Post by Charlotte Shimizu on Mar 31, 2024 23:42:20 GMT
Charlie’s phone chirped with an incoming call. She quickly paused the playback she was watching and stepped away from the makeshift office and into one of the bedrooms of the ‘penthouse’ suite in the Merriweather Resort the Shimizu-Ishikawa-Walker group had gotten for the week they were spending near Sunrise, Florida, ignoring her sister’s protests.
She swiped to answer as she brought the phone up to her ear. “Hey!” she said cheerfully. “Didn’t think I’d hear from ya until High Stakes!”
“Well, I had a minute,” Pax responded. She could hear his slow smile even though the connection. “I’m gonna be busy until then, but I wanted to actually say ‘good luck’. You’re gonna be great, Charlotte. I’m sure of it.”
His words made Charlie’s heart thud against her chest. She liked the way her name sounded when he said it. A traitorous voice in her mind asked how she’d like the sound of her middle name if he said it. She chuckled to cover her embarrassing thought. “Well, good luck yourself, Pax. Kick everyone’s ass.”
“That’s the plan,” he agreed easily with his own laugh. “See ya Sunday.”
Charlie smiled again. “See ya then.” She heard the line disconnect and she sighed at herself, clicking her phone locked. It was sweet of him to want to call instead of texting her, especially given how busy they both were. She shook her head. He was just being friendly, she reminded herself. It didn’t mean anything more than that.
She pocketed her phone and went back into the ‘office’. Hannah was frowning at her. “What?” Charlie demanded, her good mood rapidly vanishing.
“Charlie! Could you have picked a worse time to get yourself a boyfriend?” Hannah almost wailed. “The Iron Maiden is days, almost hours, away now! Do you care more about a guy’s phone call or about this match?!”
As Hannah kept ranting about distractions and how packed their schedule was, Charlie felt a deep rage welling up in her. She looked to the doorway, then grimaced as she remembered that Rini and Nat had gone out earlier and weren’t back yet. Either of them would’ve pulled the siblings apart before the explosion happened…
“That’s ENOUGH, Hannah!”
Too late.
The stunned look on Hannah’s face only made Charlie angrier. “You can be my manager or my little sister but fuck being both at the same time. You wanna tease me that a friend, who happens to be a guy, is calling to wish me luck on Sunday, fine. Imōto prerogative and all that shit… but you do not, in the same fucking breath, get to give me crap about distractions. You wanna know what’s been distracting me more lately? You!”
Some corner of her mind recognized the hurt expression on her little sister’s face, but Charlie was beyond caring at this point.
“You have been constantly nagging me about shit I already know, or that I’m already doing. Your future isn’t on the line here. You will get paid no matter how things go for me. I know how to prep for a match. I know what I need to eat and when. I don’t need a fucking nanny standing over me every waking moment telling me what I should be doing when I already fucking know!”
Charlie seethed, panting for breath as the tension finally drained out of her.
“Call me when you decide if you’re my manager or my sister, because you apparently can’t be both.”
With that parting shot, Charlie scooped up her satchel and left. She cringed inwardly as the door slammed behind her and she started walking. To amuse herself, she placed a bet in her mind. It’d probably be Nat that tracked her down. Rini would probably stay behind to comfort Hannah.
She was wrong.
“Maasu?”
The tentative query jolted her back to her surroundings. She must’ve walked at least a mile down the beach, finding herself camped on a patio of Boccaccino Café and Pizzeria, and there was Rini, sitting across from her. How long had she been sitting there, Charlotte wondered, noting that Rini already had a glass of water.
Charlie looked down at her half-demolished plate of linguine, shrimp, broccoli and tomatoes, and set down the fork she was using to idly push remnants around her plate. “Hey Rini… I thought you’d be comforting Hannah.”
“Are you kidding? I couldn’t get one word of sense out of her,” Rini replied in Japanese. She could understand spoken English well enough, but still struggled with actually speaking it herself. “She kept flipping between ranting about you getting distracted and wondering what she did wrong. Uranusu said she’d handle it. I’m not sure where Tsuki got the idea that you had a boyfriend though…”
Charlie groaned. “I don’t… Unless you count a friend that happens to be a boy as a boyfriend,” she replied, her tone clipped. Unbidden, the memory of meeting Pax in the sauna after Rini’s match floated into her mind and she shook her head, trying to push the image away before she blushed. “He’s like Shiori, just a friend. He called to wish me luck at High Stakes, that’s all.”
Rini regarded Charlie for a long moment. “I imagine he is very much like Shiori,” the smaller girl said, seeming to carefully choose her words as though she were trying to speak English instead of her native Japanese. “Will he send you chocolate on Valentine’s Day too? And will you be giving him chocolate on White Day?”
Charlie felt her face burning brightly from the blush Rini’s questions brought up. She had hoped that Rini hadn’t noticed the silent gifts left in their respective lockers back at Neo-Honshu. “We don’t have White Day here!” she protested, latching on to the one neutral point in the whole topic.
“Why would that stop you, Maasu?” Rini retorted, smiling in that infectious way she always had. Charlie could have resented it at that moment, but it was the same smile that had drawn her to Rini in the first place.
“Because,” Charlie started, then faltered. “Because I don’t want him to be exactly like Shiori…” she finally admitted after a long moment.
Rini’s smile softened slightly, understanding without being told that Shiori’s unspoken reasons had hurt in ways Rini might never truly grasp. “Come, Maasu. Uranusu and I brought back mint chocolate chip ice cream for you and Tsuki to share and make-up.”
Charlie took a moment to fully understand what her friend was saying. “You two… You knew this would happen?!” Rini only laughed. Charlie didn’t know whether to be irritated or grateful to her friends.
The feed opens on a dimly lit room, the only illumination the glow of five monitors along one side, lighting Charlotte’s face in profile as she regards the flickering images. Her expression is one of dispassionate study as she regards the screens, each showing the other women in the Iron Maiden.
“Six women, all at various stages of their careers; from a former champion to some who haven’t been in the business for a full year. Six women with vastly different experiences; some have served as trainers or recruiters while others have only been seen in the squared circle under the glare of the arena lights.”
The angle changes to show Charlotte standing before the left-most screen, which shows highlight clips of April Madrox. Slowly, Charlotte turns to face the camera.
“April… You asked me before what I expected you to do. No. I don’t expect you to turn on your sister. I’m not even on the list of people in all of Imperial, maybe even the world, that would expect or ask you to do that. I know the meaning of family loyalty. How can I not?” Her sardonic smile is almost eerie in the flickering glow.
“What I want you to do is to open your eyes. I want you to really look at what your sister is doing. I want you to think long and hard about whether you agree with what she does, not why she’s doing it. What you decide once you answer that question is entirely on you… but I want you to know that if you agree with her and her methods, then you better stop pretending to be a decent person.”
Charlotte’s expression hardens into a look of contempt mixed with pity. “You couldn’t even say it to my face that you wouldn’t be in this match without me. Tell me, April… Why was that? Was it because Brooklyn was praising you to the skies and you were just lapping up the attention?”
Charlotte scoffs derisively. “Frankly, I feel like if you got the belt, we might as well let Brooklyn have it back. Because that’s what it’d be, wouldn’t it? You’d be such a good little sister and do whatever Brooky says, wouldn’t you? Well fuck that shit. You wanna be her little toady ‘yes-girl’, that’s no skin off my nose, but you ain’t gonna have a belt and do it. God knows you might as well be Brooky’s puppet already, what with you letting her speak for you. When you step out of that Maiden, you better just be you, not Brooklyn’s sister or a cultist, because if you have any other voice in your head, you will lose.”
Charlotte’s wave is almost dismissive, and the screen showing April Madrox dims, showing only April’s headshot. She turns to the next screen and watches the clips of the Techno Tsuchiguomo, Natasha Walker, for a few seconds before turning back to the camera.
“Nat… All I’ll tell you is to keep your head on a swivel, and don’t let your guard down just because it’s me. It’s because I respect you and because you’re my friend that you’ll get the same treatment from me as any other woman in the ring. You wouldn’t want anything less, so don’t give me anything less than your best shot, girl.”
Again, Charlotte waves and Nat’s screen dims as April’s did, and she turns to the middle monitor, staring for several long moments at the clips and highlights of Abigail. Finally Charlotte turns, her expression clearly conflicted or confused.
“Abigail… Girlie… I really don’t know about you. What kind of person willingly signs up to live a false life? I have a lot of questions about you, but I’m not about to go prying into your life outside the ring. Truthfully, it doesn’t matter here… All that matters is that you’re one of the biggest threats to me in this match. You’ve actually reached the summit.” Charlotte gestures over her head, turning her eyes up to her hand with an expression that is equal parts hopeful and determined. “You were the Women’s Champion for 217 days and defended it five times… But that was the past. Three years ago, in fact. A lot happens in that amount of time. I’m not gonna say you’re not still good… but it’s time for something new… and, girlie, you ain’t anythin’ new.”
This time, Charlotte’s dismissing wave is more fluidly included in her turn to the next monitor, showing Mai Everstone. She doesn’t spend more than a second watching the monitor before addressing the camera again.
“Mai… First off, I wanna make it clear that I have nothing but respect for ya. I know you can take the punches as well as give ‘em. I never doubted that. I’m honestly wanting to see you come out of your Maiden, ready to rain down all that angst you got boilin’ under your skin. I dunno what the story is with you and your doppelganger, but like I said with Ole Abby and Baby Madrox, it don’t matter. Ya can’t bring it into the ring with ya, and if ya do? You’ve lost the same as last year; before you’re even out of the Maiden.”
Charlotte pauses, cocking her head thoughtfully to one side with a wry smirk twisting a corner of her mouth up. “Does that thought make you angry? Good. It should. Maybe it’ll keep you from doing what you shouldn’t. I want you at your best, girl, because if you ain’t, then what’s the point of winning over you?”
Charlotte straightens, her expression earnest, almost caring except for the hard glint in her eyes. “Do you think winning the Iron Maiden and the title will make you liked? Accepted? Do you think the title will make all that rejection go away? The fuck it won’t. You grew up in Mormon country. Don’t you know anything about fuckin’ cults? You conform or you’re kicked out. I promise you, the first time you do something that your new friends don’t like, they’ll turn on you, just like any other cult. Oh they’ll say they accept you as you are… But that’s because you’re controllable to them now… Brooky don’t want friends… She wants followers…” Charlotte uses a closed fist to make a nodding gesture. “Little bobble-headed lackeys that are told to jump and ask ‘how high?’... That don’t sound too much like your style… I’m just guessin’, but I don’t think your new friends will like it so much when you start gettin’ the credit you deserve.”
Again, Charlotte’s wave to dim Mai’s monitor is smoothly integrated into her turn to the last monitor. “And Serenity…” she starts without turning, regarding the last flickering screen for a long moment. When Charlotte does turn to face the camera again, her expression is cold as ice and as unyielding as stone.
“Homie… I hate the fact that I got my pin on you after Shea sent you throat-first into the ropes… But Imma tell you somethin’...” Charlotte motions at the screen behind her and it shows a still of Serenity in the ring, taunting Shea while Charlotte and Itami were laid out. “You fucked up that match. I can’t tell you how many times I watched and rewatched it. You hesitated. You decided that the threat wasn’t in the ring. You decided to take precious moments to soak in the crowd and then goad Shea. You wanna know who’s to blame for your loss there?” Charlotte smirks with a derisive snort. “Look in the fuckin’ mirror, Homie. Did I take advantage of that lapse? You bet your 22nd Century ass I did… Just like you would’ve if you’d been in my place, only you wouldn’t have regretted that someone else beat the shit out of me while you were out of it.”
“You wanna make like I’m nothin’ to ya?” Charlotte asks, one hand brushing her shoulder in another dismissive gesture. “Fine, Homie, but that’s your first mistake and the starting bell ain’t even rung yet. Just remember, I am Imperial’s Breakout Star for ‘23. Not you.” Her grin turns almost feral, her teeth gleaming in the dim light. “Don’t it just eat you up that some upstart comin’ home from Japan got an accolade when she only had one clean win? And that same girl pinned ya because you couldn’t keep your head in the match? Just think! You coulda had your first IWF win if you’d just gone for a pin instead of fuckin’ around and findin’ out!”
Charlotte laughs, a mirthless and cold chuckle. “You better get your mind out of that 22nd Century of yours and back to the 21st, Homie, because that’s where you’re fightin’. You and me are gonna have five full minutes of Quality Time before our party gets crashed, so ignore me at your own peril. This match can be won in five minutes. Don’t think I ain’t gonna try. I have every intention of givin’ you the flying lesson of a lifetime, Homie.”
Charlotte waves, the gesture again dismissive, and the monitor dims to show only Serenity’s headshot, but this time the lights in the room come up slightly as well, keeping Charlotte clearly in view as she advances on the camera, eclipsing the monitors and, by proxy, the other women.
“I make a big deal about how I got no damned brakes. You can be damned sure I won’t be installin’ any. But I do need to take a page out of Knight’s book. I gotta be patient and wait for that perfect moment. I’ve seen each of these women fuck up and lose their focus. And you can bet that when it happens, I’m gonna be there to take full advantage of it.”
The lights come up further, backlighting Charlotte as she spreads her arms, revealing that over her outfit is a more shawl-like version of a Japanese haori. Long white feathers are interspersed with shorter red and yellow ones along the lines of her arms, giving her the appearance of a bird spreading its wings.
“No matter the outcome, I leave the Iron Maiden free as the redbird. Will you?”
Charlotte’s hand covers the lens, and the camera turns, catching a glimpse of a red sun just peeking over a watery horizon. The feed cuts in a flash of crimson light.
It is later released in Japanese and Cherokee.
She swiped to answer as she brought the phone up to her ear. “Hey!” she said cheerfully. “Didn’t think I’d hear from ya until High Stakes!”
“Well, I had a minute,” Pax responded. She could hear his slow smile even though the connection. “I’m gonna be busy until then, but I wanted to actually say ‘good luck’. You’re gonna be great, Charlotte. I’m sure of it.”
His words made Charlie’s heart thud against her chest. She liked the way her name sounded when he said it. A traitorous voice in her mind asked how she’d like the sound of her middle name if he said it. She chuckled to cover her embarrassing thought. “Well, good luck yourself, Pax. Kick everyone’s ass.”
“That’s the plan,” he agreed easily with his own laugh. “See ya Sunday.”
Charlie smiled again. “See ya then.” She heard the line disconnect and she sighed at herself, clicking her phone locked. It was sweet of him to want to call instead of texting her, especially given how busy they both were. She shook her head. He was just being friendly, she reminded herself. It didn’t mean anything more than that.
She pocketed her phone and went back into the ‘office’. Hannah was frowning at her. “What?” Charlie demanded, her good mood rapidly vanishing.
“Charlie! Could you have picked a worse time to get yourself a boyfriend?” Hannah almost wailed. “The Iron Maiden is days, almost hours, away now! Do you care more about a guy’s phone call or about this match?!”
As Hannah kept ranting about distractions and how packed their schedule was, Charlie felt a deep rage welling up in her. She looked to the doorway, then grimaced as she remembered that Rini and Nat had gone out earlier and weren’t back yet. Either of them would’ve pulled the siblings apart before the explosion happened…
“That’s ENOUGH, Hannah!”
Too late.
The stunned look on Hannah’s face only made Charlie angrier. “You can be my manager or my little sister but fuck being both at the same time. You wanna tease me that a friend, who happens to be a guy, is calling to wish me luck on Sunday, fine. Imōto prerogative and all that shit… but you do not, in the same fucking breath, get to give me crap about distractions. You wanna know what’s been distracting me more lately? You!”
Some corner of her mind recognized the hurt expression on her little sister’s face, but Charlie was beyond caring at this point.
“You have been constantly nagging me about shit I already know, or that I’m already doing. Your future isn’t on the line here. You will get paid no matter how things go for me. I know how to prep for a match. I know what I need to eat and when. I don’t need a fucking nanny standing over me every waking moment telling me what I should be doing when I already fucking know!”
Charlie seethed, panting for breath as the tension finally drained out of her.
“Call me when you decide if you’re my manager or my sister, because you apparently can’t be both.”
With that parting shot, Charlie scooped up her satchel and left. She cringed inwardly as the door slammed behind her and she started walking. To amuse herself, she placed a bet in her mind. It’d probably be Nat that tracked her down. Rini would probably stay behind to comfort Hannah.
She was wrong.
“Maasu?”
The tentative query jolted her back to her surroundings. She must’ve walked at least a mile down the beach, finding herself camped on a patio of Boccaccino Café and Pizzeria, and there was Rini, sitting across from her. How long had she been sitting there, Charlotte wondered, noting that Rini already had a glass of water.
Charlie looked down at her half-demolished plate of linguine, shrimp, broccoli and tomatoes, and set down the fork she was using to idly push remnants around her plate. “Hey Rini… I thought you’d be comforting Hannah.”
“Are you kidding? I couldn’t get one word of sense out of her,” Rini replied in Japanese. She could understand spoken English well enough, but still struggled with actually speaking it herself. “She kept flipping between ranting about you getting distracted and wondering what she did wrong. Uranusu said she’d handle it. I’m not sure where Tsuki got the idea that you had a boyfriend though…”
Charlie groaned. “I don’t… Unless you count a friend that happens to be a boy as a boyfriend,” she replied, her tone clipped. Unbidden, the memory of meeting Pax in the sauna after Rini’s match floated into her mind and she shook her head, trying to push the image away before she blushed. “He’s like Shiori, just a friend. He called to wish me luck at High Stakes, that’s all.”
Rini regarded Charlie for a long moment. “I imagine he is very much like Shiori,” the smaller girl said, seeming to carefully choose her words as though she were trying to speak English instead of her native Japanese. “Will he send you chocolate on Valentine’s Day too? And will you be giving him chocolate on White Day?”
Charlie felt her face burning brightly from the blush Rini’s questions brought up. She had hoped that Rini hadn’t noticed the silent gifts left in their respective lockers back at Neo-Honshu. “We don’t have White Day here!” she protested, latching on to the one neutral point in the whole topic.
“Why would that stop you, Maasu?” Rini retorted, smiling in that infectious way she always had. Charlie could have resented it at that moment, but it was the same smile that had drawn her to Rini in the first place.
“Because,” Charlie started, then faltered. “Because I don’t want him to be exactly like Shiori…” she finally admitted after a long moment.
Rini’s smile softened slightly, understanding without being told that Shiori’s unspoken reasons had hurt in ways Rini might never truly grasp. “Come, Maasu. Uranusu and I brought back mint chocolate chip ice cream for you and Tsuki to share and make-up.”
Charlie took a moment to fully understand what her friend was saying. “You two… You knew this would happen?!” Rini only laughed. Charlie didn’t know whether to be irritated or grateful to her friends.
The feed opens on a dimly lit room, the only illumination the glow of five monitors along one side, lighting Charlotte’s face in profile as she regards the flickering images. Her expression is one of dispassionate study as she regards the screens, each showing the other women in the Iron Maiden.
“Six women, all at various stages of their careers; from a former champion to some who haven’t been in the business for a full year. Six women with vastly different experiences; some have served as trainers or recruiters while others have only been seen in the squared circle under the glare of the arena lights.”
The angle changes to show Charlotte standing before the left-most screen, which shows highlight clips of April Madrox. Slowly, Charlotte turns to face the camera.
“April… You asked me before what I expected you to do. No. I don’t expect you to turn on your sister. I’m not even on the list of people in all of Imperial, maybe even the world, that would expect or ask you to do that. I know the meaning of family loyalty. How can I not?” Her sardonic smile is almost eerie in the flickering glow.
“What I want you to do is to open your eyes. I want you to really look at what your sister is doing. I want you to think long and hard about whether you agree with what she does, not why she’s doing it. What you decide once you answer that question is entirely on you… but I want you to know that if you agree with her and her methods, then you better stop pretending to be a decent person.”
Charlotte’s expression hardens into a look of contempt mixed with pity. “You couldn’t even say it to my face that you wouldn’t be in this match without me. Tell me, April… Why was that? Was it because Brooklyn was praising you to the skies and you were just lapping up the attention?”
Charlotte scoffs derisively. “Frankly, I feel like if you got the belt, we might as well let Brooklyn have it back. Because that’s what it’d be, wouldn’t it? You’d be such a good little sister and do whatever Brooky says, wouldn’t you? Well fuck that shit. You wanna be her little toady ‘yes-girl’, that’s no skin off my nose, but you ain’t gonna have a belt and do it. God knows you might as well be Brooky’s puppet already, what with you letting her speak for you. When you step out of that Maiden, you better just be you, not Brooklyn’s sister or a cultist, because if you have any other voice in your head, you will lose.”
Charlotte’s wave is almost dismissive, and the screen showing April Madrox dims, showing only April’s headshot. She turns to the next screen and watches the clips of the Techno Tsuchiguomo, Natasha Walker, for a few seconds before turning back to the camera.
“Nat… All I’ll tell you is to keep your head on a swivel, and don’t let your guard down just because it’s me. It’s because I respect you and because you’re my friend that you’ll get the same treatment from me as any other woman in the ring. You wouldn’t want anything less, so don’t give me anything less than your best shot, girl.”
Again, Charlotte waves and Nat’s screen dims as April’s did, and she turns to the middle monitor, staring for several long moments at the clips and highlights of Abigail. Finally Charlotte turns, her expression clearly conflicted or confused.
“Abigail… Girlie… I really don’t know about you. What kind of person willingly signs up to live a false life? I have a lot of questions about you, but I’m not about to go prying into your life outside the ring. Truthfully, it doesn’t matter here… All that matters is that you’re one of the biggest threats to me in this match. You’ve actually reached the summit.” Charlotte gestures over her head, turning her eyes up to her hand with an expression that is equal parts hopeful and determined. “You were the Women’s Champion for 217 days and defended it five times… But that was the past. Three years ago, in fact. A lot happens in that amount of time. I’m not gonna say you’re not still good… but it’s time for something new… and, girlie, you ain’t anythin’ new.”
This time, Charlotte’s dismissing wave is more fluidly included in her turn to the next monitor, showing Mai Everstone. She doesn’t spend more than a second watching the monitor before addressing the camera again.
“Mai… First off, I wanna make it clear that I have nothing but respect for ya. I know you can take the punches as well as give ‘em. I never doubted that. I’m honestly wanting to see you come out of your Maiden, ready to rain down all that angst you got boilin’ under your skin. I dunno what the story is with you and your doppelganger, but like I said with Ole Abby and Baby Madrox, it don’t matter. Ya can’t bring it into the ring with ya, and if ya do? You’ve lost the same as last year; before you’re even out of the Maiden.”
Charlotte pauses, cocking her head thoughtfully to one side with a wry smirk twisting a corner of her mouth up. “Does that thought make you angry? Good. It should. Maybe it’ll keep you from doing what you shouldn’t. I want you at your best, girl, because if you ain’t, then what’s the point of winning over you?”
Charlotte straightens, her expression earnest, almost caring except for the hard glint in her eyes. “Do you think winning the Iron Maiden and the title will make you liked? Accepted? Do you think the title will make all that rejection go away? The fuck it won’t. You grew up in Mormon country. Don’t you know anything about fuckin’ cults? You conform or you’re kicked out. I promise you, the first time you do something that your new friends don’t like, they’ll turn on you, just like any other cult. Oh they’ll say they accept you as you are… But that’s because you’re controllable to them now… Brooky don’t want friends… She wants followers…” Charlotte uses a closed fist to make a nodding gesture. “Little bobble-headed lackeys that are told to jump and ask ‘how high?’... That don’t sound too much like your style… I’m just guessin’, but I don’t think your new friends will like it so much when you start gettin’ the credit you deserve.”
Again, Charlotte’s wave to dim Mai’s monitor is smoothly integrated into her turn to the last monitor. “And Serenity…” she starts without turning, regarding the last flickering screen for a long moment. When Charlotte does turn to face the camera again, her expression is cold as ice and as unyielding as stone.
“Homie… I hate the fact that I got my pin on you after Shea sent you throat-first into the ropes… But Imma tell you somethin’...” Charlotte motions at the screen behind her and it shows a still of Serenity in the ring, taunting Shea while Charlotte and Itami were laid out. “You fucked up that match. I can’t tell you how many times I watched and rewatched it. You hesitated. You decided that the threat wasn’t in the ring. You decided to take precious moments to soak in the crowd and then goad Shea. You wanna know who’s to blame for your loss there?” Charlotte smirks with a derisive snort. “Look in the fuckin’ mirror, Homie. Did I take advantage of that lapse? You bet your 22nd Century ass I did… Just like you would’ve if you’d been in my place, only you wouldn’t have regretted that someone else beat the shit out of me while you were out of it.”
“You wanna make like I’m nothin’ to ya?” Charlotte asks, one hand brushing her shoulder in another dismissive gesture. “Fine, Homie, but that’s your first mistake and the starting bell ain’t even rung yet. Just remember, I am Imperial’s Breakout Star for ‘23. Not you.” Her grin turns almost feral, her teeth gleaming in the dim light. “Don’t it just eat you up that some upstart comin’ home from Japan got an accolade when she only had one clean win? And that same girl pinned ya because you couldn’t keep your head in the match? Just think! You coulda had your first IWF win if you’d just gone for a pin instead of fuckin’ around and findin’ out!”
Charlotte laughs, a mirthless and cold chuckle. “You better get your mind out of that 22nd Century of yours and back to the 21st, Homie, because that’s where you’re fightin’. You and me are gonna have five full minutes of Quality Time before our party gets crashed, so ignore me at your own peril. This match can be won in five minutes. Don’t think I ain’t gonna try. I have every intention of givin’ you the flying lesson of a lifetime, Homie.”
Charlotte waves, the gesture again dismissive, and the monitor dims to show only Serenity’s headshot, but this time the lights in the room come up slightly as well, keeping Charlotte clearly in view as she advances on the camera, eclipsing the monitors and, by proxy, the other women.
“I make a big deal about how I got no damned brakes. You can be damned sure I won’t be installin’ any. But I do need to take a page out of Knight’s book. I gotta be patient and wait for that perfect moment. I’ve seen each of these women fuck up and lose their focus. And you can bet that when it happens, I’m gonna be there to take full advantage of it.”
The lights come up further, backlighting Charlotte as she spreads her arms, revealing that over her outfit is a more shawl-like version of a Japanese haori. Long white feathers are interspersed with shorter red and yellow ones along the lines of her arms, giving her the appearance of a bird spreading its wings.
“No matter the outcome, I leave the Iron Maiden free as the redbird. Will you?”
Charlotte’s hand covers the lens, and the camera turns, catching a glimpse of a red sun just peeking over a watery horizon. The feed cuts in a flash of crimson light.
It is later released in Japanese and Cherokee.
Well howdy there pardner.