Best Served Cold

[BlackAkuma]

Aspasia was confident that the past three weeks counted as the worst period of her life.

After her match, she had been rushed to the local medical facility instead of the infirmary, needing intensive care right away. She had gone in and out of consciousness on the way there, only vaguely aware of what was happening to her, and every time she came back, there was someone new in the room, some new doctor looking her over, some new pain that hadn't been there before. Every time she drifted off, she did so not knowing when - or if - she would come again.

It was touch and go, but they were able to get her stable, and she spent the next couple of weeks in a hospital bed hooked up to an IV. Thankfully, while her injuries were numerous, they were nothing she couldn't recover from, given enough time. Concussions, fractures, and a few other terms that she didn’t quite recognize. Nothing that required surgery, which was her real fear.

But it did mean she had to spend several days in a bed, in the dark, waking and eating and sleeping and waking and eating and sleeping and waking and eating and sleeping until it drove her to the brink of insanity. When it was over, she hoped she would never see the inside of a hospital again.

And there was only one woman to thank for that: Safiyah Neferet.

Not a minute had passed in the last three weeks where Safiyah hadn't occupied her thoughts. She was still trying to piece together what exactly had happened, what she had done to set the woman off and warrant such a brutal beating, but the more she thought of it, the less she cared. It was another case like with Naga - a woman who thought she could bully Asp and push her around, thinking there would be no repercussions because of her nature.

But if she believed she could do such a thing to the Water Serpent and get away scot-free, then she was about to learn the error of her ways. If Asp had her way, she would be learning them today.

At this moment, Asp stood in the middle of the ring in front of the LAW crowd, a microphone in hand, dressed in her most casual attire - sandals, a denim skirt, and a green crop top that hugged her body. The crowd had been happy to see her, giving her a round of applause as she had made her entrance, and while she appreciated that, her focus wasn’t on them tonight.

After the crowd died down enough, she brought the microphone up and spoke. ”Firstly, I want to thank all of you.” She kept her head low and gave them a quick wave. ”For all of your support in the past few weeks. For your well-wishes and your prayers. They meant the world to me, and I am happy to report that I have been cleared to compete.”

That drew a fresh wave of claps from the audience, but she raised her hand to keep them from going overboard. ”Thank you. But that is not the main reason I’ve come out here today. I am not much of a speaker, so I will make this mercifully brief.”

Asp breathed deep and prepared herself, steeling her nerves for what would come. She had been fortifying herself for weeks now, but she knew that imagining this wouldn’t come close to the real thing. After a few quick breaths, she found enough courage to speak.

”Safiyah Neferet.” The crowd booed as Asp turned her attention to the curtains. ”I know you are in the arena, habibti. I know you can hear me. You have two choices: come out here and face me, or I can go back there and find you. I believe you know which of those options will be least pleasant.”

There, the gauntlet was thrown. Safiyah stepped back and leaned against the ropes, her arms folded, waiting for a response.

[Lightman]

Safiyah sighed.

Asp would be correct, she is in the arena, watching it live backstage. However, it wasn’t necessarily by choice.

The 'bluenette' had no particular interest in hearing Asp out tonight. Frankly, she would have been just as happy staying in the back, ignoring whatever indignant tirade the woman had planned, and going about her evening as if none of this concerned her. But that option had been taken from her.

Management had made it clear—they wanted the 'Azure Cobra' in the arena. Whether it was to answer for her actions, to give Asp the confrontation she was demanding, or simply to capitalise on the incident and draw eyes to the product, she didn’t care. It didn’t matter. She had been summoned, and although Safiyah detested taking orders, she cooperated for the time being. Regardless, it was a request that barely warranted her attention—if not for the sheer predictability of why.

Aspasia.

The name barely registered any weight on Safiyah’s mind. The redhead should have counted herself lucky—three weeks ago, Safiyah had given her exactly what she deserved. And if Asp had spent that time stewing in her own bitterness, plotting some grand retaliation, that was her problem. Not Safiyah’s. She had no regrets, no apologies. The humiliation, the bruises, the scars—Asp had earned them, and if she still couldn’t accept that, then she was far more fragile than Safiyah had initially thought.

Still, there was a certain predictability to this. Of course, Asp would want revenge. Anyone would. That part, at least, Safiyah could respect. If someone had done the same to her, she might have sought the same justice. But it didn’t change her reality—she had done what she felt was necessary, and she felt no guilt about it. Whatever reckoning Asp wanted, it was her burden to bear, not Safiyah’s.

As the roar of the crowd carried through the walls, Safiyah barely glanced at the monitor broadcasting the ring. Asp stood there, microphone in hand, dressed for comfort, but unmistakably tense. The speech was expected, a practised appeal to the audience’s sympathies. The cheers. The support. She played into their emotions, feeding into their righteousness. Safiyah rolled her eyes.

Then, the inevitable. Her name.

Instantly, the audience responded with a flood of jeers washing over the arena. The animosity was palpable, but Safiyah felt nothing. The venom in the Water Serpent’s voice, the hard edge behind her words—it was all so predictable. A demand. A challenge.

The ultimatum.

Safiyah exhaled slowly, rising from her seat and tugging at the hem of her loose-fitting black top, smoothing out the fabric over her midriff. A pair of blue snug jeans hugged her hips, the only sign of effort she’d made for the night. Her feet slid into her sneakers, casual and effortless, much like her approach to this entire situation.

Without hurry, without urgency, she stepped toward the curtain, barely registering the staff, giving her wary glances as she passed. Let them look. Let them whisper. They could waste their energy on whatever conclusions they wanted to draw.

Then she stepped through.

The moment she emerged, the audience erupted, their disdain echoing through the rafters. Safiyah didn’t flinch. She didn’t even blink. Her face remained impassive, apathetic, wholly uninterested in the spectacle unfolding around her. With hands tucked lazily into her pockets, she made her way down the ramp, eyes fixed on the woman waiting for her.

Asp was standing her ground, tension coiled in her muscles, bracing for whatever came next. Safiyah, in contrast, carried herself with the same disinterest she had backstage. To her, this wasn’t some climactic confrontation. This wasn’t retribution, or absolution, or anything so dramatic. It was just another night. Another woman trying to claim something she thought was owed to her.

Reaching the ring, Safiyah paused at the apron, tilting her head slightly as she studied Asp in silence. Then, slowly, deliberately, she climbed the steel steps and entered, finally standing just a few paces away.

Her gaze remained cool, unbothered, as she let the silence stretch just long enough to be nigh unbearable.

[BlackAkuma]

There she was.

It was slight, and she doubted anyone would be paying enough attention to notice, but Asp shuddered, ever so slightly, when Safiyah came through the curtains. She would hate to call it fear, but there was no better word for it. The beating she had received at the hands of this woman had been one of the most horrific things she had ever experienced, the sort of thing that would likely return to her as nightmares for the rest of her life.

She managed to keep it under control for the moment, thankfully, as the woman made her way down the ramp, looking so much different than the last time she’d seen her. Gone was the rage, the darkness, the vengeful hatred that had been present when she was beating Asp to a pulp. In its place was a cold callousness, as if the woman could not have possibly cared less about the situation. As if she would rather be anywhere else.

Indifference? That was worse than hate. Asp was ready for hate, she had prepared for it, expected it when she visualized this moment. The dismissive gaze from those mismatched eyes was withering, and when she stepped through the ropes and proceeded to say absolutely nothing, Asp fought her desire to come forth and take out her vengeance, here and now.

There were so many things she wanted to say. Things she wanted to do. But now was not the time for the latter, and if Safiyah refused to engage, then the former didn’t matter. She would keep this brief, then.

As she took a step forward, a purposeful motion, almost as if she were about to strike. Instead, she brought the microphone to her lips and spoke once more. ”You and I. Hentai Last Woman Standing. Do you accept?”

[Lightman]

There she was.

For all the bravado in her voice, for all the strength she had tried to summon, it was there—just for an instant, just barely perceptible, but there nonetheless. A shudder. A flicker of hesitation in Asp’s stance, a ghost of the memories that had undoubtedly haunted her for the past three weeks. Safiyah saw it, and she knew. Knew that no matter how much fire Asp tried to stoke inside herself, no matter how many times she told herself she was ready for this moment, some part of her still remembered what it was like to be beneath her. To be powerless. To be afraid.

And yet, Safiyah felt nothing.

Not pride. Not satisfaction. Not even amusement. Asp’s suffering was old news. She had no interest in reliving it, no desire to revel in what she had done. She had acted on instinct, on emotion, on a rage that had burned through her so completely in that moment. But now? Now it was gone. Spent. And all that remained was the quiet, detached apathy that had settled over her like a second skin.

She had already moved on. Asp clearly hadn’t.

The tension in the ring was thick and suffocating, but Safiyah did nothing to alleviate it. She stood there, still and unbothered, her mismatched gaze watching as Asp tried to hold herself together. The microphone lifted. Asp spoke sharply and to the point, and Safiyah felt, for just the briefest moment, the temptation to smirk.

Hentai Last Woman Standing.

So that was what she wanted. Not just revenge, but that. A contest that would demand endurance of the body and the will, where submission and climax were weapons just as dangerous as any hold or strike. Safiyah could see it now—Asp wanted not just to win, but to prove something. To rewrite what had happened last time, to take back control of the story that had been ripped from her hands the moment Safiyah had pinned her down and decided to make her suffer.

Interesting.

Safiyah tilted her head ever so slightly as if considering, though she already knew the answer. She walked away from Asp, letting her linger in nerve-wracking uncertainty. She poked her head out, her hand outstretched, her heterochromatic gaze demanding a microphone from a lone stagehand, without the need for words. After receiving a microphone, the bluenette walked back to where she’d left the redhead. The crowd murmured in anticipation, waiting for her to speak, but she let the silence stretch, slowly bringing the microphone to her lips.

And then, at last, she gave her answer.

A headbutt. Square on the nose.

[BlackAkuma]

It had taken Asp no small amount of time to work up the gumption for this entire confrontation. Calling someone out for a fight, even one that was deserved, went against so much of who she was, what she was, that doing so had almost felt like a betrayal at first, and she had nearly balked at the idea a few times. A part of her wanted to let this go and rise above the pettiness that seemed to pervade wrestling. To be better than all of that. To let it go.

But then she felt the pain from those lingering injuries, and the memories came back. The memories brought the rage, and she would find herself back where she started once again - broken, helpless, and determined to do something about it.

Throughout it all, she had formed an image of the way things would go when Safiyah came out, if she did indeed answer the call. She had seen this done enough times - often over far pettier problems - to know the general progression. Safiyah would come down and explain her actions, make some excuse to justify them, and the two of them would banter back and forth before the challenge was accepted. It was a formality more than anything.

Asp expected heat. Searing, blazing heat. Instead, she received a withering, wuthering cold, and the sight only made her blood boil that much hotter. Where was the woman who’d ripped her apart? Where was the rage from before? She had beaten her within an inch of her life, cursed her name, and now she acted as if the whole ordeal was barely worth her time.

Asp felt a tinge of relief when the woman finally showed some life and took a microphone. Asp stepped forward, wanting to look into her mismatched eyes, waiting on every word. She tensed up, breathed deep, readied herself mentally…

…and found herself on her back. Again.

She laid there, staring up at the sky, as the familiar scent of blood filled her nostrils. Her brain needed a moment to process what had just happened, even though she knew the sensation well. It was just impossible for her to fathom. She’d done it, again. Another headbutt.

She wasn’t sure if she was more angry with Safiyah for doing it or herself for falling for it, but either way, rage surged through her veins. ”You…you…” She stammered as she rolled over to her chest and groggily pushed her way up.

[Lightman]

There were certain moments in life where Safiyah found herself amused, though rarely in the ways others would expect.

From the moment she’d stepped through the curtain, she’d known what this little theatre was meant to be. Safiyah had almost laughed at the dramatic irony of it all: Asp’s expectations were so painfully transparent. She expected a confrontation. She expected heat. She expected a spark to meet the flame in her belly and make something beautiful—or at least explosive. It was the classic story. Retribution. Fire against fire. Pain against pain. But what Asp didn’t understand—what Safiyah had understood—was that the absence of heat could be far more agonizing than flame.

She remained silent as the challenge was issued. Her mismatched eyes, as cold and dead as twin moons, watched Asp with a look bordering on bored disinterest. Her shoulders remained slack, her posture lazy. The weight of the moment, so heavy in Asp’s chest, meant less than nothing to her. And yet...

There was still that faint flicker in Asp’s eyes, that barely contained quiver—the same tremor Safiyah had seen weeks ago as she crushed her into unconsciousness. That flicker, not her words, reminded her of her reason for being there that night. She could’ve left this to silence. Could’ve turned and gone backstage, leaving Asp to yell into the void. But no. That flicker asked to be addressed. And so, with no warning, Safiyah stepped forward—fluid, feline—and cracked her skull directly against Aspasia’s.

The sound echoed like a gunshot—a clean, brutal connection. The impact’s aftermath was a silent moment where time stretched into stillness. Asp’s body reeled, folding in on itself as if someone had cut a vital string from that puppet. Down she went—again. And Safiyah, serene and untouched, exhaled a silent breath through her nose.

Only then did she raise her hands. Reaching up, she took hold of the azure blue hair that had veiled her for the past weeks—an anonymity she’d donned to stave off attention in the days following their match—and peeled it away, strand by strand, revealing what lay beneath. Her actual hair: deep violet, cropped close to her shoulders, sharp and efficient, just like the woman herself. No more masks. No more theatre. She dropped the wig at Asp’s side like a shed skin.

“I accept.”

Two words. Uninflected. A declaration, not a threat.

Safiyah stepped away without flourish or fanfare, turning on her heel and slipping through the ropes as if the entire ordeal had already bored her into a trance. The crowd roared, half in shock, half in awe, but none of it reached her. Her mind was already elsewhere. Her body followed. She descended the ramp, shoes falling in smooth rhythm, leaving Aspasia behind on her knees, blood at her lips, rage in her voice. Just like before.

And just like before, she had no regrets.