Catalina Cortes Vs. Jonathan Willis

Catalina Cortes had lost before.



She hated it, but she could deal with it. After pushing past the initial crushing sense of failure, she funneled that hatred right back into practice and training and the study of her competition. A good enough wrestler could beat Catalina Cortes, but nobody would beat Catalina Cortes twice. One part of her brain screamed excuses. She and Christopher Marlowe weren’t at their best; the three-way ladder match was stacked against them; Rock Lobster and the Entourage were in cahoots, the interpersonal drama was a fake-out, it was four against two. When her thoughts skewed conspiratorial, Catalina realized she was being unreasonable. Dozens of x-factors could swing a match in one direction or the other. Losing didn’t mean the wrestling gods were plotting against you. It meant your competition was better than you were. If Axton Gunn and Jonathan Willis left Ultimate Carnage 6 with the tag team titles, it was because they deserved them. The Kit-Kat Connection couldn’t hold onto the belts forever, though Catalina relished the idea of one more successful defense. That would be enough to tie the current record holders. And then they would just be one away from cementing themselves as the greatest tag team in Carnage history.



Her hopes were dashed and her pride stung, but not all was lost. She and Marlowe made three successful defenses. They were guaranteed a rematch against the new champions. Given time to focus and prepare, Catalina wanted to believe they could regain the titles. They just had to work some things out first. Marlowe disappeared for two months, but their chemistry was still electric when they stepped in the ring as a team. One conversation and they could work everything out.



After the ladder match and a cursory check by the medical staff, Cat scoured the Royal Farms Arena for Kit. Her body was wracked with aches and pains, but her legs were functional enough. She didn’t bother changing out of her pink and white Gwenpool ring attire. The crowd’s jeering and cheering echoed through the halls as Silvio Leon faced Ken Davison back in the ring. The winding corridors were full of staff members milling about, giving Cat shrugs or points in a particular direction when she asked if they had seen Christopher Marlowe, or more helpfully, a guy on a horse.



The quest eventually led her to the parking lot, and her heart swelled at the sound of clopping hooves. It sank when she rounded a corner and saw Christopher Marlowe on horseback, staring down at Zed Hotley. Cat was uncharacteristically quiet, her breath catching in her throat as she watched the two. After what felt like an eternity, Marlowe extended an arm to his former partner. Zed took it, climbing onto the horse behind him. They rode out of the parking lot without even noticing her, and Cat’s heart sank further. She slumped to the curb, watching the spot where Zed Hotley and Christopher Marlowe disappeared into the Baltimore night.



And there she sat for the rest of the show.

---

One month later, Catalina woke up at 8am on a weekday, unreasonably early for her following a late night Twitch stream of Monster Camp in which she was unable to make an adorable green blob hook up with a delinquent devil in time for the big meteor shower. Early mornings had become a recent habit of hers, a new routine she fell into following the new year, though she threw hygiene to the wind and slipped a Jolteon hoodie over her pajamas. Her early birding was still a work in progress. Grabbing her checkerboard backpack, she gave her daily appraisal of the cosplay mannequins by the door. Her Wario ring gear was immaculate, ready for the hero’s welcome it was sure to receive from the Legion. She was charitable enough to let Marlowe be Waluigi, though his own cosplay would require adjustments before it was ring ready. Her multiple emails regarding a giant inflatable green pipe for their entrance had gone unanswered by Carnage management. Still, Cat couldn’t wait to unveil her latest masterpiece at the next supershow.



From her apartment, Cat dashed to the Starbucks she and Marlowe frequented over the last year, another staple of her routine even in his absence, though she was not cringy enough to refer to it as their Starbucks. Everyday when she exploded through the doors, she expected a rousing greeting of “CAT!” from her fellow patrons(like that guy from that show her dad liked), the type of thing befitting a local celebrity. She was generally met with brief glances up from laptop screens and sideyes from people in mid-conversation. Those were enough to shame her into quietly waiting in line and staring at her phone like a normal person.



The wait gave her time to look over the rest of the customers. It was the usual mix of working drones, coffee shop hipsters and students. Not an Elizabethan poet among them. Cat shrugged to nobody, and approached the counter, leaning forward to get a better look at the high-sugar treats behind the glass.



“Mouthwash,” the barista said, wincing and pulling his hat down to cover his nose.



Cat cupped a hand around her mouth and tried to smell her own breath. “Sorry, bro,” she said. In her haste to start each day, she currently had only a 50% success rate on remembering to brush her teeth before leaving her apartment. But there was enough of 2021 left that Cat was confident she could bring that average up. As a courtesy, she leaned back and eyed the confections from a distance that she hoped her bad breath could not close. “Has he been by?”



The barista shook his head, like he or one of his coworkers did every morning when Cat inevitably asked if Christopher Marlowe had stopped in. “The usual?” he asked, a look of pity in his eyes.



Cat nodded, her urge to smalltalk dwindling. “Throw in a chocolate croissant.”



A minute later she grabbed her pastry and pair of skinny mochas from the counter, then retreated to the patio table where she used to talk at Marlowe while he wrote Buzzfeed articles. For the first few days, she slid one mocha across the table, to wait in front of an empty chair. But after the chair remained empty for weeks, Cat no longer bothered. She could drink one, eat her croissant, and then drink the other. A stomach full of caffeine and sugar was enough to distract her from her feelings, even if it meant she might throw up while running later. Being overly full to the point of vomiting still felt better than being sad. Thumbing through her phone, she reopened her digital copy of Marlowe: Complete Plays and resumed her place in Dido, Queen of Carthage. The next time she saw Marlowe, she planned to lambast him over how Dido should do more if the goddamn play is named after her. If there was a next time. She chugged one mocha, took the first bite of her croissant, and tried to convince herself there would be.

---

Days fell from the calendar and Catalina kept waiting, as Chaos 104 crept ever closer. There was no word from Marlowe, be it an explanation, an apology, or even a goodbye. Cat assumed the worst, which was not that far off considering he was probably with Zed Hotley, but in the end she knew that wasn’t the truth. When Christopher Marlowe disappeared after Ultimate Carnage, it was to do something that didn’t involve Catalina Cortes. It was more important than their team and their friendship, and while Cat tried to numb herself to that fact through food and costuming and video games, it was ultimately undeniable. When he disappeared before their final title defense, he made no effort to contact her. Now, presumably gone for good, he did likewise. The Kit-Kat Connection was dead, but Cat was stuck in the grieving process. Unable to move forward and acknowledge that she was alone in Baltimore. Again. There were people who liked her. People who considered her a friend. There was the Legion. But none of them had the connection she shared with Marlowe. A connection which she destroyed because she couldn’t bring herself to share him with Zed. As much as Cat preferred to harness her negative emotions into white hot, motivating anger, she spent over a month in a haze of grief and guilt that she tried her best to ignore. 2021 would bring new challenges that she would have to face alone, and if she had any hope of that, she would have to move on to acceptance of the situation.


The Friday before Chaos 104, Cat was up at the crack of 8am once again, taking for granted the schedule of an independent contractor with a non-traditional profession. This morning there would be no trip to Starbucks, though she did remember to brush her teeth. Still in her pajamas, she walked the three steps from her studio apartment’s kitchen-bedroom to her living room-recording studio. She grabbed a red pen from the tray of her whiteboard, eyes dancing across the blank space, slash concepts dancing in her head. Cat fought the urge, taking a deep breath and closed her eyes in a failed attempt to keep her tears in check. While she always felt a tinge of embarrassment at the idea of scribbling daily reminders and affirmations throughout her living space, reminding her to be a fucking bad ass today or love herself unconditionally or brush her goddamn teeth, her best idea for moving past her current misery was to see the undeniable truth everyday. Cat exhaled, and squeezed the top off the red marker, scribbling a note in giant letters that took up the entirety of her whiteboard.





She took a step back to assess her work. There was no admiration, but there was a sense of relief she hadn’t felt since she saw Marlowe ride away on a horse accompanied by a horse’s ass. That was the first insult that sprang to her mind after that night, and she couldn’t wait to tell Kit when they were reunited. Her emotions not fully vented, she took the marker and transformed the O’s into sad faces. Four s’mores pop-tarts later and Cat was rummaging through her closet, pulling out a box that was mostly empty, except for a layer of pins and patches at the bottom.



A final look at her mannequins confirmed that her cosplay skills had grown increasingly sick as fuck, but Catalina steeled her resolve and went about removing the Wario ring attire from the first one, until the pieces formed a yellow and purple pile in the box. When she went to start on the second mannequin, her breath caught in her throat. She pushed her way through, determined to put Christopher Marlowe in her past, just like he had done to her. “You were my Waluigi, dude,” she sighed, yanking the purple hat off and flinging it into the box. The rest of the process was a blur. Before Cat knew it, the box containing the costumes was in the back of her closet. She buried it beneath a few pairs of old ring boots for emphasis, and slammed the door. That was when she noticed the quill tattoo on her wrist, an eternal ink-on-skin reminder. She scratched it, like a fresh mosquito bite. “Shit,” she said.



Then she ate more pop-tarts in an attempt to stave off a panic attack. It didn’t work, but the pop-tarts helped.

---

The Carnage Network video started in moderate-resolution, faux-guerrilla production, a massive banner reading CATALINA COMEBACK TOUR 2021 stretching in orange and black above the couch in Catalina’s meager studio-living room. The Lucha Princess herself stretched out on the same couch, clad in complementary orange and black ring gear, a throwback to her earliest days in Carnage wrestling. She pointed to the banner with her thumb.



“This might be grandstanding, but after the way 2020 ended for me, my soul is starving and the only thing I’m hungry for is victory with a side of self-importance. But first I want to remember some of those we lost in 2020… Editing note to self, insert sad music here. So without further ado, rest in power to...”

“Catalina Cortes’ Undefeated Streak...” 

“The Kit-Kat Connection’s Historic Tag Team Championship Reign…” 

“Also the Kit-Kat Connection???” 

“Also Christopher Marlowe??? IDK…”