Rules: Falls are awarded on pinfall, submission, or knockout
Backstage, Shimmerlace whistled. While she adjusted her lacy, white hair-pin and tightened the bows on her corset, she trilled a jig. This pre-match ritual started at her debut. On a day that jittery it had been sing or pop. Today, she concentrated on every forced note.
The outfit, too, had changed. The Marauder pillaged Shimmerlace’s debut attire, then her minivan, a car from college days carrying thousands of dollars worth of costume, makeup, and art. But the first target, Thistlebro — Shimmer's pet rabbit, her friend, the only connection to life before LAW — hurt the worst.
Then
Now
Now it was eight months on, two Apex qualifiers behind Shimmerlace, one to go and then…her shot at taking it all back.
As Shimmerlace checked her contacts in a round mirror, and adjusted her makeup with a pad, she mused—what if she lost? Would she get another shot? Probably. Angelina liked being chased. But third, fourth, and fifth chances take time, and rabbits — like comets in the sky — only live a precious little time. And she’d never have a stage this grand again.
But—such bullshit did not belong ringside. Shimmerlace plucked each dark emotion bubbling behind her pink contacts, one by one, like fish from a pond, and stuffed them into corked glass bottles. She grinned, glowing pink, one hundred percent fairy down to her gleaming fangs.
—
When the truth is found…to be lies!
No smoke, no explosions, no harness and a dive from the roof, no thousand-dollar props—for the match against Yuki, Shimmerlace stepped into nothing but rose-tinted stage light.
The Pixie leapt to the second rope, grasped the post, and gazed grinning at the audience. ”Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of the Eastern hemisphere!” Cunts and cuntesses. Though actually the Coterie only occupied a few pink pock-marks scattered among a packed set of seats.
By now, Shimmerlace had experienced many different kinds of audiences. As a stage magician, the Feychild had known them hot, cold, bored, quiet, raucous, loud, rude, had known the boos and the cheers and the gasps and the over-enthusiastic ones to be avoided after the curtain dropped. But LAW took it to another level. Just look at the cosplaying freaks supposedly in her corner.
But tonight’s energy still hit differently. Unlike her coterie, these fans didn’t come bearing obnoxious, geeky badges of enthusiasm for Yuki or LAW. Many of the marks were well-dressed and looked to be polite in that stereotypically Japanese way, developed (so it was said) to make social life bearable on an overstuffed island. But, also unlike her fans, not one of these fans was on their phone. That was almost hard to believe (surely one of them must have a babysitting crisis? An emergency contact from work?) but she searched, and all eyes fixed on the ring. Buzzing with anticipation. Each was their own person and showed excitement uniquely. Some you could read it from their forward lean, their grinning, their constant overeager applause; others were reserved, but you could still catch their engagement by the shine in their eyes. The glow from the ring reflected hazily on them, and they glowed and shivered back.
Shimmerlace licked her lips, a smile creeping to her face—and hopped to the slight bounce of the mat. No puns or magic tricks today, kiddos. She crossed her legs, leaned into her post, and waited.
