The Match Begins

The heavy metal door slammed shut behind them with a hollow boom, sealing Bayley and Lyra into the sprawling backlot behind the arena. Sodium lights buzzed overhead, casting long, jagged shadows across a chaotic landscape of chain-link fences, stacked shipping containers, idle forklifts, scattered tool chests, half-dismantled cars, coiled cables, wooden pallets, and the skeletal arms of two mobile cranes looming like steel vultures. The air smelled of oil, rust, and wet concrete. Everything was a weapon.

Everything was opportunity.

Bayley rolled her shoulders, still in her gleaming blue-and-silver Role Model gear, and took a cautious step forward. “All right, Lyra. You wanted the playground. Here it—”

Lyra moved first.

No warning. No measured approach. She simply snapped.

With a high, ragged laugh that bounced off the containers, Lyra lunged, grabbed Bayley by the hair and the strap of her top, and hurled her sideways into a stack of metal barrels. The crash was deafening. Bayley hit hard, the impact knocking the wind from her lungs as the barrels toppled and rolled. Before she could push up, Lyra was already on her—eyes wide, smile too bright, movements jerky and unhinged.

“Welcome to my house now!” Lyra sang, voice cracking with manic glee. She seized Bayley by the wrist and the back of the neck, spun her like a rag doll, and drove her face-first into the side of a parked production truck. The metal dented with a dull thunk. Bayley staggered, blood already starting to trickle from a small cut above her eyebrow.

Lyra didn’t let her recover. She grabbed a length of heavy chain from a nearby pile, whipped it once through the air with a wild flourish, then wrapped it around Bayley’s midsection and yanked. Bayley was pulled off her feet and slammed down onto the gravel. Lyra dragged her several yards, cackling the whole way, until she reached a low chain-link fence. With a sudden surge of strength she hoisted Bayley up and threw her over it. Bayley crashed through the top rail in a tangle of limbs and blue-and-silver fabric, landing hard on the other side amid scattered crates.

Lyra vaulted the fence after her like it was nothing, landing in a crouch. Her hair was already wild, her breathing uneven, that glittering madness dancing in her eyes.

“Look at all this,” she whispered, almost reverent, spreading her arms wide to the chaos around them. “Fences… cars… tools… so many pretty ways to break a Role Model.” She snatched up a discarded crowbar, spun it once, and advanced on the still-rising Bayley with that same broken-music-box laugh.

“Come on, Bayley… smile for me. I want to see how long that Role Model face lasts.”