[Roux]

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>COURTside: Forward.

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The crowd was still filtering out of the MGM Grand Garden Arena, but the backstage area couldn’t have been more busy. Stars from the roster littered the hallways causing stagehands to have to weave between cliques. The only part of the set not being taken down and packed away into crates was a small interview space. Against a black backdrop, and seated on by himself a couch, was Scott Oliver attempting to speak with anyone that would sit down with him. The only problem was that all the people that he wanted to talk to passed him by without a glance, and nobody could blame them. They had just spent hours putting on Sin City’s greatest show of the year. Now that the adrenaline was starting to subside, the couch next to Scott Oliver was empty. That was, until he noticed the chatter down the hallways go quiet. The sudden change caused him to look up, and he spotted the reason for the hushed silence.

Standing in front of him was the former Bombshell World Champion, Courtney Pierce. She still had the same scowl on her face that she had been wearing since coming back behind the curtain, and she sat down next to him without a word. When he looked at her dumbfounded, Court turned her attention to the camera, which seemed to snap him out of his daze. He made sure that the cameras were indeed rolling, and turned to his surprise guest with a forced smile plastered to his face. He cleared his throat, but she put up a hand in his face.

”Let me go ahead and cut you off before you make the mistake of wasting time beating around the bush. I know I didn’t give you the exclusive scoop or anything, but you’re probably just glad I am talking to you at all. You’re going to half-ass your way into asking me about the fact that I already named the time and place of my rematch against the new sham Bombshell World Champion.”

Scott’s expression changes and he seems to be about to defend the way that Julianna DiMaria beat Court for the championship, but she slaps the microphone out of his hand.

”It’s okay. You won’t be needing that. I can take it from here.”

Instead of turning back to the camera, she glares at him until he gets so uncomfortable with the situation that he removes himself from the frame and her sight. It was clear that the former champion had already gotten everything she required from him.

”It feels like you people expected me to throw some kind of fit. You thought that after my showing tonight, I would be pushed into another full-blown meltdown, right? You figured that there would be reports of me destroying the backstage area again, or scream-crying to Mark and Christian, right? Sorry to disappoint all of you.”

She shrugs her shoulders and raises both of her palms into the air in front of herself.

”There will be no bitching tonight. There’ll be no crying. I lost. That happened. I can’t do anything to change it, and I definitely deserved what I got. It’s already in the past though. Dwelling on it, or being upset about it now is just a waste of time. I have already lost too much time, and too many opportunities, to give anymore away willingly. High Stakes is behind us, and the Sin City year restarts anew on the next Climax Control. I am choosing to move forward with the new year, and the only way that I can do that is by walking out of the first Climax Control of this new cycle with MY Bombshell World Championship back where it belongs.”

She looks like she knows that the immediate rematch clause isn’t going to go over well, but it wasn’t enough to deter her. She had been there when Mikah had done the same thing and took her championship back from Crystal. At the time, and even for years after that, she had been angry with her mentor. She knew that she was about to become the subject of that same anger from every bombshell on the roster, but it didn’t matter.

”...and maybe that feels a little disrespectful to the woman that walked out of High Stakes with MY championship, but her feelings are none of my fucking concern. I don’t walk down to the ring in order to make friends. I do it to be the very best that this company has to offer. I came up short tonight on the biggest stage. I can own that, but I am still the woman that held the Bombshell World Championship for 147 days. I have dominated every single person that I have stepped into the ring with, except one. One off-night doesn’t invalidate my position in this company. One poor showing doesn’t outweigh the months where most were too afraid to utter my name backstage. One match doesn’t push me all the way back to the end of the line. I earned an opportunity for a rematch by carrying this division for months! And I did such an amazing job that I won the 2023 SCW Woman of the Year! There is no other contender. It’s me. Anyone that can’t understand that needs to grow the fuck up…”

She takes a deep breath, and tries to calm herself down before she breaks down and gives everyone what they expected to see.

”So, that’s why I am not going to wait for my rematch. Everyone knows that the Bombshell World Championship is going to be defended on a Climax Control whether I am in the match or not. It might not be the first one, but it was going to happen. I could have crossed my fingers, and hoped that Mark and Christian did the right thing. I could have waited for the “right time” or “right place” to make my move. However, I already have some experience being blown off for championship opportunities, and I couldn’t stomach Julianna being fed some subpar challenger in my place. This time I wasn’t willing to be passed over, and I wasn’t willing to wait. There is no reason for me to have to wait another six weeks or whatever in order to get back what everyone knows already belongs to me. I don’t need the biggest stages, or the flashiest lights in order to fight. Climax Control is fine for me. I don’t care if it seems too fast, or irrational. In this business you have to be selfish, and I have already watched an opportunity like this slip through my fingers because I took a backseat for a few weeks.”

”I can guarantee that I am going to be able to walk into Climax Control in fourteen days. I can guarantee that Julianna is going to be the one carrying my championship down to the ring for me. That sounds like as good of a place as any to put things back in their rightful places. As I have already said, doing anything else would feel like a step backwards. It is the Bombshell World Championship or bust for me. I wouldn’t feel right challenging one of the lesser champions. I have no interest in finding a partner. There is one thing for me to do in this company, and there is only one woman that I need to pummel to make it happen..”

Despite the fact that she had lost everything that was important to her just over an hour ago, a smirk forms in the corner of the former champion’s mouth. It spreads across her face until she is smiling at the camera, appearing to have found some of her missing confidence.

”Julianna admitted that when I won the Bombshell World Championship I was unstoppable. Back when I was on a mission to avenge all of the blemishes on my record, I was at the top of my game. Julianna was inspired to come to this company after watching me destroy people because I had something to prove. If she did anything at High Stakes, she woke that person up. I can admit that I got complacent. I can admit that after coasting through my first handful of opponents, and nobody coming close to being on my level, I got arrogant. I took my eye off the ball. I took weeks off. I put in time with the family. I closed my eyes and started enjoying the ride that I was on.”

She sighs, and shakes that feeling away. She didn’t have time for it. That was what got her into trouble in the first place.

”...and that’s exactly when it went off the rails. I won’t make that mistake again, and deep down, Julianna knows that. That’s why I didn’t go behind her back to make this happen. I didn’t have to run to Mark and Christian’s office to demand what I wanted in secret. I got on Julianna’s precious social media, and tagged the bitch carrying MY championship. I made sure she had no excuses, and couldn’t say she was surprised by it a week from now when they release the main event to the.public. I let everyone know that I was going to be at Climax Control to take my championship back no matter what anyone thought about it. Most importantly, I made my challenge directly in Julianna’s face, the way that she always wanted me to. So far, her silence on the matter has been deafening, but I don’t know…”

The smirk comes back to her face.

”...maybe she’s too busy planning her big victory celebration that she was so mad at me for not throwing after I beat Roxi. I can’t say that I blame her either. She’s only going to get one opportunity to do so, because it’s the only Climax Control she’ll ever walk into carrying MY title.”

She focuses on the center of the camera’s lens, and speaks slowly so that her next words have a chance to truly land.

”...and after that, it will almost be like she never won it at all.”



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24th October 2023
OFF-Camera

Adversity.

I’ve never been a fan. That’s kind of the point though, right? I guess I never bought into the line about it building you into something better. None of my injuries made me a better competitor. The reality of the situation was that I was much more limited today than I was the first time that I walked into a gym. Every obstacle has taken its pound of flesh, and I am made up only of what remains. The challenges hadn’t made me stronger. They hadn’t made me more resilient. They hadn’t motivated me to improve and overcome. Instead, the adversity simply tried, and failed, to beat something out of me that was too deeply ingrained. It put walls between me and the career that I desired, but it never changed me. As a sixteen year old, I walked into an autograph signing with Mikah Green with all of the same confidence that people see every week on Climax Control. It wasn’t something that I picked up along the way. I had already been turned away from every gym, and every notable trainer had already told me to fuck off. I still knew what I was going to do with my life though. See, everyone made the mistake of thinking that I was asking them for permission to join their industry. I wasn’t. I was telling them what was in my future and offering them a chance to be a part of it from the very start.

Mikah was the only one that saw the opportunity to train me for what it was. She got to attach her name to someone that was always inevitably going to make it to the top, and she would get to take the credit for it when my career paid off. But the same thing that brought us together was the thing that eventually ripped us apart. Just two years later, Mikah became the source of all the adversity I faced. I was ready to join Blast from the Past, and she did everything in her power to keep me out of it. I thought it was because she was the Bombshell World Champion, and was just trying to hang onto the spotlight for a little bit longer. She didn’t want me to show up and threaten her position, so she pulled the rug out from under me. Instead of helping, she sent me away to Jet City.

Of course, I won the tournament anyway. I proved her wrong. I proved that I was ready, and that after two years together, she had turned into just another obstacle like everyone else. I didn’t want to waste my time by slowing down, so she decided that she was going to stop wasting her time on me. It didn’t help that she lost her championship moments after I won the tournament. I was on top of the world, and she was at one of her lowest points. And since Mikah wasn’t the champion anymore, it meant that she needed me to step aside so that she could get back what was hers. She needed to be the first challenger, and it didn’t matter what I had earned. For a long time I thought that she was the only person that really understood me, only for her to kick me to the curb, and then step overtop of me. She became the embodiment of all of the people that didn’t want me to succeed, and that ate at me for the next five years.

COURT: I get it.

It was only three words, but each of them was impossibly difficult to force out of my mouth. It didn’t matter that I had flown hundreds of miles to be able to say them in person. It didn’t matter that I had spent days playing out all of the possible outcomes of this conversation in my head.. I lost more sleep over those simple words than I had about losing MY Bombshell World Championship. And as much as I hated adversity, it had nothing on admitting that I was wrong.

MIKAH: It’s about time.

I wished that she would have laughed me out of the building. That somehow would have been easier to hear. She didn’t raise her voice, and she didn’t even seem bothered by the fact that it took me so long to finally see things from her perspective.

COURT: It’s the first thing that I’ve ever lost…

She rolled her eyes, and immediately dismissed my words.

MIKAH: It wouldn’t matter if it was the 10,000th thing that you lost. You’ve wanted that championship from the moment that you decided that you wanted to step into the ring….

Her words drove a much larger knife into an already open wound. I nodded, unable to raise my eyes up to meet her gaze.

COURT: Yeah…

There was no mistaking the sound of defeat in my voice, but she wasn’t going to allow me to sulk.

MIKAH: Show me someone that feels good after losing, and I’ll show you a loser. Sure, it probably sucks more for you because you’ve been chasing the championship that I made famous for like… forever….

Not to mention that my pursuit of it was what had driven a wedge in between us in the first place.

COURT: ...and now I realize that there isn’t anyone that I wouldn’t step in front of, walk over, or choke out to get it back.

I forced my head up, so that I could look her in the eyes as I said the words. She deserved as much since it took me so long to finally grow up.

MIKAH: I have some experience with that.

She could have turned on the sarcasm, or kicked me while I was down. She didn’t though, and it made me hate that I had turned her into the villain of my story over something that never mattered.

COURT: I shouldn’t have taken that personally. It wasn’t about me.

She let out a deep sigh of relief, like a huge invisible weight had fallen from her shoulders. It was nice to know that I wasn’t the only one that had been carrying it around for all these years.

MIKAH: Then losing to Julianna was a good thing, even though you’ll hate me saying that.

There it was. Adversity builds character. I still think it’s mostly bullshit, but I wasn’t in a position to argue. Had I won at High Stakes, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

COURT: Lesson learned.

A smile returned to her face, and I could tell that the time for letting me feel sorry for myself was over. She had pulled a few punches already, but now that I had gotten the near-apology out of my system she wasn’t going to be able to help herself.

MIKAH: Again, it’s about time. You decided that you had nothing left to learn over five years ago, and have been coasting ever since!

Apparently winning Blast from the Past, and a Bombshell World Championship, was considered coasting, but it is not like I could really argue that with her. She had done both of those things as well, and so much more..

COURT: Well, my eyes are open now.

She nodded, and tapped her index finger on her bottom lip twice before appearing to be struck by an idea.

MIKAH: Then maybe I know someone that can help…



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26th October 2023
OFF-Camera

Asking for help is never easy. It has always felt like admitting that someone else was better than me. Even more than that, it meant that I still had more to learn. For a long time I couldn’t stomach that idea. I wanted to believe that I was the best. I wanted to think that anyone that told me that I had something left to learn was just making an excuse to hold me back. And it’s not like it was an assumption without evidence. From the very first time I stepped into the ring I outclassed everyone around me. I impressed Mikah back when she was widely considered to be the best that the Bombshell division would ever see. I ran circles around everyone that came into Jet City, and eventually even their trainers had to admit that they could learn a thing or two from me. Eventually I took over for those people, and the work that I put in during that time has already produced champions.

But becoming the Bombshell World Champion was probably the worst thing that could have happened to me. For me, Roxi was just another person trying to take my dream away from me. She said all of the same things that I heard my entire career. When I won that match, it justified my beliefs and when I started running through everyone that they put in front of me, it went to my head. Every narcissistic thought that I ever had was validated each time that I stepped into the ring and dominated. I never thought that I could be knocked off the top of the mountain. I never prepared for the day that I would lose the Bombshell World Championship.

The illusion that I spent years crafting, shattered. Everything that I believed was flipped upside down. I couldn’t understand where I had gone wrong, because what happened at High Stakes had never once crossed my mind. The dream was that I was going to rise to the top of Sin City, and be the forever Bombshell World Champion. That was how things were supposed to be. Losing hadn’t ever been something that I had to consider, but as I was looking up at the bright lights of the MGM Grand Garden Arena, that didn’t matter. Whether or not I thought it was possible, it happened. The Bombshell World Championship was gone, and I was empty. The only thing I could think about was when I could get it back, and the things that I would do in order to make it happen. I thought about walking into the locker room and ripping it from Julianna’s hands after the show. I fought the urge to break something or someone just to vent the anger out of my system, and in doing so I knew what I had to do. Mikah had already shown me the path forward years before, even if I was too naive to understand. If the championship was something that I couldn’t live without, then I needed to do whatever it took to get it back as quickly as possible. Waiting was just going to cause me to lose even more sleep.

Patching things up with Mikah had been nice and all, but good vibes weren't going to return a championship to my waist. It’s not like she could offer much more than that in her current state either. She was still getting back to normal after inflicting her latest spawn on the world, and wasn’t ready to step back into a ring. I couldn’t go home, and I couldn’t go back to Jet City; not empty-handed. Yet, there wasn’t anyone else in Mikah’s gym that could challenge me. When I thought all was lost, it was my mentor that spotted the most obvious solution. There was really only one woman that everyone in Sin City is intimidated by. There was really only one person that could help me get to the level that I once thought I was already at.

Two days, and several hundred more miles after my conversation with Mikah, I found myself much more nervous about what I was going to have to do next. Fortunately, I also knew that there was no other way. If I didn’t push through by the time Climax Control came around, I would simply go out and fail all over again. I needed to leave my comfort zone. I needed to push myself in a way that I had been too afraid to admit was possible. This was the only place that I was going to be able to do that.

AMBER: Eleven days is a long time. You might not make it to Climax Control in one piece.

The last time the two of us were in the ring together, Amber Ryan tore me apart, and retained the Bombshell World Championship just like everyone knew that she would. I spent a long time trying to pretend that I couldn’t see the difference in talent between the two of us. However, when her voice startled me out of my thoughts, it couldn’t have been more obvious. I was nervous to simply be in her presence. The gnawing thoughts in the back of my mind were screaming that I should run before I made myself look like a joke next to her. I couldn’t listen to them though. I forced them to be silent. She might have thought it was a long time, but I couldn’t help feeling like eleven days didn’t leave me even a second to waste.

COURT: I can’t come up short again.

My words drew a slight furrow in her brow and a vague curiosity. A crinkle in the bridge of her nose that suggested a sense of amusement as she motioned for me to follow her.

AMBER: You won’t.



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>COURTside: Nightmares

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The Halloween season had ended, but somehow that made the former Bombshell World Champion’s surroundings even spookier than they would have been otherwise. Court Pierce was dressed in all black, like she came to this dilapidated house straight from a funeral. The patchwork walls around her were covered in red graffiti, and none of its messages were pleasant. Dancing flames from within several Jack-O-Lanterns were the only source of light within the halls, causing the shadows Court cast to shimmy around her as she moved down the hallway.

”A couple of days ago this place was full of people working, and others that paid to show up simply to enjoy the season. This was a place of excitement, with a line halfway around the block. Yet, in a couple more days, it will all be gone and forgotten. We’ll start talking about November feasts, and snow-capped presents. This horror show will be but a memory.”

As she moved, she ran the tips of her fingers along the wall, and even smiled at several of the more hostile messages she passed.

”I can’t help but be a little jealous. Spooky season might be over, and most people are already moving on, but our collective Sin City nightmare lives on. Julianna is walking around with the Bombshell World Championship for at least another couple of days, andI know that I am not the only one that is bent out of shape about that. As abrasive as I can be, at least people know that Sin City is exactly where I want to be. Right now we have a champion of the Bombshell division that has yet to even acknowledge that I am challenging her at the next show. I made the challenge, and it has been crickets since. The match was made official, and we still haven’t heard a peep. She hasn’t been celebrating her championship win. She hasn’t been cashing in on her momentum from High Stakes.Instead, she has already talked about moving on to some other company and winning their title. It’s been almost two weeks, and she hasn’t had shit to say about Sin City, or the Bombshell World Championship since the moment she won it. Need I remind all of you that this is the person that gave me shit for taking the same amount of time off to let her establish herself as a true contender to MY championship?”

”It’s a fucking joke, and I tried to tell everyone that this would happen if she won. She doesn’t bleed SCW like I do. The championship she wears around her waist is nothing more than a prop. She doesn’t care about this company, and that is what makes us very, very different people. This is the only place that I have ever wanted to be. The Bombshell World Championship is the only thing that I have ever chased after. I’m not splitting time in multiple companies. I’m not hyping up the possibilities of winning titles elsewhere, and forgetting about the one that I am chasing here. My focus is here, and now. That’s what being the champion of our division is all about.”

” I have been replaying the events of High Stakes over-and-over again in my head trying to figure out how it all went so spectacularly wrong. It has been on my mind non-stop for twelve days, no matter what I try to do in order to keep myself busy or prepare myself for what lies ahead. It wakes me up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. But the difference between my nightmares, and the one that existed here is that solving my problems won’t be as easy as the calendar turning over to a new month. If I want to be free from mine, I have to fill the void that was left inside of me when High Stakes went off the air. If I want the terror to end, I have to go reclaim what we all know that I should have never lost. That thought has driven me to push myself further than I ever have, and ask for help in the most unlikely of places. The pit in my stomach has been gnawing at me for twelve long days, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Salvation is just around the corner, and maybe I will be able to put all of this negativity behind me after just two more sleepless nights.”

”Although I should be glad that my nightmare is a whole lot different from a place like this. Haunted houses are full of actors, not real monsters. They have rules, and codes of conduct. They try to keep the fights to a minimum, and force people to buy-in to their false reality. I don’t have those kinds of limitations. At Climax Control, I am walking into a Street Fight, where absolutely anything goes, and I am doing so because I reject the results from High Stakes. I won’t buy-in on their sham champion, and the fact that she took possession of what we all know is mine means that this ‘match’ was always just going to be a fight. Throwing out the rulebook was supposed to be some kind of punishment, but instead it feels like Mark and Christian have taken off my handcuffs. I get to do whatever it takes to take back what is mine, and there is absolutely nothing that anyone can say or do to stop me. There aren’t any rules for me to break. There aren’t any codes to consider. If everything goes, it means I am truly free to do what I need to in order to make sure that Julianna never wants to challenge me ever again.”

”I have had to live with being haunted by my mistake for nearly two weeks now, but it is nothing compared to how the beating I give to Julianna is going to haunt her for the rest of her life. I am going to make sure that she has one of the most pathetic Bombshell World Championship reigns of all time. I am going to embarrass her in front of a crowd that wishes she would just fuck off to any of the other companies that employ her. I am going to raise my hand in victory, and end this nightmare once and for all.

Count on it.”