Anna Daniels
Have you ever just reached a point where you just say “fuck it”?
If you have, you probably know that there are many varieties of “fuck it”. There’s the despondent, giving up, resigned to your fate version. There’s the annoyed and irritated beyond belief version. There’s the shrugging, uncaring version. And then…there’s this version.
The vessel sits on the front porch of Casa Daniels, Bucky and his sword sleeping nearby. Her form is illuminated by nothing other than the light buzz of neon piped in an outline of the roofs. The light itself gives off the often duplicated but never really replicated 1980’s aesthetic; a nod to the human side of Jacky Rex Daniels, husband, true blue Aussie, and forever wondering if he was born in the wrong era. If one is to be poetic, one could say that the darkness is the other half of him. Rapscallion, Lovecraftian Bond Villain, and as of this time, the reigning King of Christmas. So many hats for one head.
Sound familiar?
Yes. This tends to be a pattern. The couple could never be one thing at a time. It wasn’t in their natures. Even when they first met, they were manifold and filled to the brim with secrets. Us Multitudes were not out in full force at the time, but here. Always here. So was his. We hid in plain sight from the vessel and he locked away his eldritch appeal. Those innocent days couldn’t last forever. Nor should they.
We hunger for your kisses, darling.
And with the ashes of your wings,
We shall create our own so to place ourself
Upon the pedestal you’ve created for us.
N’ghftnahh ah’n’ghft, yogfm’ll hafh.
The Prime looks at the tweet again. Written on the sixth of November. She never remembered writing it. She damn sure never authorized it. And she knew where that devotion belonged to.
That’s why she ended up in the Flooded City in the first place.
The Prime never wanted to step on the toes of the inhabitants of the PRIMEverse. She knew full well they were running on the back foot coming here, but that was part of the challenge. To contain one’s self in neutrality is a struggle. It was a struggle she had thought was needed at the time. But during that ReVival, altering the experience of one Larry Tact, it was the only time us as an entirety felt…
Free.
The attack blended into the background as yet another malicious attack in a landscape filled with them. Ordinary enough to be glazed over from mortal eyes and insane enough for their mental filters to force-block out the madness. In short, it was perfect. And if anybody bothered to observe it, they could very well argue that Anna Daniels is no different than Paxton Ray or the Love Convoy or those egg scramble cucks (or whatever they call themselves). It won’t be surprising if Youngblood, in all his grit, would say so.
In a way, he’d be right. The difference is we don’t do it just to assert authority or to be an asshole. Those are part of it, let’s not lie. But if the reasoning was only that, it wouldn’t be worth it. The kerfluffle at the PRIMEporium wasn’t just because Tact dirtied up merchandise. It was the disrespect. It was the damned foolishness of the man. The thought that he thought that he could siphon this power from us like a leech. It’s been stuff like this building up that led to the meeting amongst the tears of gods. The Prime, Vɛrin…
And He-Who-Hates.
That part surprised the Prime. The fact that he was there. The moment that ego, superego, and id congregated on mostly neutral ground. The bafflement wasn’t lost on either the glitched nun nor the monster. Yet after much snarling from at least two sides, there came an understanding. We hoard our ideas which can be good at times. More often than not, however, we tend to play tentatively. Carefully. Slowly until the ideas rot from not being used. Because even though most of them don’t have an expiration date, the feeling for them does. It’s either there or not. The hoarding is a incredibly tough habit to break, something we may just struggle with forever in an infinite loop. But in that tower with those two and the visions we’ve kept under wraps on the walls, there was an understanding.
He-Who-Hates got tired of the cage created for him. And we got tired of ours again.
This is the “acceptance” flavor of fuck it. An acceptance of the path so far, a fury towards perception, and a refocus on the sniper’s scope.
________
This match does not belong on this card and we all know it.
This match is not the semi-main event to anything. Not even Dusk’s last ride into the sunset. It belongs in MSG. You know it. We know it. We’ve been building to this moment since we’ve shook hands. We’ve been building this since we’ve acknowledged each other. It should be us versus you at Colossus for that Universal Championship. Not that meaningless Cancer Jiles. Not Underwear Boy. Not Nova playing ref. You and us, Brandon Youngblood. But it really wasn’t meant to be this time around, was it?
So here we are. Playing second fiddle to a nostalgia trip. Both of us on a downward spiral, it seems. It wasn’t all that long ago that we were on top of the mountain. You at the very top, us not that far behind. But things happened. You lost the belt you fought like a lion to gain at the hands of absolute bullshit that didn’t really matter in the end. And despite everything, we’ve been racking up losses. Granted, really close losses. Still…
The shame that we’re not where we deserve to be falls on us and us alone. You bear the weight with those broad shoulders. We bare ours with a certain degree of dissociation.
However, weight affects us in different ways, doesn’t it?
Your weight is wearing you down. Crippling the confidence you once held so very dear. Your own flesh and blood no longer considers you a hero. And though the fans still cheer for you, you doubt yourself. The vision of a wrestling Camelot melts in front of you, more of a mirage than anything. It shows. It shows in your actions and your thoughts. It’s funny. You’re the best you’ve ever been, Brandon. Despite the years, you’ve done your work to be better than you were. Physically. Mentally. And yet in a strange way, you’ve never felt as useless as you do right now.
(Note that we don’t say he’s never felt useless. He has. But this is a different shade. A bitter taste he’s not yet familiar with precisely because of the work done.)
Us? We’re used to this. See, you took a rest from the game. You retired. You didn’t think you’d ever be back in any ring on primetime–no pun intended–again, let alone in a PRIME ring. You’re probably forgot that tartness in your soul when you work so hard and everything tends to fuck you. But we’ve never taken a break. Not one. We’ve never retired. We’ve never taken a vacation. No step backs. That’s not to say we’ve never been tempted in times like this. We’ve had the thought that maybe we should step back. Go part time or go forever, let our name fade into the history books of this profession’s history. Destined to be forgotten faster than lightning. Maybe we should be content. Maybe we should travel the ‘verses ad infinitum, never belonging anywhere.
And yet…
Every time we have had this thought. Every time we have been a pussy hair’s length to pulling the trigger. Something in our skull…sparkles. It’s not the best explanation. We don’t know how exactly how to explain it. But there is a new idea in our head. A new possibility to grow. Another road to travel. And in our curiosity, our hunger for knowledge, we take it. Just like that, we’re sucked back in with renewed vigor. The journey continues. Would you believe, oh Grapplefather, that it wasn’t until about a year ago that we figured out that was the way our cycle worked? We used to fucking hate times like these. It used to chafe at our soul.
Now? Now we cannot help but embrace it. Diamonds from coal.
This weight that used to cripple us doesn’t anymore. We carry it like its a weighted backpack, irritating but necessary. Because it carries what we need within even when we’re not one hundred percent sure what we’ll need until the moment arises. That knowledge in and of itself makes the situation tolerable. This is temporary. Everything is. In the moment’s fragility lies freedom. Even if choosing to live our life on the small scale much like humans do forces us to forget more often than we like.
That might just be all we need to take you down. That one fragment reaped time and time again from the hardest road.
Yet that would be undervaluing you, Last Diamond.
There’s a chance that even as we speak, you’re getting ever so close to the same conclusion. Albeit in your own words and format. It may be wriggling in your head as we’ve said it. Taking root in your soil. Just waiting for the right amount of sun and rain to come along.
What kind of aspiring god would we be…
Nah. Scratch that.
What kind of warrior would we be if we didn’t give you what you need? Not what you want. What you need. As much as we can provide. As much as can be leaked out of us. As much as you can try to squeeze out of us with your strength. Wring it out until you’re content! Far as we’re concerned?
Fuck Colossus.
Fuck the Garden.
We wipe our whole asshole with Cancer Jiles, Paxton Ray, the Love Convoy, and the rest of the goings on. We spit in the face of what could’ve been and should’ve been. That shit’s dead. The past is dead, Brandon Youngblood. Who you used to be. What PRIME used to be. All of it is decomposing under the weight you carry right now. Our only focus in this ‘verse right now is you. We may not have been living up to the New Era moniker you’ve so graciously given us. It may just be a buzzword to sell shirts.
(For now.)
However, that doesn’t give you the goddamn right to disappoint us for a second time. Quite frankly, Brandon, we won’t let you. We will haunt you to the ends of every world. We will curbstomp you in your nightmares. We will always be in the corner of your vision, just out of your sight. If you don’t think we will or you don’t think we can, ask what’s left of Larry Tact.
For one night. For one match. From bell to bell.
Leave your weight at home.
________
The tattered robe of the Time Lords is slid onto a wire hanger. The headpiece sits on a mannequin head.
These aren’t just fanciful ring wear. They mean something…or at least they meant something once. The dueling seals of Rassilon used to shine in the light. The ragged crimson remnant used to have fresh-yet-ancient regality imbued in its fibers. The broken leather used to hold in place. We wore this for a reason. We wore this to show you, dear reader, that we are a battle hardened brute. A survivor of War. We wanted it known that no matter who you throw at us, no matter what the match was, no matter the circumstances, that we would always push through. That we have our past and are not afraid to carry the weight of our choices.
(Naturally, much of this was lost in the conversion from a flesh and blood form into the wax bodies the PRIMEverse demands. But that was the thought process behind it, even as the ideas fail to be rendered.)
However, we have now reached the point that the lesson is internalized often to the point where it has become our stabilizing factor.
Long ago, when Dodobird took control from Firebug and the vessel was in its previous form, we were called “consistently inconsistent”. Granted Dodobird was absolute madness. A living breathing cartoon character that just so happened to be one of us. A breaker of reality. So the distinction fit her, perhaps a little too well. But even with her gone, we still very much are. Most people would take that as an insult and would work hard to be consistent and would do everything in their power to be…stable. And we’ve tried. Honest! There’s just one problem.
Consistency is so damn boring.
Not to mention that it makes one complacent and predictable. Being too predictable in the wrestling business may make the fans all warm and fuzzy as they recite your five moves of doom by heart as you’re doing them on whatever device they watch you on live and mostly commercial free. However, it also makes you painfully easy to read. That’s fine for a five year old or people whose mental facilities ended up stunted whether that’s due to being born or unfortunate tragedy. Everybody else? They need a challenge. In “combat sports” or whatever buzzword you want to use, there is nobody more challenging than somebody who is able and willing to break from their own traditions when they need to. Or want to. Or just because they feel like it.
Another robe is slipped off of its wire hanger. We’ve had it designed months ago, but we never really could allow ourself to pull the trigger. It is a brilliant white with shining onyx cuffs. The crimson from the old robe is here as well, though it is neither regal nor broken. It is confined to its places. Patches of old within the new. And for the first time, we wear it.
We look like a choir girl.
An angel.
A nun from the Everywhere into the here.
It’s perfect.
Metamorphosis takes time. Ascension to Godhood takes time. And perhaps we may have failed Brandon Youngblood by not being what he thought we were. We definitely failed Ria Lockhart by not murdering Incense Pope. Yet it’s never really a failure until you’ve failed yourself. On that front, we just haven’t yet succeeded.
Bucky barks from behind us. He’s waiting for his dinner. His tail wags faster than anything and the Prime cannot help but laugh. Yet before we leave, the eyes focus on the t-shirt that hangs over the marital bed. The same neo-80’s aesthetic that vaguely seasons this home with two simple words.
TEAM OVERKILL
Vɛrin bows the vessel’s head. The prayer is silent. We can only hear the beating of our hearts and the rushing of our blood. He corrupts the worlds and devours them. We just cause them to fade out. To cease to exist.
How long will it take for us to snuff out yours?