Quarter Finals: Jeremy Starling vs. Sarah Lacklan

CLANK!

Weights fall to the floor, echoing in the gymnasium’s private room like the peel of thunder.

CLANK!

A barbell with several 45-lbs plates, the “big plates” crash to the floor with that simultaneously deep and high-pitched crash. Men and women throughout the GrayFoote L.A. gym turned their heads with each crash, though they knew not to ever both the oddity that often reserved that private room. She had been gone for much of the last month, but the Vampire of Lacklanland West had returned.

Sarah Selena Grey-Lacklan carried a surprising amount of muscle on her small frame. The albino had pale skin and platinum hair, but her eyes were the rarest sort, without even a touch of melanin and thus shone as red in the light. Her ghostly appearance, part of what gave life to the legend of the vampire, was often punctuated by distinctive wings painted on her face to bring out those eyes and a seemingly endless array of clothes, many from her own Renati “Firestarter” line, but not this day. This day, the woman who some knew as the Red Queen was prepared for battle and training, prepared for the fight which had consumed most of her 19 years on the planet. Hair pulled back in a braid made her high cheekbones pop even more, and a simplistic attire of matching black and red sports apparel that hugged her curves, her feet wrapped in white tape.

The sweat-covered body was a young bodybuilder’s dream: While her upper body was tight muscles, a four-pack of abs visible, her lower body was a mass of dense muscle, the quads and hamstrings thick and round, the calves the size of softballs. Five years of lifting heavy, most of it under the watchful eye of a father that was as much lifter as he was wrestler, had taught her effective technique and dedication, lessons which she applied to her life. But lifting and in-ring work were not the only things taught to her by her father or her trainer, both former world champions and members of halls of fame.

“Use your mind, Daughter. Outwit. Outthink. The battle may already be over before an elbow is thrown.”

Words of the masked man she had traveled the world with as a child.

“You will never be their size, dearie. You will never be as big or strong, no matter how many of these dumb weights you lift. Be more agile in body AND mind. That make sense, Little Lacklan?”

Indeed, the words of the woman she had idolized since she was 12 had proven important. She could never be stronger…but she could be smarter. So she was. The colorful character online, the cheerleader who pushed her wife’s Lingerie Football League team, the vlogger with the Fang Gang. The Cool Kid with the sunglasses indoors.

The fake Sarah.

Many fell for it, thought she was just the dizzy albino, the blonde, more worried about shoes , t-shirt sales, and typo-turned-catchphrases than becoming a success. And in her nine month career, most of those had fallen prey to the reality of the second generation star. Many had shock on their faces when the 5’2” girl kicked them with tree-trunk legs, wrapped them into a painful submission, or blew mist into their face. More had been sent to the Abyss than her detractors could lower themselves to admit.

Had people in her new company fallen for her tricks? Had they been distracted by the flash and flair of the heiress? Had any seen through the veil of misdirection?

She doubted much that Holland did. The man seemed to be every shirtless, ghetto-ripped psychophrenic arguing with themselves and punching at the air that she had ever seen on the streets of Hollywood. He was fixated on a man seemingly forgotten by time, the ill-named KEG, and was possibly not even aware that he was in a tournament. The aforementioned KEG, meanwhile, was assumedly trapped between worlds and time in his drunkenness. A once proud career was now relegated to signing up for tournaments while being blacked out and not remembering the next day. What little she had seen of him had given her the impression of a man so inebriated that he could understand the intricacies of how any company ANYWHERE could have thought Courtney Leinart was a viable world’s champion. And Sarah knew well from her own experiments how drunk one had to be for that.

She supposed that both K-Remix, despite the silliness of his name, and Archer, despite the silliness of his sideburns, were both passably intelligent. Their words and demeanor were as silly as their respective names and haircuts, but their wit showed through in their handling of people online. She and her wife delighted in a game called “Two Hawt Chicks Being Dumb on Twitter” and both of those perspective opponents seemed to do the same. And while she knew little of Archer’s history outside of his tired and over-exposed usage of “Greatest of All Time,” she had personally seen K-Remix win a match just the day or two prior. They were threats.

Thunder…

Sarah sighed inwardly.

Redd Thunder was the epitome of the shame of the business: Full hype and little follow-through. He was far more intelligent than he allowed himself to seem, and she loved him for that, but she doubted he would remember that he had to WIN matches.

Starling and Corvin were smart, even in spite of their failings in verbal battles. But Corvin’s body was close to broken, much like her father’s had been at the end, and she knew how to exploit that. No quarter or mercy. Starling likened himself an intelligent man, but she had seen many in his mold as she grew in the harsh environs of Lacklanland: Over-proud underachievers. Smart, yes. Witty? They thought so. They thought wrong.

The real Sarah, clangs and bangs the weights, a smile on her pretty, sweaty face.