Post by Sam Kidsgrove on Mar 20, 2022 9:29:44 GMT -5
“I don’t wanna go through this again.” Zooey says, wearily as the circular conversation goes round and round for another go. She’s clearly fed up with the topic, has said what she wants to say and wants to leave it at that.
“I still don’t understand though, what exactly did I say that was wrong?” Kidsgrove asks her, seemingly for the 1000th time. “You’ve been angry with me for a week, you know this. I know this. I just wanna sort it.”
She sighs, looks at Kidsgrove again, with tired eyes. She’s absolutely fuming but she keeps it together.
“I’ll say it again, it’s not about what you said. For the record nothing you said was inaccurate….” She’s cut off almost immediately by Kidsgrove throwing in the equivalent of an AHA!
“Exactly! So what is it?”
“If you let me finish! It’s not about the damn thing you said, it’s about going off script again! We had it planned, this was a fluff piece! You were to go there and talk nice, promote the PPV and be a professional right?”
“I mean, what happened was….” He starts
She literally stamps her foot down in an act of annoyance.
“RIGHT?”
Kidsgrove doesn’t say anything immediately, shocked at the show of force from Zooey. Eventually he concedes the point and nods.
“And what did you do?” She asked, knowing that she finally got through to him. “You went off book, you said shit about Cass we didn’t agree on and you said stuff about Tatiana that we absolutely agreed were off limits!”
“I…”
“And yes, I know Cass is an insufferable bore, I know everything he does irritates you but whenever we go out to do things publicly, you have to stick to the script. We say one thing wrong, we put a foot out of place and our enemies have the upper hand, you don’t get that new contract. Do you understand?”
At this point Kidsgrove, although he’s not happy about it, at all, swallows his pride and apologises to the love of his life, like every real man who knows he’s in the wrong.
“I agree, I’m sorry. When we’re in public, I’ll stick to the script. I’ll play nice and realise we gotta get those contracts back. It’s just this whole thing with Cassidy. Man that guy is a grade A cunt and he really fucking annoys me you know.”
“Well, yeah but maybe keep that between us in the future. I kinda know what’s been going on between you but you’ve been holding back on me. I can’t help you tactically if you can’t tell me what’s the problem, y’know? I thought we agreed he’s not the priority. Havoc is. But if you need to vent to get it out of your system then do it. Now is the perfect time actually, you have to face him and Tatiana again and, well, Pasternak has said the winner of this gets a good spot at Havoc, so if you want me to help you I need to know why he’s pushing your buttons.”
Kidsgrove takes a long drawn out sigh and begins.
“We’re talking a guy who’s literally never had to worry about a single thing in his whole privileged stupid life. A frat boy who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and wanted for nothing as a kid. He’s got no respect, no desire, he’s lazy, he’s annoying and he’s entitled. The literal antithesis of everything I am.
Did you see him talking about me the other day? Fucking idiot doesn’t even know how whiney and self important he is. Talking shit about me doing the bare minimum, not doing my research, never having it and all that fluff that the entitled shitmaggot does himself on a day to day basis. Honestly, if he did his own research he wouldn’t have been using insults that were relevant 3 years ago and realised that I said that I’ve been phoning it in months ago myself, live on Monday Night Clash.
Well let me lay some facts down on his scrawny chicken ass.
If he had something interesting to say in the time he’s been here, then maybe I would have paid attention to the “nuance” of his stories. No one cared about his stupid reality TV shit, people were only mildly interested in his whole affair with Lissie because we were playing “when is Lissie going to drop his ass and who’s she going to next” bingo.
If he actually said or did something that doesn’t come from the realm of being a white, spoiled, generational rich kid that comes straight from his fucking New York Mansion upbringing then maybe when he tried to make it in my industry, executives might have actually hired him and he would have been able to do my job. Nobody, and I mean nobody outside of rich privileged white kids cares about what Cass has to say. It’s rich kids problems.
I think it’s funny how he criticises my acting skills when he couldn’t even break into the industry, other than that time he did a casting couch by fingering his own sister but you know, that’s Cassidy all over. He projects so hard that no one takes him seriously any more. He says all this shit about me because he resents my life and what I’ve done. I have been at the pinnacle of the career he wants not once, but twice. He wanted to be an actor. He failed - then he saw all my billboards and my billions of dollars worth of Box office takings.
So then he goes, “OK, let’s be a wrestler. Worked “hard” for his standards anyway, because let’s face it he puts effort into doing anything exactly twice a year. He puts some effort in, he makes it into AW and what’d you know? There I am being a RECORD BREAKING United States Champion, so yet again he sees me and thinks “Why isn’t that me?”
Easy, because Cassidy is a vacuous, pointless mess of a person who has never faced true hardship. He’s a leech that just hangs on to whatever star he can cling on to, like Lissie, like me now, seemingly I can’t shake him off my ass, I’m facing the twat every week.
I, on the other hand, am a record breaker in two industries because I never want to face destitution again. I have shit to prove to someone every single day of my life and I live with that on my shoulder. He just thinks life is easy, because he had it easy. If he was to be injured tomorrow and could never work again, he’d be fine because he has his family’s money to fall back on. He could just call his sis back up and be like “Oh hey, you know that time I fucked you over, sorry about that, can I be back in the family business again?” And the next minute he’d be Vice President of something or other on a 6 figure salary.
If that happened to me? If I lost AW, if I lost acting, if I lost you? I’d have nothing. This is why I put everything I have into everything I do, it’s all or nothing and I’ve had my fill of nothing. I can’t go back to that. Never again.
This is why this match means more than BattleBowl. It gives me an opportunity to get a better placement in Havoc. Doing well in Havoc is the cornerstone to the next year and getting that new contract and I would love to be standing here right now saying I’d prepare for this match the same as any other, regardless of who it is because it’s a massive opportunity but in all honesty it’s been disrupted. Disrupted by the sheer disdain I have for people like Cassidy Adler, I want to win this for the benefits it brings for my career. But I want to win this more to hurt Cassidy, physically and mentally.
You see, people like him can be dealt with easily, you just deny them what they want. He wants a good spot in Havoc, so I’m going to take it. He wants to make a name for himself on the back of one of the legends of Action Wrestling? I’m going to take his pride. If I had my way, this match would be a 1v1 in a massive cage, but you know, it’s a triple threat so I unfortunately have to divide my attention with someone else.”
“I should check in with Tatiana when we’re at the arena, after the match of course, see if she’s OK and wants to, how do you guys say it again? Grab a cuppa?” Muses Zooey.
Kidsgrove finally cracks a smile, some of the tension is melting away between them after his clearing the air rant about Cassidy.
“Something like that.” He brings Zooey in for an embrace, she accepts and buries her head in his chest as he kisses her forehead.
“I am really sorry.” He says again, “For all of it.”
“No, me too. I shouldn’t be grumpy for a week about it.” She replies. “I don’t want to lose you again, it terrified me with the whole Nightingale thing.”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry, it’ll be fine. Are you going to try and be friends with Tatiana though?”
“Yeah? That a problem?”
“No, just that I’m going to have to be brutal with her, it might not be a good time.”
“Tea is always a good time.”
“She might not be able to swallow afterwards. I mean it’s nothing personal you know, it’s just that she’s in the way of what we want to do.
If someone’s in the way, then they are a target. She’s an unfortunate target because she’s just so sweet and happy to be here. I regret some of the comments I made about her last week because she is the real deal. She gave just as good as she got in the match at BattleBowl and some of her hits were the hardest I took in that match, she hit me harder and with more effect than Cassidy at any rate. You can tell she forged out a great career in Canada with the hard effort of sweat and blood. She’s a good asset to the roster and I can’t wait to see what she does in the future.
It’s just a shame that she’s going to be sacrificed right now because despite the fact she can hurt, despite the fact she’s going to be the most dangerous opponent in this match, no amount of work in Canada or anywhere else can prepare you for the jump to AW. It’s going to take a lot more work, with twice the effort she put in on the Canadian circuits to make the same splash she had. Especially when you’re coming up against people like me, people who have been in this place long enough to become twisted and vengeful, people who have taken others to hospital with absolutely no problem because we’re driven, vicious and have absolutely no issues with sacrificing ourselves, never mind the opponent to get what we want.
She has to ask herself one day whether she has it in her to do that. When you face off against some guy who just wants to win, in a safe match where everything is nicey nice and we’re all good friends afterwards that’s one thing. When you come into a match knowing that your opponent would rather die than lose and they have zero fear and will come at you knowing that they’re going to throw everything at you because losing isn’t an option? That’s an entirely different ball game.
In AW it’s kill or be killed. I don’t win, I get pushed further down the ladder and I get to the point where I don’t eat. Does she think calling out someone like Dandy would be a great idea? I mean if you do get to spend some time with her, definitely talk her out of that one. Dandy is a toxic mess and my one regret is that I didn’t shut his stupid face when I had the chance.
Then again, after Monday she might have second thoughts about that anyway. After all, Dandy and I are made of the same stuff - we’ve had different trajectories since we destroyed one another but when it comes to fighting we’re the same. Every time we get in that ring it’s do or die. We look at our opponent like they are not human, like they are something to be put down, like they are our enemy. She had a taste of that at BattleBowl but she’s not going to like the main course.
So yeah, we can get in touch with her after the match together, if she can drink or talk we’ll go for a coffee and make sure that there are no hard feelings for her, after all with Tatiana this is only business. I’m hoping she’ll understand that to be honest, the last thing she’ll want to do is go down a path of resentment and hatred. That just leads to being a punk like Cassidy and no one wants that in their lives.”
“Wonder what the promise for a better spot is.” Zooey asks, more to herself than anything. Kidsgrove chuckles a little.
“Knowing him, it’s going to be nonsense, like “Oh yeah your spot is number 1 now, it’s a good one.” Or some stupid bullshit only Pasternak can pull out of his ass.”
“Won’t that bother you if it is? You win on Monday and then get put as number 1 in Havoc?”
“It doesn’t matter when you come into Havoc really, it’s a survival game regardless of which number gets drawn, my goal is to go through every single one of that roster anyway, high number, low number that makes no difference to me. When I go into that ring I’m going to be laser focussed on hurting as many people as I can and throwing them over that damn rope.
We’re getting ahead of ourselves though, the focus is on one match at a time, first thing’s first I got business to take care of on Monday. Tatiana, for her own safety, really needs to step aside and let me dismember Cassidy first and foremost. Let me obliterate him from this planet, she doesn’t want to be caught in the crossfire and end up in the hospital as collateral damage. She doesn’t want that, you don’t want that, hell until the match starts I won’t want that.
Cassidy though? I hope he turns up with his smug condescending attitude and his infinitely punchable smirk, because that’s going to make me more and more angry. After I’m done with him, even he won’t remember the nuances of his own life.”
“I still don’t understand though, what exactly did I say that was wrong?” Kidsgrove asks her, seemingly for the 1000th time. “You’ve been angry with me for a week, you know this. I know this. I just wanna sort it.”
She sighs, looks at Kidsgrove again, with tired eyes. She’s absolutely fuming but she keeps it together.
“I’ll say it again, it’s not about what you said. For the record nothing you said was inaccurate….” She’s cut off almost immediately by Kidsgrove throwing in the equivalent of an AHA!
“Exactly! So what is it?”
“If you let me finish! It’s not about the damn thing you said, it’s about going off script again! We had it planned, this was a fluff piece! You were to go there and talk nice, promote the PPV and be a professional right?”
“I mean, what happened was….” He starts
She literally stamps her foot down in an act of annoyance.
“RIGHT?”
Kidsgrove doesn’t say anything immediately, shocked at the show of force from Zooey. Eventually he concedes the point and nods.
“And what did you do?” She asked, knowing that she finally got through to him. “You went off book, you said shit about Cass we didn’t agree on and you said stuff about Tatiana that we absolutely agreed were off limits!”
“I…”
“And yes, I know Cass is an insufferable bore, I know everything he does irritates you but whenever we go out to do things publicly, you have to stick to the script. We say one thing wrong, we put a foot out of place and our enemies have the upper hand, you don’t get that new contract. Do you understand?”
At this point Kidsgrove, although he’s not happy about it, at all, swallows his pride and apologises to the love of his life, like every real man who knows he’s in the wrong.
“I agree, I’m sorry. When we’re in public, I’ll stick to the script. I’ll play nice and realise we gotta get those contracts back. It’s just this whole thing with Cassidy. Man that guy is a grade A cunt and he really fucking annoys me you know.”
“Well, yeah but maybe keep that between us in the future. I kinda know what’s been going on between you but you’ve been holding back on me. I can’t help you tactically if you can’t tell me what’s the problem, y’know? I thought we agreed he’s not the priority. Havoc is. But if you need to vent to get it out of your system then do it. Now is the perfect time actually, you have to face him and Tatiana again and, well, Pasternak has said the winner of this gets a good spot at Havoc, so if you want me to help you I need to know why he’s pushing your buttons.”
Kidsgrove takes a long drawn out sigh and begins.
“We’re talking a guy who’s literally never had to worry about a single thing in his whole privileged stupid life. A frat boy who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and wanted for nothing as a kid. He’s got no respect, no desire, he’s lazy, he’s annoying and he’s entitled. The literal antithesis of everything I am.
Did you see him talking about me the other day? Fucking idiot doesn’t even know how whiney and self important he is. Talking shit about me doing the bare minimum, not doing my research, never having it and all that fluff that the entitled shitmaggot does himself on a day to day basis. Honestly, if he did his own research he wouldn’t have been using insults that were relevant 3 years ago and realised that I said that I’ve been phoning it in months ago myself, live on Monday Night Clash.
Well let me lay some facts down on his scrawny chicken ass.
If he had something interesting to say in the time he’s been here, then maybe I would have paid attention to the “nuance” of his stories. No one cared about his stupid reality TV shit, people were only mildly interested in his whole affair with Lissie because we were playing “when is Lissie going to drop his ass and who’s she going to next” bingo.
If he actually said or did something that doesn’t come from the realm of being a white, spoiled, generational rich kid that comes straight from his fucking New York Mansion upbringing then maybe when he tried to make it in my industry, executives might have actually hired him and he would have been able to do my job. Nobody, and I mean nobody outside of rich privileged white kids cares about what Cass has to say. It’s rich kids problems.
I think it’s funny how he criticises my acting skills when he couldn’t even break into the industry, other than that time he did a casting couch by fingering his own sister but you know, that’s Cassidy all over. He projects so hard that no one takes him seriously any more. He says all this shit about me because he resents my life and what I’ve done. I have been at the pinnacle of the career he wants not once, but twice. He wanted to be an actor. He failed - then he saw all my billboards and my billions of dollars worth of Box office takings.
So then he goes, “OK, let’s be a wrestler. Worked “hard” for his standards anyway, because let’s face it he puts effort into doing anything exactly twice a year. He puts some effort in, he makes it into AW and what’d you know? There I am being a RECORD BREAKING United States Champion, so yet again he sees me and thinks “Why isn’t that me?”
Easy, because Cassidy is a vacuous, pointless mess of a person who has never faced true hardship. He’s a leech that just hangs on to whatever star he can cling on to, like Lissie, like me now, seemingly I can’t shake him off my ass, I’m facing the twat every week.
I, on the other hand, am a record breaker in two industries because I never want to face destitution again. I have shit to prove to someone every single day of my life and I live with that on my shoulder. He just thinks life is easy, because he had it easy. If he was to be injured tomorrow and could never work again, he’d be fine because he has his family’s money to fall back on. He could just call his sis back up and be like “Oh hey, you know that time I fucked you over, sorry about that, can I be back in the family business again?” And the next minute he’d be Vice President of something or other on a 6 figure salary.
If that happened to me? If I lost AW, if I lost acting, if I lost you? I’d have nothing. This is why I put everything I have into everything I do, it’s all or nothing and I’ve had my fill of nothing. I can’t go back to that. Never again.
This is why this match means more than BattleBowl. It gives me an opportunity to get a better placement in Havoc. Doing well in Havoc is the cornerstone to the next year and getting that new contract and I would love to be standing here right now saying I’d prepare for this match the same as any other, regardless of who it is because it’s a massive opportunity but in all honesty it’s been disrupted. Disrupted by the sheer disdain I have for people like Cassidy Adler, I want to win this for the benefits it brings for my career. But I want to win this more to hurt Cassidy, physically and mentally.
You see, people like him can be dealt with easily, you just deny them what they want. He wants a good spot in Havoc, so I’m going to take it. He wants to make a name for himself on the back of one of the legends of Action Wrestling? I’m going to take his pride. If I had my way, this match would be a 1v1 in a massive cage, but you know, it’s a triple threat so I unfortunately have to divide my attention with someone else.”
“I should check in with Tatiana when we’re at the arena, after the match of course, see if she’s OK and wants to, how do you guys say it again? Grab a cuppa?” Muses Zooey.
Kidsgrove finally cracks a smile, some of the tension is melting away between them after his clearing the air rant about Cassidy.
“Something like that.” He brings Zooey in for an embrace, she accepts and buries her head in his chest as he kisses her forehead.
“I am really sorry.” He says again, “For all of it.”
“No, me too. I shouldn’t be grumpy for a week about it.” She replies. “I don’t want to lose you again, it terrified me with the whole Nightingale thing.”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry, it’ll be fine. Are you going to try and be friends with Tatiana though?”
“Yeah? That a problem?”
“No, just that I’m going to have to be brutal with her, it might not be a good time.”
“Tea is always a good time.”
“She might not be able to swallow afterwards. I mean it’s nothing personal you know, it’s just that she’s in the way of what we want to do.
If someone’s in the way, then they are a target. She’s an unfortunate target because she’s just so sweet and happy to be here. I regret some of the comments I made about her last week because she is the real deal. She gave just as good as she got in the match at BattleBowl and some of her hits were the hardest I took in that match, she hit me harder and with more effect than Cassidy at any rate. You can tell she forged out a great career in Canada with the hard effort of sweat and blood. She’s a good asset to the roster and I can’t wait to see what she does in the future.
It’s just a shame that she’s going to be sacrificed right now because despite the fact she can hurt, despite the fact she’s going to be the most dangerous opponent in this match, no amount of work in Canada or anywhere else can prepare you for the jump to AW. It’s going to take a lot more work, with twice the effort she put in on the Canadian circuits to make the same splash she had. Especially when you’re coming up against people like me, people who have been in this place long enough to become twisted and vengeful, people who have taken others to hospital with absolutely no problem because we’re driven, vicious and have absolutely no issues with sacrificing ourselves, never mind the opponent to get what we want.
She has to ask herself one day whether she has it in her to do that. When you face off against some guy who just wants to win, in a safe match where everything is nicey nice and we’re all good friends afterwards that’s one thing. When you come into a match knowing that your opponent would rather die than lose and they have zero fear and will come at you knowing that they’re going to throw everything at you because losing isn’t an option? That’s an entirely different ball game.
In AW it’s kill or be killed. I don’t win, I get pushed further down the ladder and I get to the point where I don’t eat. Does she think calling out someone like Dandy would be a great idea? I mean if you do get to spend some time with her, definitely talk her out of that one. Dandy is a toxic mess and my one regret is that I didn’t shut his stupid face when I had the chance.
Then again, after Monday she might have second thoughts about that anyway. After all, Dandy and I are made of the same stuff - we’ve had different trajectories since we destroyed one another but when it comes to fighting we’re the same. Every time we get in that ring it’s do or die. We look at our opponent like they are not human, like they are something to be put down, like they are our enemy. She had a taste of that at BattleBowl but she’s not going to like the main course.
So yeah, we can get in touch with her after the match together, if she can drink or talk we’ll go for a coffee and make sure that there are no hard feelings for her, after all with Tatiana this is only business. I’m hoping she’ll understand that to be honest, the last thing she’ll want to do is go down a path of resentment and hatred. That just leads to being a punk like Cassidy and no one wants that in their lives.”
“Wonder what the promise for a better spot is.” Zooey asks, more to herself than anything. Kidsgrove chuckles a little.
“Knowing him, it’s going to be nonsense, like “Oh yeah your spot is number 1 now, it’s a good one.” Or some stupid bullshit only Pasternak can pull out of his ass.”
“Won’t that bother you if it is? You win on Monday and then get put as number 1 in Havoc?”
“It doesn’t matter when you come into Havoc really, it’s a survival game regardless of which number gets drawn, my goal is to go through every single one of that roster anyway, high number, low number that makes no difference to me. When I go into that ring I’m going to be laser focussed on hurting as many people as I can and throwing them over that damn rope.
We’re getting ahead of ourselves though, the focus is on one match at a time, first thing’s first I got business to take care of on Monday. Tatiana, for her own safety, really needs to step aside and let me dismember Cassidy first and foremost. Let me obliterate him from this planet, she doesn’t want to be caught in the crossfire and end up in the hospital as collateral damage. She doesn’t want that, you don’t want that, hell until the match starts I won’t want that.
Cassidy though? I hope he turns up with his smug condescending attitude and his infinitely punchable smirk, because that’s going to make me more and more angry. After I’m done with him, even he won’t remember the nuances of his own life.”