Post by Downfall on Jan 30, 2022 14:02:49 GMT -5
This didn't feel like a dream.
She was walking, bare feet aching and bleeding as she stepped on the reddened stones and pebbles across the cracked ground. Stalagtites formed by what had to be an eons old-river cropped up here or there, but the ground was burning hot, so hot that the red stone cracked in places. Harsh wind whipped her dress around her, and she clutched herself against the heat.
Sensation, alive. Not a dream.
And, yet, Michelle's head perked up as she heard echoes through the canyon. It was voices, talking... it was Danny's voice?
She shook her head. This lends more credence to it being a dream, after all.
She had her sights set on the edge of the canyon, which terminated in a giant cave maw. Outcroppings of rock at the entrance gave the cave the look of teeth. If she was walking anywhere, it was for shelter, not knowing how she had been deposited in this wasteland, exposed to the elements.
Harsh wind and sand buffeted her, feeling like it was slicing against her in her short dress, cutting into the skin of her bare legs. And still, she heard Danny's voice, echoing, from long ago.
She could almost see a replay of it, in front of her, the memory playing out like a movie.
It was years past when they were kids, and they were young and in love and taking on the world together. Now, it was just work. All the time.
And he'd said, ranting - "Can't believe this... Me. They cut me, said that they didn't have any direction for me right now. It's me, dammit. I'm the biggest star acquisition they could have had, and they just - "
And young Michelle, just starting to feel old, has grasped him by the shoulder, performing her expected duty of being the good girlfriend shoulder to lean on, even though with his growing fits of pique she wasn't sure why she bothered, had said - "Baby, it's okay, you've bounced back from more than this, we'll start over somewhere else - "
And he'd turned his back on her, petulantly, saying, "You don't understand, Michelle... Jason said I'm cursed. Cursed. That can't be true. I'm me, dammit. I'm..." and he sighed, so confused, her lost boy. She was losing him forever in this period, she just didn't know it. "I just wanted our names in lights. You and me. Together. I wanted us to play Korakuen, I -"
She'd bit her lip, but she wanted to give him the truth. "Danny... that was a boy's dream. To be better than your father, to be somebody... baby, Korakuen ain't even the biggest venue in Japan, there's..." she shook her head, refocusing, "But you... Danny, you sacrificed everything for your dream... you asked me to come along with you, but... I took time away from my dream for you."
He'd eyed her, coldly, then, she remembered that part, but the movie playing out in echoed whispers in the canyon's stones shimmered violently, a surge of red. "Your dream? Your dream was to be with me."
She had paused, and she had never felt such a disconnect between them, or such a hurt. But still, she did what she always did then, and she had tried to soothe him, tried to connect the way she used to to the boy he'd been. She took his hand.
He had jerked back so suddenly, flinging his hand that it swatted her. Michelle recoiled, feeling it. It was the first time he'd hit her. Twenty-seven-year-old-Michelle had given a little, brittle gasp, and Danny's expression showed sorrow for just a moment, and he reached for her. But Michelle had drawn back, as if stung. And he'd...
"He doubled down," came the voice from her nightmares. Jason was approaching her. His face, although worn and lined, was carrying a sympathetic look of commiseration.
Danny's voice had echoed through the halls of the canyon, coldly. "Whatever then. I don't need you. This was my dream, and I don't need anybody but me."
The echo went away, and Michelle felt herself die a little. Jason held his hand out to her.
"It's an awful feeling, isn't it? To know that your life never mattered, your dreams never mattered?" Jason said, sympathetically. "In the final analysis, you hitched your ride to the most ego-driven, obsessive narcissist possible, and he never even let you have a life."
"I do have a life, Jason... I've got my charity work, and my apartment, and my- my..." She swallowed.
Jason nodded, sagely. "Precious little that's really yours, you know this... you never got to live your life, your dreams, your life is ironically failing a Bechdel test because you've been bound so closely to him, like your two ships in a snowglobe... And he never cared. He treated you, treated me like we were just means to an end... he never asked what we wanted."
Michelle's smile was wry. "And what did you want?"
Jason's eyebrows raised. "A family." But his eyes cut to her, mysteriously.
Michelle, hugging herself against a sudden chill, said "This isn't a dream... but where are we?"
"We're walking between worlds so I could talk to you, like once Jesus Christ was talked to in the wilderness. Because I want to talk to you about the life you want, the dreams you want."
Michelle frowned. "Why should I believe anything you say?" A beat, then, "Jason... who are you?"
Jason craned his head up at the sky, and his smile was faraway. "A fly that birthed a million maggots."
He looked down to her. "Or, maybe, a friend who's holding out an opportunity you've never known before." He shrugs. "Multiple choice."
She looked back at the canyon, the blasted red rock.
Jason was standing by the entrance to the cave, who's stalagmites never looked so much like teeth, solicitously holding out his hands.
The echoes of the canyon continued to speak. "I'm sorry, baby..." Danny was saying... but, damnedest thing was, the echoes faded as she stepped towards the cave. Finally, the echoes went away, as if they'd never been.
For so many, a moment like Revolution's the one they've been waiting on. Every step of the way has been met by wits such as Regan proclaiming that this will be the time that I live up to my nom-de-guerre.
The moment where Dandy uses his family connections to sneak through another crowded multi-man match he doesn't really belong in, is a third wheel in... yet uses duplicitous underhandedness or just outright daddy's money to bag him another win; Breaking history, becoming the first four-time AW World Champion.
The moment where Regan fulfills that promise that netted her so many vaunted fan-vote awards, going from being the hottest can't-miss future star/Woman of the Year to actually accomplishing something; Making it so that empty-headed egotists like Lissie fawn all over handing her her crown, even when they're making it all about themselves, as they wanna be the ones that present Regan her honor as the new woman to beat.
They've been kept waiting multiple times. I wasn't supposed to win WOTY. I wasn't supposed to end Dandy's reign. Dion and myself weren't given Vegas odds of walking out of the fatal fourway still champions. Each time I've met resistance was supposed to be my Waterloo.
Each time they've been denied, they've attacked me with wrath and scorn.
I could no sooner hold my hand up in victory and stand up, before Regan was bringing a chair crashing across my shoulder blades.
Before Dandy was already running straight to the back to go find Pasternak and demand a rematch.
Despite my show-opening venting to management I actually have no problem with any of that. When the boss was unavailable I steeled myself and acknowledged I needed to handle this the way I always did.
Every time I'm hit, every time I'm backed into a corner, I don't fold. I don't bend. I may be wounded, but, oh, maybe you could remember my calling card message to Ash Blake two years ago that became my central thesis:
The wounded wolf is more dangerous than the scavengers snapping their jaws at it, not less.
So no, Regan, Dandy, you aren't revolutionaries walking in to crush a regime.
You aren't conquering heroes planting a flag under fire, making an Iwo Jima stand on the front lawn of the White House over my body.
I'm not going out on my shield.
You are walking into the Badlands, armed minimally, not dressed for the elements, and unprepared for the fury of the wilderness, for the predators that are gonna maul you and leave you there, a feast for the vultures.
Because this time, you are not gonna be standing tall enough to hit me from behind when this doesn't go your way.
You are not gonna be fit enough to whine to Pasternak that you didn't get your way despite having literally every advantage going in.
This time around, you are gonna be left with nothing but the scorched, blasted earth I leave you laying on.
You're entering my hallowed ground now.
But it's your nightmare realm. This is the Badlands, baby... you don't go down here. And you don't walk out alive.
You're about to find, those two are one in the same.
He'd recognized the terrain immediately. It had come to him, months ago, in what he'd thought was a dream about a tower, about shadows around a throne, whispering.
But now, as he stalked towards the entrance to a cavern surrounded by skulls and picked bones, he held his hand up to face the harsh wind. If he had come at this from the other side, there was a canyon, but he was still walking towards the shelter of this cave.
He wasn't expecting to see Nate Nawrocki there at all.
"Redd?" Danny yelled, calling towards the specter, that shimmered like a mirage before solidifying. "Nate!" He called alternately. There were a million questions hanging on his tongue, such as why Nate had left them months ago, and if he was still sober... but the mystery of opening his eyes in this blasted desert put all thought out of his mind.
The former Redd Dogg had clasped his hand in a show of brotherhood, beckoning him to come in to shelter away from the slicing wind.
"I've come a long way to draw us both here, bossman," Nate said, sternly, "Some people from higher-up dispatched me to talk to you, but if we hurry, we can catch them."
"Nate- catch... who?" Danny squinted, baffled, "How did we get here? How did you get here?"
Nate shook his head. "No time. Precious little time. He's here. He might already be gone."
Nate took off in the direction of the interior of the cave, and then, Danny stopped, hearing whispers that seemed to come from the stones themselves.
"What will you be remembered for? When it's all over, who tells your story?"
"You have... no idea, what I'd give. For us to just make it. For me to be a star."
"I tried to be, but it's not - this is who I am, Michelle, this is all I am!"
"I'm sorry."
Unnerved, he looked around him for the source of the echoes, but he eventually followed Nate deeper into the cave, something tingling the base of his scalp that urges him forward, before he's too late.
When I look at the two of you, I can't see any others that deserved each other more. Honestly, the two of you should have gotten it out of the way, attempted to team up rather than you, Regan, forming the quickly-forgotten Affluenza with Jill.
You're practically the same person, only you've chosen different aesthetics to glom onto.
You both disdain the wealth your family handed to you, yet you always beat us over the head with the fact that your privilege has bought you the best training money can buy.
Short periods of time into your careers, literally in your infancy... far from growing into the kind of polish and experience hard living and grinding through independent dates affords you.
Neither one of you would be fit to clean a pair of kick-guards that you traditionally have to endure back-breaking training in a Japanese dojo to obtain.
Yet you're gonna lecture me about success.
Winston Divito's entire life has revolved around transactional, temporary partnerships that always end when he's not good enough to sustain them.
Through his immaturity, everyone who's ever had to live with Dandy has washed their hands of him so fast that it gave their skin friction-burns.
Consequently, every alliance Dandy's ever made ends because they're just as fleeting as a 50-dollar session with a hooker in a motel room where you cry and she holds you like a baby.
Your partnership with Kidsgrove ended because you weren't "partners" by any sense no matter how hard you tried to spin it.
Your relationship with baby-momma Yaz ended because, once the paternity ended up not being in your favor, she'd have no reason to stick around with you.
Yet we're supposed to believe that Richard or Edward are gonna keep footing the bill for your mistakes? Running interference, facilitating low-rent backshooting jump attacks like you're the world's most ineffectual, Jordan Belfort-adjacent chapter of the Crips? No.
Your family are gonna end up leaving you behind once it becomes even clearer that you're the one not pulling your weight.
All it's gonna take is the realization that you keep putting them in the firing line when they were supposed to be the ones backstopping you.
When they were the ones who were gonna take you into a new era of prominence and showing the world why your family built empires.
How'd you do that, again, Dandy? Was it by going backstage and crying how unfair it was that I pinned you in a one-on-one match?
Was it by compromising your morals so much that you'd opt to partner with a man you profess to hate for breaking up the Following, so much that you'd team with Carter Shaw just for a slim chance of sneaking out a revenge-win against me?
Is that how Daddy Edward has raised up to the footnotes of the Fortune 500? He really should write self-help books.
But I think even you know you don't belong here, Winston.
Try as you might to decry how unworthy I am, when I pinned your ass January 3rd I saw the light leave your eyes.
I saw the truth immediately settle in to weigh on your shoulders.
You erased the stain of "two-minute champ" from your name, but it slowly dawned on you, that you will not be the man that carries a division or a company when I'm around.
And that eats at you.
You set this into motion back in July, Dandy, when you snarked at me and said I should be hunting for other gold like the All-in case instead of fighting for your Tag titles, that I belonged in the main event.
When I pinned your ass after Two Wolves, you sulked, you broke up Fight Forever, but you never came back for your rematch.
You suddenly pretended you cared about fighting Philidor, and wanted to take it to Carter Shaw. You chased the World Championship, despite an entire year of doing nothing to promote yourself as championship material.
Your low cunning and opportunistic attempt to spin this will have you making yourself out to be chasing me.
To make connections that you've spent an entire year hunting either me or Philidor when you categorically have ducked fights with both parties.
In the final analysis you never have understood what makes me work, Dandy.
Last time we paired off you recounted my 2021 as if I was ashamed of it.
You questioned if I was ready to make a better 2022 because you assumed I was the same man as I was that started 2021... Dandy, you couldn't miss the point any more than if you'd set a target ten feet away and you shot your arrow two feet behind you into the earth.
I'm NOT the same man as I was in 2021...
But if I was you, I'd fucking pray that I wasn't going in to Revolution the same way, because last year's Revolution, I went into a triple threat match defending a belt against two promising stars who, I was told, were main event money at one time and I walked out still retaining.
So I'd maybe hold off on invoking what type of man I am in one year... because the answer is that I've been changing, evolving and showing sides of me that you both don't like... and, when pushed to the wall, I've retaliated, violently.
Evolution's a painful, gutting, ripping performance. So's Revolution, for that matter.
But I've grown into my role. I've fought hard for it.
But being honest, Dandy, you aren't the only one in this match that's missed that point.
In fact, I've been so completely open about what the point is with me and this title that I may as well have handed you idiots ammo on me.
Yet it seems even if I gave Regan Voorhees a loaded gun and invited her to point it at my temple, she'd fumble it and drop it at my feet.
Regan did indeed read my history, both going into Turmoil and the fatal-fourway, and yet her conclusions drawn from it were so wrong it practically led to the disappointment of the prized valedictorian failing an exam with the open book right there.
According to Regan's... optimistic view, time is on her side because I'm in the twilight of my career. She did glean pertinent facts from the bio page I wrote myself as regards to my age and the fact that I spent years out in the wilderness scratching to make a living.
On a purely superficial level, that would give credence to her take that I'm a Rocky V case.
That I'm past my physical prime; that eventually I'll fall apart.
But despite the odds, I've only bettered myself... I'm more hardened now than I've ever been. More focused. Stronger. And a helluva lot meaner.
No matter how much Regan tries to pry into that angle, it doesn't land, and that gets inside her head because she paid so much money to be here. To attain the best wrestling training, to throw that cash around to buy her in, to flash her Prada and stroll out there in her last-season shoes, doling money out.
That's why I vex Regan.
Because I represent an untouchable quality she doesn't have. A grit, a toughness and an unimpeachable work ethic she can't match. You think Regan Voorhees would make a good champion? She can't even consistently place in a Havoc made for her, nor could she overcome any obstacle she met on Cruiserclash without resorting to the same tactics she's tried on me.
As I pointed out to Regan, it doesn't absolve you of the fact that you failed, to attack someone from behind. Doesn't remove the mark from your record, that you couldn't get it done at Turmoil, that your girlboss yas-queen superteam didn't win the fourway.
It just makes you look low rent.
Like a pouting little child, so accustomed to getting her way. You couldn't even deny that, you just smiled that you're glad I liked them.
What I liked, Regan, is that you're trying so hard, and failing to play this game on my level.
If you really had my number like you believe you do, and Turmoil was just a setback until you've had time to scout me more, then you should have walked out of Clash with the Tag titles.
If you were living rent-free inside of my head, then when you so "deviously" had me hunted for bounty; got me isolated and picked apart by paid goons until you had me softened up, would have thrown me into a panic.
Instead, I served the volley back your way last week, and showed you I'm even more adept at manipulating petty little princesses like you and Dandy into moving right where I want you. Please, don't twist this into a "twilight of my career" angle when the real story is that I've got decades of experience at being the most ruthless cunt imaginable.
And everyone saw you tapping when I truly got my hands on you.
The real reason that it gets under your skin like a splinter is because, 'til you met me, you had all of these weak-kneed Stans convinced that you were a killer.
Walter in Chanel.
Nightingale if he listened to pretentious concertos and drank cocktails from a Food Network recipe.
You had your name on all the lips, someone they thought was the star to beat, that you journeying to Clash, entering heavyweight divisions was gonna give you room to flourish into the main-event threat you're supposed to be.
But I shattered that mystique and since then, you actually haven't done anything on Clash, or Cruiserclash. I'm not gonna let you forget your last hurrah on the show you purportedly dominated was being outlasted by Karlie Nash.
What I want you both to know, is that this is not your story. I'm not chasing you down here.
You've both provoked something darker than you're capable of understanding and stoked these fires to an even hotter temp than the flame that seared you both in one-on-one matches.
And now, you're coming to me. You both need to beat me. Or your entire premise is undone, because I'm the one for both of you, that ended your aspirations.
But it doesn't matter how many ways Dandy and his sycophant degenerate brother twist words like Downy or Fall in sophomoric attempts to avoid saying my fucking name.
It doesn't matter how many people Regan pays to be around her and agree with her ideas.
It doesn't even matter that the reason you both get this shot at the same time is because Richard went back and complained like someone sending back the steak to a Sizzler chef for it to get spat on.
I've shown you exactly who I am and what prices I'd pay to get here. How both of you know absolutely jack squat about what it's like to come from nowhere and to be treated with indifference, to dream of the brightest-lights success, so you make yourself a promise that come whatever may you were going to scratch and claw with the voracity of an animal in a snare until you chased that dream down.
To make deals with devils, to cast out everything in your life, to devote yourself purely to this art and make it your savior, your patron, your lover.
You two wealthy scions of nepotism can't teach me shit about that. That's why I'm on a level you can't reach.
I have depths to my psyche that I've only scratched the surface of... darknesses I'm willing to tap into to keep what I've fought so hard for.
You are not walking in to Revolution and taking everything I spent the back half of 2021 building.
I'm cursed, many say, to never be satisfied, to always be hunting. But that's why it's apropos to make this wasteland my hunting field, my killing floor.
It won't be enough for me until I've made myself the undisputed master. I can't do that until I leave two blackened skulls sitting on the blasted sand.
Leave them blackened, scarred, destroyed, the smoldering ashes and embers still glowing, the charred and twisted bodies of those beneath it left in place as a reminder of who's fucking house they walked into.
These Badlands, are my house, Regan, Dandy.
At Revolution, daddy's coming home.
