He glanced around the dressing room to see if there was anything he could use as a weapon. No such luck. All he could find were a couple of chairs, plenty of glitter and mascara, and a barrel of old costumes.
I won’t be needing the glitter or mascara, thought Butler, reaching into the costume barrel.
Juliet Butler was feeling a little claustrophobic in the arms of her opponent.
“Come on, Sam,” she hissed. “You’re suffocating me.”
Samsonetta stamped flat-footed on the canvas, sending hollow booms bouncing around the auditorium, while at the same time making a show of squeezing Juliet’s neck.
“That’s the idea, Jules,” she whispered, her Stockholm accent stretching the vowels. “I whip up the crowd, remember? And then you take me down.”
Juliet turned her face to the three-thousand-strong crowd, delivering a dramatic howl of pain.
“Kill her!” screamed the nice ones.
“Kill her and then snap her in two!” screamed the not-so-nice ones.
“Kill her, snap her in two, and stamp on the pieces!” howled the downright nasty audience members, usually easily identifiable by the violent slogans on their T-shirts, and the drooling.
“Careful, Sam. You’re moving my mask.”
“And such a pretty mask too.”
Juliet’s entire outfit was pretty enough to make her a crowd favorite. A jade skintight leotard, and a small eye mask, which was actually a gel-pack covered with glitter.
If I have to wear a mask, Juliet had reasoned, it might as well be good for my skin.
They prepared for Samsonetta’s trademark takedown: an overhead drop, helped along by the power of her amazing arms. Usually if her opponents had so much as a spark of energy left in them after that maneuver, Sam simply fell on them, and that generally did the trick. But since Juliet was the crowd’s favorite, the move was not planned to go as usual. A wrestling audience liked to see their hero as far down as possible without being out.
Sam advertised the move by asking the crowd if they wanted the body slam.
“Do you vant it?” she shouted, playing up her accent.
“Yes!” they howled, beating the air with their fists.
“The body slam?”
“Slam!” they chanted. “Slam! Slam!”
A few chanted other rougher slogans, but security soon zoned in on them.
“You vant a slam! I vill slam!” Generally Samsonetta would have said I shall slam! But Max, the promoter/ manager of LuchaSlam, liked her to use ‘v’ instead of ‘w’ wherever possible, as for some reason it drove the crowd crazy.
And so she bent backward and hurled the unfortunate Jade Princess toward the deck, and that would have been the end of it had not the Jade Princess somehow twirled in midair to land on her toes and fingertips, and that wasn’t even the impressive part. The impressive part was springing back up again and whipping her head around so the jade ring woven into her blond ponytail whacked Samsonetta in the jaw, landing the giantess flat on her back.
Samsonetta whined and complained, rubbed her jaw to redden it, and rolled like a walrus on a hot rock.
She was quite a performer, and for a moment Juliet worried that the jade ring had really hurt her, but then Sam threw her a secret wink, and she knew that they were still playacting.
“Have you had enough, Samsonetta?” asked Juliet, springing nimbly to the top rope. “Would you like some more?”
“No,” blubbed her supposed opponent, then decided to sneak another ‘v’ in for Max. “I vant no more.”
Juliet turned to the audience. “Should I give her some more?”
Oh no, said an imaginary audience. No more, that would be barbaric.
But the real audience said things like:
“Kill her!”
“Take her downtown!” (Whatever that meant—they were already downtown.)
“Show her the pain!” The pain being obviously more excruciating than just plain old pain.
I love these people, thought Juliet, and launched herself off the top rope for the coup de grâce.
It would have been a thing of beauty. A lovely double flip rounded off with a nice oooof-inducing elbow to the stomach, but someone came out of the shadows and snatched Juliet from the air, tossing her roughly into the corner of the ring. Several other silent, muscled attackers piled on top of Juliet until all that was visible of the girl was one green-clad leg.
In the shadows, where he was watching behind one of the lighting rigs, Butler felt a sour ball of fear drop to the pit of his stomach, and muttered: “That’s my cue.”
Which sounded an awful lot more flippant than he felt.
The crowd was still applauding the unexpected arrival of the Ninja Squad luchadores in their trademark black costumes disguised by trench coats, who had doubtless shown up to avenge their master’s rece
nt defeat at the hands and feet of the Jade Princess at QuadroSlam in Mexico City. Surprise guests often showed up unadvertised at the slams, but the entire Ninja Squad was an unexpected bonus.
The ninjas were a writhing mass of pumping limbs, each member desperate to land a blow on the Jade Princess, and there was nothing the slight girl could do but lie there and absorb it.
Butler entered the ring quietly. The element of surprise was often the difference between victory and defeat in against-the-odds situations, though if Butler were honest with himself he would admit that secretly he usually felt that the odds were in his favor, even in this case, where he was outnumbered twelve to one. Twelve to two if Juliet were still conscious, which was six to one, which was virtually even-stevens. A moment earlier Butler had felt a little self-conscious in the borrowed costume of fake bearskin leotard and mask, but now all embarrassment was forgotten as he clicked his brain into that cold space he called combat mode.
These people are hurting my sister, he thought as a hot trickle of anger cracked his icy shell of professionalism.
Time to go to work.
With a growl that was totally in keeping with his Crazy Bear costume, Butler rolled into the ring under the bottom rope, stepped briskly across the canvas, and began laying into the ninjas with blatant economy of movement. There was no threatening monologue, not even a simple foot stamp to herald his arrival, which was hardly courteous. He simply dismantled the ninjas as though they were a Jenga stack.
There followed thirty seconds of flailing limbs and high-pitched screaming that would have done hysterical teenagers at a boy-band concert proud, and then, finally, Juliet was uncovered.
Butler saw that his sister was intact, and smiled behind the mask.
“Hello there. I made it.”
And in response to her life being saved, Juliet jammed four rigid fingers into his solar plexus, driving the air from his body.
“Aarrrk,” he grunted; then, “Whuueeeech.” Which was supposed to be What are you doing?
A couple of the ninjas had recovered and tried a few of their stylized moves on their attacker, only to be rewarded with casual openhanded slaps.