The first peals of thunder roll past my ears as I’m crossing the fourth mile of my run. I’ve been pushing harder than usual today, so for a second I dismiss the sound as being only my pulse pounding in my ears. However, the slow roll of another thunderbolt echoing across the landscape quickly dismisses this notion. As I come to the street corner I pause for a second, my breath echoing deeply in my chest, and look up to the blackened, roiling clouds coming pouring in from the west. I pause. It’s already been four miles, after all, and to be honest it wouldn’t be a terrible idea to rein my training back a bit. I’ve been pushing myself for weeks now, both dealing with Cagero’s meddling on the air and the continuous turmoil of life in general. A rest would be nice. I could turn left and cut the run short, head home, maybe film a promo for Riot!
I consider for half a moment longer before turning right and heading further out, away from home.
The first pattering drops of rain start to fall, and my mind drifts away. When I was a kid I used to hate running, despise it if we’re being completely accurate. I would look for excuses to cut laps short at football practice, and earned quite a few dressings down from my gunnery sergeant for trying the same bullshit during boot. Somewhere along the line, however, things shifted. I think ultimately it stopped being about something other people were wanted me to do and became my own, a test I set for myself on a day to day basis. Can I keep moving when the muscles of my legs start to feel like rope stretched taut beneath my skin? Can I push on when the burning spreads through my lungs and every breath feels like agony? Every second sheared off of my time, every foot that I’m able to travel further than I had gone before, is a personal victory. It’s pure, unsullied, clean. There are no run ins, no backstage politics, no money grubbing ex-wives. It’s me, my own personal place and moment in time, and often the only moments of the day when I actually feel like I’m where and when I’m supposed to be.
The rain suddenly accelerates, going from a slow drizzle to a downpour in a heartbeat. My clothing is almost immediately soaked through, rivulets of water running down both sides of my skull and down in front of my eyes. Another flash of lightning illuminates the street, temporarily revealing the image of a woman in a sun dress sprinting towards an office door, her brief case held precariously above her head. I feel a thrill as the wind starts to whip down the streets. There really is nothing like the fury of a Midwestern thunderstorm. They arrive out of nowhere, dumping their torrential fury on the unsuspecting masses, their arrival only heralded by the sounds of tornado sirens or the howling of the wind across the plains. It’s chaos unleashed on a grand scale, and it speaks to the same grain of chaos I carry around in my heart. And then, just as quickly, they move on, in an instant reverting back to a sunny day so quickly that, if you were unobservant, you might wonder how exactly everything became drenched when you looked away for a moment.
This chaos, this is what I want to bring to the IWC. Christian Savior wanted to characterize me as a heel or face, as if those definitions have any sort of bearing whatsoever. I’ve consistently been defined more by the people I’m put in front of from a week to week basis than by any of my own actions. I’ve always done things with a personal, violent style that many find difficult to condone. That is, of course, until I’m doing them to their own personal, most hated IWC competitor. Then, obviously, things change and I’m a hero. Huzzah! What a glorious day, right up until the moment I am instead turned against their favorite, handsome world heavyweight champion and I’m a villain again. I’ve never put much stock in it, to be perfectly blunt. This week I’m facing three hated competitors, so I guess that makes me a face.
Somewhere around mile five and a quarter, a car passes by, momentarily blinding me with their headlights. I can only imagine the expressions of the people behind the wheel. Curiosity? Pity? I smile through the curtains of rain, flashing a salute at the driver and carrying on as if God isn’t spraying the city down with his personal firehose. I can feel the insoles of my shoes squidging beneath my feet with each step, and, to my irritation, I find my thoughts wandering back to work.
Adams, Brooks, and Savior. Calling getting into a ring with them climbing into a pit of vipers would be an insult to the vipers. Adams is a treacherous little shit, and I might be the only person in the company who is actually disappointed to see him leave, if only because it means I’ll never get my chance to thank him personally for the part he played in turning me down this new and exciting chapter in the story of my mental collapse. Instead, I merely have to console myself by pummeling the other two, who are no less deserving.
Robin hasn’t really done anything particularly troublesome to me since her return, other than I’m sure I felt her small, feminine boot heels on my back during the numerous Five Star Society gang assaults I’ve endured during their time here. Tragically, that sort of thing has become so commonplace in the IWC shithole that it barely deserves notice. I do, however, take exception to the situation between her and Hurse. Not that I really consider him to be a particularly good friend either, but I do happen to have a long enough memory to remember a time when Hurse was a decent wrestler who was on the way up in the business, as opposed to the broken shell that dances around wearing his skin for the amusement of the people in the crowd. He’s a joke, now, and as far as I can see Robin Brooks is responsible for that. If nothing else, that would be enough of a reason to pummel her. The fact that a shot at the World Title is on the line merely adds to the flavor.
Christ. The World Champion. Porno-fucking-Lad, the IWC world champ. How…in the fuck…could this have happened? What sort of upside down world have I found myself in? As I dash down the street, I look down an alley, halfway expecting to see Rod Serling standing under an umbrella, narrating how there isn’t enough KY in the world to satisfy a Porno Lad world champion…in The Twilight Zone. Even without the history between Savior and I, the fact that he played a role, indirect and unwilling though it may have been, in making this travesty a reality would be the paired motivation I would require to put him down to the mat. I’ll admit, the fact that his compatriots turned on him and eliminated him from competing for the belt is incredibly unfair. However, given the sort of ridiculous shenanigans that have facilitated each of his victories over me, I seem to be having a difficult time finding any sympathy. Truly, this seems to me to be one of those incredibly rare situations in this business where a miserable bastard like Savior actually reaps what he’s sown. And now he’s out on his own, all alone but for a wrestler from his past that none of us have ever actually heard of before, so maybe, for once, things can go down cleanly and we can settle things between us once and for all.
Of course, I thought the same thing last time, right up to the second Josh Hudson snapped a pair of handcuffs around my wrists and I turned around to see Savior tapping his forehead, as if he actually had anything to do with it besides being lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.
I’d chuckled over that bit for months, I can assure you. Not so much, however, as I am now at the thought of me somehow swinging from Dan Douglas’ nuts to get where I am in this company. Put aside for a moment the fact that Savior’s been doing that very thing basically since day one of his arrival in the IWC, and you’re still left with the comical image of Dan-fucking-Douglas doing me a favor. ME. A person he detests on a personal and professional level. A man who has gone out of his way on more than one occasion not just to hold me back but to flat out try to end my career through intermediaries just like Savior. This is the man who supposedly is doing me favors?
I taste the rain as a sarcastic smile splits my lips, letting the streaming water pour past my bared teeth.
On even a general scale, the idea of someone helping me in this company is completely laughable. I fought on my own through a stable of five competitors for my first world title, and for the second, the only way I could get a title shot was to win the fucking Rumble Bash. So I literally went through the entire roster to get a shot for that belt. Can he really think that putting me into a match with two competitors who’ve been haunting my every step for months now is somehow doing me a favor? I can’t imagine it. Unlike Savior, when I say I know that he is intelligent I actually mean it. No one gets as far as he has with his lack of ring talent or athleticism without being able to stay one step ahead of the people around him. It’s spin, and it’s painfully obvious. It isn’t my fault that both of them were incompetent competitors in the ring. As both of them would eagerly point out, they’re both former World Champions, and the fact that this simply means that out of the pile of mediocre wrestlers making up the roster, they happened to be the least mediocre on a particular day.
Frankly, I have to assume that the accusations are simply a new level of desperation setting in for the Falling Phoenix. He could have at least said it was Cruze or Desolation doing me a favor, though those outcomes are almost as unlikely as Douglas. He’s lost his stable. He’s lost his backing from the front office. His brother is here and has, recently at least, been far more successful than him. It’s the same decline I’ve seen coming for some time now, leaving the poor bastard literally shooting his promos in back alleys with washed up wrestlers who don’t even have a fully charged battery for their camera (though, tragically, it appears there was just enough juice for his whole promo to at least make it to IWC.com.) It’s tragic really. I might feel pity for him.
If I was capable of feeling anything anymore.
I round the last corner. My apartment building looms before me, at the top of a massive hill. I take a deep breath and put the first foot to the road, climbing with what’s left of my strength up the incline. Things are finally starting to change for me in this company, and it’s a trend I intend to continue from this point forward. The only way I’m going to get anywhere near the place I deserve in the IWC is to seize it by the throat and drag it to me. I see that now. It started with putting down Psycho and Cagero at Paranoia to win Ultimate Incentive. It continues with Brooks and Savior on Riot! to become the number one contender. And it ends with Porno Lad or, more likely, whoever manages to beat him lying broken at my feet and the World Title held above my head. It isn’t a matter of mental toughness or physical endurance. At this point, it’s only a matter of time. And this go-round, Savior won’t have a conveniently timed SCW invasion to pull me off of him.
I crest the hill, water streaming off of me faster than the slow drizzling remainder of the rain coming down lazily from the sky. I look at the front door. I’ve finished my goal for the day’s training. The storm and ruminations on the coming violence have my blood up, however, and I’m not quite ready to quit for the day.
Turning back to the road, I start to run once again.
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