Sam dashed through the concourse, pushing through audience members as he made his way to the gate they trickled in and out of.
“Where’s your wristband?” a burly man in a suit and mirrored sunglasses asked, stiff-arming him to stop him in his tracks as he reached the gate.
“I’m the girl’s corner man,” Sam said. “She sent me out for a chair.”
The man scratched his head a bit, taking stock of the situation.
“Alright, I’ve seen weirder,” he said. “Take one of the empty ones at the end of the back row, they’re unsold.”
Sam nodded his thanks and clambered up the stairs as fast as he could. In the ring, he saw Ava and Wolf in a collar-and-elbow tieup that she transitioned to a headlock rest hold.
Good, she’s stalling, he thought to himself as he reversed his direction and ran up another flight of stairs, to the back row of the stadium seating. When he turned around, Wolf was punching his way out of the headlock and sending them both back to a neutral position.
Sam knew he didn’t have much time left. He grabbed a steel chair from the end of the nosebleed row, folded it up, and ran down the steps, drifting a quick turn to run back through the concourse gate.
“Thanks,” he said to the guard as he ran past and hopped over the gate, nearly knocking over a middle-aged man in an Armani suit; the guard gave a slight wave in return.
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Ava stood about a foot away from Wolf in the ring, staring him down, and threw a punch; it staggered him. She got into another collar-and-elbow tieup, and Irish whipped him into the corner of the ring.
In the corner of her eye, she saw Sam come running out of the entrance bearing a folded-up steel chair. She played to the crowd, imitating Wolf’s finger-wag, to stall for time; if the fight was under the rules of pro wrestling, she knew Wolf wouldn’t be able to do anything until the spot she was doing was over.
As she started to advance on Wolf, Sam ran up to the edge of the ring, waving the chair at the crowd; they roared with excitement as he tossed it through the ropes to Ava.
“Perfect,” she muttered, catching it with a slight stagger. “You know, I’m not a big wrestling person. I know, like, just barely enough to give that Hogan ripoff promo I gave before you ran up,” she said, raising her voice a little so that Wolf could hear her.
“Huh, you’re doing pretty well at it,” Wolf said.
“Maybe. But, you know what one thing I always did like about wrestling is?” Ava asked, readying the chair. “When they get the chairs out, people get hit for real, and they bleed.”
She swung the chair, connecting the flat side with the side of Wolf’s head at full force and sending him reeling, spitting blood through the ropes. He grabbed onto the middle rope with both arms for dear life, trying to absorb the force; Ava hit him in the head with the chair again, cutting his forehead open and sending blood running down his face. The crowd gasped and hollered; Ava was winning them over.
Another hit to the jaw loosened his grip on the ropes, and sent two of his teeth flying into the air.
“And now, time for my finisher,” Ava said, tossing the chair behind her and hoisting Wolf up to the top turnbuckle.
“Please don’t do this,” Wolf said, fairly sure of what she was about to do.
“Don’t worry, you’re not gonna die,” Ava said, mockingly. “Just probably get some brain damage. Nothing new for a pro wrestler.” She stood him up facing the other corner of the ring and then climbed up herself, wrapped her arm around his neck, and fell backwards, executing a perfect top-rope DDT that smashed Wolf’s head directly into the seat of the chair, leaving a giant dent in it as he flopped onto his back. The hoax Hogan twitched a bit, but was seemingly unconscious; Ava knelt down and checked for a pulse in his wrist, and found one, indicating that she hadn’t killed him. The ring ropes dissipated, and the announcer’s clothes returned to normal; she dashed over to Ava and lifted Ava’s arm into the air.
“And our winner for this match is… Ava Hidalgo, representing Lockheed Martin!” the announcer roared into the microphone. The crowd roared. Ava pulled her arm free of the announcer’s grasp and knelt down.
“Hey, if you can hear me,” she said to the unconscious man, “that was fun as hell. No hard feelings, and I hope we get another round in the future.”
Ava wasn’t sure, but she thought she saw Wolf crack a little bit of a smile as she got up.
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The rest of the day’s fights went by, whittling the competitors down to sixteen, as the two subteams, Ava with Sam and Luke with Scott, rested in their suites.
Sam and Scott didn’t need the rest, quite so much, but Ava and Luke definitely did; Luke was out like a light (and still missing a rib, which Scott had set on the nightstand for Luke when he got up); Ava, meanwhile, was laying in a bathtub full of ice, groaning loudly in pain.
“You alright in there?” Sam asked from the main “living room” of the suite.
“Yeah,” Ava called back. “Just hurts like a motherfucker.”
“Want me to get Scott?” Sam asked.
“Nah, I don’t think it’s that bad, just bruised like hell,” Ava called out.
“You’ve been in that tub groaning for four hours,” Sam called back, leaving the suite. “I’m gonna go get Scott. I need to use their bathroom, anyways.”
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Ava let out another loud groan that was half pain and half annoyance. In a few moments, Sam was back with Scott, and one of them (Ava couldn’t tell which one) knocked on the bathroom door.
“Hold on, let me get my clothes back on,” she said, slowly emerging from the ice as every part of her body throbbed. It had helped, but certainly not enough to make her comfortable. She threw her underwear, sports bra, shirt and pants on as quickly as she could muster, and opened the door.
“Whoa,” Scott said.
“What?” Ava asked.
“You, uh… you looked in a mirror lately?” he asked.
“Let me guess, I’m covered in bruises,” Ava said.
“That’s understating it. Jesus, Ava,” Scott said. “It’s like you’ve turned into one giant bruise. Lift your shirt up for me, please?”
Ava rolled her eyes and lifted her shirt, her arms creaking as she lowered and raised them, and the shirt making her skin feel like it was on fire when it bunched up; it made her wince.
“Sorry,” Scott said, placing his hands on the sides of her abdomen. Suddenly, the purple and black all over her body changed to Ava’s usual tan, and she started to relax.
“Jesus, I keep forgetting you have like, magical Jesus hands,” Ava said. “Yeah, that feels a lot better.” She stretched her arms a bit, still feeling a slight creak in her shoulder.
“So, you’re good, we’re good, Luke’s… asleep but mostly good,” Sam said. “What do we do now?” Ava shrugged.
“I could use some grub,” Scott said.
“A cold beer and a burger sounds nice,” Ava concurred. “And I wanna see if they’ve got merch of me or Luke yet.”
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The concourse was packed as the three teens exited the elevator. Audience members milled back and forth, discussing the matches that had taken place in the first round amongst themselves; when some of them recognized Ava, she was quickly mobbed.
Well, fuck me, I have fans now, I guess, she thought to herself. She ignored all of their questions and comments, and growled at the scattered romantic proposals she received, as she quickened her pace and tried to make a quick call on where to get her beer and burger from; she plotted out a path in her head to the food-court-style Whataburger stall and then to one of the beer stands that was selling sixty-four-ounce boot-shaped glasses of Stella Artois.
“Whataburger sound good to y’all two?” Ava asked the two boys. They shrugged. “Either of you want a beer boot, or just me?” They both nodded. She took off running through the crowd, outright tossing people out of her way when necessary; they saw her place an order at the Whataburger stall, take the bag of food, and begin tossing people out of the crowd again as she made her way to the beer stand.
“A little help here?” she called out, having only one hand free, and the two boys made their way, more peacefully, over to the beer stand. “Give us three of the Stella boots,” she said to the bored twenty-something working the stall.
“That’ll be a hundred and fifty bucks,” the employee said.
“I’m a competitor and they’re corner men, charge it to Mr. Johnson’s account,” Ava said, a little indignant. The employee rolled his eyes, tapped some buttons on the point-of-sale computer, and filled three gigantic glass boots to the top with beer, handing them to the teens one by one as they departed the stand.
One of the merchandise tables was nearby, and, much to Ava’s disappointment, there didn’t initially seem to be any official merchandise of her or Luke yet. Clearly they had been underdogs, or at least assumed to not be crowd favorites, and the tournament committee simply hadn’t thought to make anything… except for one shirt that Ava found hanging all the way at the very top right of the stall that hadn’t been there when they came in, featuring a cartoon drawing of Ava in a fighting pose and the text “BOXING QUEEN” emblazoned across the chest.
Ava’s ego demanded that she buy it, and she pointed to the top right and looked meaningfully at the employee.
“Gimme the one with me on it,” she said. “Adult small.”
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“God, I’m glad that’s done with,” Ava said as Scott opened the door. She lumbered over to the couch and set her beer boot, which she’d already taken several generous sips from, down on the coffee table, along with the bag that contained three triple-patty Sweet and Spicy Bacon Burger meals. The other two followed, setting their own beer boots down.
“You know, I wonder what they do on the live feed channel when the tourney’s not on,” Ava mused, picking up the remote. She flipped the TV on, and sadly, it just showed a test pattern; she flipped through channels as the other two dug into their hamburgers and onion rings, looking for something to watch, and eventually settled on HBO, which was showing John Wick: Chapter Two.
As Keanu Reeves dashed through an Italian villa firing guns, Ava took another large gulp of her beer boot and started to dig into her own massive hamburger.
“So, we know anything about who we’re up against tomorrow?” Ava asked. Sam set his hamburger down and went up to look at the standings.
“Luke’s up against Maxim next, just like we all figured,” Sam said. “You’re up against… some guy named Shadow Priest?”
“Oh, god, another edgelord,” Ava groaned, leaning her head back.
“Hey, you never know, this guy might not be that edgy,” Scott said. “Priest thing might be literal.”
“Fuck me, that’s even worse,” Ava groaned louder. “At least the edgelords are fun to kill, I’m gonna have to really take stock of some things if he’s an actual priest.”
“You sure do have the most interesting way of looking at things, sometimes,” Scott said, rolling his eyes slightly. Sam nudged him.
Eventually, the three were very drunk, between the beer boots and the liquor that had been provided to them in the suite’s full-size bar, and John Wick: Chapter Two had been replaced on the television by Mario Kart 64 (after Scott had figured out how to wire his laptop up to the television, and connect three of the PlayStation 5’s four controllers to it). The three teenagers, engrossed in the game, hooted and yelled and stumbled, making an unholy mess of the living room. A rapping knock on the door in the “shave and a haircut, two bricks” cadence indicated that someone was there; Ava staggered drunkenly to the door and opened it, expecting Luke, but instead found Mr. Johnson, their benefactor.
“Is everything alright?” he asked.
“Just celebrating our victory,” Ava said. “Wanna join in?” Mr. Johnson waved her off.
“No, I’m sorry,” he said. “It’d be a little… unbecoming of me to drink with teenagers.”
“Well, you’re the one buying the booze,” she slurred. “So, hey, in for a penny, right?”
“I don’t mean that in the legality sense, just… I don’t mean any offense, but it’s kind of awkward,” Mr. Johnson said, proving his point in his tone of voice. “At my age, I’d feel less like a friend and more like a sitter. There was something I had been meaning to tell you and Luke, but I think I’d prefer to wait until you’re sober, as you’re going to want to remember it.”
With that, Mr. Johnson sauntered off back into the elevator; Ava closed the door and returned to the fierce game of Mario Kart, where her Wario had already fallen into last place on DK’s Jungle Parkway against Sam’s Yoshi and Scott’s Luigi.
“What’d the boomer want?” Sam slurred.
“Oh, he said some weird shit about how he had something to tell me and Luke,” Ava slurred back. “You fuckers didn’t pause!?”
“Hey, you snooze, you lose,” Scott said.
“Alright, fuck it, I’m getting crossfaded,” she said, pulling a prerolled joint out of the dispensary shopping bag from the ship, fumbling it into her mouth, and lighting it. “Let’s see how you two handle me at 120% power.”
Sam and Scott had just blown right past it, but part of Ava really was wondering what the hell Mr. Johnson was on about. If he needed to wait until she was sober, it had to be important, but it clearly wasn’t so urgent that he couldn’t wait until tomorrow. A tiny voice in the back of Ava’s mind was telling her that maybe she was going to find out what bullshit she could defeat Maxim with.