Post by bigfan on Oct 31, 2016 22:23:04 GMT
Camille Cosworth
After a late night of reminiscing and drinking at the Slaughtered Lamb, Camille Cosworth had woken up at 12:17 PM discombobulated, hungover, and -- for the first time in months -- alone. On the nightstand there had been a still-hot venti Pumpkin Spice Latte with a cryptic message written on the side:
See you at the arena. Walk slow.
Her favorite drink and a cold shower had done wonders in dispelling her hangover, but all attempts to reach Yoona via phone, text message, or email had failed. Even now as she sat in the stands at the FAWN Arena with her match just minutes away, she had still not been able to get in touch with her girlfriend and she was growing more anxious by the moment.
Camille leaned back in her seat and looked down at her shirt and pants. After her shower, she had decided on a whim to wear special attire to her first Mania. Or at least, normal attire with some very special customizations. Starting with a plain black compression shirt and matching leggings, Cosworth had used white nail polish to write the names of all the people who had played a part in getting her to this point in her career. It only felt right that she should carry their names and memories into the ring, especially those who might otherwise never have the chance to be on the ultimate stage.
Marvela Marcille and Lily Burlingame were written vertically down her right side, the pair of women who had officially introduced her to world of FAWN.
Down her left side were the good doctors Samuel Shem and Roy Bausch who had proven instrumental in helping her develop her Ninety Seconds of Awesome.
Around her left ankle was Justine Adams, the Bangor talent scout who had first given her a contract, albeit very reluctantly.
Across her right shoulder was La Halcon, the lovable loser of a luchadora whose mask Camille had worn for so long.
On her left shoulder was Cassandra Vale who had given her some painful but much needed wrestling lessons.
Haphazardly scattered all over her back and abdomen were names of all the wrestlers she had faced at Open Fight Nights throughout the years.
Encircling both legs were the names of all the local wrestlers she had encountered on the House Show circuit.
There was even a place for Adelaide Brewster on the curve of her left hip.
Most importantly were five names neatly grouped together on her left breast over her heart. Unlike the others, these were first name only and clearly set apart from the other names adorning her clothes.
First was Anthony - US Air Force colonel and patriarch of the Cosworth family.
Next was Josephine - accountant and matriarch of the Cosworth family.
Followed by David - first of twin older brothers and strong safety for the Houston Texans.
Then Daniel - second of twin older brothers by seventeen minutes and tight end for the Seattle Seahawks.
And finally Yoona - the one person Camille so desperately needed to hear from before her match.
There were eighty-eight names in all, although truth be told, there should have been eighty-nine. Even now, Camille just could not bring herself to put the name “Paulette Severe” on her clothes, despite the French woman being the person who had really catapulted her into the limelight. That was one particular grudge Cosworth was content to hold onto for life.
Suddenly, the arena lights clicked off, a pair of searchlights started canvassing the audience, and the bombastic opening notes of Camille’s entrance anthem played over the speaker system.
Cosworth sighed deeply, did her best to put thoughts of her girlfriend out of her mind, then got up and began making her way to the ring. At the thirty second mark, just when the opening leitmotif of her music faded out, she noticed something unusual.
A third spotlight had come on, although it was focused in the center of the ring rather than strafing the crowd. Inside the cone of light stood the woman Camille had spent the last several hours trying to get in touch with.
Yoona Park
For her cameo appearance as the ring announcer, Yoona Park wore a t-shirt and sweatpants combo bearing the University of Maine Black Bears logo -- both articles of clothing clearly purloined from Cosworth’s side of the closet -- along with her soft, fuzzy bathroom slippers. On her head was a red and white baseball cap, and on her back was a yellow backpack designed to look like Pikachu.
Yoona raised a microphone to her lips and began to speak, “Ladies and gentlemen, our next contest is a Last Woman Standing match. Introducing first...”
Park hesitated briefly before continuing, “...first... I would like to tell you all a story.”
Understanding what Yoona had meant in her note, Camille continued her slow walk even when the music began to pick up in tempo.
“Once upon a time there was a carp,” Yoona said into the microphone. “Just an ordinary carp, not much different from a common goldfish. Unlike the other carp in her school, however, she aspired to be something more than just a humble fish. She dreamed of a life beyond the banks of the river. She wanted to soar in the heavens rather than swim in the streams. One day she heard of a magical waterfall called the Dragon’s Gate. The legend was that any carp who has the strength and perseverance to make it to the top of the Dragon’s Gate would be transformed from a humble fish into a great dragon.”
Yoona paused for effect as the dramatic leitmotif of the song repeated.
“No one thought she could make it. After all, there were thousands of fish in the river, and not a single dragon in the skies. What chance did she have to succeed where everyone else had failed? She was not discouraged, however. She swam for weeks and weeks against the river’s current before she arrived at the bottom of a mile high waterfall. Over and over and over again the carp launches herself against a crushing onslaught of water, and over and over and over again she’s thrown back down. Yet she still persists, because she has the most powerful force in the universe, that which defies all logic and transcends all limitations -- hope.”
Park waited for the music to build to a crescendo as the pair of searchlights finally found their target in the audience. Camille understood that was her cue to start making her way to the ring, and Yoona turned to face her directly before continuing the speech.
“Tonight, that hope becomes a reality, the fish becomes a dragon, and the beautiful loser becomes a glorious hero! INTRODUCING FIRST FROM SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS… THE ROSE THAT GREW FROM CONCRETE… THE PARAGON OF HOPE… THE GIRL OF TOMORROW…”
Yoona turned her hat backwards and dramatically pointed directly at Camille, who was now sprinting towards the ring at full speed with a megawatt smile on her face.
“...CAMILLE COSWORTH, I CHOOSE YOU!”
Cosworth leapt off the steel barricade and vaulted over the top ropes. Rather than hold her dramatic landing pose and mug for the cameras, she stood up immediately, strode into the center of the ring, and swept her girlfriend into an embrace as the FAWNatics gave her a hero’s welcome.
“Thanks Yoona,” Camille whispered. “Those are some pretty lofty titles you just hung on me, I hope I can live up to them.”
“You already have,” Yoona replied with a slight crack in her voice. Seeing her name written alongside Camille’s family members had made her unexpectedly choke up with emotion.
The referee walked over and lightly tapped Park on the shoulder, “Yoona, you need to --”
“WAY TO FUCKING RUIN THE MOMENT, MERLE!” Yoona snapped as she broke the embrace and whirled around.
“Sorry!” the official flinched. “But the ring announcer needs to introduce both wrestlers.”
Park quizzically looked at the man in the black and white stripes for several seconds, “Wait, aren’t you going to tell me that your name is ‘Algernon’ or something like that?”
“W-what? No!” stammered the referee. “Algernon is someone else, I actually am Merle. Could you please introduce the second wrestler now?”
Yoona groaned with disgust, but she raised the microphone to her lips once more.
“And introducing her opponent, some piece of shit hailing from who-the-fuck-cares,” she said, every word dripping with contemptuous ennui.
Camille let out an exasperated sigh, then took the microphone to do the introduction herself, “From Oxrun, Connecticut… Representing the Church of Eternal Midnight, she is the Weeping Angel… the Daughter of Darkness… the Queen of Nightmares… ADELAIDE BREWSTER!”
“It’s the biggest show of the year. Everyone deserves a proper introduction, even the girls we don’t like,” Cosworth chided as Yoona rolled her eyes. “How did you get them to agree to let you be the announcer anyway?”
“While you were sleeping off your hangover I came by the arena and bribed one of the production team,” Park said nonchalantly. “I told him that if I could do the introductions for your match, I’d give him every home video we have of us licking peanut butter off each other’s bodies.”
“Peanut butter…? That’s, uh, that’s not something we’ve ever done…”
“Then I guess he’s going to be pretty fucking disappointed with his end of the deal.”
Before Camille could lecture Yoona about her dishonest and unethical negotiation tactics, the arena lights clicked off and the sound of Lorde’s ‘Glory and Gore’ filled the air.
For a moment there was nothing but darkness and pinpricks of cell phone light, then a few lights on either side of the stage ‘whoomped’ on to reveal a sea of ankle deep fog. Still no sign of the Churchgoer and that was the way it stayed until a cold blue light illuminated the gloomy recession leading to the curtain. A figure swung down from the ceiling of that narrow throat, a figure hanging by her knees from a bar suspended just out of camera view. Arms crossed over her chest, Adelaide Brewster opened her eyes, then twisted loose and landed on her feet just as her anthem warned, ‘Now we’re in the ring and we’re coming for blood.’
Adelaide Brewster
Heading for the squared circle after a moment to survey her feeding grounds, Adelaide stretched her arms wide, which let her limber up while simultaneously providing the FAWNatics with a great view of her ring attire. In place of the antique ball gown, top hat and velvet number that it sheathed was a blood red one piece made of a mesh just fine enough to allow the discerning eye a glimpse of matching black bra and briefs lurking beneath. Her outfit was completed with a clunky black belt complete with a buckle done up as a snarling wolf’s head and matching black boots and pads.
Reaching the ring quickly because no one quite dared extend a hand, Adelaide slunk under the bottom ropes, popped to her feet and took ownership of a corner on the far side of the ring. Paying no attention to the presence behind her back, the Weeping Angel climbed to the second rope, tilted her head back and ‘pppfffwoooooshed’ a cloud of Red Mist out over the first couple rows of fans. Blood properly let, she climbed down and turned her attention to the couple in the ring with her.
Brewster’s lips curled back into a predatory grin when she noticed the way that Cosworth seemed to tense up in her presence. Adelaide very much enjoyed sinking her teeth into the rookie’s neck during their previous meeting, and she had been counting down the days until she could have another taste of that delectable cocktail of adrenaline and fear. That this latest encounter was a Last Woman Standing match was even better, as it denied the possibility of Camille surrendering and bringing a premature end to the feast.
Park was a welcome addition as well. She had fought fiercely to protect her girlfriend a month ago, turning her body into a whirling dervish of elbows and knees in an attempt to drive off the Churchgoers. Despite her righteous fury, the combined might of the Church of Eternal Midnight was too much for anyone to oppose alone, and Yoona had quickly found herself on the wrong end of a four-on-one beating. A horde of referees had intervened before Adelaide had sated her bloodlust, however, so she was eagerly anticipating getting another shot at Yoona. In particular, she was looking forward to seeing just how sensitive Park’s notoriously fragile feet were.
“The two of you should feel blessed,” Adelaide said. “It is only through the grace of the Church of --”
“GO CHOKE ON A DICK, COCK-BREATH!” Yoona shouted into the microphone.
Dropping all pretense of affability with a savage snarl, Brewster started to lunge for the pair of rookies and would have torn into them on the spot had Merle not looped an arm around her waist and dragged her back to the corner.
“Park! Get out of the ring! NOW!” the beleaguered official pleaded as he signaled for the timekeeper to officially begin the match.
Calmly turning to her girlfriend as if nothing were wrong, Yoona cupped both hands around the back of Camille’s neck, put their heads together so that they were touching at the forehead and nose, then gave a last minute pep talk.
“Men create monsters for heroes to slay. When the Beast rears its seven heads and rises from the abyss --” Yoona said, her voice simmering with quiet intensity, “-- YOU WILL KILL IT.”
“Is that from Game of Thrones?” Cosworth asked with a wry chuckle.
“Actually, no. It’s -- WOOAAH!”
Camille shoved Yoona clear just in time to avoid Adelaide’s massive Super Kick. Brewster was about to charge the Korean again when Cosworth quickly restrained her from behind with a Full Nelson.
“GO, YOONA! GO!” Camille roared as she fought to keep Adelaide in place. “I’VE GOT THIS!”
“Fuck yeah, you’ve got this…” Park smirked while she slipped out of the ring. “Cam! Use your Splash Attack!”
“Gyarados can’t do Splash Attack! It’s -- HYPER BEAM!” Cosworth screamed as she arched back and threw Brewster into the center of the ring with a Release Dragon Suplex.
The Churchgoer was agile and limber, however, thus she was able to absorb the brunt of the impact with a backwards roll and take minimal damage. Quickly regaining her feet, she scanned her surroundings and spotted Yoona sitting cross-legged on top of the announcer’s table. The Korean pulled a bottle of Gran Patrón tequila from her Pikachu backpack, then smiled patronizingly at Brewster while she raised the liquor in a toast.
Adelaide was fantasizing about caving Yoona’s skull in with the bottle of tequila when she saw something flying at her out of the corner of her eye. She threw herself flat on her back just in time for Camille’s to harmlessly sail over her chest with a leaping Shoulder Block, then she smoothly kipped up to her feet a second later while her opponent continued forward into the ropes.
When Cosworth came rebounding back with a repeat Shoulder Block, Brewster quickly countered with an Arm Drag that took the rookie down to the mat with a THUMP. Maintaining her grip on Camille’s right wrist, Adelaide scissored her legs around the captive limb, sat down at Cosworth’s right side, and tried to lean back to complete the Jujigatame.
Sensing what was about to happen, Camille immediately clasped her hands together to prevent Adelaide from stretching out her right arm and hyperextending the elbow. Brewster was persistent, however, and she rocked her body back and forth to repeatedly jerk on Cosworth’s arm and hopefully break the defensive grip.
Even as strong as she was, Camille knew that her arms could not withstand the pulling force of the Churchgoer’s entire body for very long, so she would have to think of some other escape. Just as Adelaide sat forward then explosively leaned back to yank on her arm, Camille suddenly rolled to her right to go along with Brewster’s pull. Unprepared for the abrupt lack of resistance, the Churchgoer wound up lying on her shoulders with her legs folded into her stomach and Cosworth kneeling over her.
Unable to complete the Jujigatame from such a position, Adelaide relinquished her hold on her opponent’s arm, then kicked Camille in the face to create some distance before she clambered back to her feet. Cosworth was still wiping the boot print off her cheek when Brewster slammed a knee into her gut, doubling her over.
“Let me see your fear, sister,” the Churchgoer commanded as she trapped her opponent in a Double Underhook and thumped home another Knee Strike.
“I am every nightmare you’ve ever had!”
THUMP!
“I am your worst dream come true!”
THUMP!
“I am everything you were ever afraid of!”
THUMP!
Feeling Camille’s legs starting to quiver, Adelaide squatted down before explosively popping her hips forward and arching her back to slam the rookie into the mat with a ring rattling Butterfly Suplex. Cosworth bounced once with a loud groan of pain, then rolled over to a corner where she used the turnbuckles to pull herself back up as Merle reached “THREE!” on his ten count.
“You’ve already seen my fear,” Camille said through a wince as she pressed her right hand to her aching lower back while her left hand gripped the top rope for support. “When you had me lying in the middle of this very ring, unable to move, unable to breathe, unable to… resist... what you were doing to me... those were the most terrifying, most humiliating few minutes of my life.”
Adelaide broke into a leering smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes, making sure to show as many of her sharp, white teeth as possible.
“You had asked me if I were afraid of you...” Camille continued. “Yes. Absolutely, I am. I fear what you did to me then, and I fear what you might still do to me now.”
The throng of fans murmured with concern at Cosworth’s earnest admission. It was seen as a lack of killer instinct and competitive fire for any athlete to so openly confess to being afraid of her opponent, and that maxim was doubly true for the combat sports.
“But you see, Adelaide…” she said, her voice suddenly turning hard and resolute. “I am still here!”
Camille shot out of her corner like a cannonball, and not wanting to give up initiative to the rookie, Brewster also rushed forward to meet Cosworth’s charge in the middle of the ring. Moments before the two wrestlers smacked together in an Elbow and Collar tie-up, Cosworth somersaulted over her opponent, clasped her hands underneath Adelaide’s chin mid-flip, then laid out on her back to slam the back of the Churchgoer’s head and neck into the canvas with a Front Flip Neckbreaker.
With her opponent lying on the mat and cradling her head in her arms, Camille signaled for the referee to begin his ten-count then addressed the legion of cheering FAWNatics.
“At first I tried to deny it, but now I realize that there is no disgrace in being afraid. Fears are to be overcome, mountains are to be scaled, and monsters --”
Cosworth shared a knowing glance with Park at the announcer’s table, then quickly returned her attention to Adelaide, who was just climbing to her feet as Merle counted “FOUR!”
“-- Monsters are to be slain,” Camille finished, eliciting a pop from the crowd.
“You delude yourself with hollow platitudes, sister,” Brewster said with a baleful scowl on her face. “I will break you of this idolatrous habit.”
The two wrestlers briefly circled each other in the center of the ring before Adelaide suddenly lashed out with a Toe Kick. Camille reflexively tensed her abdominal muscles to absorb the kick with a grunt, then crossed both arms in front of her face to block a pair of Brewster’s follow-up Forearm Smashes.
Having weathered the assault, Cosworth grabbed Adelaide by an arm and whipped the Churchgoer into the ropes. Camille took off in a sprint after Brewster, planning to hit her with a Spear just when she rebounded off the cables.
Adelaide heard the footsteps behind her, however, so as she approached the edge of the ring she leapt up, planted both feet on the middle rope, and launched herself into a blind Springboard Back Elbow. Taken by surprise, Cosworth had no recourse except to try to roll with the impact when Brewster’s elbow caught her on the side of the head.
With the Churchgoer’s momentum behind the blow, Camille was sent to the mat in a backwards tumble. She maintained the wherewithal to roll over her own shoulder to get into a prone position, and she made it to her hands and knees before Adelaide dragged her up the rest of the way with a rear Waist Lock.
“Terrors come at night with their voices soft as thunder,” the Churchgoer purred into Camille’s ear. “As they tear your hopes apart and turn your dreams to shame.”
Adelaide tried to lift her opponent up and back for a German Suplex, but she found that impossible with Cosworth’s leg intertwined with her own. With a growl of frustration, Brewster exchanged her hold around her opponent’s waist for one around the neck, then she dropped to the mat and bore down hard on the Rear Naked Choke.
With surrender literally not an option, the only thing Camille could do was make a play for the ropes. With a supreme effort she was able to roll onto her stomach, and next came the arduous task of crawling to the side of the ring. She had just made it halfway there when Brewster decided to indulge in a mid-match snack.
“AUUUGGGHH!” Cosworth screamed as a set of sharp teeth bit into the side of her neck.
Nevertheless, exposing enough flesh to accommodate the bite meant the Rear Naked Choke was briefly loosened, and that was the opening she needed to scamper the remaining distance and grab onto the bottom rope. Adelaide milked the five-count for as long as she could, then gave Camille a parting Forearm Smash to the back of the head before she released the hold and stood up.
“Not there yet,” Brewster said with a smack of her lips. “You need more time to marinate in misery. Show me what is dearest to you, sister. Show me so that I may have the joy of taking it from you.”
Cosworth pulled herself upright and rolled her head 360 degrees in one direction, followed by 360 degrees in the other to get the stiffness out of her neck. Then she took several deep breaths to calm her nerves and fight back the unpleasant memories brought on by the Churchgoer chewing on her flesh again.
Once she had adequately recovered, Camille left the safety of the ropes and walked to the center of the ring with her arms held out at her sides, subconsciously imitating her girlfriend-cum-sparring partner.
“Are you afraid of me, Adelaide Brewster?” she audaciously asked in a reprise of the Churchgoer’s line from several weeks ago.
“Be careful of what you say next,” Adelaide coldly replied as her face turned livid. “The Church of Eternal Midnight will not tolerate such blasphemy.”
“It was a rhetorical question. I know you’re not afraid of me,” Camille said flatly. “That’s why you’re going to lose.”
Infuriated by the rookie’s brazenness, Brewster leapt forward with talons bared. With her left hand she carved a series of thin, parallel scratches along Cosworth’s right jawline, and her right hand would have raked her opponent right across the eyes had Camille not leaned her head back at the last second to allow the claw to harmlessly pass an inch in front of her face.
Ignoring the stinging sensation on the side of her face, Camille quickly lashed out with her right hand and snatched Adelaide’s right wrist before the Churchgoer had a chance to retract the limb. In turn, Brewster grabbed Cosworth’s right wrist with her left hand, which then prompted Camille to pin Adelaide’s hand underneath her left forearm. With all four arms of their arms tied up in a pair of interlocking X’s, the two wrestlers briefly pushed, pulled, and jockeyed for position.
After a dozen seconds or so, it was Camille who gained the advantage over her lighter opponent. Wary of Brewster blowing another plume of Red Mist into her face, she forced the tangle of limbs up to face level to serve as a barrier to block anything the Churchgoer might spit forth from her mouth. With the threat of the Red Mist temporarily neutralized, Cosworth made a gun shape with her left hand while still bearing down with that arm to keep Adelaide’s hands pinned, and then placed the fingertip barrel right between Brewster’s eyes.
“A worthless gesture,” Adelaide hissed, not at all amused by Camille’s sudden cheekiness. “Did you remember to pack your silver bullets, sister?”
“I guess we’re about to find out,” Cosworth replied as she closed one eye and used the other to line up her target behind her thumb.
“Bang.”
Brewster’s head snapped back as if shot by a sniper, and then she crumpled to the mat in a heap.
The FAWNatics sat in stunned silence for a few moments while Merle started his count, then roared to life when Camille blew some imaginary gun smoke off her tips of her index and middle fingers to celebrate her One Inch Punch. Putting on her best “I told you so” expression, she turned towards her girlfriend at the announcer’s table and waggled her eyebrows with smug self-satisfaction. Yoona only shrugged in response, then treated herself to another gulp of tequila straight from the bottle.
As dramatic and macabre as it looked to ‘shoot’ her opponent execution-style in the head, it wasn’t quite a finishing maneuver. The One Inch Punch had actually struck Adelaide in the thickest, hardest portion of her skull, thus the Churchgoer managed to stagger to her feet as the referee’s count reached “SEVEN!”
Undeterred by her opponent’s resilience, Camille snatched Brewster by the arm and started to Irish Whip her towards the ropes, only to find that the Churchgoer somehow still had the strength to latch onto her wrist and reverse the whip. Rather than send Cosworth running off, Adelaide elected for the more straightforward tactic of pulling her in closer then firing a vicious Snap Kick right between her thighs. The explosion of pain radiated all the way from her groin to behind her eyeballs, and Camille immediately hunched over and went pigeon-toed.
Adelaide took a couple of seconds to savor her opponent’s agony, then resumed her counter-offensive. Looping her hands around the back of Camille’s neck, she leapt up, drew both of her knees to her chest, and fell backwards onto the mat. The landing wasn’t exactly pleasant for Brewster, but it was much worse for Cosworth who was dragged along for the ride and had her chest crushed against the Churchgoer’s knees after a short fall.
Turned into a gasping, wheezing wreck by the Inverted Lungblower, Camille flopped onto the canvas and instinctively rolled into a prone position. Despite having the wind knocked out of her, she still managed to crawl to her hands and knees and would have most likely beaten the ten count had Adelaide not taken a seat on her lower back, both sending her to the mat and interrupting Merle’s count at “SIX!”
Spinning around in her seat so that she was facing Cosworth’s legs, Brewster crossed her opponent’s ankles then forcefully pulled back on both feet, eliciting a grunt of pain that would have been much louder if Camille had not just suffered a Lungblower a few moments ago.
“Think of this as practice for when I get my hands on that tramp you call a lover,” Adelaide mused as she increased the pressure on the Double Toe Hold.
The Churchgoer looked towards Park, but she seemed to be busy scribbling with a set of pen and paper she had procured from broadcast announcer Gordy Solis. Returning her attention to her opponent who was ever so slowly crawling for the ropes, Brewster unlaced Camille’s Converse sneakers and pulled them off. With Cosworth’s feet exposed, Adelaide pressed her fingers into Camille’s bare soles, imitating the nerve hold that Yoona occasionally used at House Shows to submit her opponents.
Much to her consternation, Adelaide discovered that the technique wasn’t as easy as it seemed. Having never experienced the hold herself she could only guess at where the pressure point was, and judging from her victim’s lack of distress, she was off the mark. Even more infuriating was the way that Park looked at her -- with a smirk, an eye roll, and a dismissive head shake -- before continuing to scribble.
Her blood boiling with rage, Brewster decided to settle for a much less technical but brutally effective means of attack. She dug her fingernails into the tender flesh on the balls of Cosworth’s feet, then suddenly ripped her hand along the arch all the way down to the heel.
“OWW! OOWWWWWW!” Camille shrieked as Adelaide repeatedly shredded the soles of her feet.
Fighting through the pain, she continued crawling for the edge of the ring even with Brewster sitting on her back and drastically slowing her forward progress. After what felt like hours, Cosworth was finally able to reach out and grab the bottom rope.
“BREAK!” she called to the referee.
Adelaide worked the five-count for as long as she could, viciously clawing Camille’s feet four more times -- two to the left, two to the right -- before she finally relented on the attack. Glaring daggers the whole way, the Churchgoer stalked to the edge of the ring and ominously pointed towards Park as if to say, “You’re next.”
Rather than speak or gesticulate, Yoona simply held up a piece of paper and showed Brewster what she had been scribbling.
It was a crude drawing of four stick figures named “DUM BLOND,” “DUM BLOND JR.,” “SNEK LADY,” and “ADDALAID” getting crushed by a runaway locomotive engine named “CAMMEEL.” Across the top of the picture were the words “GG EZ GET REKT LOL.”
Once she was satisfied that both Adelaide and the arena cameras had gotten a good look at her artwork, Yoona flipped the piece of paper around so that the other side was visible. On the backside was a much more well done drawing of a single rose growing from a crack in between two slabs of sidewalk.
The Churchgoer gave a disdainful sneer, then returned her focus to the other woman in the ring. She would deal with the Korean and her childish antics later.
Meanwhile Camille was still struggling to stay upright. While she was not seriously hurt, the soles of her feet burned with agony any time she put weight on them, thus making it impossible to stand.
“SIX!” Merle called out.
She tried to get up to one knee, then immediately fell back to the mat, clutching her foot.
“Your efforts are futile, sister,” Adelaide taunted.
“SEVEN!”
“You can no more defeat me than Sisyphus can defeat the hill,” she added.
“EIGHT!”
“ARRRGGGHHH!” Cosworth screamed as she tried to rise again, only to fall again.
“NINE!”
“Just lay down and die, Camille Cosworth,” Brewster commanded.
“TE--huh, well I’ll be damned…” Merle said with a tone of astonishment as he interrupted his own count that would have ended the match.
“HOPE NEVER DIES!” Camille shouted over the raucous crowd of FAWNatics.
Unwilling to give up and unable to stand on her feet, Cosworth chose a third option by standing on her hands instead. Merle wasn’t actually sure if a handstand technically fell within the definition of ‘standing’ under Last Woman Standing rules, but he knew that calling the match now would at best get him chewed out by the brass, and at worst cause the joyous bunch of fans to riot. Exchanging a shrug with the timekeeper, the referee allowed the match to continue.
“You are starting to believe your own hype and it’s unbecoming of you, sister,” Adelaide snorted. “Despair suits you much better than pride. You’ve never looked more beautiful than the moment when I broke your heart.”
Not in the mood for an extended round of banter, Cosworth tumbled forward to close the gap between herself and her opponent. Coming out of her forward roll, she spun around on the seat of her pants and swung her legs out in a wide arc a few inches above the canvas, trying to sweep her opponent’s legs. The Churchgoer quickly stepped back out of range of the leg sweep, but then Camille made a full 360 degree rotation after her whiff to return to her original location, crunched up onto her shoulders, and launched herself upwards in a Kip-Up Hurricanrana that caught Brewster completely off-guard.
Unhurt but upset after being sent flipping to the mat, Adelaide scrambled upright with a furious, indignant growl. With the rookie still on the mat, Brewster took a lunging step forward and unleashed a vicious Soccer Punt aimed at her opponent’s head.
Rather than evade the blow, Camille swung her legs around again to parry the kick and rolled with the impact to spin onto her hands with a picture perfect gymnastic flare. The audience ooh’ed and ahh’ed in appreciation of Cosworth’s unmatched penchant for what seemed to be superfluous spinning, but this time there was a method to her madness. As soon her opponent tried to follow up on the blocked Soccer Punt, Camille twirled her legs around in another full revolution then scissored both limbs around Brewster’s left leg to send the Churchgoer falling face-first to the mat.
Adelaide used her hands to break her fall and managed to avoid a harsh face-to-canvas collision, although that didn’t prevent Camille from taking advantage of her prone position. Scrambling as quickly as she could with her aching feet, she laid out across Brewster’s back and then clasped her hands around the Churchgoer’s right thigh. With both of Adelaide’s legs under control, Cosworth yanked Brewster’s legs wide open with a Banana Split, rolled onto her back, then her shoulders, then her side, and just like that the Rolling Death Cradle was on.
Side.
Back.
Shoulders.
Other side.
Back.
Shoulders.
Over and over they went as Camille dragged Adelaide along for a dizzying spin cycle in the middle of the ring while painfully stretching her legs.
Meanwhile at ringside, the pair of broadcast announcers had struck up a conversation with their guest as the FAWNatics counted out each revolution of the Rolling Death Cradle.
“Does Camille have any moves that don’t involve spinning?” Gordy Solis asked.
“Some of her moves have flipping instead,” Yoona replied as she thoughtfully sipped on her tequila.
“I couldn’t help but notice that Camille has Adelaide’s name written near her rear end,” Joanna Coleman commented. “Could this be Camille’s way of telling us what she intends to do to the Weeping Angel should she win? Perhaps we will see a cattier side to --”
“Cosworth doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell!” Solis blurted out. “The name’s only there so that everyone knows who her ass belongs to! She’s going to --”
“It’s been awhile since I’ve kicked someone in the testicles,” Park wondered out loud.
“Camille Cosworth is the best there is, the best there was, the best there ever will be,” Gordy immediately corrected, earning himself a grin and a pat on the head from the Korean wrestler.
Back in the ring, Camille had finally ended her Rolling Death Cradle after the twenty-third cycle. With her opponent reduced to a moaning puddle of flesh for the time being, she scrambled over to retrieve her shoes before slipping her feet inside and triple-knotting the laces extra tightly. Footwear back in place, Cosworth gingerly climbed back to her feet and grimaced when she still noted some lingering tenderness in her soles. Somewhere in the back of her mind she wondered if Yoona had to deal with that kind of painful sensation all the time.
“SEVEN!” Merle called out.
With her head spinning and her hamstrings burning, Brewster needed the aid of the corner turnbuckles to make it upright as she roiled with anger that the rookie had reduced her to crawling for the ropes like a godless heathen.
“Hope has no power in this wretched cesspool, Camille Cosworth,” she snarled. “FAWN rewards the brutal and the vicious. No matter what pretty words or trite cliches you use to dress it up, the weak will always be food for the strong. There are no heroes here, sister. Not any more. Monsters are only slain by greater monsters, and there is no greater monster than the Queen of Nightmares!”
Message delivered, Adelaide rushed forward and smacked into her opponent in the middle of the ring. The two wrestlers were deadlocked briefly before Camille managed to slip her head and shoulders underneath Brewster’s right arm, then threw her own right arm across the Churchgoer’s chest and prepared to hoist her up for a Lifting Side Slam.
Adelaide’s reflexes were too fast, however, and she managed to elbow Cosworth in the side of the head just as her feet were leaving the canvas. Stunned by the hit to her temple, Camille lost her hold on her opponent and stumbled around in a daze for a few steps before Brewster grabbed a handful of her hair, whirled her around, and blew a point blank Red Mist into her face.
“GAAAAHHHHH!” Cosworth shrieked as her hands reflexively went to her burning eyes.
The Churchgoer was never one to give quarter, so she grabbed Camille’s right arm by the wrist and twisted that limb behind her opponent into a Chicken-Wing Arm Lock. Switching to a one handed grip on the Arm Lock, Adelaide then slipped her right hand between Cosworth’s thighs from behind and dug her talons into the most sensitive parts of the rookie’s anatomy with a hateful Crotch Claw. Still not satisfied, she once again sank her teeth into her opponent’s neck to complete the quartet of pain.
With the pain receptors in her eyes, shoulder, genitals, and neck simultaneously set ablaze, Camille’s screams hit a volume and pitch that could have shattered a wine glass. The urge to tap out or shout her submission was nearly irresistible, but whatever portion of her brain that was not yet inundated with pain managed to convince the rest of the body that surrender was both futile and unacceptable.
She got a small reprieve when Merle forced Adelaide to cease the neck-biting after a five-count and she managed to scrub a good deal of the Red Mist out of her eyes with her free hand, although the Crotch Claw and Chicken-Wing combo was still no walk in the park. Nevertheless, she resolved to hold on for as long as possible using whatever means she could.
She bit down on her bottom lip to put a halt to her screaming.
She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to distract herself from the agony by mentally playing tic-tac-toe with herself.
She ground her heel against her captor’s instep, although Adelaide’s sturdy boots provided too much protection for that to be effective.
Despite her best efforts, the combination of holds very quickly took a toll on her body. By ten seconds her eyes were watering, by thirty she was whimpering, and by sixty she was on her knees. Shortly after that Brewster finally relented on her holds, not out of any sense of mercy, but simply because her hand was starting to cramp from continuously applying the Crotch Claw.
On the verge of sobbing, Camille pressed both hands to her aching groin, then keeled forward until she was propped up on her knees and forehead. She heard Merle begin his ten-count and she wasn’t sure if she still had it in her to get up again, though her concerns turned out to be moot when Adelaide pressed a domineering boot on the back of her head and stopped the referee’s count.
“Say it,” the Churchgoer demanded. “Tell me that you’re nothing but a stupid, naive girl. Tell all those who hold you as a false idol to abandon their heathen ways and accept the absolution of Midnight. Tell everyone --”
“You’re right,” Camille groaned from her face down position. “You’re right. You’re right! YOU’RE RIGHT!”
The crowd which had been booing vociferously abruptly went silent at Cosworth’s proclamation.
A victorious sneer creeping onto her face, Adelaide lifted her foot and reached down to pull Camille up into a kneeling position with a handful of hair. Most of Cosworth’s face was still caked in Red Mist, her eyes were squeezed shut, and her mouth was twisted into a painful grimace.
“I fell in love with this sport when I was ten years old,” Camille rasped. “Had I known then what I know now about this business, I would have been disgusted instead. The world of wrestling I loved was just a mirage seen through the eyes of a child who did not know the bitter taste of being violated and degraded.”
Brewster’s sneer widened, then she made a gun-shaped gesture with her right hand and pressed the barrel to Cosworth’s left breast, right where the name “Yoona” was written.
“But if it’s all the same,” Camille continued, her lips breaking into a faint smile and her tone turning cheerful, even though her eyes remained half-lidded. “I would like to share my childish, idealistic mirage with everyone. And if the world I envisioned does not exist, then I will build it.”
“Foolish and sentimental to the end, sister,” Adelaide said contemptuously. “Any final words?”
Cosworth sighed softly, as if resigned to her fate, “All those who have honored me with their support, faith, and love… all those who I’ve had the privilege of calling my fans... please, I implore you… Do not go gentle into that good night.”
The Churchgoer cocked her right hand back to her cheek, turned the gun into a fist, then brought it down in a devastating Heart Punch.
Smack!
CRAAAACK!
Camille caught the Heart Punch in the palm of her left hand, and squeezed so hard that the cartilage in Brewster’s knuckles popped.
Her eyes snapped wide open, revealing a pair of enormous black pupils that had been dilated by an overload of adrenaline, and then she continued her poetry recitation, “Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
Adelaide hissed in pain and was still struggling to free herself from her opponent’s death grip when Cosworth suddenly yanked her forward by her trapped hand, then pulled her into a Fireman’s Carry.
“Though wise men at their end know dark is right, because their words had forked no lightning they --”
With Brewster slung across her shoulders and still squirming in her grasp, Camille suddenly rocketed off the mat directly from her kneeling position. At the peak of her jump, she leaned backwards so that her toes were pointed towards the ceiling, then fell straight back down to hammer the Churchgoer into the canvas with a thunderous Samoan Drop.
“-- Do not go gentle into that good night.”
Even after the jarring slam, Camille kept her grips around Adelaide’s head and legs to maintain the Fireman’s Carry as she climbed to her feet with her opponent still across her shoulders. Brewster was not struggling any more.
“Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright their frail deeds may have danced in a green bay --”
Cosworth leapt off the mat again, although this time she laid out on her side to spike her opponent’s head with a Death Valley Driver.
“--Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
Still keeping the insensate Adelaide secure in the Fireman’s Carry, Camille got up to her feet again to a round of cheers that had been getting progressively louder with each bone-rattling slam and each poetic verse. Instead of smashing her opponent into the mat again, she started whirling in place with an Airplane Spin.
“Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, and learn, too late, they grieved it on its way --”
Cosworth came to a sudden halt just as she pushed her burden up and off her shoulders. Imbued with inertia from the Airplane Spin, the limp body of the Churchgoer did two more flat revolutions then belly-flopped to the mat in a Fireman’s Carry Facebuster and laid deathly still.
“--Do not go gentle into that good night.”
Camille reached down to grab two handfuls of Adelaide’s body-mesh between the shoulderblades and at the waist, then gracefully launched herself forward with a Front Handspring. The momentum of the flip pried Brewster off the canvas, and she ended up facing the ceiling held aloft on Cosworth’s outstretched arms in a sort of Inverted Military Press.
“Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight, blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay --”
Camille forcefully brought her opponent’s body down in front of her while at the same time bringing her right knee forward and up. Adelaide’s lumbar spine made a dull crunch as it met the point of Cosworth’s knee in a vicious Over the Knee Backbreaker that would have made Leila Olmstead smile with approval and Bruce Wayne wince with empathetic pain.
“--Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
The force of the Bane-style Backbreaker made Brewster’s body bounce into an upright standing position for a brief moment, and Camille quickly slipped the Churchgoer’s right arm over her own right shoulder as her right arm reached across Adelaide’s chest to keep the flaccid body vertical.
“And you, my father, there on the sad height, curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray --”
Cosworth planted her left hand in the small of Brewster’s back for extra support, took one step forward with her left leg, then launched into her highest leap yet. As she ascended into the air with her opponent in her grasp she spun around 180 degrees, and then at the peak of her jump she flipped 180 degrees so that the crown of the Churchgoer’s head was now pointed straight down. Finally, gravity took over and sent the two wrestlers crashing into the mat, completing the wicked combination of Fosbury Flop and Ura-nage that Camille had named Meteor Slam.
The impact left both women laid out in a jumble of limbs, and although Brewster took the worst of the landing, Cosworth was not immune to the effects of taking a vertical drop either.
“Do not go… gentle… into that… good night…” Camille panted between deep, gasping breaths as she laid on her back next to her completely unconscious opponent.
Sensing that their heroine was completely spent after her superhuman efforts, the assembled crowd of FAWNatics urged her to get up by chanting the last line of the poem.
“RAGE!” twenty thousand people shouted as one. “RAGE AGAINST THE DYING OF THE LIGHT!”
“RAGE!” they repeated.
“RAGE!”
“RAGE!”
“RAGE!”
The show of support allowed Cosworth to tap into the last reserves left in her exhausted body and she was somehow able to stagger back to her feet. She rubbed her bleary eyes, which had returned to their normal hazel, then turned to give her girlfriend a weary thumbs-up.
“CAMILLE USED POETRY!” Yoona screamed into the ring announcer’s microphone. “IT’S SUPER EFFECTIVE! SHITHEAD HAS FAINTED!”
“SIX!” called Merle.
The rhythmic chants of “RAGE!” gave way to a cacophony of joyous cheers.
“SEVEN!”
Brewster still had not stirred, and the cheers grew louder...
“EIGHT!”
...and louder...
“NINE!”
...and louder...
“TEN!”
...and then the entire crowd erupted into a standing ovation as Merle called for the bell to make the result official.
“Your winner, by FATALITY, Camille Cosworth!” Yoona announced, exaggerating ever so slightly.
Camille allowed the referee to raise her arm in victory. Truth be told, she did not have the energy to lift the limb by herself. She was two steps into her victory lap when all the muscles in her back seized up and her legs turned to jelly. Cosworth listed to one side then pitched forward, and she would have had a crash landing if Park had not scrambled into the ring just in time to catch her.
“Hahahahaha! Oh shit!” Yoona cackled while she helped Camille lay down on the mat. “I want to have your babies, Cam! You’re such a motherfucking badass!”
“I… I’m… burn-burning… burning up…” Camille gasped between greedy gulps of air.
Park peeled off Cosworth’s sweat-soaked shirt, leaving her in a sports bra. After a few seconds of having more of her skin exposed to the brisk arena air, Camille seemed to be feeling better. Yoona wiped off the remaining bits of Red Mist with the shirt and was just about to start removing Cosworth’s pants too when Camille stopped her.
“No...no panties…” she whispered.
“You’re such a pervert,” Park sarcastically replied as she laid the shirt across Camille’s hips to preserve her modesty, then pulled her pants down to her ankles. She rolled the Pikachu backpack into a pillow shape, set it under Cosworth’s head, and offered a drink of tequila which was declined.
“Yoona… am I cool now?” Camille asked with an exhausted grin.
“You’re the coolest girl in the world, Camille Cosworth,” Yoona said before giving her girlfriend a kiss on the forehead.
Satisfied with that answer, Cosworth closed her eyes and laid back to let her body cool off. Park helped herself to another celebratory drink, and once she was sure that Camille was resting comfortably, she turned around and made a beeline for the still unconscious Churchgoer.
“I don’t know what you’re planning to do, but you’ve got a bad look in your eyes,” Merle said as he stepped in the way. “The match is over, just go -- UNNNGGH!”
Yoona fired a Snap Kick into the referee’s gut without breaking stride, then neatly stepped around him when he crumpled into a heap. She nudged Brewster with her foot, and when she didn’t get a response, Park settled into a high and tight Schoolgirl Pin atop Adelaide’s chest.
Yoona took a large gulp from her bottle and rolled the tequila around in her mouth, savoring the taste that started off sweet like caramel before turning slightly spicy and oaken as the liquid soaked into the taste buds in the middle of her tongue. Still holding the liquor in her mouth, she took in a deep breath through her nostrils, then leaned forward and spat the tequila into Brewster’s face.
“That was for my nacho hat, asshole,” Yoona said, her tone playful and mischievous.
There was still no response from Adelaide.
Next, the Korean made a circle with the middle finger and thumb on her right hand, and lightly flicked the Churchgoer on the forehead three times.
“That was for those girls in Miami, whatever the fuck their names are.”
Still no response.
Yoona reached down with her right hand and pinched Adelaide’s nostrils shut. After a few seconds, Brewster reflexively began breathing through her mouth, although she still did not rouse to consciousness. Park took another gulp and swallowed this time, letting out a sigh as the tequila warmed her esophagus on the way down.
When she spoke again, her voice was cruel and cold.
“This is for Camille.”
Yoona jammed the neck of the bottle between Adelaide’s teeth to pour liquor down her throat. Still inhaling through her mouth, Brewster immediately woke up in a spastic fit when her next breath drew tequila rather than air into her lungs. Feeling like someone had just set her chest on fire from the inside, she thrashed and flailed as hard as her battered body would allow, but she could not dislodge the woman sitting atop her chest.
Park kept pouring it on for nearly ten seconds before she set the bottle aside and then applied a hand smother to Brewster’s mouth and nose to force the Churchgoer to either swallow or breathe in the liquor rather than spit it out.
“Renounce your faith,” Yoona ordered. “Scream at the top of your lungs that your Church is a fraud.”
Park leaned in close and removed her hands from Brewster’s face so that she may better hear the recantation, but instead all the Korean got was a faceful of Red Mist mixed with tequila.
“Midnight... comes for one and all…” Adelaide gurgled, defiantly faithful despite her predicament.
Yoona angrily wiped her face on the sleeve of her shirt, pinched off Brewster’s nostrils, and picked up the half-empty bottle again.
“Wrong answer.”
She was just about to administer another force-feeding when she felt a hand gently lay upon her shoulder.
“That’s enough, she’s already beaten,” Camille pleaded, her voice haggard and exhausted. She had managed to dress herself and get to her feet, although she still seemed like she might keel over at any moment. “Yoona, please, just let it go.”
Yoona scoffed and shrugged away Cosworth’s hand, but Camille grabbed her wrist when she moved to jam the bottle into Adelaide’s mouth again. Although the grip was feeble, Park still seemed frozen in its grasp.
“Be better than this, Yoona…”
Park squeezed her eyes shut and her face twisted into a grimace, seemingly in great internal conflict. Camille’s victory had been far more emphatic than she would have thought, both physically and spiritually, and that somewhat obviated the need for Yoona to take revenge in her stead.
“Okay, Cam,” she whispered after several tense seconds, although her voice was still bitter. “Okay.”
Park relented on her attack with a weary sigh, stood up, and embraced her girlfriend. They stood in the center of the ring for a good amount of time with Camille leaning heavily on Yoona for support, but then the cheers turned to jeers and they turned their heads to see the rest of the Church of Eternal Midnight stalking down the entrance ramp -- Miranda Wainright in the center and flanked on either side by Ashley Conda and Tiffany Mayes.
Miranda Wainright
Tiffany Mayes
Ashely Conda
“Babe, can you still fight?” Park asked, to which Camille only shook her head.
The couple limped over to a corner arm-in-arm, and Yoona propped her girlfriend up against the turnbuckles. Then she took one last drink, gripped the bottle by the neck, and shattered the body against the steel ringpost. Improvised shiv in hand, she dropped down into a defensive crouch in front of Camille as the trio of Churchgoers entered the ring.
Contrary to the Korean’s expectations, they did not appear interested in another brawl. Ashley and Tiffany stooped down to retrieve their fallen sister, then left the ring without saying a word. Yoona breathed a little easier when she saw them retreat up the entrance ramp, but she still did not let down her guard around Wainright.
“You’ve healed up nicely since I last saw you, Yoona Park,” Miranda nonchalantly commented.
Park snarled and would have attacked had Cosworth not wrapped both arms around her waist to keep her anchored to the corner.
“COME HERE!” Yoona screamed as she wildly swung the broken bottle to and fro. “GIVE ME YOUR FACE!”
“You’re a fascinating woman,” Wainright mused. “Your beloved has just had the greatest victory of her career, on the biggest stage in the world, and here you are trying to grab the limelight for yourself. And the most incredible thing is, you don’t even realize how selfish you really are.”
“GO FUCK YOURSELF, GOAT-FUCKER!”
“I am only here to talk, but I am not interested in you,” Miranda said in an amazingly casual tone, although she remained wary should the raging Korean decide to throw the glass shiv at her. “Now you have two choices, Yoona. You can either stay here and we can fight, and regardless of outcome, it will surely mar what was a magnificent performance from Camille. Or you can leave peaceably, let her bask in the adulation and glory that she has earned, and allow me to have a civil conversation with someone I have no intention of harming.”
Yoona was about launch into another vulgar tirade when Cosworth spun her around and locked her into a deep French kiss. At first the Korean seemed surprised and her entire body tensed up, though within a few seconds her thoughts of violence were displaced by thoughts of something much, much sweeter as she indulged in the taste of Camille’s tongue in her mouth. The muscles in her body relaxed and she absentmindedly dropped the broken glass bottle before helping herself to greedy handfuls of her girlfriend’s firm, shapely rump, whipping the FAWNatics into a sex-crazed frenzy.
“Goddamn,” Park muttered when Cosworth finally broke off the kiss. “You wanna just fuck, right here, right now? It’ll be so hot, and totally piss off bitch-face over there too.”
“Hmm, save it for when we’re back home,” Camille whispered with a coquettish smile. “Go to the locker room, and tell them to get an ice bath ready. I’m really going to need it before any more strenuous activity tonight.”
Park eagerly nodded in agreement. Her brain hijacked by lust, Yoona brushed past Miranda with hardly a glance as she stepped out of the ring and made her way to the backstage area.
“Alright, Miranda,” Cosworth said once Park had vacated the area. “What’s the topic of today’s sermon?”
“I’m not here to deliver a sermon, sister,” Wainright replied. “Rather, I bring you a warning.”
Camille raised an eyebrow in bemusement, and gestured for Miranda to continue.
“You are the rarest of creatures, Camille Cosworth -- a pure soul. You and the Church of Eternal Midnight are the same in that regard, for while light and dark might seem diametrically opposed, they are simply two sides of the same coin. That noxious woman you hold dearest to you, however, cannot claim purity. Not of body, not of mind, not of soul, and not of purpose. She is an abomination that slips between light and dark and all the shades of gray in-between depending on what suits her at the moment. Morals, scruples, and creed… these words mean nothing to her. She will discard any principle without a second thought, and it is only a matter of time before she discards you too.”
“You don’t know her like I do. Yoona has been there for me every step of the way, she would never do that to me,” Cosworth replied.
“She is using you, Camille. Just like she used her parents,” Wainright countered.
Camille bristled at that comment, but she did not interrupt.
“She offers you a kind word and a soft touch,” Miranda continued. “She builds you up. She makes you shine brighter than ever before, and then she hides in your light. The chattel will be so blinded by you that they will not see her evil for what it is. It’s already happening. Tomorrow, everyone will talk about Camille Cosworth’s heroic triumph and Yoona Park’s heinous act of torture will be forgotten. Do you see now, sister? The horrors that lurk in the daylight are no less dangerous than those in the dark, only less honest. The woman you share your bed with is every bit as savage and ruthless as the monsters you purport to slay.”
“That's so ridiculous I'm not even going to dignify that with a response,” Camille scoffed. “Since when did you start giving a crap about my well-being anyway?”
“I’ve always been concerned for you, Camille,” Wainright said in a tone that sounded surprisingly frank and sincere. “We want the same things, sister. That idealistic vision of wrestling you held as a child… no one believes in that more fervently than me. Like you, I also dream of a better tomorrow. We only differ to on how to achieve a mutual goal, because I have realized it is folly to build upon a rotten foundation. In order to make a new world, we must first burn the old one.”
“Oh God, here comes the recruitment pitch again,” Cosworth groaned. “Let me guess: you want me to be a horseman of your apocalypse.”
“Light cannot change the world for the better, sister,” Miranda continued, blithely ignoring Camille’s annoyance. “The cretins will look to you as an idol. The indolent and shiftless will be content to live vicariously through you -- they will revel in your achievements and triumphs without ever lifting a finger themselves. Everything you accomplish will only make them more complacent and languid. Others, driven into a fervor by your rhetoric of hope, will try to follow your example, only to find out that hope by itself is not sufficient. You were blessed with wings, but what of those who are not? Will they be just another name on your shirt when they fall to their doom rather than soar?”
“No one is going to fall. Plant your dreams in me, and we will fly together,” Camille answered as she made a grand, sweeping gesture to the audience.
“You don’t yet realize what a burden you’re taking on,” Wainright said with a shake of her head. “So be it, Camille Cosworth. When you see the futility of your ways, however, remember that I believe in your cause more ardently than any other. More than your fans, and certainly more than that silver-tongued succubus you keep at your side. One day the weight will be too heavy, and it will be impossible to --”
Cosworth started chuckling, interrupting Wainright’s speech.
“Is something funny, sister?” Miranda asked blandly.
Instead of answering, Camille’s laughter progressively got louder and louder until it turned into a mad cackle after twenty seconds. Then her fit of giggles stopped just as abruptly as it had began and she looked up at Wainright with huge, black pupils.
“Were you not paying attention, Miranda?” she asked. “I have climbed the Dragon’s Gate. I am the Rose That Grew From Concrete. I am the Paragon of Hope. I am the Girl of Tomorrow.”
Cosworth walked past Miranda to the middle of the ring then turned back to offer some final words prior to departure.
“Fuck the impossible,” she said, drawing a riotous ovation from the fans.
Camille leapt on to the top rope, then used the steel cable to springboard into a spectacular twisting somersault that put her on the other side of the audience barrier where she was swallowed up by a crowd of jubilant FAWNatics.
After a late night of reminiscing and drinking at the Slaughtered Lamb, Camille Cosworth had woken up at 12:17 PM discombobulated, hungover, and -- for the first time in months -- alone. On the nightstand there had been a still-hot venti Pumpkin Spice Latte with a cryptic message written on the side:
See you at the arena. Walk slow.
Her favorite drink and a cold shower had done wonders in dispelling her hangover, but all attempts to reach Yoona via phone, text message, or email had failed. Even now as she sat in the stands at the FAWN Arena with her match just minutes away, she had still not been able to get in touch with her girlfriend and she was growing more anxious by the moment.
Camille leaned back in her seat and looked down at her shirt and pants. After her shower, she had decided on a whim to wear special attire to her first Mania. Or at least, normal attire with some very special customizations. Starting with a plain black compression shirt and matching leggings, Cosworth had used white nail polish to write the names of all the people who had played a part in getting her to this point in her career. It only felt right that she should carry their names and memories into the ring, especially those who might otherwise never have the chance to be on the ultimate stage.
Marvela Marcille and Lily Burlingame were written vertically down her right side, the pair of women who had officially introduced her to world of FAWN.
Down her left side were the good doctors Samuel Shem and Roy Bausch who had proven instrumental in helping her develop her Ninety Seconds of Awesome.
Around her left ankle was Justine Adams, the Bangor talent scout who had first given her a contract, albeit very reluctantly.
Across her right shoulder was La Halcon, the lovable loser of a luchadora whose mask Camille had worn for so long.
On her left shoulder was Cassandra Vale who had given her some painful but much needed wrestling lessons.
Haphazardly scattered all over her back and abdomen were names of all the wrestlers she had faced at Open Fight Nights throughout the years.
Encircling both legs were the names of all the local wrestlers she had encountered on the House Show circuit.
There was even a place for Adelaide Brewster on the curve of her left hip.
Most importantly were five names neatly grouped together on her left breast over her heart. Unlike the others, these were first name only and clearly set apart from the other names adorning her clothes.
First was Anthony - US Air Force colonel and patriarch of the Cosworth family.
Next was Josephine - accountant and matriarch of the Cosworth family.
Followed by David - first of twin older brothers and strong safety for the Houston Texans.
Then Daniel - second of twin older brothers by seventeen minutes and tight end for the Seattle Seahawks.
And finally Yoona - the one person Camille so desperately needed to hear from before her match.
There were eighty-eight names in all, although truth be told, there should have been eighty-nine. Even now, Camille just could not bring herself to put the name “Paulette Severe” on her clothes, despite the French woman being the person who had really catapulted her into the limelight. That was one particular grudge Cosworth was content to hold onto for life.
Suddenly, the arena lights clicked off, a pair of searchlights started canvassing the audience, and the bombastic opening notes of Camille’s entrance anthem played over the speaker system.
Cosworth sighed deeply, did her best to put thoughts of her girlfriend out of her mind, then got up and began making her way to the ring. At the thirty second mark, just when the opening leitmotif of her music faded out, she noticed something unusual.
A third spotlight had come on, although it was focused in the center of the ring rather than strafing the crowd. Inside the cone of light stood the woman Camille had spent the last several hours trying to get in touch with.
Yoona Park
For her cameo appearance as the ring announcer, Yoona Park wore a t-shirt and sweatpants combo bearing the University of Maine Black Bears logo -- both articles of clothing clearly purloined from Cosworth’s side of the closet -- along with her soft, fuzzy bathroom slippers. On her head was a red and white baseball cap, and on her back was a yellow backpack designed to look like Pikachu.
Yoona raised a microphone to her lips and began to speak, “Ladies and gentlemen, our next contest is a Last Woman Standing match. Introducing first...”
Park hesitated briefly before continuing, “...first... I would like to tell you all a story.”
Understanding what Yoona had meant in her note, Camille continued her slow walk even when the music began to pick up in tempo.
“Once upon a time there was a carp,” Yoona said into the microphone. “Just an ordinary carp, not much different from a common goldfish. Unlike the other carp in her school, however, she aspired to be something more than just a humble fish. She dreamed of a life beyond the banks of the river. She wanted to soar in the heavens rather than swim in the streams. One day she heard of a magical waterfall called the Dragon’s Gate. The legend was that any carp who has the strength and perseverance to make it to the top of the Dragon’s Gate would be transformed from a humble fish into a great dragon.”
Yoona paused for effect as the dramatic leitmotif of the song repeated.
“No one thought she could make it. After all, there were thousands of fish in the river, and not a single dragon in the skies. What chance did she have to succeed where everyone else had failed? She was not discouraged, however. She swam for weeks and weeks against the river’s current before she arrived at the bottom of a mile high waterfall. Over and over and over again the carp launches herself against a crushing onslaught of water, and over and over and over again she’s thrown back down. Yet she still persists, because she has the most powerful force in the universe, that which defies all logic and transcends all limitations -- hope.”
Park waited for the music to build to a crescendo as the pair of searchlights finally found their target in the audience. Camille understood that was her cue to start making her way to the ring, and Yoona turned to face her directly before continuing the speech.
“Tonight, that hope becomes a reality, the fish becomes a dragon, and the beautiful loser becomes a glorious hero! INTRODUCING FIRST FROM SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS… THE ROSE THAT GREW FROM CONCRETE… THE PARAGON OF HOPE… THE GIRL OF TOMORROW…”
Yoona turned her hat backwards and dramatically pointed directly at Camille, who was now sprinting towards the ring at full speed with a megawatt smile on her face.
“...CAMILLE COSWORTH, I CHOOSE YOU!”
Cosworth leapt off the steel barricade and vaulted over the top ropes. Rather than hold her dramatic landing pose and mug for the cameras, she stood up immediately, strode into the center of the ring, and swept her girlfriend into an embrace as the FAWNatics gave her a hero’s welcome.
“Thanks Yoona,” Camille whispered. “Those are some pretty lofty titles you just hung on me, I hope I can live up to them.”
“You already have,” Yoona replied with a slight crack in her voice. Seeing her name written alongside Camille’s family members had made her unexpectedly choke up with emotion.
The referee walked over and lightly tapped Park on the shoulder, “Yoona, you need to --”
“WAY TO FUCKING RUIN THE MOMENT, MERLE!” Yoona snapped as she broke the embrace and whirled around.
“Sorry!” the official flinched. “But the ring announcer needs to introduce both wrestlers.”
Park quizzically looked at the man in the black and white stripes for several seconds, “Wait, aren’t you going to tell me that your name is ‘Algernon’ or something like that?”
“W-what? No!” stammered the referee. “Algernon is someone else, I actually am Merle. Could you please introduce the second wrestler now?”
Yoona groaned with disgust, but she raised the microphone to her lips once more.
“And introducing her opponent, some piece of shit hailing from who-the-fuck-cares,” she said, every word dripping with contemptuous ennui.
Camille let out an exasperated sigh, then took the microphone to do the introduction herself, “From Oxrun, Connecticut… Representing the Church of Eternal Midnight, she is the Weeping Angel… the Daughter of Darkness… the Queen of Nightmares… ADELAIDE BREWSTER!”
“It’s the biggest show of the year. Everyone deserves a proper introduction, even the girls we don’t like,” Cosworth chided as Yoona rolled her eyes. “How did you get them to agree to let you be the announcer anyway?”
“While you were sleeping off your hangover I came by the arena and bribed one of the production team,” Park said nonchalantly. “I told him that if I could do the introductions for your match, I’d give him every home video we have of us licking peanut butter off each other’s bodies.”
“Peanut butter…? That’s, uh, that’s not something we’ve ever done…”
“Then I guess he’s going to be pretty fucking disappointed with his end of the deal.”
Before Camille could lecture Yoona about her dishonest and unethical negotiation tactics, the arena lights clicked off and the sound of Lorde’s ‘Glory and Gore’ filled the air.
For a moment there was nothing but darkness and pinpricks of cell phone light, then a few lights on either side of the stage ‘whoomped’ on to reveal a sea of ankle deep fog. Still no sign of the Churchgoer and that was the way it stayed until a cold blue light illuminated the gloomy recession leading to the curtain. A figure swung down from the ceiling of that narrow throat, a figure hanging by her knees from a bar suspended just out of camera view. Arms crossed over her chest, Adelaide Brewster opened her eyes, then twisted loose and landed on her feet just as her anthem warned, ‘Now we’re in the ring and we’re coming for blood.’
Adelaide Brewster
Heading for the squared circle after a moment to survey her feeding grounds, Adelaide stretched her arms wide, which let her limber up while simultaneously providing the FAWNatics with a great view of her ring attire. In place of the antique ball gown, top hat and velvet number that it sheathed was a blood red one piece made of a mesh just fine enough to allow the discerning eye a glimpse of matching black bra and briefs lurking beneath. Her outfit was completed with a clunky black belt complete with a buckle done up as a snarling wolf’s head and matching black boots and pads.
Reaching the ring quickly because no one quite dared extend a hand, Adelaide slunk under the bottom ropes, popped to her feet and took ownership of a corner on the far side of the ring. Paying no attention to the presence behind her back, the Weeping Angel climbed to the second rope, tilted her head back and ‘pppfffwoooooshed’ a cloud of Red Mist out over the first couple rows of fans. Blood properly let, she climbed down and turned her attention to the couple in the ring with her.
Brewster’s lips curled back into a predatory grin when she noticed the way that Cosworth seemed to tense up in her presence. Adelaide very much enjoyed sinking her teeth into the rookie’s neck during their previous meeting, and she had been counting down the days until she could have another taste of that delectable cocktail of adrenaline and fear. That this latest encounter was a Last Woman Standing match was even better, as it denied the possibility of Camille surrendering and bringing a premature end to the feast.
Park was a welcome addition as well. She had fought fiercely to protect her girlfriend a month ago, turning her body into a whirling dervish of elbows and knees in an attempt to drive off the Churchgoers. Despite her righteous fury, the combined might of the Church of Eternal Midnight was too much for anyone to oppose alone, and Yoona had quickly found herself on the wrong end of a four-on-one beating. A horde of referees had intervened before Adelaide had sated her bloodlust, however, so she was eagerly anticipating getting another shot at Yoona. In particular, she was looking forward to seeing just how sensitive Park’s notoriously fragile feet were.
“The two of you should feel blessed,” Adelaide said. “It is only through the grace of the Church of --”
“GO CHOKE ON A DICK, COCK-BREATH!” Yoona shouted into the microphone.
Dropping all pretense of affability with a savage snarl, Brewster started to lunge for the pair of rookies and would have torn into them on the spot had Merle not looped an arm around her waist and dragged her back to the corner.
“Park! Get out of the ring! NOW!” the beleaguered official pleaded as he signaled for the timekeeper to officially begin the match.
Calmly turning to her girlfriend as if nothing were wrong, Yoona cupped both hands around the back of Camille’s neck, put their heads together so that they were touching at the forehead and nose, then gave a last minute pep talk.
“Men create monsters for heroes to slay. When the Beast rears its seven heads and rises from the abyss --” Yoona said, her voice simmering with quiet intensity, “-- YOU WILL KILL IT.”
“Is that from Game of Thrones?” Cosworth asked with a wry chuckle.
“Actually, no. It’s -- WOOAAH!”
Camille shoved Yoona clear just in time to avoid Adelaide’s massive Super Kick. Brewster was about to charge the Korean again when Cosworth quickly restrained her from behind with a Full Nelson.
“GO, YOONA! GO!” Camille roared as she fought to keep Adelaide in place. “I’VE GOT THIS!”
“Fuck yeah, you’ve got this…” Park smirked while she slipped out of the ring. “Cam! Use your Splash Attack!”
“Gyarados can’t do Splash Attack! It’s -- HYPER BEAM!” Cosworth screamed as she arched back and threw Brewster into the center of the ring with a Release Dragon Suplex.
The Churchgoer was agile and limber, however, thus she was able to absorb the brunt of the impact with a backwards roll and take minimal damage. Quickly regaining her feet, she scanned her surroundings and spotted Yoona sitting cross-legged on top of the announcer’s table. The Korean pulled a bottle of Gran Patrón tequila from her Pikachu backpack, then smiled patronizingly at Brewster while she raised the liquor in a toast.
Adelaide was fantasizing about caving Yoona’s skull in with the bottle of tequila when she saw something flying at her out of the corner of her eye. She threw herself flat on her back just in time for Camille’s to harmlessly sail over her chest with a leaping Shoulder Block, then she smoothly kipped up to her feet a second later while her opponent continued forward into the ropes.
When Cosworth came rebounding back with a repeat Shoulder Block, Brewster quickly countered with an Arm Drag that took the rookie down to the mat with a THUMP. Maintaining her grip on Camille’s right wrist, Adelaide scissored her legs around the captive limb, sat down at Cosworth’s right side, and tried to lean back to complete the Jujigatame.
Sensing what was about to happen, Camille immediately clasped her hands together to prevent Adelaide from stretching out her right arm and hyperextending the elbow. Brewster was persistent, however, and she rocked her body back and forth to repeatedly jerk on Cosworth’s arm and hopefully break the defensive grip.
Even as strong as she was, Camille knew that her arms could not withstand the pulling force of the Churchgoer’s entire body for very long, so she would have to think of some other escape. Just as Adelaide sat forward then explosively leaned back to yank on her arm, Camille suddenly rolled to her right to go along with Brewster’s pull. Unprepared for the abrupt lack of resistance, the Churchgoer wound up lying on her shoulders with her legs folded into her stomach and Cosworth kneeling over her.
Unable to complete the Jujigatame from such a position, Adelaide relinquished her hold on her opponent’s arm, then kicked Camille in the face to create some distance before she clambered back to her feet. Cosworth was still wiping the boot print off her cheek when Brewster slammed a knee into her gut, doubling her over.
“Let me see your fear, sister,” the Churchgoer commanded as she trapped her opponent in a Double Underhook and thumped home another Knee Strike.
“I am every nightmare you’ve ever had!”
THUMP!
“I am your worst dream come true!”
THUMP!
“I am everything you were ever afraid of!”
THUMP!
Feeling Camille’s legs starting to quiver, Adelaide squatted down before explosively popping her hips forward and arching her back to slam the rookie into the mat with a ring rattling Butterfly Suplex. Cosworth bounced once with a loud groan of pain, then rolled over to a corner where she used the turnbuckles to pull herself back up as Merle reached “THREE!” on his ten count.
“You’ve already seen my fear,” Camille said through a wince as she pressed her right hand to her aching lower back while her left hand gripped the top rope for support. “When you had me lying in the middle of this very ring, unable to move, unable to breathe, unable to… resist... what you were doing to me... those were the most terrifying, most humiliating few minutes of my life.”
Adelaide broke into a leering smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes, making sure to show as many of her sharp, white teeth as possible.
“You had asked me if I were afraid of you...” Camille continued. “Yes. Absolutely, I am. I fear what you did to me then, and I fear what you might still do to me now.”
The throng of fans murmured with concern at Cosworth’s earnest admission. It was seen as a lack of killer instinct and competitive fire for any athlete to so openly confess to being afraid of her opponent, and that maxim was doubly true for the combat sports.
“But you see, Adelaide…” she said, her voice suddenly turning hard and resolute. “I am still here!”
Camille shot out of her corner like a cannonball, and not wanting to give up initiative to the rookie, Brewster also rushed forward to meet Cosworth’s charge in the middle of the ring. Moments before the two wrestlers smacked together in an Elbow and Collar tie-up, Cosworth somersaulted over her opponent, clasped her hands underneath Adelaide’s chin mid-flip, then laid out on her back to slam the back of the Churchgoer’s head and neck into the canvas with a Front Flip Neckbreaker.
With her opponent lying on the mat and cradling her head in her arms, Camille signaled for the referee to begin his ten-count then addressed the legion of cheering FAWNatics.
“At first I tried to deny it, but now I realize that there is no disgrace in being afraid. Fears are to be overcome, mountains are to be scaled, and monsters --”
Cosworth shared a knowing glance with Park at the announcer’s table, then quickly returned her attention to Adelaide, who was just climbing to her feet as Merle counted “FOUR!”
“-- Monsters are to be slain,” Camille finished, eliciting a pop from the crowd.
“You delude yourself with hollow platitudes, sister,” Brewster said with a baleful scowl on her face. “I will break you of this idolatrous habit.”
The two wrestlers briefly circled each other in the center of the ring before Adelaide suddenly lashed out with a Toe Kick. Camille reflexively tensed her abdominal muscles to absorb the kick with a grunt, then crossed both arms in front of her face to block a pair of Brewster’s follow-up Forearm Smashes.
Having weathered the assault, Cosworth grabbed Adelaide by an arm and whipped the Churchgoer into the ropes. Camille took off in a sprint after Brewster, planning to hit her with a Spear just when she rebounded off the cables.
Adelaide heard the footsteps behind her, however, so as she approached the edge of the ring she leapt up, planted both feet on the middle rope, and launched herself into a blind Springboard Back Elbow. Taken by surprise, Cosworth had no recourse except to try to roll with the impact when Brewster’s elbow caught her on the side of the head.
With the Churchgoer’s momentum behind the blow, Camille was sent to the mat in a backwards tumble. She maintained the wherewithal to roll over her own shoulder to get into a prone position, and she made it to her hands and knees before Adelaide dragged her up the rest of the way with a rear Waist Lock.
“Terrors come at night with their voices soft as thunder,” the Churchgoer purred into Camille’s ear. “As they tear your hopes apart and turn your dreams to shame.”
Adelaide tried to lift her opponent up and back for a German Suplex, but she found that impossible with Cosworth’s leg intertwined with her own. With a growl of frustration, Brewster exchanged her hold around her opponent’s waist for one around the neck, then she dropped to the mat and bore down hard on the Rear Naked Choke.
With surrender literally not an option, the only thing Camille could do was make a play for the ropes. With a supreme effort she was able to roll onto her stomach, and next came the arduous task of crawling to the side of the ring. She had just made it halfway there when Brewster decided to indulge in a mid-match snack.
“AUUUGGGHH!” Cosworth screamed as a set of sharp teeth bit into the side of her neck.
Nevertheless, exposing enough flesh to accommodate the bite meant the Rear Naked Choke was briefly loosened, and that was the opening she needed to scamper the remaining distance and grab onto the bottom rope. Adelaide milked the five-count for as long as she could, then gave Camille a parting Forearm Smash to the back of the head before she released the hold and stood up.
“Not there yet,” Brewster said with a smack of her lips. “You need more time to marinate in misery. Show me what is dearest to you, sister. Show me so that I may have the joy of taking it from you.”
Cosworth pulled herself upright and rolled her head 360 degrees in one direction, followed by 360 degrees in the other to get the stiffness out of her neck. Then she took several deep breaths to calm her nerves and fight back the unpleasant memories brought on by the Churchgoer chewing on her flesh again.
Once she had adequately recovered, Camille left the safety of the ropes and walked to the center of the ring with her arms held out at her sides, subconsciously imitating her girlfriend-cum-sparring partner.
“Are you afraid of me, Adelaide Brewster?” she audaciously asked in a reprise of the Churchgoer’s line from several weeks ago.
“Be careful of what you say next,” Adelaide coldly replied as her face turned livid. “The Church of Eternal Midnight will not tolerate such blasphemy.”
“It was a rhetorical question. I know you’re not afraid of me,” Camille said flatly. “That’s why you’re going to lose.”
Infuriated by the rookie’s brazenness, Brewster leapt forward with talons bared. With her left hand she carved a series of thin, parallel scratches along Cosworth’s right jawline, and her right hand would have raked her opponent right across the eyes had Camille not leaned her head back at the last second to allow the claw to harmlessly pass an inch in front of her face.
Ignoring the stinging sensation on the side of her face, Camille quickly lashed out with her right hand and snatched Adelaide’s right wrist before the Churchgoer had a chance to retract the limb. In turn, Brewster grabbed Cosworth’s right wrist with her left hand, which then prompted Camille to pin Adelaide’s hand underneath her left forearm. With all four arms of their arms tied up in a pair of interlocking X’s, the two wrestlers briefly pushed, pulled, and jockeyed for position.
After a dozen seconds or so, it was Camille who gained the advantage over her lighter opponent. Wary of Brewster blowing another plume of Red Mist into her face, she forced the tangle of limbs up to face level to serve as a barrier to block anything the Churchgoer might spit forth from her mouth. With the threat of the Red Mist temporarily neutralized, Cosworth made a gun shape with her left hand while still bearing down with that arm to keep Adelaide’s hands pinned, and then placed the fingertip barrel right between Brewster’s eyes.
“A worthless gesture,” Adelaide hissed, not at all amused by Camille’s sudden cheekiness. “Did you remember to pack your silver bullets, sister?”
“I guess we’re about to find out,” Cosworth replied as she closed one eye and used the other to line up her target behind her thumb.
“Bang.”
Brewster’s head snapped back as if shot by a sniper, and then she crumpled to the mat in a heap.
The FAWNatics sat in stunned silence for a few moments while Merle started his count, then roared to life when Camille blew some imaginary gun smoke off her tips of her index and middle fingers to celebrate her One Inch Punch. Putting on her best “I told you so” expression, she turned towards her girlfriend at the announcer’s table and waggled her eyebrows with smug self-satisfaction. Yoona only shrugged in response, then treated herself to another gulp of tequila straight from the bottle.
As dramatic and macabre as it looked to ‘shoot’ her opponent execution-style in the head, it wasn’t quite a finishing maneuver. The One Inch Punch had actually struck Adelaide in the thickest, hardest portion of her skull, thus the Churchgoer managed to stagger to her feet as the referee’s count reached “SEVEN!”
Undeterred by her opponent’s resilience, Camille snatched Brewster by the arm and started to Irish Whip her towards the ropes, only to find that the Churchgoer somehow still had the strength to latch onto her wrist and reverse the whip. Rather than send Cosworth running off, Adelaide elected for the more straightforward tactic of pulling her in closer then firing a vicious Snap Kick right between her thighs. The explosion of pain radiated all the way from her groin to behind her eyeballs, and Camille immediately hunched over and went pigeon-toed.
Adelaide took a couple of seconds to savor her opponent’s agony, then resumed her counter-offensive. Looping her hands around the back of Camille’s neck, she leapt up, drew both of her knees to her chest, and fell backwards onto the mat. The landing wasn’t exactly pleasant for Brewster, but it was much worse for Cosworth who was dragged along for the ride and had her chest crushed against the Churchgoer’s knees after a short fall.
Turned into a gasping, wheezing wreck by the Inverted Lungblower, Camille flopped onto the canvas and instinctively rolled into a prone position. Despite having the wind knocked out of her, she still managed to crawl to her hands and knees and would have most likely beaten the ten count had Adelaide not taken a seat on her lower back, both sending her to the mat and interrupting Merle’s count at “SIX!”
Spinning around in her seat so that she was facing Cosworth’s legs, Brewster crossed her opponent’s ankles then forcefully pulled back on both feet, eliciting a grunt of pain that would have been much louder if Camille had not just suffered a Lungblower a few moments ago.
“Think of this as practice for when I get my hands on that tramp you call a lover,” Adelaide mused as she increased the pressure on the Double Toe Hold.
The Churchgoer looked towards Park, but she seemed to be busy scribbling with a set of pen and paper she had procured from broadcast announcer Gordy Solis. Returning her attention to her opponent who was ever so slowly crawling for the ropes, Brewster unlaced Camille’s Converse sneakers and pulled them off. With Cosworth’s feet exposed, Adelaide pressed her fingers into Camille’s bare soles, imitating the nerve hold that Yoona occasionally used at House Shows to submit her opponents.
Much to her consternation, Adelaide discovered that the technique wasn’t as easy as it seemed. Having never experienced the hold herself she could only guess at where the pressure point was, and judging from her victim’s lack of distress, she was off the mark. Even more infuriating was the way that Park looked at her -- with a smirk, an eye roll, and a dismissive head shake -- before continuing to scribble.
Her blood boiling with rage, Brewster decided to settle for a much less technical but brutally effective means of attack. She dug her fingernails into the tender flesh on the balls of Cosworth’s feet, then suddenly ripped her hand along the arch all the way down to the heel.
“OWW! OOWWWWWW!” Camille shrieked as Adelaide repeatedly shredded the soles of her feet.
Fighting through the pain, she continued crawling for the edge of the ring even with Brewster sitting on her back and drastically slowing her forward progress. After what felt like hours, Cosworth was finally able to reach out and grab the bottom rope.
“BREAK!” she called to the referee.
Adelaide worked the five-count for as long as she could, viciously clawing Camille’s feet four more times -- two to the left, two to the right -- before she finally relented on the attack. Glaring daggers the whole way, the Churchgoer stalked to the edge of the ring and ominously pointed towards Park as if to say, “You’re next.”
Rather than speak or gesticulate, Yoona simply held up a piece of paper and showed Brewster what she had been scribbling.
It was a crude drawing of four stick figures named “DUM BLOND,” “DUM BLOND JR.,” “SNEK LADY,” and “ADDALAID” getting crushed by a runaway locomotive engine named “CAMMEEL.” Across the top of the picture were the words “GG EZ GET REKT LOL.”
Once she was satisfied that both Adelaide and the arena cameras had gotten a good look at her artwork, Yoona flipped the piece of paper around so that the other side was visible. On the backside was a much more well done drawing of a single rose growing from a crack in between two slabs of sidewalk.
The Churchgoer gave a disdainful sneer, then returned her focus to the other woman in the ring. She would deal with the Korean and her childish antics later.
Meanwhile Camille was still struggling to stay upright. While she was not seriously hurt, the soles of her feet burned with agony any time she put weight on them, thus making it impossible to stand.
“SIX!” Merle called out.
She tried to get up to one knee, then immediately fell back to the mat, clutching her foot.
“Your efforts are futile, sister,” Adelaide taunted.
“SEVEN!”
“You can no more defeat me than Sisyphus can defeat the hill,” she added.
“EIGHT!”
“ARRRGGGHHH!” Cosworth screamed as she tried to rise again, only to fall again.
“NINE!”
“Just lay down and die, Camille Cosworth,” Brewster commanded.
“TE--huh, well I’ll be damned…” Merle said with a tone of astonishment as he interrupted his own count that would have ended the match.
“HOPE NEVER DIES!” Camille shouted over the raucous crowd of FAWNatics.
Unwilling to give up and unable to stand on her feet, Cosworth chose a third option by standing on her hands instead. Merle wasn’t actually sure if a handstand technically fell within the definition of ‘standing’ under Last Woman Standing rules, but he knew that calling the match now would at best get him chewed out by the brass, and at worst cause the joyous bunch of fans to riot. Exchanging a shrug with the timekeeper, the referee allowed the match to continue.
“You are starting to believe your own hype and it’s unbecoming of you, sister,” Adelaide snorted. “Despair suits you much better than pride. You’ve never looked more beautiful than the moment when I broke your heart.”
Not in the mood for an extended round of banter, Cosworth tumbled forward to close the gap between herself and her opponent. Coming out of her forward roll, she spun around on the seat of her pants and swung her legs out in a wide arc a few inches above the canvas, trying to sweep her opponent’s legs. The Churchgoer quickly stepped back out of range of the leg sweep, but then Camille made a full 360 degree rotation after her whiff to return to her original location, crunched up onto her shoulders, and launched herself upwards in a Kip-Up Hurricanrana that caught Brewster completely off-guard.
Unhurt but upset after being sent flipping to the mat, Adelaide scrambled upright with a furious, indignant growl. With the rookie still on the mat, Brewster took a lunging step forward and unleashed a vicious Soccer Punt aimed at her opponent’s head.
Rather than evade the blow, Camille swung her legs around again to parry the kick and rolled with the impact to spin onto her hands with a picture perfect gymnastic flare. The audience ooh’ed and ahh’ed in appreciation of Cosworth’s unmatched penchant for what seemed to be superfluous spinning, but this time there was a method to her madness. As soon her opponent tried to follow up on the blocked Soccer Punt, Camille twirled her legs around in another full revolution then scissored both limbs around Brewster’s left leg to send the Churchgoer falling face-first to the mat.
Adelaide used her hands to break her fall and managed to avoid a harsh face-to-canvas collision, although that didn’t prevent Camille from taking advantage of her prone position. Scrambling as quickly as she could with her aching feet, she laid out across Brewster’s back and then clasped her hands around the Churchgoer’s right thigh. With both of Adelaide’s legs under control, Cosworth yanked Brewster’s legs wide open with a Banana Split, rolled onto her back, then her shoulders, then her side, and just like that the Rolling Death Cradle was on.
Side.
Back.
Shoulders.
Other side.
Back.
Shoulders.
Over and over they went as Camille dragged Adelaide along for a dizzying spin cycle in the middle of the ring while painfully stretching her legs.
Meanwhile at ringside, the pair of broadcast announcers had struck up a conversation with their guest as the FAWNatics counted out each revolution of the Rolling Death Cradle.
“Does Camille have any moves that don’t involve spinning?” Gordy Solis asked.
“Some of her moves have flipping instead,” Yoona replied as she thoughtfully sipped on her tequila.
“I couldn’t help but notice that Camille has Adelaide’s name written near her rear end,” Joanna Coleman commented. “Could this be Camille’s way of telling us what she intends to do to the Weeping Angel should she win? Perhaps we will see a cattier side to --”
“Cosworth doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell!” Solis blurted out. “The name’s only there so that everyone knows who her ass belongs to! She’s going to --”
“It’s been awhile since I’ve kicked someone in the testicles,” Park wondered out loud.
“Camille Cosworth is the best there is, the best there was, the best there ever will be,” Gordy immediately corrected, earning himself a grin and a pat on the head from the Korean wrestler.
Back in the ring, Camille had finally ended her Rolling Death Cradle after the twenty-third cycle. With her opponent reduced to a moaning puddle of flesh for the time being, she scrambled over to retrieve her shoes before slipping her feet inside and triple-knotting the laces extra tightly. Footwear back in place, Cosworth gingerly climbed back to her feet and grimaced when she still noted some lingering tenderness in her soles. Somewhere in the back of her mind she wondered if Yoona had to deal with that kind of painful sensation all the time.
“SEVEN!” Merle called out.
With her head spinning and her hamstrings burning, Brewster needed the aid of the corner turnbuckles to make it upright as she roiled with anger that the rookie had reduced her to crawling for the ropes like a godless heathen.
“Hope has no power in this wretched cesspool, Camille Cosworth,” she snarled. “FAWN rewards the brutal and the vicious. No matter what pretty words or trite cliches you use to dress it up, the weak will always be food for the strong. There are no heroes here, sister. Not any more. Monsters are only slain by greater monsters, and there is no greater monster than the Queen of Nightmares!”
Message delivered, Adelaide rushed forward and smacked into her opponent in the middle of the ring. The two wrestlers were deadlocked briefly before Camille managed to slip her head and shoulders underneath Brewster’s right arm, then threw her own right arm across the Churchgoer’s chest and prepared to hoist her up for a Lifting Side Slam.
Adelaide’s reflexes were too fast, however, and she managed to elbow Cosworth in the side of the head just as her feet were leaving the canvas. Stunned by the hit to her temple, Camille lost her hold on her opponent and stumbled around in a daze for a few steps before Brewster grabbed a handful of her hair, whirled her around, and blew a point blank Red Mist into her face.
“GAAAAHHHHH!” Cosworth shrieked as her hands reflexively went to her burning eyes.
The Churchgoer was never one to give quarter, so she grabbed Camille’s right arm by the wrist and twisted that limb behind her opponent into a Chicken-Wing Arm Lock. Switching to a one handed grip on the Arm Lock, Adelaide then slipped her right hand between Cosworth’s thighs from behind and dug her talons into the most sensitive parts of the rookie’s anatomy with a hateful Crotch Claw. Still not satisfied, she once again sank her teeth into her opponent’s neck to complete the quartet of pain.
With the pain receptors in her eyes, shoulder, genitals, and neck simultaneously set ablaze, Camille’s screams hit a volume and pitch that could have shattered a wine glass. The urge to tap out or shout her submission was nearly irresistible, but whatever portion of her brain that was not yet inundated with pain managed to convince the rest of the body that surrender was both futile and unacceptable.
She got a small reprieve when Merle forced Adelaide to cease the neck-biting after a five-count and she managed to scrub a good deal of the Red Mist out of her eyes with her free hand, although the Crotch Claw and Chicken-Wing combo was still no walk in the park. Nevertheless, she resolved to hold on for as long as possible using whatever means she could.
She bit down on her bottom lip to put a halt to her screaming.
She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to distract herself from the agony by mentally playing tic-tac-toe with herself.
She ground her heel against her captor’s instep, although Adelaide’s sturdy boots provided too much protection for that to be effective.
Despite her best efforts, the combination of holds very quickly took a toll on her body. By ten seconds her eyes were watering, by thirty she was whimpering, and by sixty she was on her knees. Shortly after that Brewster finally relented on her holds, not out of any sense of mercy, but simply because her hand was starting to cramp from continuously applying the Crotch Claw.
On the verge of sobbing, Camille pressed both hands to her aching groin, then keeled forward until she was propped up on her knees and forehead. She heard Merle begin his ten-count and she wasn’t sure if she still had it in her to get up again, though her concerns turned out to be moot when Adelaide pressed a domineering boot on the back of her head and stopped the referee’s count.
“Say it,” the Churchgoer demanded. “Tell me that you’re nothing but a stupid, naive girl. Tell all those who hold you as a false idol to abandon their heathen ways and accept the absolution of Midnight. Tell everyone --”
“You’re right,” Camille groaned from her face down position. “You’re right. You’re right! YOU’RE RIGHT!”
The crowd which had been booing vociferously abruptly went silent at Cosworth’s proclamation.
A victorious sneer creeping onto her face, Adelaide lifted her foot and reached down to pull Camille up into a kneeling position with a handful of hair. Most of Cosworth’s face was still caked in Red Mist, her eyes were squeezed shut, and her mouth was twisted into a painful grimace.
“I fell in love with this sport when I was ten years old,” Camille rasped. “Had I known then what I know now about this business, I would have been disgusted instead. The world of wrestling I loved was just a mirage seen through the eyes of a child who did not know the bitter taste of being violated and degraded.”
Brewster’s sneer widened, then she made a gun-shaped gesture with her right hand and pressed the barrel to Cosworth’s left breast, right where the name “Yoona” was written.
“But if it’s all the same,” Camille continued, her lips breaking into a faint smile and her tone turning cheerful, even though her eyes remained half-lidded. “I would like to share my childish, idealistic mirage with everyone. And if the world I envisioned does not exist, then I will build it.”
“Foolish and sentimental to the end, sister,” Adelaide said contemptuously. “Any final words?”
Cosworth sighed softly, as if resigned to her fate, “All those who have honored me with their support, faith, and love… all those who I’ve had the privilege of calling my fans... please, I implore you… Do not go gentle into that good night.”
The Churchgoer cocked her right hand back to her cheek, turned the gun into a fist, then brought it down in a devastating Heart Punch.
Smack!
CRAAAACK!
Camille caught the Heart Punch in the palm of her left hand, and squeezed so hard that the cartilage in Brewster’s knuckles popped.
Her eyes snapped wide open, revealing a pair of enormous black pupils that had been dilated by an overload of adrenaline, and then she continued her poetry recitation, “Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
Adelaide hissed in pain and was still struggling to free herself from her opponent’s death grip when Cosworth suddenly yanked her forward by her trapped hand, then pulled her into a Fireman’s Carry.
“Though wise men at their end know dark is right, because their words had forked no lightning they --”
With Brewster slung across her shoulders and still squirming in her grasp, Camille suddenly rocketed off the mat directly from her kneeling position. At the peak of her jump, she leaned backwards so that her toes were pointed towards the ceiling, then fell straight back down to hammer the Churchgoer into the canvas with a thunderous Samoan Drop.
“-- Do not go gentle into that good night.”
Even after the jarring slam, Camille kept her grips around Adelaide’s head and legs to maintain the Fireman’s Carry as she climbed to her feet with her opponent still across her shoulders. Brewster was not struggling any more.
“Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright their frail deeds may have danced in a green bay --”
Cosworth leapt off the mat again, although this time she laid out on her side to spike her opponent’s head with a Death Valley Driver.
“--Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
Still keeping the insensate Adelaide secure in the Fireman’s Carry, Camille got up to her feet again to a round of cheers that had been getting progressively louder with each bone-rattling slam and each poetic verse. Instead of smashing her opponent into the mat again, she started whirling in place with an Airplane Spin.
“Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, and learn, too late, they grieved it on its way --”
Cosworth came to a sudden halt just as she pushed her burden up and off her shoulders. Imbued with inertia from the Airplane Spin, the limp body of the Churchgoer did two more flat revolutions then belly-flopped to the mat in a Fireman’s Carry Facebuster and laid deathly still.
“--Do not go gentle into that good night.”
Camille reached down to grab two handfuls of Adelaide’s body-mesh between the shoulderblades and at the waist, then gracefully launched herself forward with a Front Handspring. The momentum of the flip pried Brewster off the canvas, and she ended up facing the ceiling held aloft on Cosworth’s outstretched arms in a sort of Inverted Military Press.
“Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight, blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay --”
Camille forcefully brought her opponent’s body down in front of her while at the same time bringing her right knee forward and up. Adelaide’s lumbar spine made a dull crunch as it met the point of Cosworth’s knee in a vicious Over the Knee Backbreaker that would have made Leila Olmstead smile with approval and Bruce Wayne wince with empathetic pain.
“--Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
The force of the Bane-style Backbreaker made Brewster’s body bounce into an upright standing position for a brief moment, and Camille quickly slipped the Churchgoer’s right arm over her own right shoulder as her right arm reached across Adelaide’s chest to keep the flaccid body vertical.
“And you, my father, there on the sad height, curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray --”
Cosworth planted her left hand in the small of Brewster’s back for extra support, took one step forward with her left leg, then launched into her highest leap yet. As she ascended into the air with her opponent in her grasp she spun around 180 degrees, and then at the peak of her jump she flipped 180 degrees so that the crown of the Churchgoer’s head was now pointed straight down. Finally, gravity took over and sent the two wrestlers crashing into the mat, completing the wicked combination of Fosbury Flop and Ura-nage that Camille had named Meteor Slam.
The impact left both women laid out in a jumble of limbs, and although Brewster took the worst of the landing, Cosworth was not immune to the effects of taking a vertical drop either.
“Do not go… gentle… into that… good night…” Camille panted between deep, gasping breaths as she laid on her back next to her completely unconscious opponent.
Sensing that their heroine was completely spent after her superhuman efforts, the assembled crowd of FAWNatics urged her to get up by chanting the last line of the poem.
“RAGE!” twenty thousand people shouted as one. “RAGE AGAINST THE DYING OF THE LIGHT!”
“RAGE!” they repeated.
“RAGE!”
“RAGE!”
“RAGE!”
The show of support allowed Cosworth to tap into the last reserves left in her exhausted body and she was somehow able to stagger back to her feet. She rubbed her bleary eyes, which had returned to their normal hazel, then turned to give her girlfriend a weary thumbs-up.
“CAMILLE USED POETRY!” Yoona screamed into the ring announcer’s microphone. “IT’S SUPER EFFECTIVE! SHITHEAD HAS FAINTED!”
“SIX!” called Merle.
The rhythmic chants of “RAGE!” gave way to a cacophony of joyous cheers.
“SEVEN!”
Brewster still had not stirred, and the cheers grew louder...
“EIGHT!”
...and louder...
“NINE!”
...and louder...
“TEN!”
...and then the entire crowd erupted into a standing ovation as Merle called for the bell to make the result official.
“Your winner, by FATALITY, Camille Cosworth!” Yoona announced, exaggerating ever so slightly.
Camille allowed the referee to raise her arm in victory. Truth be told, she did not have the energy to lift the limb by herself. She was two steps into her victory lap when all the muscles in her back seized up and her legs turned to jelly. Cosworth listed to one side then pitched forward, and she would have had a crash landing if Park had not scrambled into the ring just in time to catch her.
“Hahahahaha! Oh shit!” Yoona cackled while she helped Camille lay down on the mat. “I want to have your babies, Cam! You’re such a motherfucking badass!”
“I… I’m… burn-burning… burning up…” Camille gasped between greedy gulps of air.
Park peeled off Cosworth’s sweat-soaked shirt, leaving her in a sports bra. After a few seconds of having more of her skin exposed to the brisk arena air, Camille seemed to be feeling better. Yoona wiped off the remaining bits of Red Mist with the shirt and was just about to start removing Cosworth’s pants too when Camille stopped her.
“No...no panties…” she whispered.
“You’re such a pervert,” Park sarcastically replied as she laid the shirt across Camille’s hips to preserve her modesty, then pulled her pants down to her ankles. She rolled the Pikachu backpack into a pillow shape, set it under Cosworth’s head, and offered a drink of tequila which was declined.
“Yoona… am I cool now?” Camille asked with an exhausted grin.
“You’re the coolest girl in the world, Camille Cosworth,” Yoona said before giving her girlfriend a kiss on the forehead.
Satisfied with that answer, Cosworth closed her eyes and laid back to let her body cool off. Park helped herself to another celebratory drink, and once she was sure that Camille was resting comfortably, she turned around and made a beeline for the still unconscious Churchgoer.
“I don’t know what you’re planning to do, but you’ve got a bad look in your eyes,” Merle said as he stepped in the way. “The match is over, just go -- UNNNGGH!”
Yoona fired a Snap Kick into the referee’s gut without breaking stride, then neatly stepped around him when he crumpled into a heap. She nudged Brewster with her foot, and when she didn’t get a response, Park settled into a high and tight Schoolgirl Pin atop Adelaide’s chest.
Yoona took a large gulp from her bottle and rolled the tequila around in her mouth, savoring the taste that started off sweet like caramel before turning slightly spicy and oaken as the liquid soaked into the taste buds in the middle of her tongue. Still holding the liquor in her mouth, she took in a deep breath through her nostrils, then leaned forward and spat the tequila into Brewster’s face.
“That was for my nacho hat, asshole,” Yoona said, her tone playful and mischievous.
There was still no response from Adelaide.
Next, the Korean made a circle with the middle finger and thumb on her right hand, and lightly flicked the Churchgoer on the forehead three times.
“That was for those girls in Miami, whatever the fuck their names are.”
Still no response.
Yoona reached down with her right hand and pinched Adelaide’s nostrils shut. After a few seconds, Brewster reflexively began breathing through her mouth, although she still did not rouse to consciousness. Park took another gulp and swallowed this time, letting out a sigh as the tequila warmed her esophagus on the way down.
When she spoke again, her voice was cruel and cold.
“This is for Camille.”
Yoona jammed the neck of the bottle between Adelaide’s teeth to pour liquor down her throat. Still inhaling through her mouth, Brewster immediately woke up in a spastic fit when her next breath drew tequila rather than air into her lungs. Feeling like someone had just set her chest on fire from the inside, she thrashed and flailed as hard as her battered body would allow, but she could not dislodge the woman sitting atop her chest.
Park kept pouring it on for nearly ten seconds before she set the bottle aside and then applied a hand smother to Brewster’s mouth and nose to force the Churchgoer to either swallow or breathe in the liquor rather than spit it out.
“Renounce your faith,” Yoona ordered. “Scream at the top of your lungs that your Church is a fraud.”
Park leaned in close and removed her hands from Brewster’s face so that she may better hear the recantation, but instead all the Korean got was a faceful of Red Mist mixed with tequila.
“Midnight... comes for one and all…” Adelaide gurgled, defiantly faithful despite her predicament.
Yoona angrily wiped her face on the sleeve of her shirt, pinched off Brewster’s nostrils, and picked up the half-empty bottle again.
“Wrong answer.”
She was just about to administer another force-feeding when she felt a hand gently lay upon her shoulder.
“That’s enough, she’s already beaten,” Camille pleaded, her voice haggard and exhausted. She had managed to dress herself and get to her feet, although she still seemed like she might keel over at any moment. “Yoona, please, just let it go.”
Yoona scoffed and shrugged away Cosworth’s hand, but Camille grabbed her wrist when she moved to jam the bottle into Adelaide’s mouth again. Although the grip was feeble, Park still seemed frozen in its grasp.
“Be better than this, Yoona…”
Park squeezed her eyes shut and her face twisted into a grimace, seemingly in great internal conflict. Camille’s victory had been far more emphatic than she would have thought, both physically and spiritually, and that somewhat obviated the need for Yoona to take revenge in her stead.
“Okay, Cam,” she whispered after several tense seconds, although her voice was still bitter. “Okay.”
Park relented on her attack with a weary sigh, stood up, and embraced her girlfriend. They stood in the center of the ring for a good amount of time with Camille leaning heavily on Yoona for support, but then the cheers turned to jeers and they turned their heads to see the rest of the Church of Eternal Midnight stalking down the entrance ramp -- Miranda Wainright in the center and flanked on either side by Ashley Conda and Tiffany Mayes.
Miranda Wainright
Tiffany Mayes
Ashely Conda
“Babe, can you still fight?” Park asked, to which Camille only shook her head.
The couple limped over to a corner arm-in-arm, and Yoona propped her girlfriend up against the turnbuckles. Then she took one last drink, gripped the bottle by the neck, and shattered the body against the steel ringpost. Improvised shiv in hand, she dropped down into a defensive crouch in front of Camille as the trio of Churchgoers entered the ring.
Contrary to the Korean’s expectations, they did not appear interested in another brawl. Ashley and Tiffany stooped down to retrieve their fallen sister, then left the ring without saying a word. Yoona breathed a little easier when she saw them retreat up the entrance ramp, but she still did not let down her guard around Wainright.
“You’ve healed up nicely since I last saw you, Yoona Park,” Miranda nonchalantly commented.
Park snarled and would have attacked had Cosworth not wrapped both arms around her waist to keep her anchored to the corner.
“COME HERE!” Yoona screamed as she wildly swung the broken bottle to and fro. “GIVE ME YOUR FACE!”
“You’re a fascinating woman,” Wainright mused. “Your beloved has just had the greatest victory of her career, on the biggest stage in the world, and here you are trying to grab the limelight for yourself. And the most incredible thing is, you don’t even realize how selfish you really are.”
“GO FUCK YOURSELF, GOAT-FUCKER!”
“I am only here to talk, but I am not interested in you,” Miranda said in an amazingly casual tone, although she remained wary should the raging Korean decide to throw the glass shiv at her. “Now you have two choices, Yoona. You can either stay here and we can fight, and regardless of outcome, it will surely mar what was a magnificent performance from Camille. Or you can leave peaceably, let her bask in the adulation and glory that she has earned, and allow me to have a civil conversation with someone I have no intention of harming.”
Yoona was about launch into another vulgar tirade when Cosworth spun her around and locked her into a deep French kiss. At first the Korean seemed surprised and her entire body tensed up, though within a few seconds her thoughts of violence were displaced by thoughts of something much, much sweeter as she indulged in the taste of Camille’s tongue in her mouth. The muscles in her body relaxed and she absentmindedly dropped the broken glass bottle before helping herself to greedy handfuls of her girlfriend’s firm, shapely rump, whipping the FAWNatics into a sex-crazed frenzy.
“Goddamn,” Park muttered when Cosworth finally broke off the kiss. “You wanna just fuck, right here, right now? It’ll be so hot, and totally piss off bitch-face over there too.”
“Hmm, save it for when we’re back home,” Camille whispered with a coquettish smile. “Go to the locker room, and tell them to get an ice bath ready. I’m really going to need it before any more strenuous activity tonight.”
Park eagerly nodded in agreement. Her brain hijacked by lust, Yoona brushed past Miranda with hardly a glance as she stepped out of the ring and made her way to the backstage area.
“Alright, Miranda,” Cosworth said once Park had vacated the area. “What’s the topic of today’s sermon?”
“I’m not here to deliver a sermon, sister,” Wainright replied. “Rather, I bring you a warning.”
Camille raised an eyebrow in bemusement, and gestured for Miranda to continue.
“You are the rarest of creatures, Camille Cosworth -- a pure soul. You and the Church of Eternal Midnight are the same in that regard, for while light and dark might seem diametrically opposed, they are simply two sides of the same coin. That noxious woman you hold dearest to you, however, cannot claim purity. Not of body, not of mind, not of soul, and not of purpose. She is an abomination that slips between light and dark and all the shades of gray in-between depending on what suits her at the moment. Morals, scruples, and creed… these words mean nothing to her. She will discard any principle without a second thought, and it is only a matter of time before she discards you too.”
“You don’t know her like I do. Yoona has been there for me every step of the way, she would never do that to me,” Cosworth replied.
“She is using you, Camille. Just like she used her parents,” Wainright countered.
Camille bristled at that comment, but she did not interrupt.
“She offers you a kind word and a soft touch,” Miranda continued. “She builds you up. She makes you shine brighter than ever before, and then she hides in your light. The chattel will be so blinded by you that they will not see her evil for what it is. It’s already happening. Tomorrow, everyone will talk about Camille Cosworth’s heroic triumph and Yoona Park’s heinous act of torture will be forgotten. Do you see now, sister? The horrors that lurk in the daylight are no less dangerous than those in the dark, only less honest. The woman you share your bed with is every bit as savage and ruthless as the monsters you purport to slay.”
“That's so ridiculous I'm not even going to dignify that with a response,” Camille scoffed. “Since when did you start giving a crap about my well-being anyway?”
“I’ve always been concerned for you, Camille,” Wainright said in a tone that sounded surprisingly frank and sincere. “We want the same things, sister. That idealistic vision of wrestling you held as a child… no one believes in that more fervently than me. Like you, I also dream of a better tomorrow. We only differ to on how to achieve a mutual goal, because I have realized it is folly to build upon a rotten foundation. In order to make a new world, we must first burn the old one.”
“Oh God, here comes the recruitment pitch again,” Cosworth groaned. “Let me guess: you want me to be a horseman of your apocalypse.”
“Light cannot change the world for the better, sister,” Miranda continued, blithely ignoring Camille’s annoyance. “The cretins will look to you as an idol. The indolent and shiftless will be content to live vicariously through you -- they will revel in your achievements and triumphs without ever lifting a finger themselves. Everything you accomplish will only make them more complacent and languid. Others, driven into a fervor by your rhetoric of hope, will try to follow your example, only to find out that hope by itself is not sufficient. You were blessed with wings, but what of those who are not? Will they be just another name on your shirt when they fall to their doom rather than soar?”
“No one is going to fall. Plant your dreams in me, and we will fly together,” Camille answered as she made a grand, sweeping gesture to the audience.
“You don’t yet realize what a burden you’re taking on,” Wainright said with a shake of her head. “So be it, Camille Cosworth. When you see the futility of your ways, however, remember that I believe in your cause more ardently than any other. More than your fans, and certainly more than that silver-tongued succubus you keep at your side. One day the weight will be too heavy, and it will be impossible to --”
Cosworth started chuckling, interrupting Wainright’s speech.
“Is something funny, sister?” Miranda asked blandly.
Instead of answering, Camille’s laughter progressively got louder and louder until it turned into a mad cackle after twenty seconds. Then her fit of giggles stopped just as abruptly as it had began and she looked up at Wainright with huge, black pupils.
“Were you not paying attention, Miranda?” she asked. “I have climbed the Dragon’s Gate. I am the Rose That Grew From Concrete. I am the Paragon of Hope. I am the Girl of Tomorrow.”
Cosworth walked past Miranda to the middle of the ring then turned back to offer some final words prior to departure.
“Fuck the impossible,” she said, drawing a riotous ovation from the fans.
Camille leapt on to the top rope, then used the steel cable to springboard into a spectacular twisting somersault that put her on the other side of the audience barrier where she was swallowed up by a crowd of jubilant FAWNatics.