Post by Downfall on Nov 12, 2023 13:43:39 GMT -5
He stands, feeling chill air prickle against his flesh. Around him, fog rolls through gnarled, twisted black trees, so distorted that they're nightmarish.
Everything has the wavering quality of unreality, and yet... looking at his bare arms, he feels the chill distinctly.
The woods are eerily calm.
He knows he isn't alone.
Shadows flit by on his peripheral, he turns his head, the barbed, bristling thing races past.
Danny steps on a dirt path in the midst of that forest, not sure where he's walking, but knowing this dream from before. He's met himself there, many times.
There isn't a moon to prove silvery moonlight, and yet, he can see where he's going.
The spiny shadow moves past him on his left. Then, despite the familiarity, he feels a pit of dread in his stomach, because he realizes while he's here, exposed, out in the wilderness, there is still vulnerability in what he's left behind in the waking world. "Ru?" He calls, but she isn't part of this dream.
"Ru? 'Chelle?" now his feet pick up the tempo, and a dark shade runs along in front of him, taking an amorphous, yet sharpened form.
His feet beat down the path, charging. He can hear growling in between the trees, rising in the wind.
The glare of eyes in the dark, reddened camera-flash orbs, yet the set of eyes is too many; Five where there should be two. Fangs bare, nastily. His head snaps back and forth, and defiantly, he shouts "You better stay back!!"
He keeps walking, and, increasing in rapidity now, the shades move past him. He can hear the crackle of branches in the woods.
Finally, he comes to a bend where the forest trail turns... at the edge of it, under a copse of trees, a little, natural beetling of rock protuberance.
And Danny stops, because now he sees what he came here for. In the little cave, a she-wolf is nestled on her side, contendedly curled around a little of mewling, yipping cubs.
He watches this, in a rapid sea-change of emotions, before stilling into calm contemplation.
As he does, the nightmarish, amorphous, spiked thing sidles up next to him, coalescing into his familiar, an eldritch hellhound of a wolf, coal-red glowing eyes in the dark, a mane of thorns and horns protruding everywhere, and a nasty grin that splits all the way up to it's eyes filled with teeth. With teeth.
"To be loved," the nightmare-wolf grumbles, heard in his mind, "Is to be changed. To change, is to evolve forward. Do you understand?"
Danny looks down at the nightmare-wolf, staring it in it's eyes, and then at the squirming litter of cubs and their momma, feeling a sense of sadness wash over him, but a mood of affirmation. "I do."
The beast grins, disturbingly, and it blinks. Danny looks back down, and he sees a grisly aftermath; He didn't even see the slaughter. He sees nothing but entrails, and a steaming pile of blood. He wants to heave.
He whirls, outraged, staring into the fog-dense forest, but the nightmare-wolf is already padding away. "Remember."
He sits up bolt-upright in bed, sweat sticking him to the sheet, his chest heaving.
For assurance, he reaches out, and finds Rumiko there, sleeping peacefully, but as he sits up in bed, he still sees those red-coal eyes staring at him.
He sets his jaw.
"To change, is to evolve forward," it'd said.
Crossing a mental rubicon, he reaches towards his phone on the nightstand.
As we move in to the closing of the year with Turmoil, and the "best and brightest" fill out the field to serve as the cross-section, a sampling of the elite class, the most winningest and highest-ranked competition; All of them with the idea in their mind that they'll cross the entire board and remain standing at the end.
They cement themselves at THE most elite athlete, and in theory, since they triumphed out over what's usually the hardest road of the tournament to get to the end, it sends a State Of The Union speech out about the strength of the competition here in AW in toto.
What I find the most interesting about the perception of that elitism is that it isn't absolute perfection.
Look at the ranks of winners of the Wrestler of the Year Tournament who went on to challenge for their fair shot at the World Heavyweight Title, and they didn't close the deal.
It isn't baiting a vitriolic section of X to bring that statistic up. It isn't shit-stirring, specifically, to be petty.
I'm pointing out that less than forty percent of the WOTY winners in the six-year history of this company, with all of the legions of competitors they had to overcome, managed to not only win the Finals of Turmoil, but went on to claim the World Championship. That puts me in an echelon with one man who was equally as feared.
But Walter's tenure was too fleeting, his dominance didn't lend itself to longevity.
So when it all shakes out at the end of it all, I stand in this ground, alone.
Four years in, and I'm still here.
Four. Years, and each year I've accomplished something memorable every single November. Shattered winning streaks. Outshined peak athletes.
I start this November's tournament by... receiving a bye straight through week one, and taking on Jonny Cedrone in the second round.
I do harbor some serious concerns about this year's WOTY and it's commentary on the state of AW competition, but I'll table those for the talking heads.
I'm about to begin the close of a trilogy out by smashing the dreams of the less-impressive perennial back-half of a tag team.
If you Google my tournament history in 2021/2022 together, who I drew in the second rounds there, you'd see just how deliciously apropos it is to happen again.
When I raised that sentiment earlier, Jonny, 'bout being alone in a class all my own... I smiled your way because now I'm facing you, stripped of your status as a lapdog under the pretense of equal-partnership for the... second? Third? Time... I see you as just that.
Alone.
It happened just as I predicted, Gerard left you behind once you stopped being useful. Not that you were ever useful to him, mind, you were expedient, Jon.
Gerard Angelo is a strutting, vain lil' peacock that's never felt the security within himself to reflect and wonder who he is if he doesn't have a golden title around his waist.
His literal only motive for tagging up with you and holding the Tag titles, was, he wanted that shiny security blanket.
And you...
You wanted, predictably, what you always want. You wait around until some arrogant prettyboy with aspirations to be a main eventer has a few shows until the next PPV to kill so they grab for another empty accolade.
Happened with "King Shit" in Trios, happened with James Freedom, happened with Gerry.
When you lose the belts, when the team stops performing beyond that initial pretense, because you're never on the same page, then there's no heartbreaking betrayals, no barbershop windows, they just leave you in the dust like the sad fucking Boomer you are to wait around outside of the skate park in your minivan while they go hang out with their friends.
You're just lucky I'm finally getting to you now in Turmoil, as opposed to one week after Uprising, Jonny.
9/11 Clash, I was ready to rip your slanted head off and shit down your neck; now I look at the brackets across at you and I just see the leaden disappointment of having to roast you for being a follower yet again, before shrugging it off as irrelevant and already drafting in my mind just how badly I'm going to paste Gerard once I meet him in the likely final.
Of course I'm overlooking you in this, dimwit. I've already given you ample shots to bare your teeth back at me, you clammed the fuck up.
Fact one there's not a damn thing you can say to me right now that you didn't try in two separate Hardcore Title bouts that I didn't shut down immediately, so let's dispense with the idea that you're going to hit me with anything unexpectedly clever.
What's "different" about this time that would have you feeling your oats, the fact that you triumphed over a perennial washout like Jimmy Jackson to get to this point, the fact that you talk now about how focused, how full of rage you are?
We've heard on multiple separate occassions how you've turned things around, Jon.
It's always the same with you, you talk to Gloria about how oppressively daaaark, atavistic your inclinations are; That lasts only as long as you face the Jimmy Jacksons of the world because when you step up to me, you get rolled.
Fact numero dos, two years in and you've accomplished nothing on your own, Jon.
How's a man with the accolades you've accrued garner such a reputation as a pushover, always the Jerry Smith following any Rick who's loud and brash enough to cow you into submission?
You think I'm salty about the fact that it was you literally holding my leg preventing me from reaching up to grab the All-In briefcase and that's your slim measure of revenge for all the mean things I've said? Jonny to me, that was indicative of your entire, eager-to-please demeanor.
Because you didn't let me reach up and grab the case, good job, but you stood by and clapped like a good little seal and watched as Gerard won it, then you cringed at his heels every second afterwards.
You don't have brain one enough to want, to actually try for yourself at this point.
Every single thing I need to know about you falls neatly between the fact that two years in, your biggest/only accomplishments are Tags you didn't get the win in but ya damn sure took the pinfalls to lose, and the fact that when you had your last, best chance to win the Hardcore Title, you said one, stupid line throwing dirt on my name, proclaiming that I only held the Hardcore championship that long because I was afraid to compete amongst the likes of Jill Park, Carter Shaw, Dandy Divito; enough names to make me fucking vomit laughter because you, by transitive property, believed you could ever compete on a level that reaches their boots.
I held on to the Hardcore championship, because I was pursuing the addition to my legacy, two decades-worth of winning and defending Hardcore titles around the world.
I held on to the Hardcore championship, because I was testing myself to prove that I could stand in that ring, be the brutal, dominating, feared motherfucker I knew I had in my heart. No Vanguards. No Inner Circles, just me on my own.
I held on to the Hardcore Championship over you because I've done what you cannot, evolve over the years while still staying true to myself, never being a people-pleaser, NEVER letting myself hand over a win I wouldn't grab for myself.
Now we're here, in the second round of Turmoil, the time I come out to play every year, the time they send you out to fucking die;
And you're alone. You're completely, 100% on your own, kid.
Take this moment and taste it, this is as high as you go.
In the fleeting seconds before I shatter your jaw, and you're left to slump off sadly with your tail between your legs, moaning to Gloria about what you need to do to be taken seriously yet again.
I'd just give up now Jon.