It Comes Back To You. (4,000 words)
May 7, 2023 19:01:21 GMT -5
Carter Shaw, Orret the Match Writer, and 1 more like this
Post by Downfall on May 7, 2023 19:01:21 GMT -5
He's never truly felt lost, until this moment.
He staggers, the tinnitus splitting his ears and the concussion still turning his perception into greying static.
Simply dumped out of a black SUV, he's been forced to replay it all over and over again in his mind, the gunshot, Bradley falling. Hinata telling him it was all for nothing.
He's making his way back to the only lair he has left; wounded animal instinct, legs carrying him, on autopilot.
He's found his way to Pine Street and, nestled between an old bodega and an empty brownstone that has a rental sign hanging, is the security gate over the front of his... his dojo. (That was never truly his to begin with)
Fumbling fingers clench the gate, pulling it back with a shriek. Stiff, Frankenstein legs trudge up the stairs. Weary, and so tired.
As he gets to his room, he sees a note, written on the front, in Japanese kanji, is a simple letter from his students. "We got a better offer,". He can't help but feel that it's a loss, bleeding he was too arrogant to staunch.
He turns, moving to his cot. He finds his duffle bag, and, searching for familiar things, he reaches down and brings out his gear pants, feeling their weight in his hand. His hands dip into his duffel... and he brings out the golden title belt he'd been proudly carrying around.
"Given everything you asked for... you still will never be satisfied."
"Give yourself everything you've ever wanted... give yourself finally, the triumphant, shining moment in the sun. [...]Will that be enough for you? Would you be... happy? Satisfied?"
He screams.
Lashing out, furious with a burbling anger he has nothing he can do with, he hurls the Hardcore belt across the room and it smashes into a picture frame, and it falls to the floor, askew, like a discarded peel. Not finished, he turns to the cot with his duffel bag on top, upending it and savagely throwing it; his clothes scatter out of his bag.
He sinks down to his knees amid the piles of scattered wrestling gear and broken glass. He looks at the title he'd thrown across the room, sitting cockeyed and it's strap limp.
"Then what. Was any of this. FOR."
He is still taking a long look at the title, laying amid a pile of glass shards, when the office door squeaks open, much later.
Rumiko comes towards him, shocked to see him and she goes to him. A bit put off himself, he rises, meeting her, and is surprised when she wraps her arms around him for a moment.
They part, and, she looks around, for the first time noticing the destroyed room, the ripped gear, the lonely, jettisoned title belt. He notices her noticing, and, for once, he can't think of a way to spin it that isn't honest, desperate truth. "I... needed someplace to put the anger."
Her eyes meet his, worried, a little sad, and she tenderly touches his cheek, "Put it all on me... I can take it..."
She takes his face in both of her hands, bringing him closer, for a persistent, despairing kiss.
He moves against her body, taking her in his arms, and starting to lay her down, but hesitates, noting the deposits of ripped fabric and broken glass, and his eyebrows knit... "It's... been a bit since I allowed myself something like this, Ru..."
She reassuringly reaches up to put her fingertips against his lips to shush him, "...It comes back to you."
As all of the pieces move into place over Havoc; As all of the names pop out of the woodwork, the titillating thrill of who we are going to see make their return begin to filter from the fan's lips... as the pundits debate who's coming into Havoc with the story that defines them as the diamond in this rough.
The story truly solidifies them as not only the one that stands above the rest of the pack, but gives them the motivation to be the one that stands up and opposes Jill Park.
God knows we've already seen speculation that this is Carter Shaw's year, a redux of his last year's successful clearing the field and finishing off his story with Jill, that he didn't end against Dandy.
Everyone sees the returning acts that are keen to say that AW has dimmed in their absence, and their showing in Havoc is an example of why they alone can turn the heads, move the needle, be the One.
All of these players, half of them dumb enough to just run down AW's roster in a list, even dumber the few that only focus their attention on the end goal and the perceived biggest threats, Lissie, Shaw, Tatiana... and me.
I know from two years running that I'm going to be getting more than my share of mentions, because being honest... even Carter, Corey Black... the men who've eliminated me in past years, spent enough paragraph space denying my ability to capitalize on what I'm given... at least knew I was enough to bother with that they needed to address me.
Those who think that I've made myself weaker because I "cut myself off from emotion". Those that think I turned to the Hardcore division because "I couldn't get the job done with the World title"... or that I overreact when I "lose a big match" and this is my course correct.
I've heard it all... and I'm man enough to admit there've been grains of those truths encased in what I do.
But I also think it's become clear that there isn't a competitor in Havoc that can appreciate what I've brought to the table in Action Wrestling. I don't think anyone does.
If you went back in a machine and asked someone, a fan of WGWF in 2014, if one day, Downfall wouldn't just made a comeback story that eclipsed what he accomplished in his first three years of mainstream wrestling... but that he'd grown confident enough to stand on his own.
No tag partners. No stables. No assistance. Just him against the entire world, bodying favorites and carving out lengthy singles title runs... you'da been laughed outta the building.
But that's where I've grown from.
Time and again I've overcome the absolute worst.
Pushed through my own self-defeating, self-doubt, risen from the ashes time-after-time, and that's what you all don't get.
I coulda been Tatiana Jolee, a forty-year old veteran and journeyman figure who got this spot and lapsed into comfort, making a ceiling out of the TV and CBS division. But unlike Tatiana, I didn't settle. When I lost my shots at backing my words up, I didn't cry about management holding me back. When something didn't go my way, I didn't piss and moan and exchange banter on Twitter, or demand matches against Torture.
I don't tire.
I don't politic for my spot.
Hell, unlike 90% of this roster I'm not out here double-dipping in CU:LT, or XWF, or wasting my days on wrestling Twitter. I commit everything I can to this game, to this company.
You can't say that about Max Daemon, he'd give you Honkey Lighthouse effort and demand matches against Conor McGregor and David Hunter over main-eventing Evolution. Can't say that about Alice Gemini, she'd rather proclaim herself the Scream Queen of CU:LT (or whatever small pond she'd love to pretend to be the biggest fish in for a few months while taking no bookings here.)
Can't say that about CJ Phoenix, Wesley, Harvey Marx, just about any of these small-timers probably just gonna pop in for Havoc and a cheap run, maybe a lower-tier belt or a shot at a Pure Cup, and they're gone.
Even the ones who we thought were gonna leave the biggest mark after last year's Havoc didn't pan out, did they. That's where my consistency lies... because you stack someone like Jason Cashe against me, and there's no comparison.
The ones that match that consistency, that give that effort here; Gerard. Jill. What they possess? Attitude that this is undeniable. Inexorable. That being on top is their foregone conclusion.
For the longest time, I thought of it that way myself.
So it's been pointed out now where I've faltered in the last year, hell, where my oversights in Havoc last year that led to me being ignominiously bounced out.
I tried to play the game as if I was the ultimate boss, the devil that everyone in the ring should rightly fear.
And if I fell against Spencer Adams? I realize now that it was because I put myself in the antagonist mode, the one that fought to tear Spencer down, the one who just wanted to take the moment away from Spencer, to take the moment away from Corey Black.
It didn't wholly convince, even myself. I'm nothing if not honest about the fact that a good part of this has been learning to live with your illusions.
The story around my continued reinvention isn't antagonism, then I had to ask myself what I was fighting for over the last few weeks. How I could word this different than I did last Havoc, Turmoil.
It's always been about pushing myself to be bar none, the best in the world. Undesirable, to undeniable. From people thinking of me only as a washout, someone who didn't even a career other than handshake deals and one-off appearances.
This isn't the same delusion I'd been living in. I have nothing to prove to anyone except, finally, allowing me to by myself. I don't have to rekindle old dreams. I don't have to bend over backwards trying to be the champion I was in 2006.
And that's exactly why I wanted the Hardcore title. To get fully in tune with the truest, most intentional version of myself. Asking, exactly who I wanted to do this for. Who I wanted to be.
I don't need the help of cults like Dion's Elysium to parrot me empty, insipid motivational speeches to know what I'm capable of. I'm a force of nature.
Understand this, from that moment of gnosis and epiphany grew a new, firmer resolve. If before I'd determined I wasn't going backwards into tactics that had made me successful before... I'm taking everything I've learned over these last two years especially in Havoc, triumph and failure and applying it.
Real actualization is where you pare down to your essence.
Better than you ever have given yourself credit for.
Better than the the lowest-energy feebs that have built around your feet, throwing rocks you turn into steps.
Better than the person you entered into this to impress. Certain in one simple truth.
What it comes down to, is who has the will to make it happen.
Side-by-side, they'd walked to the waterfront again.
She was nervous as they made their way through the marketplace until they got to the boardwalk, but, aside from a few surreptitious glances, nobody harmed them.
"It's not too late to get in your car and drive off," he reached in his pocket, pulling out his pack of coffin-nails. Rumiko wrinkled her nose, said, "Put that out, I hate that."
He fixed her with a cool look, but he defiantly took a drag of his cigarette, "We aren't a couple, just because we - "
Rumiko sighed, "No. That was just two lonely people, who'd lost everything, providing each other support in the moment." That was... all it was, she reminded herself, all he was going to let it be. "But still. It's a nasty habit. And you only do it because it's something you can control."
"There's that word again," he said, examining the cigarette burning between his knuckles; knowing he isn't exactly winning this fight.
She's listing off ill-effects of nicotine already, "...Provides a dopamine release to the cortex that's not unlike the instant gratification of a slot machine... provides an unnatural relaxation to tensed muscles... yellows the teeth, which, lemme tell you, keeps people like me in business..."
"Alright, alRIGHT," he overrides her. Lifting his boot up, he crushed the stub of the cigarette out against the bottom.
She walks towards the dock. Hours have passed since their initial... dalliance this morning. Noonday sun, and, despite the presence of some suspicious figures, the air is serene with the bustle of people down the way on the beach, and the call of the seagulls taking fries from the vending stand. The Bay shines.
Rumiko stands, looking out over the water, and Danny joins her.
"I..." he doesn't know how to begin. "I have Hinata's words in my head."
"You too?" she keeps looking at the water.
He huffs, then, finally, "He asked what any of this was for. Not just Japantown... my entire life. And as long as I'd lived, and there's been stretches where I've known exactly who I'm supposed to be and who I want the world to see me as..." He opens his hands, then lets them fall.
"So you're upset, that Bradley Jutensai, and Tomie, and all the others, have died in this for nothing?" She looks at him sidelong. "Typical, let's just all have a pity-party for the white boy who didn't understand this neighborhood at all and how bad he feels about it."
"Hey, knock it off," he snarls, then, "No... more than that. I wonder if there's a step I've taken anywhere in my life that I took for the right reasons." His mouth deepens into a scowl. "Even Adam had a point... I should always have left all this alone and concentrated on my... career... but even my career has it's times..."
"Where you don't know what this was for? And that it ultimately means nothing to you?"
He nods, slightly.
"So, let me ask you this... because you told me before that this only ever was for Michelle. Was that true?" He doesn't answer, "Or your dad, how you once told me a story that you got into wrestling because you wanted to impress your father, and be closer to him in following the same trade he had?"
"Or are those just things you've told yourself this whole time?"
He cranes his head up to follow a seagull, pinwheeling overhead. "That's a question, innit," he mutters, half to himself, "...That's... a question."
"So, what would it look like if you took all of that off the table, Danny? Don't... fight to impress anyone. Don't fight because you want to give your girlfriend a shiny bauble. Don't fight because you want to deprive someone else of having something you wanted. You look at where you are in your career, and you decide you're going to go out there and do it because it's what you decided you wanted. Have you ever tried it that way?"
"I to admit I haven't, really" he said, "But what if Hinata's right? What if it's... just never enough for me?"
His mouth forms a thin line of determination, "But the thought occurs to me too... that if Hinata's right... if nothing we do truly does matter."
"Then what matters is what we do with that."
Rumiko puts her hand on his shoulder, "Look at the tides with me, Danny."
"The water does swell up at high tide, and it recedes, and it moves in cycles linked to the moon's gravitational pull. It never concerns itself with whether it'll be too high or too low. The water just allows itself to ebb and flow."
"I think... you put too much effort and thought into being who you think you needed to be, for other people... instead of just letting things be what they are, and waiting for the right moment where you're at your strongest energy."
"If you think of yourself like the rocks that waves break on the shore, they may not be moved... but they'll erode over years..."
"But if you think of yourself like the ocean... then all of the energy that you put out there in the universe that drains you to your lowest ebb... it comes back to you, in time."
He smiles, distantly, "Hm."
They watch the waterfront for a while; With the bustle of Pine Street and the marketplace behind them, all that's left is the call of the gulls and the chatter of people on the beach, as the tide begins to roll in after all.
I realize how unlikely this sounds, like a tonal switch from the arrogant, nihilistic bastard I'd been in Turmoil, from the savage brute that's been making my bones shattering people in the Hardcore division.
But it isn't, really.
My motivation's always been... moving towards betting solely on myself. Relying on nobody but myself. Doing things... just because I can.
It takes self-awareness on a level that nobody in this match exhibits to commit to the level I'm bringing. To be the one that does stand there when it all shakes out, culminating this story to it's logical endpoint.
Nobody; Not Dionysus, who still exhibits that same deluded pattern I called out in March, the frenzied, manic burst of energy when he gets a new idea that tickles his fancy and the bone-deep knowledge he doesn't have the follow-through to make it happen.
It's small wonder, then, that Dionysus has hitched his wagon where he has... in the same boring journey of enlightenment that Brandon Leno and Alister McKissick are undergoing. Rife with generic, cliched "psychedelic" mantras of actualization (but lacking the depth), Dionysus has done little more in the month he's been gone than find some hippie commune that's gonna put a slip of acid under his tongue.
But Dion thinks this is genius, that this is the gimmick that's going to push him to the next level, if he joins a group of other, similarly floundering summer children and galivants through open doors.
Devoid of self-awareness, any journey of actualization you could take is going to lead to you walking in the same rut you've always been.
Same as it ever was. For Dionysus.
For Lissie Hope.
Lissie is an odd case, actually one, that I believe wants people to believe she's in on the joke. That she possesses enough awareness of how people perceive her that she makes them into limits to overcome... You'd think that manifests as awareness in that she knows she can make an anthem of proclaiming that she knows it must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero.
But she remains... frustratingly, opaquely blind to where I'm not even certain "Lissie Hope" as a person exists.
Her every idiotic, convoluted action plays as a frustrated, male, hack Hollywood writer trying to feed lines about feminism and being a Heroine into an AI and generate a script about a girlboss protagonist.
Lissie Hope is so desperate to be seen in the limelight as a promoter of women, that will always clap to give another sister her due, that she'd steal a trophy from Serenity on Pure just so she can "present" it to her on Cruiserclash. Lissie feigns awareness of her flaws and thinks it paints her as someone who's openly fighting their darkest and winning...
Except that she's done more to add fuel to the narrative that she doesn't actually do anything for Action Wrestling. We continue to give her title shots and ample space to be given any new side hustle that's interested her this week.
We have, just in the last year, watched this woman found a gym, play women's football and be given reality television contracts, and still if the time comes for Lissie to have a match on a weekly basis, it's a crapshoot.
What's incredible to me, is that we tolerate this obviously mentally-ill, deeply needy little whore her delusions and basically bend over backwards to give her anything she wants. Make sure to give her succ, that she's really such a hero to all the little girls everywhere.
Lissie hasn't evolved, moved her dial one inch on this in the last three years. If this is such old news to her that everyone still says it about her, then it might just possibly be that people have caught on to her pattern.
But she believes that it isn't her that's in the wrong, anyone who says different must be slut-shaming. Must be trying to tear her off her pedestal. Must be trying to keep her down because they hate women.
Again... not a story that has gone anywhere.
If these are our heroes, then I weep for this company.
To Corey Black... who returned last year, and targeted me... because he was looking for a satisfying ending to his career, a road to Valhalla to walk into with a smile on his face. Instead, I put him down like an ugly, mongrel dog, and since then? He hooked up with Odin Balfore and they've since decided they're going to drag the division down even further in the gutter than a team that had two separate entrances. That's Corey Black's glorious Valhalla ending.
To James Freedom, Alice, Max... bring all of them on.
I am awakened, and fully aware of why I'm in this fight. For too long... my motivation wasn't my own.
But I am coming into this calm, focused, and ready to wash over this entire field like floodwaters.
I am rising. Surging.
And I pity anyone that doesn't know how to swim.
She had never been less sure of where to go, or what to do, in her life.
He staggers, the tinnitus splitting his ears and the concussion still turning his perception into greying static.
She wraps her hands tightly around her elbows as she walks towards the docks. The waterfront is empty, and she feels like a ghoul; A wasted apparition with nothing left out of itself.
Simply dumped out of a black SUV, he's been forced to replay it all over and over again in his mind, the gunshot, Bradley falling. Hinata telling him it was all for nothing.
She can't reconcile what was once her brother, the idol superhero can-do-no-wrong, who had never had a crazy dream he didn't follow with his whole heart, staring at her as if she was an ant; Asking her if she had chosen the right side.
He's making his way back to the only lair he has left; wounded animal instinct, legs carrying him, on autopilot.
If she has a destination, it's just to the water; Something instinctual in her is telling her that it's nearing dawn and the sun will be coming up over the Bay.
He's found his way to Pine Street and, nestled between an old bodega and an empty brownstone that has a rental sign hanging, is the security gate over the front of his... his dojo. (That was never truly his to begin with)
From here, she can see the shell of the dental practice, never having recovered from it's bombing, and she stares at this ruin of her life's work, knowing that it's over, that she had chosen wrong. (Everything is gone.)
Fumbling fingers clench the gate, pulling it back with a shriek. Stiff, Frankenstein legs trudge up the stairs. Weary, and so tired.
Her fingers, biting into her elbows, are the only sensation she has, her legs are as numb and faraway as the rest of her. She's come to a marina full of parked yachts.
As he gets to his room, he sees a note, written on the front, in Japanese kanji, is a simple letter from his students. "We got a better offer,". He can't help but feel that it's a loss, bleeding he was too arrogant to staunch.
She feels helpless as if she never had any place here.
He turns, moving to his cot. He finds his duffle bag, and, searching for familiar things, he reaches down and brings out his gear pants, feeling their weight in his hand. His hands dip into his duffel... and he brings out the golden title belt he'd been proudly carrying around.
She turns towards the water, staring at the painted watercolors of the sunrise, reds and deepening oranges, shimmering.
"Given everything you asked for... you still will never be satisfied."
"Give yourself everything you've ever wanted... give yourself finally, the triumphant, shining moment in the sun. [...]Will that be enough for you? Would you be... happy? Satisfied?"
"Because, and you'll laugh at this, an old friend came to me, and showed me that everything I hoped to build in Japantown was all for nothing."
"Do you think he's capable of loving you?"
He screams.
She screams.
Lashing out, furious with a burbling anger he has nothing he can do with, he hurls the Hardcore belt across the room and it smashes into a picture frame, and it falls to the floor, askew, like a discarded peel. Not finished, he turns to the cot with his duffel bag on top, upending it and savagely throwing it; his clothes scatter out of his bag.
She doesn't have anything to throw, but the emotion that kindles deep in her heart that wakes her out of her leaden haze is anger. So much death. So much thrown away, and for what? Startled, heads turn her way.
He sinks down to his knees amid the piles of scattered wrestling gear and broken glass. He looks at the title he'd thrown across the room, sitting cockeyed and it's strap limp.
"Then what. Was any of this. FOR."
There had been a moment when she had looked out over the water and wanted to throw herself in.
It's at this mutual, shared moment, a mile or so apart, the two sit among the wreckage of what's left of their illusions; There has been a great deal of loss through the whole venture. The loss of illusions, a loss of childish fantasies. But as she looks out over the water from the end of the dock, and he looks at the scattered remnants of what's left of his life, there is a true gnosis.
It's akin to coming up for air.
He is still taking a long look at the title, laying amid a pile of glass shards, when the office door squeaks open, much later.
Rumiko comes towards him, shocked to see him and she goes to him. A bit put off himself, he rises, meeting her, and is surprised when she wraps her arms around him for a moment.
They part, and, she looks around, for the first time noticing the destroyed room, the ripped gear, the lonely, jettisoned title belt. He notices her noticing, and, for once, he can't think of a way to spin it that isn't honest, desperate truth. "I... needed someplace to put the anger."
Her eyes meet his, worried, a little sad, and she tenderly touches his cheek, "Put it all on me... I can take it..."
She takes his face in both of her hands, bringing him closer, for a persistent, despairing kiss.
He moves against her body, taking her in his arms, and starting to lay her down, but hesitates, noting the deposits of ripped fabric and broken glass, and his eyebrows knit... "It's... been a bit since I allowed myself something like this, Ru..."
She reassuringly reaches up to put her fingertips against his lips to shush him, "...It comes back to you."
As all of the pieces move into place over Havoc; As all of the names pop out of the woodwork, the titillating thrill of who we are going to see make their return begin to filter from the fan's lips... as the pundits debate who's coming into Havoc with the story that defines them as the diamond in this rough.
The story truly solidifies them as not only the one that stands above the rest of the pack, but gives them the motivation to be the one that stands up and opposes Jill Park.
God knows we've already seen speculation that this is Carter Shaw's year, a redux of his last year's successful clearing the field and finishing off his story with Jill, that he didn't end against Dandy.
Everyone sees the returning acts that are keen to say that AW has dimmed in their absence, and their showing in Havoc is an example of why they alone can turn the heads, move the needle, be the One.
All of these players, half of them dumb enough to just run down AW's roster in a list, even dumber the few that only focus their attention on the end goal and the perceived biggest threats, Lissie, Shaw, Tatiana... and me.
I know from two years running that I'm going to be getting more than my share of mentions, because being honest... even Carter, Corey Black... the men who've eliminated me in past years, spent enough paragraph space denying my ability to capitalize on what I'm given... at least knew I was enough to bother with that they needed to address me.
Those who think that I've made myself weaker because I "cut myself off from emotion". Those that think I turned to the Hardcore division because "I couldn't get the job done with the World title"... or that I overreact when I "lose a big match" and this is my course correct.
I've heard it all... and I'm man enough to admit there've been grains of those truths encased in what I do.
But I also think it's become clear that there isn't a competitor in Havoc that can appreciate what I've brought to the table in Action Wrestling. I don't think anyone does.
If you went back in a machine and asked someone, a fan of WGWF in 2014, if one day, Downfall wouldn't just made a comeback story that eclipsed what he accomplished in his first three years of mainstream wrestling... but that he'd grown confident enough to stand on his own.
No tag partners. No stables. No assistance. Just him against the entire world, bodying favorites and carving out lengthy singles title runs... you'da been laughed outta the building.
But that's where I've grown from.
Time and again I've overcome the absolute worst.
Pushed through my own self-defeating, self-doubt, risen from the ashes time-after-time, and that's what you all don't get.
I coulda been Tatiana Jolee, a forty-year old veteran and journeyman figure who got this spot and lapsed into comfort, making a ceiling out of the TV and CBS division. But unlike Tatiana, I didn't settle. When I lost my shots at backing my words up, I didn't cry about management holding me back. When something didn't go my way, I didn't piss and moan and exchange banter on Twitter, or demand matches against Torture.
I don't tire.
I don't politic for my spot.
Hell, unlike 90% of this roster I'm not out here double-dipping in CU:LT, or XWF, or wasting my days on wrestling Twitter. I commit everything I can to this game, to this company.
You can't say that about Max Daemon, he'd give you Honkey Lighthouse effort and demand matches against Conor McGregor and David Hunter over main-eventing Evolution. Can't say that about Alice Gemini, she'd rather proclaim herself the Scream Queen of CU:LT (or whatever small pond she'd love to pretend to be the biggest fish in for a few months while taking no bookings here.)
Can't say that about CJ Phoenix, Wesley, Harvey Marx, just about any of these small-timers probably just gonna pop in for Havoc and a cheap run, maybe a lower-tier belt or a shot at a Pure Cup, and they're gone.
Even the ones who we thought were gonna leave the biggest mark after last year's Havoc didn't pan out, did they. That's where my consistency lies... because you stack someone like Jason Cashe against me, and there's no comparison.
The ones that match that consistency, that give that effort here; Gerard. Jill. What they possess? Attitude that this is undeniable. Inexorable. That being on top is their foregone conclusion.
For the longest time, I thought of it that way myself.
So it's been pointed out now where I've faltered in the last year, hell, where my oversights in Havoc last year that led to me being ignominiously bounced out.
I tried to play the game as if I was the ultimate boss, the devil that everyone in the ring should rightly fear.
And if I fell against Spencer Adams? I realize now that it was because I put myself in the antagonist mode, the one that fought to tear Spencer down, the one who just wanted to take the moment away from Spencer, to take the moment away from Corey Black.
It didn't wholly convince, even myself. I'm nothing if not honest about the fact that a good part of this has been learning to live with your illusions.
The story around my continued reinvention isn't antagonism, then I had to ask myself what I was fighting for over the last few weeks. How I could word this different than I did last Havoc, Turmoil.
It's always been about pushing myself to be bar none, the best in the world. Undesirable, to undeniable. From people thinking of me only as a washout, someone who didn't even a career other than handshake deals and one-off appearances.
This isn't the same delusion I'd been living in. I have nothing to prove to anyone except, finally, allowing me to by myself. I don't have to rekindle old dreams. I don't have to bend over backwards trying to be the champion I was in 2006.
And that's exactly why I wanted the Hardcore title. To get fully in tune with the truest, most intentional version of myself. Asking, exactly who I wanted to do this for. Who I wanted to be.
I don't need the help of cults like Dion's Elysium to parrot me empty, insipid motivational speeches to know what I'm capable of. I'm a force of nature.
Understand this, from that moment of gnosis and epiphany grew a new, firmer resolve. If before I'd determined I wasn't going backwards into tactics that had made me successful before... I'm taking everything I've learned over these last two years especially in Havoc, triumph and failure and applying it.
Real actualization is where you pare down to your essence.
Better than you ever have given yourself credit for.
Better than the the lowest-energy feebs that have built around your feet, throwing rocks you turn into steps.
Better than the person you entered into this to impress. Certain in one simple truth.
What it comes down to, is who has the will to make it happen.
Side-by-side, they'd walked to the waterfront again.
She was nervous as they made their way through the marketplace until they got to the boardwalk, but, aside from a few surreptitious glances, nobody harmed them.
"It's not too late to get in your car and drive off," he reached in his pocket, pulling out his pack of coffin-nails. Rumiko wrinkled her nose, said, "Put that out, I hate that."
He fixed her with a cool look, but he defiantly took a drag of his cigarette, "We aren't a couple, just because we - "
Rumiko sighed, "No. That was just two lonely people, who'd lost everything, providing each other support in the moment." That was... all it was, she reminded herself, all he was going to let it be. "But still. It's a nasty habit. And you only do it because it's something you can control."
"There's that word again," he said, examining the cigarette burning between his knuckles; knowing he isn't exactly winning this fight.
She's listing off ill-effects of nicotine already, "...Provides a dopamine release to the cortex that's not unlike the instant gratification of a slot machine... provides an unnatural relaxation to tensed muscles... yellows the teeth, which, lemme tell you, keeps people like me in business..."
"Alright, alRIGHT," he overrides her. Lifting his boot up, he crushed the stub of the cigarette out against the bottom.
She walks towards the dock. Hours have passed since their initial... dalliance this morning. Noonday sun, and, despite the presence of some suspicious figures, the air is serene with the bustle of people down the way on the beach, and the call of the seagulls taking fries from the vending stand. The Bay shines.
Rumiko stands, looking out over the water, and Danny joins her.
"I..." he doesn't know how to begin. "I have Hinata's words in my head."
"You too?" she keeps looking at the water.
He huffs, then, finally, "He asked what any of this was for. Not just Japantown... my entire life. And as long as I'd lived, and there's been stretches where I've known exactly who I'm supposed to be and who I want the world to see me as..." He opens his hands, then lets them fall.
"So you're upset, that Bradley Jutensai, and Tomie, and all the others, have died in this for nothing?" She looks at him sidelong. "Typical, let's just all have a pity-party for the white boy who didn't understand this neighborhood at all and how bad he feels about it."
"Hey, knock it off," he snarls, then, "No... more than that. I wonder if there's a step I've taken anywhere in my life that I took for the right reasons." His mouth deepens into a scowl. "Even Adam had a point... I should always have left all this alone and concentrated on my... career... but even my career has it's times..."
"Where you don't know what this was for? And that it ultimately means nothing to you?"
He nods, slightly.
"So, let me ask you this... because you told me before that this only ever was for Michelle. Was that true?" He doesn't answer, "Or your dad, how you once told me a story that you got into wrestling because you wanted to impress your father, and be closer to him in following the same trade he had?"
"Or are those just things you've told yourself this whole time?"
He cranes his head up to follow a seagull, pinwheeling overhead. "That's a question, innit," he mutters, half to himself, "...That's... a question."
"So, what would it look like if you took all of that off the table, Danny? Don't... fight to impress anyone. Don't fight because you want to give your girlfriend a shiny bauble. Don't fight because you want to deprive someone else of having something you wanted. You look at where you are in your career, and you decide you're going to go out there and do it because it's what you decided you wanted. Have you ever tried it that way?"
"I to admit I haven't, really" he said, "But what if Hinata's right? What if it's... just never enough for me?"
His mouth forms a thin line of determination, "But the thought occurs to me too... that if Hinata's right... if nothing we do truly does matter."
"Then what matters is what we do with that."
Rumiko puts her hand on his shoulder, "Look at the tides with me, Danny."
"The water does swell up at high tide, and it recedes, and it moves in cycles linked to the moon's gravitational pull. It never concerns itself with whether it'll be too high or too low. The water just allows itself to ebb and flow."
"I think... you put too much effort and thought into being who you think you needed to be, for other people... instead of just letting things be what they are, and waiting for the right moment where you're at your strongest energy."
"If you think of yourself like the rocks that waves break on the shore, they may not be moved... but they'll erode over years..."
"But if you think of yourself like the ocean... then all of the energy that you put out there in the universe that drains you to your lowest ebb... it comes back to you, in time."
He smiles, distantly, "Hm."
They watch the waterfront for a while; With the bustle of Pine Street and the marketplace behind them, all that's left is the call of the gulls and the chatter of people on the beach, as the tide begins to roll in after all.
I realize how unlikely this sounds, like a tonal switch from the arrogant, nihilistic bastard I'd been in Turmoil, from the savage brute that's been making my bones shattering people in the Hardcore division.
But it isn't, really.
My motivation's always been... moving towards betting solely on myself. Relying on nobody but myself. Doing things... just because I can.
It takes self-awareness on a level that nobody in this match exhibits to commit to the level I'm bringing. To be the one that does stand there when it all shakes out, culminating this story to it's logical endpoint.
Nobody; Not Dionysus, who still exhibits that same deluded pattern I called out in March, the frenzied, manic burst of energy when he gets a new idea that tickles his fancy and the bone-deep knowledge he doesn't have the follow-through to make it happen.
It's small wonder, then, that Dionysus has hitched his wagon where he has... in the same boring journey of enlightenment that Brandon Leno and Alister McKissick are undergoing. Rife with generic, cliched "psychedelic" mantras of actualization (but lacking the depth), Dionysus has done little more in the month he's been gone than find some hippie commune that's gonna put a slip of acid under his tongue.
But Dion thinks this is genius, that this is the gimmick that's going to push him to the next level, if he joins a group of other, similarly floundering summer children and galivants through open doors.
Devoid of self-awareness, any journey of actualization you could take is going to lead to you walking in the same rut you've always been.
Same as it ever was. For Dionysus.
For Lissie Hope.
Lissie is an odd case, actually one, that I believe wants people to believe she's in on the joke. That she possesses enough awareness of how people perceive her that she makes them into limits to overcome... You'd think that manifests as awareness in that she knows she can make an anthem of proclaiming that she knows it must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero.
But she remains... frustratingly, opaquely blind to where I'm not even certain "Lissie Hope" as a person exists.
Her every idiotic, convoluted action plays as a frustrated, male, hack Hollywood writer trying to feed lines about feminism and being a Heroine into an AI and generate a script about a girlboss protagonist.
Lissie Hope is so desperate to be seen in the limelight as a promoter of women, that will always clap to give another sister her due, that she'd steal a trophy from Serenity on Pure just so she can "present" it to her on Cruiserclash. Lissie feigns awareness of her flaws and thinks it paints her as someone who's openly fighting their darkest and winning...
Except that she's done more to add fuel to the narrative that she doesn't actually do anything for Action Wrestling. We continue to give her title shots and ample space to be given any new side hustle that's interested her this week.
We have, just in the last year, watched this woman found a gym, play women's football and be given reality television contracts, and still if the time comes for Lissie to have a match on a weekly basis, it's a crapshoot.
What's incredible to me, is that we tolerate this obviously mentally-ill, deeply needy little whore her delusions and basically bend over backwards to give her anything she wants. Make sure to give her succ, that she's really such a hero to all the little girls everywhere.
Lissie hasn't evolved, moved her dial one inch on this in the last three years. If this is such old news to her that everyone still says it about her, then it might just possibly be that people have caught on to her pattern.
But she believes that it isn't her that's in the wrong, anyone who says different must be slut-shaming. Must be trying to tear her off her pedestal. Must be trying to keep her down because they hate women.
Again... not a story that has gone anywhere.
If these are our heroes, then I weep for this company.
To Corey Black... who returned last year, and targeted me... because he was looking for a satisfying ending to his career, a road to Valhalla to walk into with a smile on his face. Instead, I put him down like an ugly, mongrel dog, and since then? He hooked up with Odin Balfore and they've since decided they're going to drag the division down even further in the gutter than a team that had two separate entrances. That's Corey Black's glorious Valhalla ending.
To James Freedom, Alice, Max... bring all of them on.
I am awakened, and fully aware of why I'm in this fight. For too long... my motivation wasn't my own.
But I am coming into this calm, focused, and ready to wash over this entire field like floodwaters.
I am rising. Surging.
And I pity anyone that doesn't know how to swim.