The locker room air bit at Charlie Turpin’s exposed skin, raising goosebumps that had nothing to do with the temperature. Anxiety vibrated through her frame, settling as a nauseous knot behind her navel. She gnawed on a fingernail, chipping away the polish, while her eyes darted between the two women preparing to march into war. If she didn’t know better, she would have assumed the schedule listed her name for tonight instead of theirs. She supposed it did only say The Katakura Kiss Club.
Charlie's nervous eyes darted one way. There, Ecaterina dominated the space before the body-length mirror, her vivid eyes locking onto her reflection with the intensity of a sniper sighting a target. She didn't look nervous. But, the mirror revealed the cracks in her typical composure. Charlie watched E’s fingers hover over the silver clip in her hair. She slid it a millimeter to the left. Then a millimeter to the right. Then back again. Charlie counted eight different adjustments, and yet the clip ended up exactly where it began. Yeah, she felt a little nervous, which made Charlie more nervous.
Surprisingly, Bobbie, for once, soothed her rather than annoyed her. The usually boisterous Southerner stood close, her hands kneading the tension out of E's traps with strong, rhythmic squeezes. She kept her voice low, and Charlie caught only fragments - “...already stars... built for this... just muscle and bone, sugar...” - but the words worked. E leaned into the touch, her breathing deepening, her frantic grooming slowing under Bobbie’s grounding presence. She even swatted Bobbie lightly, once, which filled Charlie with a sense of normalcy.
Zelda... did Zelda things. The German marched behind them, steps so loud that someone had come to the door to check if anything had gone wrong a couple minutes earlier. Zelda swung her arms in violent arcs, loosening the heavy muscle of her shoulders, while a stream of guttural German spilled from her lips. It sounded less like a pep talk and more like a curse upon their enemies. If Goti felt fear, she drowned it in a wild-eyed thirst for havoc.
It made perfect sense. For the Kiss Club's debut, they sent their vanguard. This wasn't a sprint but a "First to Five Falls" match against established heavyweights. They needed Zelda’s raw horsepower as their own near-heavyweight and E’s height and tactical brain. Charlie felt a surge of relief that she remained on the sidelines for this one - her stomach did a somersault just thinking about the "first time" jitters - but that relief paled against the fierce, protective pride swelling in her chest. They looked incredible. They looked dangerous.
A knock on the door frame shattered the quiet. "Two minutes."
The warning lit the powder keg. Bobbie erupted.
“That’s it! Look at you two! Hotter than a two-dollar pistol and twice as dangerous! Go kick some ass!”
Charlie, for her part, went for anxious little hugs where it felt like the two comforted her more than she comforted them. ...Well, more E's. Zelda nearly squeezed the life out of Charlie.
Then the two turned to each other. They exchanged no hug - just a long, hard stare between partners and a slap of hands that cracked like a gunshot. Some sort of arcane pact, Charlie suspected.
The bass of their entrance theme began to thump as the four of them crossed through gorilla together, and Charlie almost had to pry Bobbie off of both of them. As it was, the Southerner managed to give them both a slap on the ass before they exited. Charlie joined Bobbie in clinging to the curtain's edge, peeking out like kids watching a horror movie together as their teammates stepped into the lights.
Zelda exploded through the smoke first. She attacked the ramp, basically. She stomped, thrashing her head to the beat, screaming at the front row until veins popped in her neck. She reached the steel steps and kicked them, the metal ringing out a warning before she vaulted over the top rope, pacing the canvas like a berserker waiting for blood.
In stark contrast, E flowed. She followed with a runway model’s poise and strut but a gothic killer's eyes, slapping a few hands on the way. She approached the ring and slid between the ropes with a terrifying, silent grace, rising to her full height to flick her hair out at the arena and act as the statuesque, graceful calm in opposition to Zelda's storm.
The crowd noise slammed into Charlie, even as she was enamored by their entrances - they cheered them. They loved them already.
Charlie felt heat prickling behind her eyes. They were actually doing it. Freezer had opened the door, but they had managed to squeeze through it. She might have let a tear slip, but Bobbie grabbed her shoulders, shaking her with manic excitement before dragging her out into the dim lights toward ringside.
They... they had arrived. And Charlie couldn't be happier.
Spoiler
