Anna Daniels
Promotional stuff. We dislike it.
It isn’t the action of it, per se. It’s just that sitting around answering other people’s stupid ass questions for a few hours can be annoying especially when it’s the same fifty questions EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. There is this thing. It is called Google. You should know what it is, stupid ass reporter, because you humans invented it. And the reporters are so interchangeable. They end up like the majority of opponents after a while. The matches eventually blend together and so do the conversations. So when PRIME management wanted everyone to do some sort of promotional wankfest at the MGM Grand, we smiled and nodded and pretended…and did whatever the fuck we wanted to anyway.
The vessel pulls the curtain and the Vegas sun blinds the eyes for a moment. But it’s only for a moment. The glare of the glass might not help matters. But that is alright. Here we are–Anna Daniels, the Muse and Multitudes, the ONLY Wrestler That Matters–in a bulletproof glass box with all the amenities we will need for one week directly in front of the MGM Grand. (Because they never said it had to be inside the damned place.) And to fulfill our obligations, we made a point to put signs at each side of the queen sized bed.
HERE IS ANNA DANIELS, MISCREANT, DOING PROMOTIONAL FOR PRIME’S ALMASY TOURNAMENT IN A MOST RIDICULOUS FASHION WHICH IS IN OUR NATURE AT THE PRESENT TIME on the left side of the box.
TAKE PICTURES IF YOU WANT (NO FLASH PLEASE). PRESS WITH QUESTIONS CAN CALL 1-858-651-5050 on the right.
With people curiously glancing at the box as they walk past, we settle into our fuzzy minion pajamas newly bought in a certain amount of haste, sit at the foot of the bed, and prepare to plug in the definitely not at all illegally imported Nintendo 64 to the television in front of us.
Thus starts the first day.
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Once upon a time, PRIME used to mean something.
Under bright lights and in front of roaring crowds, great warriors plied their trade. They waged wars and created legends, drove the masses to joyful eruptions and the depths of despair. Each show meant something to fan and wrestler alike. Each story had something to say, even if that something to say is fucking stupid. When it was finally laid to rest, people were sad to see it go but also happy that it was here. And we didn’t have to travel back in time or even watch one millisecond of ancient programming to know that.
Because it showed. It showed in the way everybody made such a big deal about the comeback. It shows in the oldbloods coming back to get their first taste of the spotlight for an extremely long time. And it definitely showed in some of the biggest names of the present diving in. We looked at all this, sniffed a little, and then decided in our utter boredom of killing time–no pun intended–to walk through the door and get the vibes of the place for ourselves. Besides, we can’t remember the last time we were in Vegas. So it’s a win-win.
We have been on both sides of this equation before. We have been the oldblood looking to uphold the banner and test our mettle against the youth. We have been the newblood seeking new challenges and looking to make our stance upon another hill. It never gets any easier for anyone no matter how many times you do this because you always gotta find your footing first before you can begin.
It never gets easier. But you do get used to the struggle. The having to rebuild over and over again. You have to. Otherwise, you’re better off not being here. You’re better off either putting around in your retirement home watching your career die or staying in your comfy holes where everything is sunshine and rainbows and everybody knows your name. Like a neighborhood bar. Or an Applebee’s.
Starting over is a challenge that’s not for the weak. Starting over means throwing your expectations to the forefront and actualizing them by might and iron will in an uncertain landscape you might not even fit into or worse yet, might crumble the moment you get there. A situation like this makes it even more sketchy. Reboots-slash-retreads of old promotions evaporate just as fast as the fresh ones do except with the added stain of endless comparison.
And yet, here we are. Again. A glutton for punishment spurred on by the occasional wild hair up our ass to throw ourself into the breach.
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There is a crowd gathering around our little box. We don’t know why.
It’s not like we’re doing anything relatively entertaining. We’re doing what we normally do. I, She-Who-Writes, write our accumulated thoughts on the situation in a semi-comprehensive manner on this rag of paper to focus ourself on the goal. We pay no attention to them. Not right now. Is it so strange to them that this is the way we go about it? It shouldn’t be. That’s what they expect. They expect public people to remain public forever. They want to know our secrets and blast it on dirtsheets. They want to know our thoughts. Firebug lights a cigarette in the corner of the mind’s eye and speaks to the masses who cannot see.
“fuck off. you haven’t earned the right to know us.”
And she’s right. You have to earn the right and that in of itself is a difficult thing to do. We have learned through many years of giving our hearts out and being abandoned that 99% of the people that drift into our life are temporary. This knowledge is both blessing and curse. Blessing because your attachments aren’t incredibly tight and thus when they disappear it hurts a little less. And curse, almighty curse, because you’re bound to get close to some. You’re bound to care about a few and when they rise to their stations away from you, it kills you.
We watch the night sky, the endless void, and therein we see our lanky son. His dead soul stars blinking out signals and we know what they are as well as what they mean. We look at the rising sun and there in the heart of it is our husband meditating. For the light of the sun is his and the heat that emanates therein is not for these pissants crawling along the mudball. The heat is his love for us, a raging burning flame that will inevitably burn everything away to leave his family as the only ones left for the next go around. And sometimes, they have Earthly form. And sometimes, they do not.
Those are the only ones who know and those are the only ones that matter. The rest get this glass box. They see us and talk to us if we wish to be talked to. But the world will never know us. They can only guess from what they see and speculate from what they hear.
A message from the many among us that has no form and no name. “We think too much. This shit is depressing. The Prime and the rest of us agree. We flip on the console again and eventually get lost in our efforts to convert every track to muscle memory.
________
We don’t know Seymour Almasy. Until this tournament announcement, we have never heard of his name or saw his face or knew nothing of his accomplishments. Of the last, we still really don’t know how big the impact is. We imagine he meant something to what PRIME used to be. We’re also willing to bet that there will most likely be some video package to highlight both the man (or is he a half-elf? He looks like a half-elf!) and the tournament itself at some point. That’s how memorials work, after all. The ones that know get to feel sad and the ones that don’t get to learn.
IF they wish to learn.
For us, this is a clean slate which is the best surface to build on. Oh, sure. There are people on this roster that have an inkling of what they’re dealing with when it comes to us. But they are either on the other side of this field with their own bands of “who?” to deal with or out of the running entirely. The only other person we know on our branch is a single dori–oh. We mean Tapioca and his sister-wife, Muriel. And this…actually suits us just fine. After all, what fun would it be beating up known faces right off the bat without a suitable buildup? At a certain point in one’s career, you gotta learn to savor the little morsels before you get to the big hunts. Stay hungry, but never starve.
Doesn’t mean that we can take it too easy, though. With a lot of unknown variables and moving parts, anything can happen in the WW–
Some lady just walked into the glass. That must’ve been embarrassing for her. It was a lot like those viral videos of people trying to walk into the house and then SPLAT. Their face meets the poolside door, prompting another squirt or twelve of Windex. We have lived among them for a long time yet we keep forgetting humans are stupid. Maybe it’s the CTE. Or maybe the lack of fucks has spread to things we can’t control.
At least we’re not trying to hammer in a lesson she doesn’t want to learn…this time. Small victories.
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The liaison is not pleased.
Apparently, the press on this side of the multiverse has started complaining about how their questions are transferred to the Harvard Sentences. We can’t imagine why. There’s better answers there than what they’ll get from us. Don’t they know we’re busy doing literally anything else? The Prime poses for pictures when asked. Firebug rolls her eyes. I write. He-Who-Hates trains on and on into the almighty night. The miscellaneous assortment of us, those that have no substance, occasionally slip in microactions that belong somewhere in the in-between. So seeing this ancient red batphone in a corner desk in the glass box is not great. And as we expected when the calls roll in from radio shows and assorted dirt sheets, it’s the same old blues.
John William Jankenson from the Rasslin’ Spectator squirts out a gem. What is your main goal in PRIME? Firebug, at this point, craves a cigarette as her annoyance flares up. The rasp in her voice merely adds to the sarcasm. “hmmmmm…let’s see. we’ve entered into a tournament that has some of the best that can be compiled for a shiny title belt. might that not provide a clue? kicking ass, being the best, causing chaos. what else is there?”
Martin Mel from some third rate newspaper in Pahrump, Nevada shows so much professionalism for such a small man. Who do you think is your real competition in PRIME? Our confidence says “Nobody”. Our rationality says “Everybody”. I, your meager writer, split the baby. “Everybody and nobody.” We can tell by the pause that he’s considering questioning this before ultimately shaking his head. It isn’t worth it, he thinks. And in a way, he’s right.
Jack-em-off Johnny and the Radical Cumjar, two aging shock jocks with a dwindling fanbase, manage to say this in between QAnon shenanigans and jokes about tits: What do you think about this Nathan guy you’re facing? And THIS, insanely enough, is the question that causes us to pause the timeline juuuuust for a second as we try to find the answer. We watch as the passers-by and spectators freeze in this second in time. We watch the sun and we puzzle this out.
It isn’t the source that shocks us. Even a dying breed can still do something useful every now and again. It’s just that…what is there to think about? He hasn’t stepped into a ring thus there’s no tape of him and the only thing anybody has heard about him is that he was a baby sold into slavery towards some wrestling Weapon X experiment. Many would probably mock that. Many most likely will. But we are a veteran of the stranger bits of the business, never mind the many universes. We have seen a dragon, a sex robot, an eunich without a torso who loves armbars, a sentient wrestling promotion that may have been our child, and about a million people who may or may not have been werewolves. That’s just in the past few years. We’re not even adding anything we’ve done into the equation. Compared to all of that, he and his one track mind are positively boring.
With a sigh, we press play. The world comes back to life. Nobody noticed that ten minutes have passed when they and their universe just stood still. The Prime takes full control. All it takes to answer is one word, but her voice streaming through the vessel’s vocal cord makes it sound rather posh.
“Nothing.”
The jocks hem and haw but Prime pays it no mind. She pulls the phone out and performs the one action we’ve been wanting to do for the past three days. Do humans still say yeet?
Well, it doesn’t matter. With no more phone calls for the foreseeable future, we can now prepare ourself for the next few days.
But first, Mario Kart.
________
Both sides of the mountain have one thing in common.
The past doesn’t mean a goddamn thing to those on the other side.
In the end, it doesn’t matter to us what PRIME used to be any more than what we used to be matters to PRIME. We’ve spent the past year slowly cleaning out our mental and spiritual baggage in between murderous title defences in Japan, endless hunts for an old man’s head in Australia, and bits of battle sandwiched within. None of that–not a single thing–is important to this tournament or the people in it. If we spoke into a camera about it, nobody would care. But it matters to us. We’ve been told once that the empty places tend to be the most full. And that’s true. Full of possibility. Full of magic. For the first time in our chain of life, the weight of what was and what ought to have been is truly, undisputedly gone.
What is left? The Here. The Now. The Moment.
On our television, a commercial is playing promoting PRIME’s return. A voice says “Welcome to the new era”. He doesn’t realise just how true that is. He doesn’t sense the inevitable drama that’s brewing nor does he know the type of blood that’s flowing. And none of them, not even the ones we’ve been sharing locker rooms with really know us. Cue that Action Bronson theme and the boy with the wind tunnel hair.
…huh. Some drunken idiot just tried to punch the box. He’s hurt his hand more than he’s hurt our temporary residence. But there’s a small crack in the wall now. We should fix that.
It seems like we keep coming back to this thought. It must be the point. Many mold themselves into a shape they want to show the masses whether it be for intimidation or for defence. To make one fear them or to hide against them. And here we are in this glass box, this display case, doing neither. We are our own zeitgeist. We are what we are at the moment and we do not flinch.
When we said nothing, we didn’t say he IS nothing. Nor that he can DO nothing. He is somebody and he can do something. We just think nothing. In a situation like this, dipping one’s toes into the many timelines and seeing everything will only cause analysis paralysis. Analysis paralysis causes us to hesitate. Hesitation means a loss more often than not. Our best work is done when we absorb the vibe in that ring and act accordingly. Our best work is done when we flow. When we flow, we conquer.
Never mind being Number One By Definition. Never mind the buzz and the noise. In order for PRIME to survive let alone thrive, it too must flow ever forward and never in the quite same way twice.
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The final night has arrived.
We’ve fulfilled our obligation in terms of promotional now. By the next morning, our display case won’t be here. We’ll put on some actual clothing. Or maybe we won’t. We don’t know yet. We watch the sun begin to set and the dark begin to manifest. We are at the point of dusk, the bleeding through of our boys nodding to each other and watching us. We’re here for many things but one of the big things is to be their inspiration. All of us are in communion. All of us smile.
How does one become the Muse? How does the many?