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N.E.W. Match: Ladder Ascension Match (Part 2)

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Starring

Xuan Ying

Mina Anderson

Mina Anderson

Climb the Ladder, claim the wings and the victory. Sounds so simple. But you have to get the ladder, fold it up, slide it in the ring, unfold it, set it. If you can keep someone down for 3 minutes instead of the seconds, then maybe. There is gave up precious time and opportunity to prepare the ring. The bag of thumb tacks nestled in the corner are there to protect the ladder at the last, but you ignore them, too captivated by the soft, heavenly embrace above. You can hardly be blamed. After all when you look down into the whites of my rolled eyed and my draped, drooling tongue. I must have looked like a ghostly figure. The nervous murmur only made worse by all those misfiring nerves and spasming kicks, clacking into the rail. That errant arm calms all the souls in the Hammersmith but one.. The woman that towered over me and planted a foot down on my gloved hand with a spiteful twist. As if a violent gesture could quell hope were sheer carnage had failed? My eye focus and a flutter of pain passes over my face as you applied that pressure. Enough to fan out my fingers, then try a lazy, semi conscious groan. As if were about to plead for just 5 more minutes. My nostrils still flared and my embossed chest still lifted and fell, but surely, I'll still be here long after you've rose above all this?

Your right there on the cusp of a match that will be noticed much more for the spectacle I leant you, than the notoriety of the win. And how did you repay me? With a patronising smile that I can almost see take shape in the blinding lights beaming down on me. That's an uncomfortable thought. There's more discomort on the base on my back where something blockly pressing into skin and lifting my hips barely at inch... The Tazer! I roll onto my side and slap the hand on you stood on down on the mats. Not out frustration you showed earlier. No.. I want that ripple of pain through my wrist and forearm to stir my mind. To take my attention from the kettle drum banging at the back of my head and the sticky wet liquid I can feel creep down the back of my neck. I'm on all fours, but holding my head high as I shuffle toward the apron, still out of sight to you. RIght now I could be stood beside you and you may not be able to take your gaze away from those prized plumes..

Xuan Ying

I open the ladder in the center of the ring, its silver legs spreading across the canvas until they lock into place with a hard metallic snap. Above me, heaven waits. The great white wings sway gently beneath the lights, impossibly soft against all the steel and ruin we have scattered beneath them. Feathers drifting in artificial wind. A little piece of divinity suspended over a battlefield. For the first time, they look close enough to touch. The crowd realizes it with me. Noise rolls through the Hammerstein like a storm changing direction, cheers colliding with screams, hope wrestling panic somewhere high above the ring. Among them I can see your disciples. Pink wigs glowing beneath the lights. Plastic wings strapped faithfully across their shoulders. Little earthbound angels rising from their seats, shouting themselves hoarse as they beg me not to climb. Stop. Turn around. Give her one more miracle. I almost smile. They still believe you have one left. My hand closes around the first cold rung. I glance toward the wreckage beyond the ropes where I left you and allow myself one dangerous certainty, you aren't getting up. Then I climb. One foot. Then another. Metal groans softly beneath my weight as the canvas seems to fall away one rung at a time. It should be easy. Such a small distance between earth and heaven. But you have made certain I carry you with me. Every bruise becomes another invisible hand pulling downward. The ache behind my eye pulses with my heartbeat. My shoulders protest beneath the memory of steel. Fatigue has poured itself into my limbs like wet cement, making each upward step feel farther apart than the last. Still, I climb. Because I have climbed from deeper places than this.

The wings drift above me, serene and untouched, while beneath them the ring lies wounded, one rope hanging broken and ladders scattered like fallen monuments. Somewhere beyond those ropes lies the angel who promised she could send me back into the ashes. Perhaps that is why the ascent feels strangely familiar. My fingers curl around the next rung. My boot rises again. The crowd becomes something distant beneath me, thousands of voices dissolving into one enormous heartbeat as I force myself higher. Toward the feathers. Toward victory. Toward the little piece of heaven the phoenix intends to steal.

Mina Anderson

I'm still down, on all fours with a feline arch creeping into my spine as I stretch out and try to tease some of the throbbing, hammer like pain out of my shoulder blade. If you hand climbed the other side of the ladder, you'd be facing the big screen. You'd see little pink dove testing her wings and finding them ruffled, damaged but unbroken. But your not and you only have eyes for one thing, so close yet further away with each step. That rumble of noise isn't what's pulling you back, nono, it's simple fatigue. It's the crocked boards under the canvas creaking and shifting and making that ladder feel so treacherous under your feet. A week ago I offered you this poisoned chalice and you took it both hands. Now the win spins just out of reach in a match that is so difficult to win and so very easy to lose. You rise over the noise but it was never for you. A thousand little angels scream on uneven chorus and that energy washes over me, through me. A gloved hand and manicured pink fingers cluth the apron and pull, lifting me up onto my knees. There's strength enough in my legs to push through the weary burn in my calves and rise. I need only haul myself in and roll and I'm so close. Another push. Perhaps you hear the grunt of exertion it takes for me to push on a bent knee, stumble forward and fall, arms flailing out and catching the legs of the ladder. You feel one of those feathers, light smooth and impossible soft tease across your finger tip before you base shakes, sways and lurches to the side. It falls slowly, like a felled redwood with you perched in its canopy. You see the whole of Hammersmith tilt and rush around you til the ladder meets a top rope, bend and buckles and flings you toward the ground near the commentary table!

Xuan Ying

The feathers find me first. Soft white down whispers across the tips of my fingers, so impossibly gentle after everything required to reach them. Victory is no longer something hanging somewhere above me. I can feel it. One more half-step. A few miserable inches between the phoenix and heaven. The Hammerstein seems to understand. The crowd erupts into frantic chaos as I force myself higher, stretching until my shoulder burns, fingertips searching through those drifting feathers for something solid enough to claim. Then heaven moves. Not the wings. Me. The ladder trembles beneath my boots. My stomach drops before the rest of me understands why. Instinct tears both hands away from the prize and sends them clamping around the ladder instead. The beautiful white feathers retreat from my fingertips while the aluminum beneath me begins to sway with increasingly violent little shudders. I look down. White gloves. Tanned fingers exposed through them, curled stubbornly around the ladder. You. Of course. You are beneath me again, somehow resurrected from yet another grave I had been foolish enough to believe would hold you, throwing every stubborn ounce of yourself against the ladder. “No! Biao zi!” The curse escapes before dignity can catch it. There is no poetry in it. No carefully measured composure. Only genuine surprise sharpened instantly into frustration, not merely because you have returned, but because some unforgivably optimistic part of me had actually believed you wouldn't. I should know better by now.

The ladder passes the point where balance can save me. For one strange instant, everything slows. The wings remain suspended exactly where they were, swaying innocently above the ring while I fall away from them. My fingers abandon the rungs. My boots lose their kingdom. Gravity reaches up from below like an old debt finally collecting what it is owed. The height carries me clean over the top rope. Then I am falling. Ring. Lights. Crowd. Ceiling. Everything trades places in a violent blur before the thin ringside padding rushes to greet me. I hit hard, the impact bursting through my body and stealing whatever breath the fall had spared. Momentum refuses to leave the matter there. I tumble across the floor until the bottom of the announce table catches me with an abrupt, unforgiving finality. THUD. My body stops. The pain does not. A low groan crawls reluctantly from my throat as I lie among the wreckage, staring through strands of dark hair toward the ring. Above me, the ladder completes our strange synchronized fall without me. It crashes sideways against the top rope, bounces once, then again, metal rattling against cable before finally settling into an awkward repose. And beyond it, those beautiful white wings continue their gentle rotation. Untouched. Unclaimed. Waiting. My eyes close for half a second as frustration burns hotter than the pain spreading through my back. Half a step. You had stolen heaven’s gates from me by half a step.

Mina Anderson

My cheeks billow with relief as I crane my neck and stare up at those wings. Uncomfortable as hell in ever photoshoot I've worn then in but still mine. They remain, pivoting in complete oblivion to the carnage they've inspired. They were so close vice of fire and there they are, answering with... a shrug? Not even that. I watched you fall all the way toward my sacrifical alter, still waiting expectantly for a sacrifice. Who would I be to deny it? So with a deep energising breath I clamber forwards on heavy, shuffling legs, the tazer still tucked into the back of my shorts. A plan B like no other. I come to the ropes and see you strewn at the foot of the table. Two commentators stood up and well out of the way as they give their appraisal. Superlatives and Hyperbole fly quicker than I fists have but I block out and you.. You have other problems to focus on right now. I drop and roll under the rope and onto my feet, teetering a second while I adjust the straps of my top and flick my hair behind my shoulders. "Get up you ungrateful tramp!". I hiss, bitter more about an errant look than any of the moves you've laid on me. I ensare your hair and use it like a leash. I position myself behind you as I haul your flame licked ass up to your knees and pause to deliver a couple of sharp punches toward you temple to try and keep you dazed and vulnerable so I can heave you on up and roll you onto the table like an offering, not for the gods. No.. It's for all those people in neon pink and cheap plastic!

Xuan Ying

I am trying desperately to blink the fog from my eyes, but pain and confusion have become jealous things, each fighting for whatever space remains inside my skull. The announce table presses against my back, cold and solid, precisely where my fall abandoned me. Somewhere above, the Hammerstein roars. Somewhere farther still, those white wings continue their serene little orbit over the ring, heaven indifferent to whichever one of us has to crawl through hell to reach it. Then something white enters the bottom of my vision. Your boots. Pristine white soles descend through the wounded ropes and touch the ringside floor before me. There should be nothing frightening about them. White is supposed to mean innocence. Purity. Salvation. Yet from where I lie, they look like an omen. The angel has descended. And she has not come bearing mercy. I barely begin lifting my eyes toward you when your fingers disappear into the wild tangle of my hair. They travel through sweat dampened strands until they find enough purchase to close firmly. Then you pull. “Ah…” My scalp burns as you drag me upward, first from the floor and then only as far as my knees, arranging me before you like some stubborn sinner finally brought to the altar. Penance. Perhaps that is what you think I owe you. For your stomach. For your head. For your hand beneath my boot. For daring to reach heaven before its favorite angel.

My knees scrape against the padding as I sway before you, equilibrium still somewhere inside the ring beside the ladder you toppled. I try to summon my hands. Tell them to rise. Tell them to protect me. The message arrives too late. Your fist buries itself into my core. My body folds around it. Another follows. Then another. Each impact steals some small possession from me, breath, balance, thought, until your fists begin climbing their way upward and the distinction between individual blows dissolves into flashes of pressure and light. One catches my face. White spots explode across my vision. My head snaps aside, sweat and saliva scattering onto the black padding beside my knees. I taste something metallic. The crowd surges somewhere beyond the haze, but their voices have become distorted, as though I am hearing thousands of people shouting from beneath deep water. Still you continue your sermon. And I have become a poor congregation of one. When the barrage finally relents, I remain on my knees only because the announce table has caught my back. Without it, I think gravity would simply finish the conversation. My head hangs. My arms dangle uselessly beside me. Through the curtain of hair fallen across my face, I can just make out those immaculate white boots standing before me. How irritating. After everything tonight, somehow they are still white. Your hands find me again. I feel myself being gathered upward, but there is little cooperation left in my limbs. For these few seconds my body belongs more to you than to me, responding to your intentions while ignoring mine.

You roll me backward onto the announce table. The painted wood meets my spine with a coolness almost soothing enough to be mistaken for kindness. Almost. I lie there beneath the arena lights, chest rising unevenly, dark hair spilling across the tabletop while my fingers twitch uselessly at my sides. Move. Nothing. I tell my arm again. Move. A faint curl of my fingers is all I receive. The command exists. The body simply cannot seem to find it through all this fog. And beneath me sits the table you so carefully cleared earlier. Your altar. At the time, I had wondered what sacrifice you intended to place upon it. Now, staring upward through the fractured constellation swimming across my vision, I finally have my answer. Me.

Mina Anderson

"What's she gonna do!?" One of the commentators asks rhetorically as if the answer wasn't glaringly obvious, though the fine details haven't quite fell into place within my own mind, clouded as it is, by fatigue and the bruises slowly rippening across my back and midsection. And two impacts to my head have raised a nasty looking bump and brought a hazy frame to my field of vision. But you are dead centre within it, prone and struggle just to breathe, to move. Every move in this contest has been intended to devastate and I'm fine with that. But that sympathetic smile you offered, as if I were already dead and buried. That's an insult that will not go unpunushed! "Nothing good pal... Nothing good!". I lift my gaze to the commentators and the sea of faces behind them all waiting so expectantly. Every risk I've taken so far has been punished and that twitch of your hand is enough to raise alarms somewhere in the back of my mind. This time there'll be no chances taken. I can't leave any hope of your turning things around at the last, so I slide the tazer out from the back of my shorts and hold it high so everyone can see the hissing part dance across it's prongs. "OH MY GOD, DON'T DO IT ANGEL!!" THat's my queue to wedge those steel teeth into your stomach and unleash a current of electricity, sizzling and dancing across your body with glee!

Xuan Ying

The lights above the Hammerstein Ballroom have become stars drowning in shallow water. They shimmer. Divide. Bleed back together. I watch them without truly seeing them, stranded upon the announce table while the remnants of your fists continue their work inside my skull. Each fluttered blink shakes loose another dull pulse behind my eyes. Each breath carries an inventory of everywhere you found me. Then something pink swims into focus. Your hair. There is no mistaking that impossible color. Sweat has darkened the roots and gathered the strands into damp ribbons that hang above my face. They sway gently as you move, floating through my broken vision like the pieces of some child’s mobile suspended above a crib. Shifting lazily in a harmless breeze. Almost peaceful. Almost beautiful. Almost. The commentators are shouting. The crowd beyond them has become an ocean heard from a thousand yards beneath its surface, thousands of voices compressed into one distant, shapeless roar. None of it matters. There is only one voice I need. Mine. Get up, Xuan. Nothing. Get up. My body seems unconvinced that the instruction belongs to it. So I begin smaller. Toes. They curl weakly inside my boots. Fingers. One twitches against the tabletop. Then another. Eyes. I squeeze them shut until darkness swallows those spinning lights, hold them there for one breath, and force them open again. Better. Not clear. But better. The pink blur becomes hair. Hair becomes shoulders. Shoulders become you. And finally I find your face. There is something different written across it now. Not delight. Not that maddening theatrical mischief you carry so effortlessly. Resentment. For one strange second, I wonder what offense remains unpaid between us. I have hurt you. You have hurt me. We accepted those debts when the bell rang. Maybe angels become less forgiving once someone has made them bleed. Then your hand disappears toward your waist.

I see movement. A flash beneath the pink. Something small. Something black. Something that does not belong in your hand. My eyes find it. My mind does not. What is…Your pink hair suddenly streaks across my vision. My entire body locks. Frozen in place with paralyzing efficiency. The electric current latching to my nervous system. A touch from a God. My back stiffens against the table. My abdomen becomes stone. My fingers claw inward. My toes curl violently inside my boots. My jaw clenches until pain shoots along its hinge, and somewhere behind my teeth a broken sound tries to become a scream but dies before my throat can give it shape. Every nerve becomes a burning wire. Every muscle becomes its prisoner. I cannot pull away. Cannot strike you. Cannot even fall. Something unseen tears through the architecture of my body. Saliva gathers helplessly at my lips as my lungs forget their rhythm. My eyes remain open but useless, staring past you into those beautiful Hammerstein lights while they stretch into long white scars across my vision. I do not understand. Not then. Only later would I learn what your hand had hidden from me. A taser. Secreted inside your gear until the precise moment you decided to conjure a little manufactured magic. Cold metal pressed into the exposed flesh of my abdomen, its current poured through me while I lay helpless upon the altar you had so carefully prepared. Perhaps that should make me angry. Later, it will. But in that moment there is no room inside me for anger. There is only the terrible intimacy of electricity, the realization that something smaller than my palm can enter my body without ever breaking the skin and steal every muscle from me at once.

The phoenix survived grief. Loss. Exile. Violence. It has burned and burned and still somehow remembered how to rise. But fire requires movement. Fire requires air. And beneath your hand, I possess neither. So I lie there trembling against the black tabletop, staring through a universe shattered into pink and white fragments, while the angel bends over the phoenix and teaches her something cruel about mythology. Sometimes heaven does not extinguish fire with rain. Sometimes, it answers with lightning.

Mina Anderson

I watch you trembling across the table, bound by your own muscle in that agony. It's an ordeal I've had to go through and it's a macabre spectacle that the fans seem to relish the sight off. Somehow the hiss and crackle of the current rises over the noise of the crowd and the incessant narration of the commenters just feet away from us. I could keep you in this torture for what would feel like an eternity, but I can see the table starting to creak under your shuddering body and the battery on the tazer is starting to reach it's limits. It's time, I decide, to move things along and take the first on my stair way back to heaven. So no sooner have I tossed the weapon, skittering across the ground than I'm climbing onto the table, sliding one knee then the other onto the smooth surface so I'm straddled over your legs. From here, I can reach out for your hair and peel you up onto your feet as I raise to mine and hold you bent forward at 90 degrees. A raised fist to the crowd signals whats coming, a judgement of sorts on all you've attempted just to end up here, awaiting my Sword of Damocles. With a sharp twist of my flaring hips, I bring my leg up and my thigh across the back of your neck, then let my standing leg flick out in front of me and my weight come down, looking to drive your face into the surface of the table with force enough to go right through it!

Xuan Ying

Even after you cast your instrument aside, some part of it refuses to leave me. Its memory remains beneath my skin. Small aftershocks wander through my muscles like ghosts searching for the doors they entered through, setting my fingers trembling against the tabletop, making one thigh tighten without permission before surrendering again. The taser clatters somewhere onto the ringside floor. I hear it. I simply cannot make myself care. The Hammerstein is still swimming above me when the table shifts beneath additional weight. You. I do not notice you climbing onto our little altar so much as I notice that suddenly the pink has returned to my sky. Then your fingers disappear into my hair. They close. And you pull. My head rises first. The rest of me follows because it has forgotten how to refuse you. Boots somehow find the tabletop. Knees straighten reluctantly beneath me. My balance arrives late and drunk, leaving me swaying while you draw me upright from the place where moments ago electricity had nailed me flat. So I stand. Barely. Then you bend me forward. And there I am. Bowed before you. How appropriate. The phoenix brought to her knees before heaven’s altar, only for the angel to decide kneeling was not quite enough. My hair hangs toward the tabletop in dark, sweat-heavy strands. My arms dangle beneath my shoulders, fingers opening and closing with faint, useless uncertainty. Somewhere inside the fog I command them to move. Grab her. Nothing. Fight. A twitch. That is all. Above me, you raise an arm toward the crowd. Their response arrives as a distant avalanche. Even through the haze I understand what you are doing. You are not asking permission. You are announcing the sacrifice. The commentators understand before I do. Shapes begin moving at the edges of my vision, men abandoning chairs, headsets pulling loose, bodies retreating hurriedly from the table that had belonged to them only minutes ago.

They know something I don’t. That realization should frighten me. Instead, I am simply too tired to solve it. Then I feel you move behind me. A shift of weight. A sudden absence. And before my thoughts can catch up, your thigh comes down across the back of my neck and shoulders. Everything becomes gravity. My knees disappear beneath me. The tabletop rushes upward. There is one impossible instant in which I see my own reflection in its dark painted surface, a distorted flash of black hair and orange fire and then the altar gives way. The table splits beneath us with a tremendous crack. Wooden panels collapse inward. Equipment scatters. The world drops several inches all at once, carrying both of us into the wreckage as the Hammerstein erupts around us. For a moment there is no ring. No crowd. No angel. No wings. Only darkness and broken pieces. I land facedown among what remains of the announce table, my body stretched across splintered panels and overturned equipment while your weight crashes down somewhere across the wreckage with me. And then? Nothing. Not true nothing. Something quieter. The kind of silence that exists only inside your own head while thousands of people are screaming around you. My cheek rests against the cold floor. One arm lies somewhere beneath me. The other has fallen uselessly across a broken piece of tabletop.

I try to lift my head. It does not happen. I try again. Still useless. A tremor moves through one leg without asking me first, followed by a faint shiver through my hand, the lingering confusion of a body that has been shocked, struck, dropped, and finally driven through the very altar upon which it had been offered. Stay awake. The command feels smaller now. Xuan. Darkness presses at the edges of my sight. Stay. Somewhere beyond the wreckage, the white wings are still hanging above the ring. I cannot see them. But I know they are there. And for reasons I cannot yet explain, that is enough to keep one thin ember glowing. Not rising. Not yet. Just…refusing to go out.

Mina Anderson

I feel my hair lift, momentarily defying gravity and flaring high into the air like a brilliant neon streamer captured in the stage lights and spectacle while my body comes crashing down with your head there to cushion my fall first into the smoothed table surface and then with a cacophony of creaks, crunches and thuds to the ground in a flurry of splittering wood and a goosebump stirring swirl of nose that captures my fans and yours alike in the sheer destructive violence of the moment. It's began and ended in barely a heartbeat, but it could be the moment that the fans walk away talking about. If I can find my way out of the crooked Vee that was once the commentator table and soar up to retrieve those bright beautiful wings that cast such a large looming shadow over the carnage below. You're face down with my leg still draped across the back of your head while I gather my bearings and focus on rapid chatter coming from the unseated commentators.

"Oh My GOOODDD! Our Table!!"

"If you ask Mina they should call her the hells angel!"

1"What are you talking about!"

"Well think about it. She out here and baited the new fighter into THIS!... Oh... Now what's she doing.....?"

I'm rolling of the sweaty, twitching heap that claimed to be Phoenix, ignoring how jagged splitters snag and split the threads of my fishnets here and there as I coil up onto my knees and take it all in. All those faces flush with excitement and unashamed blood lust. The crooked ladder strewn to one side, the ring steps over my shoulder at the other side. My mind is racing much faster than my body can right now, fatigue bites through my calves and flexing, tight thighs as I clamber onto my feet, wincing from the blows to my stomach and shoulders. But I can put those to the back of my mind. Front in centre is how you wrote me off. It's not a mistake I plan on making.

19:45 Mina_Anderson: The ring apron is right there, for me to place a hand on for balance while my weary legs carry me to one corner of the arena. Now the commentators see what I was looking at. Those steal steps. Another sharp bite echos across my bruised and beaten abbs as I lean forward and grab the sides, then pause in that provocative position long enough to draw a deep, energising breath before I haul them high above my head with a heavy grunt. The journey back's less smooth. It's a sway here a side step there but soon enough I'm towering over you. All 5'3 of me, with those crystal blue eyes looked onto the back of your knees, as if the back of your pads where two targets. A snap of my body and fick of my arms sends that rigid metal tumbling toward in hopes they'll clank and clatter across the back of your knees and thighs!

Xuan Ying

I cannot tell you whether I lost consciousness. There is no clean border between absence and awareness anymore, only fragments. Darkness. Noise. Heat. Then darkness again. Hammerstein returns to me slowly, as though someone is turning the volume of the world back up one careful notch at a time. What had been a distant underwater murmur separates into individual sounds: the crowd roaring somewhere beyond the barricade, boots striking ringside padding, metal shifting against metal. I am still here. Unfortunately, so is everything that hurts. The arena lights burn against my back with the warmth of a false sun. Beneath them, pain radiates through my skull in slow concentric rings, each pulse beginning somewhere behind my eyes and traveling outward until even my teeth seem aware of it. The electricity you poured into me has not completely departed either. It lingers within my muscles like a storm reluctant to leave the valley, keeping certain fibers tight long after I have begged them to relax. My fingers twitch. My calf tightens, then releases. Breathe. I obey. That, at least, still belongs to me. I begin pulling myself through the wreckage one miserable inch at a time. What remains of the announce table surrounds me in broken pieces, black, painted panels and splintered wood scattered beneath my arms like the ruins of some altar after the god it served finally became dissatisfied with the sacrifice. You had been so relentless that your absence feels unnatural. That is what frightens me. Silence from you has become more suspicious than violence. For several seconds, nothing arrives. No boot. No fist. No pink hair entering the edge of my vision. Perhaps you are finally tired. Perhaps.

A shadow falls across me. Large. Wrong. My body understands before my eyes do. I turn my head just enough to find you standing behind me, your legs unsteady but stubborn beneath you, both hands raised above your head around something enormous and metallic. The steel steps. Of course. You had apparently decided subtlety is overrated long ago. The polished metal catches the arena lights above you, shining almost beautifully as you balance it overhead. For one absurd instant it resembles some sacred tablet carried down from the clouds. Except your intention is not to deliver commandments. Your eyes are fixed upon the backs of my legs. My knees. The realization passes through the fog with terrible clarity. Move. My body does not. Move, Xuan. Nothing. You begin bringing the steps down. There are moments when courage is something noble. This is not one of them. This is desperation. I drag one breath deep into aching lungs and throw everything I have into a single roll toward you. Broken wood scratches beneath my shoulder. Then. CRASH. Steel meets the place where my legs had been less than a tick earlier. The impact shakes the floor beneath me.

Close. Too close. I finish the roll almost against your boots, my breath leaving me in a broken exhale. There is no triumph in the escape. No clever counter waiting patiently inside my thoughts. There is hardly even a thought. Only instinct. And instinct tells me one thing. Do not let her go. Because every time I give you distance, you return carrying something worse. A ladder. A chair. Lightning. Now half the architecture of the ring. I am finished discovering what else your imagination has prepared. So my arms close around your legs. Around those glossy white boots that have somehow remained absurdly angelic despite everything they have walked through tonight. I cling to them. Not elegantly. Not proudly. Like someone caught in deep water clings to the first solid thing her hands can find. My cheek presses against your shin while my arms lock as tightly as what little strength remains will allow. I can feel you shifting above me, trying to find your balance, but I refuse to release you. No distance. No weapons. No tricks. No miracles. Just you and me. For once, Mina, you are going to stay exactly where I can reach you. And perhaps if I can hold on long enough one breath... then another...then one more...the phoenix might remember how to stand.

Mina Anderson

The more cosmopolitan fan's decorated in charcoal and crimson would never have imagined what they are watching. Even many of my hopeful congregation must feel their eyes are deceiving them. You are after all the more taller more powerful woman and the more practised and dangerous warrior. But here you are, and there you are in unforgiving close up on the big screen, balled up on the floor and clutching onto my boots as if you're entire future depended on just holding on. I have the ring behind me, close enough I can nestle my rear on the edge for support and plant my hands on my hips as I look down, over the rising swell of my bountiful cleavage at the fallen phoenix. I reach back with one hand, clasping a rope for support should you try the obvious, and sweep my legs. "Pretty... Birdie... Wanted... To... Fly". I coo as I reach down for a handful of your hair and peel you upwards. Your face brushes along the front of one slick leg, fishnet rippling spitefully over your cheek and the swelling around your eye. "But when I gave her... the chance..." I draw your head back so you're looking up at me, into eye cold gaze. "Look where she landed".

The bite across your scalp only burns hotter as I keep guiding you, slowly back up to your feet. Then a quick pivot of my body guides you onto the side of the ring where I can help you up and in with a tug on the back of your shorts. Inside, two your left the broken bottom ropes skewed across the canvas. The bag of tacks is in corner, a 2 by 4 still sits. And behind you, I'm following. I'm pulling myself onto the apron and using the ropes to pull myself onto my feet so I can get to the corner and scale the turnbuckle all the way to the top, where I wait, hunched like a coiled spring and ready to launch myself...

Xuan Ying

: Your fingers return to my hair before I have managed to gather enough strength to hate them properly. They thread through the damp strands, close tightly, and pull. My hands make one last stubborn attempt to remain around your boots, but there is nothing left in my grip that you cannot simply take from me. The hold breaks. My body follows. You drag me upright by hair and waistband, steering me toward the ring with the impatient efficiency of someone returning an object to where it belongs. Then the apron presses briefly against my side and I am rolled beneath the ropes, back onto the canvas we have spent the entire night trying to destroy. Pain has become background noise. What matters is that you do not follow. For several seconds I simply lie there, cheek against the mat, waiting for the pieces of myself to remember their proper arrangement. My thoughts are still arriving out of order. My limbs feel borrowed. Even breathing requires negotiation. But the silence stretches too long. That is when I look up. And find you climbing. One boot finds the apron. Then the middle rope. Then higher. You ascend the turnbuckle slowly, deliberately, until you are perched above me beneath the lights, pink hair falling around your shoulders while the crowd begins to understand. Of course. The angel has decided she would rather fall from heaven than wait for me to climb toward it. I remain still for another heartbeat. Perhaps you think I cannot move. Perhaps you are right. But whenever you are given time, you turn it into catastrophe.

So I begin to crawl. Not toward you. Toward the wounded side of the ring. The side where our violence finally tore something loose. The bottom rope hangs useless there, freed from its fastening, stretched across the canvas like a dead serpent while the two surviving ropes remain taut above it. My hands find the middle rope. I pull. My arms tremble immediately. I pull again. One knee comes beneath me. Then the other. The ring sways in my vision, but slowly I force myself upright, leaning heavily into the remaining ropes while every exhausted part of me protests the decision. Above, you are still waiting. Watching. Planning. Good. Let heaven plan. I do not know what you intend when you finally leave that turnbuckle. A splash. A kick. Another miracle with some pretty name attached to it. It no longer matters. If you jump, I will move. Or I will try. And if my battered body obeys me for one more second, I will let your own ruined ring answer you. I wait for you to commit. Then, if I can escape your descent, I will turn with everything I have left and send that broken cable snapping across your back before you can recover. There is only timing now. Instinct. One damaged body trying to become dangerous before the other one leaves the sky. I draw another breath and stare up at you. Jump, angel. Let us see which of us the broken ring chooses to betray next.

Mina Anderson

I perch atop the turnbuckle, ready to attack again while you stir and roll and crawl and either through sheer luck or design keep yourself at just the wrong distance for me. Moving closer would reduce the risk, moving clear would force me to abandon this course of attack and return to the canvas. Somehow you remain just within range, where I can reach you but only at huge risk. Perhaps that's why I hesitate and wait, shifting my feet and the angle of my body to track your slow path to the ropes. I'm on the turnbuckle about 90 degrees to your left as you rise up onto your knees and teeter there, still a small target but a grounded one. Wounded prey that looks about one more big move away from being left out for the count and unable to stop me from finally ascending to claim those downy wings and all the glory and impact that will come along with them. It, I decide, is worth the risk...

I push my feet into the top ropes til I feel the tension bite with a soft creak then I release like an uncoiling spring and let that elastic tension send me soaring high into the stage lifts where my body silhouettes and twists with cat like agility. Boot feet are thrusting toward you as I come crashing down. They hit... only air a second before I let the Mat with a thunderous crash. I land on my side, leveled out like a plank after the misguided drop kick, and bounce up as bruising red marks ignite across my side from my thigh to my armpit, werehere there isn't white lycra or pink lace covering my skin. The world's spinning around me as I find myself on all fours still favouring one flank of my now vulnerable body. I'm not sure where you are, but I can hear something coil and snap through the air just before the broken rope whips across my back and shoulders with thunderclap impact that burns of hot and sharp that tears well up in my eyes. "AIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!". You can see them, starting to drag on my mascara and forrow into the diamonte glaze on my cheeks as I look back over my shoulder while my body arches forward into a feline pose, rear lifting, chest sinking toward the floor while a streak of cbold purple and bed bruising marks where the lash landed across my back and shoulders!

Xuan Ying

I never learn what made you commit to the leap. Pride, perhaps. Ego. Or simply that incurable need of yours to turn every dangerous decision into something beautiful enough for the crowd to worship. Whatever the reason, you leave the turnbuckle. And this time miss your mark. I move. Barely. Your body crashes into empty canvas where mine had been a touch earlier, and before you can gather yourself from the landing, the ruined ring answers through my hand. The broken bottom rope snaps across your back. The sound is sharp enough to split the roar of the crowd. You arch away from it. I strike again. Then again. After that, counting becomes unnecessary. Each swing comes faster than the last, anger finally outrunning arithmetic. The cable whistles through the air and leaves angry red lines across your skin, each one another sentence written into the argument we have been having since the bell rang. The taser. Crack. The announce table. Crack. The steel steps. Crack. One answer for every new decrepit seed you’ve planted in this garden. And somewhere in the middle of it, something inside me understands. You changed the rules long before the ring physically broke. The moment you named this an Ascension Ladder Match, you gave chaos permission to enter with us. Chairs became companions. Tables became altars. Steel became scripture. Even electricity somehow found its place in your sermon.

I had spent the first half of the night trying to survive the world you created. Now I am learning how to live inside it. Maybe that is Noir. If so, Mina, I could not have asked for a better teacher. When at last I stop swinging, my chest is rising hard, the broken rope still clenched tightly in my fist. You are down in front of me, trying to gather yourself after the storm. I stalk closer. No hurry now. You taught me better than that. My free hand slips into your bright pink hair and draws you upward until you are kneeling in front of me, your balance uncertain, your breathing ragged, your back still carrying the evidence of every answer I just gave you. I step behind you. The loose cable hangs from my hand like the discarded tail of some dead serpent. A terrible idea presents itself. Which, tonight, seems almost appropriate. I begin drawing the broken rope around you, trying to pull it into position around your neck before you can twist away or catch my hands. Perhaps you escape. Perhaps you turn and make me regret giving you even this much space. You have built an entire match out of impossible recoveries. But I am finished assuming the angel will stay fallen. So I pull you close and try anyway. Because somewhere between the lightning, the ladders, and the wreckage, this stopped being a contest about who could climb highest. Now it is about who can still rise after teaching the other exactly how far they are willing to fall.

Mina Anderson

The pain's written all over my face, squinted and twisted up under the spotlights and displayed in close up on the screen behind me. It's a new pain to me. I've been put through all sorts of mills in my short time in this fed but that hot heavy sting streaking across my back burns sharper and deeper than anything else I've endured. The camera's pick up the tears welling as my brow furrows and my lips twist and curl into trembling seal. Somewhere in the noise and haze I'm aware of your shadow looming over me so ominously and I try to get away, sliding my knees across the canvas in a way that see saws my rear while my shorts tense and stretch, crease lines forming then vanishing across the back of hip hugging little short shorts as I pad my hands forward and crawl slowly toward the corner I just leapt from. "aaaIIIIIIIiiieeEEeeEE!!!" Leather wrapped steel licks across my shoulder, lower back and hips with a crisp snap rings out, echo'd by a huge roar of nervous energy that somehow my shrill scream pierces through. Now tears are collecting mascara and flush pink eye shadow and drag that mix down toward my cheekbones as I throw my head back and shudder on the spot while another red welt rises criss crossing the first. THis is a new escalation. One I never imagined, but now the ring itself is the weapon and after everything I've hit you with, you've no hesitation in wielding it. I need to get out of the way and I try to, gingerly now shuffling toward the corner...

"nnnyYYEEEEEEEEEE!!!" Another squeal rings out as the whip curls across the back of my thighs and ass, rocking me forward on slick, trembling limbs. The next bites around my waist and pushes my body low, chest cushioning to my sides as I beat my feet of the canvas! There's blood streaked across my back, it's staining the back of my top and still the cracks ring out, each making me shudder and thrash and squeal til I'm laid out flat, panting and whimpering at your feet. Still there's no respite. As if Huff and pant, I feel the bite of pain across my scalp and start clawing at your wrist while you haul me up to my knees in front of your. "aaaugghhh.. nnnn... nnnooo... get away". I hiss as I feel that rope coil around my throat. I try to pry my fingers under it as it tightens and squeezes til my jaw drops and my tongue unfurls... "nnnssphhhh!!"

Xuan Ying

Your hands find the cable immediately. Instinct moves faster than thought. Fingers claw at the broken ring rope where it coils across your neck, searching desperately for some merciful inch of space between steel and skin. You try to wedge them beneath it, to loosen what I have drawn tight, but the cable has already become stubborn in my hands. And so have I. I pull. Your breath catches in small, strangled fragments, each one thinner than the last. The clever words are gone now. The laughter. The taunts. That endless talent for making danger look like play. There is only survival. Warm saliva bubbles at your decorated lips like ocean foam left ashore, nowhere for it to go. I listen to the agonizing gasps only a crushed windpipe can produce.

Your hands continue working at the rope while I stand behind you, jaw clenched, arms burning from the effort of keeping you close. And somewhere inside that struggle, I realize what you have done to me. Not physically. Something stranger than that. You have spent this match introducing me to pieces of myself I had never needed before. Each new device, every new cruelty another door opened inside me, until eventually I stopped wondering whether I should walk through them. My eyes narrow as your resistance begins to weaken. The angel who refused every grave tonight is finally beginning to look mortal. Your movements slow. Your eyes lose some of their sharpness. And that frightens me less than the realization that some newly awakened part of me has been waiting to see it. Enough. Perhaps the word belongs to conscience. Perhaps to exhaustion. Either way, I do not release you. Instead I keep the cable controlled with one hand and pull you upright just enough to create the opening I need. My knee drives forward. It catches you high and sends your head snapping backward, breaking whatever rhythm remained in your defense. I feel the cartilage of your nose shift against my kneecap. Your legs unfold beneath you almost immediately and you collapse to the canvas in a loose, stunned heap, like a marionette whose puppeteer has suddenly abandoned the performance. I stare down at you. And still…I do not trust it. That has become your greatest accomplishment tonight. You have taught me never to believe your stillness. Every time I have mistaken silence for victory, you have returned carrying another trick beneath your wings. So no. Not yet. My eyes sweep across the wreckage surrounding us. That is when I see them. Your thumbtacks. Of course they are yours. A small container of silver points waiting near the corner, another unfinished thought from whatever terrible little sermon you had planned next. I almost laugh. Instead, I pick them up.

The container tilts in my hand. Hundreds of tiny pieces spill across the canvas, scattering beneath the arena lights like metallic confetti at the world’s least appropriate celebration. The crowd understands immediately. Their roar changes. Not louder, exactly. Hungrier. I hate that sound. Yet I keep moving. You lie only a few feet away. I reach into the bright disorder of your hair again and pull you gradually upward. Your body follows reluctantly, still trying to remember which direction the world is supposed to face. Your back carries the evidence of everything that has happened tonight. So does mine. Perhaps that is the only equality left between us. I turn you. Fold you forward. Guide your head between my thighs. Then my arms circle your waist. The position settles into place with terrifying familiarity. Behind you waits the corner. Beneath it waits the glittering field you brought here yourself. Your own constellation. Your own consequence. I tighten my grip and lower my center of gravity, preparing to lift. For one instant I remain there, breathing hard, feeling your weight against my arms while the entire Hammerstein seems to hold its breath with us. You have risen from everything else. So I suppose one question remains. How many times can an angel fall before heaven finally stops sending her back? I begin to hoist you upward. And if you cannot find one more escape hidden somewhere inside that impossible resilience of yours…then I intend to let gravity answer.

Mina Anderson

Fingers scramble across the caught leather and underlying metal of that rope wrapped so tight across my choker, around my throat. Occasionally a nail squirms under the taut noose only to bend or snap without buying me even a gasp of precious iar. No, the tension keeps on building and biting harder and harder into my creamy soft skin, I can the friction burn, the slow bruising rising underneath the rope but I can't stop it no matter how much I try, squirming for a gap that never comes as I sway my kneeling body one way, then the other, stretching and twisting. As I flail my arms back without the angle or power to do anything more than brush across the side of the legs planted solidly behind me. My feet are trapped under my sweaty damp, ivory sheened shorts and I can't find the strength to get up and get a better angle, not now my lungs burn in desperate need of just a breath and everything I've endured repeats through in waves. Those lashes across my back are still so raw wince every time my back brushes against your legs. All While I stare into the blinding lights, lips parted and gapping. The tip of my tongue protruding just enough while froth starts to rise. Darkness is encroaching on my field of vision but I can sense something has change.

The big screen shows an image of domination. And kneeling angel and a crimson devil looming large and sinister. It stirs your fans into a chorus of anticipation, while mine know what they're watching. THey've seen there angel push an opponent til she goes to the darker places in her nature. You've stopped snatching at victory, so desperate to claim a metaphorical prize and started to exist in the moment, in the exchange of power and sickening sensation. It's apparent in how you wait for my arms to drop and hang useless at my sides and I teeter between conscious and unconsciousness. That's when you reposition yourself so you can look down into my glassy eyes and see the trail of drool around my glossy lips. I'm there, at your mercy, if only you had any left. Instead a swift statement. A casual yet devastating snap of my knee comes scrunching into my nose and sharp pain shoots back into my swirling, hazy mind. FOr a jumping heartbeat everything comes back into focus under a crimson filter. I see you standing tall and powerful, like a spectre. Then the swelling starts and tears flood into my eyes and I taste Iron at the back of my throat and feel warm moisutre rolling across my mouth, down my chin. I'm crumpling, feet trapped under the back of my thighs as I land on my back with a soft tremble that dances through every soft curvel of my sinful body. At least I can breath again, when I manage to choke out plume of red mist. My chest rises slowly, bringing tension across the generous neckline of my snug little top. "aaaahhnn..... aaahhhhnnnn.... ggawssppPpp".

Few injuries are as debilating as a broken nose. The impact echos through me like hot knifes deliving into my skull on never breath I take. Tears are mixing with mascara and plush pink eye shadow as I lay still yet reeling. And yet you are right not to relent. I'm still at least aware of you moving around the ring. Of the shift in air and tantalised energy flowing through the air. There's a soft shake of my head when I hear the pitter patter of metal landing and gleaming across the canvas like the glitter that still sparkles across my cheeks where they're not stained with the crimson splatter from my crushed nose. "nnnNnnnnn". You peel me off the mat and into the vice like grip of your thighs. I can see those pointed shining gleefully, waiting for you to use my own trap against me... I manage to flail and an arm. To shuffle my feet before "CRASH!!!" My face plants and tacks embed across my features as the impact ripples up my spine making one leg twitch and flick into the air before I collapes onto my side and burry my head in my hands, curling up into the fetal positon.. "awwhhh...ooOOOoooohhhh... OOoooOOoohhh!". All around me, I can hear the feral roar. I'm known for spectacle and violence, even the girls in plastic wings understand that. But for the enclave in painted crimson, they're seeing a Phoenix rise over her own limitations, and revel in the raw hellfire that NOIR can ignite into!

Xuan Ying

The sound that follows you into the canvas does not belong to the Mina Anderson who skipped around this ring beneath painted wings and neon scripture. It is lower than that. Rougher. A broken, bubbling groan dragged from somewhere beneath pride and performance as I push myself back to my feet and leave you sprawled across the silver field you brought for someone else. The crowd recoils and surges all at once, thousands of voices becoming one horrified hymn, but for several seconds I hear almost none of them. Only you. Only my breathing. Only the terrible realization that, in your own strange way, you have already accomplished something tonight. You changed me. Not by defeating me. By convincing me to follow you. The woman who walked through that curtain believed there were lines inside a wrestling ring that belonged to other people. Crueler people. Wrestlers who mistook brutality for courage and spectacle for strength. Then you opened the door. The ladder. The chair. The broken table. The electricity. Every escalation another invitation written in a language I kept insisting I did not speak. And eventually, I answered.

I look down at you and barely recognize the woman casting my shadow across your body. Perhaps that is your miracle, Mina. You did not bring the phoenix to heaven. You made her descend somewhere darker. Into your cathedral of violence, where every pew is broken and the congregation cheers louder the closer we come to destroying one another. Into the embrace of some spiteful old god who does not ask for prayer, only sacrifice. And I walked willingly into its arms. You lie face down beneath me, pink hair scattered wildly around your face, your breathing uneven but stubbornly present. Still here. Of course you are. My boot slides carefully beneath your chin. I lift. Not violently. Almost ceremonially. Your head rises just enough for your unfocused eyes to find mine. “Look at me,” I think to myself. Because I need you to. I need you to see what your sermon has made of its newest believer. My foot rises a little farther, guiding you first toward your knees before I finally reach down and gather a fistful of that impossible pink hair, pulling you the rest of the way upright. Your legs tremble beneath you. You sway. Not quite standing in my world. Not quite fallen into yours. Somewhere between consciousness and instinct, between heaven and the canvas, you move like a candle flame refusing to admit the room has run out of air.

And then I see it. Or perhaps I imagine it. The faintest curve at the corner of your mouth. A tiny smile. You can barely stand, and somehow you are still smiling at me. For one fleeting moment I simply stare. Then something inside me goes very still. No anger. No panic. Just certainty. I release your hair. Plant my foot. Turn. My body unwinds in one clean, practiced revolution, all the chaos of this match finally drawn into a single line of motion. The Cyclone Shanghai Kick comes around with me, my heel cutting toward your waiting, slacked and gaped jaw. No ladder. No weapon. No trick. Just me. Just you. And the strike I have trusted long before either of us ever knew this match would exist. As my heel races toward you, I find myself thinking that even God must eventually run out of favors, even for his favorite pink angels. And this time, I do not intend to leave enough room for another one.

Mina Anderson

There I lay, spread eagled and with hair spiralled out across the canvas in a curled, chaotic halo, from which can hear the pained groans as the noise around us seems to retreat into white noise. The occasional twitch ripples through me, rolling my shoulders, tensing through slick, light catching thighs as my nerves catch up with reality and every pin prick to sting into my consciousness one by one by one. It feels like they're are hundreds, beaded into my skin, across my brow and cheeks, and littered over my shoulders. The bite into the pancaked cushions of my breasts, swelling at my sides each time I find a pocket of air somewhere around the pool of blood still flowing from my cracked nose. I'd known before we walked out that the canvas would be stained claret at some point tonight. Perhaps I even understood it would be mine that decorated it in a macabre tribute to conflict and inevitable defeat. "hhhsssppp.... ooOOOooohhh... nnnaawwWWgggg".

You have all the time you need to take in the moment, to make your plans and start to inact them, peeling me up to my knees. A few tacks pop out leaving pearls of crimson on my skin, blotches seeping into my once virgin white outfit. I place a hand on your hip for support as you hair me, wincing and groaning onto my feet. The other finds your soulder as I slump and press against you, head bowed but swelling eyes meeting yours in just a fleeting flash of understanding. We both have to wait along with everyone well for the foundation of my legs to solidify before you can edge me back til my arms flop to my sides and I'm standing there, still waiting... A sacrificial dove at the crest of unbridled career. It comes in a flash, to fast for me to see lets alone react to. Through the blur of blinding light and shadow, there's movement and then aother sickened CRACK that silences the entire arena. My jaw shifts a inch to the side then drapes and hangs so visable broken. I go down in stages. First dropping to one knee, where my torso says like a cobra on my hips. Then, like an oak, I topple onto my side and flop onto my back again, stunned and shattered under the blaring lights. Surely there's no coming back from such devastation... Yet that notion comes with an uneasy sense of deja vue. A murmours starting to build around us. All mixed together but you can sense the sentiment... Is that it? What will you do?

Xuan Ying

The first thing I see when my heel finds your chin is not the movement of your body. It is the disappearance of you from your own eyes. One moment there is still something behind them, that stubborn little flame that has survived every ugly prayer we have offered this ring tonight. Then the Shanghai Cyclone Kick lands. Your gaze empties. Your eyes roll upward as the rest of you seems to forget, piece by piece, that standing was ever an agreement it made with gravity. Pink hair whips through the air. A thin streak of blood follows the turn of your face. Your knees surrender first, then your shoulders, and finally all of you folds toward the canvas beneath the fading echo of my heel. I land. Turn. Watch. And wait. Because surely this cannot simply be over. Not with you. Not after everything. So I stand above you, chest rising hard, listening to the congregation scream while your body lies quiet among the scattered silver points. There is movement, but only the faint, uncoordinated tremor of a nervous system sending signals that limbs can’t quite comprehend. No. I cannot climb yet. Not while there remains even the smallest possibility that those eyes might open again. There is still an Ascension waiting above us. And before I approach heaven, I must first make certain its angel cannot follow. I take hold of you and begin pulling. You give me none of your usual resistance now. Your weight drags reluctantly across the canvas as I guide you toward the corner where the lowest rope surrendered so long ago that it feels like the remains of another match entirely. Perhaps it was. Perhaps somewhere between the opening bell and now, Mina Anderson and Xuan Ying disappeared and left two other women fighting in their place.

I settle you against the turnbuckles. Your arms fall where gravity wants them, so I lift them and drape them across the surviving ropes, arranging you upright as best I can while your head hangs forward beneath the curtain of your pink hair. Then I see the plank. Another relic from whatever sermon you had intended to preach with it. I stare at it for a moment. Then at you. And almost smile. “Oh, Mina…” Even now, you keep providing the props. I slide the board horizontally behind the steel post. The loose length of broken cable follows into my hands. One wrist. Then the other. I loop the rope around each carefully, fastening your arms outward against opposite ends of the plank until the position holds you there even when your legs threaten to surrender beneath you. I step backward. And the symbolism strikes me before I can stop it. Of course. Of all the shapes this match could have chosen for its final image…you hang there with your arms spread wide, pink hair veiling your bowed face, the great white wings still floating impossibly high above us. A fallen angel beneath her own heaven. A crucifix built not from faith, but from everything we broke trying to reach it. For several seconds I simply stare. The crowd does too. Then your head shifts weakly to one side. Enough. I turn away. The ladder lies toppled near the center of the ring. That ladder. The same one you threw from beneath me when my fingertips had already brushed the feathers above. The same ladder that sent me tumbling back to earth when victory had been less than a breath away.

I take hold of the metal frame and pull it upright. The hinges unfold. The feet settle against the canvas. One last glance toward the corner. You remain there. Still. Bound beneath the ropes like some defeated saint in a cathedral built from sweat, broken furniture, and bad intentions. Now I climb. My hand closes around the first rung. My boot follows. Then the next. My ribs remember your knees. My back remembers the ladder. My muscles still carry the ghost of electricity. My lungs burn. But the wings grow larger above me. The crowd rises with every rung. One. Another. Another. Their voices swell until Hammerstein itself seems to become an enormous choir, thousands of people singing without melody as the phoenix climbs toward the prize meant for an angel. My fingers tighten around the ladder. I pull myself one step higher. The white feathers drift gently overhead. I look down once more. At you. At everything beneath us. Then upward. I raise one aching arm. Open my hand. And reach for the wings.

Mina Anderson

I wouldn't articulate even if I still could, but as I lay there, awkwardly staring into a pin prick of light and the dancing shadow of my prized wings. My world has narrowed in on itself, my very essence has. Right now, as my gloved hand slides up my arched core, I'm little more than a mix of sensations, some lingering and dull overs fresh, raw and sharp. Agony rolls across my flesh in waves, carried on every breath, every frantic beat of my heart. No matter which way I stretch or which way I lull, little spikes pierce into my whipped, bruised and bloody back. My hands swept over the rising curve of my chest, across the taut and distorted ANgel motiff blazed across that strained fabric littered as it is, with poko dots of wet claret. My fingers slip into the tangled mess of hair over my face and touch over my disheleved and crack jaw drawing a sharp hiss. I've given all I had to give, but an irrepresable spirit can only take you so far when the flesh is weak and sheer skill is so limited. So here I can, still whimpering, and moaning as you grab a foot and drag me, like dead weight through that sea of sharp waiting tacks... "aaahhnffff.... aawwwwhh.... nyeeeeeee".

Soon where at the corner and I'm being pushing into the ring post. Still you hear my gargbled, slurred voice but there are no words, just pain expressed in deflated squeaks. Perhaps you catch the flicker of a half smile as you return with the plank in hand. It's hard to tell under the mess of hair and blood and the tricks of the light. Could I find some satisfaction in giving my all? I'd have said yes when I arranged this stage but you took everything I had and then you took more. As I manage to crane my neck enough for hair to clear and those puffy eyes, crushed nose and crooked hanging jaw to come into view, bringing a wave of uneasy silence to the arena. You' ve taken my beauty and now as you slide the rope that finally whipped the fight out of me around me and bind my arms.. YOu take my dignity and that last flicker of hope. My body slumps back into the corner, not for the first time in this ring, totally defeated, bound and spent. THere's a rumbling of noise.. collective relief as you start to ascend unnopsed while I can only watch. Of course I try... Willing myself to rise and resist but all I can manage is slow shift and roll of my hips while you finally claim your prize. The wings that will surely lift your career and your status. A new headliner raises indeed like a phoenix over the fallen, broken angel.

Xuan Ying

My fingertips find the feathers first. Soft. Downy. Almost absurdly gentle after everything required to reach them. For one strange heartbeat I simply hold them there, my hands resting against white plumage while the entire arena seems to inhale beneath me. Then my fingers close. Firm. Certain. I unhook the first wing from its suspension. Then the second. And Hammerstein erupts. The sound is unlike anything I have heard all night. Louder than the ladders crashing. Louder than the tables breaking. Louder even than the collective gasp that followed every miracle you dragged from your battered body. It is not noise anymore. It is revelation. My arms fold around the wings as I collapse forward across the top of the ladder, forehead nearly touching the cold aluminum. For several seconds I cannot move. Cannot think. Cannot quite believe that after everything you made me walk through tonight, after every trap, every weapon, every cruel little sermon delivered in steel and electricity, I somehow climbed out the other side. You walked me through Hell, Mina. And somehow...I still reached Heaven. I lift my head. Look down. There you are. Still bound in the corner beneath me. More coherent now. Not much. But enough that I can see your eyes following me from beneath the mess of pink hair and exhaustion. Even now, you refuse to miss the ending. I begin descending. Slowly. One rung at a time. The wings tucked against me. Every step announces itself somewhere in my body. My ribs protest. My back tightens. My legs feel carved from wet stone. The muscles in my arms shake beneath the weight of something that should weigh almost nothing. Victory, apparently, is heavier after you have nearly died for it.

When my boots finally meet the canvas again, I carry the wings toward you. The crowd is still roaring. I stop in front of your corner. Look at you. And despite everything...I feel gratitude. Real gratitude. I lower myself into a crouch. The wings rest across one arm. “Thank you,” I tell you quietly. My breathing is still too heavy for elegance. “For my welcome to Noir.” There is almost something sacred about saying it now. A week ago, I walked into this ring without music, without fire, without anyone knowing who I was. Tonight, you taught me exactly what kind of place I had entered. You taught me how ugly this cathedral could become. How loud its congregation could scream. How quickly an angel could sharpen her halo into a weapon. And perhaps worst of all, you taught me that I was capable of answering in kind. My hand slips beneath the edge of my kneepad. One small match rests there. A final secret. I look upward. Then raise one hand toward the rigging above us. The hooks that once carried the wings begin to descend. I smile faintly. Another lesson from you. The fans love a show. My hand lowers. The arena lights die. Everything disappears. The crowd. The ladders. The wreckage. You. Me. For a clock tick, there is only darkness. Then I fasten the wings back onto their hooks. The match strikes. A tiny flame appears between my fingers. So small. So fragile. And yet in the darkness, it becomes the brightest thing in the world. I hold it there for a moment. Watching its reflection tremble in your tired eyes. Then the fire touches feather. Light races outward. White becomes gold. Gold becomes orange. And suddenly the wings are burning.

The arena explodes again as they begin rising above us, flames crawling through the feathers while glowing embers drift downward like pieces of some collapsing heaven. The fire paints the ring in amber. The ropes. The broken ladders. The scattered wreckage. Your pink hair. My hands. Everything illuminated by the wings you thought would crown an angel. I crouch beside you again. For a moment neither of us speaks. Above us, heaven burns. I look from the flames back to you. “But these wings were never meant for an angel.” My eyes lift once more toward the burning shape climbing into the darkness. A smile touches my lips. Not cruel. Not triumphant. Something quieter. Something earned. “They belong to the Phoenix.”