Recorded on a stolen iPhone / Uploaded to HIVE the night before Empires End
The Cyber Reavers’ bunker looked like it always did at three in the morning—too bright where it shouldn’t be, too dark where it mattered.
Old CRT monitors spat static across concrete walls. The neon “CLOSED” sign they’d ripped from the upstairs karaoke bar kept flickering between “LOS” and “DE.” Wires hung like vines. Somewhere in the pipes, Tokyo rain rattled a dull, endless rhythm.
Kyōki Piero balanced an iPhone on a dented toolbox, tilted her head, then shoved a roll of athletic tape under it to get the angle right. The front camera caught half her face: one green eye, one cybernetic red, both too awake.
She held up her hand.
Kyōki Piero: Wait, wait, don’t scroll. This one’s for you, Vanity.
She jabbed the screen, making sure “REC” flashed in the corner, then dropped onto a folding chair a few feet back. The AAPW Death Match Championship draped sideways over her like it was trying to crawl off her shoulder and escape.
Her cybernetic eye clicked. The HUD framed her own face, then overlaid text:
INCOMING: “VANITY STRIKES BACK” – PLAYBACK COMPLETE.
Kyōki grinned, baring her teeth.
Kyōki Piero: Sooo… you went for a walk.
She mimed a little stroll with her fingers in front of the lens, boots squeaking faintly on the bunker floor as she shifted.
Kyōki Piero: Same dead Tokyo strip. Same sad neon. Same Blovid curfew. Same “I am the dark, the night, the whatever” voice-over. Very artsy. Very “Season One villain gets her own episode.”
She clapped once, sharply.
Kyōki Piero: I liked it. Honestly. Good monologue. Eight out of ten. Lost two points for pretending you don’t feel anything.
She tapped her chest twice with a taped knuckle.
Kyōki Piero: See, that’s the fun part, Vanity. You keep saying “I don’t love, I don’t long, I don’t fear, I only execute survival.” But every time you open your mouth, you talk about purpose. Purification. Evolution. Ritual.
She leaned in until the camera caught only her eyes and a sliver of smile.
Kyōki Piero: That’s religion, sweetheart. That’s belief. That’s feeling—you just dressed it up in barbed wire and daddy issues so it looks sharp instead of soft.
She flopped back in the chair, belt clattering.
Kyōki Piero: Let’s be honest with each other, hmm?
She counted off on her fingers.
Kyōki Piero: Cassie fights for home. For Texas air and Colton’s arms and little Sammy’s bedtime stories. She fights because she wants to go back to a life that made sense before wrestling turned it inside out.
Second finger.
Kyōki Piero: You fight so no one can ever make her go back if it hurts again. You’re not the dark goddess you keep cosplaying—you’re a safety protocol with a knife.
Her eye glowed a little brighter, amused.
Kyōki Piero: You’re the emergency generator they installed in Cassie’s head when her family tried to keep her “good.” The part that said, “Nope. We’re done crying now. We do violence on purpose.”
She pointed at herself with her thumb.
Kyōki Piero: Me? I’m what happens when you stop lying about how good that feels.
For a second, the audio glitched—just a soft hiss—like the iPhone picked up interference from her augments. Kyōki’s gaze flicked up to the corner of the screen, then back down.
Kyōki Piero: Don’t worry. That’s just Skirnov humming.
She waved that off like a nuisance fly.
Kyōki reached out of frame, grabbed a marker, and scribbled on the whiteboard behind her. The camera only caught fragments:
HANDS // EYES
KNEES // BACK
VAIN 0NE
Kyōki Piero: You sat there in that empty Tokyo street, listening to us game-plan like a little NSA goblin. You heard Yuriko talk about your hands and your eyes. You heard Takeshi talk about my limp and my “redline fuel tank.” You heard Yoshinobu growl about your bat.
She tilted her head, mocking herself.
Kyōki Piero: “Kyōki sells the leg, Cassie wastes gas, and boom—Bloodline Implosion, thanks for flying AAPW.” That’s the version you watched, right?
She grinned, wider now.
Kyōki Piero: Then you cut your little anti-promo and told us what you really are. Not a strategist. Not a planner. Just… necessity in human skin. You said you’d keep hitting me not to win, but to confirm the damage.
She clapped her hands twice, too fast.
Kyōki Piero: And that… that right there? That’s where everything changed.
Kyōki leaned forward, elbows on her knees, belt sliding into her lap. Her voice slowed, almost conversational.
Kyōki Piero: You said I’m the wall and you’re the demolition charge. Cute visual. But I grew up in buildings that were condemned before the explosives showed up.
Her eye unfocused briefly, like she was watching a memory only she could see.
Kyōki Piero: First kill was in a place just like that—half-lit stairwell, rotting drywall, city pretending it wasn’t there. I didn’t build a demon to get me through it. I just… stepped forward.
She shrugged.
Kyōki Piero: You needed to build you. A clean operating system. A thing to blame. “Vanity did it. Vanity had to. Vanity is survival.” It’s neat. It’s tidy. It means Cassie never has to say out loud: “I liked it when her knee went the wrong way. I liked it when the bat got stuck.”
Her grin thinned to a knife’s edge.
Kyōki Piero: And that is what I’m stealing from you.
She raised a finger, wagged it playfully.
Kyōki Piero: So yes, hands and eyes? Still on the menu. Knees and back? Oh, absolutely. But not to stop you.
She tapped her temple.
Kyōki Piero: To change what your “perfect logic” counts as survival.
Kyōki scooted the chair a little closer, metal legs scraping. She filled more of the frame now, intensity cranked up.
Kyōki Piero: Let’s talk Death Match, yeah? Flesh and logistics.
She held up her left leg, slapped her thigh.
Kyōki Piero: You hit the Shin Breaker? I’m not going to flop around like a fish and hope you buy it. I’m going to land wrong on purpose. I’m going to give you the sound. That little ligament-pop your brain’s been waiting for since your dad first swung that bat.
She lowered the leg, stomping once.
Kyōki Piero: You lock in Black Sheep? You’re going to hear bone complain. You’re going to feel my lower back try to separate from my spine while I rake at your eyes with whatever I can grab—glass, wire, my nails, your own damn hair.
She held up her hands, flexing the fingers.
Kyōki Piero: And when you wrap The Vain 0ne in your pretty, taped-up, already-damaged fingers and you look across at me?
Her voice went airy, sing-song.
Kyōki Piero: I… am not… going to run.
She framed her own face like a target.
Kyōki Piero: I’m going to stand there with bad wheels and a screaming back and let you decide if you want to swing at the safe spot… or the one you’ve been dreaming about since you got on the plane.
Her eye pulsed red.
Kyōki Piero: That’s the test, Vanity. Not if you can break me. You can. I’m breakable. Everyone is. The test is whether you satisfy the urge… or survive me.
Kyōki reached off-screen again, this time bringing up a short length of barbed wire. She began wrapping it loosely around her taped wrist as she spoke, almost absentmindedly.
Kyōki Piero: You told me you’re not scared of me going for your hands. That you’ll just use the chair I slam you in to snap my arm instead. You told me you don’t need sight because you’ll just break whatever’s closest until an opening appears.
One barb bit into her wrist; a thin line of blood appeared. She watched it with genuine curiosity.
Kyōki Piero: You’re not wrong. Pain does make people like us clearer, doesn’t it?
She lifted the barbed-wire hand, showing it to the camera.
Kyōki Piero: But hands and eyes aren’t about taking away your toys anymore. They’re about making every swing of yours leave a fingerprint.
She mimed gripping a bat.
Kyōki Piero: You keep hitting me with a tendon-shredded hand? That’s not sacrifice. That’s indulgence. You keep charging with glass in your eyes? That’s not nobility. That’s obsession.
She idly dragged one tiny barb across her own palm. Another bead of red welled up.
Kyōki Piero: Every time you pick the worse option for you because it makes you feel more real? That’s not Cassie drowning. That’s you pushing her under and standing on her shoulders so you can breathe better.
Kyōki grinned, too wide, too bright.
Kyōki Piero: And when she watches the replay, she’ll know it.
For once, the manic edge in her voice softened. Not gone, just… banked.
Kyōki Piero: Cassie… hey.
She gave the camera a little two-finger wave.
Kyōki Piero: If you doom-scroll this before call time? I believe you. I believe you miss Texas and you love your nephew, and this whole trip has felt like being stuck in a country that’s not yours with a job that won’t let you leave.
She thumbed the front plate of the belt.
Kyōki Piero: I believe you want this skull because it’s your ticket out. I respect that.
Her eye hardened.
Kyōki Piero: I also believe you let something very sharp grow inside you, and now it’s wrapping barbed wire around its hands and promising to “protect” you by seeing how much human meat it can ruin in one night.
She shrugged, almost apologetic.
Kyōki Piero: That’s fine. That’s wrestling. We all brought our monsters.
She jabbed a finger toward the lens.
Kyōki Piero: But when this is over—no matter who’s got this belt, no matter who’s in the ambulance, no matter whose blood is in whose hair—you are going to have to sit with which options she chose when nobody made her.
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
Kyōki Piero: And I’m not the one you’re going to be scared of.
The iPhone mic picked up the distant thunder of a train grinding somewhere overhead. Kyōki listened to it for a second, then smiled like she heard applause only she could hear.
Kyōki Piero: You said I’m paying for loneliness. That Tokyo owns me. That I keep this belt because it’s the only thing that ever chose me back.
She thought about that, head tilting.
Kyōki Piero: You’re… not wrong. The Rumble chewed us up and spat us out empty-handed. UW walked off with the momentum, AAPW walked off with scars, and this?
She slapped the belt.
Kyōki Piero: This became a souvenir everyone assumes is already in transit to your carry-on.
Her laugh came out high and sharp.
Kyōki Piero: I’m not defending this title for prestige. I’m defending it because if I lose it to someone who needed to build an altar in her head just to pick up a bat…
Her eye dimmed for just a heartbeat, something wounded flickering underneath.
Kyōki Piero: …then everything Skirnov carved into me really was just noise.
Then the light came back. Hard.
Kyōki Piero: I can live with losing blood. I can live with losing years off my career. I cannot live with losing the argument that I am exactly what I say I am.
She jabbed her thumb into her own chest.
Kyōki Piero: A monster who knows she likes it.
She pointed at the screen again.
Kyōki Piero: You? You’re still pretending this is mercy.
Kyōki stood up, the chair squealing across concrete. She stepped closer to the iPhone until the shot was all eye, wire, and smile.
Kyōki Piero: So here’s what’s waiting for you at Empires End, Vanity.
She lifted the barbed-wire hand and tapped the lens gently. The picture shook.
Kyōki Piero: You bring The Vain 0ne. You bring your “cold logic,” your predator talk, your “I’ll burn Texas to keep Cassie breathing.”
Her voice slid back into sing-song.
Kyōki Piero: I’ll bring Tokyo’s rust, Skirnov’s static, every ugly thing that crawled under my skin the day I stopped lying to myself.
She drew an invisible line across her throat.
Kyōki Piero: Somewhere in that match, you are going to get the exact shot you’ve been fantasizing about. You are going to have my knee, my neck, my skull lined up and no one will be able to stop you.
Her eyes burned.
Kyōki Piero: If you take it… we’re the same. If you don’t… you’re scared I already am what you’re trying to be.
Kyōki smiled, softer now, almost affectionate.
Kyōki Piero: Either way? I win something.
She blew a kiss at the camera—barbed wire and all.
Kyōki Piero: See you in the redline, Vanity. Let’s find out which one of us walks out… and which one of us has to live with herself.
She reached forward, and the last frame the audience saw was her cybernetic eye filling the screen, glowing bright crimson before her finger hit “END.”