A Matter of Family

hot

the blood

it

boils

The large man reels as the dark woman with the braids deftly pokes her finger into his eyes, his hands immediately covering them in a vain attempt to lessen the impact.

feel it

breathe it

LIVE IT

The small woman with the pale hair and skin rushes forward with a scream. A man rests upon the ground, the referee attending to his needs, and the woman places her heeled boot on the side of his head and uses it to push herself upward, launching into the air in a way reminiscent of her Shining Wizard prep.

join me, Beloved

into the darkness

eternal

The dark woman with the braids slides into the ring and pushes herself up to her feet, already running, and launches herself into the air. Both women pull back their right hands, fingers clenched in fist, and then snap them forward. The large man’s head is caught in between the two fists, dark and pale, and the crumples to the mat. Off in the distance, just beyond the edge of hearing, the cry of a falcon can be heard, a scream of defiance into the night.

The pale woman falls atop the large man, using both of her hands to hook around his knee and hoist the muscular leg up into a trapped position. In the corner of her oddly red eyes, the pale woman sees the dark woman leap away, cutting off any attempt of rescue for the large man. The man in the stripes appears and he gives final judgement to the unfortunate wrestler who befell the Falcon Punch of the Grey-Lacklans.

Three times, his hand slaps the mat.

joy

rapture

together

---

A Matter of Family

---

Sarah Selena Grey-Lacklan smiles as her car turns onto Hollywood Boulevard. Not the full Billion $$$ Smile of yore, not after a long week of international travel and little rest. Not after a suddenly full schedule of wrestling, training, and promoting. Not after Many...many...MANY...conversations with Kenzi to convince her long-suffering spouse that, no, she was NOT going to kill herself on what was quickly becoming “Fight the World Across the World, Part II.” No, this was a small smile of coyness. A smile filled with a gentle humor that few knew the normally, and naturally, angry and rage-filled Sarah could possess. A smile filled with warmth because she knew that, in but a few moments, they would be home.

For a little while, at least.

Kenzi had complained off and on over the last week, of course. Sarah had been dragging the two of them across the country, often on long road trips filled with her barely-contained chaotic driving, the two of them stuffed into their Kitt replica with little else but clothes and their electronics. Across the country to satisfy her “cravings” for food, but in reality to satisfy the drive within her to wrestle, to fight, even while on vacation. Since leaving the UGWC, their “home” wrestling company for the majority of the last two years a few weeks ago, Sarah had somehow found herself wrestling in a battle royal (she hated those), a triple threat (she hated clusters, too), a singles match (loved those!), and their recent tag in London (her favorite). All while on “vacation.” And now, with several bookings with wet paint coming to a dry right that moment, Kenzi was more tired than ever. She had, on multiple occasions, expressed her desire to simply stay at home for a bit, to stay within the Egg, to work on their non-wrestling projects, just the two of them.

But Sarah couldn’t do that.

This was her blood.

She couldn't even come straight home from London! No, they had to make a stop for a day during the week in Texas, to visit her sister at the STA Ranch. The younger...though not smaller...sister of Sarah, Angelica Vaughn was a recognized World Champion...having been the one to dethrone Sarah in their very first singles match against one another...and that meant a day of Kenzi having to deal with the two women constantly competing in one way or another, including tackling each other to the ground in a tense grapple the moment they exited the car. Even when visiting her sister, her (non-spouse) best friend, she couldn’t stop fighting.

But, now down the street from their home, the insanely expensive house they could barely afford, the smile on Sarah’s face was genuine. Beside her in the passenger seat, Kenzi was slowly awakening from her slumber, barely conscious of Sarah’s unnecessary speed and fast turns. Off Hollywood Blvd they turn, down a street which leads to a neighborhood populated by sports and entertainment professionals such as themselves. To their gate, the large wrought iron monster centered with a giant “G-L” in the center, and through the security check point. Down their private road, past the fountain, and up to the circular driveway before their ho-

“Oh, fuck my ass SIDEWAYS with a BRUSH!”

Kenzi’s sudden outburst catches Sarah by surprise and the car spins as she loses control. Sarah quickly compensates, turning the wheel as she alternates the break and accelerator, forcing the car to correct itself as it skids, until they are again facing forward.

‘Beloved! What’s wrong?!”

Kenzi simply points away from them, her finger shaking with an anger that was clear by the downturned eyebrows and purple cheeks on her face. Sarah’s eyes track Kenzi’s finger out the windshield and to their oddly shaped house, the two story circular beast of white with curving stairs, affectionately referred to as “the Egg,” until she sees what got Kenzi up in arms: Four long black cars were parked before the door, each with a personalized license plate signifying what number they were in the fleet.

Sarah’s heart fills with warmth equal to the cold rage emanating from her better half.

Sarah’s mother had come to visit!

---

---

“OW!”

Sarah’s eyes fill stars as her hands clutch the top of her head and immediately try to smooth away the pain. The searing heat spreads across her forehead, regardless of how hard she rubs, and a blur from water joins the stars obscuring her vision.


She shuts her eyes, pushing out the water and banishing the stars, and focuses inward. She doesn’t see the figure rushing towards, instead feeling it, feeling the sudden change in air pressure, feeling the soft tremble in the floorboards beneath her bare feet. As she feels a slight tingle on her body, feels air suddenly pressing against her smooth skin, she lunges to the left, diving with her arms before her, and into a forward roll. Years of gymnastics and dance, of the combination of sport and art in which her lithe younger form found so much excellence, allowed her to roll through and up to her feet, though the muscle added to her frame over the last several years still throws off her balance.

She turns

Throws up her arm

And catches a solid form with a heavy “WHACK!”

”MERDI !”

Sarah smiles as the swear, uttered through a thick French accent, is followed by a grunt. She lunges again, feeling the body, forcing her mind to imagine the room, imagine her opponent, so that her arms find the waist she knew would be there. Up goes her right arm, catching an elbow, quickly pulling it up into a hammerlock. Up goes her left arm, snaking around a chest, pushing past a pointed chin and shoving it to the side, so that she can pull it down. Her fingers find one another in the blind darkness, without need for sight, and then clench together.

”Je me rends !”

Sarah immediately releases the crossface chickenwing, then spins the body around and latches on with another grapple, though this one is far less aggressive. She squeezes the hug tight for a moment and then lets go. She backs away and slowly opens her eyes, glad to see that the stars have dissipated. Her sparing partner standing before her has a face filled with equal parts annoyance and pride.

“Well done, ma fille.”

Standing a few inches taller than herself, Aveline Lacklan could easily be a nightmare to most. Her step-mother, known in a few wrestling circles as Le Bord de Dieu, the Edge and Blade of God, had deep green eyes which were filled with a violent light touching upon madness, a pointed chin and nose which most would associate with the West’s most wicked witch, sickeningly gaunt and sharp cheeks, and a bald head full of ugly scars. Those scars also ran up and down her arms, though they were disparate from one another: The left arm featured neat and clean scars, as if sliced from a surgeon's scalpel, while the other featured jagged lines of random depth, as if etched by a razor whose blade left “dull” long in the past. Wearing an odd black bodysuit which covered her from heel to neck, minus the arms, her face popped as brightly as Sarah’s own always did.

“Oh, thank you ever SO MUCH, Mumsie!”

Sarah rolls her eyes as hard as she can, causing her step-mother’s eyes to narrow into slits. She then posits her hands on her waist, juts out her hip, and flashes her Billion $$$ Smile. Ava shakes her head and turns away, taking a moment to shake out her shoulder, and mutter under her breath...in French, of course...about the junior Lacklan being "dressed like a salope."

“I am dressed appropriately for this, thank you so much!”

Sarah wore her work out gear, of course, a scandalously small sports bra and pair of short shorts, both black with patterns of red spider webs, which were thin enough to seem to be painted on her body.

“Daddy pressed the importance of wearing as little as possible when exercising, ya know.”

She presses her chin down into her neck and drops her jaw.

”One must understand their body, Daughter. One must FEEL every muscle!”

Sarah clears her throat after mimicking her departed father’s deep baritone. Mimicry had always been a skill of hers, one which had gotten her in trouble when she was younger...particularly when she met Kenzi a few years ago...certain elder wrestlers were still mad at them for how many times they had prank called them in the guise of other coworkers...but the deep voice of Jean-Paul Lacklan always made her throat hurt.

“Ça suffit !”

Sarah nearly giggles as Ava waves her away. She Mad Frenchwoman begins to pace a little as she works out the strain in her shoulder caused by Sarah’s “Pigeonwing,” and the Blood Princess takes a moment to look around. A basement was a rarity in Southern California, but the Egg had one, and they used it as a space where they could focus on professional wrestling. A large television with a massive library array of media. A set of light weights for at-home lifts. Several pads for working on ground and chain wrestling. A heavy bag for striking.

And the place was thrashed.

“Ze woman you fight. She is ‘hardcore,’ oui? Le Champion? Let me assist you, ma fille!

Kenzi had already gone to bed...just one “Ze animals in Minneapolis! Zey should be shot, n’est-ce pas?” from her more-than-just-a-little-racist mother-in-law had sent the mixed race Kenzi out of the room as fast as possible in order to avoid punching the living hell out of the woman…and that meant the two of them working together in the basement. Sarah abhorred “garbage” wrestling, a sentiment which did not sit well with “The Champion of Chaos,” and the insistence that they work downstairs in preparation of fighting L Verez had led to a broken television, tapes and books thrown asunder, the mats displaced, and several of the weights off their racks. One of them, the 12.5 dumbbell used for bent over rear flys, had caused the stars in her eyes and the growing bump on her forehead.

“This is stupid anyway, Mumsie. It’s not some stupid hardcore match, anyway!!”

Ava whirles on her and her eyes blaze like two emeralds set aflame, but Sarah doesn’t back down.

“Mumsie, God loathes garbage wrestling! He HATES that crap! You know VERY well that he wants wrestling His most FAVORITE of sports, to be held within a ring, within the rules, with a winner triumphing over the loser by way of pinfall or submission. ANY half-trained NITWIT can do something like pull a taser out of their boot in order to shock a giant. It takes SKILL to do what I do. It takes FINESSE! Literally any first-year tryhard can bust out the barbed wire and-”

Sarah cuts off as Ava suddenly charges her with a scream. Red eyes go wide and she dodges to the left, but Ava is too quick, her rage too feral, and she wraps Sarah into a bear hug. Still screaming, she smashes her head into Sarah’s with a vicious headbutt, the crown of Ava’s bald and scarred skull connecting with the growing bruise on Sarah’s, causing the stars to return. A second. A third. Finally, Sarah is able to set her legs and use her superior strength to push Ava away with a clench and thrust of her thighs. The little space she is able to gain is quickly closed, though, as Ava grabs a handful of DVDs and throws them at her, the field of plastic blocking her view, and she gets caught in the gut with a spear and the two find themselves on the ground, with Sarah stuck on bottom.

“God loves ALL wrestling, foolish child! Use ze chaos! As I did! As your wife did! As your father did!”

Fists accompany the screamed words and Sarah does her best to cover up. Ava was right, of course, at least to an extent. Using the argument of “use the chaos to create order,” her step-mother had become the premier and most dominant champion of a company, proving at the “lesser” hardcore title was anything but. Kenzi herself had been a creative and successful hardcore champion, though secretly partially driven to prove that she was better than the bigoted Ava. And of course...her father…

“Daddy did it in SPITE of that ideal!”

Sarah was vastly superior in technique to her step-mother, something they both knew, and it didn’t take long before Sarah popped her hips, shifted her shoulders, and reversed their position. Using her thick legs to squeeze tightly on the comparatively bony hips of Ava, Sarah secures her mount and begins to lay in her own set of strikes, these open palms with far more precision than her opponent.

“Daddy was the Path! He wished to see the garbage trend ENDED! And, so, yes, he dove down into the depths of Hell in order to pull the world of wrestling out. The scars were testament to what God TRULY wants out of His children. And THAT is ME at the top of the card! That is ME headlining shows filled with adoring fans. That is ME giving the world a role model to base their entire lives off!”

Sarah pushes herself of Ava, grabs her by the arm, and pulls them both up to their feet.

“This is NOT some USELESS hardcore match, which, to this point, L has only been able to find success in. Four matches...if you can even ALL that hardcore shit a ‘match’...and she has ONLY looked good when using weapons. Those tag matches she’s been in? Good LORD did she look like a lost puppy in the middle of the freeway. Bodies flying everywhere, her eyes wide as Babmi’s mom in the middle of the fire, and a complete ineptitude to do ANYTHING other than just kinda be there. And on Monday? This isn’t some shitty hardcore match throughout the arena. Its not on some planet or in space or in some other dumbass fantasy realm where she needs to exist in order to be relevant. It is in MY arena. In a singles match in the main event. In the place where I exCEL!

“L…dumb name, especially when you add ‘seven’ to it...since ‘L Seven’ literally means ‘square’...what a loser...is someone who doesn’t know WHO she is, WHERE she belongs, or WHAT she’s doing. But me? I know exactly who I am. A second generation STAR who is screaming out of the gate after some rest and relaxation. A WORLD CLASS wrestler who is superior in EVERY way. Genetically. Spiritually. Worldly. And when she is under the spotlight and squaring off against me, I am going to make her listless tag matches look like brilliant bouts of decisive action. And ANOTHER thing! I-”

Suddenly, the sound of a woman sighing in passion fills the air, and Sarah’s pale cheeks redden as Ava’s face tightens. She clears her throat and quickly walks over to her custom YSL athletic bag and fishes out her phone to see what the notification sound was for.


Sarah’s red cheeks flush all the way to scarlet at the accompanying picture that came with the text from Kenzi...a picture of what was waiting for her...one of Kenzi’s greatest pleasures in life was reminding Ava, as loudly as possible, about their sexual leanings...and she quickly hides her phone before turning back to her step-mother.

“Wow, it is SO late, would you LOOK at the time! Been a LONG day and what a GREAT training session this was, Musmie! Lets get you to the guest bedroom!”

Ava didn’t bother to hide the shiver of disgust that wracked her body.