CHAPTERS
SEGMENT
ALYSSA KNIGHT-KEKOA
The camera fades in on Alyssa Knight-Kekoa standing alone in a dimly lit hallway. No smile. No playful energy. Just focus. Her hands are taped. Her eyes locked on the camera.
ALYSSA: Taylor Landry keeps asking why.
She tilts her head slightly.
ALYSSA: Why did I jump that barricade?
Alyssa lets out a small laugh.
ALYSSA: Taylor, you act like you’re some innocent victim caught in the middle of someone else’s problem.
She shakes her head.
ALYSSA: No. You made yourself part of the problem every single time you opened your mouth. Every time you backed Amethyst Caldwell. Every time you decided that disrespect was easier than accountability.
Alyssa takes a step closer.
ALYSSA: And when I finally got tired of listening? When I finally stopped being polite? Suddenly I’m the villain.
She shrugs.
ALYSSA: I can live with that.
Alyssa’s expression hardens.
ALYSSA: You want to talk about what happened on UNLEASHED? Let’s talk about it. The barricade didn’t stop me. The bodyguard didn’t stop me. The concourse didn’t stop me. And apparently neither did a large New York pizza.
A brief smirk crosses her face before disappearing.
ALYSSA: Because when I decided I was done being pushed around, there wasn’t a person in that building who was going to stop me from getting my hands on you.
She points directly into the camera.
ALYSSA: Now here’s the funny part. Amethyst Caldwell is banned from ringside. No backup. No distractions. No giant enforcer lurking around waiting to save the day. Just you and me.
The intensity in her voice rises.
ALYSSA: And that’s exactly what I’ve wanted from the beginning. Because for weeks you’ve hidden behind excuses. Hidden behind Amethyst. Hidden behind your own delusions. At PCW’s Terrordome, there won’t be anywhere left to hide.
Alyssa folds her arms.
ALYSSA: You say I’m weak. You say I’ve lost who I am. No. I finally remembered.
A faint glimpse of Mystique flashes across her face.
ALYSSA: And that’s the part that should scare you.
She leans forward one last time.
ALYSSA: Tonight, there are no barricades. No security. No Amethyst Caldwell. Just a bell. And when that bell rings, Taylor…
Alyssa’s eyes narrow.
ALYSSA: …you’re going to find out exactly why everyone keeps warning you about me.
The camera lingers on Alyssa’s cold stare before fading to black.
SEGMENT
TAYLOR LANDRY
An annoyed Taylor Landry is in her wrestling gear pacing through the hallways of the Municipal Auditorium.
“IT GIRL” TAYLOR LANDRY: It is likely that you are pleased with yourself right now Alyssa. The world saw you throw me into pizza! Do I look like peppers, pepperoni, grated cheese, or any other kind of ingredients for pizza? I’m far too attractive to be humiliated like that!!! Just because you’re a sore loser and can’t handle the fact that I took you out with one punch! One punch knocked your pathetic ass out. It’s not my fault that you lost. Nor is it my fault that you have a weak jaw, a weak mind, and a weak constitution.
Taylor’s face becomes red with anger.
“IT GIRL” TAYLOR LANDRY: Now you have a chance to face me once again with Amethyst banned from ringside! This is a woman who is not only my friend but she makes her living protecting me from the likes of you. You are someone who had a break from reality because your mind is weak, Alyssa it is really that simple! So, I will once again beat you tonight and what will be great is that you’ll have no excuse as to why I beat you.
Taylor takes a deep breath.
“IT GIRL” TAYLOR LANDRY: So if you don’t mind I’m walking out to the ring right now and beat your ass on my own! Who knows? I might just leave you in a pile of pasta just for kicks and giggles.
Taylor storms off and walks into Gorilla Position.
OPENING MATCH
ALYSSA KNIGHT-KEKOA
vs
TAYLOR LANDRY
AMETHYST CALDWELL IS BANNED FROM RINGSIDE
Taylor Landry stands in the corner of the ring, dripping with the kind of corporate, sensual arrogance that buys its own rules. Beside her is the looming, immovable presence of Amethyst Caldwell.
Referee Stephanie Marshall isn’t having it. She marches directly toward the corner, pointing a rigid finger straight up the entrance ramp. Caldwell is ejected.
Amethyst stares at the referee with a gaze that could cripple a grown man in its grip. But Marshall stands her ground.
MARSHALL: You’re banned from ringside!
Amethyst thumbs her nose at the referee then climbs through the ropes and drops to the floor. Heavy boots begin the long, slow walk up the ramp.
Taylor snaps. Furious. She invades Marshall’s personal space, jabbing a manicured finger, aggressively complaining about the ejection. The entitlement is on full display.
TAYLOR: WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?!
Marshall smirks.
MARSHALL: I’m the referee.
Then she signals for the bell.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
Alyssa Knight-Kekoa doesn’t flinch. She walks to the dead center of the ring and freezes. Her hands drop, loose and relaxed at her sides. Chin elevated. Unblinking. No shifting weight. No posturing. Just a cold, unnatural stillness that dares Landry to make the first move.
Taylor hears the bell, turns away from the referee, and charges. Pure reckless velocity.
Alyssa just steps off the center line. Taylor catches nothing but air.
Before Taylor can hit the brakes, Alyssa clamps onto the back of her neck. A Muay Thai clinch. Vise grip. Alyssa pulls Landry down and drives a rapid-fire series of short, sharp knees directly into the midsection. Brutal, targeted strikes delivered with military efficiency.
No wasted motion. Alyssa shifts her hips, ducks under Taylor’s arm, and launches her backward with a Saito suplex.
THUD.
Taylor’s shoulder blades spike into the mat. Alyssa bridges her hips, hooking the leg.
ONE…
Taylor kicks out. Too early.
Alyssa doesn’t give her room to breathe. She traps Taylor on the canvas, cranking down on a tight front face lock. Heavy hips. Cutting off the oxygen. Taylor thrashes, kicking her boots against the mat, clawing for survival. Landry pushes off the canvas, hauling both women up to a vertical base.
Desperation kicks in. Taylor’s hand shoots out, raking her nails deep across Alyssa’s eyes. Opportunistic cruelty from the Tiburon native.
Alyssa releases the grip, blinded for a split second. Taylor capitalizes. She launches off the opponent’s thigh, snapping a blistering Kickstart step-up enzuigiri into the side of Alyssa’s head.
Alyssa drops to one knee.
Taylor hits the ropes, comes rocketing back, and throws a sliding knee strike directly into Alyssa’s exposed jaw.
A lateral press.
ONE…
TWO…
Alyssa powers out, rolling a shoulder off the canvas.
Taylor is back on her feet. She grabs a handful of Alyssa’s hair, dragging her upright. Taylor tucks the head, hooking the front face lock, looking to execute the IT GIRL (Snap DDT).
Alyssa plants her boots. Dead weight. Taylor tries to swing her leg for momentum, but Alyssa violently shoves her away. Taylor stumbles backward, hitting the ropes. She rebounds right into a thunderous forearm strike from Alyssa. Bone on jaw.
Taylor collapses, rolling frantically under the bottom rope to escape the pressure.
BOO!
Inside the ring, Alyssa pushes herself up to one knee. Her eyes slide shut. A single, slow, heavy breath hisses out through her nose. The sharp, ringing pain in her jaw isn’t ignored—it is simply categorized. Filed away. Dismissed. Her eyes snap open. The slate is entirely wiped clean.
REFEREE: One! Two!
Taylor takes her time. Pacing the ringside mats. Catching her breath. Letting the referee’s count climb.
Eight! Nine!
Taylor slides back under the bottom rope.
Alyssa is on her instantly. She pounces, mounting Taylor, raining down a barrage of short, heavy strikes.
Taylor scrambles blindly. She grabs a thick fistful of Alyssa’s hair, dragging the doctor forward. Taylor yanks down hard, sending Alyssa crashing face-first into the middle turnbuckle.
Alyssa slumps.
Taylor springs up. TWICE AS NICE (Double Knee Drop into Backflip into Double Knee Drop). The knees dig deep into the spine.
Taylor hooks the leg.
ONE… TWO…
Alyssa kicks out.
Taylor doesn’t waste a second. She rolls Alyssa onto her stomach, stepping on the back of the knees, grabbing the wrists, and wrenching backward into an Inverted Surfboard stretch. Shoulders popping. Spine bending in unnatural directions.
Alyssa’s spine strains under the load. No panic. The diagnostic mind analyzes the pressure. Taylor shifts her center of gravity to gloat—a critical error in leverage. Alyssa exploits it. She torques her wrists inward, exploding upward with raw physical power to rip her arms free.
Taylor scrambles back, popping up to a vertical base, startled. Alyssa is already moving. No warning. HER VERDICT (Jumping Knee Strike) crushes Taylor’s jawline.
Taylor drops like stone. Alyssa hooks the leg.
ONE…
TWO…
THR—NO!
Taylor kicks out at two and a half, breath escaping in a ragged gasp. She rolls frantically across the canvas, wrapping herself into the protection of the ropes. Alyssa closes in to haul her back to the center. Taylor reaches through the bottom strand, fingers clawing blindly. Nails rake right across Alyssa’s eyes. Pure opportunistic malice.
Alyssa stumbles back, momentarily blinded. Taylor springs onto the middle rope, launching inward with a flying springboard forearm that clatters across Alyssa’s temple.
Alyssa drops hard. Taylor pins her down.
ONE…
TWO…
THR—NO!
Alyssa powers a shoulder up at two.
Taylor stalks, hovering behind Alyssa as the doctor struggles up. Taylor leaps, hunting for KNIFE IN THE BACK (Backstabber). Alyssa reads the shadow. She lunges forward, white-knuckling the top rope. Anchor weight. Taylor catches nothing but air, bouncing violently off Alyssa’s back and crashing spine-first onto the hard canvas.
Taylor groans. Alyssa turns, seizing Taylor by the waistband and hauling her dead weight into the turnbuckle pad. Slips behind. Waist lock clinched. Alyssa explodes backward, launching Taylor up and over for HER RECKONING (Corner German Suplex). Taylor’s neck impacts hard near the turnbuckle base.
Alyssa keeps her hands locked, arching into a high bridge.
ONE…
TWO…
THR—NO!
Taylor gets a shoulder up just before the hand hits three. Millimeters.
Alyssa breaks the bridge. She turns her attention to the corner, scaling the turnbuckles to set up HER ASCENSION (Avalanche Headstand Hurricanrana). Taylor is desperate. She grabs referee Stephanie Marshall by the shirt, shoving her violently into the adjacent ring ropes. The cables whip. Alyssa loses her footing on the slick turnbuckle, slipping and crashing heavily, crotched on the top iron.
Taylor smiles through the pain. She scales the ropes, joining Alyssa at the peak. Front facelock applied. Taylor lifts, executing a vertical superplex off the top rope. Impact shakes the ring. Taylor doesn’t stop. She rolls through the landing, instantly catching Alyssa’s waist from behind, leaping up into TAYDROP (Code Red). Alyssa’s spine is driven into the mat.
Taylor hooks both legs, screaming at the referee to count.
ONE…
TWO…
THR—NO!
Alyssa’s shoulder twitches off the canvas at the absolute final microsecond.
Taylor loses her mind. She beats her fists against the canvas, screaming at Marshall, throwing a massive tantrum. Completely frazzled because things aren’t breaking her way. Taylor forces herself up, running blindly, leaping for a Flying Chuck Kick.
Alyssa ducks low. Taylor misses entirely, sailing over her. Alyssa turns, tracking Taylor’s landing, and drives her directly down to the canvas with an aggressive takedown. Alyssa traps the arm, lacing her fingers, and wrenches back with HER SENTENCE (Crossface). Forearm biting into the cheekbone. Spine screaming.
Taylor shrieks in pain. She reaches out with her free hand, inching across the canvas, clawing desperately for the bottom rope. The rope is too far. Taylor turns her head, snapping her jaws shut, violently biting into the meat of Alyssa’s gripping hand.
Alyssa releases the hold, recoiling toward the center of the ring, clutching her bleeding knuckles. Taylor scrambles up the turnbuckle. She reaches the top, looks out at the booing crowd, and launches for AIRTAY (Split Legged Moonsault).
Alyssa moves. A quick roll out of the impact zone. Taylor crashes chest-first into the canvas with devastating, unprotected force. No water in the pool.
Alyssa doesn’t hesitate. The diagnostic mind registers the physical shock to Taylor’s ribs. Alyssa grabs the head, pulling it deep under her armpit, snapping her hands shut to lock in HER LEGACY (Guillotine Choke). She wraps her body around Taylor on the canvas, removing every conceivable exit.
Sudden movement at the curtain. Marisol Vilaro sprints down the entrance ramp. Heavy boots pounding the floor. She reaches ringside and slides a silver aerosol canister across the canvas, skittering it right under the bottom rope.
Marisol doesn’t stop. She darts around the ringpost and leaps onto the apron, slapping the top rope, screaming.
Referee Stephanie Marshall snaps. She abandons the submission check, lunging over to the ropes to get directly in Marisol’s face.
REFEREE: Get down! Get out of here right now!
On the mat, Taylor is broken. Her open palm slaps the canvas. Rapid-fire. Desperate. A blatant submission.
Marshall sees none of it. Her back is turned. Totally consumed by the argument on the apron.
MARSHALL: Leave now or I will disqualify Taylor!
VILARO: IF YOU DO THAT I WILL SUE YOU!
Alyssa tracks the referee’s eyes. Sees the distraction. The submission is entirely wasted. Frustration boils over. Alyssa releases the hold, letting Taylor drop like a sack of wet cement. Alyssa storms across the canvas toward the ropes. White-hot focus. She coils and throws a heavy forearm strike that shatters across Marisol’s jaw. Bone on bone. Marisol flies backward, crashing hard onto the ringside mats.
YEAH!!!!!!!!!!
Alyssa turns around, expecting to see Taylor still lying on the mat.
But she’s already on her feet, the canister gripped tight in her knuckles. Pshhh. A heavy cloud of VilaroRECOVERY+ mist fires directly into Alyssa’s wide-open eyes. Pure, ugly cheating.
Taylor drops the evidence, quickly kicking the silver bottle under the bottom rope. Gone.
Marshall turns away from the fallen Marisol, turning her attention back to the action.
Alyssa stumbles backward. Blindsided. She claws at her eyes, face burning, swinging her fists wildly at empty air. Blind. Totally vulnerable.
Taylor moves with lightning speed. She scrambles up the corner, balancing on the second turnbuckle. She lunges off the iron, launching her body directly at the blinded doctor.
She catches Alyssa’s head, flipping over in a tight, violent 360-degree arc. CALIFORNIA VACATION (Panama Sunrise). Alyssa’s head is spiked straight into the canvas with crushing force. Dead weight.
Taylor collapses over the body, hooking both legs deep. Marshall drops, slapping the canvas.
ONE…
TWO…
THREE!
Ding. Ding. Ding.
TAYLOR LANDRY WINS
PINFALL VICTORY
FUCK YOU TAYLOR!
(clap-clap cla-cla-clap!)
Stephanie Marshall raises Taylor Landry’s hand into the air. Taylor collapses against the referee, chest heaving, a smug, venomous grin plastered across her sweat-streaked face. She hoists herself up, gloating, completely unbothered by the wall of hostility radiating from the arena seats.
FUCK YOU TAYLOR!
(clap-clap cla-cla-clap!)
In the center of the ring, Alyssa Knight-Kekoa lies motionless. Unconscious. Spiked. Completely robbed of the victory. A woman who will awaken with a thirst for revenge.
MATCH TWO
THE V.I.P.
CHRIS MOSH
vs
VANCE ISAAC PARKER
The two V.I.P.’s of wrestling stare across the ring, their gazes colliding in the center.
The crowd chants.
FUCK YOU PARKER!
FUCK YOU MOSH!
FUCK YOU PARKER!
FUCK YOU MOSH!
The bell rings.
No feeling-out. No tentative circling. Mosh shoots low the instant the sound cracks through the arena, driving hard for a single-leg takedown—the kind of entry he’s drilled since he was sixteen years old in a Long Island wrestling room.
Parker sprawls.
Hips heavy. Shoulders dropping. Mosh’s grip slides down to the ankle and Parker snatches the front facelock on the way down, clamping Mosh’s skull against his ribs. The crowd howls. Two technicians. Zero room for error.
Mosh fights his base. Digs his toes into the canvas, powers up through Parker’s grip, and wrenches free—transitioning smoothly into a standing hammerlock. He torques the arm high between Parker’s shoulder blades. Parker’s face tightens. The pressure is real.
Parker doesn’t panic.
He rolls with the torque, flipping his body through to the mat, and in the same fluid motion he snags Mosh’s wrist and extends it across his own knee. Fujiwara armbar. Deep. Mosh’s elbow joint bends at an angle it shouldn’t. The referee, Grade Garret, drops to a knee beside them, watching for the tap.
No ropes to grab. No rope break in a street fight anyway.
Parker grinds his forearm across Mosh’s jaw—not just the hold, but the insult. Burying the bone into the teeth. Grinding.
Mosh’s free hand rakes across Parker’s face. Thumb searching. Finding the eye socket. Parker jerks back, the armbar slipping, and Mosh surges upright.
OHHHH…
A closed fist. Mosh loads it. Cracks it across Parker’s jawline—right hook, knuckles-first, no attempt to hide it. Street fight. No disqualification. Parker’s head snaps sideways and he stumbles into the ropes.
Mosh doesn’t wait. He drives forward, snatches Parker by the back of the neck, and launches him through the middle ropes. Parker crashes to the floor on the outside, shoulder hitting first, body rolling across the thin mats.
Mosh steps through the ropes. Drops to the floor. His eyes scan.
The steel chair is under the ring. Mosh pulls it out, folds it, and Parker is getting to his feet—wobbly, dazed—and Mosh swings for the head.
CRACK.
Chair meets ring post. Sparks fly. Parker ducked.
Parker’s boot drives into Mosh’s gut—folds him in half—and Parker hooks the arm, drops his hips, and snaps off a butterfly suplex on the floor mats. No give. Just the thin layer of foam over unforgiving concrete. Mosh’s back absorbs the full impact. The air leaves him in a single burst.
Parker doesn’t celebrate. He drags Mosh up by the hair, spins him, and whips him shoulder-first into the steel barricade.
The sound is ugly. Metal buckling. Flesh giving.
Mosh bounces off and crumples to the floor. When he looks up, blood is already streaming from a gash above his right eyebrow. It traces a dark line down his cheek, drips off his jawline, and spots the floor.
Parker grabs Mosh by the throat. One hand. He walks him backward and shoves him over the barricade. Mosh’s body cartwheels over the steel and crashes into the first row of chairs. Parker climbs over after him.
Concrete floor. No mats. Just the cold, hard surface of the audience section.
Parker mounts him. Two raw right hands to the temple—thud, thud—the kind that rattle the brain against the skull. He loads a third.
Mosh blocks it.
Sharp elbow. Upward. Catches Parker square in the nose. Parker’s head rocks back, blood trickling from both nostrils. Mosh doesn’t stop—he brings his boot up, drives a low thrust kick into Parker’s kneecap. Parker’s leg buckles. He hobbles backward, putting distance between them, climbing the concrete stadium stairs one pained step at a time.
Mosh rises. Blood smeared across his face now, dripping into his eye, but he’s smiling. That smug, rich-kid grin. He stalks up the stairs.
Parker is near the railing. Mosh grabs the back of his head with both hands and rams his face into the metal handrail.
CLANG.
Parker’s body goes slack for a half-second. Mosh sees the bottle. Glass. Brown. Half-empty. Sitting on the ledge where a fan abandoned it. He grabs it by the neck.
Parker turns. Desperate. He lunges forward for a tackle—pure instinct, no technique, just survival.
Mosh steps into the charge.
The bottle comes down. Full force. Dead center of Parker’s forehead.
The glass explodes. Beer and shards and blood everywhere. Parker’s eyes go blank. His legs give out and he collapses backward onto the concrete steps, his body folding awkwardly, head lolling. Blood pours from his forehead, mixing with the beer, running down the steps in thin red rivulets.
Mosh drops down. Lateral press. He hooks Parker’s leg against the unforgiving concrete.
Grade Garret scrambles up the stairs, slides into position.
ONE…
The crowd holds its breath.
TWO…
Parker’s shoulder shoots off the concrete. A reflex. A survival instinct. His eyes are still glassed over, but he’s not done.
Mosh leaps to his feet and gets in Garret’s face.
MOSH: FASTER! LIKE THIS!
He smacks his hands like a machine gun on burst mode.
Meanwhile, Parker is pushing himself to his feet.
He’s still bleeding—forehead split open, blood threading down through his eyebrows, dripping off the bridge of his nose—but the instinct kicks in. He shoots. A double-leg this time, driving through Mosh’s waist on the concrete stairs. Mosh’s back hits the steps hard. Vertebrae against stone.
Parker mounts. Hips sinking. Knees pinning Mosh’s arms for a half-second before the ground-and-pound starts. Left forearm. Right fist. Left elbow. Right palm strike. Rhythmic. Methodical. The kind of assault that doesn’t need to be pretty to be effective. Mosh covers up—forearms shielding his face, the blood from his eyebrow gash smearing across his own skin—and he scrambles. Hips bucking. Finding a sliver of space. He claws his way upright, Parker’s fists still clipping his shoulders and the side of his head.
They don’t stop. They can’t stop.
Through the entry tunnels they tear into each other. Mosh grabs a handful of Parker’s jorts. Parker snatches Mosh’s arm sleeve and rips it half-off. Shoulder against cinderblock. Elbow into ribcage. They stumble through the curtained-off backstage corridor and spill out onto the arena concourse.
Smooth polished concrete. Vendor stalls. The smell of popcorn and spilled beer and industrial cleaner.
The crowd in the nearby sections is on its feet, craning, phones out. The concourse workers have scattered.
Mosh throws a wild right hook. Everything behind it. Parker ducks under—the fist whistles past his ear—and Parker’s hand finds the back of Mosh’s neck. Fingers digging into the muscle. He doesn’t slow down. He drives forward and Mosh’s face hits the popcorn machine.
The glass doesn’t crack. It shatters.
THOOM-crash. The thick front panel of the machine explodes inward. Popcorn kernels burst outward in a yellow-white cloud. Butter and glass and blood. Mosh’s body rebounds backward, his face a mask of crimson, new gashes opened across his forehead and both cheeks. Shards of glass cling to his skin. He hits the concourse tile flat on his back. His chest is still moving. Barely.
HOLY SHIT!
HOLY SHIT!
HOLY SHIT!
Parker drops onto him. Hooks the leg. Grade Garret slides across the slick tile.
ONE…
TWO…
Mosh kicks out. The shoulder comes up. Not dead yet.
Parker’s jaw tightens. He stands and kicks a dent into the side of the popcorn machine—the metal buckling inward with a hollow boom—and he reaches down to grab Mosh again. Fingers wrapping around the collar.
Mosh trips his leg.
It’s desperate. Ugly. A last-ditch grab at Parker’s ankle that yanks his base out from under him. Parker’s face smacks the tile. Mosh rolls, still blind with blood, and clamps on a grounded front facelock. He drags himself to his knees, hauling Parker’s head with him, and spikes a kneeling DDT into the concourse floor. The top of Parker’s skull drives into the tile.
Mosh doesn’t stop. He kicks Parker’s knee—same knee he attacked earlier, the same buckling leg—and Parker’s stance crumbles. Mosh pulls himself upright by the nearest vendor table, grabs a fistful of Parker’s hair, and hits a second DDT. Full standing this time. Parker’s body whips over and the back of his head cracks against the tile.
Mosh hooks the leg.
ONE…
TWO…
Parker’s shoulder shoots up. Grade Garret holds up two fingers. The crowd roars.
Both men lie on the concourse floor for a long count of three. Chests heaving. Blood pooling on the tile. The fight has carved a path of destruction—shattered glass, scattered popcorn, dented steel—and it’s not done.
Mosh rolls first. Parker rolls second. They crawl toward the loading doors.
A forearm to the jaw. A palm strike to the ear. They crash through the loading doors together—the metal swinging wide—and spill into the adjacent parking garage. The air changes. Cold concrete. Dim fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. Oil stains on the floor. The echo of their breathing bouncing off the low ceiling.
Exhausted. Both of them.
They stand on legs that don’t want to hold them. Parker’s jorts are torn. Mosh’s arm sleeve hangs by threads. Blood everywhere now—Mosh’s face is a crimson mess, Parker’s forehead still leaking through the dried streaks.
They trade.
A looping right from Parker catches Mosh’s jaw. Mosh’s head turns with it, but he comes back with a looping left of his own. Parker absorbs it across the cheekbone. Another from Parker. Another from Mosh. Slow. Heavy. The kind of punches thrown by men who have nothing left except the refusal to fall down.
Headlights.
They flash on behind Mosh. Two white beams cutting through the dim garage, casting long shadows across the concrete. Parker sees them first. His eyes widen. The reflection dances in his pupils.
A Cybertruck. Stainless steel. Silent except for the sudden electric whine of acceleration.
Mosh is winding up. Right fist cocked back, facing away from the headlights, oblivious. He doesn’t hear it. He doesn’t see it.
Parker dives. Not toward Mosh. Away. He throws his body to the side, hitting the concrete floor hard, rolling.
Mosh turns.
The truck is there.
The impact is not a thud. It’s a detonation. Two thousand pounds of angled steel and electric torque clips Mosh at the hip and his body folds wrong—sideways, then airborne—and he flies. He hits the concrete ten feet away and rolls like a discarded mannequin, limbs flopping, no control, no awareness.
The Cybertruck screeches around a corner and vanishes into the garage’s lower level. Tires squealing. Then silence.
Parker pushes himself off the concrete. His chest heaves. His eyes scan the empty garage—the space where the truck was, the corner it disappeared around, the motionless body of Chris Mosh sprawled on the cold floor.
Confusion. Genuine, unscripted confusion on Parker’s face.
He looks at Mosh. Looks at the empty garage. Looks back at Mosh.
Vance Isaac Parker shrugs his shoulders.
He crawls over. Slow. Every movement costs him. He drapes an arm across Mosh’s chest. Hooks the leg. The blood from Parker’s forehead drips onto Mosh’s ruined gear.
Grade Garret drops to the concrete. His hand slaps the floor.
ONE…
TWO…
THREE.
The bell.
VANCE ISAAC PARKER WINS
PINFALL VICTORY
The parking garage swallows the sound. No music. No celebration. Just the buzz of fluorescent lights and the ragged breathing of a man who survived.
Grade Garret rises. He lifts Parker’s hand into the cold garage air. Parker doesn’t raise it himself. He just kneels there, staring at Mosh’s motionless form, still trying to process what happened.
Mosh doesn’t move. Face down. Blood spreading beneath him in a slow, dark halo on the concrete. The paramedics are already pushing through the loading doors.
Vance Isaac Parker won. He doesn’t look like he knows it yet.
SEGMENT
THAÏS
BACKYARD – SUNSET
The camera opened on Thaïs Empristikí standing in the backyard of their home as sunset painted the sky in soft streaks of amber, pink, and violet. A fire pit crackled nearby, its warm glow dancing across the stone patio and casting gentle flickers of orange light across their face. The evening air was calm, almost peaceful, but Thaïs carried a visible heaviness in their posture. Their arms rested loosely at their sides, shoulders slightly slumped as they stared into the fire, collecting their thoughts.
For a few quiet moments, only the sound of crackling wood filled the silence. Then Thaïs looked up toward the camera, and a small, genuine smile touched their lips.
THAÏS: (softly, almost fondly) Marilyn Matthews… Now that’s a name that’s been on my bucket list for a long time.
They let out a quiet laugh, shaking their head in disbelief.
THAÏS: (warm and sincere) Retirement status or not, part of me always hoped our paths would cross in this ring somehow. And honestly? I’m really glad circumstances came together in a way that allows you to compete again. You deserve that. Wrestling deserves that.
There was no hostility in their expression—only admiration.
THAÏS: I know you’re excited for this, and… truthfully, so am I.
Their smile slowly faded into something more conflicted as they lowered their gaze back to the fire.
THAÏS: (choosing their next words carefully) But Marilyn… I wish this was happening under different circumstances.
Thaïs slowly began pacing around the fire pit, hands running through their hair before settling on their hips.
THAÏS: Under any other conditions, this would just be a dream match for me. A chance to test myself against someone I’ve respected for so long. (pain creeping into their voice) But that’s not what this is.
The weight of everything settled visibly onto their shoulders.
THAÏS: Because you’re walking into something much bigger than just a match.
Thaïs exhaled slowly, their expression tightening.
THAÏS: You don’t understand how personal this has become for me.
Their voice didn’t harden—it broke, just slightly, under the weight of emotion.
THAÏS: Because no matter who walks out as champion tonight… I have an axe to grind with both of them.
At the mention of Yelena Gorgo, frustration flashed across their face.
THAÏS: (jaw tightening) Yelena… and Black Rainbow have terrorized wrestling across promotions for over a year now. Everywhere they go, they leave chaos behind. They manipulate, they hurt people, and they poison everything they touch.
Thaïs stared into the flames again.
THAÏS: And it has to stop.
They swallowed hard.
THAÏS: I’ve fought Yelena before. I beat her. But I’m not naïve enough to think that means this will be easy. (eyes lifting again, determined) A one-on-one fight with her now would be completely different. She’s more dangerous than ever.
Their hand tightened into a fist over their heart.
THAÏS: (quietly, but with immense conviction) But I’m still here. I’ve had setbacks. I’ve taken losses. I’ve been hurt. (voice trembling, though keeping control) But I’m still here.
A long silence followed before their expression softened again—this time into unmistakable heartbreak.
THAÏS: And that brings me to… Bia.
At Bia’s name, Thaïs looked away from the camera entirely, blinking rapidly.
THAÏS: (barely above a whisper) Bia… I loved you like the sister I never had.
The confession hung heavily in the air.
THAÏS: We fought side by side for over a year. We bled together. We survived together.
Thaïs rubbed at their face, trying to keep composure.
THAÏS: I won’t apologize for stepping in. (voice cracking) I won’t. (taking a shaky breath) Because you were dying out there.
The words came raw and unfiltered.
THAÏS: You were pushing yourself past every limit, and you were too stubborn to stop—even when stopping was the only way to survive and still win.
Their hand pressed against their chest.
THAÏS: I stepped in because I cared.
Tears threatened at the corners of their eyes, though none fell.
THAÏS: I thought… I thought that would matter.
The silence afterward felt crushing.
THAÏS: I thought caring would be enough.
Slowly, hurt gave way to disappointment.
THAÏS: But now I see you getting closer and closer to Black Rainbow.
Thaïs shook their head, bewildered.
THAÏS: (no bitterness, only pain) And I don’t understand it. After everything you said about them. After everything they did to another promotion. After all the anger, all the outrage… (swallowing) You walked away from Eternia only to stand beside the very thing you hated.
Their eyes met the camera again, pleading now.
THAÏS: My words aren’t reaching you. Nobody’s are.
Thaïs stepped closer, firelight reflecting in their glassy eyes.
THAÏS: So I don’t know what else to do. (voice dropping, fragile but resolute) If words won’t reach you… (drawing a slow breath) Then maybe actions will.
They turned slightly toward the fire, watching the flames dance.
THAÏS: (softly, regret heavy in their tone) Marilyn… I really am sorry you’re caught in the middle of this.
Then they faced the camera fully once more.
THAÏS: But I don’t have the luxury of backing down.
Their posture straightened. The exhaustion remained, but so did ironclad determination.
THAÏS: (steadying) I need that number one contendership. And I need that championship.
Not arrogance. Not bravado. Need.
THAÏS: Because this has to end.
The camera lingered as Thaïs stood silently beside the fire, sunset finally giving way to night, the flames becoming the only light left. Their expression held no anger now—only determination sharpened by love, grief, and desperation.
MATCH THREE
PCW VOODOO PACT CHAMPIONSHIP
EVOLVE
UNCLE SINISTER
MICHAEL SHAW
SAM STEEL
vs
THE BLACK RAINBOW
DATURA
LILY BRIAR
SELENE PYRE
The bell rings sharp and clean, and the crowd settles into that particular hush that only championship fights earn—eight thousand and change packed into this building, all of them leaning forward.
Sam Steele steps through the ropes first for EVOLVE. No hesitation. Shoulders loose, chin down. Selene Pyr mirrors him from the Black Rainbow corner. She doesn’t blink.
They circle once. Twice.
Steele explodes.
No collar-and-elbow. No feeling-out. He drops levels and shoots, snatching Selene’s lead leg with both hands. Single-leg takedown, textbook, and he’s already torquing the ankle, stepping over into a half-crab before Selene’s back fully hits the canvas. The pressure comes fast—Steele doesn’t ease into submissions, he applies them.
The crowd stirs. Early, technical, but the intent is clear: Steele wants to test how much Selene can absorb and how quickly.
Selene’s face tightens. That’s it. No screaming, no thrashing. She exhales through clenched teeth and rolls with the torque, using Steele’s own momentum to turn through the hold. A sharp kick of her free leg and Steele’s grip breaks. She pops up, weight shifting, and before Steele can reset—
CRACK.
A basement dropkick straight to the jaw. Steele’s head snaps back. The crowd winces. Selene doesn’t celebrate. She just watches him scramble backward, watches him reach for his corner.
The tag is made.
Michael Shaw steps in. The pace changes immediately—where Steele was explosive, Shaw is deliberate. He meets Selene in the center with a collar-and-elbow tie-up, and the height differential tells the story immediately. Shaw uses his leverage, walking her backward step by step until Selene’s spine meets the EVOLVE turnbuckle pads.
The referee moves to force the break. Shaw raises his hands—clean, compliant.
Uncle Sinister does not.
From the apron, Sinister drives a forearm into Selene’s lower back, right between the shoulder blades. The referee’s head turns, but Sinister is already gone, hands raised in mock innocence. The crowd boos, a rolling wave of disapproval.
Shaw doesn’t waste the gift. He snatches Selene into a snap suplex—hips up, rotation tight, Selene’s body arched and then flattened. He floats over into the cover, hooking the far leg.
ONE…
TWO—
Selene kicks out. Not desperate. Decisive. Her eyes stay locked on Shaw.
Shaw transitions without pause. He slides into a chinlock, forearms braced against the jawline, and drags Selene flat to the mat. The EVOLVE corner is right there—close enough for tags, for chatter, for control. Shaw keeps his weight centered, keeps Selene’s head cranked at an angle that makes reaching her corner a distant proposition.
The crowd begins to clap. Rhythmic. Building. Get her home.
Selene’s elbow finds Shaw’s ribs. Once. Twice. Third time the grip loosens. She powers to her feet, breaks free with a sharp twist, and lunges.
The tag connects.
Lily Briar springboards in one fluid motion—feet touch the top rope and she’s airborne, a flying crossbody that catches Shaw square in the chest. They tumble. Shaw’s shoulders hit the mat.
ONE—
Shaw kicks out, but Lily is already up, already moving. Running forearm smash. Another. A third. Shaw retreats, back hitting the ropes. The crowd’s energy shifts—something fast and chaotic is building. Lily presses forward, looking to chain another attack.
Shaw bounces off the ropes. And the blind tag happens.
Lily doesn’t see it. She’s already launching into a tilt-a-whirl headscissors on Shaw, legs wrapping for the rotation—
Uncle Sinister meets her mid-spin.
The clothesline is brutal. Sinister’s arm catches Lily at the collarbone and simply erases her trajectory. She folds backward, landing flat, arms splayed. The crowd goes quiet for half a beat—that specific silence when a body hits the mat wrong.
Sinister doesn’t cover immediately. He drags Lily to center by the wrist. Positions her. Then—
POWERBOMB.
Lily’s body jackknifes on impact, her shoulders pinned flat.
ONE…
TWO…
THR—NO!
Lily kicks out. Her body bucks, instinct more than strategy. Sinister’s expression doesn’t change. He just pulls her toward the EVOLVE corner by the hair, tags Steele back in, and steps out.
The isolation tightens.
Steele enters and goes to work in the corner. European uppercut. Another. A third—each one snapping Lily’s head back, dropping her incrementally lower until she’s seated against the bottom turnbuckle, chest heaving. Steele backs up two steps, then charges. Running knee-lift. Lily’s head rocks sideways.
Steele hooks the leg.
ONE…
TWO…
THR—
Datura crashes into the frame, stomping Steele’s back to break the count. The referee physically inserts himself, arms waving, guiding Datura toward her corner. Behind his back, Shaw slips a forearm across Lily’s throat, pressing her against the middle rope. The rope burns. The pressure cuts off air. Lily’s legs kick weakly.
The referee turns. Shaw releases. Nothing happened.
Steele pulls Lily up, tucks her head under one arm, and lifts. FALCON ARROW. Lily’s back meets the mat at full velocity, Steele’s body weight driving through.
ONE…
TWO…
THR—KICKOUT!
The crowd exhales. Lily’s shoulder came up. Barely.
Steele doesn’t argue the count. He shifts behind her, locking his grip for a back suplex. But Lily is already twisting—slipping through his arms, rotating mid-escape—
Sitout jawbreaker.
Steele’s chin connects with the crown of Lily’s skull. His legs buckle. He drops.
Now they’re both down. Both crawling. Opposite directions. The ring feels enormous between them. The crowd rises, clapping, willing someone—anyone—to reach their corner first.
The ring splits open.
Lily lunges. Datura’s hand extends across the divide—fingertips meet, grip locks. Hot tag. Simultaneous with Steele slapping Shaw’s chest on the opposite side. Two fresh bodies. Two different kinds of momentum.
Datura clears the ropes at a dead sprint. Shaw swings a lariat meant to decapitate—she ducks under it, feeling the wind of his arm pass over her scalp. She hits the far ropes, rebounds, and the dropkick doesn’t go high. It goes low. Shin against kneecap. Shaw’s leg buckles sideways. The base is gone. He drops to one knee like a building losing its foundation.
She doesn’t let him breathe.
European uppercut. Jaw snaps left. Another. His head whips right. A third. Shaw’s eyes glaze for a half-second—that flicker of disconnect—and Datura seizes it. She hooks both arms behind his back, traps them, and spikes him. Straight-jacket DDT. Shaw’s skull meets canvas with a sound that travels.
The crowd erupts.
Uncle Sinister steps over the top rope, all six-foot-five and two hundred thirty-five pounds of bad intention. He lumbers toward Datura like something carved from stone. She turns. Sees the mass coming. Doesn’t try to fight it.
She pulls the top rope down.
Sinister’s momentum carries him over. His own weight betrays him—chest hits the rope, legs go up, and the big man tumbles to the floor with a crash that shakes the barricade. Eight thousand voices roar their approval.
Datura turns back toward the ring—
Shaw is already there. Already swinging. She drops her weight at the last possible instant, slips under the grapple, and the transition is seamless. She catches the arm. Threads it through. Fujiwara Armbar. Shaw’s elbow hyperextends. His face contorts.
Steele vaults through the ropes to break it—
Selene Pyr cuts him off mid-stride. Springboard back elbow. Steele never sees it coming. The point of her elbow catches him clean across the bridge of the nose and sends him staggering backward, spine meeting turnbuckle with a violent rattle. His legs threaten to go.
Lily Briar is already airborne.
Slingshot crossbody from the apron, sailing over the chaos in the ring, aimed at the floor. She crashes into Sinister just as he finds his feet, both of them tumbling into the ringside barricade. The impact makes a sound like a door being kicked in. Lily’s body—the same body that absorbed a powerbomb, a Falcon Arrow, three European uppercuts, and a rope choke—hits the floor and keeps moving. She slaps the mat, drags herself up.
Back inside, Datura releases the armbar. She tags Selene. The exchange is instant—Datura locks Shaw’s arm behind his back and stomps through it, and Selene is already in motion, already closing the gap.
Running pump kick.
Shaw’s head snaps sideways. He goes down hard. Selene drops into the cover, hooking the leg tight.
ONE…
TWO—
Shaw throws her off. Not a kickout—a dismissal. Pure strength. Selene tumbles sideways, rolling to absorb the momentum.
Shaw gets to his feet, slower than before. The leg Datura dropkicked drags slightly. His breathing is heavier. Selene measures him, draws back, and delivers a knife-edge chop across the chest. The sound is sharp. Definitive.
Shaw absorbs it. Doesn’t flinch.
He drives forward. Raw power. Selene’s feet slide backward, and she can’t stop the retreat. Shaw walks her into the EVOLVE corner like he’s parking a car, shoulder buried in her sternum. He reaches back and tags.
Uncle Sinister steps over the top rope. The size discrepancy is absurd—Selene’s head barely reaches his chest. He looks down at her. The crowd’s energy shifts toward unease.
Selene doesn’t wait. She charges. High-angle Yakuza kick, the heel aimed at Sinister’s jaw—
He takes it. Absorbs the strike and answers with a clubbing blow across her upper back. One shot. Selene drops to the mat like her strings were cut. The impact echoes.
Sinister raises his boot, aiming to stomp.
Selene rolls backward. The boot hits canvas. She’s already moving, already reaching—
Tag to Lily Briar.
Lily doesn’t climb the ropes. She doesn’t springboard. She goes through—drops to all fours and slides clean between Sinister’s legs, the kind of move that only works when the giant is too slow to close his stance. Sinister turns, confused, bending to find her.
Lily is already on the far ropes. Already springboarding. Already rotating.
Missile dropkick.
Both boots connect with Sinister’s jaw. His head snaps back. The big man wobbles—knees fighting to stay locked, arms out for balance—and then surrenders. One knee hits the mat. Then the other hand. Eight thousand people come unglued.
Lily lands on her feet. Chest heaving. Sweat plastering hair to her forehead. But she’s standing.
Sinister slaps Shaw’s shoulder. Tag. On the other side of the ring, Datura and Steele spill through the ropes simultaneously, their brawl already spilling onto the floor before the exchange is even complete.
Shaw closes on Lily like a closing door. She’s still recovering from the missile dropkick that put Sinister on his knees, still pulling air into lungs that have absorbed a powerbomb and a Falcon Arrow and thirty-seven other indignities tonight. He scoops her. Tilt-a-whirl backbreaker. Lily’s spine bends across his knee and she cries out—sharp, involuntary.
The crowd winces.
Shaw doesn’t cover. He pulls her up, whips her into the ropes. Lily rebounds, legs heavy—
LILY LASH.
It comes from nowhere. A spinning high-flying strike, her body rotating mid-air, and something—a forearm, an elbow, the blur of her—catches Shaw flush across the temple. He drops. Lily crashes down alongside him, scrambles, hooks the leg.
ONE…
TWO—
Steele’s shoulder drives into Datura on the floor. She hits the barricade hard, spine first, and Steele is already turning, already sliding under the bottom rope. His hand chops down across Lily’s back, breaking the count. The referee’s hand never reaches three.
Lily rolls away. Frustration flashes across her face. Three breaths. That’s all she gets.
Datura pulls herself up on the floor, slides in, and Selene Pyr is right behind her. They converge on Steele from opposite angles. Twin superkicks. Both boots connect—one to the jaw, one behind the ear. Steele goes stiff. The kind of stiff where consciousness flickers. He topples sideways and rolls under the bottom rope, hitting the floor with a dead-weight thud.
The crowd is on its feet. The noise is a living thing now.
Uncle Sinister steps over the top rope and the energy shifts. Eight thousand people’s excitement curdles into something more nervous. He doesn’t run. He marches. Datura and Selene exchange one glance—no words, just recognition—and dip under the bottom ropes in opposite directions. Smart. Survivable.
Sinister follows. He drops to the floor, rounds the corner, stalking.
Inside the ring, Lily sees Shaw stirring. She dives into the cover.
ONE…
TWO—
KICKOUT.
Shaw’s shoulder rises. Lily slaps the mat once—just once—and pulls herself up.
Outside, the geometry of violence shifts. Sinister rounds the ring corner. He sees Selene. He does not see Datura.
Datura is on all fours. In his blind spot. A human launchpad.
Selene charges. Foot on Datura’s back. Launches. Yakuza kick. Her heel drives into Sinister’s masked face with the force of a swung hammer. The giant stumbles backward—his legs don’t go, but the world tilts. His arms wheel.
Datura springs up. Runs. Straight at the staggering giant.
LADY DEATH.
Straight-jacket bullhammer elbow. Her arm traps his, and the point of her elbow meets his jaw with a sound like splitting wood. Sinister’s knees unlock. He goes down. Heavy. Final. Datura doesn’t wait to admire her work. She leaves Selene on the floor to keep the monster grounded and leaps onto the apron, hand extended toward Lily. Toward the tag.
Inside the ring, Shaw is waiting.
Lily pushes herself up. Shaw explodes out of the corner. He jumps—
DRAGON’S CALLING.
The stomp. The boot aimed at her skull.
Lily rolls.
Shaw’s boot crashes into canvas. The impact travels up his leg, through his hip, into his spine. He staggers. Lily is already lunging, already extending, and Datura’s hand meets hers.
Tag.
Datura enters like a woman who has studied this man’s weaknesses for an hour and found them all. They trade. Forearm for forearm. She’s faster—he’s bigger. The bigger wins. Shaw catches her mid-swing, hauls her up, and whips her into the corner. Datura’s back hits the turnbuckle and her legs nearly give.
Outside, Selene is in trouble. Sinister has recovered—masked face, dead eyes—and he’s got her pinned against the ring apron, forearm across her throat. Selene’s feet kick. Her face reddens.
Lily sees it.
She sprints. Full length of the ring apron, feet barely touching the thin padding, and launches.
CANDY CRUSH.
Missile dropkick. Both boots find Sinister’s face. His head snaps back and connects with the steel ring post—a sound that isn’t a crack or a thud but something deeper, something structural. The giant’s grip on Selene releases. He slides down the post and doesn’t move.
Lily hits the floor. Stays there. Selene gasps for air beside her.
Inside, Shaw charges the cornered Datura.
Datura pushes up. Hands find the top turnbuckle. Feet leave the canvas. Shaw’s momentum carries him forward and she kicks out—heel catching him flush in the jaw. His head snaps back. She grabs the arm. Stands tall on the ropes. Hooks her leg around his neck.
The crowd inhales.
MOONFLOWER.
She jumps. The rotation is tight, violent, Shaw’s body twisted around her leg, driven face-first into the mat with the force of a tornado leg drop. The impact shakes the ring.
Datura doesn’t pause. She rolls through. The arm is already trapped. She cranks it back. Fujiwara Armbar. Shaw’s elbow hyperextends at an angle that makes the front row recoil. His free hand hovers above the mat—trembling, fighting.
On the floor, Sam Steele stirs. He sees his partner. He sees the hold. He climbs.
Lily and Selene slide into the ring from opposite sides. Twin superkicks. Steele never takes a second step. Both boots connect. He drops. EVOLVE’s last hope hits the canvas and stays there.
Shaw’s hand hovers.
The crowd counts with every passing second. The pressure increases. Datura wrenches back. Shaw’s teeth clench. His eyes screw shut. His hand shakes.
Then it taps.
Furiously. Repeatedly. Against Datura’s own arm, against the mat, against the reality of the moment.
The bell rings.
THE BLACK RAINBOW WINS
SUBMISSION VICTORY
VOODOO PACT CHAMPIONS
Datura releases the hold. Her chest heaves. Sweat drips from her chin. She doesn’t stand—not yet. She rolls to her knees, breathing like someone who just climbed out of deep water.
Lily Briar crawls to the center. The same woman who absorbed a powerbomb, a Falcon Arrow, three European uppercuts, and a rope choke—she pulls herself to Datura’s side and drapes an arm across her shoulder. Her face is a mess of exhaustion and something that almost looks like disbelief.
Selene Pyr rises from the floor outside, one hand still massaging her throat where Sinister’s forearm pressed. She slides into the ring, slow, deliberate. She collects the chain that fell from somewhere—hers or Sinister’s, it doesn’t matter—and drapes it across the bottom rope like an offering.
The referee retrieves the Voodoo Pact Championship belts. Three of them. He hands one to Selene. She stares at it. No smile. Just that same expression of searching—trying to feel if this is real. She clutches it against her chest.
Lily takes hers and laughs. A wet, tired, disbelieving laugh. She holds it up to the lights and the eight thousand sing for her.
Datura stands last. The referee offers the third belt. She takes it. Looks at it. Then she turns to where Michael Shaw is still on the mat, clutching his arm, his face pressed into the canvas.
She crouches beside him. One hand on the back of his head. A moment. Quiet. Then she rises.
Black Rainbow stands together in the center of the ring. Datura. Lily. Selene. Three women. Three belts. One team.
On the outside, Steele sits against the barricade, head in his hands. Uncle Sinister is still down near the ring post, a hand moving vaguely toward his mask. Michael Shaw rolls to the apron and slides off, cradling his arm, refusing help from no one.
The crowd is still roaring.
Selene raises her belt. No howl. No growl. Just the belt. Just the proof.
Lily holds hers high, spinning slowly, showing all eight thousand what she did tonight.
Datura simply looks at hers. Then she tucks it under her arm and walks to the ropes, holding them open for her partners.
Black Rainbow exits together.
SEGMENT
ALEKI KEKOA
The camera feeds cut to a dimly lit concrete corridor backstage at the arena. Flickering fluorescent lights buzz overhead like dying insects. Prestige Wrestling Empire Prestige Champion Aleki Kekoa leans against a steel equipment crate, tape wrapped tight around his bruised ribs. A small butterfly bandage sits above his left eyebrow, crusted with dried blood from last night’s chair shots. His dark hair is matted with sweat, eyes intense and burning with barely-contained rage. He winces as he shifts, clutching his side, but straightens when the PCW interviewer approaches.
INTERVIEWER: Aleki, after what happened last night at PWE Scion, how are you even standing here ahead of tonight’s PCW Asylum Championship match against Samantha Tolson?
Aleki’s voice is low, gravelly, a bitter laugh escaping through gritted teeth.
ALEKI: Standing? Barely. Our illustrious owner and World Champion didn’t beat me. She “Gorgo-ed” shit up. She pulled the ref in front of my spear, then decided to play piñata with my body while the ref was out cold.
He touches the laceration, his fingers coming away with a fresh smear of red. His eyes flash with manic fury.
ALEKI: My ribs feel like they’re fuckin’ grinding glass. My head’s ringing like a goddamn church bell in hell. But you know what? Good. Pain keeps me awake. Pain reminds me I’m still breathing.
The camera draws close to Aleki’s face; sweat beads on his forehead, jaw clenched so tight the muscles twitch. A shadow of something sinister flickers across his expression for a split second.
ALEKI: And now here we are at PCW Terrordome for the inaugural PCW Asylum Championship. Asylum Rules. Keys. Wrought-iron fucking keys Sam and I both earned this last. They won’t tell us the full stipulation until the bell, but we both know those keys open something nasty. Something that fits right in my head right now.
He steps closer to the camera, breathing heavy, voice dropping into a venomous whisper.
ALEKI: Samantha Tolson. Sam. One of my favorite ghosts from One Wrestle Movement. She’s always thought she was better than me. Always. But when we step into the same ring together, especially with gold on the line, I left her either staring at the lights or her ass tossed out into the abyss. Remember the inaugural Tidebreaker Championship? Inaugural just like tonight. And I walked away champion. Until Alyssa was burned… and everything in me broke. And when I put on the Kai’roth mask and costume… lost in the dark waters of my own skull… what did Sam do? She laughed. Mocked me on every platform, every interview. Called my breakdown pathetic theater. Laughed at the Wrestling Divinity shit when I crawled back out too. I’ve been nothing but a punchline to her. Although the titles I have held since then say otherwise. Proof of my healing and evolution.
Aleki’s hands curl into fists, knuckles white. His breathing grows ragged—genuine pain mixing with old trauma resurfacing. For a moment his eyes glaze, like he’s seeing the flames again.
ALEKI: You never could let me have my demons, could you, Sam? You had to poke them. You had to laugh while I was drowning. Well tonight, here in the Terrordome, in this Asylum Rules match, my demons get the keys. I earned mine in a hellacious match after hours in solitary confinement. Not to say that you didn’t earn yours too. Good on you. I want you at full strength when I finally shut your mouth for good.
He slams a fist into the crate, metal echoing. A stagehand flinches off-camera.
ALEKI: This isn’t just about another title, Sam. This is about proving that even when my mind’s a fuckin’ warzone, even when my body’s taped together with spite and scar tissue… I’m still the one who walks out champion. My mental health? Asylum rules? Perfect. Lock me in. I’ve been living in one for years. And tonight, Sam Tolson, you’re about to find out what happens when you mock a man who’s already been to the bottom of the ocean and came back wearing championship gold.
Aleki stares dead into the lens, a twisted half-smile breaking through the pain.
ALEKI: See you in the asylum, Sam. Bring your crazy. I’m bringing mine.
The camera lingers on his battered face as he turns away, limping into the shadows. The lights overhead flicker once more before cutting to black.
MATCH FOUR
THE BILLION DOLLAR CHAMPIONSHIP
GINA NEON
vs
THE BILLION DOLLAR CHAMPION
MARISOL VILARO
The bell sounds clean and sharp. Stephanie Marshall signals for the opening.
Gina Neon comes forward with her hands up, bouncing light on the balls of her feet. Marisol Vilaro meets her in the center. No smile. No handshake. The champion’s chin stays high. Her eyes flick down at the smaller woman like she’s reading a quarterly loss.
Collar-and-elbow. They lock up.
Marisol snaps into a side headlock immediately—tight, grinding, her forearm mashed across Gina’s ear. She wrenches it once. Twice. Showing her. Making the point early: I’m stronger where it counts.
Gina doesn’t panic. She walks it toward the ropes, pushes off with a shove, and sends Marisol running.
The champion rebounds off the far cables. Gina drops flat. Marisol hurdles her. Keeps running. Gina pops up. Leapfrog. Marisol’s momentum carries her back toward the center and Gina catches her on the return with a deep arm drag—snap, rotation, back hits the canvas. Clean. The crowd erupts.
YAY!
Marisol scrambles up, face twisted. She lunges. Gina sidesteps and catches her with a hip toss—the arc is high, the landing flat. Marisol’s spine smacks the mat. She pushes up onto her elbows and Gina’s already in the air. Standing dropkick. Both boots catch the champion square in the chest and she topples backward, clutching her sternum.
Gina kips up. The crowd is already hers.
Marisol sits there. Rubbing the back of her head where it bounced off the canvas. Rubbing the spot between her shoulder blades. Her jaw works side to side. She looks at the ropes. Looks at the floor. Looks at the official.
And then she’s gone.
Under the bottom rope. Both feet hit the floor. Marisol paces ringside in a wide arc, chest heaving—not from exhaustion, from indignation. She jabs a finger toward a fan in the front row.
MARISOL: You don’t get to look at me! You pay to look at me!
Hans Richtershofen is there. He positions himself between the champion and the world, arms spread, shielding her like she’s a dignitary under threat. Marisol leans into him, breathing hard, muttering.
Stephanie Marshall begins the count.
ONE.
TWO.
THREE.
Gina stands in the ring. Hands on her hips. She cocks her head. Waits.
FOUR.
FIVE.
Marisol glances at the official. Then away. She’s not moving toward the ring. She’s walking parallel to it, further from the apron. Hans stays glued to her flank, a one-man security detail.
SIX.
Realization hits Gina’s face. Count-out. Marisol knows it. Marisol’s counting on it.
SEVEN.
Gina slides out.
She hits the floor running. Hans sees her coming and widens his stance, but Gina doesn’t slow down—she steps around him like he’s furniture, reaches out, grabs a fistful of the champion’s gear at the shoulder, and spins her around.
The right hand comes over the top. Full windup. Cartoonish and glorious and devastating all at once. It connects with Marisol’s jaw and the CRACK echoes off the barricade. The champion’s head snaps sideways. She staggers.
The crowd loses its mind.
Gina grabs a handful of that perfectly maintained hair and marches her back toward the ring. She rolls Marisol under the bottom rope like she’s heaving a duffel bag. Pops up onto the apron. The fans are standing.
GINA!
GINA!
GINA!
She’s back inside. Marisol is up on wobbly legs, still shaking off the cobwebs. Gina measures her. Three quick strides. Running forearm smash. The bone of Gina’s forearm drives through Marisol’s mouth, and the champion goes down hard—flat on her back, arms splayed.
Gina hooks the far leg.
ONE—
Marshall’s hand hits the mat.
Marisol kicks out. Not a panic kick. A message. Her jaw’s already reddening.
Gina doesn’t argue. She’s back up, light on her feet, motioning for Marisol to rise. The champion gets vertical and Gina closes the gap—but Marisol’s thumb finds the eye socket. Quick. Filthy. Hidden from Marshall’s line of sight.
Gina stumbles back, blinking hard, one hand pressed to her face.
Marisol seizes. She hooks Gina for a snap suplex—but Gina feels it coming. She plants her feet. Blocks the lift. Slips behind. Backslide. Both shoulders down.
ONE…
TWO—
Marisol kicks out with force, rolling through to her feet. She’s up and swinging wild. A haymaker meant to end things. Gina ducks underneath it, grabs the waistband, and rolls her through with the schoolgirl.
ONE…
TWO—
Shoulder up. Marisol’s face is a thunderstorm.
She rises and Gina’s already unloading. Over-the-top punches—each one a production, the arm winding back like she’s loading a slingshot. One to the ribs. One to the jaw. A third that snaps the champion’s head to the side. The crowd counts along. Gina backs her into the corner turnbuckle with each shot, then grabs her by the wrist and whips her in hard.
Marisol hits the pads chest-first. Her back bows. She slumps. The turnbuckle holds her up.
Gina turns to the crowd. The finger comes up then drops level with Marisol’s beedy eyes.
The entire crowd says it in unison.
YOU!
Gina walks the ring, jabbing that finger toward Marisol as the Fitness Queen circles away with a scowl.
GINA: NEON POWERRR!
She breaks into the sprint. Full speed toward the corner. The NEON KICK is loaded and the crowd is already on their feet.
Marisol’s eyes snap open.
She lunges out of the corner—not toward Gina. Toward Stephanie Marshall. Fingers hook into the referee’s collar. She yanks. Marshall is jerked sideways directly into the path of the charging challenger.
Gina sees it. Hips torque. Weight shifts. She slams the brakes so hard her sneakers squeal against the canvas. Her boot stops an inch from the official’s face. Marshall flinches, eyes squeezed shut, then realizes she’s still breathing. She pulls herself free and scrambles clear, chest heaving.
Gina exhales. Lowers her foot. Turns.
And Marisol is already in the air.
The clothesline catches Gina across the throat. Momentum, leverage, and three steps of runway. The impact flattens her—legs kicked out from under her, back hitting the mat with a sound like a door being kicked in.
Gina Neon stares up at the lights.
Marisol Vilaro stands over her, breathing through her teeth, adjusting her gear. The crowd rains down boos. She hears them. She doesn’t care.
She drops to the mat and starts doing push-ups over Gina’s motionless body.
The crowd comes unglued, blasting the ring with hatred as the Billion Dollar Champion rises and wipes her hands together like she’s dusting off after a workout.
Gina is still down. The champion mounts her—one knee on either side of the ribcage, settling her weight. The first forearm smash lands between Gina’s shoulder blades. The second. The third. Marshall tries to get in for a count but Marisol just keeps dropping them—stiff, piston-like, each one driving Gina’s chest harder into the canvas. The sound is wet leather on meat.
Gina’s legs kick weakly.
Marisol grabs a fistful of that side ponytail and hauls her up. Gina’s eyes are glassy. The champion hooks the head, drops her weight, and spins through. Headlock Takedown. Clean rotation. Gina’s skull bounces off the mat and she rolls onto her side, one hand going to the base of her neck.
Marisol stays on the headlock. Grinding. She looks out at the crowd with a flat, bored expression.
MARISOL: This is your hero?
The boos rain down. Hans Richtershofen claps from the floor.
Gina fights. One knee under her. Then the other. The crowd picks up. She’s pushing up, the champion’s weight hanging off her head like a millstone. Gina gets vertical and fires elbows into Marisol’s ribs—one, two, three sharp shots—and the hold breaks.
But the reprieve lasts half a second.
Marisol’s knee drives into the midsection. Gina folds in half. Air leaves her in a rush—audible, ugly. The champion catches the wrist mid-collapse and torques it around into the Spinning Wrist Lock. Gina’s arm twists behind her at an angle that sends the front rows wincing.
Marisol walks her in a slow circle. Showing her off. The joint is hyperextended, Gina’s fingers splayed and trembling. Marisol leans in close to her ear.
Then the kick. Swift. Surgical. The back of Gina’s knee buckles and she drops like a sack of wet cement.
Marisol rolls her over. Lateral press. Hooks the leg.
ONE…
TWO—
Gina’s shoulder rockets up. The crowd exhales.
Marisol doesn’t argue. Doesn’t even look at the official. She’s already transitioning, already folding Gina’s leg, already locking the Half Boston Crab. She sits back, deep, her weight leveraged across the lower lumbar. Gina’s spine bows.
The scream comes from somewhere primal.
Marshall is right there, asking the question. Gina’s head shakes violently. No. No. Her arms claw at the canvas. She drags herself. Inch by inch. The ropes are close—agonizingly close. Marisol leans back further, watching the ceiling.
Gina’s fingertips brush the bottom cable. Marshall calls for the break.
Marisol holds for the full four-count. Lets go at four-and-three-quarters. Steps back with her hands raised like she’s innocent. The boos are a wall of noise.
Gina uses the ropes to pull herself upright. Her back is a knot of pain. She’s moving like a woman ten years older.
Marisol charges.
Gina sidesteps. The champion crashes chest-first into the turnbuckle pads and staggers backward. Gina doesn’t hesitate—she bounces off the adjacent ropes and fires a dropkick into Marisol’s spine. The champion hits the buckles again, face-first this time. The crowd stirs.
Gina hits the far ropes. Momentum building. She’s coming back fast, arm cocked for the leaping clothesline. The building swells.
She leaves her feet.
And Marisol’s thumb finds the eye.
It’s hidden. Perfectly placed. Gina’s head snaps back in mid-air, her trajectory collapsing. She lands wrong—one leg buckling, both hands flying to her face. She’s blind. Stumbling.
Marshall didn’t catch it. Hans is already throwing his hands up, protesting innocence to no one.
Marisol wastes nothing. She grabs Gina from behind, waist-lock. Drives her forward into the ropes. They rebound. Both women bounce off the cables together—and Marisol drops her weight, pulling Gina backward into the O’Connor Roll.
They tumble. Marisol ends up on top. She sits deep on the backs of Gina’s thighs. Her fingers hook into the bright fabric of the zubaz trunks. A handful. A fistful. The stretch of the material is obvious—if Marshall had the angle. She doesn’t.
ONE…
TWO…
THR—
Gina’s shoulder rips free. Two-point-nine. The crowd erupts in relief.
Marisol’s head snaps toward Marshall. Her lips curl. She starts to protest but catches herself, smoothing her expression back into composure.
Gina rolls away. One hand pressed to her eye. The other pointing wildly at her own tights, then at Marisol, then at Marshall.
GINA: She pulled them! She had the tights!
Marshall turns, trying to piece together what she missed. The arena is loud. Confusion swirls.
And Marisol steps through the gap.
The kick comes with no warning. No setup. No dramatic windup. Just a sharp, vicious drive of the boot straight into the side of Gina’s face. The sound is a gunshot. Gina’s head whips sideways. Her body follows a half-second later, toppling onto its side, motionless.
The crowd goes silent. Then the heat comes.
Marshall spins around, eyes wide. She didn’t see it. She knows something happened. But she didn’t see it.
Marisol Vilaro stands over Gina Neon’s limp form. She doesn’t smile. She just looks down. Cold. Clinical. A woman who has removed an obstacle.
She drops. Hooks the leg. Casual. Like she’s clocking out.
ONE…
TWO—
Gina’s shoulder shoots up. Not close. Defiant.
The champion’s jaw tightens. She shifts her weight, rises just enough to drop an elbow across Gina’s sternum. The thud echoes. She hooks the leg again, deeper this time, wrenching it.
ONE…
TWO—
Kick out. Gina’s chest heaves. Her good eye is open and burning.
Marisol slaps the mat with both palms. She’s on her feet, pacing, fingers raking through her hair. barking at Marshall between reps.
MARISOL: That was three! Are you counting in Spanish? Do you need me to count for you?
Marshall stands firm. Two. It was two.
Marisol pops up, grabs a fistful of Gina’s hair, and yanks her up—
Gina’s arm shoots through the grip. Blocked. The crowd ignites.
What follows is thirty seconds of pure, uncut Neon Power.
The over-the-top punches come first—wild, looping, each one a full-body commitment. Right to the jaw. Left to the temple. Right to the mouth. Marisol’s head snaps with every impact, her legs turning to jelly. Gina grabs her by the wrist and whips her across the ring. Marisol rebounds. Gina’s already airborne—leaping clothesline, the forearm driven across the champion’s throat. Marisol flips, landing hard.
Gina doesn’t stop. She pulls Marisol up, tucks the head, and launches her with a deep hip toss. The champion’s back slaps the canvas. She rolls onto her hands and knees, hair hanging in her face, chest heaving.
Gina stands in the center of the ring. She’s breathing hard. Sweat dripping. But she’s smiling.
The crowd picks it up. A few voices at first. Then more. Then the whole building.
HEY GINA!
YOU’RE SO FINE!
YOU’RE SO FINE YOU
BLOW MY MIND!
HEY GINA!
HEY GINA!
Gina points. One finger sweeping the arena. Her grin is electric. She turns that finger toward Marisol.
The champion’s eyes are black fire.
Marisol shakes her fists out—like she’s recalibrating, rebooting. Then she explodes into a sprint. Full speed.
Gina pivots. Ole. The matador step is perfect—hips turning, shoulders rotating. Marisol hits nothing but turnbuckle. Chest-first. The pads absorb some of the impact but not all of it. She staggers backward, clutching her sternum.
Gina’s already in motion off the far ropes.
Running bulldog. Handful of hair. Drive forward. Marisol’s face gets planted into the center of the canvas. The thud is deep. Satisfying. The champion rolls onto her back, arms limp.
Gina looks around the building. She throws both arms up. The crowd rises with her.
She sprints for the corner. Leaps. Both feet hit the second rope. She springs backward into the rotation—
BACK TO THE FUTURE (Corner Springboard Moonsault)
—and Marisol is already moving.
Not to counter the move. To the referee. She grabs Stephanie Marshall by the shoulders and shoves—violent, desperate, two-handed. Marshall is hurled directly into the drop zone.
Gina is already committed. Already inverted. Already falling.
She crashes onto the official. Full weight. Full rotation. The impact folds Marshall underneath her, and both women collapse in a heap. The referee doesn’t move.
The ring is silent except for the crowd’s collective gasp.
Hans Richtershofen is already in motion. He reaches over the barricade, produces the can—VilaroRECOVERY+, label gleaming under the lights—and slides it across the apron into the ring.
Marisol catches it. Turns. Grins.
Gina is standing right there.
The grin dies.
Gina’s hand closes over Marisol’s wrist. She twists. The can changes hands. Gina rips it free, aims, and fires. A cloud of aerosol mist blasts directly into Marisol’s face. The champion shrieks, stumbling backward, arms windmilling. She hits the corner and drops to her knees, eyes squeezed shut, coughing.
Gina stands over her. Can raised. Finger on the trigger.
Marisol’s hands come together. Pressed palm to palm. Her voice cracks.
MARISOL: Please. Please. I’m sorry. No more. Please.
Gina hesitates. The can wavers. Her nature betrays her. She believes it. Just for a second.
Movement on the apron. Hans Richtershofen climbs the steel steps, one foot on the apron, reaching over the top rope—
Gina spins and fires. The spray catches him full in the face. Hans reels backward, clawing at his eyes, and topples off the apron. He hits the floor hard, rolling, pawing blindly at the barricade.
The can is still in Gina’s hand.
Marisol’s open palm drives into her throat.
The thrust comes from the knees—dirty, accurate, cowardly. Gina’s airway closes. She drops the can. Staggers backward, both hands clutching her neck, a wet choking sound escaping her lips.
The can hits the canvas. Marisol lunges. Gina sees it. She dives. Both women crash to the mat simultaneously, clawing after the weapon. Hands slap. Fingers tangle. The can skitters, spins, gets swatted by a wild elbow, and rolls under the bottom rope onto the floor.
Gone.
Something snaps.
The catfight erupts. Fists. Nails. Hair. They roll across the canvas in a tangle of neon zubaz and designer gear—scratching, punching, no technique, just violence. Marisol gets a handful of Gina’s ponytail and yanks. Gina answers with a wild right hand that catches the champion above the eyebrow. They tumble.
Under the bottom rope. Both of them. They hit the ringside floor in a heap and keep swinging.
Marshall is still down in the ring. Hans is blind near the barricade. There is no one to stop this.
Gina’s right hand connects flush. Marisol’s head snaps sideways, her legs buckling, and she drops to one knee on the floor. The punch echoes off the barricade. Gina shakes out her hand, chest heaving, and pushes herself up to standing.
She doesn’t see Hans.
He comes from the blind side—eyes bloodshot, veins corded in his neck, the muscle spray still glistening on his cheeks. Three hundred pounds of fury with a full head of steam.
The lariat hits Gina at the base of the throat. Her feet leave the floor. Her body rotates in the air—a full, violent arc—before she crashes onto the thinly padded mats with a sound like a cinder block dropped from height. She doesn’t move.
BOOOOOO!
Hans stands over her. Chest heaving. He delivers a kick to the ribs. Then another. Stiff. Punctuated. Each one shifts Gina’s limp body an inch across the floor.
He bends down, scoops Marisol up like she weighs nothing, and rolls her under the bottom rope into the ring. The champion crawls toward the center, still shaking off the cobwebs.
Inside, Stephanie Marshall is stirring. Marisol grabs her by the collar of her striped shirt and hauls her up with both hands. Her lips are an inch from the official’s face.
MARISOL: Get up! GET UP! You do your job or I will sue you! I will sue this company! I will sue your children! DO YOU HEAR ME?!
Marshall blinks. Dazed. Nodding. She doesn’t know what happened. Doesn’t know Hans interfered. She only knows the champion is screaming at her and there’s a challenger somewhere outside the ring.
She begins the count.
ONE.
TWO.
THREE.
Gina’s hand moves. Fingers twitching against the floor.
FOUR.
FIVE.
She grabs the ring skirt. The fabric bunches in her fist. She pulls. Her body doesn’t cooperate. Her legs are concrete. Her neck is a column of broken glass where the lariat connected.
SIX.
Gina gets a knee under her. Then the other knee. The crowd is pulling for her, willing her up. She lunges for the apron.
SEVEN.
Her hands slap the edge. She’s close. She’s right there.
EIGHT.
She pushes up. Gets one foot on the apron edge. The ring skirt slips. Her grip fails. She slides back.
NINE.
Gina throws herself forward. Desperate. Every ounce of Neon Power she’s ever had. Her arm reaches for the bottom rope—
TEN.
The bell rings.
BELL: DING DING DING!
Stephanie Marshall waves her arms. The match is over.
Gina Neon lies halfway under the bottom rope. Frozen. One arm still reaching.
MARISOL VILARO WINS
COUNTOUT VICTORY
The boos are a physical force. The building shakes with them.
Hans Richtershofen is already in the ring. Championship belt in hand. He straps it around Marisol’s waist, then drops to one knee and hoists her onto his shoulders. She rises above the ring, arms spread wide, the gold gleaming across her midsection, her smile haughty and luminous.
Hans parades her in a slow circle. She raises the title above her head with both hands. The boos get louder. She drinks them in.
On the floor, Gina sits up. One hand pressed to the back of her head. The other braced against the apron. Her hair has come loose from the scrunchie. Her shutter shades are long gone. Her eye is swollen. Her lip is split.
She glares through the ropes. Through the pain. Through the injustice.
GINA: THIS ISN’T OVER!
Her voice is raw. Cracked. But it carries.
Marisol looks down from her perch. She cocks her head. Studies the scene—Gina battered on the floor, the referee still out of sorts, Hans solid as a monument beneath her. Her smile doesn’t waver. She lifts one hand, presses her fingers to her lips, and blows a kiss toward the fallen challenger.
Slow. Dismissive. Regal.
The bell continues to ring. Marshall tries to restore order. Hans carries his champion in one final lap.
Gina Neon pulls herself up by the ring skirt. She stands on shaking legs. One hand on the apron. Watching.
The champion and her bodyguard retreat up the ramp. The Billion Dollar Title bounces against Marisol’s shoulder with every step.
Gina doesn’t look away.
SEGMENT
MARILYN MATTHEWS
A cameraman found Marilyn Matthews backstage. Already in her ring gear, she was working a few stretches and last minute preparations for her match tonight. She notices the camera and smiles. Without stopping her stretches she begins to speak.
MARILYN MATTHEWS: Thaïs Empristikí. I ain’t gonna stand here and take anything away from you. I’ve been keepin an eye on you for a long time. Even when I was into my forced retirement, I always watched the field, so to speak. See who is making waves, who I would have to face if I wanted to prove that I can do what I say. This match is gonna be a potential show stealer. I can say for a fact I ain’t gonna make this easy for you.
She pauses for a moment bending over at the waist. She straightens back up and continues.
MARILYN MATTHEWS: And I know for a fact that you won’t make this easy is for me. You have every right to be in this match. Hell, I’d say probably a little bit more than me. But that’s what is gonna make this the match it’s going to be. Two talented wrestlers, one of the quote New generation unquote and one from an older generation. But just because I’ve been doing this for well over a decade, don’t think for one second I’m gonna be a pushover. And, don’t think I’m writing you off because of that.
Marilyn smirks.
MARILYN MATTHEWS: You’re damn talented, Thaïs, damn talented. Like I said on social media the other day, whoever wins tonight, does so without argument. The winner tonight will be a worthy challenger. No matter who comes out champion tonight, their first defense will be just as tough as their match tonight. We will both make sure of that. So, like I said, Thaïs, may the best one win tonight.
Marilyn gives a little nod and a wink before walking out of frame.
MATCH FIVE
PCW ASYLUM CHAMPIONSHIP
SAM TOLSON
vs
ALEKI KEKOA
ASYLUM RULES
Born to Rule is still thundering through the speakers. Aleki Kekoa stands at center, head bowed, fist pressed to his chest—the Still Point, held like a heartbeat. Across from him, Samantha Tolson rolls her shoulders loose, eyes fixed on the man she came here to put away.
Ten feet of canvas between them. Neither moves.
A picture-in-picture window snaps open in the corner of the frame and expands.
MOMENTS AGO…
Sam Tolson walking. STARSET’s strings raw through the arena. She hits the stage and doesn’t slow. Referee Grade Garret waits at a rusted iron console. Tolson pulls a key from her gear—wrought iron, heavy—and slaps it into his palm. Garret slots it into the console.
CUT TO: Aleki Kekoa walking. Head down. Spotlight tight on his shoulders. At stage right, Referee Stephanie Marshall stands beside an identical console. Kekoa drops his key into her hand without looking. Marshall inserts it. Keys seated. Neither turned.
The window collapses and the shot is live in the ring on both wrestlers waiting like animals about to burst out of their cages to collide in violence.
Born to Rule fades. The arena holds its breath.
HAYES JR.: Ladies and gentlemen… tonight’s Asylum Rules match is…
A beat. The kind that makes people grip their seats.
HAYES JR.: …A PADDED CELL MATCH.
The crowd erupts in scattered bursts—cheers, confused shouts, a guy in the third row grabbing his friend’s arm.
HAYES JR.: To win, one wrestler must force their opponent inside the room…
On the stage, Garret and Marshall turn their keys.
CLANK.
The lights die. Two spotlights—harsh, white—stab down onto center stage. From beneath the floor, chains drag a rusted metal box into view, grinding upward inch by inch. Rivets along the seams. A door of solid iron facing the ring, its only feature a narrow observation window at head height.
HAYES JR.: …and lock them inside.
Garret grips the latch. Muscles it open. The door swings wide on screaming hinges. A camera pushes past him into the interior—dingy canvas stretched wall to wall, floor to ceiling, thick padding yellowed like old bone. No corners. No edges. A room that eats impact and gives nothing back.
Cut to Tolson.
Her jaw sets. Her eyes trace the distance from ring to stage, the dimensions of the door, the weight of the man she’ll have to put through it. She breathes once and finds her answer.
Cut to Kekoa.
He hasn’t moved. The fist against his chest. The flat, patient stare. He looks at the cell the way he looks at everything else—like he knew it would be there. Like the outcome was settled before the keys ever turned.
The bell rings.
Tolson doesn’t circle. Doesn’t feel him out. She shoots low and fast, closing the gap before the echo dies, arms wrapping his leg—testing his base, probing for a weakness that might not exist.
Kekoa sprawls. Heavy hips. One thick arm bars across her collarbone and shoves. She resets. Shoots again. He stuffs her a second time, then a third, each attempt ending the same way—Tolson redirected, Kekoa advancing.
He walks her down.
Not fast. Never fast. Step, step, step—the crowd rising with each one—until Tolson’s back hits the turnbuckle. Kekoa cocks his forearm. Lets it go. The impact cracks through the lower bowl. He loads another. Another. Each strike folding her smaller, his full weight behind every shot, making sure she understands exactly what two hundred sixty-five pounds feels like when it’s pressing the air out of her lungs.
Tolson’s knees dip. She clutches the ropes to stay upright.
Kekoa takes a half-step back to measure the next blow.
She explodes off the buckles.
A European uppercut snaps his head back. Then another. She ducks under his return swing and unloads—right kick to the thigh, left kick to the knee, right kick to the same spot, the sound switching from thud to thwack as the leg reddens. She’s chopping at the trunk, trying to fell something that doesn’t know how to fall.
Kekoa absorbs. Resets his stance. Waits.
Tolson backs up, lines him up, charges in for something bigger—and Kekoa catches her. Arms lock around her ribs. He pivots, momentum building toward a slam that would end anyone.
Her hips shift mid-rotation. Weight drops. She wrenches against his grip and somehow—impossibly—plants her feet and lifts, bridging hard, a German suplex that sends the Samoan War Machine arcing through the air and crashing to the mat shoulder-first.
The ring shakes.
The crowd is on its feet.
Tolson kips up, chest heaving, eyes wild. Kekoa pushes to one knee, then both, and looks at her across the canvas with an expression that isn’t shock. Isn’t anger.
It’s the first flicker of interest he’s shown all night.
Kekoa’s back hits the ropes. Tolson doesn’t let him breathe—she charges, arm cocked, and the lariat catches him across the throat. His feet leave the canvas. Her momentum carries her with him, both bodies tumbling over the top strand and crashing to the floor in a heap of limbs and ring apron skirt.
Tolson stirs first. She shoves off the ground, one hand gripping the barricade for balance.
Kekoa rises slower. He doesn’t look hurt. He looks inconvenienced.
He reaches under the ring. His arm disappears into the darkness beneath the apron. When it comes back, the sledgehammer comes with it—a brutal length of wood and steel, his name practically etched into the grip. He winds up. The head cuts an arc through the air where Tolson’s skull was a half-second earlier. She ducked. The hammer bites into the ring post instead, ringing it like a bell.
She doesn’t give him a second swing.
Tolson grabs him by the hair and drives his forehead into the steel steps. Once. Twice. The third impact leaves a dent. Kekoa staggers. Tolson doesn’t wait—she’s already under the ring herself, pulling a steel chair free, the legs unfolding with a crisp snap.
Crack. Across his shoulders. He stumbles forward.
Crack. Again. The chair warps. Kekoa drops to one knee.
Tolson raises it for a third.
Kekoa rolls his shoulders. Slow. Deliberate. The motion eats the pain. He stands. Turns. And Tolson sees it in his eyes—something behind the damage, something patient and ancient and entirely unimpressed.
He bull-rushes her. The chair clatters away. Kekoa drives her backward—six steps, eight, ten—until her spine meets the barricade with a sound that makes the front row wince. She gasps, trapped, his forearm digging under her chin.
Tolson rakes his eyes. He recoils. She grabs his wrist and whips him toward the ramp-side barricade, but Kekoa reverses—he sends her careening over the barrier into the timekeeper’s area, scattering monitors and water bottles.
She doesn’t stay down. Grabs a cable. Throws a monitor at his face. Misses, but it buys her a step. She vaults back over the barricade and they meet in the aisle—forearm for forearm, neither yielding, the fight grinding up the ramp in violent inches.
Tolson cracks him with a knee to the ribs. Kekoa answers with a headbutt that staggers her sideways. She spits. Resets. Swings again.
They pass the midpoint of the ramp, neither man in control, both of them bleeding something—sweat, spit, maybe worse—as the cell waits for them on the stage, its door still hanging open.
Tolson slips behind him at the base of the ramp.
Her arms lock around his waist. She plants her feet on the steel grating, digs in, and bridges. Kekoa goes up—all two hundred sixty-five pounds of him—and comes down spine-first on the angled metal, the impact shuddering through the ramp structure loud enough to register in the cheap seats.
He doesn’t get up.
Tolson rolls to her feet. She doesn’t celebrate. Doesn’t pause. She drops off the side of the ramp and tears at the ring skirt like she knows exactly where everything is. The stretcher comes out folded—canvas, aluminum frame, release lever. She hits it. The legs snap open. Wheels lock.
Dead weight is the hardest kind. Tolson gets her hands under his arms anyway. Hauls. Her thighs burn. Her jaw clenches until tendons ridge in her neck. Kekoa’s body folds onto the gurney in stages—torso, hips, legs—and she doesn’t wait for him to settle before she’s gripping the handles and surging forward.
Up the ramp. Full sprint. The wheels chattering over the grating, Tolson’s boots finding traction on the steel incline, the cell growing larger with every stride, its open door a dark mouth swallowing the stage.
She doesn’t slow. The stretcher crosses the threshold and she releases—Kekoa’s body tumbling into the padding with a muffled thump.
Tolson spins. Grabs the door. Throws her whole frame against it.
The gap narrows. Eight inches. Six. Three.
Fingers curl around the edge.
The camera swings behind her. Through the closing slit, Kekoa’s hands are pressed flat against the interior padding of the door, arms braced, shoulders set.
Tolson shoves. Her boots skid on the stage. She throws her hip into the metal, every pound of leverage she owns.
The door stops.
Then it moves backward.
Kekoa shoves from the other side and the door explodes outward—Tolson catches the full force in her chest, her feet backpedaling down the ramp’s incline, heels finding nothing but air as gravity takes her. She stumbles. Falls backward. Hits the grating hard.
Kekoa steps out of the cell.
The pause is a heartbeat. Maybe less. He drops low and launches—a spear that catches Tolson at the solar plexus and drives through her, through the ramp, through everything, the steel grating screaming beneath both bodies as they slide to a stop.
Tolson folds around his shoulder. Doesn’t move.
Kekoa pushes to his feet. One hand presses to his ribs where the suplex landed. He looks down at her. Then up at the cell, door still hanging open, waiting for whichever of them gets locked inside first.
Neither wrestler should be standing.
Tolson gets there first—barely. One knee, then both, her midsection screaming from the spear. Kekoa rises slower, favoring his ribs. They meet on the stage with nothing left but whatever they can scrape off the bottom of themselves. A slap. A staggered forearm. Kekoa grabs a fistful of her hair. She digs her thumb into the soft spot under his jaw. They stumble together through the cell door like drunks fighting over the tab.
The interior swallows them.
A light flickers overhead—sick yellow, erratic. The broadcast cuts to the mounted CCTV feed, the lens fisheye-distorting the room. Canvas everywhere. Floor. Walls. Ceiling. The padding drinks sound, smothers echoes, turns every impact into something dull and wrong.
Kekoa whips Tolson into the wall. She hits—and doesn’t hit. The padding catches her, absorbs the blow, gives her back enough of herself to fire off a desperation elbow that catches him behind the ear. He throws a knee. She blocks it, but barely. Everything that works in the ring doesn’t work here. Slams turn to shoves. Throws become glancing deflections. The cell takes violence and softens it into something you have to deliver up close—fists, forearms, choking grips, the intimacy of people trying to end each other with their bare hands.
Tolson finds a second wind where second winds don’t exist.
She grabs two handfuls of Kekoa’s collar, plants her heel against the padded floor, and hurls him with everything she hasn’t already spent. He sails backward across the cell and crashes into the far wall—shoulders first, arms wide, canvas straining against its rivets.
He should crumble.
The padding compresses.
Then it fires him back.
Kekoa springs off the wall like it kicked him forward—one stride, two, his right arm cocking, the fist rising, and Tolson is still off-balance from the throw when MY STANDARD catches her clean on the jaw, a Superman punch delivered with the surgical precision of a man who only needs one opening.
Her eyes go blank before she hits the floor.
She lands face-up on the padded floor. Doesn’t twitch. Doesn’t breathe that ragged fight-breath anymore. Just the slow rise and fall of someone who’s been shut off.
Kekoa stands over her. His chest heaves. The fist he hit her with stays clenched at his side, trembling from something that isn’t exhaustion.
He steps backward through the doorway. His hand finds the door. He pulls.
It swings shut with the weight of something final.
CLANG.
The locking mechanism engages. The light inside the cell flickers once and steadies.
ALEKI KEKOA WINS
AND NEW PCW ASYLUM CHAMPION
Samoan War Machine hits the speakers. Referee Grade Garret approaches, the Asylum Championship in his hands—black strap, rusted metal plates. He offers it up. Kekoa takes the title. Raises it. Breathes once, long and slow, letting the moment settle into his bones.
Banging.
Frantic. Insistent. Coming from the cell.
Kekoa turns.
Samantha Tolson is at the observation window. Her fist pounds the reinforced glass in a rhythm that says she hasn’t learned the lesson—that she will never learn it. Her eyes are wide. Venomous. Alive with something that losing didn’t extinguish.
Kekoa faces her through the glass.
He doesn’t raise the title again. Doesn’t taunt. Doesn’t move. He simply meets her gaze with that long, flat, patient stare—acknowledging what she is, what she survived, what she’ll bring with her the next time that door opens.
The show fades to black on the two of them, separated by three inches of reinforced glass and everything that comes next.
MATCH SIX
THAÏS EMPRISTIKÍ
vs
MARILYN MATTEWS
WINNER WILL BE THE #1 CONTENDER FOR THE PCW UNLEASHED CHAMPIONSHIP
The arena hums. Not the restless kind. The expectant kind. This means something. #1 contender for the PCW UNLEASHED Championship. Every person in the building knows it.
The bell rings sharp and clean.
They circle. Marilyn Matthews, all California ease and hard miles, eyes locked on Thaïs Empristikí—the Flame Bringer, bouncing light on their toes, coiled energy barely contained. Collar-and-elbow. They test. Marilyn digs her heels in, feels the younger wrestler’s surprising power push back. Clean break. No games. Just the first question asked and answered.
Thaïs explodes.
A duck-under. A leapfrog. Marilyn swings—air. Thaïs drops, pivots, springs again. The crowd stirs, caught in the blur of movement. But Marilyn’s been here. A decade in rings just like this one. Her feet adjust, her hips turn, and when Thaïs shoots in for another evasion, the veteran’s already there—wrist control, rotation, arm-drag. Thaïs hits the canvas. Rolls through.
No beat. No breath.
Thaïs pops up, arm-drag right back. Marilyn rolls, rises. Arm-drag again. Thaïs spins out, reverses into their own. Back and forth, mirror images, bodies whipping through the ropes’ shadows. Four, five exchanges. A kinetic conversation with no clear winner.
Both scramble up at the same instant.
Dead stop.
Two wrestlers, five feet apart, chests heaving just slightly. The crowd gets it. Applause ripples, swells, climbs. Not a polite golf clap. Real recognition. Two athletes who just showed their work.
PCW!
PCW!
PCW!
Thaïs nods once. Marilyn cracks the smallest grin.
The reset doesn’t last.
Thaïs charges—eager, honest, too trusting. Marilyn reads it like large-print text. She sidesteps. Her knee drives upward, catching the charging wrestler square in the midsection. The sound is wet and hollow. Thaïs folds at the waist, air gone.
And just like that, the pace dies.
Marilyn doesn’t rush. She takes the wrist, torques it behind Thaïs’ back, marches them toward the corner. A forearm driven between the shoulder blades. Thaïs slumps against the turnbuckle. Marilyn leans in close, lips moving—the words are for Thaïs alone, but the smirk says plenty. The crowd catches the energy shift. The SoCal Beach Babe is talking her shit.
She wrenches the arm again. Thaïs grimaces. Marilyn transitions seamlessly into a hammerlock, grinding the joint. The referee—sharp-eyed, hovering—asks the question. Thaïs shakes their head. No surrender. Not here. Not now.
Marilyn releases. But only to drive a knee into the same shoulder. Then a forearm. Then she drags them to the center, snapping a short kick to the ribs before cinching in a grounded headlock. Thaïs thrashes. The veteran’s weight shifts, adjusts, smothers each escape before it starts. Not fast. Not flashy. Just the ugly, grinding knowledge of where to be and when.
The crowd rallies. A stomp. A clap. Building.
Thaïs fights to a knee. Then two. The noise gets louder. They shove forward—Marilyn cuts it off, yanks the arm, and in one liquid motion, drops her hips and bridges. Bridging Northern Lights Suplex. The impact cracks through the arena.
The referee slides in.
ONE…
TWO…
THR—NO!
Thaïs rips a shoulder off the canvas. The bridge collapses. Marilyn exhales hard through her nose.
The veteran doesn’t stay down long. She’s up, and her hand finds the back of Thaïs’ collar before they can fully recover. A rough yank. Get up. Let’s go.
Wrong move.
Thaïs slaps the hands away. Hard. The crack echoes. The crowd gasps. Thaïs rises on their own terms, eyes narrowed, jaw set. The friendliness is gone. Not anger—something purer. Pride.
They meet in the center.
Forearm from Marilyn. Thaïs absorbs it. Fires back. Quicker. The second one buzzes Marilyn’s jaw. She answers—heavy, grizzled shop-worn leather. Thaïs shakes it off, answers with two. Three. Marilyn swings—Thaïs ducks, comes up with a blistering palm strike that snaps her head back. The exchange accelerates. No blocks. No dodges. Just two fighters trading, the noise a sick rhythm of flesh on bone.
Thaïs wins. Not by much. But enough.
A running knee catches Marilyn in the ribs. A spin kick to the temple. The veteran stumbles, her legs betraying her, arms dropping. The Flame Bringer is everywhere now. Forearms. Knees. A Yakuza kick that folds Marilyn against the ropes like wet laundry.
Thaïs hooks both arms.
SUMMER SOLSTICE (Double Underhook DDT). They drop. Marilyn spikes into the canvas, crown-first. The crowd erupts, a single roaring organism.
Thaïs scrambles, hooks the leg, deep.
ONE…
TWO…
THR—NO!
Marilyn’s shoulder jerks skyward. A millisecond before the mat slap. The referee holds up two fingers. The crowd screams disbelief. Thaïs rocks back on their heels, eyes wide.
The veteran lies there. Breathing. Just breathing. Still in it.
Thaïs smells blood. They shouldn’t. Youth and momentum make a dangerous cocktail. The Flame Bringer scrambles up, eyes locked on the downed veteran, and bolts for the ropes. They spring, plant, launch backward—a springboard moonsault, or something like it, the rotation tight and ambitious.
Marilyn’s already moving.
She doesn’t get up. She rolls. A half-turn toward the ropes, one arm snaking up—and her forearm slashes across Thaïs’ shins mid-rotation. The legs go sideways. The body follows. Thaïs crashes to the canvas in a heap, the geometry of their flight undone in a single, surgical swipe. The crowd groans.
The veteran’s lips curl.
Thaïs won’t stay down. That’s not a flaw. It’s who they are. They push to their knees, swinging. A palm strike catches Marilyn across the jaw. Then another. Desperate. Real.
Marilyn takes them.
She leans into the third one, lets it glance off her cheekbone, and steps inside. Her elbow drives into Thaïs’ sternum. A short knee to the ribs. The younger wrestler’s breath hitches. Marilyn’s face is stone—except for the eyes. The eyes are alive. She’s walking through fire and she knows it.
She backs off a step. Arms spread wide. The SoCal Beach Babe soaks it in.
YOU STILL GOT IT!
YOU STILL GOT IT!
Marilyn winks at the front row. Points at a fan with a sign. Takes her time.
Thaïs is crawling now. Not quitting. Just getting up wrong. One knee. Then two. A stumble forward, arms low, head tucked.
Marilyn explodes.
GOT ‘EM (Jumping Cutter). No setup. No tell. She springs, hooks the head, and drops. Thaïs’ skull whips through the arc and spikes into the canvas. The impact is ugly. Final. The kind that makes the front row flinch.
Marilyn scrambles, throws herself across the body, hooks the far leg deep.
ONE…
TWO…
THR—
NO!!!
THAÏS KICKS OUT!
Shoulder up, body convulsing. The referee’s hand stops an inch from the mat. Marilyn sits up, eyes wide, mouth half-open. She stares at the referee. Two fingers. She stares at the ceiling. Then at Thaïs, still breathing, still here.
The shock is genuine.
Marilyn recovers. Or tries to. She grabs a handful of Thaïs’ gear, hauling them up for whatever comes next.
But Thaïs comes alive.
Not gradually. All at once. They surge upward, a burst of speed that doesn’t make sense given the damage they’ve absorbed. A forearm catches Marilyn under the chin. Another. A lariat turns her inside out. Then another. Thaïs bounces off the ropes—the dropkick is textbook, both boots to the chest, and Marilyn’s body whips backward into the turnbuckle.
Thaïs doesn’t stop. Can’t. A running knee follows. A spin kick. The veteran staggers forward, doubled over, arms dangling useless. She’s bent at the waist in the center of the ring. Target presented.
Thaïs is already airborne.
GREEK TIME (Front Flip Backstabber). They spring upward, rotate forward in a flash, and both knees drive directly into Marilyn’s upper back. CRACK. The veteran snaps forward and down, face-first, a marionette with the strings cut.
Thaïs bridges. The referee drops.
ONE…
TWO…
THR—
Marilyn kicks out. Barely. Her shoulder twists free, her body spasming. The effort looks like it costs her something real. Something she might not get back.
Thaïs sits on the canvas, chest heaving. The crowd is roaring. Nobody’s sitting down.
Neither moves. Seconds bleed into each other.
Marilyn gets to a knee first. Then stops. Her hand presses against her ribs. Thaïs rolls to their side, then up, one arm wrapped around their own midsection. The damage is etched into both of them now—the way they move, the way they breathe. Labored. Ragged.
They collide in the center again. Not with strikes. With desperation.
Marilyn grabs for a wrist. Thaïs counters, snatches a waistlock. Marilyn reverses, drops into a dragon sleeper position. Thaïs spins out, rolls through, grabs an ankle. Marilyn scissors the leg. They twist, torque, counter. No space. No air. Just two bodies grappling on instinct when the gas tank is empty.
The scramble breaks open.
Crucifix pin—ONE… TWO… shoulder up!
Backslide—ONE… TWO… kickout!
Small package—ONE… TWO… THR—NO!
Roll through. Pop up. Both of them. Opposite ropes.
They run.
Not fast. Not pretty. Just the last reserves of two athletes who refuse to yield. Thaïs from one side, Marilyn from the other. They meet in the center.
Double crossbodies. Both bodies crash, fold, collapse. A heap of limbs and sweat on the canvas.
The referee stands over them. Counting. Nobody’s moving.
ONE!
TWO!
THREE!
FOUR!
The crowd stirs. A hand twitches. Then another.
Thaïs pushes an arm against the canvas. Their legs scramble, searching for purchase that isn’t there. But the Flame Bringer gets up—because that’s what they do. That’s all they’ve ever done. The crowd catches the movement and the noise swells, feeding oxygen into the match.
Marilyn’s still down. Flat on her back. Staring at the lights.
Thaïs sees it. The opening. They explode across the ring—not sprinting, not anymore, but fast enough—and a spinning kick catches Marilyn behind the ear. Enzuigiri. The veteran’s head snaps sideways. Her body goes limp. The separation is complete.
Thaïs doesn’t hesitate. They turn. They climb.
The corner. The top turnbuckle. Every step deliberate, measured, the precision of someone who knows exactly what a mistake here costs. They pause at the apex. One breath. Eyes tracking Marilyn’s motionless form below. The chest rises. Falls. The target is there.
Thaïs launches.
DRACARYS (Top Rope Double Stomp). Vertical drop. Both feet extend. Time slows—the rotation, the descent, the crowd rising in a single, horrified gasp. Both soles drive into Marilyn’s chest. The sound is a thunderclap. The veteran’s body jackknifes, air driven from her lungs in a sick, involuntary wheeze.
Thaïs crashes down, rolls through, scrambles back. The cover.
ONE…
TWO…
THR—
Marilyn’s shoulder rockets off the mat. No conscious thought behind it. Just muscle memory. Just a career’s worth of refusing to die. Thaïs rocks backward, hands on their head. The referee confirms: two. Only two. The Flame Bringer’s chest heaves. They look at the official. At the ceiling. At this grizzled, impossible veteran who simply will not go away.
Somehow, they both get up.
The word is crawling. It’s the only word. Marilyn uses the ropes. Thaïs uses the corner. Inch by inch, hauling dead weight vertical. The crowd doesn’t cheer now. They murmur. They feel it. Two athletes scraping the absolute bottom of the tank, and neither one blinking.
They meet in the center. Toe to toe. Eye to eye.
Marilyn swings first. A forearm. Slow. Heavy. It lands. Thaïs’ head rocks. They answer. A palm strike. Marilyn’s jaw ripples. She fires back. Thaïs answers. The rhythm is glacial now—a stark, brutal contrast to the lightning exchange of Act I. Each blow lands with the full weight of exhaustion behind it. Flesh on flesh. No snap. Just thud.
MARILYN SWINGS!
YAY!
THAÏS ANSWERS!
YAY!
YAY!
YAY!
The chants fall into rhythm with the strikes. A call-and-response. The arena is one living thing, breathing with them.
Then the accuracy goes.
Marilyn throws a right—Thaïs ducks. Thaïs fires a kick—Marilyn sways. Wild swings. Wide misses. Bodies lurching past each other, momentum carrying them into the ropes, off the ropes. A clothesline sails high. A backhand catches air. Blocked, dodged, slipped—the sequence blurs, chaotic and desperate, the tension ratcheting because everyone knows: one clean shot ends this.
They lock up.
Not a collar-and-elbow. Something older. Uglier. Forehead to forehead. Hands gripping shoulders, necks, whatever they can hold. They push. Strain. Boots scraping. Knees buckling. A contest of sheer will, and neither is winning.
Thaïs breaks first.
A clothesline. Wild. Exhausted. The arm swings horizontal, but the body behind it is running on fumes. Marilyn reads it like a road sign.
She ducks.
The arm whistles over her head. Thaïs’ momentum carries them through, chest exposed, balance gone. Marilyn pivots—a full 180 degrees, the footwork of a woman who’s been here a thousand times. Her back leg plants. Her hips rotate.
NERF THIS (Pelee Kick).
She springs backward, her foot whipping up in a perfect arc. The instep catches Thaïs flush across the temple. CRACK. The Flame Bringer’s eyes go glassy. Their legs turn to water. They drop—not falling, but collapsing, a body that’s simply stopped receiving signals.
Marilyn crashes to the canvas alongside them. She doesn’t cover. For a half-second, she just breathes. Then she throws an arm across the chest.
ONE…
TWO…
THREE—
The referee’s hand stops. Waves it off. No count.
Thaïs’ ankle. It’s draped over the bottom rope.
The crowd groans. A collective, gut-level sound. Marilyn pushes up to her elbows, sawdust in her mouth, and stares at the rope like it personally betrayed her. She exhales. Long. Controlled. The frustration is there, written in the tightness of her jaw, but she doesn’t scream. Doesn’t argue. She’s been here before.
She stands.
One hand finds Thaïs’ wrist. She drags. Not rough. Not kind. Just necessary. The dead weight scrapes across the canvas, away from the ropes, away from salvation. Toward the corner. Toward the end.
The ring apron is cold under her boots. Marilyn steps through the ropes, one leg at a time, deliberate. The crowd knows what’s coming. The pulse of the crowd builds to a rumble, the rumble to a roar. Feet find the bottom rope. Then the middle. Hands gripping the top turnbuckle from the outside, knuckles white.
She climbs.
Every inch is a war. The ribs. The spine. The hard miles stacked in every vertebrae. She reaches the top and pauses there, perched above an arena that’s already on its feet. Thaïs lies prone below. Chest rising. Not moving. Not yet.
Marilyn measures. One breath. Two. The building is a cathedral of noise.
She launches.
SONIC SCREWDRIVER MARK 1 (Corkscrew 630 Senton). The rotation begins—a twist, a flip, a second twist, the body coiling through the air in a geometry that shouldn’t be possible. 630 degrees of controlled, violent artistry. The crowd’s roar hits its peak.
Thaïs rolls.
It’s not pretty. It’s a desperate, blind lurch, a body throwing itself sideways on instinct. The canvas shakes. Marilyn crashes. Full impact. No body to break the fall, nothing but the unforgiving mat absorbing all of her weight and velocity. The sound is sick—a shotgun blast of flesh against canvas. Her body bounces, ragdolling up to her knees before she even knows where she is.
Empty eyes. Empty lungs.
Thaïs scrambles. Hands on the mat. Feet under them. Pushing through pain, through exhaustion, through everything. They’re up.
Marilyn is up too. Somehow. A body running on nerve endings and nothing else.
They charge. Center of the ring. Two trains on the same track with no brakes.
Marilyn throws the right cross—a desperate, last-ditch swing, everything she has left.
Thaïs ducks.
The fist sails through empty air. Marilyn’s momentum carries her forward, off-balance, exposed. Thaïs dips under the arm, wraps the front facelock, threads one arm through. The grip locks. The legs drive.
SIGN OF FIRE (Michinoku Driver II).
Thaïs lifts. Holds. Drops. Marilyn’s spine meets the canvas with finality—a centered, heavy impact that shakes the ring. Her body folds. Her legs hook over nothing. The Flame Bringer bridges, holding tight, the weight of the match pressed into the mat.
ONE…
TWO…
THREE!
The bell.
The arena comes apart as the Flame Bringer becomes the number one contender for the PCW UNLEASHED Championship..
THAÏS EMPRISTIKÍ WINS
PINFALL VICTORY
Thaïs collapses. The bridge breaks. They roll onto their back, chest heaving, eyes fixed on the lights. Two feet away, Marilyn hasn’t moved. Can’t. Both wrestlers lie still, the only motion the rise and fall of their ribs, the only sound the crowd and the air tearing in and out of their lungs.
The referee crouches. A hand on Thaïs’ shoulder. A word. Thaïs blinks. Gets to a knee. The official helps them the rest of the way. Their arm goes up—the victor, the #1 contender—and the crowd meets the moment with a wall of sound.
Thaïs limps toward the ropes. Leans over the top strand. Waves. Not a show. Just gratitude. Pure and simple. The Flame Bringer, still burning.
Behind them, Marilyn sits up.
The referee crosses to her. Offers a hand. She takes it. Stands. Her body is wreckage. Her eyes are clear.
She stares at Thaïs’ back.
Still. Silent. The veteran, reading the younger wrestler like a match she’s already run in her head. The crowd quiets, sensing gravity.
Thaïs turns.
They lock eyes.
The space between them isn’t empty. It’s full—of what just happened, of what it cost, of what it means. A long beat. Another. The building holds its breath.
Marilyn extends her hand.
Thaïs steps forward. Takes it. Firm. Real.
The crowd erupts. Not for finishers. Not for near-falls. For this. For the thing that happens after the bell. The flame doesn’t die. It changes hands.
MATCH SEVEN
HELEN BECK
vs
HELENA HANDBASKET
30 MINUTE IRONMAN MATCH
Referee Stephanie Marshall signals for the bell and Helena is already in motion—boxer footwork, light and wide, circling the perimeter like a housefly that knows it’s faster than the swatter. Her grin is a mile wide. She bounces. She feints. She never stops moving.
Beck doesn’t move at all.
The stillness is the first thing that registers. Not a frozen hesitation—something deeper. A cold patience. Arms loose at their sides. Eyes tracking Helena without blinking. The crowd hums, unsettled by the contrast.
Helena skips to a stop and extends her hand.
Beck looks at it. Doesn’t take it. Doesn’t move.
Helena turns to the crowd and shrugs—big, theatrical, palms up—and a ripple of laughter rolls through the seats. She turns back to Beck with a what-can-you-do expression. Beck’s face is stone.
The lock-up, when it comes, is not a lock-up. It’s a collision. They crash together and immediately both arms are slipping grips, both bodies twisting away from leverage points, forearms jamming into collarbones. They know every grip before it tightens. They break apart after three seconds, and for half a heartbeat, something flickers across Helena’s face—not anger yet, but the suggestion of it. Beck’s expression doesn’t change.
Helena shakes it off. Grins again. Cracks her neck left, then right, and steps in with a blistering overhand chop—
—and Beck catches the wrist mid-flight.
The twist is surgical. Beck wrenches the arm, torques Helena into a whip-fast arm drag, releases at the apex, and walks back to the far corner before Helena’s back hits the canvas. Three steps. No flourish. Beck turns and waits.
Helena sits up clutching her shoulder. She mugs for the crowd, mouthing Did you see that? and working the joint with exaggerated pain. More laughter. She drags herself up using the ropes, milking it, always milking it.
Beck watches. Arms folded. No smile.
Helena explodes off the ropes. SUPERSONICS (Slingshot Bulldog)… but Beck ducks the grab and Helena overshoots, momentum carrying her face-first toward the top turnbuckle. She eats it. Or almost eats it—at the last instant she twists, catches herself on the ropes, and turns the stumble into a sweeping bow for the audience. A smattering of applause. One guy in the front row yells “Nice save!”
But the near-miss lingers. Helena’s jaw tightens as she turns back around.
She rolls under the bottom rope and drops to the floor. Takes a stroll. Marshall starts counting. Helena leans on the barricade and asks a fan what they’re eating—points at the nachos, nods approvingly. The count hits five. Six. Seven. Beck hasn’t moved from the ring.
Helena slides back in at eight, still chewing on nothing, still playing.
She comes in fast—too fast—reaching for the SMOOTH CRIMINAL (Dragon Twist Cutter). Beck reads the rotation, ducks underneath, but Helena’s arm catches them across the throat anyway and both bodies tangle into an ugly sprawl. A heap of limbs on the mat.
They untangle slowly. A beat of stillness. Just the two of them, flat on the canvas, heads turned toward each other.
Helena smirks first. Always does.
Beck rises without expression. Dusts off their singlet.
And then Beck unloads.
Overhand chop to the chest. Another. A forearm shiver that snaps Helena’s head sideways. A thrust kick to the sternum that folds her into the bottom turnbuckle—thud—and she sits there, gasping, as Beck stalks backward to center ring. Beck waits. Lets her get up. Lets her take three wobbling steps forward.
WEIRD BETTY (Exploder Suplex).
Beck hooks the arm, drives upward, and Helena’s body describes a perfect arc—shoulders over heels, the full rotation—before crashing down. The impact rattles through the ring frame. Beck floats into the cover, hooks the far leg.
ONE…
TWO…
THREE.
The crowd exhales—a sound caught between shock and dread.
BECK: 1
HELENA: 0
Helena kicks out after the three. It doesn’t matter. She rolls to the ropes, pulls herself up by the middle cable, and her smile is thinner now. Tight at the corners. A crack in the paint.
She powders again. Doesn’t stroll this time—walks with purpose, one hand on her hip, the other rubbing the back of her neck where the exploder planted her. She paces the length of the apron. Mouths something to herself. A coach’s word. A curse. Hard to tell.
Beck stands in the ring, arms folded. Watching. Waiting.
Helena slides back in at the count of six. The grin is back but it’s muscle memory now, not attitude.
She quickens. Speed is king. She darts in—forearm shiver—darts out—shin kick to the thigh—darts in again—short arm clothesline that drops Beck to the mat. She’s a blur now, hit and move, hit and move, and the crowd leans forward. Beck scrambles up and Helena is already in the corner, launching into a BLURRED LINES (Bronco Buster), hips driving through Beck’s chest, rattling the turnbuckle. Beck staggers out of the corner and Helena is on them—running forearm to the jaw, a kitchen sink that doubles Beck over, a scoop slam that plants them flat.
Cover.
ONE…
TWO…
Beck kicks out. Clean. Decisive. Helena rolls off and slaps the mat once—frustration or approval, impossible to tell.
Both up. Helena goes for the tilt-a-whirl backbreaker but Beck slips the grip mid-rotation, lands behind her, shoves her hard to the ropes. Helena rebounds—straight into a hip toss. Beck covers immediately.
ONE…
TWO…
Helena gets the shoulder up. Beck rises without hesitation, climbs the second rope in one fluid step, and launches—missile dropkick to the chest that drives Helena flat.
Cover.
ONE…
TWO…
Helena kicks out again. The shoulder comes up at two and a half and she rolls through, snatching Beck’s ankle on the way, dragging them down face-first. She scrambles into a lateral press, hooking the leg.
ONE…
Beck rolls the shoulder. Easy. Almost dismissive.
Beck explodes upward and catches Helena still seated on the mat—running PK, shin across the side of the skull. Helena crumples sideways. Beck covers.
ONE…
TWO…
Helena shoves Beck off her chest and kicks out with force, rolling to her knees, breathing hard. Sweat darkens the collar of her gear.
Beck comes in again and Helena meets them with a headbutt—dirty, sudden, forehead to the bridge of the nose. Beck staggers. Helena grabs the waist, hoists, flapjack—Beck’s chest and jaw slap the canvas.
Cover.
ONE…
TWO…
Beck kicks out at two and a half. The crowd buzzes. Close.
Helena pulls Beck up by the wrist, whips them to the corner, charges in—Beck gets a boot up. Heel to the jaw. Helena’s head snaps back and she stumbles. Beck climbs to the second rope, springs off, and drives a diving elbow into the sternum.
Cover.
ONE…
TWO…
Helena kicks out. The shoulder doesn’t just come up—it surges. Defiance.
Both wrestlers rise. Sweat dripping. Breath coming in hard pulls. They stand across the ring from each other and something has shifted. The anger is still there, a live wire under the skin, but underneath it—something else. Something that makes the crowd hush without knowing why.
Helena holds Beck’s gaze for five seconds. Ten.
Then she drops to the floor one last time. No stroll. No nachos. No performance. She paces the apron like a soldier walking off a wound, hands on her hips, head down, breathing deliberately. Resetting. When she looks up at the ring, the mask is gone.
The clock ticks past ten minutes and the noise of the crowd recedes like a tide pulling back. Both wrestlers are on their feet. Neither advances. The stillness isn’t tension—it’s recalibration. Two fighters who’ve spent ten minutes learning what they already knew and are now deciding what to do with that knowledge.
Helena starts moving again. No bounce. No mugging. Just the footwork—boxer’s rhythm, heels off the canvas, always in motion. Her eyes are fixed on Beck with a new kind of focus. Beck uncrosses their arms.
They lock up. Collar and elbow. Clean.
What follows is sixty seconds of rolling, fluid violence. Beck goes for a wristlock—Helena rolls the hand, reverses pressure, and suddenly Beck is the one bending. Beck ducks out, spins through, snatches a side headlock. Helena shoves them off to the ropes. Beck rebounds—leapfrog—drop-down—hip toss attempt. Helena blocks it at the apex. Wrenches the arm. Arm drag. Beck lands on their feet and both reset at center ring. No advantage gained. No ground surrendered.
The crowd buzzes. Not a chant yet. Just noise—the sound of people realizing they’re watching something.
They trade holds again. Beck shoots a single-leg, Helena sprawls, a front facelock, Beck slips to the back, Helena reverses into a hammerlock. Counter for counter. Every grip answered before it locks. They know each other’s bodies like a language—every tell, every weight shift, every breath before a move.
Then Helena catches Beck’s wrist on a re-entry. One motion—the grip, the pivot, the arc.
STUPARENA (Inverted Exploder Suplex).
She doesn’t pose. Doesn’t play to the crowd. She drives Beck into the canvas, floats into the cover, and hooks the leg. The crowd makes a sound—recognition rippling through the seats, the connection landing for everyone at once.
ONE…
TWO…
Beck kicks out. Solid. Decisive. Helena sits back on her heels. She doesn’t slap the mat. She just looks at her twin for a long breath, and there is something in her face that has nothing to do with anger.
She rises. The match opens.
Helena goes airborne—a Sky Twister Press, the corkscrew rotation so tight that sweat flings from her body in a perfect spiral. Knees drive across Beck’s chest. Cover. Two. She pulls Beck up by the wrist, whips them corner-to-corner, and follows with a Phoenixrana—a rolling hurricanrana that sends Beck tumbling head over heels to the far side of the ring. Beck scrambles up on instinct and immediately climbs—Shooting Star Press from the second rope, the full weight of their body landing across Helena’s ribs. Cover. Two. Helena’s shoulder surges up.
Neither stays down. Neither stops.
Helena catches Beck off the ropes—a leaping knee that spins through the air with theatrical violence.
SCREW U (Spinning Knee Strike).
Kneecap meets jaw. Beck’s head snaps sideways. Helena crashes down on top of them, hooking both legs, and Marshall drops.
ONE…
TWO…
Beck kicks out. The crowd erupts—a sharp, disbelieving roar—and Helena is already moving, dragging Beck up by the hair. Beck explodes from the mat. Legs wrap Helena’s throat, the Triangle Choke locking deep, Beck’s hips driving upward to tighten the pressure. Helena’s face flushes crimson. She claws toward the ropes—one hand, then the other—hauling both bodies inch by agonizing inch until her fingertips brush the bottom cable.
MARSHALL: ONE… TWO… THREE… FOUR… RELEASE.
Beck releases at four. No argument. They pull Helena upright by the wrist and transition seamlessly—flipping her over, stepping through, sitting deep into the Boston Crab. The torqued spine. Helena screams—a raw, ragged sound—and Marshall drops beside her face, asking.
She shakes her head. No. She drives forward on her elbows, dragging Beck’s weight across the ring, and collapses onto the ropes. Beck releases before the count reaches four.
Both wrestlers rise slowly. Their chests heave in matching rhythm. Sweat drips from their chins and darkens the canvas beneath them. They stand across from each other and the world contracts—the arena noise falling away, the lights narrowing to a single pool of heat around the ring.
Helena tilts her head. Beck tilts theirs.
There you are.
And then they brawl.
Fists. Closed. Helena catches Beck behind the ear with a right hand—the impact is ugly, wet—and Beck collapses. Helena drops into the cover.
ONE…
TWO…
Beck kicks out. Helena drags them by the wrist toward the corner, rolls under the bottom rope, and climbs to the apron. She scales the outside of the turnbuckles—hand over hand, foot finding steel—and the crowd rises with her. She’s going big.
Beck pushes to their feet. Sees the shadow climbing above them. Lunges forward and slams their body into the top rope—
—the cable shudders—
—and Helena’s balance betrays her. She drops. Straddles the steel turnbuckle bar. A sound rips out of her that has nothing to do with performance.
Beck climbs the corner. Hits Helena once across the back. Twice. Helena fires back—a forearm to Beck’s jaw that snaps their head sideways. They climb higher together. One step. Another. Both standing on the top turnbuckle now, the floor a long drop below.
They trade blows on the top rope. Helena’s fist. Beck’s forearm. Another. Another. The exchange grows desperate—hands snatching at balance, at grip, at anything solid.
Helena’s foot slips.
She starts to fall—backward, the steel steps waiting below, and the crowd inhales as one.
Beck’s hand shoots out. No thought. No time for thought. They grab Helena and throw—a desperate, violent redirect, enough force to send her clear of the steel and onto the padded floor.
But the motion takes everything Beck has. Their boot catches the top rope. The twist wrenches through their entire body. They go down—not a fall but a collapse, a body coming apart in the air—and their head clips the apron on the way to the floor.
CRACK.
The sound carries.
Beck doesn’t get up.
Helena pushes herself up from the floor. Her chest heaves. She crawls to the apron, fingers finding the bottom rope, and drags herself into the ring. Marshall begins the count.
ONE…
TWO…
Helena pulls herself upright against the ropes. She leans over the top cable and stares down at her twin. Beck is motionless on the floor. The look on Helena’s face shifts—something softening at the edges. The crowd quiets. She knows what Beck just did. She knows which body part was supposed to hit those steps. And she knows whose hand kept it from happening.
THREE…
FOUR…
FIVE…
But she wants to win. That’s always been true. It’s true now, burning in her chest alongside everything else.
SIX…
She looks at Marshall.
HELENA: Count faster!
Marshall’s expression flickers—confusion, maybe judgment—but the count continues at its steady, agonizing pace.
SEVEN…
EIGHT…
Helena grips the top rope with both hands. The softness is still there in her face. So is the hunger. They’re both real. They’re both her.
NINE…
Beck doesn’t move.
TEN!
The bell rings. Count-Out Awarded to Helena.
BECK: 1
HELENA: 1
Helena is rolling out of the ring before the echo dies. She drops to her knees beside Beck and one hand finds their shoulder.
HELENA: Hey. Hey. You okay? You with me?
Beck’s eyes snap open—wide, blazing, focused. They shove Helena’s hand off with sudden violence and Helena sprawls backward onto the floor. Beck rolls, reaches, pulls themself upright using the announce desk. Reno Nevada is still barking into the headset, voice climbing with excitement, and Beck uses the desk as a crutch to find their feet.
Helena pushes up to one knee. Her face twists—the scowl cutting deep, anger flaring hot, and it’s aimed inward as much as outward. She let herself care. She let herself check. And Beck just threw it back in her face.
Beck turns. They walk past Helena without looking at her—deliberate, unhurried—and reach for the middle rope at ringside. They pause there. Look back over their shoulder.
BECK: We are moving fast, the landscape’s changing. Are you ready to keep up?
They climb onto the apron. Step through the ropes.
Helena pushes up to her feet. The smirk that spreads across her face is sharp at the edges—a blade dressed as a smile. She slides under the bottom rope and rises to meet her twin in the center of the ring.
They come together like a car crash.
Fists. Forearms. No chain wrestling now—just raw, ugly brawling, identical twins trying to erase each other. Helena gains the edge—a headbutt that staggers Beck, a kitchen sink that folds them, a whip to the ropes. Beck rebounds and Helena steps forward, loading the elbow, the temple lined up—
FECK OFF (Bullhammer Elbow Strike).
—and Beck rolls underneath it.
Pops up behind her.
Helena turns. Beck snatches her arm, snaps a short punch into her jaw—just enough to daze—and then drops.
WITCH KICK (Inverted Stomp Facebreaker).
The back of Helena’s skull drives into the canvas. The sound is a gunshot. Beck hooks both legs and Marshall crashes down beside them.
ONE…
TWO…
THREE.
The bell. The feedback from the crowd is a wall of noise, a roar that shakes the rafters, disbelief and exhilaration crashing into each other and becoming something louder than either.
BECK: 2
HELENA: 1
Beck rolls off the cover. They lie on their back, chest heaving, staring up into the lights with an expression that reveals nothing.
After a moment to catch their breath, Beck rolls over and pushes to their feet. Not fast—not anymore. Their body rises in careful stages: hands planted, one knee, then the other, a pause at the top to let the world stop spinning. The predatory stillness has softened. The edges are worn down. Twenty-two minutes will do that.
Helena gets up slower. She pulls herself upright on the ropes, one cable at a time, and when she turns to face her twin, the footwork is gone. No bounce. No dance. Just a wrestler standing in a ring, chest heaving, trying to find something in the tank that isn’t already spent.
Beck moves in. Methodical. Cautious. They take Helena down with a single-leg, float to the back, and sink in a Straight Jacket Crossface—arms wrenched behind, neck torqued, Helena’s face contorted against the canvas. Marshall drops to ask. Helena shakes her head. She claws forward on her knees, dragging Beck’s full weight across the ring, and gets a boot on the bottom rope. Beck releases at four. Rises. Waits.
Helena gets to her feet and Beck is on her again—spinning her down into a Muta Lock, the legs threaded, the spine bending backward at an angle the human body was not designed to accommodate. Helena screams. It’s not theatrical this time. She writhes toward the ropes, inch by inch, and her hand finds the cable just as Marshall reaches four.
Beck releases. Stands. Breaths coming hard now, their chest rising and falling under their singlet. They pull Helena up by the wrist and whip her to the corner. Helena hits hard and staggers out—straight into a Sidewalk Slam, Beck’s body weight driving her flat.
Cover.
MARSHALL: ONE…
MARSHALL: TWO…
Helena gets the shoulder up. Beck doesn’t slap the mat. Doesn’t argue. They just stand and step back and wait for Helena to rise, because that’s who they are—the predator who doesn’t chase.
Helena pushes up to her hands and knees. She stays there for a long moment, head hanging, sweat dripping onto the canvas in dark constellations. The clock ticks. The crowd stirs.
And then she’s moving—not fast, but sudden—grabbing Beck around the waist and twisting.
SMOOTH CRIMINAL (Dragon Twist Cutter).
Both bodies go down in a tangle of limbs. Helena hooks the leg and Marshall drops.
MARSHALL: ONE…
MARSHALL: TWO…
Beck kicks out. Helena rolls off and sits on the mat, propped on her hands, breathing in great ragged pulls. She doesn’t follow up. Can’t. The gas isn’t there.
Beck gets up first. They look at Helena sitting on the canvas and something passes across their face—not pity, not mercy, something harder to name. They extend a hand.
Helena looks at it. Laughs once—a short, sharp exhale—and takes it. They help each other rise. For a suspended moment they stand there, gripping forearms, holding each other upright in the center of a ring that has taken everything from both of them.
Then they brawl.
Slow. Heavy. A punch that takes three seconds to arrive and another three to recover from. Beck’s fist lands. Helena’s head snaps sideways. Helena’s fist lands. Beck’s head snaps sideways. They bob and sway like ships in rough seas. Each impact costs something visible. Each throw takes something that won’t come back.
Helena grabs Beck by the wrist and whips them to the ropes. She takes off after them. Beck hits the cables and comes off with a lariat aimed at Helena’s skull—Helena ducks underneath, feels the wind of it pass over her scalp. Beck keeps running, hits the far ropes, rebounds. Helena charges. Beck comes off the ropes and leaps—elbow cocked, full commitment, no looking—
—and Helena has already left the mat.
DOUBLE FECK OFF.
Two elbows. Two temples. One moment of perfect, terrible symmetry. The impact is a thunderclap. Both bodies drop to the canvas like they’ve been shot.
Referee Stephanie Marshall stands over them, hands on her head, helpless. The crowd is a wall of sound. The timer on the screen flashes: THREE MINUTES REMAINING.
Neither moves. Ten seconds pass. Twenty. Thirty. The noise in the arena builds and builds, a pressure that can’t find release.
Helena’s arm lifts. It falls across Beck’s chest.
Marshall drops.
ONE…
TWO…
THREE.
The bell sounds!
The crowd erupts!
BECK: 2
HELENA: 2
Helena’s arm slides off Beck’s chest. Neither rises. Twenty more seconds drain off the clock. Twenty more seconds pass with the twins lying beside each other on the canvas, chests rising and falling in a rhythm that has synchronized without either of them knowing it.
TWO MINUTES REMAINING.
Beck shoves Helena’s arm away. Helena is already trying to stand. They rise together—not helping each other this time, just two wrestlers climbing the same wall from opposite sides.
They meet in the center and the punches start again. Slower now. A chop that takes five seconds to land. Another that takes longer. Their bodies sway after every blow, threatening to collapse, catching themselves on instinct alone.
Then something ignites. Adrenaline—the last reserve, the deep tank, the thing the body keeps for when it has nothing else. They come alive in the same instant. Punches thrown and blocked. Kicks launched and avoided. Every strike has a counter, every counter has a counter. It’s like watching one mind fighting itself across two bodies—the same timing, the same tells, the same instinct to attack and defend in the same breath.
ONE MINUTE REMAINING.
Helena is on the mat. Beck stands over her, breathing hard, and for a long, strange moment they don’t do anything. Just look down at their twin—the rise and fall of her chest, the sweat in her hair, the face that mirrors their own—and the crowd is on its feet, every single soul, and still Beck doesn’t move.
Then Beck drops. Legs wrap Helena’s head. Arms cinch. The GGGGRRRRRRR (Guillotine Choke) locks deep and Beck throws their legs around Helena’s waist, squeezing, thrashing—the theatrical frustration bleeding through the technique, the mask slipping because there’s nothing left to hold it up.
Helena’s knees buckle. Her eyes flutter. Marshall is right there, asking, and Helena’s hand starts to lift—not tapping, not yet, but drifting, the body betraying the will.
Then her fists tighten.
The crowd roars. Helena throws an arm up around Beck’s neck. Then she starts driving fists into Beck’s ribs—one, two, three—until the leglock slips and Beck’s boots hit the mat.
Helena’s lower arm scoops Beck’s leg.
WEIRD BETTY—
She tries. Beck’s own signature throw. The Exploder Suplex that put Helena down over twenty minutes ago, and now Helena is hoisting Beck into the arc, trying to use their own weapon against them—
—but Beck twists in the air. Lands on their feet.
TWENTY SECONDS REMAINING.
Beck grabs Helena’s arm. The boot comes up. The WITCH KICK is loading—the same move that made it 2-1, the same drop, the same arc—but Helena stiffens her stance, yanks her arm free, and Beck’s boot hits nothing but air. Beck scrambles to their feet.
TEN SECONDS REMAINING.
Helena kicks Beck in the gut. Folds them. Grabs their head and hooks the inside leg. SMALL PACKAGE. Marshall hits the canvas.
ONE…
TWO…
FIVE SECONDS REMAINING—Beck shifts their weight, rolls through, and suddenly the package is reversed. Helena’s shoulders press into the canvas. The twins fight inside the knot of limbs—a war fought in inches and ounces—and Marshall’s hand slaps the mat.
ONE…
TWO…
THREE!
The bell rings and the ticker on the screen updates to reflect the score.
BECK: 3
HELENA: 2
Helena’s shoulder surges up—a fraction of a second too late. The twins separate. They rise to their feet in the same motion. Beck grins—a real grin, the first one all night—and Helena turns to look at the screen just as the final second bleeds off the timer.
The horn blares. The time keeper hammers the bell as the crowd explodes in a roar.
BECK WINS
Beck’s music hits—the droning guitars of GHOST filling the arena—and the crowd is a cathedral of noise, and Helena turns back to face her twin.
They stand across from each other in the center of the ring. They have done everything to each other and found something at the bottom that wasn’t destruction. No words pass between them. None are needed.
Beck holds up three fingers.
Helena holds up two.
The grin doesn’t leave Beck’s face. Helena looks at the three fingers, then at her own two, then at her twin.
She laughs. It’s small and tired and honest—maybe the first honest thing she’s done all match—and the sound of it carries further than any entrance music ever could.
VIDEO PACKAGE
SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL
BLACK.
A single heartbeat. Slow. Wet. Irregular — a busted, struggling rhythm. It thumps once. Twice. We hold in the dark long enough to feel uneasy.
The first lonely piano note of “Sympathy for the Devil” trembles out of the silence.
SMASH IN on the Eternia monsoon. Rain sheets down through neon haze. BIA and YELENA GORGO stand chest to chest in the deluge, faces inches apart, jaws working in silent fury. We are at half-speed. Water peels off them in slow, glittering ropes.
YELENA (V.O.): (low, intimate) You and me… we got unfinished business.
Flashes, no music swell yet, just the heartbeat under everything: Yelena’s roundhouse cracking flush against Bia’s thigh. The crucifix elbows splitting Bia open. Blood blooming, washing pink through the rain down her face.
Bia’s Dock Blocker drives into Yelena’s knee. Yelena collapses, drags herself across the flooded canvas, the leg trailing dead behind her.
The ladder stands in the center of the ring. Untouched. Waiting.
Bia turns her back on it. Picks up a steel chair instead.
On the apron, THAÏS points up at the prize, screaming through the rain.
THAÏS: (cracking) WIN!
The music drops out. Dead air.
Across the screen, fast enough to feel rather than read:
SHE HAD IT WON.
Behind the pleading Thaïs, the water breaks.
Yelena RISES out of the flood — no limp, no grimace — rain cascading off her shoulders in an apocalyptic silhouette. An apex predator breaching the surface. The arena floods blood-red around her.
A single low cello note. Dread.
The Kikkudemon roundhouse cracks across Bia’s jaw. The world spins. Yelena scoops the limp weight onto her shoulders and drives her skull-first into the canvas with the Downward Spiral.
Yelena steps over the body. Climbs. Throws the switch.
YELENA (V.O.): I’m going to beat you, Bia. (beat) Again.
A blinding blue-white detonation. Bia’s body convulses in the electrified water — and on that flash, the first thunderous hook of SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL SLAMS in.
Yelena alone on the platform, staring down at the broken champion. We FREEZE. The image bleeds out to near black-and-white — the only color left is the blood.
SHE LOST BECAUSE SHE WASN’T A MONSTER.
(beat)
YET.
The driving rhythm of the song kicks in. We are moving now.
PCW. Bia explodes off the turnbuckle with a war cry. The ringposts erupt in red fire pyro. She is bigger here. Meaner. Hungrier.
RENO NEVADA (V.O.): And now, after an hour and nine minutes unadulterated hell, Bia is the Last Man Standing!
The in-ring segment. Yelena’s twitchy, stop-motion stalk down to the ring, the UNLEASHED title slung over her shoulder. The two women square off, chest to chest, the size difference stark — and Bia doesn’t blink.
YELENA: Where is the War Goddess, hm?
Bia closes the distance. A slow, devilish, toothy grin spreads across her face.
BIA: You want me to beat you so badly you can barely stand it.
Yelena’s finger presses into Bia’s chest — right over the heart. Her head tilts at an avian angle. The grin stretches wide.
YELENA: I need you to prove… you’re not afraid of things that go BUMP… (the beat falls out) …in the NIGHT.
CRASH. Ultraviolet blacklight floods everything. The Black Rainbow Death Match erupts mid-violence — Roxie ripper shatters a light tube across Bia’s skull, neon dust exploding into the dark.
The hook SLAMS back in. Full cinematic chaos.
A montage, cut hard to the rhythm — each impact landing on a drum hit: jagged glass grinding into Bia’s forehead. Blood glowing sickly pink under the UV. A skull bouncing off steel steps. A German suplex into the tacks. Bia’s own head driven into the glittering silver field.
Bia hauls Roxie up by the hair. The staple gun rises.
THWACK.
THWACK.
THWACK.
Bia’s face: absolute stone. Roxie laughing and crying at once, metal glinting in her forehead.
YELENA (V.O.): Roxie did her best to tear you apart… and I knew she would fail.
The music grinds down into a low, sinister churn.
The Maelstrom drives Roxie back-first into the tacks. The cover.
ONE.
TWO.
THREE.
Bia sits up out of the wreckage — coated in blood, neon, and silver — turns, and stares dead into the hard camera. We hold there. The music breathes.
YELENA (V.O.): I sent her anyway. Why? (beat) Because I needed to see the real you.
The warehouse. Sparks rain. A skeleton of black steel and heavy chain rises twenty feet into the dark — the belt suspended through the opening at its apex.
YELENA: Behold. The Terrordome.
The music swells — ominous, cathedral-huge.
A slow sweep up the structure to the hanging title. Quick cuts of the dome pitching inward, the lone ladder.
YELENA (V.O.): You can’t claim the belt… until you’ve pinned the other person.
Accelerating cuts — every monster-beat at once: Bia’s blood-soaked face in Eternia. The staple-gun stone stare. The death-match camera stare. And cut against all of it — Yelena’s hyena grin, watching her creation come to life.
BIA (V.O.): (defiant) Big as life… and twice as dangerous.
The “PLEASED TO MEET YOU” hook surges underneath, building.
Yelena’s face in the warehouse dark. Her eyes go dead.
YELENA: (ground to shrapnel) Bring the War for me… (beat) …or bring the bodybag for yourself.
The music CUTS. Black.
In the dark, the heartbeat returns — but it’s changed. Stronger now. Steady. Certain.
One string note rises beneath it.
Bia, flat on her back after the ambush, the dented trash can beside her.
Then — the rise. Not slow. Not erratic. Sudden. Undeniable. She sits straight up. Her eyes are full of wrath.
PUSH IN slow on her face. The wrath holds…
…and then she SMILES. Wide. Toothy. Hungry.
The monster Yelena built is awake.
YELENA (V.O.): (a whisper, almost tender) I knew ya had it in you, B.
The full hook of SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL DETONATES — every instrument, the choir, the whole apocalypse of it — on the smile.
SMASH to the Terrordome looming in the darkened arena, the belt glinting at its summit. Words slam onto the screen, hit by hit:
TONIGHT.
NO ESCAPE.
THE TERRORDOME.
BIA vs. YELENA GORGO
THE PCW UNLEASHED CHAMPIONSHIP
One final distorted heartbeat in the dark…
…then a flatline tone.
CUT TO BLACK.
THE MAIN EVENT
PCW UNLEASHED CHAMPIONSHIP
THE WAR GODDESS
BIA
vs
THE WOMAN WHO LAUGHS
YELENA GORGO
THE TERRORDOME
The lights in the arena dim as the gravely, bitter voice of Rorschach from the Watchman can be heard reciting from one of his journal entries.
RORSCHACH: The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists. And all the whores and politicians will look up and shout ‘Save Us!’, and I’ll look down and whisper…’No.’.
The nu-metal guitar riff of Twisted F8’s ‘Built to Last’ can be heard signaling the impending arrival of the Australian powerhouse known as Bia. The lights to the entryway pulse red, a blanket of smoke spilling out onto the stage as the song picks up pace.
RENO: Listen to this crowd! Eight thousand maniacs packed in the historic New Orleans Municipal Auditorium! In some buildings, this woman is met with a hostile arena but not tonight! These are Pro Championship Wrestling fans! And they want to see the War Goddess!
Bia comes marching slowly out onto the entryway down to the ring. Clad in ring gear that’s all metal, chains, and black leather, her hair in tight Viking styled braids, her red and black war paint on full display, exuding an aura or pure menace. She walks slowly, purposefully down to the ring, ignoring the frenzied fans.
Sliding into the ring she climbs onto the turnbuckles of the nearest post and poses, arms outstretched. She lets out a war cry as the three remaining ringposts let off a blast of red fire pyro.
RENO: Above the ring, the Terrordome is still suspended from the ceiling. Bia holds her hand up towards the metal monster and beckons it to descend.
THE HOUSE LIGHTS DIE.
The sudden pitch black silences the crowd. A beat later, a concentrated bank of spotlights snaps on, aimed directly at the rafters.
The lights bathe the suspended cage in a deep, arterial crimson.
A voice begins singing over the PA system. There is no accompanying music. The isolated vocal rings out with a haunting, metallic echo that bounces off the concrete walls of the arena. It’s Mick Jagger.
PLEASE ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE MYSELF
I’M A MAN OF WEALTH AND TASTE
I’VE BEEN AROUND FOR A LONG, LONG YEAR
STOLE MANY A MAN’S SOUL AND FAITH
High above, industrial motors engage with a heavy, mechanical groan. Thick steel chains pull taut. The Terrordome begins its agonizingly slow descent.
Down in the ring, Bia stands anchored to the mat. The crimson light cuts through the descending steel mesh, casting a shifting, web-like shadow over her frame. She stares straight up into the red glare, her expression entirely devoid of fear.
I WAS ‘ROUND WHEN JESUS CHRIST
HAD HIS MOMENT OF DOUBT AND PAIN
MADE DAMN SURE THAT PILATE
WASHED HIS HANDS AND SEALED HIS FATE
The cage drops lower, clearing the arena monitors. The sheer scale of the metal monster becomes fully apparent, a claustrophobic grid of reinforced steel. The sound of metal grinding on metal bleeds into the silence between the vocal lines.
RENO: I was there when the last Terrordome match was contested. When Yelena Gorgo won the very belt now suspended in the top of this frightening structure. I watched four people tear themselves apart for this title. Four people who knew what it meant to carry the weight of one of the most decorated titles in the history of the sport. A legacy that continues tonight, right here in Pro Championship Wrestling.
Bia paces slowly, a predator tracking the perimeter of her impending enclosure. The red spotlights catch the sweat and war paint on her face. She stops dead center, tilting her head back, waiting for the structure to swallow the ring.
PLEASED TO MEET YOU
HOPE YOU GUESS MY NAME
BUT WHAT’S PUZZLIN’ YOU
IS THE NATURE OF MY GAME
The heavy steel frame breaches the ring ropes. The shadow of the cage consumes the canvas.
CLANG.
The cage touches ground, locking into the reinforced base of the ring with a massive, structural thud. Bia is sealed inside.
THE ENTIRE HOUSE
TURNS
TO
BLACK.
The oppressive silence lasts only a fraction of a second before a heavy, militaristic marching beat begins to echo through the PCW arena.
With every rhythmic, concussive thud of the percussion, spotlights violently slash across the stage.
On the titantron, glitching, static-laced text flashes in rapid, subliminal bursts:
NOW I BECOME DEATH
THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS
GO BACK TO SLEEP!
The beat establishes a punishing, mechanical rhythm, and the lighting locks into a disorienting, strobing choreography.
THUD. Every spotlight in the arena converges on a single point center-stage, bleeding a chaotic spectrum of blinding rainbow colors through the fog.
THUD. The color instantly dies. The beams snap to a stark, ghastly white, plunging the periphery back into pitch blackness.
THUD. The violent rainbow spectrum returns.
THUD. Dead, blinding white.
The lights lock into this jarring, visual loop. Thick, suffocating smoke rolls across the steel grating. A low camera angle from the base of the ramp frames the stage, catching the violent convergence of light.
Rising slowly from the heavy fog is YELENA GORGO.
In the strobing flashes, her whited-out, tattered form shifts violently between a surreal, bruised rainbow and a dead, corpse-like pale. She inhales the rolling fog deep into her lungs, then exhales it in thick, lingering plumes like a dragon, her black-stained eyes locked forward. The strobes repeatedly illuminate that unblinking, nightmare grin.
RENO: If you look close, you’ll see the Boss is looking a bit worse for wear. She still has stitches on her forehead and brow from a Taipei Death Match she competed in last week. A stipulation she picked. Maybe not the smartest decision but hey. You’re listening to a guy who lost his van by betting it on the Bills to beat the Chiefs. You’re also listening to a guy who was living in said van. So it was a double whammy—
The crushing, heavy industrial drop of the highly edited track kicks in, hitting the crowd with a physical force.
She steps out of the smoke. She stands tall and stalks down the ramp to the crushing beat, the white and rainbow strobes detaching from the stage to violently track her path. Her gait is stiff and predatory, dragging a hand aggressively across the steel barricade. As she passes, the front row recoils—not engaging, but shrinking back from the pure, unhinged energy radiating off her.
RENO: —but all that’s the past. Now’s the present. And right now, Yelena Gorgo is looking to defend her UNLEASHED title, a title she carried for two years because
Looming ahead of her is the massive, unforgiving steel structure of the Terrordome. Waiting inside the steel confines is Bia, staring dead-eyed right back at her through the mesh.
Yelena doesn’t break stride or look away. She steps right through the open cage door, crossing the threshold of the steel prison, and climbs up onto the apron, and then steps smoothly through the ropes.
When the brutal beat kicks back in, Yelena violently snaps her head up and closes the distance, stepping directly into Bia’s personal space. They are completely face-to-face. Yelena’s black-stained eyes pierce right into Bia, her teeth bared in that sickening nightmare grin, looking entirely devoid of sanity and ready to tear the flesh from her bones.
DING DING DING!
Chest to chest. Eye to eye. The Terrordome hums around them, the crowd’s roar flattening into a low, dangerous rumble as the two stand there, breathing the same air, refusing to blink.
Their mouths move first. Sharp, ugly words. Bia’s jaw works, teeth bared as she barks something up into Yelena’s face. Yelena answers with that ruined, hungry grin, lips curling as she murmurs back, almost amused. Then Bia snaps. She lashes out with the first right hand, knuckles cracking against Yelena’s jaw.
RENO: Bia strikes first! But the champ doesn’t fall. She fires back!
In an instant, they are trading in the pocket—heavy forearms, short hooks, shoulders slamming, the sound of bone hammering into bone echoing off steel. The brawl spills into the corner. Bia’s back thuds against the turnbuckles, steel cable biting into her spine as Yelena pins her in and unloads with stiff, concrete hands to the ribs and jaw.
Bia ducks under a wild haymaker, slips out to the side, and shoves Yelena hard into the buckles, reversing position. Now it is Bia burying her forehead into the champion’s collarbone and driving heavy shots into her midsection—thudding body blows, short elbows, a grinding shoulder to the sternum. Yelena absorbs as many as she blocks, teeth clenched, eyes going colder. She plants a forearm across Bia’s chest, muscles surging, and bullies her way back out of the corner, turning the War Goddess and slamming her into the pads instead. A sharp knee pistons up into Bia’s midsection, folding her over, followed by a brutal back elbow that cracks across the side of her skull and snaps her head sideways. The Terrordome comes alive, fans roaring for the violence, not the name.
Yelena takes a step back, chest rising, and slowly looks around at the sea of bodies beyond the cage, that manic grin carving across her face. She drinks in the noise like oxygen. Bia snarls, surging out of the corner to shove Yelena away with both hands. The impact rocks the champion off-balance. Bia drives forward off her back foot and rifles a pump kick into Yelena’s midsection, the ball of her foot denting the gut and sending the champion stumbling back toward center ring. Bia stays on her. No retreat. She stalks Yelena down with a flurry—heavy right hands, a low kick slamming into the thigh, another hook into the ribs as she tries to chop the bigger woman down.
On the third rib kick, Yelena snatches Bia’s ankle out of the air. She clamps down on the captured leg, eyes flashing, and with her free hand snakes up to wrap around Bia’s throat. In one violent, judo-slick motion she pivots, wrenches Bia’s balance across her hip, and hurls her. Bia’s body whips through the air and skids halfway across the canvas before crashing hard into the opposite turnbuckles, spine and shoulders bouncing off the padding. Yelena is already moving, closing the gap with long, predatory strides. She crushes a running knee up into Bia’s jawline against the buckles, snapping the War Goddess’ head back and dropping her straight down to the mat in a heap.
RENO: Bia hits the mat like me after a three day bender. Yelena admires her work, looking down at Bia with that insane grin. Chest heaving in slow, satisfied breaths… She bends down, hooks a hand in Bia’s hair and gear, then… then she just HAULS her deadweight off the mat alike a punching bag!
The champion slings her toward the ropes, sending her under the bottom strand. Bia spills out of the ring, shoulder and hip smacking the floor before her momentum carries her into the Terrordome wall. Steel meets spine with a sharp, ugly clang. She lets out a raw scream as her body bounces off the chain-link and collapses to the floor, one arm wrapping instinctively around her lower back as the crowd surges to its feet, hungry for what comes next.
Yelena drops from the apron to the floor, boots hitting concrete as she stalks toward Bia slumped against the Terrordome wall. She snags a handful of gear and hair, drags Bia along the side of the ring, and tries to sling her face-first into the black steel mesh. Bia gets her forearms up at the last heartbeat, bracing against the chain, boots digging into the floor. The impact rattles the dome, but her skull never hits. She wheels around, snarling, and they start throwing again—short, ugly punches, a low kick whipping into Yelena’s thigh, a forearm crashing into Bia’s jaw. Yelena muscles through the exchange, reasserting control as she hammers a series of blistering knife-edge chops across Bia’s chest, each one snapping off her sternum and echoing through the arena.
She latches onto Bia’s wrist and tries to whip her into the cage. Bia plants her feet, reverses, and uses Yelena’s own momentum to hurl the champion face-first into the Terrordome instead. Steel shudders on impact. Bia lets out a guttural roar and charges like a rhino, lowering her level and driving her shoulder through Yelena’s back, crushing her between bone and chain. Yelena’s back ricochets off the heavy black links before she spills down to the floor, the breath torn clean out of her lungs.
RENO: Yelena crumbles at the base of the wall and blood is now pouring out of those torn stitches above her left eye.
Bia paces along the apron side, hand pressed to her own chest, sucking air, feeling the sting of those chops. She drops to the floor and flips up the ring skirt. The New Orleans crowd smells it coming.
GET THE TABLE!
CLAP! CLAP! CLAP-AP-AP!
GET THE TABLE!
CLAP! CLAP! CLAP-AP-AP!
The roar spikes as Bia drags a long wooden folding table out from under the ring, the legs clattering against the floor.
RENO: The crowd has a request. And Bia is in a giving mood! Eight thousand maniacs roaring as she pulls out the table. But she ain’t done! She’s reaching back under, like Santa double-dipping his sack… a chair! She’s got a chair!
The metal glinting under the lights. She shoves the table up under the bottom rope, sliding it into the ring, then turns with the chair gripped tight in both hands, stalking toward Yelena.
As she raises it, Yelena explodes forward with a sudden kick, her boot slamming up into Bia’s midsection and folding her over. The chair slips from Bia’s grasp, clattering to the ground. Yelena scoops it up in one smooth motion. As Bia instinctively turns away, Yelena brings the chair down across her upper back with a sickening crack, jolting her spine and driving her to her knees.
Yelena catches Bia by the straps and waistband and hurls her shoulder-first into the steel steps, the impact sending the top half of the stairs skidding a few inches. Bia slumps across the cold metal. Yelena climbs up onto the steps, planting one boot square between Bia’s shoulder blades, then shifts, grinding the sole down across the back of Bia’s skull. She presses her full weight through the boot, stamping Bia’s head against the sharp edge in short, cruel pulses. The steel doesn’t give. Bia’s hands claw at the steps, trying to relieve the pressure, but there’s nowhere for her skull to go.
Yelena drops back to the floor and sinks to a knee, breathing hard, eyes still bright with that feral amusement. She yanks up the ring skirt on her side now, and the crowd erupts as she produces two fluorescent light tubes taped together like a makeshift bat. She rises and charges, swinging for Bia’s head. Bia lunges forward at the last instant, driving through Yelena’s hips and tackling her spine-first into the apron. The tubes slip from Yelena’s hands and tumble to the floor as Bia pistons short, desperate punches into the side of her jaw and cheekbone, knuckles smashing bone again and again.
RENO: Yelena slumps, glassy-eyed! Bia snatches up the taped light tubes, lines up the shot, and swings them down over Yelena’s skull!. The fragile glass detonates on impact!
A cloud of chalky phosphor dust explodes into the air as shards rain down around them. Yelena staggers, knees dipping. Bia snarls, gripping one jagged end like a broken stake and driving forward, aiming to ram the splintered glass into Yelena’s face. Yelena gets both forearms up in time, the sharp edge millimeters from gouging her forehead. With a grunt, she shoves Bia off, sending her stumbling backward into the Terrordome wall, chain-link rattling on contact.
Yelena rolls under the bottom rope, choosing the relative safety of the ring. Bia shakes out her arms and follows, sliding in after her. As Bia reaches through the ropes, hand near the remaining broken tube, Yelena stomps down on the glass beside her fingers, crushing it to dust with a loud pop.
She follows with sharp boots to Bia’s shoulder and ribs, then hauls her up, cinching a deep grip on her hip and sleeve. In one clean, violent motion she rips Bia off her feet with a textbook HARAI GOSHI, sweeping the leg and sending the War Goddess flipping through the air before she crashes down on her side and shoulders, folding awkwardly on the canvas with a heavy thud.
RENO: I just took a deep breath on behalf of Bia because she just got the air punched out of her lungs! Yelena rises, a little unsteady from the punishment and the glass dust still clinging to her, but that crooked grin is still plastered across her mug!
She staggers over to the table, snaps the legs open with a rough shove, and props it up onto its side near the ropes. Before she can turn back, Bia surges in from behind, grabbing a fistful of Yelena’s gear and hair. She jerks the champion forward, bouncing her face-first off the hard edge of the table so the wood rings like a drum.
Yelena recoils, clutching at her nose and mouth. Bia spins her, hurls her toward the ropes, and chases right on her heels. The moment Yelena hits the strands and rebounds, Bia barrels through her with a brutal clothesline, sending both champion and challenger tumbling up and over the top rope, crashing back down to the floor on the far side of the Terrordome.
Bia drops to the floor beside Yelena, sucking wind, sweat and phosphor dust clinging to her skin. She drags the champion up by the wrist and a handful of gear, shoves her face into the Terrordome wall, and grinds. Chain-link bites into Yelena’s forehead and cheek as Bia leans her full weight in, scraping her across the steel until the metal sings.
Yelena finally manages to get an arm up and drive a double axe handle down into Bia’s midsection, folding her back against the apron with a sharp exhale. Yelena snaps a high kick toward Bia’s head, but Bia ducks under, steps in, and rams a shoulder into Yelena’s stomach, pinning her there and driving her back into the cage again before unloading with a barrage of short, heavy right hands to the ribs and jaw.
Bia clamps onto Yelena’s wrist and the back of her neck, muscles in her arms and shoulders standing out as she hauls the bigger woman toward the ring. She launches Yelena face-first into the steel ring post. Forehead meets cold metal with a brutal crack, and Yelena crumples to the floor, one hand instinctively going to her brow. Bia doesn’t let the moment breathe. She stalks over to the steel steps, heaves the top section up against her chest, and marches back toward Yelena.
As Yelena pushes up to her feet, dazed and blood spilling over the angles of her face and settling in the hollows of wrinkles and sockets, Bia hoists the steps overhead and drives them forward, ramming the flat steel straight into Yelena’s face and upper body. The impact knocks Yelena flat, the steps tumbling from Bia’s hands as the champion spills to the ground in a heap. Bia throws her head back at ringside and roars, the sound ripping out of her lungs and drawing another surge from the crowd.
Bia turns, spots the discarded steel chair from earlier, and strides over to claim it. She grips it tight and stalks back toward Yelena, who is somehow forcing herself upright, swaying, a crimson grin cutting through the mess on her face. That grin only makes Bia angrier. She rears back and brings the chair down across the top of Yelena’s skull with a thunderous crack. Yelena drops to both knees, eyes glassy, body rocking. Bia takes a half step back, adjusts her grip, and swings again. The second shot caves Yelena sideways, her body collapsing to the floor in a boneless sprawl.
The chair clatters away as Bia tosses it aside and immediately throws herself down across Yelena’s chest, hooking a thick leg for the cover. Referee Grade Garrett slides into position, hand slapping the canvas.
ONE…
TWO…
THREE!
The bell rings, echoing inside the dome as the crowd erupts.
RENO: Bia gets the first fall! She is now eligible to go for the title! All Yelena can do is try to stop her—unless she can recover enough to put down the War Goddess herself!
Bia pushes up to her knees, chest heaving, blood and sweat streaking her war paint. Grade Garrett raises her wrist, signaling the pinfall. Inside the Terrordome, the rules shift—Bia has earned the right to climb, to reach for the PCW UNLEASHED Championship hanging above the oculus in the center of the domed cage. Yelena lies sprawled at her feet, dazed and bleeding, while the War Goddess looks up into the steel sky, the belt glinting like a promise she can finally chase.
Bia makes her way to the far side of the ring, drops to the floor, and flips up the apron. She drags out a large black ladder, metal scraping against the concrete, then muscles it up onto the apron and shoves it into the ring. Sliding in after it, she hauls the ladder to dead center and snaps the legs open, lining it up directly under the PCW UNLEASHED Championship hanging from the oculus above.
She plants a boot on the first rung. Then the second. The crowd buzz thickens as she starts her climb. On the floor, a bloody hand claws up onto the apron. Then another. Yelena’s head rises into frame, her face drenched in blood from the chair shots, teeth bared in a ruined grin as she drags herself back into the ring. By the time Bia reaches the halfway point on the ladder, her back turned, Yelena has slid under the bottom rope and taken up position directly behind her.
Yelena steps onto the first rung, her weight making the structure shudder. Bia feels the shift and glances down. In the same heartbeat, Yelena drives an arm up between Bia’s legs, forearm hammering into the inner thighs and gut, then clamps her other hand around Bia’s midsection. She pivots and rips Bia off the ladder, turning with her and slamming the War Goddess flat on her back, spine and shoulders bouncing off the canvas.
Yelena shoves the ladder closed with a sharp metallic snap and drags it into the nearest corner. She heaves it up and lets it crash against the pads, where it settles leaning against the top turnbuckle like a steel ramp. Across the ring, the table still lies tipped on its side. Yelena stalks over, grabs the edge, and hauls it upright, propping it at an angle in the opposite corner so the wood faces the ring menacingly.
RENO: Yelena movin’ furniture around the ring like this is Interior Design Masters. Now she’s turning back to Bia. Reaches down to grab the War Goddess… BUT BIA FIRES A DESPERATE PUNCH UP! FIST SLAMMING INTO YELENA’S SOLAR PLEXUS!
The shot blasts the air out of the champion’s lungs and sends her stumbling backward, one hand clamped to her neck as she coughs and reels. Bia forces herself up, legs shaky, blood starting to mat in her hair, and moves in behind her. With a roar, she impressively hoists Yelena up across her shoulders, muscling the larger woman into THE SOUTHERN CROSS (Torture Rack Argentine Backbreaker).
RENO: Yelena’s spine is bowing over Bia’s shoulders! Head and legs trapped. The arena is coming unglued!… BUT YELENA ANSWERS—WITH VIOLENCE!
The champion pistons an elbow into the side of Bia’s skull. Then a second. The blows rattle Bia just enough for Yelena to slip free, sliding down behind her to land on her feet. In one smooth, brutal motion, Yelena scoops Bia across her own shoulders, turns, and charges toward the ropes. She launches Bia over the top strand, hurling her straight into the Terrordome wall. Bia’s face slams into the steel mesh with a harsh, tearing clang before her body crumples to the floor below. The camera snaps to a close-up: a fresh gash has opened across Bia’s forehead, blood already trickling down the side of her face, cutting through the war paint as she blinks in a daze.
Yelena drops down to the floor and marches straight for the nearest set of steel steps. She grips the sides, muscles bunching as she rips the top section free, then wheels around just as Bia is pushing up on hands and knees. Yelena charges and rams the steel straight into Bia’s face, the edge smashing across her features and sending her sprawling back to the floor. Blood spatters the steps as Bia crumples. Yelena grabs a fistful of hair, drags her up just enough, and drives her face into the metal again, the dull ring of steel-on-bone echoing off the Terrordome.
She hauls Bia onto the flat top of the steps, leaving her sprawled across the cold steel, then reaches under the ring apron and pulls out another chair. The crowd buzzes as Yelena raises it high overhead, shadow falling over Bia’s blood-streaked face. She swings down with murderous intent. At the last possible heartbeat, Bia rolls free, dropping off the steps to the side. The chair collides with the steel where Bia’s skull was, exploding in a horrible metallic clang that sends vibrations up Yelena’s arms.
Bia staggers away around the corner of the ring, one hand on the cage wall, trying to buy herself a breath. Yelena is right behind her, stepping up and over the toppled steps in a single stride, closing the gap with the chair still in her hands. She cocks back and takes a swing. Bia quickens her pace, ducking just out of range so the chair whooshes past her shoulder. She plants, wheels, and explodes forward, looking to cut Yelena in half with a SPEAR (Running Shoulder Tackle).
But Yelena sidesteps at the last moment, letting Bia shoot past and stumble toward the Terrordome wall. Bia slams both palms into the chain to stop herself and turns back around—just in time to see the chair leaving Yelena’s hands.
Yelena hurls the steel ten feet through the air like a discus. It spins once, twice, and crashes square into Bia’s skull with a sickening thunk.
RENO: BIA JUST GOT DECAPITATED WITH A FOLDING CHAIR!
Bia’s legs give out. She drops flat to the floor, arms splayed. The crowd detonates.
HOLY SHIT!
HOLY SHIT!
Yelena stalks over to the wreckage, breathing hard, blood still masking her face but eyes bright with cruel focus. She grabs Bia under the arms, deadweight now, and muscles her up just enough to shove her under the bottom rope back into the ring. Bia rolls to her back on the canvas, the crimson mask spreading. Yelena climbs in after her, stepping between the ropes with deliberate, predatory calm.
Yelena hauls Bia up from the canvas, muscles straining as she muscles the Australian powerhouse across her shoulders, face down. Bia’s arms hang limp, blood dripping from her brow to the mat. Yelena turns slowly, pivoting until she is staring through the Terrordome mesh directly into the hard camera set up beside the waiting table in the corner. The message is obvious.
She spins. In one smooth, vicious burst, Yelena launches Bia off her shoulders and down—hitting THE MAELSTROM (F-5 Fireman’s Carry Facebuster), stealing Bia’s own finishing move!
RENO: Gorgo sticks her hand into Bia’s wallet and steals her finisher! Just like last week, when she finished Kelsey Savage at Eternia’s Hidden Heart!
Bia’s body whips through the air and detonates through the table, wood exploding in a sharp crack as she crashes straight through it and lands in a pile of splinters and twisted legs. The crowd roars at the theft and the impact.
Yelena doesn’t waste time. She drags Bia’s wrecked body out of the debris, rolls her to clear the broken table pieces, and sprawls across her chest for the cover. Referee Grade Garrett slides into position and counts.
ONE…
TWO…
THREE.
The bell sounds again inside the dome. With that second pinfall, Yelena joins Bia in eligibility; the Woman Who Laughs has now legally earned the right to climb and try to rip down the PCW UNLEASHED Championship hanging over the center of the Terrordome.
Yelena wipes at the blood on her face, then trudges to the corner where the ladder still rests against the turnbuckle. She drags it back toward center and starts to set it up, hands working the hinges—then stops, eyes cutting toward the debris.
RENO: Bia is already clawing her way out of the shattered table and twisted metal, dragging herself free of the wreckage. Gorgo might have executed the Maelstrom to perfection, but Bia knows that move inside and out. She might not have been able to stop the impact, but she knew how to protect herself at the last moment. Unfortunately for Bia… Yelena sees her getting up.
Yelena abandons the careful setup and instead grips the ladder like a battering ram. She lowers a shoulder, steps in, and drives the blunt end straight into Bia’s midsection, folding her over and knocking the wind from her lungs. Bia drops to her knees, arms wrapped around her ribs. Yelena hoists the ladder up and brings it down like a guillotine across Bia’s stomach. Bia rolls to her side with a choked gasp, clutching her gut, only for Yelena to raise the ladder again and slam it down across her back. The harsh metal crashes against muscle and spine, leaving Bia writhing, one hand clawing at her lower back.
Satisfied for the moment, Yelena finally props the ladder up properly, snapping the legs open and walking it into position beneath the hanging PCW UNLEASHED Championship. She starts to climb, each step slow and deliberate. Blood continues to pour down her face, dripping onto the rungs. At one point her boot slips on a slick patch, the ladder shaking as she momentarily loses her footing before catching herself on the sides and continuing upward.
Below, Bia drags herself upright and staggers to the base of the ladder. She reaches up, grabs hold of Yelena’s ankle, and yanks, anchoring her in place. Yelena stretches for the next rung but can’t rise any higher, snarling as Bia keeps her grounded. Yelena answers the only way she knows how: she pistons a boot backward, heel smashing into Bia’s already-bloodied face. The kick blasts Bia away from the ladder and sends her crashing back to the mat, arms flung wide.
Yelena turns on the ladder, shifting her weight to face inward toward the ring.
RENO: WHAT ARE YA DOIN’ CHAMP?! Go for the gold! Not the glory!
In a rare moment of arrogance, she bends her knees and launches herself off the rungs, throwing her body sideways for an elbow drop. Bia rolls at the last heartbeat, leaving nothing but canvas to catch Yelena’s fall. Yelena’s elbow and ribs slam into the mat, the impact jolting through her frame. She pays instantly for trying a move that isn’t in her playbook.
RENO: Yelena Gorgo had the belt within reach! Bia was down! But she let her obsession with the War Goddess cloud her judgment! Now both women are down in a pool of blood and sweat.
Bia starts to move first. She crawls to the ladder, sets it back upright with shaky hands, and begins to climb, rung by rung, her face a crimson mask and every breath ragged. The climb is slow, desperate. Behind her, Yelena, grimacing and clutching her ribs, forces herself up again. She stumbles to the side of the ladder, plants her feet, and shoves with everything she has left.
The ladder tips. Bia’s eyes go wide as it tilts out from under her. She spills sideways, crashes across the top rope, and bounces off it like a slingshot. The whiplash launches her backward, where she slams down hard on her back in the center of the canvas, all the air blasted from her lungs. Yelena drops to her knees and then collapses fully, body giving out from exhaustion and blood loss as both women lie wrecked in the Terrordome.
Both women lie flat, staring up at the Terrordome ceiling as the crowd buzzes. Slowly, they start to move. Bia clutches at her lower back. Yelena holds her ribs. Yelena makes it to her feet first—just a half-step quicker, just a little less broken—and staggers over to Bia. She fists a hand in Bia’s hair and trunks and simply heaves her out of the ring like dead weight. Bia spills through the ropes and crashes hard onto the floor.
Yelena follows, dropping to the outside. She grabs one of the dislodged sets of steel steps and shoves it against the Terrordome wall on its side, bracing it against the chain-link. Then she flips the apron and drags out another ladder. With methodical cruelty, she lays the ladder across the side of the steps and the ring apron, creating a bridge of metal between steel and canvas. The structure flexes under its own weight, promising something ugly.
Before she can fully admire her work, Bia surges from behind and clubs her across the back, driving her chest-first into the bridged ladder. Yelena’s face smashes against the rungs with a sharp clank. Bia grabs the back of her head and repeatedly bounces her face into the ladder, each impact smearing more blood across the black metal. Yelena staggers backward, her features drenched, pawing at her eyes to clear the crimson curtain just to see.
Bia steps in and hammers an axe handle down between Yelena’s shoulder blades, the blow buckling her. Bia then tries to muscle her back into the ring, shoving her toward the apron. Yelena rolls onto the edge of the ring and under the bottom rope, then uses the taped cables to haul herself upright as Bia climbs up onto the apron. Bia cocks back a wild right hand, swinging for the head. Yelena ducks under and snaps up with a vicious European uppercut, knuckles crashing into Bia’s jaw and snapping her head back. Bia clutches the top rope to keep from pitching backward off the apron.
RENO: Yelena steps back and fires off a KICK DEMON roundhouse kick aimed to take Bia’s head off—Bia ducks again!
Yelena’s shin scythes through empty air, the force of the miss spinning her all the way around. Bia seizes the opening, wrapping her arms around Yelena from behind over the top rope, trying to haul her backward from inside the ring, for a belly-to-back suplex off the apron to the floor. Yelena clamps both hands on the top rope and hangs on for dear life. For a terrifying second, both women teeter over the brink, bodies seesawing over the bridged ladder below, threatening to crash down through it.
Yelena shifts her weight, twisting, and manages to drop back onto the apron, regaining a vertical base. She blasts Bia with a shot to the head, then wrenches her into a standing head scissors. With a guttural effort, Yelena hooks the waist, hoists Bia up, and steps forward. She sits out, driving Bia down in a savage powerbomb that spikes Bia’s back first across the ladder bridge. The metal bows, buckles, and finally collapses under the impact, folding around Bia’s body as she screams and falls into a heap of twisted steel and aluminum.
Yelena turns her head and looks into the empty ring. The ladder is there. The belt hangs above. She could climb. Instead, she drops down to the floor again, eyes alight with something darker than victory.
She flips up the apron and digs around until she pulls out one large velvet bag. Then another. The Terrordome erupts as the crowd realizes what’s coming. Yelena rolls back into the ring, drags both bags to dead center, and slowly opens them. With a deliberate tilt, she pours out millions of tiny, bright steel thumbtacks, a glittering, lethal carpet spreading across the canvas.
RENO: That’s… a lot of tacks. It’s like someone went to every Staples from here to Little Rock and said “yes”.
Yelena leaves the ladder where it lies, forgotten in the corner. She stalks to the ropes and leans over them, eyes locked on Bia’s broken body amid the wreckage at ringside. Blood pours down her face as she screams over the steel.
YELENA: BIA!
Her voice breaks.
YELENA: BIA!
She climbs through the ropes and drops to the floor. Yelena hauls Bia up by the hair and trunks, slams her into the Terrordome wall, and pins her there with a forearm across the chest. Then she starts smacking her, open-hand shots cracking across Bia’s blood-slicked jaw and cheek, each slap trying to wake the War Goddess up as much as hurt her.
Bia’s eyes peel open through the crimson haze. She answers with a short, sharp right hand that detonates against Yelena’s jaw. The shot knocks Yelena backward, sending her stumbling into the apron. Bia roars and charges, driving a lariat into Yelena’s mid-back and crunching her spine against the ring edge. The impact rockets Yelena forward, her upper body slamming into the ropes and then rebounding straight back out into the Terrordome wall, where she collides chest-first with the steel.
Bia grabs her and muscles her up across her shoulders, despite her own screaming spine. She breaks into a run, building as much momentum as the cramped ringside space allows, and then swings Yelena down. THE WAR HAMMER (Running Emerald Flowsion Side Sitout Powerslam) spikes Yelena back-first onto the thin ringside padding, Bia landing seated, the force of the slam rattling the floor. Yelena’s body bounces once and then flattens out.
Bia pushes up slowly, every inch of her skin smeared in red until there’s more blood than visible flesh. She stands there for a moment, chest heaving, eyes peeled wide as she looks around the Terrordome while the fans scream themselves hoarse. The sound washes over her. She grabs a handful of Yelena’s matted hair and drags the champion up, then heaves her under the bottom rope back into the ring. Bia climbs in after her—and only now sees the glittering field of thumbtacks spread across the canvas. An ugly grin curls across her bloodstreaked lips.
Bia hauls Yelena up into a front facelock, draping Yelena’s arm over the back of her neck. She’s calling for ODIN’S WRATH (Steiner Screwdriver Vertical Suplex Piledriver), the crowd reacting to the set-up immediately.
She tries to lift, but Yelena snakes a leg around Bia’s, blocking the elevation. Bia answers with short, brutal punches to the ribs. ONE, TWO, THREE! Each one thudding into Yelena’s side until the hook loosens. Bia powers her up, getting Yelena vertical, but white-hot pain streaks up her spine from the ladder shots and the War Hammer landing. Her back gives out, severely weakened from the powerbomb onto the ladder.
RENO: Bia couldn’t do it! The damage to her back, the pain, it’s too much! Gorgo slips and drops back down to her feet!
Yelena surges in that instant. She snatches Bia’s arm and body position, shifts her hips, and with a violent snap launches IPPON (Kata Guruma Judo Throw), ripping Bia up and over her shoulders. Bia flips through the air and comes crashing down back-first into the sea of thumbtacks.
A collective grown rumbles through the arena. The impact sends tacks flipping through the air. The is a horrifying mix of thud and skitter as metal bites into flesh. Bia arches once, then collapses flat, hundreds of tacks embedded in her back and shoulders.
Yelena remains standing for only a heartbeat or two, swaying, eyes glassy. Then her legs give out. She topples forward and falls straight into the tacks herself, crashing down beside Bia. The steel points punch into flesh. Neither woman even flinches. they just lie there, motionless in the glittering bed of thumbtacks, both completely spent and utterly out in the heart of the Terrordome.
They lie in the bed of thumbtacks for what feels like forever. Ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty. Nearly a minute passes before both bodies twitch at once. Then, as if yanked by the same invisible wire, Bia and Yelena shoot upright, sitting up in unison, covered in tacks. The realization hits a second later. Both scream, backs arching as hundreds of steel points bite deeper into flesh, blood streaming down their shoulders and soaking into their gear. They roll away from each other, thumbtacks skittering across the canvas, and start the long, slow push to their feet. Under the arena lights, silver glints up and down their backs and legs, tacks embedded in skin, fabric, and boots. They turn and stare, two ruined warriors standing in the middle of a battlefield.
RENO: Both women step forward! No sprinting! Just slow, lumbering, stubborn strides until they collide in the center and start throwing! Fists slam into faces, over and over, knuckles thudding off jaws and cheekbones as the crowd’s roar climbs with every shot. Blood is flying through the air!
Yelena edges ahead, each heavy right hand forcing Bia back a step. Bia ducks under a swing and drives a knee up into Yelena’s midsection, folding her. Now Bia takes over, pummeling Yelena with clubbing blows that send her stumbling toward the corner where the splintered remains of the table still litter the mat. As Bia closes in, Yelena snatches one of the surviving table legs, rips it free, wheels around, and slams the metal straight into Bia’s face. The impact drops Bia to her back, a half-step removed from the worst of the thumbtack minefield.
Yelena steps over Bia, raising the table leg high overhead. She drives it down like a stake. Bia sends a boot straight up, catching the weapon flush and kicking it back into Yelena’s own face. The blow snaps Yelena’s head back and forces her to stumble away, dropping the leg as her hands fly to her nose and mouth. Bia slowly fights her way upright.
When Yelena’s hands fall, she’s grinning again—nose clearly busted and pouring blood down her mouth,one tooth missing from the ragged, hacksaw smile.
The horror show draws a mix of groans and bloodthirsty cheers.
Bia marches forward. They meet dead center, a bloody mirror of the opening stare-down. Bia rears back and slaps Yelena across the face, the crack echoing through the Terrordome. Yelena’s head whips to the side, then slowly ratchets back, eyes burning, grin still carved across her ruined mouth. Bia balls her fist and swings. Yelena swats the punch aside and drives her forehead into Bia’s face with a brutal headbutt. Both women recoil in opposite directions—Bia from the blunt-force shot to the nose, Yelena from the shock of ramming her already-broken bridge into solid bone.
They turn back toward each other again. Yelena strikes first, whipping a kick into Bia’s stomach and doubling her over. She dips her hips, wraps her arms around Bia’s waist, and the crowd surges to its feet, sensing what’s coming. Yelena hoists Bia up and arches backward into a Northern Lights Suplex. Bia’s back slams into the thumbtacks again, another spray of glinting steel erupting around her, while the crown of Yelena’s head crashes into the tack-studded canvas as well. Bia rockets up off the mat, screaming as more points embed in her back, then collapses back down. Yelena rolls through the debris, collecting even more tacks along her shoulders and scalp, before dragging herself away from the pile and up on the ropes. A close-up catches several thumbtacks actually stuck in the top of her skull as she pulls herself upright, grinning, bloody, utterly deranged.
RENO: They rise yet again and stagger back toward center… but this time Bia is just a beat too slow! Yelena whips her leg through the air! KIKKUDEEEEEEEMON!!!! Her shin just crashed into the side of Bia’s skull like a baseball bat! The impact nearly takes her head off!
Bia spins and drops in a heap, finally clear of the worst of the tack field but motionless on the canvas. Yelena stands over her, shoulders heaving, chest surging as she drags in one deep breath after another. Then she turns away and heads for the ladder.
She rights it, walks it back under the hanging PCW UNLEASHED Championship, and snaps the legs out with trembling hands. Blood runs down her arms and drips from her fingertips. Satisfied with the placement, Yelena plants a boot on the first rung and begins to climb, one slow, agonizing step at a time, while Bia lies broken somewhere behind her in the Terrordome.
Yelena climbs like a woman dragging a mountain. One rung at a time. Boots heavy. Hands slick with blood. Each step makes the ladder wobble, metal groaning under her weight and the abuse it has already taken. The crowd stands as one, the noise a constant, ragged wall around the Terrordome as she forces herself higher, ribs aching, back full of tacks, face a ruin.
She nears the top and pauses, chest heaving. The ladder shifts beneath her, unsteady from being used as a battering ram and a blunt-force weapon. She reaches up anyway, fingers stretching toward the belt swaying under the oculus. The ladder trembles again, threatening to slide out from under her. Yelena hesitates for a heartbeat, feeling the give in the joints and the flex in the legs.
Down below, Bia moves. Slowly at first—one arm under her, then the other—until she forces herself upright. She blinks blood out of her eyes and looks up. She sees Yelena’s hand reaching for her title. The sight lights a fire.
RENO: Bia staggers forward, lowers her head, and explodes into the side of the ladder, her shoulder slamming against the metal!… BUT YELENA SAW IT COMING! SHE LEAPS OFF THE LADDER JUST BEFORE IT FLIES OUT FROM UNDERNEATH HER BOOTS! She reaches… SHE GRABS THE TOP OF THE TERRORDOME CEILING!
Yelena’s fingers hook into the chain, arms straining as she hangs there, swinging, only a few feet away from the championship belt suspended through the central oculus.
RENO: Gorgo dangles, legs kicking to steady herself. One hand lets go, stretching out into space. Her fingertips brush the smooth leather of the strap, just shy of a clean grip!
On the mat, Bia sees it. She sees Yelena’s fingers touching her belt. She scrambles for the fallen ladder, drags it upright with a ragged shout, and slams it into place just behind Yelena under the dome. Bia climbs as fast as her battered body will allow, boots slipping on blood-slick rungs but never stopping. She reaches Yelena’s height and starts hammering fists into the back of her head and shoulders, trying to shake her loose. Yelena grunts, teeth clenched, but refuses to let go of the Terrordome ceiling. Her free hand still claws for the belt.
RENO: It isn’t enough, Bia! This women is the goddamn TERMINATOR! You gotta… you gotta do something drastic here!
Bia changes tactics. She wraps an arm around Yelena’s waist, then another around a leg, and simply yanks, physically peeling her off the chainlink. Yelena’s fingers finally break loose. Bia drags her across her shoulders, balancing her with terrifying, exhausted precision above the narrow top of the ladder.
RENO: Bia has the champ across her shoulders! Yelena fires back! Elbows smashing into Bia’s jaw, again and again! Bia sways… her legs shake… but she ain’t stepping down! SHE GRITS HER TEETH… AND CLIMBS HIGHER! Forcing herself to the very top! What… what’s she going to—OH MAH GAWD!!!!!!!!
With the entire arena holding its breath, Bia throws Gorgo into THE MAELSTROM (F-5 Fireman’s Carry Facebuster).
RENO: FROM THE TOP OF THE LADDER!
Bia spins, ripping Yelena off her shoulders. Yelena’s body whips out into space, spiraling through the air in a sickening arc before crashing chest-and-face-first into the thumbtacks below. Her body bounces once, a spray of steel popping up around the impact, then she goes limp, face buried in the bed of tacks, not moving at all.
HOLY SHIT!
HOLY SHIT!
HOLY SHIT!
HOLY SHIT!
The Terrordome shakes with the noise.
RENO: Bia turns on the top of the ladder! Eyes finding the belt again! It’s right there—but the ladder isn’t under the oculus! She’s out of position! With no other option, she starts to climb down to move it under the belt… Wait. She stopped. Why’d she stop? She’s looking down at Yelena. She’s seeing Yelena’s hand curling into a fist! Even face-down in the tacks, her fingers are moving!
Bia stops. Looks up instead. Then she climbs back up, rung by rung, until she’s standing again at the very top. She bends her knees and leaps, hands shooting up to grab the cage above. Her fingers hook into the chain, and she swings out, then begins to move hand-over-hand across the ceiling of the Terrordome like monkey bars, inching toward the center of the oculus. The crowd roars with every reach.
RENO: Bia reaches the middle! The belt hangs in front of her! She reaches… she snags the strap with one hand! Then the other!
She rips down and immediately drops about two feet, dangling momentarily until the belt’s buckles give way. Her boots hit the mat, knees bending to absorb the fall, PCW UNLEASHED Championship clutched in both hands.
RENO: BIA HAS DONE IT! BIA IS THE PCW UNLEASHED CHAMPION!
The bell sounds.
BIA WINS
THE TERRORDOME
Twisted F8 blasts from the speakers as Bia rolls with the landing, tumbling away from the bed of thumbtacks and coming to a stop on clear canvas. Referee Grade Garrett is there almost instantly, taking one of her bloody wrists and raising it high while she clutches the title to her chest with the other arm. Medics are allowed into the Terrordome by referee Stephanie Marshall at ringside, ducking through the door and rushing straight to Yelena’s motionless, tack-studded body.
Bia pushes herself up and staggers to the nearest corner. She climbs slowly, planting one boot, then the other on the buckles, and raises the PCW UNLEASHED Championship high overhead. Her music hits but it melts into the wall of crowd noise. Everyone in the building is on their feet—cheering for Bia, cheering for the savagery they just witnessed, cheering for Yelena as medics carefully roll her onto a backboard, her skin and gear studded with steel, her face a crimson ruin.
Bia is still celebrating, breathing hard, belt held high, when she hears it.
Laughter.
She looks down. On the backboard, strapped in, eyes rolled back and unfocused, Yelena Gorgo is cackling. Her grin is wrecked—teeth missing, nose swollen and crooked—but the laughter pours out of her anyway, raw and manic, echoing off the steel.
Bia stares. Then, slowly, the War Goddess smiles back, blood and tacks and gold all catching the light.
RENO: Mutual respect? Drunk on violence? Who knows. But what I do know is, this has been an amazing night of matches. Twists and turns. Violence. Glory. Honor. Betrayal. Goddamn Chris Mosh got run over by a Cybertruck. THIS is what PCW is all about. So if you like what you saw? Come back in two weeks to the Big Easy and see what else we got instore. Until then, I’m Reno Nevada and this is Pro Champions Wrest—
Suddenly, the arena lights flicker, and the heavy, grinding opening riffs of How It’s Done by Huntrix hits the PA system, cutting right through the chaos.
Bia, bloody and busted, snaps her attention away from the medics, turning to stare through the chainlink steel of the Terrordome cage toward the entrance ramp.
Thaïs Empristikí walks out onto the stage, standing tall as the newly crowned number one contender for the title Bia just won. Their gazes lock in the gulf of distance between the ring and the ramp, separated by the steel mesh. The crowd goes into absolute full-throated cheering, completely unglued for the anticipated future classic.
Then, two more of the arena’s absolute favorites step out behind Thaïs—Hope Levitt and Jenna Jillian Walker, rounding out the beloved Tigress faction. They stand united, a powerhouse trio of fan favorites ready for the next chapter.
Down in the ring, Bia acknowledges the storm coming for her. She spits blood onto the mat, wipes her mouth, and calmly runs her thumb across her throat.