L.A.W. - League of Anime Wrestling

This was worse than it had been the last time. Asp was sure of it. When Safiyah beat her that time, it had been a mostly physical experience. It had been horrifying, yes, but that terror came from simply being put into a situation she hadn't expected, something she couldn't even fathom before. It was always going to be a bad time, but it was nothing she couldn't recover from. Wounds could heal. Bruises would disappear. She had been mended, repaired. She was made whole.

Not this time. This time, the wounds Safiyah inflicted were so much deeper, her venom that much more potent.

If she had just left Asp like this, she might have tried to get up. Yes, she was spent, but her body still worked. There was enough strength in her to rise, certainly with the aid of the ropes. She could’ve made it up, and she would’ve attempted, if only for the satisfaction of angering Safiyah.

But then her opponent spoke, and her words cut deeper than blades. This had been an utter failure. This whole thing was supposed to be her revenge, her swansong, and it had wound up being an unmitigated disaster. The only thing she proved was that Safiyah was truly her superior, as the woman bested her in every way imaginable - outmaneuvered, outflanked, outfought. Now, she was left to rot here, a shivering wreck, a husk of the woman she thought she was.

Why get up? What was the point?

Asp lay there as the referee began her count, beginning the longest ten seconds of her life. Every moment passed by like an hour, giving her ample time to stew and take in the defeat. She couldn't even muster the strength to look Safiyah’s way. She could feel that mismatched gaze on her. Those haunting spheres peered at her in the darkness she closed her eyes.

”8! 9! 10!”

And there it went. The bell rang, the crowd erupted into a discordant mix of cheers and jeers, and all Asp could do was close her eyes and be still, wishing she could open them and be somewhere, anywhere, else.

There was no pleasure in this victory. Not really. Safiyah watched Asp’s form crumpled before her like a discarded marionette and felt…nothing. Not the satisfaction of triumph, nor the bitterness of vengeance fulfilled. Just the hollow, enduring weight of inevitability. The outcome was predetermined from the start. Asp may have told herself this was her reckoning, her redemption. But Safiyah knew better. Knew what kind of woman lay behind that serpentine bravado. She was prey that had dressed itself in venom, thinking the performance would pass for power.

The noise of the arena was a dull roar in her ears, distant and meaningless. That crowd didn't understand what had happened here, not truly. They saw domination, spectacle, heat. But what had unfolded was quieter, deeper.

Some would wonder if Asp is fighting for the thought of rising, rather than the motion itself. Her limbs hadn’t twitched. There was a time when Safiyah would’ve watched that struggle with interest, maybe even admiration. But tonight, there was only detachment. If Asp had pulled herself up, reached for the ropes, spat one last word of defiance… it would have changed nothing. She had already lost the match.

Safiyah stood still as the count rang out, cool and clinical. She didn’t need to move. Her work was done. The seconds crawled by, and she felt no urgency, no eagerness. Just the slow, creeping confirmation of a story she’d already written in her head. Upon the count of ten, the bell’s sound was barely a ripple across her mind. She looked down once, just once, at the heap of womanhood that had dared call itself her rival.

“Pathetic.”

The word left her lips without venom, without emphasis. A simple statement of fact dropped like a stone into the silence between them. It didn’t need to be cruel. It just needed to be true. And in that moment, it was the truest thing she could say. The referee tried to raise her arm in some attempt to present a winner to a crowd she couldn’t care less about, but Safiyah sidestepped him without a glance. Applause and booing blended into one irrelevant cacophony behind her. She didn’t slow. Didn’t wave. Didn’t turn her head. This wasn’t a performance.

It was a reckoning. And she was done.