Karen

For what feels like the eighth thousandth time, we press play on this damned promo. We’ve been playing it on and off since it was released. It is new in the grand scale of things. It is also against us. Bryan Williams

(yes, the chickenman. You remember him.)

is/was sitting in his wearhouse in Bumfuck, Nowhere on a dusty chair and is talking to us and in a way, Yamashi Promotions as a whole. He’s trying to bite back some of his frustration of not getting where he wants to go. But it’s there and there’s no hiding it. He even admits his lack of movement forward. It’s a good moment, the closest thing to a confessional a pro wrestler can have. That is not the moment that forces the whole thing on a loop, however. It’s what he says after.

“You seem to have an idea for yourself, at least in here. I’ve watched you in other companies, your success isn’t quite as memorable as it is here. Touring in Japan, for some reason, just brings out the best in you.”

Oh, yes. He says some nice things afterwards and vents more frustration and doubt of himself in the air. But that’s the part that keeps the repeat button lit. Because he’s right. The little bastard is right. We’ve been in multiple promotions all over the place. We have fought in Disneyland and on boats and sound stages in Florida. We have almost died on private islands and regrettably slogged through shitty carnival sideshows. We’ve done a lot. Yet we have never felt at home nearly as well in any other place as we have under the massive blood soaked umbrella of Goto Yamashi.

Which brings up the question: how in the hell did we do that?

We wish we could tell him that there’s some sort of formula for it. Some secret code that could be whispered into his ear and illuminate his mindset. The truth seems much more basic. Right place, right time, right mental breakdown at the right time, and violence. Passionate yet heartless violence. Seems contradictory, don’t it? Passionate yet heartless. One can be both on fire for the goal and cold blooded when the gloves come off. However, just the fact that our successes elsewhere don’t quite stack up is an irritant.

The real question is how does one solve that problem? How can we kindle a similar flame? The shirts are working some. When you have the main ref being caught in 4k wearing it and fan signs giving nods towards it, you’re doing something right. That’s only the first step though. The next step sounds easy, yet isn’t always so.

Fan and peer support means next to nothing if you can’t get the wins. Sad, but true. Oh sure. There’s plenty of loveable losers in the business. There’s even a metric fuckton in PRIME. But sometimes, even the losers would like the taste of victory every now and then. As much as we’re in this for the artistry and the physicality of it, every single wrestler has the competitive bug. Every single one. Even those that say “good golly gosh, I’m just happy to be here”. And nobody has it worse than somebody that’s been to the mountain top before. If you’ve been there once regardless of where it is, the craving never completely dies. It may sleep. It may lay low. It may go on vacation.

But it never dies.

________

 

What is a man to a king

And a king to a god?

What is god to a demon putting up a facade?

I need an outlet now

I need to write this down

 

Not for the first time does the start to DEMONDICE’s “wanting, getting, wanting” float through the bluetooth earbuds. Nor is it the first time the Multitudes that make up Anna Daniels have caused the vessel’s head to bop to it. This has been on repeat since before the Cecilia Ryan match and it shows no signs of leaving rotation. Not here. Not in the PRIMEverse, anyway. Every time since they come back to this land of wax bodies and soundbites, this is the song that haunts them. They have yet to properly figure out exactly why.

Yes, there’s always a reason why. It’s just a matter of finding it. When you’re many forms of yourself, there are lyrics that hit different parts of the ever shifting onion. The self-deprecation and snark definitely belongs to Firebug. The doubt low key belongs to the more competitive of them all, though they’ll never admit it. Time is finite and cars don’t run in space belong to the Prime. I need to write this down is practically She-Who-Write’s mantra. The more they pick their parts, the more of a headache it is.

To look out at Las Vegas with all of that floating in your ears and all the stuff floating in your head is an experience. The words of Bryan Williams. The words of DEMONDICE. The words of Brandon Youngblood. 

(yes, some of us are still very much aiming at you, motherfucker. patience.)

They bleed together as the sun slowly sets giving way to Sin City truly starts to live up to its name. Lights begin to pop on from the buildings and every cell inside the vessel stirs. The Great American Nightmare. First of all, let’s not call Cody Rhodes “great” yet. Secondly, shouldn’t this be in July? Whatever.

The bobbing in the brain from one element to another. Did they expect to be in the Intense title match? No. Of course not. Why would they? That was Ria and Angloboi’s thing. That was the build up. Anglo betraying Ria, Ria getting pissed, Luchador making stump speeches for reasons. And the Multitudes were perfectly content with letting little sis handle her own damn business. Even with everything that’s been revealed, she still is very much able to hold her own. If she wanted to make an idiot bleed, who were they to stop her?

As for Anna Daniels versus Rowan…that particular man was a giant annoyance. The man expected her to go back in time to fix his fuck ups, refused to take no for an answer, and then had the audacity in that microscopic bit he calls a ball sack to slander. There isn’t any actual, true blue, full blown fuck off hate for Mr. Witness Protection. Deep down, the Multitudes understand the motives. He is just a giant irritating fly shitting on everything he landed on and what he landed on just so happened to be their nerves. And you know what happens to flies, eh? They get swatted, trapped, eaten.

Lindsay Troy looked at all of this. Looked into Morty’s eyes as he begged for a match. Noticed the similarities in the stories told. She had to. Two masked men getting on the bad side of mental messes in the form of women. She looked at all this and desired to kill two birds with one stone.

For Rowan, the upcoming match is a chance to bend a Lord of Time to his will.

For Tom, a chance for penance. Or bloodshed. Whichever comes first.

For Ria, both a blessing and a curse. She finally gets to unleash some of the violence in her head, but people she cares for are in the way.

“But for me, it was Tuesday.”

And with that quip, a moment of realization. 

________

Transcript from a radio interview on the Barnacle Boy and Moppy Mornin’ Power Hour, only on KFLX. Interviewee: Anna Daniels. Subject(s): The Great American Nightmare card, her opponents, her aspirations.

BB: –so PRIME’s Great American Nightmare is just around the corner. You have a barn burner of a match coming up. Semi-main event, in fact. The Impulse title is on the line in a fatal four way and the ring ropes will be wrapped in barbed wire. Ms. Daniels, your thoughts.

AD: Firstly, we’re pretty sure it’s called the Intense title. Not Impulse. Randall Knox doesn’t have a belt, that we know of.

BB: Yet. He doesn’t have one yet.

AD: Look. We have no hate for Impulse. He seems like a good dude considering. But if anybody’s taking that strap from that big Canadian lummox, it’s going to be us.

BB: So you’re saying you don’t care about the Intense championship?

AD: What we’re saying is we aren’t afraid of carrying double the gold.

Moppy the Janitor, who only communicates via soundboard, presses a button. KA-CHING!

BB: Bold words from a bold lady. But in order to do that, you would have to go through three bodies, the mentally unraveling Anglo Luchador, the smokin’ hot very evil, very-Christlike Ria Nightshade, and the mysterious Mortimer Kjigamarig. Koalamandu? Kolostomybag?

AD: Rowan. His name is Rowan Scatino.

A manufactured gasp from Moppy.

BB: Pulling out that name all in the open might get you in trouble with some totally legitimate businessmen, Anna.

AD: It’s his fault for putting his own business out there. Subtly isn’t exactly his forté. Even the smoothest of brains can listen to his little sob story and connect a few dots. Besides since Rowan wants to sling his nonsense on us, we consider it fair game. As for his “family” or whatnot, we have no issues with them. We’re no snitch, nor do we care about their business dealings. If they have a problem with us beating their weakest link to a bloody pulp, they can find us.

The soundboard produces a gun shot.

AD: We don’t imagine that to be a problem, though. In fact, they might get a kick out of it.

BB: You really don’t like this guy, do you?

AD: We just want him out of our hair. It’s not our fault your life sucks, Rowan. Take some responsibility.

BB: What about Morty’s claims that you, a Time Lord, have been messing with the entire timeline just to screw him over in his matches?

AD: It rubbed us the wrong way, not gonna lie. Once or twice? We can ignore it. Let the idiot believe whatever, ya know? More times than that and you’re actively poking the bear. At that point, you’re not only asking us to ruin your existence. We’re also getting extremely tempted to do so with each poke. It’s why we offered what we did on the last ReVival.

BB: So that you don’t cave to the temptation.

AD: Exactly. We try to be a benevolent demi-god. We gave him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

A snippet of some out of tune parody of the Godfather theme. Even Anna cackles at that.

BB: Yet neither of you expected to be in the middle of this war between the Anglo Luchador and Ria Nightshade. For a championship, no less.

AD: Wasn’t our intention, no. But this does tend to happen. We’re minding our own business and BOOM!

HEADSHOT!

AD: No, title shot. But thank you, Moppy. We can’t help it we’re badass enough for chances of glory to fall from the damn sky. And we sure as hell aren’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

BB: Back to TAL for a moment. He spent some time in the deathmatch scene in Japan. There’s even a potential supporter of his in attendance in the form of deathmatch legend, Pom Shinjoku. Does any of this rattle you at all?

AD: Why would it?

MY DOG STEPPED ON A BEE!

AD: We did sound like her, didn’t we? Apologies. Back to this though. Barnacle Boy, you said something very important. Angly-Wangly spent time there. As in past tense. Which means he might just be a wee bit rusty. It may also mean that over the years, he’s never really caught up.

(I must break from the transcript to point out something that you can’t really hear, dear reader. Throughout this entire interview, it has been mostly the Prime speaking. Firebug snarks a bit but the shifting between the two have been so subtle that few would even notice. This is by design. This is what happens when one’s Multitudes are in sync. But it is at about this point where someone else gains the microphone. 

This “someone else” has yet to have a title or a form. Indeed, most of the Multitudes are like this. But this particular one has gained a personality and a voice, if nothing else. They–for the gender of this ghost, if any, is unknown still even to them–are both newborn and ancient. A strange “love child” of the caged animal He-Who-Hates and the ever militant Five-of-Four. They are a blood knight of the highest order. They are confident as all hell, perhaps to the point of occasional egotism. But most importantly, they have pride. And pride is still very much a new concept.

The vessel can feel them come to the very forefront of her skull. She can feel her eyes begin to widen with mania. It is always scary. It always feels good.)

AD: Allow us to educate everyone. We did not become The OOOOOOONLY Champion That Mattered in said scene for one full year and some change because we’re smoking hot and have a rockin’ body. Oh, no. We got that way because we can take an asskicking and we can most definitely dish. Them. Out. But we imagine that only a few people in this dreadful ‘verse would know about that. Lindsay Troy might’ve heard some of our exploits. The two men fighting for the Universal title sure as shit has. Especially Youngblood. He’s the biggest wrestling hipster on the roster. If TAL still has more brains than CTE, he’ll ignore the legend in the front row and focus on the one standing across the ring from him.

BB: So this isn’t just about getting Mortimer to leave you alone anymore.

AD: Still a big part of things. But don’t tell us you expect a prizefighter to ignore the big shiny carrot that suddenly dangles over our head. Rowan’s a big ol’ target but we ain’t fu–. We aren’t blind, my dude.

BB: Ria Nightshade. You and her have developed quite the bond as of late, even going so far as to call yourself sisters. Now you’re fighting against each other for what you call a big shiny carrot. How does that affect things in your mind?

AD: It always sucks when you fight the people you care about. Doesn’t matter how many times you do it. How many times you reassure each other before and after. It still sucks, even now. But we’re on the same roster. It was going to happen at some point. The way that we’ve rationalized this is…as a competitor to a fellow competitor, we would be disrespectful to her and her to us if we gave less than one hundred percent towards each other. In this case, even in a diet deathmatch situation–seriously, no explosions?–one hundred percent can mean doing some serious damage to one another. If she beats our ass, we understand why. We hope that when the roles reverse and they most likely will because once we get into the flow of battle…

(This sentence trails off. Because trying to describe that would take another Mornin’ Power Hour that they don’t have.)

AD: We hope she’ll understand. There’s nothing personal there. She’s little sis, no matter what.

BB: We’re almost out of time. Thank you for coming out, Anna. Anything else you want to add?

AD: Buy the shirt, cowards.

Airhorn. Cut to commercial.

 

________

 

Just pretend it’s nothing

An endless

“wanting, getting, wanting”

I’ll never stop

“One thing, always one thing”

I’ll always keep

Wanting, wanting more

 

The chorus in a song will always hit the most. It’s what everything builds and releases to. Usually, that’s the part that gets stuck in your head. An earworm that binds the entire work together. It’s also this point where all the voices end up unleashing themselves. God, what a headache that creates.

“You’re the most impressive of the lot.”

Shut up, Brandon.

“You know what it takes to be an Ace.”

Shut up, Bryan.

They don’t need to be told this. They already know. It’s just a matter of getting the signs to align. Maybe the fact that she was placed into this match was as good of a sign as they were going to get. After all, in terms of advantageous circumstances, this is definitely in their wheelhouse. In the flow of battle, there is no overthinking. No obsession. No doubt. There is only you, your opponents, and occasionally a weapon of your choice. You have no time–no pun intended–to ponder. You simply act out of pure instinct molded only by your training. Perhaps this is why she fit in so well amongst all the chaos. And maybe this is the code.

“When fighting in an area where confusions are present, probability itself may become liquid.” 

Five-of-Four recalls the quotes embedded in their soul. And how could she not? They and all their peers had to recite this doctrine by heart and commit it to memory. What was once an order in War becomes a sort of prayer in relative peace.

“The importance of being able to keep it in your grasp even at its most protean cannot be underestimated. Shadows hide, stars guide.”

That last part wasn’t in the doctrine. But for a pseudo-prayer, it works. The probability can be small, very small, microscopic small. Yet as long as it exists, there is a chance. In the waxy facade of Las Vegas, the nightlife is in full swing. Above it, the New Era smiles. The goal isn’t just to win or to beat up Rowan. The goal is to embed themselves so deep into the PRIMEverse that nothing can take away the stain of their presence.

 

What does a demon believe in?

A king or a god?

I told ’em Dice won’t be leaving so what are the odds

I get my outlet now?

 

A whir of the sonic screwdriver shuts off Spotify.

“Shut up, Karen.”