Miescher

Cecilia Ryan.

The Murder Daughter, is it?

Her whole thing is simple enough to digest. Another one of those “wrestling family” dynasty seekers trying to build herself a name while everybody else in this waxy and incredibly small part of the Multiverse faps off to her body and endlessly compares her to her father and her aunt. She acts like a bitch because at this point of her barely budding career, she needs to. In order to make an impact, she kinda has no choice but to be a smug little shit to show she can’t be pushed around. And she has some skill to back it up.

Now if we were to base our judgements on only this, well, this whole thing would just be incredibly dull. Sure, the pedigree Ms. Ryan possesses may be a selling point for short sighted wrestling historians and parts of the Multiverse that give a flying fuck about Dan Ryan’s existance. But how many second gen or third gen or eighty-fifth gen progeny could actually carry the weight with a hint of the glory? Not many. Most of them do it for a quick buck, an easy lay, and fame via nepotism. And the ones that honestly wish to carry the name with some form of dignity usually can’t escape the shadow of the more successful, more popular, or quite simply the ones that are better at what they do.

One also must factor in the numerous amounts of wrestlers with no bloodline whatsoever willing to endure through the shitty bits of their careers. Those who get shrugged at, spat upon, considered as nothing. The dregs of the curtain jerker variety. Lower card misfits who should they persevere and have a working brain end up growing, evolving, becoming their own masters, resting their feet on a Hall of Fame plaque while novelty bloodlines just…sit there.

All of this is to say that no matter how much smoke she manages to blow up her own asshole and everybody elses, the odds are very much against the Murder Tot. It seems from the whole two seconds of her career so far that she’s ready for the challenge. Willing to put in the work. Her goal is to not just meet the shadows of her family but cover them with her own. She just might be able to.

But even with her observing the aspects of others careers, she can’t divine the struggles that will inevitably happen in her own.

________

She-Who-Writes taps her pen as the vessel raises her head. There are photographs on a wall in the depths of the timeship. Some of them have been put up years ago in a bid to remember, others were added over the course of time. It may surprise some people that the resident Time Lord is also by pure happenstance part of a wrestling family, albeit in the most roundabout of ways. And it is now that we think about them solely in the wrestling sense, for it’s this point we may find a connect with Murder Baby.

Jeff Mathews. Alleged cousin. We say alleged because we never really crossed paths enough to get a DNA test on the matter. If it was ever true at all, it was most likely from the Broodmare’s side of the bloodline. Wrestled for four years. No championships to his name. Ended up faking his suicide, becoming a domestic terrorist before car bombing himself, his wife, his only child, and his Sasquash friend in front of a library in Canada. But not before he gave us a Swiss bank account. Odd motherfucker.

Micah Castille. Half-brother. That one has been tested. Apparently from our Spermdonor’s side. Snarky. Smart. Held a couple belts. We teamed up near the end. We even knitted each other scarves. We still have ours. Last seen stepping into a stargate as we were bleeding out. Never could find him. Presumed dead.

Jacky Red Daniels. Husband. Amun-Ra. Crawling Chaos. Has been champion before, can be one again if he chooses. Our beloved just likes taking the occasional break.

Akemi Hayashi. Clone-daughter. Dagger. Kahlúa Ayano. Occasionally pops up for a cup of coffee in one place or another. She probably has held a title or two. We can’t remember. Our relationship is distant, but friendly.

BUDOKAN GAIJIN DREAM FIGHT. Alleged son. A sentient wrestling promotion based (usually) on the grounds of Nippon Budokan. We loved him. At least we got to say goodbye before he left again. Vanished. Possibly dead.

L.M. The less said, the better.

The Skull Kids. Nephews and nieces by way of adoption or dark magic. Maybe both. Skull Kid 1 and 2 are multiple time tag team champions with attempts at solo runs. The rest are popping up here and there.

All these faces looking back at us on glossy paper and held up by thumbtacks. The Prime recognizes the paradox of being both self-made and part of such a family. The biggest difference is the pictures on the wall came mostly by chance, fate, or fuckery. However, our situations are not the same for a bigger reason.

Cecilia is under a shadow in hers. We are the shadow in ours.

________

Even if you think you know what you’d do in such-and-such a situation. Even if you mentally play with the idea. Even if you think you know yourself well enough. You really, honestly don’t know a thing until you’re in the thick of it. Until it directly involves you. Sometimes, everything around you messes with your head and the decision isn’t as crisp and clear as what you’ve been led to think it is. Sometimes, everybody else is absolutely right but you just cannot see it. 

The longer you’re in the game, the more you gotta balance. As a rookie, Cecilia’s choices are easy. This is all a learning experience and no amount of training and head pats can prepare anybody for the real thing. In the beginning, all one can do is wing it because they aren’t as attached to everything. It’s a fuck everybody, all for me attitude…until it’s not. Last long enough and you realise that the attitude is tiresome to carry around all the time. And furthermore, it can be so ridiculously boring.

So you connect. Whenever you see the same people every other week, every week, every month, it’s inevitable that someone’s gonna stick to you, even if you don’t want to. Might even become the best of friends. Might even become lovers. And then the choices get tougher.

Should I team with them? 

Should I help them?

Should I betray them before they betray me?

Should I forgo my dreams for their dreams?

Should I allow them to do the same for me?

And if I invest all my emotion, what happens if they just disappear?

To find that balance between ambition and devotion is the hardest part. Even though these same questions keep popping up over and again, the answers always change. The person changes. You change. Different lessons learned through different stages of life. Picking the doors to close and the doors to open.

Most importantly, beyond anything, one must learn when to be giving and when to be selfish. Even if it hurts them. Especially if it hurts you.

________

Beyond the wall of faces, there are thousands more. Vanished lovers, would-be legends, forgotten heroes. The psychic remnants of dead ‘verses. They once left an imprint on our psyche, morphed and changed us. Learned from them in one way or another. Ghosts of the unsaved. Over the past few years, the impressions have been fading by the current. Their faces lost their details and turn into a primordial soup of nothingness.

This is the part that She-Who-Writes wouldn’t tell anyone, ya see. She wants to believe that they all meant something. And once upon a time they did. Maybe she wants to remind us to embrace under the construct of teaching. But there’s nothing to teach. Already we are attached. Already we suffered. Already we let go.

There’s also a very good possibility that she’s rambling to find a point. Sometimes, it takes a moment. Perhaps the message is “just continuing when all those faces failed is selfish”. We used to feel shame about that. It used to be a weight around our neck. It used to drag us down, the memory of it. Now we feel…nothing.

The fact that they aren’t here right now and that their effects are dying proves their weakness, not ours. They weren’t hungry enough to even attempt to make their roaring echo through the strands. They weren’t able to step out of their world and into another. They couldn’t handle the tough choices. Maybe continuing is selfish but we wouldn’t want it any other way.

Change of subject? Change of subject.

________

We have reached the point in our career where we’re always looking for something different. Or at the least, something similar with a twist to it. On the surface, the vessel looks like she’s lounging or biding her time or waiting. Some see us as being complacent with our glory. But anybody who lasts long enough can understand. The grind gets boring. The same old, same old gets boring. Even the Muse is an artist and an artist needs inspiration. Stimulation. It doesn’t always have to be a title belt (though it’s nice when it is). Maybe it can just be a challenge or even just something that feels interesting.

Given our nature, it should come as no surprise that this gets hard to find. We have ebbs and flows like the ocean tides. An age of going through the motions while we try to find the next thing and an age of finding it, stalking it, and ultimately taking every single inch of personal enjoyment from it. It’s a lot like the concept of War: the thrill of glory alternates with the hunkering down and silence. Both can drive a person mad. We know. We’ve seen it happen. At times, it’s happened to us.

This is the ebb time. The hunker down time. The hunting time. We are a dog sniffing around for the next big thrill. Looking at Cecilia Ryan, stalking her as prey, we do not sense that thrill being in her. It’s not even her fault. She cannot help what she is. She cannot help that nothing about her makes us stand up too much or take notice. She cannot help that we’ve seen all this before. Reruns in a different body, name, and face. There’s still some growth to be had and road to travel before she can press that trigger in us.

At least on paper.

That’s the thing, isn’t it? You can watch all the matches, read all the history books, even sit amongst crowds of endless possibilities. But none of that, not a single shred, compares to actually being in that ring with that person in the moment. To get an honest taste of someone, you can’t get it second hand or third hand or freeze dried via streaming. A whiff of them backstage gives one a clue. We just prefer to pluck the moment when it’s ripe and fresh and clean.

The only true way to know a warrior is to fight them.

________

There is the taste of copper in the vessel’s mouth just thinking about it.

We are not bleeding, not now. Yet He-Who-Hates gnashes his teeth at the mere thought of a fight. Momentum is freedom, A cascade of madness, A minute to spare. Somewhere, there is a sound of glass domes shattering and the thumping of weaponized years. The crying of children morphing into the screaming of old men. Elders into sperm. The regeneration process being forced over and over and over and over.

We stand on the remains, hands to the skies. A sun burning down upon the rawest of skin. The world’s wide open…

________

Ms. Ryan probably has her share of insults and presumptions to sling.

She wouldn’t be a up-and-comer if she didn’t.

She wouldn’t be a wrestler if she didn’t.

And we don’t really care about them.

In the end of this whole thing, her thoughts and words and hype and bloodline are absolutely meaningless. The only thing that matters is the fight. Thrown punches and combo kicks. Crippling submissions and being dropped on her head. The entire reason why we write our feelings of the events on paper instead of recording it on film is because the words don’t matter. But we have to pour them somewhere so they won’t cluster up in the head. We release so we can fight.

Give us a reason to care.

Give us a reason to respect you.

Give the whole damn world a reason to believe you might just accomplish your goals.

Because outside of her family and her simps, nobody really sees it. Nobody’s buying it. She got overshadowed twice by a man named after underwear, for fuck’s sake. It doesn’t matter how many nobody’s hands she breaks because to a lot of people, she’s just a novelty act. Moreso than the eighty-five cults that run around here and the twenty-five berry people. A young girl with resting bitch face in yoga pants and a tank top is a dime a dozen. Nothing special. She has to be ready to evolve. 

A big mouth and some talent can only take her so far in the New Era.

________

The vessel’s hearts (plural, we earned that second heart) batters against her chest.

Inhale. Exhale.