx enters the ring and immediately cracks the kneeling Delilah across the collarbone with a stiff step-up enzuigiri. Delilah sways on her knees, her defenses completely shattered Nyx hauls her up, locks her into a reverse three-quarter facelock, twists her body, and violently spikes the champion into the canvas with IMPALER (Rolling Cutter)!
Nyx flips Delilah over and buries a heavy forearm across her throat and chest.
Delilah’s limbs go dead on the mat
ONE…
TWO—
Jenna abandons the Tigress apron. She charges across the canvas and drives a heavy work boot straight into Nyx’s ribs, blasting the challenger off her partner to shatter the count.
Before MacKaye can regain control, Taeler darts into the ring to blindside Jenna from behind.
Jenna catches the movement out of her peripheral vision. She pivots on her heel, catches the charging Taeler by the chest and hips, and violently heaves her over the top cable. Taeler lands on the apron, keeping her feet, and instantly clamps a death grip around Jenna’s wrist to trap the powerhouse against the ropes. Nyx charges in from behind, hooking Jenna under both thighs. With Taeler wrenching her arm from the outside and Nyx elevating her lower half, the challengers tip Jenna over the top strand, sending her crashing hard onto the concrete floor.
Taeler drops from the apron to the ringside floor while the crowd unleashes a torrent of boos.
Inside the squared circle, Nyx stands over a battered Delilah, driving cold, methodical stomps into the champion’s spine and shoulders.
Out on the arena floor, Taeler stomps away at Jenna’s midsection, intent on keeping the powerhouse grounded. Looking to eliminate the threat permanently, Taeler yanks Jenna up by the arm and whips her with full force toward the steel ring post.
Jenna digs the soles of her boots into the floor mat. She muscles through the momentum, reverses the whip, and slings Taeler face-first into the unforgiving steel post with a sickening crunch.
Taeler staggers across the floor, clutching her bruised face in total disorientation Jenna stalks right behind the reeling Red Rose, wraps her arms around Taeler’s waist from behind, arches her back, and launches her with a crushing German suplex onto the thin ringside padding.
THUD.
Leaving Taeler crumpled by the barricade, Jenna hauls herself up onto the Tigress apron, breathing fire.
Inside the ring, Nyx buries a vicious toe kick into Delilah’s gut and snaps on a tight front facelock. She drags the champion to the corner, scales the turnbuckles, and launches herself into the air for a TORNADO DDT—
Delilah drops her hips with every shred of core strength she has left She collapses flat beneath the top cable, using Nyx’s own momentum against her to slingshot the flying challenger throat-first across the steel-taut top rope.
Nyx snaps back violently off the cable, clutching her crushed windpipe as she hits the canvas hard.
Silence falls for a split second before the crowd roars. Both competitors lie motionless on the canvas. Jenna stands perched on the apron, a wide, agonizing expanse of canvas separating her from her fallen partner.
Thousands of fans begin a thunderous, rhythmic stomp against the arena floor.
DE-LI-LAH!
DE-LI-LAH!
DE-LI-LAH!
Jenna stomps the apron, leaning as far over the top cable as she can reach, her left hand stretched outward.
Delilah rolls onto her stomach She blinks through the sweat and stinging pain, her eyes locking onto Jenna’s open hand across the ring. Her fingers dig into the rough canvas She drags herself forward an inch Her battered ribs scream in agony, but Delilah pulls a knee beneath her chest and claws forward another foot
Behind her, coughing and clutching at her bruised throat, Nyx rolls over and spots the crawl. Her eyes widen with feral urgency. Dropping to all fours, Nyx scrambles across the canvas like a predatory creature closing in from the dark.
Jenna roars at the top of her lungs.
JENNA: JUMP!
Delilah pushes off her bruised knees, launching her entire body forward in a desperate dive
Nyx’s outstretched fingers graze the heel of Delilah’s boot a split second too late as Delilah’s palm cracks across Jenna’s hand with a deafening smack.
Jenna Jillian Walker vaults over the top rope, hitting the canvas with purpose as Delilah Hart tumbles onto the apron to nurse her battered ribs.
The Municipal Auditorium detonates Twelve thousand fans unleash an absolute roar as the powerhouse of Tigress charges across the ring straight at a scrambling Vespera Nyx. Nyx lunges with a desperate right clothesline, but Jenna ducks underneath the arm, rebounds off the far cables, and cuts the Blood Queen in half with a thunderous Spear right in the center of the canvas.
Jenna pops back up, her face a mask of cold, pragmatic fury. Out on the arena floor, Taeler Virelle uses the steel steps to haul herself up, clutching her bruised jaw while shouting frantic commands to her corner
Jenna hauls Nyx off the mat by the waist, deadlifts the vampire straight overhead in a military press slam, and drops her spine-first across an elevated knee for a jarring backbreaker. Without wasting a single motion, Jenna scoops the rebounding challenger and slams her into the mat with a vicious spinebuster.
Jenna hooks the far leg.
ONE…
TWO—
Nyx violently arches her spine, throwing her left shoulder off the canvas.
Keeping the challengers separated, Jenna clamps a front facelock on Nyx, drags her dead weight back to the Tigress corner, and stretches her hand out to tag. But Delilah is staring blankly down at the ringside floor. Her eyes are glassy, her thoughts visibly drifting back to the stretcher carrying Hope Russo away. There is a disjointed pause before Delilah finally snaps out of the trance and slaps Jenna’s open palm.
The champions’ usual telepathic synergy looks fractured.
Jenna secures Nyx’s left arm, holding her trapped against the turnbuckle just long enough for Delilah to climb to the top turnbuckle and leap, driving both knees into Nyx’s chest with a diving meteora. Delilah rolls through, pivots on her heel, and drills a basement dropkick straight into Nyx’s floating ribs. The blow sends the Whitby native skidding toward the ropes
On the opposite apron, Taeler snaps her fingers repeatedly, screaming at Nyx to crawl toward the challengers’ corner.
Delilah cuts off the retreat. She grabs Nyx around the crown of the head and cinches a tight side headlock, leaning her weight in to grind the pace to a crawl. Backing Nyx toward the Tigress corner, Delilah extends a hand to tag Jenna for a double suplex. But miscommunication strikes again. Jenna steps through the ropes a half-second too soon, bumping Delilah’s shoulder just as the Golden Girl attempts to lift.
The balance is broken. Sensing the slip, Nyx lunges forward and buries her fangs straight into Delilah’s bare shoulder with a savage BITE (Teeth Sink to the Shoulder)!
Delilah shrieks in agony.
She shoves Nyx back as MacKaye barks a furious warning. Nyx ignores the official entirely, snapping off a quick step-up enzuigiri that cracks Delilah flush across the cheekbone. Delilah drops to one knee, clutching her jaw. Nyx dives toward the challengers’ post where Taeler’s fingertips strain over the top rope, but Delilah lunges across the canvas and clamps down on both of Nyx’s ankles.
Hauling Nyx back toward the blue corner, Delilah makes an awkward, slapping tag against Jenna’s chest.
Jenna steps in, looking to hit a tandem Irish whip before the mandatory five-count expires, but the timing is completely off. Both champions pull Nyx in conflicting directions. Jenna simply abandons the combo, relies on raw power, and bowls Nyx over with a short-arm running powerslam.
Jenna glares down at Delilah on the apron, shaking her head to demand focus before immediately tagging her partner back in to keep the pressure on.
Jenna holds Nyx pinned to all fours for an extra second before stepping through the ropes. Delilah scales the middle strand, launches herself backward, and drills the vampire with a springboard missile dropkick to the shoulder blades.
Delilah scrambles forward, hooking both legs.
ONE…
TWO—
Nyx thrusts her hips upward, sending Delilah tumbling backward off the cover.
Delilah transitions instantly, locking Nyx into a grounded camel stretch. She pulls back hard on Nyx’s chin while driving a knee between her shoulder blades. Across the ring, Taeler slams her palms against the top pad, shrieking at Nyx to break the fingers. Delilah breaks the hold before Nyx can crawl to the ropes, hauls the challenger up by the wrist, and tags Jenna back in.
Jenna steps through the cables with clinical aggression. She rocks a rising Nyx with a stiff European uppercut, traps the waist, and hurls her across the ring with a snap German suplex. Nyx rolls onto her knees; Jenna stalks right behind her, buries her head beneath Nyx’s armpit, secures the waist, and arches high into TRUST THE PROCESS (Northern Lights Suplex)!
Jenna holds the high bridge, back arched in textbook amateur perfection.
ONE…
TWO…
TWO-AND-A-HALF—
Nyx violently yanks her right shoulder off the mat at the razor’s edge of three.
Jenna rises, snares Nyx in a standing dragon sleeper to choke the oxygen from her lungs, and drags the thrashing challenger back to the Tigress corner for another tag. Delilah ducks through the ropes, charges full speed across the ring, handsprings off the opposite cables, and spins backward, driving her elbow into Nyx’s jaw with CURTAIN CALL (Handspring Back Elbow)!
Nyx drops flat on the canvas Delilah immediately slaps Jenna’s outstretched palm so the fresh powerhouse can close the door.
Jenna steps between the ropes, drops a heavy forearm across Nyx’s sternum, and hooks the leg deep.
ONE…
TWO…
Taeler charges across the ring, driving a sharp boot straight into Jenna’s spine to break the pinfall.
The building erupts into loud jeers MacKaye scrambles to his feet, barking furiously and physically herding a defiant Taeler back toward the challengers’ corner. Taeler retreats through the cables to the apron, immediately leaning over the top rope to scream in MacKaye’s face, trapping the referee’s vision completely.
Behind the blinded official, Jenna gets to her feet. She looks out at the roaring crowd and draws a thumb slowly across her throat, signaling for the BLUEPRINT (Cradle Piledriver)—
Jenna reaches down to haul the limp Blood Queen off the canvas.
Nyx snaps onto her back, arches her neck, and spews a pressurized geyser of thick, crimson blood mist directly into Jenna’s face.
Jenna shrieks in shock, stumbling blindly backward across the mat. Dark, sticky red fluid blinds her eyes, coating her face, hair, and chest.
Nyx rises from the canvas in one continuous, eerie movement, shaking off the damage of the entire frame Delilah steps between the ropes to reach her blinded partner, but Nyx darts across the canvas and blasts the Golden Girl flush with a savage forearm smash. The blow knocks Delilah clean off the ring apron, sending her crashing to the concrete floor.
Nyx spins on her heel and charges diagonally across the ring toward the challengers’ post
Out on the apron, Taeler abruptly breaks off her argument with MacKaye and drops to the arena floor, clearing the line of fire
MacKaye, entirely focused on the corner, has no idea what is coming Nyx launches herself into the air, flying across the ring and driving a crushing running elbow into the back of the referee’s skull with a brutal CRISSAEGRIM (Running Elbow Strike)!!!
CRACK.
MacKaye’s head snaps into the top turnbuckle pad. He is knocked out cold before his boots leave the canvas His limp frame slumps down the pads, collapsing into a motionless heap in the corner
A deafening chorus of boos shakes the Municipal Auditorium
The referee is down The rules are gone. Complete lawlessness reigns inside the ring.
With Nathan MacKaye unconscious in a heap at the base of the turnbuckles, Taeler Virelle glides into the center of the ring. She steps close to Vespera Nyx, extends a gloved hand, and gently wipes a smear of crimson mist from Nyx’s bottom lip with her thumb. Taeler lifts her thumb to her own mouth, tasting the dark fluid with a cruel smile.
TAELER: Go break a Hart.
Nyx flashes a feral grin and slips through the middle ropes to the floor
Aware that the evening’s main event is a death match stocked with weapons, Nyx yanks up the heavy fabric of the ring apron and reaches into the darkness beneath the frame She emerges hauling a heavy black canvas duffel bag stenciled with the word “POLICE” in bold white lettering
Inside the squared circle, Taeler moves like sex personified wrapped around a malevolent soul. She sways over to where a blinded Jenna Jillian Walker kneels, clawing desperately at the sticky red mist coating her eyes. Taeler drops to both knees beside the powerhouse, hooking a manicured fingernail under Jenna’s chin to tilt her face upward.
TAELER: My, my, what a mess you’ve made, kitten.
Outside, Nyx rounds the turnbuckle at a dead sprint with the heavy police bag clutched in both hands Delilah Hart reaches for the middle cable, pulling herself up toward the Tigress apron to aid her partner. Nyx swings the weighted bag like a kettlebell, smashing the heavy canvas squarely into the center of Delilah’s spine.
Delilah arches with a gasp of raw agony, crumbling back onto the ringside mats.
Nyx drops down, rips the zipper wide, and dumps the bag’s contents onto the floor Steel handcuffs, a solid police baton, a heavy ring of keys, thick zip ties, a canister of pepper spray, and a black Maglite flashlight clatter across the mats
Groaning against the floor, Delilah uses the steel edge of the announce table to haul herself up. She spins, spots Nyx crouched over the contraband, and charges. Nyx snatches up the Maglite, clicks the switch, and thrusts the searing white beam directly into Delilah’s eyes.
Blinded by the glare, Delilah windmills her arms through empty air, staggering sideways until her hands smack the announce table for balance.
Inside the ring, Jenna explodes from her knees, driving a heavy right fist straight into Taeler’s jaw.
The Red Rose sprawls backward across the canvas. Jenna grabs the top cable, hauling her frame upright. Her crimson-splattered face contorts in fury as her vision finally clears. Scrambling backward on her elbows, Taeler shrieks out toward the arena floor.
TAELER: Nyx! Ferte opem!
Nyx’s head snaps toward the voice. She drops the flashlight, grabs the solid police baton, and takes two rapid strides toward the apron Before Jenna can take a single step toward Taeler, Nyx thrusts the steel rod through the cables, smashing it flush across the back of Jenna’s left knee.
The joint collapses. Jenna hits the mat with a guttural roar of pain.
Behind Nyx, Delilah barrels in and tackles the vampire chest-first into the apron frame. Nyx grunts as the wind is crushed from her lungs Delilah grabs a fistful of dark hair and hurls Nyx across ringside straight into the announce desk.
Commentator Reno Nevada scrambles out of his chair in a panic, clutching his mug to his chest.
RENO NEVADA: I got a beverage here, man!
Delilah turns back toward the ring, blinking rapidly against the blinding flashbulb spots dancing across her retinas. Inside, Taeler is already rising over Jenna.
Nyx shakes off the impact with the table, scoops the steel handcuffs off the floor, and stalks behind the champion. Delilah reaches for the bottom turnbuckle to climb onto the apron.
CLICK.
Cold steel clamps shut around Delilah’s right wrist.
Delilah whips around to see Nyx smiling through smeared blood as the vampire ratchets the second loop around the bottom ring rope. Delilah throws a desperate left hook, but Nyx dances backward out of range, cackling wildly.
Inside, Taeler stomps viciously into Jenna’s injured knee and exposed ribs. Nyx slides under the bottom cable, twirling the baton as the two challengers converge.
Tethered to the ring cable, Delilah shrieks in fury, yanking against the chain with enough violence to bruise the bone.
The Municipal Auditorium rains pure vitriol down on the ring. Taeler pins Jenna to the canvas by her hair while Nyx drives the solid baton across the champion’s back and shoulders. Taeler grinds the sole of her boot across Jenna’s throat, glaring coldly at the helpless Golden Girl chained to the outside.
Delilah scans the ringside floor through tears of helpless rage. Her eyes catch a faint metallic glint among the scattered weapons—the keyring. Sliding her bound wrist down the bottom cable toward the corner, Delilah drops flat on the apron, straining her free hand downward. Her fingertips fall three inches short.
Inside, Nyx pulls a battered Jenna to her knees, pinning her arms back while Taeler takes the baton.
TAELER: Here, kitty kitty. You’ve been a bad girl.
Jenna drives a savage backward elbow flush into Nyx’s nose, fracturing the vampire’s grip. Taeler swings the baton at Jenna’s skull, but Jenna buries a heavy front kick into Taeler’s midsection, grabs the Red Rose by her bodysuit, and hurls her across the ring into the opposite turnbuckle. Operating on raw adrenaline on a ruined leg, Jenna turns and stomps relentlessly into Nyx’s chest.
On the apron, Delilah strains her shoulder, grazing the handle of the dropped Maglite. She secures the tail cap and uses the flared bezel like a shepherd’s hook, dragging the heavy keyring across the mats toward her fingers.
Taeler storms out of the corner, eyes blazing with malice. She charges behind Jenna and cracks the police baton across the back of the powerhouse’s skull.
CRACK.
Jenna pitches forward, collapsing face-first onto the canvas.
Over by the turnbuckles, MacKaye groans, his fingers twitching against the mat. Taeler brings the baton down across Jenna’s spine one more time to extinguish any hope of recovery. Jenna does not move. Taeler flings the weapon out to the floor, rolling Jenna’s limp body onto her back and dropping over her chest for the cover.
Taeler stops. She sits up, looking over at Nyx, who is pushing up from all fours.
TAELER: Darling, I do believe you were the legal woman.
Taeler drags Nyx by the arm, draping the dazed vampire directly across Jenna’s chest. Taeler scrambles over to the corner, seizing MacKaye by the collar of his striped shirt.
TAELER: Do your job, you oaf! You referees. Always lying… nnnnh… down… arghhh… on the job!
On the apron, Delilah snatches the keyring off the floor, tossing the flashlight aside. Her hands tremble violently as she sorts through dozens of keys, searching for the handcuff keyhole. She jams a brass key in—it’s too wide. She frantically sifts through the cluster.
MacKaye blinks through the fog of a severe concussion. He spots the bodies tangled in the center and crawls toward them on his hands and knees.
TAELER: There you are, darling. Be a good boy and make the count quick.
MacKaye hears nothing through the roaring tinnitus in his skull. He collapses onto his stomach, raising a leaden hand.
Nyx hooks Jenna’s far leg tight.
ONE!
Delilah finds a tiny silver key, stabs it into the tumbler, and twists.
CLICK!
TWO!
Delilah yanks her wrist free and dives headfirst under the ropes, clawing across the canvas to save the championship.
Taeler spots the movement out of the corner of her eye. She sprints across the ring, throwing her body into Delilah and driving the Golden Girl violently into the far turnbuckles.
MacKaye’s heavy palm slaps the canvas for the final time.
THREE!
DING! DING! DING!
TAELER VIRELLE AND VESPERA NYX WINS
PINFALL VICTORY
NEW VOODOO PACT CHAMPIONS
The sinister opening bassline of Halestorm’s “Love Bites (So Do I)” cuts through the speakers, instantly swallowed by an avalanche of boos from twelve thousand furious fans.
Nyx rolls off Jenna’s motionless body, rising to her feet. She stalks toward the corner where Taeler is pinning Delilah down. Together, the new champions rain spiteful boots and forearm strikes into the exhausted Golden Girl, hauling Delilah up and ruthlessly tossing her over the top cable to the concrete floor below.
MacKaye clutches the back of his throbbing skull, barely able to stand as he retrieves the two PCW Voodoo Pact Championship belts from the timekeeper. With visible reluctance, the dazed official hands the gold to the victors.
Standing over the fallen Jenna in the middle of their newly claimed garden, Taeler and Nyx hoist the championship belts high into the rafters, grinning as they drink in the pure, suffocating hatred of the entire arena.
CONTRACT SIGNING
THE IT GIRL
TAYLOR LANDRY
VILAROFIT
PCW TRUE GRIT CHAMPION
MARILYN MATTHEWS
WITH SPECIAL APPEARANCES BY
AMETHYST CALDWELL
ALYSSA KNIGHT-KEKOA
THE RING.
A black-skirted folding table is set up between the ropes, flanked by steel chairs and topped with two official PCW contracts and a pair of pens. Standing at the head of the table is Reno Nevada, looking noticeably uncomfortable in a sharp jacket that clearly wasn’t built for a guy used to sweat pants and van life.
On one side of the table sits Marilyn Matthews. She is stone-faced and composed, the True Grit Championship resting prominently across her shoulder, her veteran gaze locked forward. Across from her, “It Girl” Taylor Landry leans back in her chair with a smug, self-satisfied grin, soaking in the chorus of boos raining down from the arena.
Looming directly behind Taylor’s chair like a brick wall stands Amethyst Caldwell. The powerhouse bodyguard has her thick arms crossed over her chest, motionless and imposing, glaring daggers across the table.
Reno looks back and forth between the two sides, shakes his head in mild disbelief at the tension choking the air, and raises his house mic toward the hard camera.
Reno Nevada: Welcome back to PCW, everybody. I’m Reno Nevada. Ya know, a year ago I was getting punched in the face for a living, and now I’m sitting here acting like an impartial diplomat between two people who clearly want to rip each other’s heads off.
Reno gestures with his open pen across the table.
Reno Nevada: Seated to my right, we have the challenger for Halloween Eve. The “It Girl” Taylor Landry.
Behind Taylor, Amethyst Caldwell clears her throat with a low, rumbling growl, crossing her massive arms and glaring holes through Reno.
Reno Nevada: And, uh… standing right behind Taylor, looking like she can bench-press my entire Prius and tear the bumper off for fun… Amethyst Caldwell. Ma’am, nothing but respect. Please don’t throw me into the third row.
Reno turns toward the opposite side of the table.
Reno Nevada: And seated across from them, holding the gold… the reigning, defending PCW True Grit Champion, Marilyn Matthews. Now, the ink needs to dry on this contract for Halloween Eve. Taylor, you’ve been running your mouth all across social media saying Marilyn’s stealing your spotlight and running from a fight. Marilyn, you’re the champ. The floor is yours. Let it rip.
Marilyn sits back in her chair, the True Grit Championship draped over her shoulder. She studies Taylor across the table for a moment before giving a small, humorless smile.
MARILYN MATTHEWS: Taylor, that’s the part I don’t understand. You keep talking about me stealing your spotlight, but I wasn’t trying to steal anything from you. I was trying to put a spotlight on people who don’t get one nearly enough. People who are disabled, people who are injured, people who are fighting through things most of us will never have to think about. I thought that was something we could both be proud of. I thought you understood why it mattered to me.
Marilyn pauses, her fingers briefly brushing across the faceplate of the championship on her shoulder.
MARILYN MATTHEWS: But somewhere along the way, you decided that my trying to help those people somehow meant I was taking something away from you. And that’s your choice. You’re entitled to feel however you feel about it. But don’t rewrite what happened just because you’re angry with me now.
She leans forward slightly, her voice becoming firmer.
MARILYN MATTHEWS: Because here’s what hasn’t changed, Taylor. Whatever happened between us, whatever you think I did, you still have to earn this opportunity. And when we look at your time here in PCW, every single match you’ve had to date has ended with the same problem: when it came time for you to get the job done on your own, you couldn’t do it.
Marilyn slides the contract toward Taylor, never breaking eye contact.
MARILYN MATTHEWS: Now you’re getting a shot at my True Grit Championship anyway. So you have your opportunity. You have your spotlight. You have your chance to prove that you belong here. But when that bell rings, there won’t be anybody else to blame, and there won’t be anybody else to carry you across the finish line.
She settles back in her chair, the championship still resting prominently over her shoulder.
MARILYN MATTHEWS: And that’s when we’re going to find out whether you can finally get the job done on your own.
Taylor sits in her chair with a smug smile on her face. She then looks over at Amethyst who is standing beside her with an unimpressed look on her face.
“IT GIRL” TAYLOR LANDRY: The sad thing is, Marilyn, that you clearly believe that. Which is very disturbing considering how much I invested in you after you left wrestling and went on hiatus. We both know the truth and I kept you relevant so that when you decided to step back into the ring companies like PCW would even consider bringing you into their locker room…
Taylor’s smug demeanor becomes annoyed.
“IT GIRL” TAYLOR LANDRY: So the fact that you tell me that I have to prove myself to you that I belong here. HOW DARE YOU?!?! That statement alone just shows how out of touch you actually are. Over here acting you’re God’s gift to wrestling!
Taylor shakes her head in disgust.
“IT GIRL” TAYLOR LANDRY: So you can go ahead and pass yourself off as a great wrestler and an even better person…
Taylor looks over at Amethyst and then back at Marilyn.
“IT GIRL” TAYLOR LANDRY: Bitch please!!!! The fact of the matter is that you can’t hold a handle to my wrestling skills. I’m just naturally talented who’ve worked on my craft. While you depend on Mondays to get enough clicks on your social media. So don’t come at me with your garbage because you’ll find out in just a few weeks that I’m better with you when I walkout as the NEW PCW True Grit Champion!!!
Marilyn listens without interrupting, her expression gradually shifting from disbelief to a quiet, almost amused smile. She looks down at the contract for a moment before looking back across the table at Taylor.
MARILYN MATTHEWS: Taylor, you really don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t leave wrestling because I got bored. I didn’t go on hiatus because I felt like taking some time off. I was forced to retire. There is a difference. And when that door finally opened again, I walked through it because I still had something to give.
Marilyn reaches down and adjusts the True Grit Championship resting over her shoulder.
MARILYN MATTHEWS: You want to talk about keeping me relevant? Please. I’ve held multiple World Championships. I’ve been at the top of this business. I’ve done things in wrestling that you could sit around and dream about your entire career and still never accomplish. And you want to stand there and tell me you made Marilyn Matthews relevant?
She gives Taylor a dismissive shake of her head.
MARILYN MATTHEWS: I have more wrestling talent in my pinkie than you have in your entire body, Taylor. And the difference between us isn’t just talent. I’ve actually proven what I can do. I’ve put the work in. I’ve won championships. I’ve been through the wars. I’ve done the things you’re sitting here telling yourself you’re capable of doing someday.
Marilyn picks up the pen lying beside the contract and looks directly at Taylor.
MARILYN MATTHEWS: So you want to prove you’re better than me? Fine. You’ve got your chance. But don’t confuse getting a shot with being entitled to win it.
She signs her name across the contract without hesitation, then slides the pen across the table toward Taylor.
MARILYN MATTHEWS: Now let’s see if you can finally get the job done on your own.
Taylor cracks a smile as she sees Marilyn sign her name to the contract.
“IT GIRL” TAYLOR LANDRY: You’ve got to laugh at the older generation thinking they’re better than the current generation. That’s great! You have a resume filled with accolades. Good for you, girl.
Taylor and Amethyst slow clap as they chuckle amongst themselves.
“IT GIRL” TAYLOR LANDRY: As I sit here and look at you it has hit me. At this very moment I realize this isn’t about me craving the spotlight I so rightfully deserve. It’s about your desire to remain in the spotlight. You want to shake hands, kiss babies, and put on stellar matches. And you realize this generation has all the talent in the world to pass you by when you aren’t ready to pass the torch. Which is why you want me to prove to you something that I don’t need to prove to anyone much less the over the hill starlet.
Taylor points her right index finger in Marilyn’s direction.
“IT GIRL” TAYLOR LANDRY: And that says you up inside. So you want me to run through hoops to get to you. Hahahaha! I refuse to play your little games, girl. Not going to happen! Ain’t going to do it! So you can say those old school attempts at an insult by saying you have more talent in your itty bitty pinky than I do throughout my whole body. Which is just so cute! You’re wrong but it’s cute nonetheless.
Taylor picks up the pin and pulls the contract closer to her. She then looks over at Reno.
“IT GIRL” TAYLOR LANDRY: Just to be clear Reno… The agreement is that Marilyn and I won’t be able to touch each other until the bell rings for our match on Halloween Eve, correct?
Reno Nevada: Uhhhhhh… That’s what I was told but I ain’t a lawyer. I have seen every episode of Boston Legal, if that counts.
Taylor signs the contract.
“IT GIRL” TAYLOR LANDRY: That only applies to Marilyn and I, right?
Before the ink can even dry, Amethyst Caldwell lunges forward, catching the underside of the heavy wooden folding table with two massive hands and flipping it clean over. The table crashes violently through the ropes and out to the floor, sending the PCW True Grit Championship bouncing and skidding across the canvas.
Marilyn Matthews’ veteran reflexes fire instantly—she vaults out of her chair and darts toward the ropes to create space, but Amethyst covers the distance like a freight train. Caldwell’s thick hands clamp onto Marilyn’s jacket and collar, yanking the champion backward into the center of the ring with terrifying ease.
Amethyst drives a crushing knee directly into Marilyn’s midsection, doubling her over, before hammering a heavy forearm across her spine. Matthews collapses to the mat, gasping for air, but Amethyst isn’t finished. She hauls Marilyn up by the hair and whips her hard into the turnbuckles, following in with an avalanche splash that smothers the champion in the corner.
Across the ring, Taylor Landry leans against the opposite ropes, clapping gleefully and laughing her head off.
“IT GIRL” TAYLOR LANDRY: That’s it, Amethyst! Break her ribs! Show the old beach bitch what real power looks like!
Reno Nevada drops his microphone, caught in pure conflict. The former fighter in him steps up, fists clenched tight, every fiber of his being itching to jump in and yank Caldwell off the defenseless champion. But the corporate reality freezes him—he’s an on-air host, not an active competitor, and laying hands on talent means his job.
Instead, Reno paces frantically toward Taylor, throwing his hands out in disgust.
Reno Nevada: Taylor! Call her off! What the hell are you doing?! You signed the damn paper, call your goon off right now! This is complete garbage and you know it!
Taylor just laughs in his face, waving him off dismissively.
Suddenly, a thunderous roar ripples through the arena.
Charging down the entrance ramp at full sprint comes Alyssa Knight-Kekoa, clutching a steel folding chair tightly in her grip! She slides under the bottom rope with fluid speed and pops up immediately behind Taylor, who is still completely fixated on the beatdown, laughing with her back turned.
WACK!
Alyssa brings the steel chair down with sickening force straight across Taylor Landry’s unprotected back!
Taylor lets out a shrill scream, her spine bowing as she crashes face-first onto the canvas, writhing in agony.
ALYSSA: HEY! OVER HERE!
Amethyst freezes and whips around. Her eyes widen as she spots Alyssa standing tall over the crumpled body of Taylor, the steel chair cocked threateningly in both hands.
Alyssa looks Amethyst dead in the eye and flashes a cold, venomous smirk. Without breaking eye contact with the bodyguard, Alyssa brings the edge of the chair down like a guillotine—CRACK!—straight into the back of Taylor’s knee! Taylor shrieks in pure agony, clutching her leg and rolling into the ropes.
Seeing her friend, and meal ticket attacked, Amethyst completely loses her mind. Like an enraged bull that just saw red, the massive bodyguard charges full-tilt across the ring to tear Alyssa apart.
Alyssa doesn’t back up an inch. She widens her stance, winds up, and swings the chair down with every ounce of leverage in her frame.
CRACK!
The flat of the chair smashes flush into Amethyst’s forehead!
The sickening metallic impact echoes through the building, halting Caldwell’s charge dead in its tracks. Amethyst’s massive frame stiffens like a statue, her boots stumbling backward half a step as her eyes glaze over into a blank, stunned stare.
Alyssa doesn’t give her a split-second to recover. She coils back and swings the steel chair with everything she has a second time!
CRACK!
The second shot connects clean. Amethyst’s knees buckle, and the giant crashes face-first to the canvas with a heavy, dead-weight thud.
The crowd comes completely unglued. Alyssa slowly circles around Amethyst’s motionless body, breathing hard, holding the dented steel chair at her side while glaring down to make sure the monster stays down. Satisfied, Alyssa tosses the chair aside and rushes over to the corner where Marilyn Matthews is slumped against the bottom turnbuckle, clutching her bruised ribs and struggling to catch her breath.
Reno Nevada quickly slides in right beside Alyssa, kneeling down to check on the battered True Grit Champion as Alyssa places a steady, protective hand on Marilyn’s shoulder, eyes fixed on the entranceway.
MATCH
STAR DRAGON
HOPE LEVITT
TIGRESS
vs
PCW UNLEASHED CHAMPION
BIA
BLACK RAINBOW
BLACK RAINBOW DEATHMATCH
PCW UNLEASHED CHAMPIONSHIP
REFEREE: THAÏS EMPRISTIKÍ
The harsh white glare of the standard overhead house lights beats down on the canvas. Twelve thousand people pack the building from floor to rafters, and the noise is a heavy, anxious hum that vibrates right up through the floorboards.
In the far corner, Hope Levitt cannot stand still. She bounces on the balls of her feet, shaking out her wrists, her 110-pound frame practically humming with nervous, wide-eyed energy. Across the twenty-foot expanse of canvas stands the PCW UNLEASHED Champion. Bia does not bounce. She does not pace. She is a 165-pound monolith of black leather, heavy iron chains, and dead-eyed Australian malice.
Between them stands Thaïs Empristikí. The black-and-white vertical stripes of their referee jersey are interrupted by the snarling face of a tiger emblazoned right across the chest.
Down on the floor, the ringside area looks like a hardware store after a riot. Bundles of fragile fluorescent light tubes, cold steel chairs, and a painted kendo stick lean against the padded barricades. A few feet away lies a spilled black canvas police gear bag, dumped and forgotten from earlier in the night. At the bottom of the entrance ramp, three wooden tables stand side by side in a neat, ominous row, set parallel to the ring apron.
Inside the ropes, nobody moves. The seconds bleed away. The silence between the three women—bound and broken by the Tigress banner—stretches to a suffocating breaking point.
Hope swallows hard. Her throat clicks. She refuses to take a step back, even if she looks like a lamb locked inside an abattoir across from the West Australian War Goddess. Bia does not even look at her. The champion does not blink, her cold eyes locked right past the challenger and fixed squarely on Thaïs, drinking in the quiet agony of the faction leader forced to officiate an execution. Thaïs’s jaw clenches so hard the muscle jumps in their cheek. Their hands tremble against the seams of their slacks as they stare back at the traitor who tore their family to pieces.
The main house lights and overhead spots cut out.
Pitch black.
Twelve thousand throats open up at once, a massive, echoing roar swallowing the dark building whole.
CA-CHUNK.
High-powered banks of ultraviolet blacklights slam on across the catwalks, dumping an eerie purple haze directly onto the ring and the surrounding concrete. The ring ropes, turnbuckles, steel posts, and ringside barricades instantly ignite, streaked with neon, glow-in-the-dark paint.
Hope shines like a flare in the ultraviolet dark. Bright, glowing sky-blue paint is splashed across her gear and skin, radiating pure promise. Across the ring, Bia turns into a walking nightmare. Her skin is painted flat obsidian, swallowing the light so her body practically vanishes into the gloom—save for thick, blotchy crimson red and razor-thin white accents tracing the violent geometry of her muscles, turning her face into a floating, glowing crimson skull.
Thaïs looks from the glowing blue rookie to the red-skulled monster. Their breathing comes shallow and ragged through their nose. Unbidden, the nightmare from an hour ago flashes behind their eyes—their wife, Hope Russo, strapped flat and motionless to a rigid backboard, her neck locked in a plastic cervical collar as paramedics wheeled her out of the arena. Thaïs squeezes their eyes shut for a fraction of a second. Yelena Gorgo already took their wife tonight. Now Gorgo wants them to stand three feet away and watch Bia butcher their protégé.
Thaïs swallows the hot bile rising in their throat. Lifting a heavy arm, they motion toward timekeeper John Broady at the ringside table.
DING! DING! DING!
Bia marches straight forward across the glowing canvas. Zero wasted motion. Zero hesitation. Hope darts out of her corner to meet the champion dead in the center of the ring, stepping right up to go chest-to-chest despite giving up two inches and fifty-five pounds of solid muscle. Hope glares straight up into the glowing red skull paint, her chin jutting out. Bia stares down at her with cold, predatory amusement.
They crash together in a collar-and-elbow tie-up.
It isn’t a contest. Bia immediately smothers the 110-pound rookie with raw size and thick, athletic leverage, muscling her backward a step before grabbing two handfuls of Hope’s collar. With a violent grunt, Bia hurls Hope across the ring. The bright blue figure goes airborne and skids hard across the canvas, crashing spine-first into the bottom turnbuckle pad.
A low groan ripples through the crowd at the sheer disparity in horsepower. Near the ropes, Thaïs flinches visibly at the thud of Hope’s spine hitting the steel-backed pad, their fingers twitching against their striped jersey before they force their boots to stay planted.
Hope shakes the cobwebs out of her head, grabs the neon middle rope, and bounces right back to her feet, charging straight back into the fire with reckless heart.
She runs right into a brick wall. Bia snatches the charging rookie out of mid-air—one hand clamped around her throat, the other fisted in her waistband—and hoists her effortlessly overhead into a towering military press. Bia locks her elbows out, holding the glowing blue rookie high in the ultraviolet haze for three agonizing seconds. The obsidian-painted biceps flex as Bia stares dead into Thaïs’s eyes.
She lets go.
Hope plummets straight down, slamming flat onto her stomach in a brutal military press slam that rattles the wooden ring boards underneath the canvas. Wind explodes from Hope’s lungs in a ragged gasp. She curls up on her side, both hands clutching tight at her bruised ribs.
Bia takes her time. She drops to one knee, casually rolls Hope onto her back like a sack of flour, and drapes a single heavy palm across the rookie’s chest.
Thaïs freezes. A beat passes before they drop slowly to their knees, dragging their hand down toward the canvas in an agonizingly deliberate cadence.
ONE…
One full second ticks by. Then a second. Thaïs barely lifts their palm off the canvas to start the next motion before Hope bridges up and kicks out easily, scrambling backward on her elbows toward the ropes.
Bia narrows her eyes at the referee. She rises slowly to her feet, dusting off her palms while keeping her gaze bored into Thaïs. Behind her, Hope hauls herself up using the glowing cables for support. Bia pivots and comes thundering in, swinging a thick arm in a wild lariat meant to take the kid’s head off.
Hope ducks clean underneath the swinging forearm. Pivoting on her heel with blazing speed, she hooks Bia’s extended arm across her hip and flips the 165-pound powerhouse completely over onto her back with a crisp Japanese arm drag.
Bia scrambles right back to her boots with a guttural snarl, lunging forward—only for Hope to leap up, clamp onto her head, and whip her down to the mat a second time with a flying snapmare.
The Municipal Auditorium comes alive, twelve thousand voices roaring the Star Dragon on as she turns and sprints into the neon ropes at full tilt. Hope rebounds off the cables, leaps, and drives both boot soles squarely across the chest of the kneeling champion with a sharp dropkick.
Bia barely budges. The impact thuds against her sternum, drawing a low grunt, and she just glares up through the crimson skull paint as Hope lands and scrambles back to her feet. Hope backs up a step, her eyes widening as the math hits her—her best shots aren’t even denting the armor. Panic and grit mixing, she plants her base foot and whips her right leg up for a superkick.
Bia swats the kicking shin out of the air with both hands. In one violent, fluid motion, she yanks the rookie forward, lifts her off her base, and drives her spine-first down across a raised knee for a vicious backbreaker.
Hope’s back arches sharply. A high, sharp cry rips from her throat as she rolls off the knee and hits the mat flat on her spine. Bia drops down and hooks the far leg tight.
Once again, Thaïs drops to their knees in slow motion, dragging their right palm through the heavy air like the hand weighs a hundred pounds.
ONE…
TWO… …
Hope drives her shoulder off the mat well before the third slap, rolling onto her side and coughing hard into the canvas.
Bia’s jaw sets. She glares daggers through the blacklight haze at the referee, spitting a quiet curse under her breath as she reaches down and clamps a hand around Hope’s wrist.
BIA: You playing games, Thaïs?
She hauls the featherweight off the canvas with one arm and whips her hard across the ring into the glowing ropes. Hope hits the cables and bounces back at high speed, right into Bia’s waiting stance. The champion scoops her sideways across her torso, steps out, and plants her deep into the canvas with a thunderous sidewalk slam.
BOOM.
The impact echoes all the way up to the balcony, drawing wails of genuine concern from the ringside fans. Thaïs winces hard, their right hand instinctively jerking forward toward their fallen student before they yank it back against their chest, trapped by Yelena Gorgo’s rules.
Bia hooks Hope’s far leg tight with both arms, lifting her chin to glare directly into Thaïs’s eyes, demanding a straight count.
Thaïs drops to a knee and starts another glacial, crawling cadence.
ONE…
Bia doesn’t even wait for two. She shoves Hope’s leg away, surges to her boots, and marches straight into Thaïs’s chest. The Australian powerhouse towers inches from the referee, jabbing a black-and-red painted index finger right into the roaring tiger on Thaïs’s jersey as the two former stablemates bark furiously in each other’s faces.
BIA: Call it straight, mate, or I swear I’ll break her in half right in front of your eyes!
THAÏS: Get the fuck out of my face.
Behind the screaming champion, a bright blue smear moves on the canvas. Hope groans, gritting her teeth through the fire in her lower spine, and scrambles desperately forward on hands and knees. While Bia continues berating the official, Hope reaches up from behind, hooks both arms tight around Bia’s waist, and yanks the distracted champion backward with everything she has, folding her into a tight schoolgirl roll-up.
Bia’s thick legs kick wildly in the ultraviolet air as her shoulders are pinned flat to the canvas.
Thaïs doesn’t hesitate a fraction of a second. They dive flat to their stomach and hammer their palm against the mat like a machine gun.
ONE—TWO—THRE—!
Bia violently thrusts her hips and legs upward, powering out and rolling through at the absolute last millisecond—tearing her shoulders off the canvas a heartbeat before Thaïs’s palm can slap the mat a third time.
Twelve thousand people gasp as one, the sound shifting into a massive, collective groan at how close the teenager came to stealing the title.
Hope scrambles to her knees, chest heaving, the bright sky-blue paint across her shoulders already smudged and streaked with black from Bia’s body paint. Across from her, Bia rolls straight to her boots in a blind, white-hot fury. Before Hope can even get a foot underneath her, Bia lunges forward, reaches down, and grabs a thick fistful of Hope’s hair.
With pure, ugly strength, Bia yanks the 110-pound rookie straight up to her feet by the roots of her hair alone, holding her trapped and dangling in a clenched fist. Thaïs scrambles to their feet, backing slowly toward the corner pads, eyes wide.
Holding the wincing, tip-toeing rookie by the scalp, Bia turns her glowing crimson skull to stare dead-eyed at Thaïs.
BIA: This is your fault, mate. Now I’m not even gonna try to pin her. At least, not until I’ve had some fun.
Hope grimaces in agony, tears stinging the corners of her eyes as she throws frantic, two-handed punches into Bia’s ribs and midsection, trying desperately to break the grip on her hair.
Bia doesn’t even blink at the punches. She shoves Hope a half-step back to create six inches of space, plants her boot, and pivots sharply on her heel.
She unleashes a murderous, full-extension lariat.
The forearm catches Hope flush across the jawline and collarbones, practically decapitating her. The 110-pound frame flips completely inside out in mid-air before crashing flat on her face in the center of the ring.
Under the eerie purple glow of the UV spotlights, Hope lies motionless on her stomach. A thick trickle of pitch-black, light-absorbing blood spills from her split lip, pooling slowly against the bright neon canvas.
In the corner, Thaïs stands frozen, both hands rising to cover their mouth in utter horror. Above the fallen challenger, Bia stands tall, flexing her jaw as a deafening wave of vitriol and guttural boos rains down from every tier of the building.
Hope lies flat on her stomach in the center of the glowing canvas. She coughs weakly, her ribs hitching with every shallow breath as black, light-absorbing blood drips from her split lip and splatters against the glowing sky-blue paint across her collarbone.
Bia doesn’t even give her a second glance. The champion steps casually between the neon ropes and drops heavily down to the ringside floor. Twelve thousand throats open up in a deafening wave of jeers and vitriol as the West Australian War Goddess strolls along the padded barricade, dragging her knuckles slowly across the arrayed hardware like a butcher picking out a cleaver. Her fingers close around a neon-painted, glow-in-the-dark kendo stick. She pulls it free and whips it twice through the purple air. Two sharp cracks echo off the concrete.
Inside the ring, Thaïs drops to one knee a few feet away from the fallen teenager. They lean in close, checking on their student verbally, though they keep both hands clasped tightly behind the small of their back—refusing to give Yelena Gorgo a single frame of video that could be used to strip their title eligibility.
Bia slides back under the bottom cable with the glowing bamboo sword in hand. Thaïs rises slowly and backs away into neutral territory, jaw clenched tight.
In the center of the ring, Hope plants her palms and pushes herself up to her hands and knees. Her chest heaves, her head hanging low as she tries to shake the cobwebs loose from that wicked lariat. Bia steps right up beside the kneeling rookie. She plants her boots, raises the glowing kendo stick high overhead with both hands, and brings it whistling straight down across Hope’s spine.
CRACK!
Hope’s back arches violently. A sharp, high-pitched shriek rips out of her throat and echoes all the way to the rafters. Under the ultraviolet lamps, the bright sky-blue paint across her shoulder blades splits clean open, replaced immediately by an ugly, raised welt leaking dark, light-swallowing crimson. In the corner, Thaïs flinches as if the bamboo caught them across the face, biting down hard on their own bottom lip to keep their boots glued to the canvas.
Hope refuses to stay down. Trembling from head to toe, she drags a knee forward and crawls blindly toward the edge of the ring, reaching a shaking hand out toward the glowing bottom cable.
Bia steps in and plants a heavy leather boot squarely into the small of Hope’s back, flattening the 110-pound teenager straight back down into the canvas. The champion lifts the glowing stick a second time and lashes it brutally across Hope’s exposed ribs.
Hope curls instantly into a tight fetal ball, sucking in desperate, ragged gasps of oxygen as tears of sheer physical shock sting the corners of her eyes.
Bia doesn’t swing a third time. Instead, she jams the toe of her boot beneath Hope’s top shoulder and flips the curled rookie violently over onto her spine. Dropping to her knees above Hope’s head, Bia lays the glowing kendo stick horizontally across Hope’s collarbones and windpipe, pressing down with both hands to pin her flat to the mat. Bia leans her full 165-pound frame onto the ends of the bamboo shaft, crushing the air right out of Hope’s lungs. Hope’s wide, terrified eyes dart frantically around the ring, searching for an out that isn’t there.
Bia lowers her glowing crimson skull until her lips are inches from Hope’s ear, growling low over the livid, booing crowd.
BIA: Biggest match of your career, yeah? And you’re already cooked.
Hope’s frantic eyes suddenly stop searching the ropes. They snap sideways, locking dead onto Bia’s gaze.
HOPE: You… ss-ahhh… You…
Bia smirks beneath the blotchy red war paint and leans her weight down harder onto the stick, grinding the bamboo across Hope’s collarbone.
BIA: Me what?
Something behind the wholesome, pure-hearted rookie’s eyes fractures in a flash of blinding, defiant rage.
HOPE: You’re just a MEAN. OLD. BIA’TCH!
Hope wrenches her head sideways and sinks her teeth straight into Bia’s bare knuckles gripping the left end of the glowing kendo stick. She clamps her jaw shut with everything she has left, grinding her teeth into the flesh until the champion lets out a sharp, furious howl and yanks her hand back, releasing the weapon.
With the choke broken, Hope draws both knees tight to her chest and fires both boots straight up into Bia’s sternum, shoving the bewildered powerhouse backward onto her rear.
The Municipal Auditorium erupts in shock and delight as the Star Dragon finally shows her teeth.
Snarling, Bia shakes out her bleeding, bitten hand, snatches the loose kendo stick off the mat with her good hand, and swings it viciously downward to take Hope’s head off. Hope dives headfirst between the top and middle ropes in the nick of time. The bamboo smashes harmlessly against the glowing top cable, vibrating the entire length of the rope.
Hope hits the ringside floor mats and scrambles to her boots, one hand clutching her bruised throat as she backpedals fast. Bia slides straight out under the bottom rope right behind her, gripping the neon stick like a machete as she gives chase like an unkillable slasher villain.
Hope backpedals and pivots, darting around the ringside perimeter and relying on her raw speed to stay three steps ahead of the champion’s heavy boots. Bia stalks after her with long, unhurried strides, slapping the glowing bamboo rhythmically against her open palm while the fans leaning over the barricades scream frantic warnings at the rookie.
Hope hits a dead sprint, rounds the far steel ringpost, and vanishes from Bia’s line of sight.
Bia rounds the steel post a full second later and pulls up short. The floor ahead is completely empty. Bia looks out at the jeering front row, lets out a cocky smirk, and knowingly taps her temple with an index finger. Bending at the waist, she grabs the black fabric of the ring skirt with her free hand and yanks it upward to expose the rookie hiding underneath.
Nothing. Just empty, pitch-black darkness beneath the steel frame.
Hope didn’t stay under the apron—she slid straight through and scrambled out the far side seconds ago. Having snatched a cold steel chair from against the opposite barricade, the 110-pound teenager comes hurtling around the ringpost behind Bia at full tilt, the chair raised high in both hands. As the champion straightens up and turns, Hope brings the steel crashing straight across Bia’s spine!
CLANG!
The steel gunshot echoes through the arena. The impact jolts Bia violently forward into the edge of the ring apron, and the glow-in-the-dark kendo stick flies from her fingers, skittering across the floor mats into the shadows near the corner barricade.
Inside the ropes, Thaïs pumps a subtle, tight fist against their thigh, their eyes lighting up as twelve thousand fans blow the roof off the building.
Hope doesn’t let her breathe. She raises the dented steel chair overhead and cracks it a second time across Bia’s broad shoulders, staggering the War Goddess sideways along the apron. Letting the bent metal clatter to the floor, Hope scrambles up onto the edge of the ring apron, measures the stumbling champion below, and leaps into the purple haze—dropping a soaring guillotine leg drop squarely across the back of Bia’s neck!
Both women crash to the padded floor in a violent tangle of glowing sky-blue and crimson limbs.
Hope bounces straight back to her boots, running on pure white-hot adrenaline, though she winces hard and reaches back to grab at the bleeding bamboo welts burning across her shoulder blades. Beside her, Bia groans deep in her chest, pushing herself up onto all fours before stumbling backward toward the timekeeper’s area—right where the dumped black police gear bag from earlier in the night lies spilled across the floor.
Hope slides quickly back under the bottom rope into the ring, sprints across the canvas to hit the far cables for maximum velocity, and rebounds at a blur. She dives headfirst between the ropes, twisting her body into a breathtaking tope tornillo!
Hope corkscrews through the UV light and crashes squarely into Bia’s sternum, bowling the 165-pound powerhouse completely off her feet and sending both of them crashing backward into the spilled pile of police equipment!
Fans in the front row hammer their fists wildly against the glowing barricades, losing their minds as the 110-pound underdog takes the fight straight to the monster.
Hope scrambles to her knees amidst the scattered leather duty belts and batons. As she plants her palm to push up, her fingers brush against a heavy, contoured black plastic casing sitting in the pile. Across from her, Bia hauls herself up to her boots, shaking her head angrily and wiping a thick smear of dark blood from her mouth with the back of her wrist as she steps forward to murder the kid.
Hope spins around on her knees and rises to her feet, leveling a high-voltage police stun gun directly at Bia’s chest.
The instant Bia spots the metal prongs, the fearless War Goddess locks up. She freezes dead in her tracks, throws both hands high into the air, and immediately takes two full steps backward.
Inside the ring, Thaïs leans over the top cable, watching in stunned fascination as the woman who refuses to ever take a backward step actively retreats. Bia’s eyes dart nervously to the black weapon, her chest tight, haunted by the memory of Yelena Gorgo’s high-voltage electrocution that left her heart wired with an erratic, dangerous arrhythmia.
BIA: Now wait a beat, darl’. You know I got a bum ticker. Don’t fuck around.
Hope’s eyes narrow. She presses her thumb down hard on the trigger button.
ZZZZT-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
Jagged arcs of blinding blue-white lightning snap and dance violently between the twin metal prongs, lighting up both women’s painted faces in harsh, strobe-like flashes.
HOPE: I guess big, bad Bia is afraid of something after all.
Hope lunges forward with the sparking stun gun thrust out in front of her. Bia pivots on her heel and flat-out runs, retreating around the outside perimeter of the ring. Twelve thousand people roar with laughter and deafening cheers as the 110-pound teenager chases the terrifying champion right around the steel ringpost.
Hope cuts the angle and corners Bia near the entrance side of the barricade. Gritting her teeth, the rookie thrusts the live, sparking prongs straight toward Bia’s midsection.
Pure survival instinct takes over. Bia sidesteps the lunge at the last fraction of a second and clamps both hands around Hope’s skinny wrist in an iron vise, stopping the snapping blue-white arcs barely two inches from her ribcage. Bia wrenches Hope’s arm violently sideways, twisting the bone until the rookie’s fingers pry open and the stun gun clatters onto the floor mats. Before Hope can dive for it, Bia lifts her heavy leather ring boot and stomps straight down onto the casing with all 165 pounds, shattering the stun gun into useless, cracked shards of plastic.
Bia lets out a long, shaky breath of relief—and then her face twists into volcanic rage as she glares down at the challenger.
Hope scrambles back a step and springs off both feet for a desperate leaping forearm smash. Bia snatches her straight out of mid-air, one hand clamped around her throat and the other around her waist. Pivoting like a hammer thrower, Bia hurls Hope like a lawn dart straight into the padded corner of the ringside barricade.
Hope hits the barrier sternum-first with a sickening thud and collapses in a crumpled heap on the floor. She gasps for breath, clutching her bruised ribs with one arm as she begins to crawl blindly around the corner of the barricade.
Bia stalks over to the barricade wall, reaches down, and lifts a thick bundle of long fluorescent light tubes taped tightly together. Inside the ring, Thaïs grips the glowing top rope with white knuckles, shouting frantic warnings down to Hope over the deafening buzz of the arena.
Bia walks slowly after the crawling rookie, raising the heavy bundle of glass tubes high overhead as she rounds the corner of the ringside area. Ahead of her, Hope slowly pushes herself up to her boots against the barricade, refusing to stay down despite the brutal punishment already carved into her back and ribs.
Locked in pure, murderous tunnel vision, Bia keeps her eyes fixed entirely on the wounded rookie’s face—completely missing Hope’s right hand dropping down and closing around the handle of the neon-glowing kendo stick lying against the base of the barricade.
Bia lets out a guttural roar and swings the bundle of light tubes downward at Hope’s skull at the exact fraction of a second Hope pivots on her back foot and swings the glowing kendo stick upward like a baseball bat with everything she has left!
THWUMP-ksssh!
The bamboo shaft collides squarely with the descending glass bundle in mid-air. The fluorescent tubes detonate in a blinding white cloud of phosphor dust and razor-sharp glass! Hope’s carry-through momentum drives the kendo stick straight through the exploding cloud and smashes it flush across Bia’s face, driving jagged shards of broken glass deep into the champion’s forehead and brow!
A massive, collective gasp—instantly swallowed by a deafening roar—tears through the building as Bia staggers backward through the settling white cloud, both hands flying up to cover her face. When Bia lowers her trembling fingers, thick rivers of pitch-black blood under the UV lamps are pouring down through the glowing crimson skull paint, dripping steadily off her chin onto her heaving chest.
Hope stands panting in the phosphor haze, her glowing sky-blue body paint flecked with white glass powder and dark splatters of the champion’s blood. Refusing to give the wounded monster a second to clear her vision, Hope drops the stick, grabs the dazed champion by the wrist, and shoves her back under the bottom rope into the ring.
Hope hops onto the apron and bounds up onto the middle turnbuckle rope just as Bia stumbles to her feet near the center of the canvas. Launching herself inward, Hope catches the champion’s head and whips her body through a dazzling springboard 720 tornado DDT!
She spins twice in the ultraviolet air and drives Bia’s bleeding skull straight down into the canvas!
The Municipal Auditorium physically shakes from the ovation as Hope scrambles over, flips the dead weight of the champion onto her back, dives across her chest, and hooks both thick legs tight!
Thaïs drops immediately to their knees and slams their palm into the canvas in a crisp, clean, neutral cadence.
ONE…
TWO…
THR—NO!
Bia violently surges upward from the mat, bench-pressing the 110-pound challenger clean off her chest at two-and-nine-tenths!
Hope rolls backward onto her knees, chest heaving, staring down at her blood-stained palms in sheer disbelief as Bia lies gasping on the glowing mat—her face a shredded mask of crimson paint, white glass dust, and black blood under the ultraviolet lights.
Hope kneels on the glowing canvas, her chest heaving, sucking wind through a split lip. She stares down at the bleeding monster she just pushed to a two-and-nine-tenths count, the cold math settling in her gut—normal high-flying offense isn’t going to keep the War Goddess down.
Hope scrambles on hands and knees under the bottom cable, drops to the ringside mats, and yanks up the heavy black apron skirt to hunt for her preferred equalizer. Her fingers lock around the cold steel rungs of a ten-foot ladder. She drags the heavy hardware out from beneath the ring frame to a massive, bloodthirsty roar from the packed auditorium.
Straining with every ounce of her 110-pound frame, her heels digging into the floor mats, Hope slides the heavy steel ladder under the bottom rope and shoves it flat onto the canvas.
As Hope pulls herself back through the neon cables, Bia rises from the mat like a resurrected slasher villain. The champion wipes a thick curtain of pitch-black blood out of her eyes with the back of her wrist, tiny shards of broken glass glinting inside her torn forehead under the ultraviolet lamps. Hope turns around, spots the blood-soaked crimson skull charging, and tries to dart sideways toward the cables to build speed.
Bia cuts the ring in half. She hits the adjacent set of ropes at full steam, rebounds across the vector like a runaway freight train, and intercepts the 110-pound rookie in mid-stride with THE DOCK BLOCKER (Running Low Angle Shoulder Charge)!
The impact launches Hope completely across the ring like a ragdoll, sending her crashing spine-first directly onto the unforgiving steel rungs of the flat ladder!
CLANG-CRACK!
A guttural, breathless scream rips from Hope’s throat. Her spine arches violently off the steel rungs as twelve thousand people wince and groan in unison. In the corner, Thaïs flinches so hard they drop down to one knee, one hand clutching tight at the tiger face on their striped shirt as if feeling their protégé’s vertebrae compress.
Bia doesn’t even look for a cover. Staying true to her word, she stalks over to the ladder with pure murder in her eyes. Reaching down, she clamps one hand around Hope’s throat and the other in her waistband, hauling the limp body up off the bent metal rungs. Bia hoists the rookie high into the purple UV light for a stalling vertical suplex, locking her arms out and holding Hope suspended upside down for five agonizing seconds while staring dead into Thaïs’s eyes.
Bia snaps her hips and falls forward, driving Hope stomach- and ribs-first straight down onto the flat steel ladder with a vicious front suplex!
Hope bounces hard off the steel rungs, coughing up dark spittle across the metal as her glowing sky-blue body paint smears with her own black-looking blood. Bia kicks the ladder a foot closer to the ropes so it lies flat and waiting, then grabs Hope by the ankle and drags her unceremoniously out under the bottom cable, letting her drop like dead weight onto the ringside floor.
Bia steps out onto the apron and drops heavily to the mats, breathing hard through clenched teeth as dark blood continues to trickle through the red-and-white skull paint on her face. She reaches down, scoops the dazed rookie off the floor, and plants her spine-first onto the thin protective mats with a heavy scoop slam. Hope writhes on the concrete-backed padding, groaning and trying to push herself up on trembling forearms while fans leaning over the front-row barricade plead with her to just stay down.
Bia drops to one knee beside the steel ringpost, lifts the apron skirt near the corner, and reaches deep into the darkness underneath. She lugs a heavy plastic cooler out from under the frame and drops it with a thud onto the mats.
Popping the lid off the cooler, Bia reaches down into the ice and pulls out a fresh six-pack of #AndStill Lager—her own signature brand. She tugs one ice-cold aluminum can free from the plastic rings, tosses the rest aside, and rises to her boots, walking with slow, deliberate steps over to the crawling rookie.
Standing directly over Hope, Bia cracks the pop-top of the can with her thumb. A fizzy mist of beer sprays up into the purple UV light. Bia tilts her head back and takes a deep, slow swig, letting the white foam mix with the dark blood and spill down her drenched chin.
Inside the ropes, Thaïs paces along the cables like a caged tiger, both fists balled so tightly their fingernails dig crescents into their palms.
Bia reaches down with her free hand, grabs a thick fistful of Hope’s blood-matted hair, and yanks her upright to her knees.
BIA: You’re a mess, mate. Here, I’ll clean ya up.
Bia tips the open aluminum can and pours the ice-cold #AndStill Lager straight down over Hope’s bloody, lacerated face. Hope sputters and coughs violently, squeezing her eyes shut tight as the alcohol stings her open cuts, jerking her head side to side as she desperately tries not to swallow the liquid. Right against the barricade, front-row fans scream raw curses at the champion, one fan covering their eyes as the glowing blue teenager is humiliated and baptized in blood and beer.
Bia crushes the empty aluminum can in her bare palm, chucks the twisted metal into the crowd, and shoves Hope back under the bottom rope into the ring.
Climbing back inside the squared circle, Bia stalks toward the corner where Hope lies slumped lifelessly against the bottom turnbuckle pad, shivering and coated in a sticky glaze of glowing blue paint, stale beer, and dark crimson. Bia grabs the top cables on either side of the corner and drives the sole of her heavy boot repeatedly across Hope’s face with vicious corner face washes—before backing up three steps, charging in, and snapping Hope’s head violent against the bottom pad with a running face wash.
Bia turns around and glares directly across the canvas at Thaïs.
BIA: You can stop this, Thaïs.
Thaïs stares back across the ring, chest heaving, tears of white-hot rage and helplessness glistening in the blacklight as they force their boots to stay glued to the mat.
Bia turns back to the corner, hauls Hope up by the collar, and drives three brutal shoulder thrusts deep into the rookie’s bruised midsection until Hope folds completely in half. Keeping one hand twisted in Hope’s gear, Bia looks right back over her shoulder at the referee, daring them to break Yelena Gorgo’s rule and forfeit their championship future forever.
BIA: You can stop this, Thaïs! One punch, mate! Just lay one hand on me and I’ll stop!
Thaïs takes a single, trembling step forward. Their right arm cocks back at their side as flashes of Russo strapped in a rigid neckbrace collide with the sight of Hope being butchered three feet away.
Bia grabs Hope’s left arm, traps it tight behind her neck, and stomps the back of Hope’s skull straight into the canvas beside the ladder with a brutal arm-trap curb stomp!
Bia straightens up and spreads her arms wide directly in front of Thaïs, turning her back completely on the fallen challenger.
BIA: Come on! You can stop this, Thaïs! Be the hero!
Behind the screaming champion, Hope Levitt stirs. She pushes herself up off her stomach, rolls desperately toward the edge of the ring, and reaches blindly through the neon cables down to the apron edge.
This is no longer the bubbly, smiling teenager who bounced down the aisle twenty minutes ago. Drenched in pitch-black blood from scalp to boots, her eyes wide and feral in the ultraviolet haze, Hope has transformed into a desperate horror-movie Final Girl. Her trembling fingers close around a jagged, splintered fragment of the broken kendo stick resting against the outer edge of the apron. She drags herself back to her boots with raw, ugly intent to injure.
While Bia is still barking in Thaïs’s face, Hope lunges forward from behind and jams the splintered wood straight into the back of Bia’s left knee—driving the jagged point right into the joint where Bia previously tore her MCL!
Bia lets out a shocked, guttural roar of agony as her left leg buckles completely underneath her, dropping her forward onto her hands and knees directly across the flat steel ladder!
Hope tosses the splintered wood aside, springs high into the purple air with reckless abandon, and crashes down with both boot soles squarely onto the small of Bia’s back with CANDY CRUSH (Mushroom Stomp / Double Foot Stomp)!
Bia’s sternum and chin slam violently into the unforgiving steel rungs of the ladder below her!
The entire Municipal Auditorium erupts into a deafening wall of noise as Bia rolls off the ladder onto the canvas, one hand clutching her bruised ribs and the other clamped tight around her tweaked left knee!
Thaïs’s eyes go wide with adrenaline, screaming hoarse encouragement as Hope stumbles toward the corner turnbuckles, limping heavily and wiping a curtain of dark blood and beer from her eyes. Seeing the War Goddess flat on her back near the steel ladder, Hope grabs the neon top rope and hauls her battered, 110-pound frame up onto the top turnbuckle pad.
Hope balances precariously at the peak. She cups her blood-stained hands around her mouth and screams at the top of her lungs over the roaring building:
HOPE: GERONIMOOOOOO!!
Hope leaps majestically into the UV-lit sky, twisting her body in mid-air for the GERONIMO SPLASH (Black Arrow / Twisting Shooting Star Press)—
Tipped off a split-second early by the echo of Hope’s scream, Bia grits her teeth and rolls out of the way at the last possible instant!
Hope crashes stomach- and ribs-first directly onto the hard canvas right beside the edge of the steel ladder!
A heavy thud echoes through the building as Hope bounces off the mat, curling up and clutching her abdomen in complete, breathless agony. Across the ring, Bia drags herself upright using the cables, limping heavily on her compromised left leg and spitting a thick mouthful of black-looking blood onto the apron as she decides to end this war once and for all.
Bia drops down from the apron to the ringside floor, lifts the black ring skirt near the corner post, and reaches deep into the darkness underneath. Her hand emerges clutching a heavy black velvet drawstring bag. Sliding back under the bottom cable into the ring, Bia rips the drawstring open with her teeth and upends the bag over the center of the canvas.
SHHHHH-TINK-TINK-TINK!
Thousands of razor-sharp silver thumbtacks cascade across the mat, scattering and glinting like a bed of fallen stars under the ultraviolet blacklights.
Thaïs backs slowly into the corner pads, both hands trembling over their mouth as they stare at the gleaming silver field of needles. Near the far edge of the tack pile, Hope pushes herself up to her boots—dizzy, disoriented, jelly-legged, and barely able to stand upright as she turns around.
Crouched low in the opposite corner, Bia locks onto her target. She launches herself forward, limping violently through the screaming agony of her bad left knee, building furious momentum across the canvas before cutting the 110-pound teenager completely in half with a bone-crushing SPEAR (Running Shoulder Tackle)!
Hope folds backward in mid-air and is driven hard into the canvas right at the outer edge of the thumbtack pile!
Hope lies gasping at the ragged edge of the silver thumbtack field. Her bruised ribs heave unevenly, and the bright, glowing sky-blue paint across her torso is almost entirely obscured beneath heavy smears of pitch-black blood.
Across from her, Bia pushes herself up onto one knee. She grimaces through her smeared crimson skull paint, rubbing a palm over her throbbing, compromised left knee before locking her cold gaze onto the broken rookie. Bia limps forward, grabs Hope by a fistful of hair and the waistband of her gear, and hauls the 110-pound challenger upright before hoisting her across her broad shoulders in a fireman’s carry.
Bia steadies her base on her bad leg, steps directly over the glittering bed of silver needles, and launches Hope off her shoulders with THE MAELSTROM (Fireman’s Carry Facebuster)!
Hope rotates 180 degrees through the ultraviolet haze and crashes face- and chest-first directly onto the bed of thousands of razor-sharp thumbtacks!
SHK-CRUNCH!
In the corner, Thaïs lets out a blood-curdling scream at the impact, both hands flying to their temples as hundreds of silver tacks bury themselves deep into Hope’s skin and gear. Even as hot tears spill down their cheeks, a wave of desperate relief washes over Thaïs’s face when Bia rolls over and drapes a single heavy arm across Hope’s tack-riddled back for the cover.
Thaïs scrambles across the ring, finds a clear patch of canvas beside the scattered metal pins, and drops to their knees to end it.
ONE…
TWO…
THR—NO!
At the absolute last fraction of a second before Thaïs’s palm hits the mat a third time, Bia grabs a thick fistful of Hope’s hair and violently yanks the unconscious rookie’s head and shoulders clean off the canvas!
The Municipal Auditorium immediately erupts into a near-riot. Thousands of fans surge forward against the glowing barricades, hurling plastic cups and trash toward the ring while screaming deafening vitriol at the champion.
On the mat, Thaïs freezes on their knees, staring up at Bia in stunned silence. Slowly, the muscle in Thaïs’s jaw relaxes, and their expression breaks—shifting past rage into something far worse: pure, heartbroken pity that their former friend has fallen this low.
THAÏS: Why?
Bia pushes herself up to her boots, wincing slightly as dozens of silver thumbtacks remain embedded in her own knee pads and leather boots, while her right hand stays locked tightly around Hope’s limp wrist.
BIA: Whole world’s gonna see what you are. Narcissistic ego-maniac. You’ll sit there and watch me destroy your niece, and you won’t do a bloody thing. You’re not willin’ to pay the price.
Bia hawks deep in her throat and spits a thick glob of pitch-black blood onto the canvas directly in front of Thaïs’s knees. Turning toward the entrance side of the ring, Bia begins dragging Hope’s limp body by the wrist toward the cables, scraping her chest and stomach across the loose thumbtacks scattered over the mat.
Thaïs scrambles frantically to their feet and rushes in front of Bia, spreading both arms wide to block her path without physically laying a finger on her.
THAÏS: Please, don’t do this. I’m asking. I’m begging you, please don’t.
Bia does not break stride. She limps steadily forward, forcing Thaïs to backpedal step by step toward the glowing neon cables.
BIA: You can stop this at any moment. You have the power.
Thaïs’s spine hits the ropes, trapping them between the advancing War Goddess and the edge of the apron before Thaïs finally breaks, drops their arms, and steps aside.
THAÏS: She made me promise.
Bia stops dead in her tracks. She stares coldly at Thaïs while Hope lies motionless on the mat at her heels.
BIA: I guess we’ll see what breaks first. Your promise? Or the table.
Bia drops Hope’s limp hand, steps through the ropes onto the apron, and drops heavily down to the ringside floor. Inside the ring, Thaïs’s wide eyes shoot immediately toward the bottom of the entrance ramp, where the three wooden tables have been sitting parallel to the ring since the opening bell.
THAÏS: No! Bia, stop! Please! I can’t. I can’t take anymore!
From the floor, Bia reaches underneath the bottom cable, grabs Hope’s wrist, and yanks hard, dragging the tack-covered teenager out under the rope onto the edge of the apron.
BIA: It’s all about you, Thaïs. All this sufferin’. I’d think you’d be happier being the center of attention.
Bia scoops Hope’s limp 110-pound frame into her arms like dead weight and begins carrying her across the ringside mats toward the three tables.
Thaïs slides hastily out of the ring, catches up to Bia from behind, and grabs hold of Hope’s dangling left arm, planting their boots and pulling backward with everything they have. Bia grits her teeth and keeps marching forward toward the ramp, powering straight through the resistance like an ox. Realizing the tug-of-war is about to wrench Hope’s shoulder clean out of its socket, Thaïs gasps and lets go.
Thaïs stumbles to a halt and looks down at their trembling open palm. As the ringside camera moves past, the ultraviolet light catches a sharp metallic glint—three silver thumbtacks transferred straight from Hope’s skin into Thaïs’s hand.
Bia comes to a halt right beside the three parallel tables. With one explosive heave of her arms and hips, she pops Hope straight up into the air, dipping her head underneath to catch the limp rookie across her shoulders in the fireman’s carry position for another Maelstrom.
BIA: See? They don’t shed a tear for you. Not for real. Only for the cameras. Only thing Thaïs cares about, is Thaïs.
Up across Bia’s broad shoulders, Hope’s eyes suddenly snap wide open.
Hope rolls her torso slightly across the back of Bia’s neck and looks down at the champion with a feral, blood-soaked smile.
BIA: Wha—
Hope’s right hand comes flying down like a carpenter’s hammer and slams squarely into the side of Bia’s face—driving a clenched palm full of razor-sharp thumbtacks straight into Bia’s temple and cheekbone, grinding the metal pins hard against the bone!
Bia shrieks in blinding agony, immediately releasing her grip and stumbling backward until her spine crashes hard into the padded ringside barricade. Hope drops cleanly onto her boots on the floor right beside the tables and violently shakes her right fist, flinging the remaining thumbtacks that were punctured into her own palm across the floor mats.
Running on pure survival adrenaline, Hope charges forward and collides with Bia against the barricade, unloading a furious barrage of closed-fist punches straight into Bia’s bloodied head! Bia throws her forearms up to cover her face and weather the storm, but Hope snakes a wild haymaker right behind Bia’s ear that makes the champion’s knees buckle underneath her. Bia nearly collapses to the mats, barely keeping herself upright by hooking an elbow over the top of the barricade wall.
Snarling through a hideous mask of black blood and embedded silver tacks, Bia shoves off the barrier and swings a wild lariat to take Hope’s head off.
Hope ducks underneath the swinging arm and drives a sharp toe kick straight into Bia’s gut, doubling the 165-pound powerhouse over at the waist. Without a split-second of hesitation, Hope leaps upward, straddles Bia’s broad shoulders, and tucks Bia’s head firmly between her thighs while locking both hands tight around the champion’s waist!
Hope flips forward into a complete 360-degree rotation in a blur of glowing sky-blue, dragging Bia over in mid-air and driving the champion crown-first into the padded arena floor with the STAR DESTROYER (Canadian Destroyer)!
Bia’s skull hits the floor with a heavy, sickening thud before her momentum flips her body over onto her stomach.
The entire building explodes into an ear-splitting roar as Hope springs to her knees, uses every ounce of her 110-pound frame to roll the heavy champion onto her back, and dives across her chest for the cover!
A few feet away, Thaïs stands completely paralyzed, eyes wide in utter shock at what they just witnessed. Hope hooks Bia’s thick leg tight with both arms and looks frantically back over her shoulder.
HOPE: Auntie!
Thaïs snaps out of their trance, rushes across the floor, and dives flat onto their stomach beside the row of tables, slamming their palm down against the ringside mat.
ONE…
TWO…
THR—NO!
Bia violently wrenches her right shoulder up off the floor at the absolute last millisecond!
A massive collective gasp sucks all the oxygen out of the arena, immediately followed by a deafening groan of heartbreak from twelve thousand throats.
Hope sits up on her knees beside the fallen champion, her chest heaving, dark blood and sweat dripping steadily from her chin onto the floor. Thaïs rises to their knees and looks at Hope with wide, guilt-stricken eyes.
THAÏS: Sorry… I was just… shocked.
Through the smeared layers of black blood and glowing blue paint, Hope offers her mentor a brief, exhausted smile.
HOPE: It’s okay.
Hope braces a trembling palm against her knee and pushes herself up to her boots as Thaïs stands back up and steps aside to give them room. On the floor, Bia rolls onto her stomach, letting out a low, animalistic grunt of pure fury as she pushes herself up on shaking arms through rivers of dark blood pouring from her head wounds.
Hope steps in, clamps Bia’s thick neck in a tight front facelock, and drags the staggering champion up onto the bottom edge of the metal entrance ramp. Pausing for a single heartbeat with the monster trapped in the headlock, Hope looks out around the dark building—taking in the glowing purple UV lights and the thousands of screaming faces willing her to pull off the miracle.
Hope spins cleanly around on her heel and drives Bia face-first into the unforgiving steel grating of the entrance ramp with TOOTHLESS TWIST (Twist of Fate)!
THUD!
Bia hits the metal ramp face-first so hard her 165-pound body bounces upward from the steel and rolls onto her back. Hope scrambles over in a frantic blur and hooks Bia’s far leg tight as Thaïs drops flat onto the metal ramp to count. The entire crowd belts out the cadence in booming unison with the referee’s palm:
ONE…
TWO…
THR—NO!
With a terrifying surge of powerhouse adrenaline, Bia bench-presses the 110-pound rookie completely off her chest, throwing Hope aside across the metal grating like she weighs nothing at all!
Bia lets out a guttural war roar that echoes all the way up the entrance stage, fighting through massive blood loss and blinding pain to force herself back up to her boots. Hope scrambles up off the ramp, charges straight back into the fire, and leaps onto Bia’s broad back, locking both arms tight around the champion’s neck like a human backpack.
Bia roars and violently swings her upper body left and right like a bucking bull, trying to shake the smaller woman loose. A few feet away, Thaïs watches Hope swinging back and forth on the monster’s back as a sudden realization hits them. Thaïs holds up a single index finger toward their student.
THAÏS: Be right back. I have an idea.
HOPE: It better be a good idea!
Thaïs takes two quick steps backward before spinning around and sprinting toward the side of the ring.
Near the bottom of the ramp, Bia violently rips her shoulders around in one sharp, explosive whip, bucking Hope completely off her back and sending her flying forward through the air! Hope lands hard on her boots in front of Bia, her knees buckling slightly from the jolt, though she keeps her balance and stays off her back.
Bia immediately lunges forward with a driving boot aimed at Hope’s sternum, forcing Hope to tuck her chin and roll across the floor mats out of harm’s way. With silver thumbtacks still glinting inside her bloody temple and cheek, Bia pivots on her good leg and lashes out with a vicious roundhouse kick that whistles millimeters past Hope’s ear.
Hope rolls clear of the missed kick, springs to her feet, and sprints straight toward the ring apron. Bia charges right after her, stepping directly in front of the row of three parallel wooden tables as she closes the distance.
Hope leaps onto the edge of the ring apron, bounds upward onto the glowing bottom rope, and twists around 180 degrees in mid-air to launch a modified DRAGON KICK (Springboard Single-Leg Dropkick)!
Hope’s boot sole smashes flush into Bia’s tack-riddled face!
Bia’s head snaps violently backward. Her heavy body lurches backward on unsteady, jelly legs until the backs of her thighs slam hard against the edge of the nearest wooden table.
Hope lands cleanly on her feet and straightens up just as Thaïs comes rushing back around the ringpost, carrying a heavy steel chair wrapped tightly in razor-sharp barbed wire that they dragged out from under the ring frame. Thaïs holds the barbed-wire chair out between them, offering the handle to Hope.
Hope looks down at the ugly weapon and hesitates, her chest heaving.
HOPE: My fight.
Thaïs reaches out, grabs Hope’s blood-stained hand, and physically wraps her trembling fingers around the cold steel leg of the chair.
THAÏS: I’m not the one hitting her with it.
Hope looks down at the jagged coils of barbed wire glinting in her hands under the blacklights, then looks up at Bia wobbling out on her feet in front of the wooden tables.
THAÏS: You are.
Hope steps forward, raises the steel chair high above her head with both hands, and brings the barbed-wire wrapped seat crashing straight down onto the crown of Bia’s skull!
CRACK-RIP!
A visceral mixture of guttural groans, bloodthirsty cheers, and horrified screams washes over the ringside area from the crowd. Hope yanks the barbed wire back, tearing fresh skin from the champion’s scalp, yet somehow Bia remains standing on locked knees—swaying dangerously in place as fresh rivers of pitch-black blood drizzle down over her eyes.
Hope stares up at the unyielding monster, her voice cracking in a sincere, exhausted plea:
HOPE: Please just fall.
Hope slowly raises the barbed-wire chair overhead for a second strike. Before she can swing, Bia’s knees finally give out completely underneath her, and the 165-pound champion collapses backward onto the row of tables, sprawling out flat on her spine across the table closest to the ring.
Hope lets the barbed-wire chair clatter to the floor beside her boots. Thaïs rushes forward, pointing frantically at the unconscious champion laid out across the wood.
THAÏS: Pin her on the table. I will count it.
Hope does not move a muscle. She just stands there, chest heaving, staring down at Bia’s ribcage rising and falling on the table. Thaïs turns and looks at Hope in disbelief.
THAÏS: What are you doing?
HOPE: She will just kick out again.
Hope turns her back on the tables, limps as fast as her battered, bleeding body will allow, and climbs under the bottom cable back into the ring. Grabbing the ten-foot steel ladder lying near the ropes, she strains with trembling, exhausted arms to stand the heavy hardware upright and pull the hinged legs apart right beside the entrance-side cables.
Thaïs runs to the apron, slides quickly under the bottom rope, and grabs at the side rail of the ladder, pleading desperately with Hope to reconsider.
THAÏS: Hope, don’t! You’re hurt too badly! Just pin her, please!
Hope ignores the pleas completely. She plants her right boot on the bottom steel rung and begins pulling her bruised, tack-punctured body up the steps.
The climb is agonizingly slow. Every single rung requires a monumental effort as Hope’s ribs spasm, her skinny arms shake violently, and dark blood drips steadily from her chin onto the steel steps below. Halfway up the ten-foot structure, Hope’s left knee nearly gives out, forcing her to hug the side rails tight against her chest and suck in a ragged breath while twelve thousand people rise to their feet across the dark building, thousands of phones held high in the air.
Down below, realizing the kid cannot be talked down, all Thaïs can do is brace both hands tightly against the steel base of the ladder to keep it from tipping and whisper a silent prayer.
Hope finally reaches the absolute summit of the ten-foot ladder. Carefully, she steps one trembling leg over the apex to brace her boots on the far side facing ringside. Looking down from the dizzying height through the purple UV haze, Bia has not moved a single inch on the wooden table below—her eyes shut tight, her crimson-and-black face completely still.
Hope stands as tall as she can atop the narrow steel peak, draws in one deep, steadying breath, and leaps forward into the dark air—tucking her chin to flip forward into a massive senton bomb!
For two terrifying seconds, the entire Municipal Auditorium goes dead silent.
And then, on the table below, Bia moves—rolling frantically off the edge of the wood and crashing heavily onto the padded floor!
All anyone in the building hears is the apocalyptic, bone-shattering explosion of timber as Hope Levitt crashes spine-first straight through the empty wooden table and slams directly into the concrete-backed arena floor!
KRRR-CRACK-BOOM!
THAÏS: NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The entire crowd goes completely ballistic, twelve thousand people screaming in sheer terror and disbelief at the sickening wreckage at ringside. In the second row, a woman stands with both hands tangled in her hair, her eyes bugging out of her skull as she screams wordlessly down at the carnage.
Beside the wreckage, Bia braces a heavy hand against the apron skirt and pushes herself up to her feet, limping heavily over to the pile of splintered wood.
Hope lies buried flat on her back amidst the jagged pieces of broken timber and twisted metal table struts—not moving, not speaking, her eyes shut tight. Bia steps directly into the debris, lifts her heavy leather boot, and plants the sole squarely onto the center of Hope’s chest.
Inside the ring, Thaïs vaults straight through the ropes and comes flying into the scene, both fists balled tight and ready to fight.
THAÏS: Get off her! This is OVER.
Bia turns her blood-caked, tack-studded face and looks at Thaïs with dead, freezing eyes.
BIA: Count and it will be.
Thaïs screams a venomous curse right into Bia’s face, drops down to their knees in the splintered wood, and slaps the floor mat as fast as their arm can move just to end the nightmare. All around the building, the crowd counts along with the slaps—not cheering Bia’s triumph, but begging for the brutality to finally stop:
ONE…
TWO…
THREE!
DING! DING! DING!
BIA WINS
PINFALL VICTORY
Bia keeps her boot planted on Hope’s sternum for one final, cruel second before stepping off the wreckage. Limping heavily on her swollen left knee, her face and chest a horrific tapestry of smeared obsidian paint, glowing crimson, white glass dust, silver thumbtacks, and thick rivers of dark blood, the West Australian War Goddess snatches her PCW UNLEASHED Championship belt from timekeeper John Broady. Refusing to let Thaïs come within arm’s reach of her, Bia raises the gold high above her own head with one trembling, blood-slicked arm as a deafening wave of furious boos and garbage rains down around her.
On the floor, Hope Levitt remains completely unconscious amidst the shattered timber of the table, her glowing blue paint buried beneath blood and splinters, while Thaïs crawls immediately into the wreckage beside her—cradling their broken protégé’s head in their lap and screaming frantically toward the curtain for the ringside doctors.
The exact millisecond the timekeeper’s bell tolls—officially ending the match and freeing Thaïs from their shackles as referee—Thaïs explodes off their knees and spears Bia straight around the waist, tackling the 165-pound champion hard onto the ringside floor!
Thaïs mounts Bia’s torso and rains a furious, unhinged barrage of closed-fist punches down onto Bia’s lacerated, tack-studded face as twelve thousand people roar back to life! Bia snarls, grabs two handfuls of Thaïs’s tiger-striped referee collar, and violently rolls them over into the scattered table splinters, hammering heavy, clubbing forearms straight back into Thaïs’s jawline.
The two bitter enemies roll and brawl wildly around the perimeter of the ring, crashing into steel chairs and kicking up clouds of white phosphor dust and broken glass.
Dozens of black-shirted PCW security guards come sprinting down the metal entrance ramp in a panic, blowing right past two emergency medics pushing a wheeled gurney toward the table wreckage. While the swarm of security dives onto Thaïs and Bia—struggling desperately to pry the two brawling wrestlers apart on the far side of the apron—the two medics drop to their knees beside the unconscious Hope Levitt.
The ringside camera whips back and forth between the chaotic pull-apart brawl and the splintered timber. Kneeling in the wreckage, the two medics—one man and one woman, both eerily pale with jet-black hair and deep, sunken dark circles bruised beneath their eyes—move with unnatural, frantic speed.
On the far side of the ring, security finally drags Bia and Thaïs several feet apart, though both women are thrashing wildly against the bodies holding them, veins bulging in their necks as they scream bloody murder at one another over the guards’ shoulders.
Back at the shattered table, the two pale medics grab Hope’s limp, 110-pound frame straight out of the jagged wood and heave her directly onto the gurney mattress. No cervical neck brace. No rigid backboard. Zero medical care for her spine or skull. They yank the nylon straps tight across her chest and shins and immediately wheel the gurney rapidly up the metal entrance ramp.
At ringside, Thaïs rips their right arm free from a security guard’s grip and spins around—catching a fleeting glimpse of the two pale medics disappearing through the black curtain at the top of the stage with Hope.
A sudden, icy wave of dread washes over Thaïs’s blood-smeared face.
THAÏS: Let me go! I have to get to Hope!
Held back by six straining guards on the opposite side of the apron, Bia grins wide through a horrific mask of black blood, silver tacks, and crimson-stained teeth, howling across the ring:
BIA: You got hope left, mate! You lost them both in one night!
A handheld backstage camera operator sprints at full tilt down the narrow concrete corridor, trailing closely behind the two pale medics as they ram Hope’s gurney through the heavy steel double doors and out into the arena loading bay.
Waiting at the lip of the concrete dock is the rear end of a white ambulance. Its back bay doors stand wide open, its heavy rubber bumper pressed flush against the dock concrete, its diesel engine rumbling low and loud in the night air.
Without checking a single vital sign or hooking up a monitor, the two gaunt medics shove the gurney straight into the back of the rig. The metal wheels lock into the floor track with a sharp clack. Immediately, both medics step back out onto the concrete dock and slam the heavy rear bay doors shut.
The camera operator pulls up short, the lens panning awkwardly from the two silent medics to the locked rear doors—visibly confused as to why the crew just sealed their patient inside the back of the rig without climbing in to treat her.
Thinking fast, the cameraman scrambles down the concrete steps at the side of the loading dock, hits the asphalt, and hurries quietly along the white flank of the rumbling ambulance toward the front cab.
The driver-side window is rolled all the way down.
As the camera lens rises cautiously over the bottom edge of the open window frame, the sound of wicked, echoing cackling spills out from the dark cab.
Sitting in the passenger seat is Vespera Nyx. Sitting right behind the steering wheel in the driver’s seat is Taeler Virelle—the newly crowned Voodoo Pact Champions who defeated Tigress earlier in the night, with Taeler finally claiming the young rookie she has had her eye on for so long.
TAELER: Tigress kept her in such dry, shallow soil, my darling Vespera. Now she shall take root where the earth is rich, dark, and entirely mine.
NYX: The altar is dressed and the harvest is secured.
Taeler reaches her delicate fingers across the dashboard to pick up a pair of left-behind sunglasses. With a smooth flick of her wrist, the frames unfold, and she slowly slips them onto her face.
TAELER: Come, darling. The night is short… and I have waited an eternity to tend this flesh.
Nyx hits a switch on the console. A loud, jagged squawk erupts from the grille speaker before cutting into a slow, falling wail.
Taeler shifts the heavy transmission into drive and stomps the gas. Tires bark against the asphalt as the ambulance lurches forward and speeds toward the open street gate, wicked laughter spilling out of the open window beneath the howling alarm.
Behind them, a voice cuts through the exhaust fumes. Panic. Pure exhaustion.
The camera whips around to capture Thaïs sprinting desperately to the edge of the concrete loading dock, closely trailed by Jenna Jillian Walker and Delilah Hart.
Watching the taillights vanish into the New Orleans night, Thaïs’s legs finally give out. They collapse hard onto their knees at the edge of the dock and scream at the top of their lungs—raw, gutted agony bouncing off the cold concrete walls in unending echoes.