The final shot was the hardest: a single, continuous lift from a crouching start. Amber had to rise from a squat, Kai clinging to her back in a piggyback style, then transition him to a side carry while climbing a three-step ramp. No cuts. No do-overs.
Amber smirked, her lats flaring as she leaned back in her chair. She’d done lift-and-carry videos before—fireman’s carries, shoulder sits, the classic cradle hold that made grown men blush. But this felt different. Voss wanted a scene: a futuristic warrior retrieving a fallen comrade from a collapsing alien ruin.
Kai slid off her back, his legs shaky—not from the lift, but from the sheer existential oddity of being handled like a sack of groceries by a woman who could probably bench-press a refrigerator.
“Told you.”
She settled into her stance, breath slow and deep. Kai wrapped his arms around her neck. Her glutes and hamstrings fired like pistons as she stood. For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of her own heartbeat and the soft creak of the leather straps on her boots.
By the third take, the crew was silent. The lighting tech, a grizzled man who’d worked on action movies for twenty years, muttered, “I’ve seen stunt rigs less stable than her.”
Voss called cut, then immediately asked for a reset. He wanted the “Amazon carry”—Kai draped face-down across her forearms like a piece of lumber. Then the “fireman’s carry” over one shoulder, his torso draped down her mountainous back. Each time, Amber adjusted her grip, her traps and rhomboids rippling beneath the torn fabric of her costume. The final shot was the hardest: a single,
When she reached the top, Voss didn’t say cut. He just stood there, mouth slightly open.
“I need an Amazon,” his message read. “Not a woman who looks like one. A real one. Lift and carry. No tricks. No harnesses. Just raw, beautiful power.”
The day of the shoot, the set was a masterpiece of crumbling pillars and smoky light. Her co-star, Kai, was a wiry parkour athlete, all lean sinew and nervous energy. He looked up at Amber as she stretched, her biceps casting shadows in the faux moonlight. No do-overs
Voss turned red. The crew laughed. And Amber Steel—Amber DeLuca, the FBB, the Amazon—walked over to her water bottle, every muscle still humming, ready to lift the world again.
The request came via a private message from a producer known only as “Voss.” He was putting together a new kind of physical showcase. Not a competition, not a strongman event, but a narrative. A story told through lifts.
The scene: Kai’s character is pinned under a beam. Amber’s character—a genetically engineered soldier code-named “FBB-7”—storms in. No dialogue. Just presence. But this felt different
“Observant,” Amber replied, cracking her neck. “Don’t worry. I’ve lifted truck tires heavier than you.”
She walked. Through the rubble, past the fog machines, her quadriceps flexing with each deliberate step. Kai’s eyes were wide—not with fear, but with the strange vertigo of being completely, utterly weightless in someone else’s arms.