Post by Super Smash Cat Inc on May 31, 2021 21:44:51 GMT -5
Cat only owned one non-Eeeveeltion themed, an Etsy-custom piece in purple that proclaimed in brightly colored Mario font that WALUIGI FUCKS. The Baltimore locals and tourists visiting the Inner Harbor noticed the words, but not the Carnage World Champion. Cat kept the hood up and buried her hands in the pockets, steeling herself against the brisk 8am Atlantic winds. They always felt less enabling than the Pacific breezes back home. Los Angeles was built on pretending, by pretending. Baltimore was a cold, crabby dose of reality - not unlike an exposed turnbuckle to the face.
She wore her championship around her waist, hidden by her hoodie. In theory, it meant she was the best wrestler in the world - the Carnage world at least. Champion of the Legion, first of her name, mother of slash fic. But following the attack by Ragdoll at Chaos 109, even her reserve of fake confidence was dashed. Catalina Cortes’ best case scenario was to be the last Carnage World Champion. The one with the belt when they shut the doors of the arena for good, assuming she could beat Ragdoll. Doctors cleared her to compete, after she told a little white lie about the frequency of her dizzy spells. Another mild one struck, as she leaned over the guard rail. The wave was gone in an instant, but still strong enough to leave her leaning on the rail for support. Ring ropes could keep her steady if one struck at Underground, but Ragdoll would read her weakness in a nanosecond and take full advantage. One opening would be the end. Another good shot to the head and she wouldn’t walk out of Carnage’s final show. Her career career could be over that same night.
The waves crashed against the docks, dark blue in the early morning. Cat wasn’t sure how deep the water was, but she couldn’t see the bottom. That was good enough. If her stealth was high enough, none of the onlookers would notice her, her cargo, or the heinous task before her. A visit to the National Aquarium later might lift her spirits, but then Cat recalled her moral objection to the imprisonment of bottlenose dolphins. She sighed and resigned herself to a future McFlurry instead.
The championship came loose from her waist easily, not being designed for the lightest of lightweights. Cat unstrapped the title and slipped it from beneath her hoodie. One last time, she stared at the face plate, studying her name on the company’s top title. When her lip shook, she bit into it. “No way I’m losing this freaking thing.”
It was an act of sheer pettiness, a denial of absolute victory to her opponent. Ragdoll might defeat Cat at Underground, but if she wanted the championship then she could fish it out of the fucking ocean. Cat held it over the rail and listened to the waves crash for a few more seconds. She tasted blood from her lip, unaware she was still biting it. “See ya, bro.” She let go and the Carnage World Championship seemed to hang in the air for a moment. When it fell, it eased into the waves like some doomed ship. Cat watched it sink, a great loss stirring within her, like when Leonardo DiCaprio didn’t squeeze in next to Kate Winslet on that door when there was plenty of room. The dreadful deed completed, Cat took a step back. Perhaps she would get a McFlurry and not tell anyone she saw the dolphins.
Even when Cat stepped back, she noticed her hands still gripped the rail and her eyes locked onto the spot where the title sank. “What am I doing?” she asked. Onlookers gave her a wide berth and didn’t answer. “What the fuck am I doing?”
“Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck,” she said, pulling her hoodie off and dropping it to the pier in a purple pile. There was no time to remove anything else, and Cat refused to make herself more of a spectacle. She would later regret keeping her limited edition Yoshi sneakers on. Unplagued by dizziness, her usual confidence in her agility returning, she springboarded off the rail and dove into the water. She struck the spot where her belt sank like it was a bullseye, and pushed through the abyss. The championship called to her, glowing like whatever the magical sword was called in that boring-ass Hobbit movie. Years of swimming lessons and beach going spurred her to the bottom of the bay. Her hands clawed through muck and sand and litter to find the championship. Once her hands were on it, she planted her feet on the harbor floor and launched herself back to the surface. When her head emerged from the water, she was gasping for air, utterly unsure of how long the retrieval took. There was a disappointing lack of ladders back to the pier.
The onlookers were more invested when Cat shimmied back to the pier via the crossbeams underneath. The Carnage World Championship was strapped across her chest and she left a trail of grimy salt water in her wake. Shivering, she collected her hoodie, not wanting to soak it but also not wanting to spend another second in only wet clothes. An aging hipster looked up from a smartphone, googling the depth of the bay. “About thirty feet,” Cat said.
Fifteen minutes later, she sat in a McDonald’s booth, one egg McMuffin in her hands, with four more to go. She was still shivering, though this time it was from a combination of chilliness and fast food infused delight. When a McDonald’s employee asked if she was alright, Cat laughed through a mouthful of egg and bread and sausage. “Nope!”
An hour later Cat was showered and still wet, but less grimy, minus a green tint at the tips of her hair. Her phone was nestled in a bed of rice, after getting waterlogged during her harbor dive, a techno-necromantic ritual to grant it an unholy second life. The Carnage World Championship dried out on her bathroom towel rack. All in all, it was an abysmal day and not even noon. Nevertheless, she streamed.
“Welcome back to Super Smash Cat,” she mumbled, voice turning to a digital garble via her headphone mic. On screen a pixelated version of her pummeled wave after wave of pixelated Ragdolls, each with different color schemes to note stat and rarity level. The orange and blue ones seemed particularly dangerous, as they broke through Cat’s Dragon Feet attack with ease and began swarming. “This is the River Kitty Girls mod of River City Girls. Most recent patch, so it’s me against Ragdoll this time. Correction, Ragdolls. Oh, they’re ganging up on me. I’m stun-locked. Ya-friggin-hoo.” Her voice lacked any on-camera professionalism, coming out instead as a monotone of impending defeat.
The onslaught continued, before the screen froze when pixel Cat had only a sliver of health left. The image stayed for a few seconds, before the game crashed back to her desktop. “Great modding work, ten-out-of-ten. How’s it going, chat? I see ZedHotleysWeiner is back and he says… He wishes I could crash… into a tree. Cool, bro. Considering the state of my life right now, that would make it marginally worse. Good looking out, I’m gonna eat another egg McMuffin.” Cat backed up her bold claim, reaching into a McDonald’s bag to retrieve a room temperature breakfast sandwich. She did not bother to mute the microphone amid her chewing, and the ASMR fans delighted.
The video game portion of her Twitch stream abandoned, a gif of a dabbing seal took its place. Cat didn’t bother to bring another one up, as she greedily clutched her food with both hands, like a covetous, soggy squirrel. “So I don’t know about you guys, but I’m in just in an awesome goddamn place mentally. Got concussed by Ragdoll, who wouldn’t love that? Had to miss the last episode of Chaos ever, also super cool. It’s like this title is cursed. I beat Sloane Taylor via the shenaniganiest of shenanigans and after that I found out the entire company is done. Either I lose the championship to Ragdoll at the final Carnage show, a nice wet fart to punctuate my reign. Or I win and I’m always going to be the champion that killed the company. Whether that’s true or not, people will say it for the rest of my career.”
The talk-chewing continued, as Cat took a larger bite of the McMuffin than any sane person should. “Ragdoll has kicked my ass twice now, and given me my first official injury. I once read on a bathroom stall that depression is anger without enthusiasm. The anger is definitely there. Usually that’s motivational for me to the point of being a cliche. Either I get mad enough to kick some heads or I get a pep talk from a person who says they always believed in me or whatever. Reactive over proactive. But staring down the barrel of what could be my greatest of failures, I’m anxious, I’m nauseous, and I’m somehow in spite of it all still hungry.”
“It’d be a really good time for Marlowe to show up and call me the biggest punk bitch,” Cat said, shrugging. “Then after a pause he adds, ‘That I’ve ever had the pleasure of teaming with.’ Like a really good time. Such a good time that if you’re watching this stream, dude, maybe take a hint.”
The McMuffin finished, Cat stared mournfully at the wrapper. It was crumbled into a ball and thrown behind her. “Or don’t. Whatever. Who gives a shit? This is Super Smash Cat, signing off.”
The stream ended.
The rice did a reasonable job of reviving Cat’s phone from the dead. When it came back online she fumbled eagerly for it, and the ensuing slew of missed texts and voicemails. Two popped up from her father.
“Hey, kiddo, we’re not going to be able to make it to the show. League business. When you get back to LA we’ll go to that lobster poptart place. Good luck! Love you!”
“What is WAP???”
Not wanting to answer, ever at any point in her life, she set her phone back on the bed of rice. Over the last month she received an onslaught of questions from her family, extended and otherwise about what she was doing after Carnage closed. Cat told them she would wait to announce her decision, because she hadn’t made a decision but wanted to sound decisive. Free agency was a daunting prospect, but less destructive to her remaining self-esteem than using family connections to secure her next job in the wrestling business. She was officially a world champion, at least for a few more days. Soon enough, they’d be rolling in, Cat attempted to convince herself.
Increasingly unsure about her professional future in a post-Ragdoll world, Cat looked at her options. Wrestling and streaming were her only major skills, the end result of her Pasadena and lucha libre-adjacent bubble upbringing, but her Twitch money was hardly a major income source. On a routine visit to the Starbucks she once frequented with Kit, a bolt of inspiration struck her. “You guys hiring?” she asked, before slurping her mocha.
The Starbucks employee looked at her somberly, eyes blackening. “We’re always hiring.”
“Holy shit,” Cat said. “Is this like some Shining thing? Am I dead?”
Cat blinked, and the employee returned to normal. That night, she decided, she would get the fabled eight hours of sleep. “No,” the Starbucks employee said. “We just have a high turnover. You can apply online.”
“You got an application?” Cat asked, trying not to betray her eagerness. Having never filled out a job application, the novelty intrigued her, though she worried that admitting so would make her seem like some privileged scion of wrestling royalty. The employee didn’t bother hiding his irritation, but he obliged all the same. After rummaging in the counter beneath the register, he emerged with a nigh forgotten form. He blew the dust off and slid it across the counter. Cat grabbed the form and a pen from the counter, but her progress was halted by the pen’s security chain. Undaunted, she wrapped it around her hand for leverage and yanked the chain free, claiming it and the pen as her own. There was a resigned sigh from across the counter.
She sat and went to work, preparing for her life after Carnage. The information was all basic enough, even for a world champion. Through the availability and work history and legal eligibility for employment, only a single field eluded her. Cat tapped the application with her stolen pen and called back across the counter. “Can I use Johnny Vegas as a reference?”
The Carnage World Championship got the prime bench spot in Cat’s dressing room. Cat took the floor instead, opting to catch the championship over her shoulder with the phone on her camera. She kept to her casual attire, not wanting to tarnish her ring gear for the evening, but the WALUIGI FUCKS hoodie was still her most incognito wardrobe option. The hood stayed up, and she offered a peace sign to open her statement, only then noticing that her nails would need painting before her match.
“Sup, Legion?” she said, trying to muster up whatever remained of her stage presence and intensity. It sat in a well deep within her, waiting to be fished out like some Hyrulean minigame.
“Since this could unofficially be my last promo, like if Ragdoll kills me, I just wanted to say some things on the way out. Foremost, bury me at Nintendo World in Osaka. If my skeleton can leap out of the lava in Bowser’s castle, that would be ideal. Leave my Master Sword replica to the Avenger. Seems like he’d get some use out of it, and I owe him one for preventing my almost-murder. But now that the last will and testament of Catalina Cortes is out of the way…”
She lowered the hood, shaking her bleached hair free. The green tips from her harbor trip were gone. Her teeth gritted, sliding into her lip for a moment and then back. “Congratulations, Ragdoll,” Cat said, eyes darting from the camera for several seconds, before reluctantly going back. “If you were trying to rattle me, consider me rattled. I can do a six-hundred-and-thirty degree splash, with a midair adjustment to land on my feet if the target moves. So, for someone who can move like I can, being too dizzy to walk across a room is pretty terrifying. As is the prospect of retiring at the age of twenty-one because the bell in my brain has been irreparably rung. My favorite things are, in order: pizza and yaoi tied for third, video games in second and wrestling at number one. If I can’t wrestle, I might not be dead, but you’ve pretty much killed Catalina Cortes.”
“Or at least this version of Catalina Cortes,” said Cat, shrugging, her face twisting as if she smelled something rancid. “Six months from now my life could be unrecognizable. I don’t know what’s on the horizon for me, but after a month of swinging between panic attacks and crippling depression, I’ve thought about trying something different because it seems like anything different would be an improvement. I wish I could be the champion who rallies the troops and yanks Carnage from the jaws of death, but my best case scenario is being the champion when we shut the lights off.”
She reached back, seizing the Carnage World Championship. The title was once again polished to pristinity. Like Cat, the traces of its bay dive were untraceable. “I hope I was a good one, but your mileage may vary. Since I won this, I wanted to represent what Carnage Wrestling was at its best. We all have our own definitions. The usual blood, sweat, tears. Epic showdowns between good and evil.” Cat coughed. “Sweet cosplay.” She coughed again. “Violence, drama, and the best wrestling you can find in a Baltimore warehouse. I never thought I’d feel so at home in what’s basically a huge storage unit.”
Cat examined the championship, running her index finger across the nameplate. “Tonight I hope I’m the champion everybody wants me to be, the champion everyone deserves, pick your cliche from the cliche buffet. If I’m not, then you only have to deal with me for one more night anyway, so suck it the fuck up. You’re bumming everyone out. Why do you always do this?”
“I know most of all, you’ll miss how consistently funny I am and how I deftly use humor to deflect things that truly hurt my soul,” Cat said, nodding in agreement with herself. “Thanks for the love, thanks for the hate. Thanks for the apathy, as long as it was the actively-shrugging-at-the-product-you-pretend-you’re-not-interested-in-while-still-consuming-that-product and not the disengaging-to-consume-other-media kind.”
She exhaled, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I swear I have mic skills.” Cat took a breath and regained her composure. Her voice contorted into an approximation of sincerity, coming from someone utterly uncomfortable with sincerity. “If this is goodbye, then I hope I made you care about an annoying goober from Pasadena with unmatchable fashion sense. I hope I played some small part in making you love this shit as much as I do.”
Her eyes clamped shut, fighting back a wave of emotion. They were red when she opened them. “And maybe, I’ll see you,” she continued, struggling. “At a movie, sneak preview. You’ll show up, and walk by. On the arm, of that guy. And I’ll smile, and you’ll wave. We’ll pretend, it’s okay. The charade, it won’t last. When he’s gone, I won’t come back.” The outpouring of words done, Cat bit enough her lip, the red of her eyes clearly from an attempt to stifle laughter.
“Finally did a song lyrics promo,” Cat said, holding her arm up in triumph. She adjusted the camera, getting a close up shot of her face to offer one last smile. The Carnage World Championship rested on her shoulder.
“Well, I guess this is growing up.”
“Bro,” said Catalina, several hours later. Her surroundings and attire had changed. Abandoning cosplay, she was in orange and black gear reminiscent of her debut. A callback to her humble origins of spoiler alerts and one-person crowd heckling in the early pandemic. “You thought that was it?”
She laughed, demeanor shifted from earlier. Self-assured and show-ready. Her ring gear was impeccable, complete with a matching sequined robe that did little to obscure the championship she wore across her chest, shoulder to waist like a golden sash. Her makeup was flawless, her nails a pristine black, her hair half-teased, half-braided. The cheers of the Legion echoed through the corridors of the arena, the final Carnage show already well underway. Cat stalked through the halls, posture and body language altered, a superficial show of dramatic overconfidence meant to intimidate(or a fake-it-till-you-make-it attempt to psyche herself up.)
“Yeah,” Cat said, her promo voice tilting into a tone of casual conversation for all of a second. “Been a rough month, but wait until my music hits. Wait until the bell rings. When I fire up, when I hit my groove, when I kick the greasepaint off Ragdoll’s pasty face. Yes, I know that insult doesn’t make sense, because her face is only pasty because of the greasepaint, but you get it. I will kick her, and when I do, she will be kicked very, very hard.”
“When my doctor cleared me to compete,” Cat said, her swagger threatening to overwhelm her camera phone. “I had him go ahead and write Ragdoll a death certification. When I punt her head into the tenth row, and someone turns it into the world’s most horrifying jack o’lantern, and then they sell it on Etsy - I want my cut of the fucking money.”
Cat stopped herself. “Too long, don’t read version is that I’m about to murder Ragdoll. Don’t worry, in the ring, it’s legal. Here we go, Legion. One last time. I am your champion - Catalina Cortes. If you ever forget me, I’ll punch you.”
Cat smooched the camera, her lipstick marring the view. Through some twist of conspiratorial generosity from the universe itself, the mark framed her face perfectly. She gave the Legion a final wink. The wink was so awkward that she immediately regretted it.
She wore her championship around her waist, hidden by her hoodie. In theory, it meant she was the best wrestler in the world - the Carnage world at least. Champion of the Legion, first of her name, mother of slash fic. But following the attack by Ragdoll at Chaos 109, even her reserve of fake confidence was dashed. Catalina Cortes’ best case scenario was to be the last Carnage World Champion. The one with the belt when they shut the doors of the arena for good, assuming she could beat Ragdoll. Doctors cleared her to compete, after she told a little white lie about the frequency of her dizzy spells. Another mild one struck, as she leaned over the guard rail. The wave was gone in an instant, but still strong enough to leave her leaning on the rail for support. Ring ropes could keep her steady if one struck at Underground, but Ragdoll would read her weakness in a nanosecond and take full advantage. One opening would be the end. Another good shot to the head and she wouldn’t walk out of Carnage’s final show. Her career career could be over that same night.
The waves crashed against the docks, dark blue in the early morning. Cat wasn’t sure how deep the water was, but she couldn’t see the bottom. That was good enough. If her stealth was high enough, none of the onlookers would notice her, her cargo, or the heinous task before her. A visit to the National Aquarium later might lift her spirits, but then Cat recalled her moral objection to the imprisonment of bottlenose dolphins. She sighed and resigned herself to a future McFlurry instead.
The championship came loose from her waist easily, not being designed for the lightest of lightweights. Cat unstrapped the title and slipped it from beneath her hoodie. One last time, she stared at the face plate, studying her name on the company’s top title. When her lip shook, she bit into it. “No way I’m losing this freaking thing.”
It was an act of sheer pettiness, a denial of absolute victory to her opponent. Ragdoll might defeat Cat at Underground, but if she wanted the championship then she could fish it out of the fucking ocean. Cat held it over the rail and listened to the waves crash for a few more seconds. She tasted blood from her lip, unaware she was still biting it. “See ya, bro.” She let go and the Carnage World Championship seemed to hang in the air for a moment. When it fell, it eased into the waves like some doomed ship. Cat watched it sink, a great loss stirring within her, like when Leonardo DiCaprio didn’t squeeze in next to Kate Winslet on that door when there was plenty of room. The dreadful deed completed, Cat took a step back. Perhaps she would get a McFlurry and not tell anyone she saw the dolphins.
Even when Cat stepped back, she noticed her hands still gripped the rail and her eyes locked onto the spot where the title sank. “What am I doing?” she asked. Onlookers gave her a wide berth and didn’t answer. “What the fuck am I doing?”
“Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck,” she said, pulling her hoodie off and dropping it to the pier in a purple pile. There was no time to remove anything else, and Cat refused to make herself more of a spectacle. She would later regret keeping her limited edition Yoshi sneakers on. Unplagued by dizziness, her usual confidence in her agility returning, she springboarded off the rail and dove into the water. She struck the spot where her belt sank like it was a bullseye, and pushed through the abyss. The championship called to her, glowing like whatever the magical sword was called in that boring-ass Hobbit movie. Years of swimming lessons and beach going spurred her to the bottom of the bay. Her hands clawed through muck and sand and litter to find the championship. Once her hands were on it, she planted her feet on the harbor floor and launched herself back to the surface. When her head emerged from the water, she was gasping for air, utterly unsure of how long the retrieval took. There was a disappointing lack of ladders back to the pier.
The onlookers were more invested when Cat shimmied back to the pier via the crossbeams underneath. The Carnage World Championship was strapped across her chest and she left a trail of grimy salt water in her wake. Shivering, she collected her hoodie, not wanting to soak it but also not wanting to spend another second in only wet clothes. An aging hipster looked up from a smartphone, googling the depth of the bay. “About thirty feet,” Cat said.
Fifteen minutes later, she sat in a McDonald’s booth, one egg McMuffin in her hands, with four more to go. She was still shivering, though this time it was from a combination of chilliness and fast food infused delight. When a McDonald’s employee asked if she was alright, Cat laughed through a mouthful of egg and bread and sausage. “Nope!”
***
An hour later Cat was showered and still wet, but less grimy, minus a green tint at the tips of her hair. Her phone was nestled in a bed of rice, after getting waterlogged during her harbor dive, a techno-necromantic ritual to grant it an unholy second life. The Carnage World Championship dried out on her bathroom towel rack. All in all, it was an abysmal day and not even noon. Nevertheless, she streamed.
“Welcome back to Super Smash Cat,” she mumbled, voice turning to a digital garble via her headphone mic. On screen a pixelated version of her pummeled wave after wave of pixelated Ragdolls, each with different color schemes to note stat and rarity level. The orange and blue ones seemed particularly dangerous, as they broke through Cat’s Dragon Feet attack with ease and began swarming. “This is the River Kitty Girls mod of River City Girls. Most recent patch, so it’s me against Ragdoll this time. Correction, Ragdolls. Oh, they’re ganging up on me. I’m stun-locked. Ya-friggin-hoo.” Her voice lacked any on-camera professionalism, coming out instead as a monotone of impending defeat.
The onslaught continued, before the screen froze when pixel Cat had only a sliver of health left. The image stayed for a few seconds, before the game crashed back to her desktop. “Great modding work, ten-out-of-ten. How’s it going, chat? I see ZedHotleysWeiner is back and he says… He wishes I could crash… into a tree. Cool, bro. Considering the state of my life right now, that would make it marginally worse. Good looking out, I’m gonna eat another egg McMuffin.” Cat backed up her bold claim, reaching into a McDonald’s bag to retrieve a room temperature breakfast sandwich. She did not bother to mute the microphone amid her chewing, and the ASMR fans delighted.
The video game portion of her Twitch stream abandoned, a gif of a dabbing seal took its place. Cat didn’t bother to bring another one up, as she greedily clutched her food with both hands, like a covetous, soggy squirrel. “So I don’t know about you guys, but I’m in just in an awesome goddamn place mentally. Got concussed by Ragdoll, who wouldn’t love that? Had to miss the last episode of Chaos ever, also super cool. It’s like this title is cursed. I beat Sloane Taylor via the shenaniganiest of shenanigans and after that I found out the entire company is done. Either I lose the championship to Ragdoll at the final Carnage show, a nice wet fart to punctuate my reign. Or I win and I’m always going to be the champion that killed the company. Whether that’s true or not, people will say it for the rest of my career.”
The talk-chewing continued, as Cat took a larger bite of the McMuffin than any sane person should. “Ragdoll has kicked my ass twice now, and given me my first official injury. I once read on a bathroom stall that depression is anger without enthusiasm. The anger is definitely there. Usually that’s motivational for me to the point of being a cliche. Either I get mad enough to kick some heads or I get a pep talk from a person who says they always believed in me or whatever. Reactive over proactive. But staring down the barrel of what could be my greatest of failures, I’m anxious, I’m nauseous, and I’m somehow in spite of it all still hungry.”
“It’d be a really good time for Marlowe to show up and call me the biggest punk bitch,” Cat said, shrugging. “Then after a pause he adds, ‘That I’ve ever had the pleasure of teaming with.’ Like a really good time. Such a good time that if you’re watching this stream, dude, maybe take a hint.”
The McMuffin finished, Cat stared mournfully at the wrapper. It was crumbled into a ball and thrown behind her. “Or don’t. Whatever. Who gives a shit? This is Super Smash Cat, signing off.”
The stream ended.
***
The rice did a reasonable job of reviving Cat’s phone from the dead. When it came back online she fumbled eagerly for it, and the ensuing slew of missed texts and voicemails. Two popped up from her father.
“Hey, kiddo, we’re not going to be able to make it to the show. League business. When you get back to LA we’ll go to that lobster poptart place. Good luck! Love you!”
“What is WAP???”
Not wanting to answer, ever at any point in her life, she set her phone back on the bed of rice. Over the last month she received an onslaught of questions from her family, extended and otherwise about what she was doing after Carnage closed. Cat told them she would wait to announce her decision, because she hadn’t made a decision but wanted to sound decisive. Free agency was a daunting prospect, but less destructive to her remaining self-esteem than using family connections to secure her next job in the wrestling business. She was officially a world champion, at least for a few more days. Soon enough, they’d be rolling in, Cat attempted to convince herself.
Increasingly unsure about her professional future in a post-Ragdoll world, Cat looked at her options. Wrestling and streaming were her only major skills, the end result of her Pasadena and lucha libre-adjacent bubble upbringing, but her Twitch money was hardly a major income source. On a routine visit to the Starbucks she once frequented with Kit, a bolt of inspiration struck her. “You guys hiring?” she asked, before slurping her mocha.
The Starbucks employee looked at her somberly, eyes blackening. “We’re always hiring.”
“Holy shit,” Cat said. “Is this like some Shining thing? Am I dead?”
Cat blinked, and the employee returned to normal. That night, she decided, she would get the fabled eight hours of sleep. “No,” the Starbucks employee said. “We just have a high turnover. You can apply online.”
“You got an application?” Cat asked, trying not to betray her eagerness. Having never filled out a job application, the novelty intrigued her, though she worried that admitting so would make her seem like some privileged scion of wrestling royalty. The employee didn’t bother hiding his irritation, but he obliged all the same. After rummaging in the counter beneath the register, he emerged with a nigh forgotten form. He blew the dust off and slid it across the counter. Cat grabbed the form and a pen from the counter, but her progress was halted by the pen’s security chain. Undaunted, she wrapped it around her hand for leverage and yanked the chain free, claiming it and the pen as her own. There was a resigned sigh from across the counter.
She sat and went to work, preparing for her life after Carnage. The information was all basic enough, even for a world champion. Through the availability and work history and legal eligibility for employment, only a single field eluded her. Cat tapped the application with her stolen pen and called back across the counter. “Can I use Johnny Vegas as a reference?”
***
The Carnage World Championship got the prime bench spot in Cat’s dressing room. Cat took the floor instead, opting to catch the championship over her shoulder with the phone on her camera. She kept to her casual attire, not wanting to tarnish her ring gear for the evening, but the WALUIGI FUCKS hoodie was still her most incognito wardrobe option. The hood stayed up, and she offered a peace sign to open her statement, only then noticing that her nails would need painting before her match.
“Sup, Legion?” she said, trying to muster up whatever remained of her stage presence and intensity. It sat in a well deep within her, waiting to be fished out like some Hyrulean minigame.
“Since this could unofficially be my last promo, like if Ragdoll kills me, I just wanted to say some things on the way out. Foremost, bury me at Nintendo World in Osaka. If my skeleton can leap out of the lava in Bowser’s castle, that would be ideal. Leave my Master Sword replica to the Avenger. Seems like he’d get some use out of it, and I owe him one for preventing my almost-murder. But now that the last will and testament of Catalina Cortes is out of the way…”
She lowered the hood, shaking her bleached hair free. The green tips from her harbor trip were gone. Her teeth gritted, sliding into her lip for a moment and then back. “Congratulations, Ragdoll,” Cat said, eyes darting from the camera for several seconds, before reluctantly going back. “If you were trying to rattle me, consider me rattled. I can do a six-hundred-and-thirty degree splash, with a midair adjustment to land on my feet if the target moves. So, for someone who can move like I can, being too dizzy to walk across a room is pretty terrifying. As is the prospect of retiring at the age of twenty-one because the bell in my brain has been irreparably rung. My favorite things are, in order: pizza and yaoi tied for third, video games in second and wrestling at number one. If I can’t wrestle, I might not be dead, but you’ve pretty much killed Catalina Cortes.”
“Or at least this version of Catalina Cortes,” said Cat, shrugging, her face twisting as if she smelled something rancid. “Six months from now my life could be unrecognizable. I don’t know what’s on the horizon for me, but after a month of swinging between panic attacks and crippling depression, I’ve thought about trying something different because it seems like anything different would be an improvement. I wish I could be the champion who rallies the troops and yanks Carnage from the jaws of death, but my best case scenario is being the champion when we shut the lights off.”
She reached back, seizing the Carnage World Championship. The title was once again polished to pristinity. Like Cat, the traces of its bay dive were untraceable. “I hope I was a good one, but your mileage may vary. Since I won this, I wanted to represent what Carnage Wrestling was at its best. We all have our own definitions. The usual blood, sweat, tears. Epic showdowns between good and evil.” Cat coughed. “Sweet cosplay.” She coughed again. “Violence, drama, and the best wrestling you can find in a Baltimore warehouse. I never thought I’d feel so at home in what’s basically a huge storage unit.”
Cat examined the championship, running her index finger across the nameplate. “Tonight I hope I’m the champion everybody wants me to be, the champion everyone deserves, pick your cliche from the cliche buffet. If I’m not, then you only have to deal with me for one more night anyway, so suck it the fuck up. You’re bumming everyone out. Why do you always do this?”
“I know most of all, you’ll miss how consistently funny I am and how I deftly use humor to deflect things that truly hurt my soul,” Cat said, nodding in agreement with herself. “Thanks for the love, thanks for the hate. Thanks for the apathy, as long as it was the actively-shrugging-at-the-product-you-pretend-you’re-not-interested-in-while-still-consuming-that-product and not the disengaging-to-consume-other-media kind.”
She exhaled, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I swear I have mic skills.” Cat took a breath and regained her composure. Her voice contorted into an approximation of sincerity, coming from someone utterly uncomfortable with sincerity. “If this is goodbye, then I hope I made you care about an annoying goober from Pasadena with unmatchable fashion sense. I hope I played some small part in making you love this shit as much as I do.”
Her eyes clamped shut, fighting back a wave of emotion. They were red when she opened them. “And maybe, I’ll see you,” she continued, struggling. “At a movie, sneak preview. You’ll show up, and walk by. On the arm, of that guy. And I’ll smile, and you’ll wave. We’ll pretend, it’s okay. The charade, it won’t last. When he’s gone, I won’t come back.” The outpouring of words done, Cat bit enough her lip, the red of her eyes clearly from an attempt to stifle laughter.
“Finally did a song lyrics promo,” Cat said, holding her arm up in triumph. She adjusted the camera, getting a close up shot of her face to offer one last smile. The Carnage World Championship rested on her shoulder.
“Well, I guess this is growing up.”
***
“Bro,” said Catalina, several hours later. Her surroundings and attire had changed. Abandoning cosplay, she was in orange and black gear reminiscent of her debut. A callback to her humble origins of spoiler alerts and one-person crowd heckling in the early pandemic. “You thought that was it?”
She laughed, demeanor shifted from earlier. Self-assured and show-ready. Her ring gear was impeccable, complete with a matching sequined robe that did little to obscure the championship she wore across her chest, shoulder to waist like a golden sash. Her makeup was flawless, her nails a pristine black, her hair half-teased, half-braided. The cheers of the Legion echoed through the corridors of the arena, the final Carnage show already well underway. Cat stalked through the halls, posture and body language altered, a superficial show of dramatic overconfidence meant to intimidate(or a fake-it-till-you-make-it attempt to psyche herself up.)
“Yeah,” Cat said, her promo voice tilting into a tone of casual conversation for all of a second. “Been a rough month, but wait until my music hits. Wait until the bell rings. When I fire up, when I hit my groove, when I kick the greasepaint off Ragdoll’s pasty face. Yes, I know that insult doesn’t make sense, because her face is only pasty because of the greasepaint, but you get it. I will kick her, and when I do, she will be kicked very, very hard.”
“When my doctor cleared me to compete,” Cat said, her swagger threatening to overwhelm her camera phone. “I had him go ahead and write Ragdoll a death certification. When I punt her head into the tenth row, and someone turns it into the world’s most horrifying jack o’lantern, and then they sell it on Etsy - I want my cut of the fucking money.”
Cat stopped herself. “Too long, don’t read version is that I’m about to murder Ragdoll. Don’t worry, in the ring, it’s legal. Here we go, Legion. One last time. I am your champion - Catalina Cortes. If you ever forget me, I’ll punch you.”
Cat smooched the camera, her lipstick marring the view. Through some twist of conspiratorial generosity from the universe itself, the mark framed her face perfectly. She gave the Legion a final wink. The wink was so awkward that she immediately regretted it.