Team 3D Academy
While Donald McCarthy and Amy Adams, serving as today's examiners, were reviewing the tryout footage for their final evaluations, the office door swung open.
"Good work, both of you."
"Haaah. Bibi. At least one of you two should've shown up."
"Today was The Bon's turn, not mine."
"Then swap turns with each other."
"Hahaha. Sorry, Amy. I'll think about it next time."
"Next time, my ass."
"I trust you two, don't I? Take it as a compliment."
"Tch!"
"Kid. If you can't even talk…."
Only five years ago, Bibi Dudley had been infamous as a raging hard-ass with a hair-trigger temper—but age had mellowed that bastard streak of his considerably.
And he never missed a paycheck.
That alone was plenty to be grateful for.
"How were today's tryouts? How many did you pull?"
"Three."
"Three out of nine?"
"One of them showed up thirty minutes late. Sent him packing on the spot."
"Good call. Three, huh. Not bad."
"Pfft. Not bad? Puhahaha."
"Bibi. You're gonna regret skipping today's tryouts."
Bibi Dudley wondered what the hell had happened to make the two of them talk such a big game.
"Why? I didn't see anyone special on the list."
"A diamond rolled right through the door."
"Yeah. A pink diamond—about three hundred carats."
"A three-hundred-carat diamond? Who? Was there a former medalist or something? No—there's no way that wouldn't have been on the résumé."
Bibi grabbed the papers spread out in front of him and skimmed them fast.
"The passers are the Gonzalez siblings, Selma and Alfred, and Lina Cha? Who was the jackpot?"
"Lina."
"Lina?"
Lina Cha. Born March 9, 2007.
Not even twenty yet.
Looking at her ID photo, she seemed pretty enough—but not so stunning that it would knock anyone sideways.
The only standout items were a full marathon finish and a three-lift total of 450 kilograms—numbers that were almost hard to believe.
"She really lifted 450 kilos? At 166 centimeters and 50 kilos?"
"Nah, we didn't even have her try that."
"Then what?"
"She's fucking gorgeous. Scarlet Kibler and Carish Stratus—the ones you used to work with—don't even come close."
"Even as a woman looking at her, she's beautiful. Straight-up K-pop idol."
"With a photo that looks like this?"
"She said she was in a rush and just snapped it on her phone."
"Fair enough. We were shocked by the gap between the photo and the real thing too."
Scarlet Kibler and Carish Stratus, the WWO Divas who had ruled the 2000s, were legendary sex symbols.
Scarlet Kibler in particular had been a terrible wrestler, but her height and those long, slender legs had set male fans' hearts racing.
The very definition of eye candy.
"That good? What about her athleticism? The other tests? Has she trained in pro wrestling before?"
"Perfect scores across every other test. She's never formally trained in pro wrestling, but her athletic instincts are damn solid."
"Didn't even need to put her on the weights. Just look at the marathon time—that's a certified record."
"The footage. Pull up the tryout video."
They hit play on the test footage right away.
Proper-form squats and burpee tests.
None of that registered in Bibi Dudley's eyes.
Only her face filled his vision.
"Bibi, well?"
"Uh—huh?"
"He checked out completely."
Watching that, Bibi's face went bright red and his voice jumped.
"It wasn't like that. The form. Her form was so good I couldn't look away."
"True. Her form is excellent. Looks like she's been at it a while."
"Why would a kid like this come here instead of the WWO Performance Center?"
The WWO Performance Center was the premier pipeline into WWO—and it at least paid trainees a bare-minimum living stipend.
Here at the Team 3D Academy, you paid them.
And not a small amount, either….
The fundamentals class ran three thousand dollars a month; the advanced class, five thousand.
Not pocket change.
A pro wrestling debut would come faster if you trained here—but if the other place was the majors, this was AA ball at best, being generous.
Facilities, scale, conditions, coaching staff—there wasn't a single category where this side came out ahead.
"You'll get it when you watch the final interview. Jane Kim. She said Jane Kim is her role model."
"Ah. Jane Kim! The Korean!"
"That's right."
"What are you waiting for? Call her and tell her she passed before she changes her mind."
"Hey! Bibi. We couldn't call because you weren't here."
"Tell her to show up starting tomorrow."
"Got it, got it."
The Dudley Boys had been inducted into the WWO Hall of Fame and ran the Team 3D Academy—but they still worked one or two matches a month for TPA.
They didn't expect TPA, the promotion they were tied to so deeply, to ever catch WWO.
But they did want to leapfrog EAW, the number-two company.
TPA's women's roster was painfully thin next to the men's, and even stacked against EAW's women, they lagged hard in both quantity and quality.
Flashy, beautiful female wrestlers? Barely two or three.
And even those women were nothing next to this girl.
Over at EAW, they had plenty of women who could actually wrestle and looked the part—Sara Bankis and others.
TPA had zero East Asian women on the roster. EAW had three or four Japanese women alone, and they were beautiful enough to draw serious heat with the fans.
And every time they co-promoted a PPV with help from WWO's NEXT, the women's lineup always felt like the weak link.
"TPA's gonna love this."
"No doubt. Once she's got the basics down, they might want her debuting immediately."
"Bibi. One thing you need to watch, though."
"What's that, Amy?"
"Lina's so pretty the male trainees were already swallowing hard. Either run separate sessions for the guys and girls, or make damn sure you put the fear of God into them."
"I hear you. I'll handle it."
Bibi Dudley might have been a mean son of a bitch, but when it came to men-and-women trouble, he kept things clean enough.
There was no way a man like that would sit back and watch something like that slide.
I was back home watching YouTube when the phone rang.
"Hello?"
"Lina?"
"Yes. Who is this?"
"It's Amy Adams. We met a little while ago."
"Ah. Yes, Coach."
"About the test you took today. You passed. Congratulations."
"The results are already out?"
Isn't that way too fast? It's only been a few hours since the tryout. If they were going to do it this quick, they could've just announced it on the spot.
Whether she'd read my mind or not, Amy explained right away.
"We needed a final okay from Bibi Dudley or The Bon Dudley, so we couldn't announce it immediately."
"I see. So what do I do from here?"
"Can you come in first thing tomorrow?"
"Yes. I can."
"Since it's your first day, be here by eight-thirty in the morning."
"Understood. I'll see you tomorrow."
"You make sure you show."
"Yes."
The next morning I finished breakfast early and, partly to let it settle, ran to the academy.
It was a ten-minute drive, but on foot it only took about twenty minutes.
So I got there a lot earlier than expected.
Honestly, this might be better than driving. But if I work out, do my stats actually go up?
I never used to enjoy exercise like this—but regardless of the whole life-or-death situation, my physical stats were so broken that working out was getting more and more fun.
Good is good. Just take the win. Take the win.
I gave my name to the security guards blocking the entrance, and since word had already gone around, they waved me straight through.
The ring area where we'd done the tryouts was dead silent—not so much as an ant in sight—while the sounds of people training drifted in from farther off.
Curiosity tugged at me, but I'd find out soon enough anyway, so I held off and waited, doing some light stretching.
A little later, the couple who'd taken the tryout with me walked in.
So they made it too.
She hadn't been on my level, but the woman had been pretty damn good.
"Yeah. Figured you'd make it."
"Yeah. Same."
"I'm Selma Gonzalez. This is Alfred Gonzalez."
"Ah. Same last name. So you two are married."
I'd thought they were a couple—turns out they were already hitched.
"What? With that bastard?!"
"Who are you calling married? That's my sister."
"Who the hell is this bastard calling me 'that'?"
"You called me a bastard first."
Wrong call.
"Ah—sorry, sorry. You two don't look anything alike for siblings. I had no idea."
The woman had the slightly copper-toned skin of someone from Latin America, but the guy just looked white.
"I take after Mom. Alf takes after Dad."
"Yeah. Anyway, I'm sorry."
I apologized again and we properly introduced ourselves.
Selma was twenty-three; Alfred was a year younger.
"I thought you looked young, but you really are young."
"Yeah. I don't turn twenty until next month."
"With a face like that, you should be an actress or an idol. Why do the hard work of wrestling?"
Alfred couldn't get a word in and just listened while Selma and I traded talk.
"It just kind of happened. And because I wanted to…. What about you, Selma?"
"Us? We grew up watching Rey Mist and Rico Guerrero since we were kids."
"So you're both lucha libre style?"
"That's right."
"Then you should be a luchador."
Lucha libre.
The fast, agile, high-flying style that thrived in Mexico, Central and South America, and Japan—flashy as hell.
And when a man wore the mask, he was called a luchador; when a woman wore one, she was a luchadora.
"Selma, are you a luchadora?"
"Oh. You know luchadora too? Not bad. But a woman in a mask is kind of a waste. Looks are a weapon too."
"Pfft!"
"This bastard looking to die!"
Alfred looked on the smaller side for a male wrestler—around 183 centimeters—but mixed heritage or not, both of them were seriously good-looking.
"I don't think either of you needs a mask. Alfred's handsome enough that he'd probably be popular."
"Uegh!"
True to form for siblings a year apart, this time it was Selma who made a gagging face.
"What style are you going for? Got something locked in?"
"Me? Powerhouse?"
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