Wrestle Kingdom: Lore of the Ring (Patreon)
Content
Technically a patron request. Also just a good idea that I kind of ran loose with. They requested a cooldown episode of Wrestle Kingdom for them to catch up and hang out for once. I definitely like this Wrestlevania place, so it felt perfect for them to regroup in. I drop some lore, I explore some characters, deal with a language barrier, and learn more about the girls' back stories in and out of the game world.
The "high flyers" at the end were definitely a little inspired by playing Tears of the Kingdom lately. I'd also hinted a lot that the other girls were higher level and a lot more happy existing in WK than Manda, and their emphasis on taking their time, doing sidequests and enjoying themselves shines in their personalities and approaches here. Just felt good to emphasize that a bit.
With their issues with their mimicking copycats taken care of, the girls started to settle in at Wrestlevania. The kingdom was dark and spooky, but in a gothy Halloween decorations kind of way. Everyone dressed in black or was a literal zombie, but none of them seemed especially dangerous let alone threatening. They stopped at the local cafe (The Undertaker’s Delight) and sat out front, nursing mugs off warm drinks and letting themselves cool down from the fights. They were unharmed physically, but the shock and phantom ache of their muscles still lingered until they got some rest and let their minds recover as well.
“At least the coffee here’s good,” Manda muttered.
“Of course. It’s a bullshit Halloween town. How could they not get pumpkin spice right?” Tessa chuckled as she took a swig of her cider.
[I can’t believe you guys drink that stuff,] Mingxia said as she opened the energy drink their waitress had left her.
“Did they get your order wrong? You can try some of mine,” Molly offered.
She slid her hot cocoa over to Ming. The Korean girl scrutinized the mug before taking a tentative sip. Her eyes slip up in approval and she took another.
“See? It’s pretty good stuff, riiiiugh!”
Ming kept the cocoa in her mouth as she took a drink of her energy drink. She shook her head to mix it up and swallowed it down. She flagged down their ghostly waitress and ordered one of her own to mix together.
“The more I learn about that gremlin, the more I worry,” Manda said, shaking her head at the shameless MMA rogue.
“Who cares? It’s not like it’s our real bodies anyway,” Tessa said with a smile.
“Do we even know that? What if we’re in comas or something out in the real world?” the redhead answered warily.
“And what? We’re keeping ourselves alive with all these pixels we’re eating?” Mollie asked as she held up a doughnut. “We’ve been in here for weeks, at least. If we had real bodies, they’d have starved by now.”
“You’re not dead,” their waitress explained.
They looked up at the purple ghost with her empty eyes topping off their waters. She just stared back.
“What? I don’t want any poser zombies in my shop.”
“How do you know? Are you like the wrestle witch? Do you know about this prophecy?” Manda pressed eagerly.
“What? No. I didn’t even go to your little fan meet,” the ghost said with a sour sneer.
“I’m just a ghost, and I see dead pe… I see spirits and empty bodies all the time. I can tell you girls are all 100% here. Maybe not mentally, but physically and spiritually. The stuff that matters.”
“I guess that’s good. So we only have to worry about ‘you die in the game, you die in real life’ stuff,” Tessa thought out loud.
“What are you talking about? People don’t die in Wrestle Kingdom,” their server scoffed.
“Then how are you a ghost?” Mollie asked genuinely.
The ghost’s empty eyes stared blankly ahead. Blanker than usual. “I… I think I have to go lie down,” she muttered, floating off and excusing herself. Manda shook her head and sipped her drink.
“See? Something tells me a game with places named Wrestlevania and Castle Turnbuckle, nobody here is capable of thinking that hard,” Manda snickered.
She conjured the digital menu in the corner of her eye and gave it a tap. Four slices of their Devil Dark Chocolate Pumpkin Cake appeared on the table and the disgruntled wrestler slid one towards the others.
“Well that’s mighty generous of you. How pleasantly out of character,” Tessa noted while already taking her own piece.
“Yea, well… we’re all geared up, so it’s not like we have much else to spend all this gold on. And the longer we sit around having brunch, the longer it takes until I get my ass beat again,” the redhead sniffed as she took a bite.
“Orrr maybe you’re just being nice cuz you’re nice,” Mollie prodded. “I know you think the game’s annoying, but that doesn’t mean that you’re mean.”
Manda frowned and shrugged. “Kinda my point. I’m just glad the waitress didn’t ask for a wrestling match as a tip or some shit. It’s nice to just do anything else with you girls.”
Tessa swallowed a bite. “That reminds me. I never did ask where you all came from before you ended up here. Did some simp of a fan send it to you too?”
Manda furrowed her brow and tried to remember when it had happened.
“I guess… I don’t remember buying it anywhere. It just showed up in my pile while I was doing a gaming stream. It’s probably why I have the chat stuck bugging me and making all these decisions on my game.”
Ming suddenly perked up and pointed at Manda. “Game stream!?” she blurted in choppy English.
She gestured to herself proudly. “Pro gayma!”
“Oh. You were a pro gamer before all this?” Mollie asked.
Manda saw a few highlights in her chat popping up, posting links to what she assumed from the thumbnails were clips of Mingxia’s stuff. There were pictures of her in front of some kind of strategy or MOBA game screenshot. Sometimes she was with other Asian people in split screens and sometimes she held trophies. Manda looked surprised.
“Wow… ok, I’m way more of a casual gamer. I do it for some side cash. Though I have no idea how much is waiting for me when I get back from this bananas marathon. But it looks like RPGs weren’t your thing.”
Ming pursed her lips and conjured a physical menu, scribbling onto its back as she spoke. She wrote in another language but the words blurred together and formed English as she finished.
[A fan sent it to me and I checked it out. Then I came here and started fucking shit up.]
“Wait, was this all a fan thing? Like some fucked up magic stream meme?”
Tess tilted her head and shrugged.
“Well, I wasn’t exactly streaming video games, but maybe...”
Mollie shook her head. “Not me. I didn’t stream. I didn’t… do a lot, really. I lived with my parents and barely worked. I just saw it on my desk and thought it was from my mom or something. I got zapped into a town called Heeldor, helped with some belt thieves, and started traveling around from there.”
Manda furrowed her brow and took another bite.
“This whole thing sounds fishier the more I hear. Were we being summoned or targetted? Because people in the chat know about walkthroughs and rumors and shit.”
“Maybe we are just the chosen ones. That’d be nice,” Tessa said, leaning on the table with a smile. “Just a bunch of anime protagonists having a good time. Though some of us a gooder time than others.”
“At least it seems to want us to succeed,” Mamda admitted.
She pulled up her menu again to bring up their quest marker pointing out of town.
“Magic quest compass, can’t die, don’t have to eat, we succeed even when we lose the fights…”
<It’s like a shitty heaven for some weird copperhead’s fetishes,> Ming added in a strange and flowy accent to her foreign speech.
Mollie gasped and shot up out of her seat. Everyone else stared at her strangely until she spoke in the same language towards Ming.
<You can speak ring dwarf!?> Molly exclaimed.
Ming narrowed her eyes warily. <Yessss?>
<Why didn’t you tell me!?>
<Because I thought it was funny, duh.>
“Did Molly learn Korean or did I just have a stroke?” Manda muttered to Tessa.
“It’s not Mandarin, but at least they’re talking.”
Mollie and Ming started hastily catching up, though Ming kept avoiding revealing too much and gladly planted a few outright lies. Mollie might have found a means of communicating with her, but she wasn’t about to give up on messing with the gullible and easily teased boxer. In fact, Mollie was rapidly learning and blushing over the colorful variety of dwarven insults and dirty talk. Manda decided to ignore them until she could understand them.
“So you actually liked it here, huh?” she pried, glancing at Tess. The sexfighter shrugged.
“I wasn’t doing much with my life. I wasn’t living with my parents and I had a job, but I was just sort of… getting by. Killing time. Then I got the game and when I got here, I charmed my way through some guards and it felt great to know I had some actual magic. Then I got to Mudrissal and won the mud wrestling tournament, and just…”
Tessa smiled distantly as she warmed her hands on her mug.
“Everyone was cheering and clapping and offering me all these deals and gifts… it was the first time it happened where I felt like I’d really earned it. It’s a nice vacation, but it can’t be good for me to stay here.”
Manda nodded and thought it all over while Tess took a last bite of cake.
“Hey, what’s your name?” Manda asked.
“Hm?”
“You’d said before how we’re all M names. What’s your real name, Tess?”
She cleared her throat and gave Manda a wry glance.
“Well the whole world here and my character sheet know me as Tessa, so don’t go telling everybody, but it’s Michelle. Meesh to my friends. Why do you ask?”
“Because I told Mollie I’d find her when we get out and we’d still be friends. You’re a little older and Ming is probably a few continents away, but the offer stands for you guys too.”
Tess giggled and leaned back, crossing her legs as she picked up her coffee.
“It’s a nice offer. We’ll have to arrange some kind of reunion then. Splitting a pizza and reminiscing about that time we got gamenapped may pale a little compared to a scenic ride on a high flier.”
Manda frowned again. “On a what?”
Tessa swallowed quickly and held up her hands.
“Ok. Hold up. You didn’t spend all this time here and not ride the high flyers, did you?”
“I guess. You keep saying that like it means something.”
Tess snapped her fingers for Ming and Mollie’s attention.
“Party up, girls. Our girl hasn’t been on a high flier.”
“Oh wow. What were you doing before you found me?” Mollie asked, looking just as surprised.
“Trying to escape the hell where I get beat up and felt up every day! What were you guys doing?!”
Mollie said something to Ming in ring dwarf. Ming shook her head and gave Manda a judging stare. Manda just rolled her eyes.
“Fine. Show me how to read fliers or whatever,” she groaned.
——
“Oh fuck this shit.”
A high flier turned out to be a giant bat the size of a small car. It had a large saddle with bench seating on its back where Tess and Ming were already climbing into the front row.
“Hop aboard a high flier? It’s the safest way to fly,” the tall, gothic twig of a woman offered Manda.
“That’s the exact same shit you said when I got here!”
“Come on. It’s been a while anyway. It updates your map with any locations and info in the area,” Mollie encouraged her.
“I forget we even have a map!”
Mollie tugged on Manda’s arm, getting her to blush and stumble along with her. She stepped up onto the big bat’s back and it let out a happy squeak before it flew straight up into the air. Manda shrieked and latched onto Mollie’s arm tighter (and Mollie blushed harder) as they flew among the low and murky clouds of Wrestlevania. The flier glided steadily over the land, doing a wide loop over variously ruined castles, spooky woods, and a huge pumpkin that had been carved into a cage around a wrestling ring.
“Pretty fucked up place, but cool,” Tess said as she leaned over the edge of her seat to look down.
Manda flinched but Tess leaned on an invisible wall on the edge of the creature’s back. Of course the game wouldn’t allow them to go flying hundreds of feet towards the ground. Even if it wasn’t keeping them alive for more embarrassing matches, it probably wasn’t programmed for that kind of activity.
“See what I mean?” Tess said ahead of them. “You’re not gonna have much fun here if you run ahead skipping everything. Slow down and take some sidequests. It’s the easiest way to find some treasure.”
Manda peeked over the edge. It did make for a nice view, though she’d have rather seen it as a wallpaper or in a player’s guide than from this high up. She started to calm down and realized she was pressed so close against Mollie that she could feel her warmth and softness despite the light breeze. Manda decided not to move and snuggled in closer.
“I guess you’re right,” she admitted quietly.