Amazon's Coliseum III (ENG)

Chapter 74: Saurom

...

How long has it been since you first burst into the fighting world? You were just a fragile, small child when the chilling news was delivered: your father had died. You remember, with vivid clarity, how at that funeral someone sat beside you, a specter in the gloom, and whispered with a voice laced with venom: "I know who killed your father... it was that woman". Yes, Chocolate was there too, impassive. Why she wasn't being arrested? Why wasn't she accused of homicide? You couldn't grasp it, nor could you comprehend the dark reason why that person had entrusted you with such a truth. In your innocence, you were unaware that their motive wasn't justice, but the relentless desire for vengeance to blossom in your heart.

You were left an orphan, utterly helpless. Your mother vanished without a trace, and your father perished due to his own choices. Your destiny led you to orphanages, some inhabited by children who were anything but pleasant. How did you manage to defend yourself from them? By becoming even less pleasant, by fighting back against your tormentors; after all, from an early age, your father had instructed you in self-defense, sowing a seed that would germinate into violence. Over time, your experience was forged at times of need. Of course, it came at a high cost: being expelled from one orphanage after another, only to be thrown into one worse than the last, and as that happened, your reputation as a fearsome fighter grew, indomitable. Finally, when it became evident that no other place would take you, only one option remained to earn your bread, How? By doing what you did best, with the sole skill that opened doors in that shadowy world: fighting.

But there you were, a seventeen-year-old girl, pitted against more experienced, and above all, far more grizzly individuals. True criminals and scum who would do whatever they pleased with you if the opportunity arose. Of course... you try to erase those moments from your head, but they persisted. It was an entire year of brutal beatings and degradations that would have shattered anyone's spirit. But you didn't break; why? Because you clung to the belief, almost an obsession, that in the end, all that torment would be worth it. Nevertheless, in a cruel twist of fate, and without you even realizing it... you became dehumanized, to the point where you believed that girls who endured the same torment you did in those circuits deserved it for daring to enter that world.

One day, like a beacon in the darkness, the first person who made you feel the warmth of a family arrived: your mentor, Mario Perusic. But that same underworld snatched him away from you. Who would have thought his own brother, the very man who later shielded you throughout the rest of your career in the clandestine fighting circuits, was the same person who instigated your father to hunt down your mother?... Ah, you still don't know that. And perhaps it's better that it remains in the darkness. Or perhaps... more than that, it no longer matters.

What matters now is that you're here, in the City. Yes, that goal you so desperately craved is finally at your reach. But do you still wish to inflict upon her what she did to your father? Or did knowing such impossibly wonderful people within that dark universe, where crime and violence reign, individuals who are also fighting against that darkness in one way or another, change your mind? Yes... Tamara Cholokashvili remains a woman who shouldn't possess all that power; however, perhaps not even she deserves the ignominious fate that you and others had reserved for her. She will receive her punishment, that's for sure, but you won't be her judge. Even so, she will learn that you are not merely a reflection of your father, nor of your mother. You are you, in your purest essence, and no one, absolutely no one, will ever snatch that away from you.

But now... it seems that, despite everything, Chocolate is about to snatch it away... Or will she?

Minerva Arena, The City

Dragana achieved the unthinkable. Her hand slipped free from her adversary's iron grip, abruptly halting an imminent strike. Before Tamara Cholokashvili could even react, the blonde elevated her legs with feline agility, trapping her opponent's body for a swift takedown. A quick pivot, and the Croatian clamped onto her rival's ankle: a Heel Hook.