Answers from on High

The scene is filled with white, floating clouds. The surrounding area is filled with ephemeral, prismatic light shining off of golden and pearl furnishings. It is clearly a room from the heavenly host, a holy site in the eternal hereafter. Winged people walk here and there, laughing gaily amongst themselves as they travel from place to place with no apparent aim or intention. The musical tones of windchimes fill the air, and the scene is entirely one of serenity and peace.

In one corner, a simple workshop is in place. An old, bearded man stands in front of a bench, fiddling with something rotating on the tabletop in front of him. Upon closer examination, the object appears to be the emerald and blue rotating sphere of a planet. The bearded man scratches thoughtfully at his chin for a moment before an idea seems to alight in his sparkling, golden eyes and he reaches down towards one of the brown and green blobs of a continent. With a touch of his finger, the land shifts, reorganizing itself at his command. A mountain range forms slowly beneath his fingertips, rising towards a brilliant blue sky rapidly. Finally, it stops as the celestial figure removes its digits from the orb, looking down at his creation and nodding in satisfaction.

His concentration, however, is disrupted temporarily by the sound of a polite cough behind him. The bearded man turns, looking behind to see an angelic figure standing rigidly behind him at attention, arms clasped behind the golden breastplate adorning his torso. The figure’s white wings are drooping down, and the angel bows before the gaze of the old creator, who waves a hand to indicate that the figure should rise.

Angel-Lord, a thousand pardons for interrupting you, but there has been a somewhat irregular occurrence. It seems that a mortal has arrived and wishes to speak with you.

The old one looks confused for a second, but nods for the angel to continue.

Angel-We’re not entirely certain how he made it here, but he indicated that he would not leave without speaking to you personally. He seemed very set in his ways. Shall I send the heavenly chorus to escort him back to Earth, Lord?

A thoughtful expression, followed immediately by a negative shake of the head and an indication for the visitor to be allowed inside. The angel looks puzzled for a moment but quickly recovers, turning and running back out of the workshop. The older man turns back towards the workbench, picking up a small paintbrush. He dabs it in some white paint before twirling it into the atmosphere of the planet, creating a white puffy cloud.

A moment later, a chorus of trumpets heralds the arrival of the angel with a stocky individual, his characteristic bald head shining in the everpresent glow of his surroundings. He looks around in awe, staring up at the old man who, though looking frail and weathered by experience, towers over AWOL. The angel announces his arrival while simultaneously swatting AWOL in the back, indicating that he should kneel. The IWC superstar looks very out of character as he takes a knee before the supreme power arrayed before him.

AWOL-Thank you for making time for me. I can, uh, see that you’re pretty busy right now.

The creator has picked up a small squirt bottle, dropping a gentle rainstorm onto one of the landmasses before him. He waves a hand dismissively without turning to greet his visitor.

AWOL-I, well, I suppose I don’t need to explain the situation to you-

Angel-Actually, you do.

AWOL-I thought he was omniscient.

Angel-He is, but he gets a kick out of listening to you mortals’ voices. He thinks they’re funny.

AWOL turns back to the old man, seeing the bemused smile on his face, before nodding and continuing.

AWOL-Well, as you know, in the IWC things have been a little less than great recently. My group has been doing what we can to eliminate another group called the Five Star Society, with no amount of success thus far. We had a match against them at the last pay-per-view, Extinction, and had to face them four on four. Their group had to replace a member before hand, but they picked up somebody else from their stable they had been working with for some time. We, on the other hand, were stuck with having to use Jackson Adams, a man who had a grudge against all of us from many years previous, and a “mystery partner” whose identity even we didn’t know until the match had started. Well, the match went predictably, in other words Jackson smashed my teammate in the face with a chair in the middle of the proceedings with a chair, Mr. Orlando Cruze turned out to be the mystery partner which, as exactly none of us actually want anything to do with him, was pretty much awesome, and then proceeded to not play any kind of significant role despite all the artificial hype he had created for himself. Their side won, and now because of him I’m going to have to listen to them congratulating themselves for their crushing victory this week. This isn’t anything new, I’ve dealt with insufferable pricks my whole career.

He looks up, checking to make sure his language hadn’t aggravated the Creator. Seeing no response he carries on.

AWOL-However, things have gone downhill from there. Last week we did manage to take the world title back for Johnny, but this week I’m back in a tag-team match with the Society. Again, I can deal with this. Admittedly I tend to compare trying to create any kind of intelligent discourse with Christain Savior and Porno Lad to getting a root canal and, believe me, I would rather go for the dental work, but I can deal with it. Far, far worse is the fact that I’m stuck with Cruze as my partner again, despite my making it very clear that I wanted absolutely nothing to do with him from here on out. This match seems pretty much tailor-made to aggravate me. This is my worst nightmare. So, I was just wondering if you could let me know what in the hell I did to piss you off?

He pauses, waiting for the Creator to respond. However, the old man simply picks a chisel up from the workbench, carving a scenic canyon into the project that seems to be drawing the majority of his attention. AWOL keeps looking expectantly for a moment before turning to the angel.

AWOL-Um, doesn’t he talk?

Angel-No. His voice would kill you instantly.

AWOL-Oh. I thought Kevin Smith just made that up.

Angel-*sigh* I suppose you think Heston wrote the Ten Commandments too?

AWOL looks in every direction.

AWOL-So shouldn’t Alan Rickman be around here somewhere to translate for him?

The angel rolls his eyes.

Angel-I tried to tell you this was a bad idea, but I suppose you can direct your questions to me and I’ll try to answer them. Although your arrogance at assuming that somehow the one true God has it out for you, specifically, is almost too much to be believed.

AWOL-I’m sorry? I wanted answers, and I’m here to get them.

Angel-Well don’t you think you could have maybe done something a bit more practical? Like talk to your little wrestling federation’s owners or commissioner or something? I would think a military man would understand the general concept of a chain of command and how annoying it is when people do an end run like this.

AWOL-The owners of my company don’t give a shit what happens in the ring, as long as there’s chaos to generate ratings. As for the commissioners, they’re half the people competing in this match.

Angel-Seriously?

AWOL-I know. Ridiculous, right?

Angel-A little. But regardless of how stupid your company’s management situation is, I’m not sure how you can claim that somehow this was our fault.

AWOL-Well it all starts with you guys, doesn’t it? The idea has to come from somewhere, or at least the creation of the genetics that makes the brain that comes up with the idea. No one in the IWC will take responsibility for it, or anything else for that matter, so I’m looking for some answers. I don’t know whose idea it was to stick me with Cruze as a tag team partner, but whoever it was had to have gotten that idea from somewhere, and I’m blaming the big guy.

Angel-That seems a little circular, but free will is unfortunately one of the things the Creator chose to give you mortals, so I suppose I’ll have to allow it.

The angel and AWOL exchange withering glares, but the celestial being finally relents. Meanwhile, the old man picks a metal instrument off of his desk which promptly sparks a bolt of lightning onto the planet’s surface.

Angel-Care to explain why you have such a problem with this?

AWOL looks incredulous.

AWOL-I’m sorry? Are you serious? Let’s put aside for the moment the fact that I would sooner rip the intestines out of Christian Savior and Porno Lad’s guts than have to live through another week of them essentially ignoring any positive point I make in favor of the one or two statements I put out that they can distort into something that is in their favor, you teamed me up with Cruze. Cruze! Orlando fucking Cruze!

Angel-And…that’s bad?

A classic facepalm is AWOL’s response to the winged being’s seeming apathy at his dismay.

AWOL-Yes, cupid, it’s bad. For one thing, the son-of-a-bitch single handedly cost us the match with the Five Star Society at Extinction. And yes, I’m aware that Jackson Adams hit a member of our team with a chair, and yes, I’m aware that I chased his ass through the backstage area to go punish him for it, but Cruze is the one who stuck us with that worthless sack in the first place. But even if you ignore that, there’s his farcical insistence on making himself the “mystery opponent” in the match. I mean, here’s a thought: maybe let your potential teammates in on the gag. It’s not like we’d have rushed out to the promo cameras to brag about how we had a washed up, retired, broken down drama queen for our partner. But no, instead we all got to sit in the dark and wonder. Apparently it wasn’t an attempt at creating drama for his return (yeah right), but the end result was the same regardless. Johnny Kingdom and I essentially got to face the entirety of the Five Star Society with an unknown and Judas on our team.

Angel-Hey, watch that.

AWOL-Sorry. The point stands regardless. And I ask you, out of the four people we had on our team, which one do you think was pinned to cause us to lose that match?

Angel-I really couldn’t care less, but feel free to inform me.

AWOL-NONE OF THEM! They pinned Hurse, the guy Cruze was replacing! Do you know how ridiculous that is? That would be like me dragging some random fan out of the crowd, bashing him in the skull, and pinning him.

Angel-Huh. I suppose that doesn’t make much sense.

AWOL-You think that’s bad, let me tell you about how Christian Savior won the Cartel Title sometime.

The angel looks puzzled but AWOL carries on regardless.

AWOL-Be that as it may, I don’t honestly hold it against the Five Star Society how that match ended. I’m not one to player hate. It would have been one of the greatest upsets of all time if they somehow managed NOT to win it. But they didn’t, they got the pin, I’d have done the same thing in their position, congrats to them, blah blah blah. Let’s get back to the fact that the ending was a complete joke, and yet Orlando Cruze, who is ostensibly one-half of the commissioning team for the IWC, has done absolutely nothing to overturn it. Or set up a rematch. Or do ANY GOD DAMN THING WHATSOEVER to make it right. We all knew he was a figure-head when he started turning his power over every fucking show to let someone else do his job for him. But he apparently now is just making it official and doing absolutely fucking NOTHING with the authority he’s been granted, and I think that’s the thing that pisses me off the most. Cruze could literally book a new member of the 5SS into a “Fight All Three Members of the Empire One-on-One with no outside interference” match every week or, random idea, just fire them, but no. Clearly the best solution to the problem is to throw on his trunks and get back in the ring. And I’m not buying this “I don’t want to look biased” bullshit either. Cruze would hardly be the most biased GM this company’s ever seen. Conrad Grey once pulled a gun on me. Seriously. A gun, and frankly I had it coming. Actually laying some kind of discipline out into the company is nothing compared to that.

Angel-Not to interrupt, but aren’t you supposed to build your teammates up before matches and insult your opponents? It sounds like you’re doing the opposite.

AWOL-Oh, you mean like what Jackson Adams did when he spent most of his Extinction promo time hammering the Empire?

Angel-Ok, sorry, my bad. No need to rip my head off.

AWOL-Would that even do anything to you?

Angel-Probably not. It’s a figure of speech. Anything else you want to get off of your chest?

AWOL-Not really. I’ve wasted enough breath laying out why I can’t stand Christian Savior and Porno Lad. He’s omniscient, so he’s heard it all before anyways.

Angel-Very well. Lord, you have heard this mortal’s case, inflammatory though it may be. Do you care to respond?

The two turn back towards the older figure, whose shoulders lift and drop in a sigh that literally carries the weight of the world behind it. He sets the blue and green orb down onto his workbench, turning away from it and affixing AWOL with a penetrating stare. A long moment passes, followed by another, as the eyes within the wrinkled face weigh the merits of the IWC superstar’s soul. Finally, with knees creaking with arthritis, he steps down from the simple wooden stool and walks forward, standing face to face with the Big Crazy Bastard. AWOL tries not to blink, but faced with the sheer power, the magnificence of the being before him, he is overwhelmed. At last he turns his gaze downward, which brings a smile to the old man’s face. He puts a brotherly hand onto AWOL’s shoulder, which brings AWOL’s gaze back up to greet his. The old man’s smile broadens, but rather than respond with any sort of wisdom or new clarity, he simply gives the big man a pat on the shoulder before turning and walking away. AWOL’s shocked expression follows his retreating form back to the bench, the Creator’s attention once again focused on the planet resting there. An ugly crimson color stains the wrestler’s face and he takes a testy step towards the workbench, only to be blocked by the angel stepping preemptively in front of him.

AWOL-What the hell? That wasn’t an answer!

Angel-We never promised you one, only that your complaint would be heard.

AWOL-That’s bullshit!

Angel-You have the right to think so, but ultimately this is your matter, mortal. He has bigger things to worry about than your middling problem. If you want advice, here it is: stop letting things happen. You’re going to complain because all of these bad things have occurred? Do something about it. I know enough about you to know that complaining isn’t in your nature. Go bust heads. It’s what you’re good at.

AWOL-That’s your answer? That’s the amazing advice? Go hit people?

Angel-You have a problem with that?

AWOL-Well, I thought Wrath was on that list of deadly sins you guys weren’t so crazy about, for starters.

Angel-That never stopped you before.

AWOL looks like he wants to argue, but he finally waves a dismissive hand in the angel’s face and turns away, stomping towards the exit.

AWOL-Whatever. I don’t know why I expected anything else.

He stops, turning around and pointing a finger at the old man.

AWOL-You want me to deal with this on my own? Fine. But I hope you’re at least prepared to take responsibility, because I can bet that you won’t be smiling after you see what I have in store next.

With that he turns, angrily stomping out of the picture, angrily waving some of the white clouds out of his way as he goes. As the camera pans back to the old man, he slowly rests his tools back on the benchtop, his expression of joy at the act of creation now replaced with one of concern, presumably at the thought of the opposite that is to come.