The hum of the engines wasn’t steady. It shuddered, rising and falling like a breath stuck in the throat of a dying god. Cold fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, flickering in and out of rhythm with the turbulence. Everything reeked of sterilized sweat, machine oil, and something sourer—like blood dried too many hours ago on vinyl seats. At the back of the aircraft, bolted into place between two armed escorts and a crate marked BIOHAZARD, sat Valora Salinas.
Or what was left of her.
Her body was strapped into a reinforced military wheelchair, arms cinched at the sides, legs jutting out uselessly in twin casts secured with carbon-fiber braces. Where skin wasn’t bruised purple, it was stitched, taped, or torn. One eye was swollen shut. Lips cracked. Hair matted with blood.
Her breath came shallow. Each inhale is a struggle through gauze-lined nostrils and a throat raw from being intubated. But her good eye was open, fixed ahead, locked not on anything in the plane, but on a place past it. A place only she could see.
Guard #1: Five minutes to landing.
He didn’t speak with malice. Just boredom. He tapped his glove against his thigh, adjusting the strap of his rifle. Beside him, the second guard stared at Valora a moment longer than necessary.
Guard #2: (lower) She looks like she walked out of a war zone.
Guard #1: She was the war zone.
Valora twitched. Barely. Her right index finger clenched around the chair’s frame for a moment, bone-white knuckle bulging beneath torn skin. The restraints didn’t move. Her body didn’t follow.
But her mind?
It stirred.
She saw flashes.
A boot slamming her into steel. Blood dripping from Abbigail’s mouth. Lightning Man’s limp body tangled in barbed wire. The echo of her own scream—cut short by the snap of her legs breaking in opposite directions.
Then Rupert’s voice.
Always Rupert’s voice.
“You’re just a liability on the balance sheet.”
Valora’s throat tightened. Not from emotion—no. That part of her had been burned out. What rose now wasn’t fear or pain. It was something older. Something hungrier.
Vengeance.
The plane dipped. Somewhere below them, the island loomed—gray buildings, fenced compounds, concrete bastions gleaming beneath floodlights. Guantánamo Bay. The end of the line.
She clenched her jaw.
Guard #2: (half to himself) Should’ve sent a nurse, not a black site.
Guard #1: Tell that to the asshole who signed the transfer.
Valora turned her head, just barely. Her eye met his. For a split second, something passed between them—less human, more primordial. The kind of stare that lived beneath the surface of wars and riots and broken bones. The kind of thing that only survivors could carry.
And then, softly—so softly it could have been imagined—her lips moved.
Valora Salinas: (hoarse whisper) Still breathing.
Neither guard replied. One checked his rifle. The other stared straight ahead.
The plane jolted as its wheels deployed. Beneath the roar of the descent, Valora heard the distant clang of shackles locking into their final place. The entire wheelchair—her prison—was now locked to the floor by two steel arms and four reinforced bolts.
Just in case the crippled woman decided to run.
The lights flickered.
Outside, the Caribbean wind howled. On the tarmac below, a reception awaited—uniformed military personnel, black-suited agents, and one civilian in a slate-gray suit, carrying a clipboard and wearing mirrored glasses.
He wasn’t watching the plane.
He was watching her.
A shadow passed over Valora’s face. She couldn’t see him. But she felt it.
Valora Salinas: (to no one) You're gonna wish you killed me.
The plane screeched as it hit the runway. Rubber burned against concrete. The guards rose. The restraints were double-checked.
Valora didn’t blink. She didn’t cry. And she sure as shit didn’t scream. Not yet. Because the Queen of Hardcore had one thing left.
Time.
Guantánamo Bay: Sublevel C-6: Restricted Wing
The echo of wheels on concrete filled the corridor like a dirge. Director Killian Voss pushed the reinforced wheelchair himself, his polished oxfords gliding silently over the slick floor. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting pale reflections across the sterilized walls. The air was colder here—colder than the rest of the prison, colder than it should be as if the building itself wanted to forget what lived on this floor.
Voss wore black surgical gloves. Not for hygiene—he didn’t care if Valora was bleeding. He wore them because, in his words, "Touching subjects directly clouds the diagnostic process. Smudges the soulprint."
Valora Salinas sat strapped in silence. Her body was bound to the wheelchair by steel and carbon fiber, both legs immobile in casts that jutted forward like broken icons on a crumbling altar. Her hair clung to her face in blood-matted clumps. One eye was swollen shut, the other open—burning. Watching.
Killian Voss: You know… There are easier ways to disappear than defying and embarrassing President McStrump. But I suppose easy never appealed to you. Sure hope all those strangers you helped free at the ICE detention center were wroth all this.
Her good eye slid toward him. Her lips barely moved.
Valora Salinas (flat, cracked): If you’re gonna bury me, Voss… you better pray I rot faster than I learn how to crawl.
He smiled, faintly, as if cataloging her response.
Killian Voss: There it is. The teeth behind the silence.
They approached a steel door with no nameplate—just a glowing red triangle etched into the concrete beside it. A scanner blinked to life. Voss leaned into it. The retinal scan took a second longer than it should’ve. The computer needed to be sure.
The door hissed open.
Inside was not a room. It was an oubliette—a prison tomb. The walls were bare concrete. The lighting buzzed overhead, too bright, too sterile. There was no bed. No toilet. No sink. Just a bolted drain in the floor and a steel bench fused into the wall.
A cell designed not for punishment, but removal.
Killian Voss: This is where you live now. Unless… I change my mind.
He wheeled her in. Her chair locked into the anchor bolts with a hiss of hydraulics. Voss crouched beside her—not kindly, but precisely.
Killian Voss (low, deliberate): The only thing standing between you and an executive order from President McStrump—to have you shot in front of a firing squad for high treason—is me.
(Smiling again, his mirrored glasses gleaming.)
Killian Voss: You don’t need to thank me. But one day, you will.
From the cell beside them came a shuddering cough. Then a voice, thin, theatrical, echoing with lunatic clarity.
Dr. Summeroff: Is that her? Oh yes… the Queen in chains. The Blob whispered you were coming.
A narrow observation slit opened in the wall. Behind it: Dr. Edward Summeroff, awake, emaciated, wide-eyed. His beard hung in matted curls. His eyes darted like the lenses of a dying microscope—zooming in, looking for divinity in trauma.
Dr. Summeroff: You’re broken. That’s good. That means you’re ready. Tell me, Valora… did you see the tendrils? The mouth beneath the water? They fold the strong ones. Like time folds paper.
He giggled. Then, without blinking:
Dr. Summeroff: Vendredi didn’t leave. He was taken sideways. Through the wall. Through the idea of a wall. By men who don’t exist. Not yet.
Valora didn’t speak. Her good eye flicked toward him once, then returned to Voss. Her silence was a knife.
Killian Voss: Enough.
He pressed a button on the wall. A thick steel panel slid down over the slit, muting Summeroff mid-rant. His voice vanished like a thought in a void.
Voss turned back to Valora. Removed his gloves. Placed them neatly in his breast pocket.
Killian Voss: No German twins. No Sato. Not even Abbigail—especially not her. This… is the new arena. You win here, I give you purpose. You lose? Six feet under.
He stood and dusted off his suit with a flick of the wrist.
Killian Voss (quiet, deliberate): You were born in blood, Ms. Salinas. Now we’ll see if you can live in silence. Welcome to Project Black Halo. We're going to do great things together… I just know it.
He turned and walked toward the door, his footsteps echoing with antiseptic finality.
Behind him, Valora’s lips curled—not into a grimace, but into something far more dangerous. A smile. Broken. Bloodied. But smiling. Because they’d locked her up… But now she was inside their house.
48 Hours Ago South China Sea: Vastrix Family Private Island
Gray clouds rolled low over the ocean, the sky as heavy as the hearts gathered on the Vastrix family’s private island. The funeral was small by design—isolated, cold, almost too quiet. A bitter breeze came in off the waves, whispering through the black-veiled palm trees. The chapel stood like a monolith, modernist and sterile, all steel and glass, more mausoleum than sanctuary. A single casket rested before the altar, draped in a silver-and-black flag bearing the Vastrix family crest. No one could say for certain what lay inside.
Because they had to fight for it.
It had taken weeks of wrangling—lawyers, back-channel diplomacy, threats veiled in protocol. Olivia and Rose had exhausted every ounce of their influence and resolve just to get Jeremiah’s remains home. The Japanese government had been evasive. Noncompliant. And ultimately cruel. Each document they signed, each clearance granted, felt like peeling away another piece of dignity.
The message finally came—clinical and cold. The body had been released.
But not whole.
Every cybernetic enhancement, every augmentation that once made Jeremiah more than human, had been meticulously removed. Stripped like salvage from a wreck. His proprietary Hammer Industries tech, once the envy of governments and corporations, had vanished—dissected, stolen, traded. Perhaps even studied. In the name of "national security," they had rendered him less than a corpse. They had erased him.
Rose Johnston stood near the front pew, her tall frame rigid, the heels of her boots sunk slightly into the wet grass outside the chapel doors. Her usual warmth had cooled into something brittle. She wore no makeup. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a severe bun. Her eyes were rimmed in red but dry—burned out from too many nights trying to be strong.
Rose Johnston: The bastards gutted him like a piece of tech. Said it was for ‘national security concerns.’ He wasn’t even cold yet.
Beside her, Olivia Cooke looked like a ghost—delicate, pale, sleepless. A black veil hung over her face, but it couldn’t hide the bruised shadows beneath her eyes. Her hands trembled as they clutched a folded letter, sealed with wax, stained with silent tears.
Olivia Cooke: I don’t even know what part of him we got back… I can’t feel him in that box.
Rose turned to her, voice softening.
Rose Johnston: I know. I feel it too.
The wind carried a hollow silence between them. The sound of surf colliding with the cliffs below echoed faintly through the chapel’s cracked-open door.
Olivia stepped forward and laid the letter on the casket. It made no sound. Her voice cracked when she spoke again.
Olivia Cooke: He told me once… if he died before me, I’d know if he ever truly loved me by the way he died.
Rose looked at her, then at the casket.
Rose Johnston: And?
Olivia hesitated. Her lips trembled.
Olivia Cooke: I don’t know. That’s the worst part. I don’t know if it was really him… at the end. What if it was his father the whole time?
Rose’s jaw tightened. Her voice trembled—not with sorrow, but with fury.
Rose Johnston: Olivia… we don’t know if that report the Japanese government gave us, supposedly from the hard drive portion of his brain, was even true… If it was… then I hope Michael Vastrix is rotting in a thousand different hells. But if there was even a second—just one second—where Jeremiah was still in there, still fighting?
She touched the corner of the casket with her fingertips.
Rose Johnston: Then we owe it to him to remember that part—the real him.
Thunder rumbled beyond the horizon. The chapel’s interior flickered in the dim light, the priest’s voice echoing off the walls as he recited scripture no one was listening to.
Outside, it was just the two women.
Olivia pulled back her veil. The wind caught her hair, casting loose strands across her cheeks. She didn’t brush them away.
Olivia Cooke: I keep waiting for him to walk through the door. Smile that stupid smile. Call me ‘Liv.’
Rose Johnston: I keep expecting to hear his voice in my earpiece again. That cocky tone like he owned the ring… like he’d never leave.
Their eyes met. The air between them charged with shared grief.
Olivia Cooke: You loved him too, didn’t you?
Rose didn’t flinch.
Rose Johnston: Yes... More than I wanted to.
They stood together in the stillness of a world that had moved on without him. The sound of the waves, the taste of salt in the air, the sting of things unsaid. And from the shadow of the treeline, a figure watched—uninvited, unmoved, unmourning shrouded in darkness.
Not everyone at this funeral came to grieve.
Kurāken no Suana — The Jade Office: 1:44 AM Night after Ronin Rumble Night 2
A heavy rain rattled the neon–lit glass that wrapped Etsuji Yamamoto’s private suite. Inside, polished jade tiles reflected the shifting glow of yokai-shaped lanterns. Oni masks—each lacquered black—stared down from the walls, eye sockets glittering with ember-stones. In the center stood a low ironwood table. Upon it lay both heavyweight championships. The AAPW emerald plate gleamed pure. The Ultimate Wrestling belt, however, throbbed in faint pulses—the Orb of Ra breathing like a buried heart.
Haruki Tanaka paced beside the table, sweat still stippling his brow. Across from him, Yamamoto poured ceremonial sake with the serenity of a tea-master. Sasori remained near the doorway, arms folded, mask unreadable, yet the weight of both belts seemed to center the entire room on him.
Yamamoto: Your victory was… exquisite, Sasori-san. But triumph breeds hunters. The Orb stays here, under my ceiling of steel and talismans. You will leave without it.
Sasori angled his head; the gem’s red glow painted lines across his mask.
Sasori: I claimed that belt in a ring drenched with my blood and Bold’s curse. My elders foretold this night—they command that the Orb be shown to them for judgment.
Tanaka pounced on the opening, voice taut.
Tanaka: Listen to him, Sasori! We can’t parade that… thing through bullet trains and checkpoints. Every mystic, assassin, and two-bit warlord will chase you. Let Yamamoto keep it secure until we learn more.
Yamamoto (smooth, but icy): You place faith in monks who chant to mountain ghosts. Honorable, yes, but naïve. This stone is older than the ghosts and God. I have files thicker than your arm—Vatican black archives, CIA occult memos, Tepes clan transcripts. All scream the same warning: exposure invites extinction.
A momentary hush. Only the soft pah-pah of rain and the subliminal hum of the Orb cut the silence.
As tension spiked, the Orb flashed—one sharp scarlet strobe. Every oni mask on the wall shed a bead of black resin down its cheek. Yamamoto clocked it, jaw tightening.
Yamamoto: You see how it tests boundaries. Every pulse fractures charm and spirit wards alike. Move it beyond these walls, and you invite storms your elders cannot disperse.
Sasori: Storms forged me. They will not unmake me.
He swept the AAPW belt onto his shoulder, then buckled the UW belt around his waist in one practiced motion—the Orb settling against his center like a living seal.
Yamamoto: Very well. Walk your road, Scorpion King. But should the Orb howl, my shadows will follow that echo, straight to you.
Sasori (inclines head; not a bow, a promise): Send shadows. The desert breeds scorpions enough to sting them blind.
He turned; door panels hissed open. As he crossed the threshold, the Orb pulsed again—lamps flickered, and a hairline crack skittered across the komainu statue flanking the hallway. The wards of Kurāken no Suana groaned like strained timbers.
Yamamoto exhaled, a sake cup trembling in his grip.
Tanaka (hushed): Can he protect it?
Yamamoto (eyes never leaving the doorway): The Orb thinks he can—for now. Pray it's faith is longer than ours.
The Return to the Mountain
The limousine emerged from the neon-drenched chaos of Tokyo’s seafood market district, leaving behind the shadows of Kurāken no Suana. Inside the vehicle, Saikō Sasori sat in stillness, his gloved hands folded neatly, the Ultimate Wrestling Franchise Championship across his lap—its golden plates glowing faintly, the crimson orb pulsing like a sleeping heart.
Tokyo blurred past, a fever dream of concrete and light. And then, slowly, the city receded. The night became quieter. More ancient.
The mountain waited.
The car halted at the familiar bend where the road became impassable. The masked driver exited silently and opened the door. Sasori stepped out, the cool air of Mount Kurama embracing him like an old friend. In his hands, he held not only the championship… but a sacred burden.
This time, as he ascended the path toward the village, he did not arrive in solitude.
The drums began first—deep, thunderous rhythms echoing down from the hills. Then came the voices: high-pitched shrieks of children, melodic chanting from elders, and the chaotic joy of dozens of villagers descending the steps to meet him. Torches lit the slopes like constellations come down to earth.
The village had erupted in celebration.
Sasori was pulled into the current of his people—robes, masks, cell phones, and yukatas mingling in the whirl of modern tradition. Flower petals rained from balconies. Elders pressed lacquered sake cups into his hands. Girls painted their cheeks with scorpions and kissed his mask in ritual affection. Children reenacted the match in exaggerated pantomime, complete with a puppet version of Chuluun Bold exploding in a burst of smoke while a cloth Sasori dropped from the roof in victory.
He was home. But more than that… he was honored.
Lanterns swung from rooftops. Flat screens showed replays of the championship bout. Troupes performed a kabuki reimagining of his final strike, overlaid with pounding techno drums and laser projections. One child dressed as a monk repeatedly poked a cardboard orb muttering, “Yokai blood bad!” while another staggered around as a puppet vampire.
Despite the surreal pageantry, Sasori’s expression never broke. He walked through the festival slowly, mask facing forward, accepting the adoration but never indu