I sit in the darkness, illuminated by the cone of light provided by a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. The scarred and tattered table before me has born witness to creation and destruction both. The creation of wondrous devices, prosthetics, and effects for use in film and television, as well as the destruction of dozens, perhaps even hundreds of individuals.
This is where the magic happens. This is where the Dark Man himself, Desolation, verbally devastated a stunning amount of people during his career. Today it's not covered with special effects debris, photographs of foes, or piles of title belts. It is not a place for the trophies of my mentor, but rather my own.
Spread out before me are the remnants of those who have fallen before me. Swords, knives, maces, staves, spears; the enchanted arms and armor of dozens of men and woman. I give the bulb a tap with my fingers setting it swaying from side to side as the camera zooms out.
There isn't just one table. There are several. And they are not alone in their contents. The floor holds a vast array of treasure and trophies alike. Precious metals in the form of coins, of bars, of crafted works like cups, statues, ceremonial attire and weapons, and other decorative objects.
Gems of a stunning variety and size, many of which glow with their own inner light in all the colors of the rainbow and some besides. They range from tiny specks to tremendous, faceted things bigger than my head.
And then there are the skulls. The smiling, fleshless faces of the beasts and monsters I've killed in combat. You have to take the head off of a lot of these things; their ties to elemental magic mean that their spirit flees to an outflow of raw power and reform there a touch weaker and a lot more pissed off.
Front and center is one of the biggest I could fit in my coat, the draconic skull I've been using as the base for a coffee table ever since I got an apartment here on this hellhole of a planet. I've got bigger trophies, but they don't fit in the opening that my extradimensional pockets can make.
"Out of everything you said, Nicholas, you managed to get one and precisely one thing right." I say with a decidedly unfriendly smile, flashing my elongated canines. I don't know what he's talking about when he says I have jagged teeth. I'm not some dragon-cult wannabe who files down her teeth into points because she lacks the real deal.
"That if I had my way I'd be spiking people to ring barriers every week. If I had my way I'd be partaking in the nice, familiar confines of gladiatorial combat where the purpose wasn't to simply pin a foe or make them submit. It was to maul them. Demolish them until they could no longer get up. To do whatever it takes to incapacitate the thing locked in the arena with you until it was incapable of defending itself. Perhaps even ending in death."
I reach up and stop the swaying of the bulb as I walk around the table, giving a sense of scale of things. The dragon that added that particular skull to my collection had a face the size of an ottoman with a pair of thick, segmented, tapering horns jutting out a good five feet to either side.
"Because that's what I know, Nicholas. That's what's familiar to me. That's what I've been doing for the vast majority of my adult life. Fighting against horrors that you have no words for, putting down monsters that are literally tougher than an Abrams tank. Battling beasts the size of semi trucks."
I kneel down and grab one of the bigger gems, about the size of a basketball. Brilliant and gleaming its core glows with a faint white lights. With a small exhalation of elemental energy, releasing a momentary blast of cold fire, I infuse it with enough mana to show its full glow.
I carry my trophy turned lamp over in front of one of the other tables, this time intent on showing a much larger trophy. But this one isn't a skull, though it used to be part of one. It's a single massive horn, taller than I am and far thicker around at the base than I am.
I pull it upright, hefting its mass with both hands. Dragon horns is dense as hell, and only gets thicker, stronger, and heavier as the dragon ages. A rather large kite-shaped section has been cut away from near the base.
"This is from the largest thing I've killed. A sea serpent hundreds of feet long that can swallow cars whole." I hold up my gauntleted left hand to the matching gouges in the material of the horn. "Had to dig in so that I could stab the goddess-damned thing in the brain. Horn's harder and better for making things out of that bone, so I lopped off the horns and carry 'em around, just in case I run into a smith of suitable skill."
I give a shrug, "I'd have my pal Delilah do it, but she's booked solid for the next decade or so. She did make me a shield out of it, however, so I'd stop pestering her about it." I let the thing fall to the floor with a rather tremendous noise. I didn't exaggerate when I said these things are tougher than tanks. My shield's taken armor-piercing depleted uranium slugs without a scratch. They weren't enchanted, but the laws of physics are the laws of physics. Getting your center of mass hit with a clip of those will put you on your ass.
"I've been an active competitor in the pro wrestling business for less than a year. I made my in ring debut September 4, 2014. The in-ring ability you're deriding? It's allowed a complete and utter rookie to stand toe to toe with the two people who have held ULW's biggest and best title. It's gotten me wins over long standing veterans of this sport. It's managed to put me in a place where every single loss I've had has come about as a result of cheating." I smirk, as being basically unbeatable one on one in ULW is a mantle that I share with none other than Desolation himself.
"I'm not going anywhere, Weapon. It's taken your world ten fucking months to find something that can even put a scratch on me. I don't age. I don't break bones. I don't get sick. I'm not going to be passed out in the parking lot from eating Jackson Adams' special pizza toppings. I'm not going to keel over dead in my forties from steroid and recreational drug abuse. I'm going to be an unholy terror in the world of professional wrestling for years to come." I grin and point an accusatory finger right into the camera.
"And that scares the complete and utter shit out of you. I'm fuckin' huge, I've got brawling down pat, I can jump off of shit with the best of 'em, and I've got the greatest technical wrestler in the world giving me the crash course on isolating body parts, optimizing my ring positioning, counters, and submission wrestling."
"Not only do I have the foundation for an exceptionally well-rounded wrestling style, but I'm also more than comfortable talking. The people love my promos, Harris, they love my weirdness, my odd insults, and my quirky worldview that comes from being an outsider to a lot of things on this silly, often stupid little ball."
"I scare the shit out of you because I have the capacity to go down in history as one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time. I'm the American fucking Dream, daddeh!" I pause for a moment with a sad smile as I give tribute to one of the recently departed greats of this industry with my turn of phrase.
"I came from literally nothing. I was yanked through the void to your world with only the clothes on my back. In the span of less than six months I managed to get my feet under myself and get signed to not one, but two internationally televised athletic companies. I pull in bigger TV ratings for ULW than a significant portions of its legends as well as several former World Heavyweight Champions from other federations."
"I've brought myself to the top of this industry through natural athleticism, through training with the best, and through sheer willpower. I've got everything anyone could ever want, hope, and dream for in a professional wrestler. Except for one thing." I pause for a moment and scowl, baring my teeth as well.
"I'm not a plain ol white dude. Oh sure the Triad has come leaps and bounds over those OTHER wrestling companies out there. Men and women compete on equal footing. Hell, ULW had a FEMALE World Champion back in the early fucking two thousands. So not having a big ol zucchini stuffed down the front of your shorts isn't the career killer that it used to be. Though other places the gals don't have it so good."
"In other places there's TV time for all of one womens' division storyline a week, two matches if they're lucky. They get paid a fraction as much as the boys. They get a sparkly butterfly belt and get called something cutesy and twee. As if they don't go out and punch each other in the face for a living and instead function as some sort of cheerleading squad for the men's roster."
"But are you going to literally say on INTERNATIONAL FUCKING TELEVISION, Weapon, that by golly gee you're not a racist, but because I'm a blue person with a tail, that I'm different from you, that I'm somehow lesser? That because I happen to have a creature of pure elemental magic in my family tree that somehow I'm an inferior being, worthy only of mockery and scorn?"
"Let me tell you how shit works, Weapon. Because I'm a dragon, but I'm also a human being too. We have eight distinct base races of sentient humanoid where I come from, human, gnome, dwarf, giant, orc, goblin, fey, and elf. They're races, they're not species. Because they can all interbreed. There are spells to check bloodlines, think Frodo's glows blue in the presence of orcs sword. I ping as six of those eight, everything but Fey and Gnome."
"Calling me inhuman is nothing but a filthy, degrading, racist slur. Because for every possible check box you could make that describes a member of the human race, I fulfill it. I just so happen to have a little bit more than you do."
"For example, Harris, I have a fucking blood type. While I can't go down to the Red Cross and donate a pint because needles don't pierce my skin, my blood is perfectly compatible with the one in ten people walking around on this planet that also share the B- type."
"I'm genetically and biologically compatible and capable of producing viable, fertile offspring with any given male member of the human race. I'm a unique, on this planet at least, subrace of humanity at best, and would be considered a subspecies at the very worst."
"So calling me outright inhuman, calling me a freak, calling me worthy of only laughter and mockery because I'm different, how is that any different from the usual degrading, dehumanizing, racist bullshit that the not-white people have to put up with, Harris? How is being labelled inferior for my blue skin and tail any different than calling Zachary Quentin inferior for his own non-white pigmentation, differing facial features, cranial structure, and frizzy hair?"
"So what if people refuse to wrestle in ULW because there's a big blue fucking dragon on the program? Who gives a shit about these companies that won't pay money because there's a woman with a tail in a prominent place on the show?"
"How is what they're doing now any different than what companies would be doing in the middle of the last century? "We cannot possibly in good conscious support your wrestling program, not with a black man as a key performer on your wrestling program, and definitely not one portrayed in a positive light!" or "What? Why should I have to share the ring with a black guy? They've got their own drinking fountains, bathrooms, restaurants, and shit, they can have their own fucking wrestling federation.""
"It's not like I haven't experienced negativity, scorn, hate, and slurs by simply being what I am. Except that because I'm a minority of one, people can get away with it. Silas Mason can call me a motherfucking lizard, a mindless animal, and demand I be thrown in the zoo. Do you think he'd get away with calling Orlando Cruze a goddamn nigger, a filthy coon, and demand that he be locked in prison for miscegenation?"
"Which, may I remind you, was on the books as a crime in most of the United States for a goodly portion of the 20th century, and took until nineteen sixty SEVEN for the good ol bible belt?"
"For fuck's sake, interracial marriages weren't seen as okay by a majority population in the US until NINETEEN NINETY FUCKING FIVE. There have been couples turned down for marriage licenses for this as recent as TWO THOUSAND FUCKING NINE. So don't sit around and pretend that everything is all non-racial and happy and hunky dory, okay? Because it's fucking not, and it's disgusting as hell that you're pretending otherwise."
"What you're doing, Harris, isn't any different than the rest of the shitheels who have found themselves on the wrong side of history. The ones whose ideals of hatred are seen as increasingly despicable in a world that is slowly making its way towards the light, towards a better tomorrow."
"Go ahead and tell yourself that it's not racism, that it's just me you hate. Whatever helps you sleep at night. Because you're going to have one hell of a time sleeping once you get your disgusting, hateful, racist ass kicked on international pay per view by the big blue fuckin' joke." I say with a sadistic grin that turns into a sneer, and then a snarl.
"That's your fucking future, Lethal. That's what you have to look forward to Monday morning! All those dipshits you're defending, all the fuckbuckets that refuse to wrestle with a blue woman, all the asshole CEO's that won't invest in a wrestling promotion because there's a fucking dragon on it, all the John Birch Society fucks worried about their precious bodily fluids that call in to whatever third rate hackjob shows that have you on as a guest."
"Like it or not, Weapon, ours is a world that delights in fantasy and the fantastical. Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings are two of the top five grossing movie series of all time. Superheroes are a huge thing right now. Humanity has collectively spent about as much time playing World of Warcraft as it has peeing over the same span of time. Fantasy and dragons are NOT a thing of the past."
"YOU ARE!"
"You and those like you. Relics of a bygone era that cling to outdated ideas and beliefs that will be consigned to the wastebasket of history. The future will look upon you in judgment and find you wanting. Adapt or perish, Nicholas. Adapt or perish." I shrug.
"And let's face it, you're not the most adaptable of human beings. Hell you can't even tolerate the teensiest, tiniest bit of humor and levity injected into professional wrestling. You equate respect with adhering precisely to your own personal set of beliefs and preferences."
"This is your fate, Harris. This is your destiny. To fail. To fall. To perish at my hands." Predatory grin time. Gotta show off those nice big, elongated canines that can punch through even Weapon's thick skull and still be able to tickle the grey matter within.
"Buck up, sport. I'm not going to fuckin' kill ya. Who the fuck do you think I am? YOU?" I do the one thing that can hurt the Lethal Weapon Nicholas Harris more than all the diving lariats in the world ever could. I laugh at him. Loud, long, and hard.
"Get used to that sound, Harris. Because I have. And do you know what? I can stand it. I can tolerate it. I can put up with colossal hooting dickholes like you and your racist brethren getting a chortle at my expense."
"Because in ten years I'm going to fucking own this industry. In twenty I'll be hale and hearty, even mightier than I am now. Laying waste to all who lay in my path with the sheer might that comes with being an eight foot tall, six hundred pound dragoness. I'll be a force of awe, respect, strength, and worship in my own right."
"I will take that devotion, that belief, the crystallized will of my followers and I will use it to rip a hole in reality. I will bridge my world and yours, and I will lead across an army the likes of which you have never seen. Ghasts and ghouls, dragons and demons, angels and the undead, gryphons and centaurs and nagas and walking, talking rocks. Beastmen, merfolk, translucent, tentacled creatures from the depths of human fear."
"And I will teach each and every one of them the art of professional wrestling. I will unleash an inhuman parade of so-called FREAKS upon your beloved sport. Your world will be filled with a diversity of sentient beings beyond which it has ever known. Your grandchildren will have to learn not merely how to contend against a foe with a tail, but one without any legs at all, with knees that bend in the other direction, of foes without any bones at all."
"I will do this so that I can visit you in the nursing home, as your spawn will shunt your bitter old ass into one the moment you become incapable of not shitting your pants. Old grey Weapon, wracked with age, shaking, crippled, cancer ridden."
"I will come to you, I will show you the wonders that I have brought into the world, the awe inspiring sights that I will gift upon the sport of professional wrestling that you so claim to love. And I will laugh in your face again, just as I laugh in your face now."
"Because I'm going to laugh now, I'm going to be laughing then, I am going to be laughing when your children's children's children have returned to the dust of the earth."
"Because my cause is a cause of righteousness. My fight is a fight for hope. I struggle not for trinkets, not for scraps of fame, not for an ill-gotten fortune, but for the betterment of my fellows, to raise the whole of all mankind."
"Cut out the scum, the backstabbers, the ankle biters, the dungeon fucks that won't cut a promo and take a big steaming shit in the ring each and every week until they're thrown out on their loathsome, freckled asses."
"Rip out the black heart of professional wrestling. The politics, the schmoozing, the corruption. The back room deals, the money under the table contracts, the hellish grind that turns athletic youngsters into agonized wrecks over the course of ten years."
"I will drag this entire industry kicking and screaming to a better tomorrow, on my own if I have to. But I'm not alone in this fight, Weapon."
"And soon you and all those like you aren't going to be laughing any more. You're not going to have the breathe in your chest left to laugh. You'll be too busy running."
"But you, Harris? Your laughing stops here. It stops now. It stops when I grind you into a paste in that ring. Because I'm not going to give up. I'm not going to stop. I'm not going to let you leave that arena without telling me who's sent you on this fool's errand. I'm not going to let you go until you let loose with who's paying you to come after me."
"I'm not going to accept a whisper. I'm not going to let you get by with just an utterance. I'm going to break you piece by piece until you scream to the entire fucking world who put you up to this."
"And do you know what the saddest thing is? That everything you suffer you've done to yourself. You didn't have to attack me. You didn't have to say the horrible, racist, fucked up things that you've said. You didn't have to be beaten to complete and utter shit in the ring by a pro wrestling rookie."
"You're a legend, Weapon, and you're going to get your ass mauled by pissed off, bright blue newbie to the sport. You did this, Harris. YOU. People are going to be laughing far louder and far longer at you than they ever will me. Because people love schadenfreude, they love seeing holier than thou, stick in the mud, nose goblins like you get their comeuppance."
"This is your fate. Sealed with a frostbite kiss." I draw in a deep breath, preparing to do my usual exhalation of mist to fill the area before the camera to ease into a fade to white, but instead as the camera zooms in I give the bare hanging bulb a tap, sending the image into darkness.
Until a hand clad in a fingerless glove grabs it, holding it still, revealing the scarred, one-eyed visage of the Dark Man himself who has a wicked smile to match my own on his face. "Oh, I'm sorry, did you think it was over? Did you think you'd be getting off that easily? Oh hell no, Weapon, sit your ass down and pull up a bar stool to rest that giant schnoz of yours on, because we're just getting started! You don't get to whip out your spotted dick and try to get into a pissing contest with me over impact on the pro wrestling industry!"
"No you di'n't, girlfriend!" In his first act in a proper promo in the better part of four years Desolation decides he needs to do the sassy black woman series of four finger snaps in a z-shape.
"So when you began your vaunted career in the year of our lord 1900 and 92, I'd been wrestling actively for five years. Trained by my stepfather from a young age, allowed to compete once I turned 16. By 1992 I'd won and lost my first World title, decided I wanted to do something with my life, joined the army, competed in the NCAA as part of the Army wrestling team, and damned near got half my face blown off." Desolation makes a few theatrical hand motions pointing to the line of his scar and outright pokes his prosthetic eye making eyes water and people blink in sympathy the world over.
"DTX has never been a huge, chart topping promotion. The three families in charge have always been content to stick with what works and not try and get too big for their britches. But they were before their time in a lot of areas; intergender matches, international cross-promotion with lucha libre, and evil authority figures that communicate only through technological devices. Though I think DTX has gone through like seven or eight CEO Burnses from lung and throat cancer. Sitting in a dark room chain smoking and talking through the Ole Anderson Black Scorpion Special will do that to you."
"And in 1996 I'd long since healed up, been back in the ring, and developed a crippling diet cola addiction that caused my weight to blossom to the low three hundreds. Despite not being as agile and flippy as I used to be, my power, brawling, and technical games were all on point and getting better. Leading me again to world title reigns, this time in DTX's Michigan-based sister promotion AWO."
"Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. Along the way I'd developed a reputation as a solid hand in the ring, on the mic, and generally an all round good guy to have around. Thus as a result I've been in charge of training newbies for the better part of 20 years down there."
"I don't just have Orlando Cruze to hang my hat on, Weapon. Back before the tattoos, the fangs, and the verbal tics of "NYAH!" and "ANYWAY!" a stick thin young lady got dropped into my lap who put on a mask and became La Latina Leonessa. A handful of years later the world knew her as Hellkat. You should remember her, Weapon. She main evented ULW's first PPV and was one of the inaugural World Heavyweight Champions. Hell, I think she was the first one to make a successful defense of the blighted thing."
"I trained a couple folks that didn't sign on with the Triad, but went on to success in other feds. Couple of guys that went to UWF and tore up the place, calling themselves the League. Big guy in a green shirt and a wifebeater, talks to his baseball bat, Hardkore Havok, having a record thirty some XHWF Hardcore Title reigns to his name. Multi time World champion by the name of Shock, renowned for being a pretty damned good high flyer and technical wrestler himself. Gerrard Anders, the OverLord of the XHWF, another World Champion."
"For the most part they've stayed on this side of the pond, and stayed the hell away from New York, so I'm not surprised you may not have heard of them. After all the last guy I trained that headed up this way ended up sidelined for a year after having that sloppy as shit, so ripped he can't wipe his own ass, confederate sockwank Andre Urinal Bates did a Banzai drop, let loose with a sloppy fart, and burned out the poor guy's sinuses on top of smashing up his face, breaking his collar bone, and crushing a few ribs."
"And Sickle did pretty much fuck all in EFW, where I spent most of my time as a creative consultant to a senile ex-Army fart who thought he could run a wrestling promotion like he could a boot camp. That guy's throbbing erection for large, preferably muscled men rivaled that of anybody whose last name rhymes with McMahon."
"I wasn't "making my name" there, I'd long since made my name, become a World Champion nineteen times over, kicked asses from coast to coast, across the pond and back, and made sorry sacks of shit, and a few shining stars, tap out on every continent INCLUDING Antarctica. It was on a cruise ship. We were in Antarctic territorial waters. It counts."
"ANYWAY! It goes to show you what a cesspool of suck EFW was when it got yanked out of the hands of previous management and said senile height fetishist was actually an improvement in the way things were being run."
"The last PPV before we took over had the two company owners in the main event, fighting for… something. One of which was crippled, and the other had his in ring career ended due to injury. And one was married to the daughter of the other, and had been since she was a minor. Whoopsie, while DTX did the Anonymous GM before it was cool, EFW managed to do a Rob Feinstein before it was… well, diddling the kiddies is never cool. Unless you're part of the Catholic Church. Then it's just a thing that'll get you traded to another parish and the victims hushed up. Because Jesus."
"So yeah, EFW got rousted from the hands from a pair of geniuses that felt that their status as a cripple and a pedophile ought to secure them the main spot on a PPV. I did some wrestling, deflated a shit ton of egos, and put some fire into a young fake-vampire hunter trying his best to get us sued by Marvel Comics, as well as a pair of young Scotsmen named Bruce Lomond and Badger Lansbury. Who you may remember had a cup of tea and pint of lager in ULW as the Highlanders."
"EFW I spent my time putting out fires and trying to teach an Alzheimer's patient why putting two immobile flankstanks in the ring with one another was not a particularly good idea. So of course when the ratings started dropping because no one liked the World Bodybuilding Federation the first time around, I got to feud with Andre Bates, King of the Flankstanks."
"This is me we're talking about. I've dragged people like Hunter, Alex Fayt, and Aurora Rose kicking and screaming to four star classics. Given a choice between wrestling Bates or wrestling Ric Flair's proverbial broomstick, not only would I chose the fucking broom every goddamned time, but the damned thing would be better on the mic and not stink up the locker room with "Big Jonneh, mah muffleh fell out babeh" wads of toilet paper." and now the Dark Man's doing his requisite Dusty Rhodes impression. Seriously, everyone in the wrestling business who's anybody has a Dusty Rhodes impersonation voice. It's like a secret handshake for professional wrestlers.
"And don't act like EFW was either genesis, the nadir, or the death knell of my career. I stepped out of the DTX/AWO pairing for the first time in May 1998, won three of the four titles in EHW during my two months with the fed. Used that effort to springboard to the bigger UWF, where I got my first nationally televised World Title. Went from there to EHWF, which got folded into XHWF, which is where I spent the largest chunk of time anywhere that isn't IWC."
"Yeah, the fed I used to deride as Ricki Eastman's motherfucking playground lasted longer than ULW did the first time. Not familiar with XHWF? Sixty five title reigns and six world titles. Three stripings, two vacating due to injury and… oh wait. I was the champ when XHWF closed the door, I'm STILL the champ."
"Of course the reason WHY I managed to rack up 65 title reigns over three years in the XHWF was because Eastman would strip people of the fucking things on a time. Looked at him funny? Title strippage. Let out a slightly more raunchy than usual fart in the locker room and have Jason Slaughter complain about it? Title strippage. Embarrass the most recent of his stripper girlfriends by making a parody song? "Miiiiistrah Crowley, come ride my white whore! Get over here, Jeri!" Entire stable stripped of titles."
"And between the end of the XHWF run and ULW I managed to accumulate a hundred plus match winning streak that only managed to be broken by one of the people I trained over my long and storied career, the woman that I would eventually marry. Hundred and something wins, one loss, three draws."
"Beats the living FUCK out of anything YOU'VE ever accomplished, Weapon. And I went out there and I entertained the fans each and every night. Not a single suckjob of a match amongst them. Not like the wrestler my protege has been blasting for their poor performance."
"I mean how fucking low do your standards have to get in order to accept that a significant portion of your wrestlers lack either the skills or the state of not-inebriation to actually wrestle a decent goddamn match that doesn't give Bryan Alvarez a hate-on? ULW has managed to drop some serious fucking stinkers since it's come back. Sure you'll never hit the depths of MINUS! FIVE! STARS! that Piddle/Caleb Hart reached. That one made Meltzer projectile vomit, if I recall, but it happened in a ULW ring. That's not the kind of thing you should be proud about, that's not something that you ought to be brushing off."
"Oh sure, Angel Kash finally being made to wrestle a match and getting her face punched in may be an nigh unto orgasmic payoff, but what about the other seven weeks of shows? They don't go "Oh boy, I sure want to see Kjorn Battlestar wrestle!" They go "Oh fuck me! It's the woman that never wrestles sending in a couple of suck bags who never win matches compete on her behalf. Holy forgone conclusion, Batman, it's time to take a piss!""
"They go "Oh look, it's Priest, whom we know is never going to get within spitting distance of a World title in the Triad because he's never held one is his decade long career of repeating the same dark, threatening, dreary, dismal bullshit.""
"They go "Oh my god. It's Cassidy fucking Haze. What series of toads has she licked this week? She appears to have gained superpowers! Look! She's gained the proportional speed, strength, and agility of a spastic, ungainly sloth!""
"It's fucking trickle down Hoganomics, Weapon, brother, dude, jack, and don't you fucking pretend otherwise. The only reason she's got a job is because she got blasted with lesbian pollen and is sticking her tongue down Serenity's throat. Who only got a job in ULW in the first place because it made Willow Wilkes happy in her pants. And once Willow's pants were not happy? Why, she left and went back to the IWC, taking the Human Sominex Machine Cassidy Haze right along with her." Desolation is spitting ether, as the kids says these days.
"And I think it's rich that you of all people are getting down on Kalinda for "injuring" Adam. Since, you know, you've fucking outright killed two people in the ring. That and the fact that he was walking right out alongside the rest of New Eden later in the evening and not, you know, in the hospital where a career ending injury would tend to land you."
"Kalinda beat the fuck out of Adam for taking liberties with her after their match the previous week. She hit him with one (1) super-finisher class maneuver, and was about to inflict the same chair-skull-mat sandwich that Adam had done the previous week when Mr. Don't Feed Me After Midnight yanked him out. That was a high impacting, though relatively routine move. If Kalinda was just about any other wrestler on the face of the planet, she'd have been on the shelf from Adam's attack, and we wouldn't be here having this little conversation, now would we?"
"You, me, and the fans can read between the lines here, Nicky Himalayas. Kalinda had precisely fuck all to do with putting Adam on the shelf. Cindy Todd got a bee in her bonnet that one of her minions had failed yet again, and this time didn't bother waiting for TV time in two weeks to do it."
"Adam's probably out with whip marks, a staph infection from the whip having Willow's filthy meat curtains rubbed all over it, a gerbil in his ass, and Cindy Todd's snapped off strap-on blocking things up. Probably waited a few days out of embarrassment and then before sepsis could off him, went to the ER with a tale about how a big black dude with a gun came up to him with a rubber horse cock and a small rodent and forced him to pull a Richard Gere or die."
"You know what this is. I know what this is. Kalinda knows what this is. Because it's the same exact shit I experienced throughout my entire pro wrestling career. She won't take a knee, she won't bow to corporate interests, she will not stop fighting for what she believes in."
"And the people with the long reach and the deep pocket books are punishing her for it. Angel Kash couldn't smear her reputation, Lenore Price-Mason couldn't dethrone the dragoness, Adam and New Eden cannot fucking keep her down, and now they send in you. Send you in to do to her exactly what you're accusing her of doing to Adam."
"Inflicting lasting damage. Because while she doesn't have the deep reserves of inner strength that come with getting the fuck beaten out of you every week for the better part of a decade like I had, she's got something more. She's not at the point where she can take a whopping like I can now, like I could at the peak of my career. But she can do something far more amazing. She'll recover from a beating that would take me days or weeks to get fully over. And she'll do it in minutes."
"She doesn't wear down, Weapon, and New Eden found that out. It doesn't matter how many men, women, demons, and prescription contacts you throw at her. She'll grind them down to dust. The sea is patient, it is relentless, and it will erode the shore until the world is so blighted that it can no longer contain liquid water, can no longer contain life."
"All that come against my young apprentice will be worn away or will perish long before they succeed at the task. And that includes you, Nicholas Appalachians. You're so happy and gleeful that you've managed to find out Kal's "kryptonite," acting like it's some big, magical revelation when every human being that's ever owned a Game Boy knows that Ice is weak against fire from playing with the pokey mans."
"Wow, your powers of deduction are literally on par with an eight year old with a 3DS. Congrats, Weapon. Sheryl must be so fuckin' proud. Goes to show why you had to beg and scrape to get World title shots in your wife's own company. And why I had to kick your head in about four times in a row to get it into your thick skull that no, you weren't coming back for one more run."
"While you spent the entire time showing why I'm twice the man that you are, and that you have half the brain that I do. Because your shining reasoning behind why you were going to get one over me was because I, a man who is two years younger than you, was somehow considered old. And this was a fucking decade ago."
"If I was old then, by god you're fucking ancient. You must be a dehydrated, skeletal mass! Like that Nazi in Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail AFTER he's take a sip. By golly, your knees must sound like stuck gear shifts every time you take a walk. You must be such a crippled, arthritic, degenerated, senile old hack by now! Forget botched spots, the biggest problem affecting the way you're perceived in this day and age is liver spots!" Desolation oh so maturely sticks out his tongue and blows out a raspberry at Lethal Weapon.
"Hey, this is kind of fun, actually. And at least I can put some fucking NUANCE into it, rather than repeating the same hackneyed bullshit. Oh, Desolation is old. He's old! Did you know he's old? Old is D'Lo spelled backwards, Mike!"
"I can see why you're tripping all over yourself to defend Angel Kash. I mean not only is she using your promo style from ten years ago, but you're cribbing from her exceptionally limited list of insults."
"I mean fucking seriously, Weapon, talking shit about the way a lady looks? That's not scraping the bottom of the barrel, that's broken through the bottom and started digging. That's something that uncreative people whip out every time they come up against someone who isn't a skinny blonde with huge tits. You don't conform to an exceptionally narrow range of human parameters, therefore you are totes and uggo and fit to make the audience puke!"
"I mean have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately, Nose-Mullet McMuttonchops? You're not exactly a prime catch of the day yourself. Being that I am not an authority on male attractiveness, I asked my wife. She dubbed you a double bagger." Desolation leans forward and holds his hand up against the side of his mouth, whispering conspiratorially to the camera.
"See that's when you're so ugly that not only do you need a bag, but your PARTNER needs one as well. Just in case yours falls off."
"Dur hur hur hur hur, aren't we all just a laugh riot. What's next, Weapon, now that you've decided that you get to decide the attractiveness ratings of the rest of humanity. What've you got in your future? A pair of tiny pink trunks, a selfie stick, and an atomizer that sprays your own brand of perfume/cologne/body spray/beaver anal gland extract called "Incoherence?""
The Dark Man takes up his stage whispering pose again.
"Rick Martel. Arrogance. That's on Wikipedia. You can google it. Along with rusty trombone." he shakes his head and mouths the word "No."
"That's all you have, Nicky Grand Tetons, is the same old tired, boring, washed out shit. You're parroting the same lines now about honor and respect and tradition that your hacked up at me ten years later. You know, after basically every wrestling-based gathering, organization, magazine, website, and HTML newbie that can scrape together the code for a functional poll have already stated quite decisively that I'm better than you."
"I don't see anybody talking about the great feuds YOU'VE had in ULW. I don't hear them talking about how YOU revolutionized an entire division with your ridiculous antics in IWC. I don't see people showering YOU with devotion and adoration for turning a mere ringside prop into not merely one of the most beloved title holders of all time, but a cult favorite wrestler in it's own right."
"I mean holy fuck, Queef-al Weapon, as Bob would say, in the span of two shows I made people give a shit about a Ladder. ULW hasn't managed that with Angel Kash in nine fucking months. Hit her in the face with a shovel, have Mya Denton cram a cattle prod down her throat, and take her off of TV like a significant portion of the other notorious ULW suck bags."
"Let me repeat that for you in case you don't comprehend the situation. I managed to take an inanimate object," Desolation is pronouncing his words slowly and making greatly exaggerated movements with his mouth, pointing to it with both hands. "An immobile thing that cannot move on its own, and I made it not merely adored, but heralded as one of one of the greatest and most entertaining champions in IWC history. And unlike Angel Kash, Ladder has never had an abortion of a match so bad it knocked up ULW's dead baby tally by one."
"See, Weapon, for you tradition is all about rules and regulations. It's all about limitations and framework. It's a dark, secluded little hugbox that you hide yourself away in and shout at the rest of the world when they crack open the door and try to show you something new and different."
"To paraphrase the great bard George Carlin "You did because your father did it, because his father did it, because his father did it, because his father did it, because his father only fucked buffalo." You don't examine things, you don't think things through. You don't look at your beliefs with a critical mind and go "Why the fuck do I have this thing in my head, and what has it done for me lately?""
"Tradition is rote memorization, it's slavish devotion to ritual, it's bland, it's sterile, it's a cold, hard, dead, unchanging thing. Tradition is using an allen wrench to put together some stupidly named end table from IKEA. Tradition has no room to be had for awe and wonder. Tradition is not a motherfucking art."
"What I do, Weapon? What Kalinda does? What we do is motherfucking art. Each promo and each match a new opportunity to create something new, something unique, something that is a snapshot of a moment in time. It's not catchphrases, cliched, hackneyed insults the fans have heard a million times before, and motherfucking five moves of doom."
"It's why when you ask people about their favorite wrestler of all time, my name appears on their lips within the first three or four names. You show up a couple dozen mentions down the line. It's because I'm a gods damned artist out there in the ring, and you're a fucking Xerox machine. Art is messy, art is organic, art is unique. Art does not fit into rigid definitions, strict codes of behavior and ethics, and neat little boxes."
"You don't create greatness in a factory, Nicky. You don't make legends by putting fences around them and trying to pack them into neat little boxes. You don't can't make a superstar just by checking some boxes. It's artificial as all hell, the fans know when you're doing it, and they will fucking turn on you and shit all over what you're trying to force down their throats."
"People like Kalinda and I, we love the sport of professional wrestling. We go out there and pour our heart and soul into every promo, we put effort into not only winning our fights, but winning them in a way that will keep the people coming back for more."
"I rain down fire and brimstone every time I speak, not because I hate professional wrestling, but because I love it. Because the wrestling fans deserve better than some of the fuck ups, egomaniacs, and mental defectives that end up as the masses of gross, stinky mud trying to cover up all the shining diamonds out there."
"I want the people that I insult to take a good long look at themselves through my eyes. I want to burn away their warped images of themselves so that they can see what I can see. Bring their flaws to light so that they can be done away with. So that they can address flawed facets in their being, in their character, in their performance, in their lives and come out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death as bigger, better, brighter human beings. And plant persons. And box heads. And vampires. And hermaphrodites. And whatever the fuck malfunctioning prototype robot from the Bimbo Factory that Aurora Rose was."
"I want people to succeed. I want to see them rise above the shit I say and improve themselves. But nobody ever fucking does. Everyone in this industry seems to wrestle one match, get their head lodged up their own ass, and thinks that they are this perfect, special, unique snowflake that can do no wrong."
"People like you, Nicky Sierra Nevada. Limited, wretched, hateful, ignorant people who have nurtured their hate and their ignorance until it's all you have left. All you need, all you want, and all you desire."
"That's what you get when you abandon your boots for a suit and a tie, the locker room for the board room, love of the sport for the commute and the daily grind. You get to trade in love for the cheap high of self-righteous indignation. How dare anyone do anything differently. How dare anyone step out of this small set of predefined boxes. The cheap high makes you dumb, it makes you cruel. It makes you PROUD of being dumb, being cruel, being hateful. And above all else it makes you resent anyone who isn't."
The Dark Man steps forward, motioning for me to join him, which I do. In matching black tanktops and camo pants we stand tall against the onslaught of Corporate America and the shit that those that bow at its altars have tried to pull on the both of us over the years.
"I never fit into any box, and Kalinda here..." he gestures to me and looks me over.
"God damn, you sure as hell ate your Wheaties as a kid. Because you're a hell of a lot bigger then me, and you're sure as hell not fitting into any boxes either."
The Dark Man holds up his hands, palms up, offering them to the camera.
"It's like the lady said, Nicky Adirondacks, adapt or perish. The only thing that rigid, hard, solid, unchangeable thinking like yours can do when it encounters a dire force like this is to break. To shatter. To be torn apart in the wake of it and explode into a million little pieces."
"You can't adapt, Harris. You couldn't adapt ten years ago. You're stuck in the same mire of smug superiority and self-righteousness that you were up to your neck in back then. Only by now you've long since drowned and are the thought process equivalent of one of those creepy-ass looking peat bog mummies."
"You couldn't adapt then. You can't adapt now."
"The only thing left for you is the fate that awaits all the other old fashioned, outdated, obsolete ideas. To be broken, to be tossed away, and to be consigned to the dustbin of history."
"And you did it all to yourself. Harris. You did it all to yourself."
The Dark Man gives the camera a small, sad smile.
"And that is something that you're going to have to cope with during the rest of your cruel, ignorant, hateful, miserable life."
"Deal with it."
As the lights come back on and the ULW cameras fade, leaving only Mr. Hush and his Cameraviathan; my silent biographer documenting nearly each and every waking moment of my life since I've been yanked to this silly ball of rock. I look over my mentor with an impressed look on my big blue face.
"Damn, sensei, you sounded more pissed off than I am there."
My mentor gives a sad shake of his head before replying; "It's because I am. You're dealing with shit that I had to deal with the whole of my career. I stepped behind the curtain and hung up my boots because I was tired of buttfuckery like this, and I loathe the fact that this stuff is still a blight on this industry. You've had to deal with it for one year, see how you feel about the subject after damned near thirty."
"Did you have to rant and rave for so long? You know this is supposed to be MY promo for MY match, don't you?"
Desolation laughs and gives a shrug, "Hey, you said it yourself back in January, Sally. I have a notorious tendency to steal the spotlight."
I'd actually forgotten I said that until he brought it up, and something in my posture or my face or scary CIA-granted telepathic powers gives that away.
"Hey, it's why I'm such a damn scary promo. I can take one little thing that someone said six months or a year or two years or a whole fucking decade ago, wrap that little irritating bit of sand in a whole lot of junk, and come out with a great big shining pearl of a comment."
"Are you saying I'm irritating?"
"Is water wet? Don't worry about it, I'm irritating too! I'm surprised the universe hasn't locked me up in my own indestructible bubble-prison on account of how irritating I am."
I give him a chuckle and stare off into space for a few moments, some thoughts floating around in my head that got knocked loose while I was standing back and watching the master at work ranting and raving.
"Nicky Mountain Ranges?"
"His name is Nicholas Harris. Mt. Harris is a mining ghost town in Colorado. Got dragged there on somebody's stupid-ass ghost hunting trip cause 34 miners died in an explosion way back when. Reminded me of Nicolae Carpathia from the Left Behind novels, which are also full of cruelty, self-righteousness, hatred, and are a collection of words that amount to complete and utter shite. They're some of the world's worst literature, and Harris has come out let loose with some pretty offensive verbiage of his own. I mean it's not sixteen novels worth of "Nyah nyah nyah nyah, you're gonna burn in heeeeeeeeeell!" But it's still pretty goddamned nasty."
"Nicky Carpathia is Romanian and named after the mountain range. There's a blog I like to read that's going through page by page and discussing just how BAD these books are. Fifteen or so years in, and the guy's on book three of sixteen."
"Wow, that is Angel Kash levels of badness and sucktitude."
"That's actually probably unfair to Angel Kash. Anyway, it's a running gag in the comments section to use varying versions of the name Nick coupled with mountain ranges."
"Sounds like something Spark would come up with."
"I wouldn't doubt it. Your muse comes up with some wacky shit sometimes."
I nod and we have a lull in the conversation.
"So what else?"
"What else what?"
"You don't have that far away look in your eyes because you were baffled at me referring to Queef-al Weapon as Nicky Grand Tetons, and then got sidetracked picturing a perverse Frenchman going "Sacre bleu! What shall we call zees mountains? Ah ha! Le Grand Tetons!" and then cupping his bosoms laughing madly while doing so. "Ah hon hon hon hon hon!"" my mentor says, probably driving off the whole of our French viewership with his mocking, overblown French accent and laugh.
"I sure as hell am now!" I say with a scowl.
"Seriously though, what's up?"
"I was thinking about what Nicky Knobhead..."
"That's a mountain?"
"Antarctica. I've looked over the place extensively because it's the coldest place on Earth, and thus a pretty good place for me to puddle-port to when I want to do some strenuous exercises, or heal up, or go where stuffy, bitter retired professionals wrestlers are guaranteed not to leap out and throw fireballs in my face."
"Ah."
"Anyway, Nicky Nipple Peak..."
Deso's eyes widen and his brows raise.
"Really?"
"Antarctica."
"Wow."
"ANYWAY! Nicky Mount Cocks..."
"Antarctica?"
"Antarctica. Now as I was saying, Nicky Mistake Peak..."
And now his jaw is hanging open.
"Close that, you'll catch flies. Nicky Queer Mountain..."
I do believe I'm well on my way to giving my teacher a case of the giggles.
"Nicky Executive Committee, yes, Antarctica. Yes, it perfectly fits him, and it even rhymes! NICKY EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE stated something along the lines of "How dare you question me! I did a thing back in 1992, and 1996, and 2003!" We don't use your calendar. We've got 8 months each comprised of five 9 day weeks, plus four days seasonal transitions, plus New Year's. Our years are about the same, but we don't have a leap day, and our numbering scheme is different. So while you were bringing up your whereabouts during each of his little utterances, I was actively doing math and recalling the major events in my life 23, 19, and 12 years ago."
"And?"
"And it's some pretty big stuff. Life changing shit on par with having your face almost blown off by a care of notorious international Canadian cheese thieves." he never talks about the exact incident and always gives something silly and ridiculous, or utterly over the top. Just like he does when he mentions weight gain from a "crippling diet cola addiction," we diet cola has no calories and thus you can't gain weight from it.
"It was worth it for the children of America to be able to dine on delicious pizza pies topped with the nation's strategic reserve of mozzarella." Desolation adds.
"1992 was the year my grandmother disappeared. She was a combat instructor to the nobility and an occasional tutor in other areas. Being basically invulnerable to being thrown around save for some soreness, I got carted along since I was about six or so to be every rich brat's training dummy."
"Only the last rich brat was dark elven royalty. A princess, basically. Next in line to take the throne. Only the position of House Matriarch can be taken through violence, invasion, challenges of personal combat, et cetera, and it's perfectly legal. Delilah, I've mentioned her to you before..."
"Seduce the Enemy, Exploit His Weakness, and Betray Him of House Projectile Often a Crossbow Bolt Fired at Our Common Foe From a Hidden Place of Safety and Concealment. Delilah Darkbolt for short."
"Well, she used Darkfire at the time, but yeah. That's basically the best translation into the common tongue for her particular arrangement of eleven names, yeah. Anyway, Mama Darkbolt, Dara, is a pretty powerful customer. Has all three of the elven branches of spirit magic at her beck and call. Delilah's got one, and her aunt's prevented her from using it by finding ways to make all her bonded animals vanish or turn up dead."
"So Del was never in a position to get herself the raw power she'd need to keep the throne, ya know? So back in '92 Dao-Mai, that's Auntie Darkbolt, stages a coup. Big ol invasion, nasty and violent. It's her last shot at getting the throne away from Dara. Because dark elves are big fans of baseball and adhere to the three strikes rule. The baseball thing is total bullshit, but the rule of three is an actual thing.
"So she decides that while she's there, just in case, she'll track down Delilah and challenge her for her place in the succession. After all, she's kept Del basically crippled magic wise for her entire life."
"So the palace is under attack, Grandma, Del, and I are all taking cover in the dojo, and then Dao-Mai storms in all gigantic and fierce. I was about a foot and a half shorter and two hundred pounds lighter than I am now. Great big elf-vampire-animal person with a scary ass sword that spits lightning that looked about ten feet tall. She was actually seven and a half."
"Del can't fight her. I'm pretty much a training dummy, I sure as hell can't fight her. Grandma casts a spell, throws me into Delilah and sends the two of us sprawling through a portal to somewhere else, and she takes on Dao-Mai head to head. Singlehandedly stopping her claim on the throne and giving her her third strike."
"1992 was the last time I saw my grandmother. She vanished after that. She didn't die or anything, but it was years and years before she showed up in my life again. And then it turned out that the person I thought she was was just pretty much a cover ID and an act for my benefit and there was this stranger there that I didn't know."
"And she was basically your entire family."
"Yeah. She was my family. Spark and Kitty are… they're different. Spark's like a goofy older brother, able to take care of me and teach me and stuff, but he was always just babysitting until Grandma came back. And Kitty's more of a special needs pet than family. Grandma was my one and only parent, and I find out years later that she pretty much wasn't even real. Just this illusion that someone pretended to be and threw away the moment I was out of sight, out of reach, and out of manipulation range."
"Ouch."
"Yeah, ouch. '96 was the year I gave up adventuring for good, or so I thought. It was the year I went to a real life actual fairy fucking princess to take up a quest to battle something dire in exchange for a blessing of great power."
"In my case being an elementally Ice aligned dragoness, I wanted to be protected from fire. So motherfucking fairy princess does not like big, thick, broad shouldered, busty tavern wench, could play lineman for the Raiders, potty-mouthed sword and armor Kalinda. She was kind of like Weapon, all filled with ideas about tradition and rules and putting people in boxes."
"I was a woman, I was a lady. Ladies did not run around in pants and armor, swinging swords and headbutting their foes in the nose. They used spells, or wielded staves, or fired arrows. They used their bonds with nature to have pretty things like unicorns or wolves. Well, Kitty's technically a wolf. And a black dragon. And a wolf. Then that black dragon again. Then another wolf, then grandma black dragon. Then a wolf, then a tiger, and a wolf, and a wolf, then the dragon again. Then a wolf, a different dragon, a wolf, and that damned black dragon again."
"And a rhinoceros!" Desolation says gleefully, which is everybody's favorite part of Dragon Kitty's genealogy.
"So suffice to say that instead of being protected against fire like I asked, she actually went and made the situation worse and now depending on the amount of flame I'm exposed to, the damage can take upwards of a year to fully heal."
"So yeah, I went and did this person a favor and she fucking cursed me because I didn't fit into her neat little boxes. And she also did something else very, very unpleasant to me with that curse that I'm not going to talk about. Not with the ULW film staff still hanging about in potential snoopity snoop mode."
"The janitor is always watching."
"Ugh. Creepy Ruiz. Seriously, that guy can go fuck himself."
"He does. Every night. Thinking of various ULW superstars, sniffing their discarded underdrawers, while he eats pound after pound of stinky, stinky cheese."
We share a chuckle.
"And 2003?"
"That was when Dao-Mai finally found Delilah and kicked the whole thing into motion that lead to me wearing this..." I hold up my left arm, clad in the armored gauntlet that is the Hand of Arimus, "And thus the fact that I'm stuck here right now."
"And how's that going?"
"No change. I either find myself a mana battery, of which a professional wrestling title belt seems the most likely, or I go out and get Eleanor Rigby a cult congregation to rival the mightiest of mega churches, brother."
"Dude."
"Jack!" I finish. Eleanor Rigby is the nickname Desolation came up for the Manyfold Matriarch, the dark, cannibalistic hydra-like dragon goddess that I managed to accidentally make myself the sole and thus primary devotee of some years back. Des calls her Eleanor Rigby because she devoured all of her worshipers to feed her hunger. As a result she faded into obscurity, forgotten entirely as the centuries passed. Her last thrall was consumed in the ruin of her primary temple. Eleanor Rigby; died in a church and was buried along with her name.
Desolation reaches out and gives me a half smile and a comforting pat on the arm. "You'll find a way. People like us always do."
"People like us?"
"Artists. Freethinkers. The opposite of the Fairy Queen and Nick Mount Dick. People that can adapt."
"Antarctica?" I ask with a toothsome grin.
"Antarctica." the Dark Man replies, with a grin of his own.
I draw in a deep breathe, banishing the demons of the past that my opponent has conjured up in my mind. Just like I'm going to banish him back to the board room called obscurity at Paranoia.
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