KARA SCENE vs. VALE [Dark Match]

We open on Vale, seated on a black bench in a mostly white room. She's wearing ratty jeans, a black tube top, and most noticeably, a smock, splattered with black and grey paint. There's a little on her face, just under her right eye - a little more, trickling slowly down her neck. There is canvas on either side of her, both of them facing away from the camera so that the framework is exposed.

Vale is staring again. Should someone have been on the receiving end of that look, they might have felt like an animal - a frog under a scalpel, though, or a lobster inches above boiling water.

"Hello!"

The cheery greeting is jarring. On Vale's lips, it looks as though she's speaking a foreign language. The tone is clumsy, like she fumbled it out of her mouth on the way to stating it. If the disconnect registers to her, though, it's not clear in the way she conducts herself. She jams her hands into the pockets of her jeans and leans into the back of the bench, stretching her long legs out.

"I just wanted to start by saying how it really is an honour to be here in Elysium Pro Wrestling. The same way it is an honour to be conducting my first match with one Kara Scene. A respected competitor who has consistently, and some would say quietly, ground her way into a position to prove herself. I see a lot of myself in that, to be honest."

Would you believe a snake if it told you it used to have legs?

"With that out of the way, though, I feel like we have very little in common, Kara, and that disappoints me already. I was rather hoping I could begin my examination with someone more familiar. I know myself better than anyone, you see. It's much easier to start with that - to work my way out from here-"

She glances down at her smock, which does appear to have a rudimentary grey heart splattered onto its chest.

"-and end in the middle, so to speak. As with any puzzle, it's best to start at the corners and work your way in."

Vale pauses for a beat, then draws her hands to her mouth in surprise. She hasn't blinked, yet. That's where the unease seeping into the shot comes from. It's not overtly obvious, not yet, she's too animated, there's a lot going on in the frame, but it's there, it's unmistakable. She hasn't b-

Blink.

Was it a trick of the imagination, then?

"Oh, but where wrestling might be a series of algorithms to me, you disagree, correct? Kara Scene. The wrestler who would turn physicality into art. I must admit that my mentor thought similarly to you, although his way of expressing his art was...much more Van Gogh. I must also concede that the concept has appealed to me before. It would be wonderful if this sport could be packed neatly into an analogy like that. Wrestling is art, except when it isn't, correct? And you'd be the judge of that?"

Vale reaches over to the canvas on her left, and turns it over. It's not the most cohesive painting, but there's a rudimentary talent on display. It's a landscape, replete with a starry grey, black, and white sky, a farmhouse, some sloppily executed blades of grass. A pastoral of monochrome. 

"Tell me, Kara, what do you see here? Because I see something that many people would suggest was compelling. At the very least, I see something that my college professor would have called 'seething political commentary' or something equally annoying."

A small smile and a laugh. Does she close her eyes when she laughs? We'll keep a closer eye on it next time. For now, they're back on the camera, back on us.

"What you see is your decision, though, Kara. We each interpret things differently. Who is to say a shot from a steel chair is any less poetic than a diving back flip over the ropes? Some wrestlers hang out in packs; others hang people in small groups. Which is correct? I bet you had an answer, just now. I bet it came right to your lips without a second thought."

A snarl. Steepled hands underneath a chin, supporting a face that just won't look away.

"I hate that about you, Kara. It's not just someone who wears their heart on their sleeve. It's that the heart looks like this-"

A gesture at the grey heart again.

"-shitty, small, close-minded little thing right here. What good is there in even displaying that in the first place? Why give away your secrets when there's so little to give?"

Vale pauses. Her breath seems a little ragged.

"Forgive me. Perhaps there is more to you than what there appears to be. I'm guilty of being quick to judge. You're a talented little girl and I think you will help me make the kind of statement I want to make heading into the lion's den that is Elysium. We can even make some of that art you're so fond of together. I'd love to paint with your eye with your eyes-"

The breathing slows, and Vale finally averts her gaze. For a second. Then she's back, but the bench seems a little further away.

"-watching me, Kara. Let me show you just how colourful this sport can really be. Let your limbs be the brushes in my first masterpiece in Elysium, and let me splay the truth of your talent out on the mat for the world to see. But really, Kara, I want you to know that this is much more intimate. This will be seen by many but shared by us. And I really, really want you to do this for me, okay?"

Vale turns the second canvas around. It's a single, rudimentary eye, her own, perhaps, painted in grey.

"Show me something, Kara. I want to see you."