HWA Message Board: Here to Stay

Okinawa, Japan
20 August 2023

Rain whispers on the tiled roof as cicadas hum beyond the wooden walls of the dojo. Inside, the dimly lit room smells of sandalwood and liniment. Paper lanterns sway gently above tatami mats. In the center, barefoot and focused, Azami Kiriyama, dressed in a sleek, black-colored ninjitsu-style outfit with her toned midriff showing. She glides through the Sochin kata, the stance of immovable strength.

Her breath is steady, her movement graceful, but with razor-sharp precision. Azami’s feet whisper across the mat, and her fists strike with the crisp snap of practiced ferocity.

In the background, from a modest flatscreen mounted in the corner, HWA’s Art of War pay-per-view crackles live. The screen bathes the dojo in pulses of blue and red light and Azami pauses between forms as the sounds from the TV cut through the rhythm of her kata.

On the screen, Michelle Learner drives her elbow into Steven “Fallen” Angel’s bloodied face before spinning with wild control and plants him with her “Sweet Jesus” superkick, sending him crashing to the mat like a rag doll, and the arena roars with thunderous applause.

Azami glances over, chest rising and falling, sweat dotting her brow. The sound of HWA Hall of Famer Vanessa Lang’s commentary can be heard.

Vanessa: Jesus Christ! What is he doing?

The camera pans up to show Sean Parker, blood dripping down his forehead, climbing the top rope, the steel cage still rising around the ring. He waits until it’s just above his head and leaps, catching the cage’s lower frame. Azami’s expression hardens. Her eyes track him like a hawk, her brow furrowing and her eyes narrowing.

Jason: He’s going to f*cking kill himself is what he’s doing!

Azami sets her stance again, fists clenched. She forces herself to continue the kata, turning into a low horse stance, known as kiba-dachi but her breath falters.

On the TV, the fans scream as Sean Parker monkey-bars across the rising cage, pulling himself up. He looks down, 45 feet below, and launches into the air with a breathtaking, reckless “Highway to Hyrule” Shooting Star Press into a double knee stomp. The crowd can then audibly be heard chanting “HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT!” over and over and the impact leaves both men wrecked. Blood spatter is everywhere amidst a sea of twisted limbs and chaos.

Azami stops again. She turns fully toward the screen, jaw clenched. Her hands begin to tremble with rage and her mouth parts as if to speak, but no words come.

On the TV, the referee can be seen calling for medical assistance but Sean Parker waves it off, getting back to his feet and dragging Fallen back into the ring.

Azami slowly walks toward the screen now, kata forgotten. She watches Michelle screaming from ringside, Azami’s eyes flickering at her. She watches as Sean ignores the EMTs, staggering inside the ring, and lifts Fallen like a man consumed by vengeance. He mutters something inaudible, turning Fallen’s battered face toward Michelle, causing Azami to elicit a low, bitter scoff, her fists balling at her sides as she watches Sean hit the “Howl of the Sniper Wolf”, his jumping Tombstone Piledriver and the crowd counts with the ref 1……………………… 2……………..……3.”

Announcer: Here is your winner…..SEAN PARKER!

Azami’s jaw continues to tighten as “Ken’s Theme [Metal Cover]” plays throughout the arena and Michelle rushes to Sean, cradling him, lifting him with her presence. Her voice, low and sharp in the silent dojo, speaks out.

Azami: Baka no otoko…

She turns away from the screen as Sean’s bloodied face flashes a smile. She walks back to the center of the dojo, plants her feet, and bows deeply. Her face is unreadable, save for the faintest tremble at the corner of her mouth. Her back is straight. Her breathing, calm. She finishes the final movements of her kata, yoko geri, gyaku-zuki before a slow transition to musubi-dachi.

Her form is perfect, smooth, seamless, and controlled. But the silence is thick now. Azami stands still, eyes locked on the screen. Her fists then start to tighten and her knuckles whiten. A tear slips down her cheek followed by another. She doesn’t blink though. Her chest rises.

Suddenly, a bloodcurdling scream rips from her lungs; a raw, full-throated sound torn out from somewhere buried deep within her soul. It shatters the stillness, cuts through the rain pouring outside and rips open the room. That’s when she snaps.

Azami moves like she’s attacking a ghost, as she kicks an adjacent weapons rack to the floor, wood crashing and rolling across the tatami. A stack of focus pads goes next, thrown, torn, hurled into the far wall. A mirror fractures with a single strike, shards falling like stalactites. She doesn’t stop though. Her breath is ragged now and her body shaking, but her movements are still precise, brutal; controlled only by instinct and rage.

She turns to the wall and sees it. A framed photograph. She and Sean. Younger, smiling. Standing beside her father, their teacher, their Sensei. All three are in black belts, Azami and Sean having just been awarded their third Dans. Azami’s eyes are bright in the photo. Sean’s arm rests across her shoulder and she is staring back into those beautiful emerald pools. She stares for a heartbeat and then drives her fist straight through the glass, causing the frame to split, the photo tearing. Her knuckles are bleeding now but she doesn’t care. She stumbles back, chest still rising and falling in quick jerks, her shoulders shaking.

Azami’s eyes flick to the TV, Sean’s face still there, frozen and smiling, leaning on someone else. Azami then charges and with one clean motion, she drives her heel through the screen causing the TV to collapse in a burst of sparks and glass, the image splitting, flickering before dying. Azami drops to her knees in the center of the wreckage. And finally, finally she breaks. Her face collapses into her hands, her body folding in on itself. The sound she makes now isn’t anger, it’s grief. Unfiltered, unrelenting, inescapable.

She kneels in the wreckage of the life they could have built…alone.

HWA Road to Ruin
12 December 2024

The sound of the crowd was like a living thing, swelling, screaming, writhing on every breath. Azami stood at ringside, still as stone, the white-and-gold mask of Starlight Kid hiding every flicker of expression from the world. But inside, her pulse beat like war drums.

She watched on as Sean was mere seconds from victory. Hans was flat on the mat and Stu-E was crumpled outside the ring. Sean, barely upright, staggered toward the ropes, every inch of him soaked in sweat. She watched the way his chest rose and fell, how his hand gripped the top rope with purpose. God he was beautiful, she thought. Look at him. Sora no Ansatsusha chichi called him and he was right. A beautiful, chiselled Assassin from the Sky. She imagined those hands gliding over her body the way they used to all those years ago as he looked out over the arena, out over everything he’d fought to reclaim and then climbed.

She threw her momentary glitch from her mind, reminding herself of why she was here. She knew the moment. She’d seen it in him before. The calculation. The killswitch, the blind leap into legend. Phoenix Shift. She watched as Sean soared through the air and crashed down with the weight of history behind him. And just like that, it was his. The ring, the crowd, the HWA World Championship, a new chapter in the Parker legacy. Azami saw it in his eyes. He went for the cover. The referee dropped. The arena trembled.

One….

Two….

…. The metallic clang rang out like a gunshot throughout the arena as Sean’s arm shot up in victory. He didn’t even look at the referee. Of course he didn’t need to, he knew he’d won. After all, he had all the proof he needed. That was until the referee waved his arms frantically, shouting something Sean couldn’t hear. Confusion bloomed like a sudden oncoming storm as Azami saw Sean turned, and his eyes landed on her. Emerald on azure. She was ready as she bowed, her mask dipped forward in frantic apology and her body language immaculate, studied, designed as she made herself small. Behind her mask though, Azami was already counting the seconds.

Sean’s face twisted into disbelief as the referee shouted again. It was beautiful chaos now, the arena erupting in confused roars. But Azami kept her head bowed. The perfect mistake. The perfect lie. Then Stu-E slid into the ring like a shadow and drove his foot into the side of Sean’s skull, the Price Tag dropping him cold and sending him tumbling to the arena floor. The crowd had now well and truly lost its mind. Inside she was eclectic but Azami didn’t break the facade. She just watched it unfold exactly as it had in her mind for months. Stu-E pulled Hans into the Stun Cutter and covered. The referee, caught between disaster and obligation, counted the fall.

One.

Two.

Three.

She then rang the bell again, the “proper” way this time and her fingers didn’t tremble. The chant started before she could draw another breath.

YOU ####ED UP! YOU ####ED UP!

They screamed it like a mantra, hundreds of throats soaked in fury, every syllable a bullet aimed at her chest but she didn’t flinch. Inside she was grinning like a Cheshire Cat but on the outside she bowed again, deeper this time, letting her body show all the grief and shame she wasn’t really feeling. In the ring, Stu-E raised the championship over his head. Ric Flair strutted beside him like an aging specter, wooing and laughing as if none of it mattered. Azami barely registered them. She had eyes only for Sean. He was sitting up now, at the edge of the ring, blood in his hair and betrayal in his eyes. Their eyes met again.
She crawled to him. Not walking. No. She crawled. Hands and knees, slowly, painfully, like a scolded child. She knelt before him and bowed low again, arms outstretched, palms together. Her voice cracked through the static.

Azami: I sowry… I sowry…

The accent was thick, deliberate. Before, she had struggled to speak the racially-appropriated broken English to hide her true nature but the more she fell into the deceit, the easier it became. Azami let the tears fall. They were real though. They were always real. Because no matter how carefully she’d built this moment, no matter how flawless the execution, there was still a part of her that remembered the man she fell in love with. He didn’t move. He just stared, jaw clenched, eyes filled with that ancient fire she knew better than anyone.

Michelle then rushed to his side, her voice trembling with sympathy as she placed a hand on Azami’s shoulder as if to shield her.

“It was a mistake,” she said to Sean. “She just got confused.”

Azami didn’t respond. She couldn’t, she was crying too hard, mask damp against her cheeks, her shoulders shaking violently as her hands gripped the floor. Every inch of her screamed innocence. Sean was still staring at her impassively though until he turned and kicked the steel steps beside him, the crash echoing like thunder. Azami watched Michelle jump, startled before again trying to grab his arm, to pull him away from the chaos around them. Azami stayed down though, still trembling, still weeping. Still playing the broken, apologetic foreigner. The world believed it had just witnessed a tragedy but she knew it had just seen the first strike.Sean then started to walk away but halfway up the ramp, he stopped. For the first time, Azami felt a flutter of nerves flap in her chest as Sean turned and started making his way back. Azami felt his hands on her arms, feeling herself being pulled up. Her heart raced, pounding like a drumbeat in her ears. He lifted her face looking into her eyes and said something soft in Japanese. Her breath caught as he pulled her into a brief hug.

It burned because she knew exactly what he had forgiven….And what he hadn’t. The smell of him was intoxicating. His sweat, his musk, f*ck he was beautiful. It took every ounce Azami’s being to once again not fall hopelessly back in love with her beloved Sky Assassin only to be saved by Sean himself sharply stepping away as Michelle threw her arms around him and kissed him in the spotlight, Azami turned her face to the floor again, wiping away tears that never stopped. But not from guilt but from relief. The first strike had landed…And no one saw it coming.

Present Day

Azami is pacing back and forth like a caged tiger. A month had almost passed since the curtain had been pulled back and Azami had revealed her true identity to the world, as the Heralds of Destruction cried with the chaos she had unleashed. But she knew it was only just the beginning. The revelation that she was not only Starlight Kid in disguise but the daughter of the Red Dragon and the former flame of the golden boy, Sean Parker had gone off like a detonated nuclear bomb inside HWA.

The fallout was now falling onto everyone around her causing chaos in every direction. The fans had been rabid, baying for her blood. How dare she go after the special couple. Sean and Michelle. F*ck they made her sick. And then the rest of the Parkers. God, the Parkers. They’d flailed. Like a rat caught in the jaws of a cobra.

Azami couldn’t help but grin widely, sharp and cruel as the Parkers had tried, and inevitably failed to cancel her contract. Just like she knew they would. Every step she’d taken over the last year had been calculated, planned and thought out. Every move from those across the board from her had been equally anticipated.

Azami: Look at you all. Piss-ants. Pathetic piss-ants squirming under the blistering heat of the magnifying glass in my hand. Look at you all, you think you’re so smart don’t you. Wisdom. Butch. The untouchable Parkers, thinking, as usual, that if you throw enough money at something, it’ll just go away. Newsflash, unlike the Epstein list, I’m not going anywhere. I have to say though, it was rather amusing watching you both scramble about assembling your polished HR machine; legal teams wrapped in arrogance and desperation calling emergency meetings, scrambling for loopholes. Like I said, pathetic.

Azami grinned again. She knew the playbook better than they did. Everything had been watertight. The visa, the mask, the language barriers, the charade of humility. All part of her slow, surgical burn. She looked at a mirror bolted to the wall in front of her, gazing at the reflection staring back at her, no longer concealed behind satin and sequins. No more false bows. No more stammering English. Just her. The Kūro Ronin.

She reached up and brushed a stray lock of hair from her cheek.

Azami: See, every step I've taken, every tear I’ve shed in pretend grief, every match I’ve lost to earn all your trust, every false smile beneath that mask, it was all part of the machine I’d already built in the dark. I had studied you all, like scripture. I learned your patterns, your alliances, your blind spots. I dissected your fragile egos until I found the one thread that could unravel them. And you, Sean? You practically handed beautiful Masamune yourself!

She turned away from the mirror and resumed pacing, feet hitting the floor with purpose, her grin fading into a cold, lethal stillness.

Azami: You know, Sean, I remember that little proverb you dropped on Stu-E last year. Do you remember? The way you took one of Chichi’s lessons and passed it off as your own.

Subete no hito ni wa mittsu no kokoro ga arimasu. Hitotsu wa seken ni miseru itsuwari no kokoro ga kuchi ni ari, hitotsu wa yūjin-tachi no tame ni mune ni ari, soshite mō hitotsu wa dare ni mo mitsukaranai yō ni fukaku umerareta himitsu no kokoro desu. Sore koso ga, ikinuku tame ni kakushite okana kereba naranai shin no kokoro na no desu.

Every person has three hearts.

Azami whispered it aloud, her voice low, almost reverent.

Azami: One for the world, that wears the mask of what we want others to see.

Like dear, sweet Starlight Kid. The humble Joshi, eager to prove herself to the gaijins. The wide-eyed rookie, the perfect pawn in the Parkers’ perfect kingdom.

One for our friends, buried in the chest, for the ones we trust.

Like you, Sean. The boy who befriended me, the man who trained beside me. Bled beside me. The man who once looked at me like I mattered, only to throw me aside like the world did before him.

And one no one must ever find, buried deepest. The true heart. The one we must hide to survive.

Azami turned, eyes burning toward the wall as if it were Sean’s face.

Azami: You showed me all three, Sean. The performative hero the world adored. The softer man behind the curtain, the one I once loved. And now? Now I see the third. The true heart. The one that fears me. The one I’m going to drag into the light, inch by inch, no matter how deep you think you’ve buried it.

Azami exhaled slowly. The mirror showed her again, and this time she stepped closer. Her reflection didn’t blink. It didn’t bow. It didn’t apologize.

Azami: I’m going to expose you, Sean Parker. Like a raw nerve. I’m going to peel back every layer of your carefully constructed fledgling legend, until the only thing left is the frightened, selfish little boy clinging to a legacy he didn’t earn… and a love he didn’t deserve. You’ve spent your life hiding behind the illusion of goodness. The hero, the champion, the man who survived. But I know better. I know where the cracks are, what’s festering beneath all that polish of the armour you think is buffed so well.

This is just the beginning for us, Sean. You will not know happiness, you will not know rest. You will not know love, you will not know peace. Every time you close your eyes, I know you see me. I’m there, festering, like an infection. Every time you touch Michelle, you’re going to think of me. The night you f*ck her for the first time on your wedding night, you’re going to think of me. I’m here for the long haul, Sean. You can’t get rid of me now, I’m here to stay. And I’m just getting started.

The scene fades to black.