Gauntlet

Chalk and Sweat

Submitted for The 6-Pack Challenge by action
Round 4: The Zone
Prompt:  < 500-word sports story (not met; 612 words)

Back in February, Ayesha Massoud traveled from Manchester to Lagos to find me. Quite a state I was in too: nearly passed out at the Jehovah's Grace Public Tavern, waiting for a refill of my bourbon, with an eager gigolo—an ex-child soldier—who I was probably too disoriented to fuck. Despite all this, she still wanted me to train her.

So I limped my way back to England for the first time since those disastrous Qualifiers in '02. Not quite a fresh start but it would have to do.

My exercise routines bordered on abuse: cartwheels with motor oil on the floor; thumb tacks spilled around the balance beam; Tsukuhara vaults off the edge of rusty shipping containers. Part of me wanted Ayesha to lose heart before suffering the indignities I did. But that tough little cunt gritted through it, pushing herself to the literal bleeding edge of her abilities. Now look where we ended up.

"Welcome, ladies and germs, to the 23rd Intercontinental Extreme Gymnastics Meet!" The announcer's second-rate Buffer impression filled the Ivan Drago Memorial Sports Center in Minsk.

Nadezhda Kovalenko was up first. A dubstep remix of the Tetris theme blared. Sure enough, her floor routine involved leaping through a series of falling bricks. Gotta admit – impressive stuff! She leaped around the tetrominoes, until she pivoted onto the balance beam.

That's when a huge automaton resembling a Cossack guard emerged from the floor, pounding its fist against the beam. It moved from one end to the other, forcing her to dodge while she did her routine. The robot struck the far end hard enough to make the beam tilt upward like a lever. With effortless grace, Nadezhda did a full turn on her right foot, launched herself into the air, and tucked into fetal position for a 270° turn, before vaulting off the automaton's shoulder for the dismount.

She could have easily gloated after that. But instead she gave a quick, terse salute to the other competitors as she walked by us, stern-faced, on her way to the lockers.

Carrie Goto was out next, wearing a leotard resembling a Japanese schoolgirl. This bitch grew up in suburban Toronto; she doesn't even speak Nihongo. Yet the weeaboos in the crowd ate it up as she entered to a metal version of the Sailor Moon theme. I won't even dignify her performance with a full description. Suffice it to say that it involved a Naruto-inspired floor routine, blatant fan service on the asymmetrical bars, and a 12-foot kaiju obstacle. She flashed us a cocky V-over-eye pose while basking in the cheers.

There it was. Moment of truth. The spotlights turned red. "Help, I'm Alive" by Metric played. A rope lowered Ayesha upside down to the floor in a mock straitjacket leotard.

Kicking off with a back handspring, Ayesha flung herself into a sequence of back-to-back hurdles in a literal game of The Floor Is Lava.

Next was a routine on the uneven bars. She evaded a sinister asylum orderly sporting a faceless mask, through a progression of somersaults between the bars.

Ayesha's final sequence was a mobility test, as a horde of infernal nurses tried to block her path. She did a cat leap between two charging demons bearing actual hypodermic needles. When a nurse crouched to lunge at her, she executed a perfectly timed flic flac off the ghoul's back. While she was airborne, Ayesha's split legs knocked out the next pair in the mob. As she cleared the nurses, she contorted into a lithe arabesque, ending her routine with a huge grin.

Didn't even care about the results anymore... Ayesha had already made it worth getting back in the game.