Epilogue 4: Wrestle Gleamia. |
“What a night, Lorraine! It looks like Mitsuko’s on her last leg!”
The commentators leaned forward in their seats. Overlooking the massive wrestling cage, the lodge was barded with screens but their eyes were fixed on the cage below where a battle was raging. Dressed in a pink sailor uniform, a defiant Mistuko unleashed a series of punches into the forearms of a muscular black woman in a yellow, knightly apparel. The flurry of attacks ended in a perfect roundhouse kick that caught the defender in the jaw, sending her reeling against the railings with a loud enough bang that it was heard over the screaming crowd. She dramatically wiped blood from the corner of her mask-covered mouth.
“I wouldn’t be so sure, Zhang. What a combo! Grook is in the ropes! Mitsuko’s attacking!”
With a cry of rage, the noticeably smaller wrestler charged on with a flying kick, but alas. A massive hand grabbed both feet at once and now Grook was spinning in the middle of the cage, centrifugal forces turning poor Mitsuko into a yelling weight whose trajectory might just reach low orbit.
“It’s the rocket launch!” Lorrain screamed.
“Everyone duck!”
But the launch didn’t happen. Instead, an athletic blonde woman in a blue outfit barreled in Grook’s back, making both others fall. Mitsuko immediately recovered and jumped on Grook’s bad, soon joined by her savior.
“Ooooh last minute save by Petra to protect her friend!” Zhang screamed.
“Is this even allowed?” Lorraine asked.
But nobody cared. In a shocking reversal, Grook’s hands lashed out like snakes, blindly finding the necks of her attackers. The sudden maneuver caught her opponents off guard. Soon they were dangling from the black wrestler’s steel arms like two floundering fish.
But Grook’s victory was short-lived.
“It’s Yunhae with the steel chair!”
“Oooooh!”
The titan was down again, and this time an entire roster of wrestlers jumped on the muscle mass from the ropes, adding their weight to the chains of flesh keeping the champion down. The mountain shivered.
“It’s a rebellion!” Zhang bellowed.
“Looks like the tyrant might fall today!” Lorraine added.
“Ooooh this isn’t a good idea. They know better than to tickle the beast. It’s a race for time now!”
“Are we going to witness another troll event?”
“God I hope not!” Zhang lied. “We’ll have to rebuild the cage again!”
“Grook!” the crowd chanted. “Grook! Grook!”
And in the mess of vocal chords and deafening acoustics, the invocation turned into a guttural cry from the dawn of time, a primal call for the forces of nature itself, from back when the gods still lived in the stars and the fire and the glinting eyes of nightly predators. It came from the throat, and it returned the spectators to the simplest, basest of desires.
The desire for violence.
The mountain stopped moving. On top of it, the latest wrestlers exchanged confused and hopeful looks. And then, the mountain roared. The growl was so deep it couldn’t have come from any throat native to this planet. An avatar of stone erupted from the mass of wrestlers with the unbound might of the volcano, and just as unstoppable. With wrestlers in both fists and a mouth like the maw of a cave, the creature howled with a power that transcended sound to become seismic. The glass of the lodge shook in its reinforced casing. Before the commentators could recover, the stone giant morphed into a hurricane of fists and flying wrestling ladies dramatically pirouetting through the air.
“Troll event! Troll event!”
“Holy shit, run!”
Protective barriers surged before the ecstatic baselines. Gleams and augs whooped as they received flying wrestlers only to see them charge right back into the melee in a smooth dance that merged choreographed chaos and technical prowess. Very few people could read stone troll expressions, and yet, in the VIP lodge, one could. Sorai leaned back into her seat with her heart content, because what she saw on her daughter’s face was pure, undiluted happiness.