One weird quirk about Alex Minett-Vega-Yin (one of many), was her difficulty adjusting to American time zones…or any timezone that wasn’t Greenwich Mean Time. She’d lived in the US for almost eight years and still she found herself falling to sleep in the early evening hours in Florida and waking up in the early morning.

So there she was, sat at the computer and impulse had driven her to look up a video on a popular video streaming site whose name rhymes with "blue tube". She didn’t know exactly what brought her to this specific video but she had been curious and strangely driven by an inexplicable urge to find a video that by strange providence was there. Even with the site’s vast amount of content, she was stunned that it was available.

Hesitating for a moment, Alex proceeded to press the play button.

On the screen was footage of a mostly empty sports hall, dressed with grey-blue mats in a square surrounded by more magnolia padding. After the wide shot, a small girl with harshly tied back black hair and a tense expression stepped towards the mats, clad in a white leotard as a man with an English accent began to speak.

Welcome back to live coverage of the 2002 junior UK national gymnastics championship here in Coventry and stepping up now is one of the favourites to win the competition, Alex Yin from Sheffield and Claire, this is a really promising young athlete.

She sure is, Nigel. Twelve-year-old Alex has been competing for four years and has a very impressive track record across the country and is looking to compete internationally in Rome next summer. There’s even talk of her being a strong hope for Olympic gold in a few years. A very promising young competitor.

An alarm blared and young Alex proceeded to race along to the mats before diving onto her hands, hand-springing across the mat before launching into an incredible corkscrew high into the air before landing perfectly on her feet and bowing, a smile now broadly across her face as the small audience applauded.

An amazing start there for Alex. Kelly Jones is still a tough front-runner but Alex Yin could take this.

Alex backflipped across the mat gracefully kicking her legs into the air before once again doing three more corkscrews across the mat to even louder applause.

Very impressive stuff. Let’s see if she can stick the final part.

Alex started to smile as she knew that this last part was also the easiest for her as she anticipated flipping across the mat once more before landing with one knee raised. She started off strong but just before the last flip, she misjudged her timing and landed with a slap on the mat in a hard belly flop. The crowd let out an audible groan of empathic pain and support for the youngster as Alex visibly winced in anguish before she stumbled up to her knee and posed, her face visibly straining to hide the signs of pain and the strong temptation to burst into tears.

Oh, that’s a real shame after such a strong start, literally falling at the final hurdle. Let’s look at the scores.

The judges’ scores flashed up on the screen as Alex was seen looking at them in the hall. A nine…an eight….and two sevens.

Well, nothing dreadful but if it weren’t for that last fall she could’ve faced some perfect scores and you know that has to hurt the youngster.

Absolutely, Nigel and in the last couple of days myself and some of our other reporters have taken the opportunity to speak to Miss Yin and she’s an absolute sweetheart. I just hope she takes this freak accident in her stride.

Alex forced a smile but tears were clearly falling down her face and as she skipped away, the cameras caught her going up to her parents who embraced her and Alex didn’t even attempt to hide her tears and visibly sobbed terribly.

Back in the present, Alex, now twenty years older, closed the video and wiped at her face as she felt her throat constrict with emotion. This wasn’t the end of her gymnastics career. She continued to enter in competitions and won most of them. She competed in Rome, taking home the bronze. By the time of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing where she’d been considered for her debut on the Olympic team for Great Britain, Alex had retired from gymnastics.

That fall she just watched had been a pivotal moment for her. A moment where her confidence had been shaken and was never fully regained even at such a young age. She’d already been a wrestling fan for a couple of years before that day but over the next few years her desire to channel her gymnastic talents into the world of wrestling had only grown in intensity whilst her gymnastic ambitions decreased. She would make her in-ring debut in 2009, compete in the UK, Germany, Mexico, Japan, Australia and elsewhere before finally expatriating Stateside in 2014.

Alex never entertained ideas of returning to gymnastics. She figured she was too old to start over now anyway whereas wrestling was more forgiving. It was just as hard and she was never the perfect prodigy in wrestling that she’d been touted as in gymnastics but that meant that with maturity she was able to take losses on the chin and her body had learned to endure the rigours of an in-ring career.

Dressed in a pair of pyjamas, Alex looked at the clock on the computer and genuinely beamed. It was three in the morning. At home in England, it was eight and that meant one thing…

The familiar melody sounded at her computer as Alex clicked at the screen, immediately greeted with a woman’s smiling face. Much like Alex, this woman looked to be of East-Asian ancestry. Caught somewhere between her late-fifties and early-sixties, the woman was still attractive even with the crow’s feet by her bespectacled eyes and her long black hair now greyed at the sides.

Am I coming through?

*laughing* Yes, mum! I say this every morning!

Margaret Yin laughed back at her daughter. It wasn’t easy living four-thousand miles from her only child. She was never a wrestling fan, baffled by her daughter’s obsession and barely ever watched her matches. Not out of a lack of support but a genuine horror of seeing Alex subjected to such harm. One of the few instances where Margaret had seen her daughter compete was accidentally coming across footage of a Brixton Street Fight involving several members of a UK indie promotion fighting with weapons. Seeing her beautiful and sweet baby girl take a backpack full of bricks to the face was more than she could stand. However, for some reason, Alex was happy and that was enough for Margaret. Barely.

I know, I know. It’s getting to be a running gag at this stage.

Any news on when you’ll come visit us?

I’m booking some flights to come see you in May this morning. Between Covid restrictions being lifted and me going into retirement, I’ll have so much more opportunity to see you!

You don’t miss teaching, do you?

Well, bits and pieces but it was so stressful. At least you only had five years of comprehensive school! Your father still has to put up with it! Oop, speak of the devil.

*offscreen* Is that my favourite daughter!?

Alex’s dad then appeared on the screen in his suit and tie. Also wearing glasses, his hair now gone on top of his head leaving what remained a dark rim around the back, Peter Yin was not a glamorous man but this small, unassuming bloke with the incongruous Yorkshire accent was one of the jolliest and nicest people you could ever hope to meet and a lot of Alex’s gregarious personality came straight from her old man.

Good morning, baba. Just heading off to work?

Yes, indeed. Have you got anything on today?

Just training for my next match.

Oh, Alex, sweetheart, I’m sorry but I don’t want to-

It’s against a vampire!

There was an awkward silence.

Well, I’m off!

Peter kissed his wife and waved to Alex who waved back.

Love you, baba.

I love you too, Princess.

Peter left and Alex was left with her mother.

A vampire?

Muuuuuuuuuuuum!

I don’t know whether to laugh or to be concerned.

She’s not a real vampire!….I don’t think. Maybe it’s one of these weird subcultures. Like, not a literal vampire but…

Alex…

She seems nice! I don’t think she’ll bite me.

Just stay safe. I love you, Alex.

I love you too, mum. Tell Grandma Fang, “Wo ai ni”.

I will. Bye, sweetheart!

Alex waved goodbye again before she closed her laptop and then, sighing, Alex turned to face the camera.

I’m not perfect. Every once in a while, I get things wrong and….I kind of beat myself up for being fallible. I know it’s ironic that my whole deal is that I'm awkward but it’s not always water off of the proverbial duck’s back. I may come off as flippant but I take my work very seriously and I never take a win for granted.

Alex sat back after this surprisingly serious opening.

That being said, I’m coming off of a major win. Technically, I’m undefeated. Yes, it’s one match but one match against someone more than two-feet taller than me! Does that mean that a vampire is less of a challenge than a giant? I…..

Alex sort of trailed off as she genuinely considered the question.

Hmmmmmmmmmm…..I mean, Olaf The Giant was so much bigger but Vita Valenteen is one of the undead…still, I don’t want to actually kill Vita, just hurt her enough that I can beat her. Are vampires impervious to pain? I guess, I’ll be okay provided I make sure I don’t bleed.

Alex shuddered at the prospect of having her blood drunk.

Regardless, you have my sympathies, Vita. It seems your vampiric identity has lead to you being a marked woman. Rest assured, I’m not a vampire hunter. I have nothing against the vampire community and hope you stand out as a positive representative of your people. Such representation is overdue….although what happened to that poor bloke won’t help.

Alex bit her lip in concern over the wannabe Van Helsing that Vita disposed of in her promo. Not out of concern for her own health, Alex didn’t think things would go that far and was confident she could fend off Vita enough to avoid severe injury, but simply compassion for the injured party.

You can consider me vampire friendly…up until Savage. When it comes to that match, I’ll go full-on Buffy on you because I have something to prove. Yes, I’ve been away for five years and that means that I have to show I haven’t lost a step. In some ways, the second match is more important than the first. Now I have to prove that my first victory wasn’t a fluke.

Alex suddenly looked more serious, showing that beneath her frivolous nature was a legitimate athlete.

As for my name, it’s the result of being in a partnership with two other women. My birth name was Alex Yin. Not Alexandra, not Alexis, just Alex. My entire name was just seven letters long. I’m very happy with my new name, obviously, but people banging on about it constantly…there’s more to me than that.

Alex smiles through the frustration.

Other than noting my name Vita, I know you also saw my first promo and my struggle with that sleeper hold. It’s true that I’m not so hot with getting hit with submissions. Call it a low pain threshold or whatever but you did see me get out of the hold, right? That training session was my first in years and, yeah, I showed vulnerability, but I also showed improvement. So much improvement that I was eventually able to slip free of that hold. If you slap a submission on me during our match, no doubt it’ll hurt but I don’t give up easily. If I did, I wouldn’t be where I am now.

Alex’s smile became more genuine and confident.

You also need to catch me first. Good luck with that. I won’t make it easy for you!

Alex finally beamed as we fade to black.