I thought my opinion of my co-workers couldn't sink any lower. That I had finally managed to delve to the deepest, darkest depths of disregard for the rest of ULW. But no, around here when you hit rock bottom on the chart of human stupidity folks don't stop. Folks break out the pick axe and keep fucking digging.
Because it can't be laziness, oh no. You'd think that people would realize by now just how fucking indestructible I am. I've been shot in the face, I've taken shots that would end careers and gotten up minutes later, and just this week I was the victim of an attempted motor vehicular homicide. Well, it would've been one had I been just about anyone else on this silly blue ball of a world.
I shouldn't have to do this. I shouldn't have to come out and remind everybody day in, day out, week after week, month after month that I am a giant magical dragoness from another world. I shouldn't have to smack people about the face and scream in their ears about the fact that I'm different than all the other wrestlers they've ever faced.
I have done everything but stand in the arena with a megaphone, shouting facts about myself into the ears of my would be opponents. But no, despite everything I have ever done no one seems to believe me. They don't believe their eyes when they see a seven foot tall, bright blue, honest-to-goodness fire breathing woman with a tail.
If you've never been to ULW in person I might understand it. I might understand the fervent denial of reality that's usually reserved for anti-vaxxers, moon landing hoaxers, religious fundamentalists, flat earthers, and people with the surname Mason. That in reality I'm some gal in a green suit with little ping pong balls stuck to it and that all the dragon stuff gets added in post production.
That I'm the real reason Channel 69 can't bloody air a single episode of FUF on time, not the constant interruptions for tennis, dog shows, and breaking news bulletins about missing blonde, upper middle class, white women. That time is needed to add all the scary dragon bits via CGI. And of course the moment you apply any sort of logic, reason, sense, or scientific evidence to that claim, it vanishes in a reeking cloud of insincerity.
You can come to a ULW live event and see that I'm real. You can look at all the photos that people post on social media. You could see me live doing interviews on talk shows, you know if management would pull their heads outta their asses, and actually do things to promote this company and the talent contained therein.
I work with these people. They pass me in the halls every day. We eat off of the same catering table, albeit it most of them with their mouths open, chewing loudly, and spewing chunks of partially masticated food in a cone in front of them.
These aren't people who are at a distance, who have never come into contact with me before. These are people for whom one of the methods for self-improvement and plan making is to study tapes of past shows. These are people who ought to damned well know EXACTLY what I am and what I'm capable of. Which leads me to conclude that most professional wrestlers are stupid, stupid, stupid.
There's a reason why I refer to Taylor Cruze as the Dumbest Women in Professional Wrestling. Literally three quarters of the problems she had any given week while I was in the IWC would be solved immediately upon watching the tape of the previous week's show to discover who precisely was jerking her around, and who was pretending to be her friend while looking for the perfect place to stick a knife.
And while ULW's roster isn't quite having THAT level of willful ignorance, I find it very peculiar that I had to almost literally hammer in the fact of my insane durability (compared to the rest of this world's population at least) through the skulls of my various opponents.
Each and every one of them come across this strange, startling revelation that I am not a normal human being. It stuns them. It surprises them. The looks of dawning, horrific realization are absolutely beautiful to see when they realize that I don't bend, I don't break, I don't bruise, and I don't bleed.
That's how damage is done to pretty much any biological organism. Bones break, ligaments rip, muscles tear, tissue ruptures, and wounds bleed. For most wrestlers it's pretty hard to actually inflict a dire injury with any regularity on one's foes. The easiest way to take somebody out is to give them a concussion. You literally smack them in the head hard enough to send their brain careening off the inside of their skull, creating bruises and bleeding in the brain.
That doesn't happen with me. Brain hits the skull, tissue compresses, but nothing gets damaged. It doesn't matter how you hit me, how you bend me, how you twist me. It doesn't matter if I'm hit with an open handed slap or a hand grenade. I don't get hurt, I don't get damaged. All I get is a little sore and very, very peeved.
Pro wrestlers train to be able to absorb huge amounts of damage that would drive a lesser individual to their knees. A single wrestling match is one of the most gruelling, draining, damaging athletic activities possible. It doesn't matter how good of an athlete you are, guaranteed you're going to need special training before stepping into a wrestling ring for the very first time.
Wrestlers will take injuries that in other sports are considered career ending. We will take them, we will suck it up, and we will soldier on with perhaps a slightly lighter than usual work schedule. Maybe taking one show off here and there. Unless you're Jason King or Willow Wilkes, then the company trips over themselves after every PPV to give you extra special snowflake times to heal.
So it takes quite a bit to put one of us on the shelf for awhile. There's no guarantee that even a few well-placed weapon shots will get the job done. Pro wrestlers frequently cut the recovery times for many injuries in half. Even if you Pillmanize a guy, there's no way to be sure he's not going to be back within the month.
For a long time the one surefire way to get somebody out of your hair, to write them off as any sort of physical threat for months has been to ram into them with a car. To smash into them with over one and a half tons of speeding automobile. Eli Legacy did everything he could to take me down short of strapping on a thong and saying that he did it for the Rock, he did it for the people.
If it were anybody else they'd be out for months. They might even be dead. Me? I got up with a wicked smile on my face and a song in my heart. Because the Crows are getting desperate as RingKing draws ever closer.
There are three of them in the tournament, possible four should something untoward happen to one of the other participants making them unable to compete. The entire world has seen Brandon Vow's complete and utter inability to put me away. Lenore Price-Mason? I destroyed her head of security, and then I demolished her in the ring.
Everybody knows that this tournament comes down to me and Vow. We either meet in the finals or the semi-finals, and whichever one of us triumphs over the other is all but assured victory. Vow is slippery, he's sneaky, he will break all the rules to win. And that's exactly what he's done the last two times we've fought.
I let him wail on me. I let him unload everything that was in his arsenal upon me. I gave him every opportunity to prove himself the so-called dragonslayer that he has dubbed himself. And at the end of the day? I was the one still standing and he was the one flat on his back, having used Eli Legacy's distraction to secure his victory. Brandon did not live up to his name, he broke his vow. There were no dragons slain that day, or any other.
He has sicced his minions on me at every opportunity, and they haven't been able to get the job done. Ol Itchy Isamu couldn't even defend himself once I way done with him, chunks of flesh gouged out of his forehead, blood oozing down his face.
They wouldn't even let me in the ring with Mya Denton. Somebody got clued in not only the massive mismatch in size, but also in talent and pulled her out of wrestling me in favor of Isamu. I left him a bleeding, broken wreck after hitting him with the move that ended Adam's career.
And now? Now Eli Legacy has nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. No escape.
Even better is the fact that I can do anything that my cold black heart desires and it's all perfectly legal. I get to haul out my Can of Fun and get to use all the interesting little devices I've been keeping in there, just waiting for an opportunity to use them.
Oh sure, a street fight with no rules means that all of Eli's birdie buddies can swoop in, go ca-caw, shit over everything, and steal anything that's shiny, But that's not going to be a problem.
See, Vow and Denton are in the tournament too. If they go on before me, they're going to be worn out and worn down, definitely not in tip top fighting shape. If they go on after me, them butting into my match runs the risk of me beating the fuck out of them so badly that they will be all but guaranteed to lose their matches.
It brings me right back to fact that I'm not like every other wrestler out there. A normal human being gets chipped down over multiple fights, their stamina drops, their reserves dwindle. Me? The moment you stop actively beating on me, the moment the pain stops is the moment I start recovering.
After a few minutes it fades to a dull ache, like overworked muscles. Just a little bit of ice, just the teensiest touch of elemental chill, and that fades away. My fatigue vanishes, my pain disappears. Give me an ice pack and five minutes and I'm going to be right back to where I was before you attacked me, no matter how bad the beatdown.
You do not want to get into a war of attrition with me, because you will be worn down into nothingness while I remain in peak condition. When the last of your children's children's children is lowered into the ground I will still be here, bigger, stronger, faster, and smarter. Every minute for you is another step towards the grave, another irreplaceable grain of sand fallen from the top of your hourglass.
Each second that ticks by is one that brings your mundane, decaying body closer to breaking down, falling apart, stricken with the building entropy of old age. You are mortal men and women, forever vulnerable to the ravages of time.
I am a dragon.
I am forever.
And I vow that I will not rest if the Crows interfere in my match. I will show you exactly what it means to truly face me in battle. I will bring down my wrath upon each and every one of you each and every time you wrestle for the rest of the evening.
I will stalk you backstage, I will lie in wait until one of your fellows is in the ring, and another is not paying attention. I will strike when you least expect it. I will show every single Crow what it's like to be hunted down and slaughtered without mercy, isolated and brought down like the wounded animals that you will become.
Because no matter how advantageous your numbers game, no matter how badly you can collectively kick my ass as a group, you're all still frail, fragile little sacks of meat and blood. You can't truly hurt me.
You will never hurt me, never cause me lasting pain or discomfort. But the reverse is not true. You don't recover like I do. You can't. Your stunted, mana-less souls don't allow for it. I've got three, maybe four hours worth of time that I can spend making each and every one of your lives a personal, agonizing hell filled with violence and pain.
And I will do it. I will attack you again and again and again until you are so bruised, battered, and broken that you cannot even move. That even if you escape with only an insignificant amount of damage you are going to be completely and utterly fucked by fatigue.
I don't wear down.
I don't wear out.
You do, and by the bleak goddess that dwells in the darkness I will drag each and every one of you to the furthest reaches of human endurance, shove you over the edge, and look down smiling with glee as you go bouncing messily down the hill hitting each rock, branch, tree, and briar patch on the way down.
Let Eli Legacy fight his own battles. Stay away from this match. I have no tolerance for people that interfere in my matches and Eli has been running from his justly deserved punishment and agonizing fate for long enough.
He can run no longer and I want to take my time wringing each and every drop that I can extract from his pathetic, mewling carcass. Drop of sweat, of tears, of blood. I am going to leave him lying in a puddle of his own precious bodily fluids as a demonstration to the world that I will not tolerate outsiders. I will not abide meddlers. Trespassing into one of my matches will result, now and forever, into having agonized, bloody vengeance brought down upon you and everything you hold dear.
People say I'm a freak, that I'm a fiction, that I'm a faerie tale. But it's Eli Legacy that's living in a dream world. A land of unreality populated by his ignorance and staffed by the lies he tells himself.
He thinks that this is a movie, following the tropes of mass media. He thinks that he is the handsome, noble hero, and I the wicked, hideous monster. Oh Eli, I'm not even from here and I've already realized that even if such a childish fantasy were true, if the world truly ran on stories, that it is not your victory at hand.
The world loathes an author avatar, mankind reacts with disgust at the wonderful, perfect, specimen who can do no wrong; the Mary Sue. Whose innate wonderfulness causes all who look upon them to immediately adore them, whose force-fed nature of in-story likeability pegs villains as such because they are the only ones that dare not worship and adore the wretched Sue.
"Look at me," says the Sue, "Look at me and my perfect nature, see as how I stride through page after page breezing through hardship after hardship without the slightest hint of drama, without even the least resistance or peril."
You are no hero, Eli Legacy. Sitting in a foul nest soiled by your inflated sense of self-worth you are to the world the villain of this piece. In the modern day and age simple tales like the one you imagine are tired relics of a long bygone age.
To get to the heart of the matter one only need look at the simplest tales, the stories made for the purpose of instructing children, of educating the next generation to avoid the mistakes of their parents and grandparents. What do Disney movies have to tell us about the tale of Eli Legacy and Kalinda Kriegsdottir?
The Hunchback of Notre Dame, perhaps? Where a non-traditionally attractive young man, forcibly isolated from his peers and lied to by his superior, develops an infatuation with a desirable young lady. Advised by a trio of mythological companions, he realizes the deception and in the end fights against the normal, mundane villain who has a position in a religious organization.
Swap out young man with young woman, and replace the desirable young lady with the professional wrestling fanbase and you have a remarkable similarity to the events of my own life, do you not? Quasimodo's got three gargoyles, I've got Spark, the Hand of Arimus, and Eleanor Rigby.
Or how about Beauty and the Beast? A pretty, arrogant blowhard believes that he is entitled to the love and devotion of an intelligent young woman who has instead fallen in love with a massive, cursed individual who sports many non-human physical aspects. While the Beast wishes to be left alone to merely live his life, said blowhard and a bunch of his asshole buddies decide to attack him out of ignorant fear.
Again, all you have to do is replace a male Beast with a female Dragoness and replace the female love interest with pro wrestling fans, and you've got a perfect parallel. Only there's the fact that unlike Gaston, you can't make me bleed. Though I have to admit I'm REALLY looking forward to throwing you off some towering portion of the O2 Arena.
Oh, hey, how about Maleficent? Magical creature from a different land and a different culture who is betrayed and outcast by greedy humans and the powerful, but ignorant, supernatural entities that align themselves with the human kingdom. She's got a snarky, shapechanging, flying sidekick, AND SHE EVEN HAS PROPER DRACONIC HORNS AND WINGS FOR FUCK'S SAKE!
And because of mankind's betrayal of the powerful dragon-y beast-woman, they have placed themselves in peril by having declared war upon her, and instead finding themselves facing her powerful wrath.
You're not the hero, Eli Legacy. You're the villain.
And even in Disney movies, Eli, the villain dies. And once you go back to the faerie tale roots of these stories, you find that the deaths involved are very horrific indeed. Disney villains have been burned alive, fallen to their demise after being thrown from on high, being torn limb from limb.
The wicked queen in Snow White? They heated iron boots in a smith's forge, forced them onto her feet, and made her dance herself to death.
What I do to you, Eli Legacy, is going to make what happened to the wicked queen look like a goddess-damned river dance.
In this faerie tale, Eli Legacy, there is no storybook ending for you.
But me? I get to live happily ever after.
When preparing for a battle it is essentially to prepare your armaments, to tilt the battlefield to your advantage, and to have a plan. It's definitely a weirder experience than preparing for a fight back home.
Despite the precedents set in Smiley v. Various Opponents, Russo et al., and the landmark Hellkat v. Weapon's Lair case, I'm forgoing armor. I don't want to be weighted down when the inevitable four on one rush comes in from the Crows.
My match is going to be the the last of the quarterfinals matches, I know this for a fact. Der Vaart is out to fuck me any and every way he can. With the exception of literally dropping trou and pulling out his shriveled, greasy weiner and attempting to achieve penetration. Probably because he licked a flagpole in winter at one point in his childhood and figured out what would happen.
The rest of the Crows are going to be allowed to fight their matches, rest up, and then I get the displeasure of having to wrestle my semi-final match immediately after a No DQ brawl with Eli Legacy. So even if I win the match, they've got the opportunity for me to be a bit worn out after a four on one beatdown.
I can pin Legacy outside of the ring, and once the match is over they have the chance to try and kick seven shades of blue off my tail until I actually make it to the ring to officially start the next match.
Which is a completely and totally fair and noble, heroic thing to do. Because apparently nobody around here has heard of forensic science and thus cannot take molds of the bite wounds, or be arsed to swab the area around the wound to get a DNA sample.
Oh sure, I suppose in a roundabout way you could say I'm responsible for a handful of ULW wrestlers being attacked and getting noshed on. But I'm not the one doing the noshing. Honestly, the whole thing gives me the giggles.
Because I know it's not me, while all my detractors are foaming at the mouth demanding that I be punished for attacking these people. They're going to be patting themselves on the back giving each other attaboys (which may or may not be a slang term for a reach around) about the steps they've taken to protect people from the big nasty blue critter who just wanted to be left alone and do her job.
It's going to be less than a month before this blows up in Der Vaart's face. A few individuals removed from active competition in ULW means that we have spots on the roster that need to be filled ASAP. Of course ULW is usually always in a hiring mode, but with a newly signed, large, powerful woman and an MMA fighter on the sidelines, they're going to be seeking to fill those niches.
Which, I'm sure, is exactly what my lunatic little dragonspawn was thinking when she decided "You know what? I really need to gnaw on somebody's skull. It's the only way to stop my teeth from being all itchy."
And she's somehow got herself a nice, new shiny ULW contract. She's already wrestled one dark match. I'm pretty sure that we're all doomed now. Totally, totally doomed. Apocalypse is here. Armageddon is nigh. The anti-christ has risen. Cue the rains of blood, plagues of locusts, and ominous Latin chanting.
"Ich will pantalones, pantalones mi cabeza, Sephiroth!" warbles SPIDER, whose collection of hardcore pro wrestling weaponry I am currently browsing.
Supposedly due to the amount of cumulative mind-altering substances he's consumed over his lifetime, SPIDER has the capacity to have his senses extend beyond the realms of mortal man and into mind reading.
"You have to explain to people that you're a big bad scary mythological dragon motherfucker, and yet you refuse to acknowledge the fact that I can hear it when somebody is narrating." SPIDER says, with a shake of the head that sends crumbs of whatever he had for lunch tumbling out of his bushy beard.
"Because it makes no sense!" I protest.
"Neither does having a literal firebreathing dragoness fall into the world of professional wrestling via a plot hole!"
"It wasn't a plot hole! I was summoned according to perfectly normal and logical rules of magic!"
"It's not YOUR world's plot hole. It's ours. That creepy guy that wears gloves because he was all "Whoops, dropped my cell phone in the deep fat fryer, let me fish it out with my bare hands," could probably explain the process. But I would get bored doing it and start poking his collection of spooky-ass artifacts with a stick just to get some evil spirits riled up to make things interesting."
He spins and points an accusator finger at someone who isn't there.
"And note the motherfucking hyphen between spooky and ass! The artifacts are of a spooky-ass nature, they are not spooky artifacts of an ass nature! Like a pair of clay buttocks that release demonic toots OF THE DAMNED! Or a cursed wooden box that occasionally will emit the noise of a raunchy, wet fart!"
"Or whatever interdimensional portal coughs up half the people ULW signs from the Dimension of Talentless Assholes."
"Anyways, we've got a motherfucking Halloween show, you've got a motherfucking no DQ match, you're here raiding my garage for hardcore weaponry, and yet you haven't put out the call to the Loons to have a mass run in. It's perfectly legal!"
"The last time you did a run in on my behalf, SPIDER, the Fart pitched a fit. Despite Dante doing the exact same thing in the exact same match."
"I can't magically teleport into the bathrooms of Dutch porn stars and take pictures of them while they poop unlike some people. And there's no way I'm trading that fat greasy fuck any of my prim weed. I wouldn't even give that son of a bitch my stems."
I just stare at him blankly. "I don't know what that means. I don't inject the marijuanas, as the kids say these days."
Having fired off an internet meme mention from Spark, the usual react of involuntary wincing commences.
"No, just no. Don't fuck around with me on this. Saying "Injecting marijuanas" to me is like telling you that you need to go live in a terrarium in a zoo somewhere. Except less hateful and more ignorant. If it was anybody but you I'd pelt you across the face with a barbed wire bat just for making me have to repeat it."
"So what's stopping you?"
"Because it's no fun having a knock down, drag out hardcore brawl with your friends when they're pretty much immune to injury."
I pause, confused. "Wait, with your friends?"
SPIDER grins, "You didn't see one of the bajillion Underground Network tag team title runs? Desolation, Xane, and I spent those matches beating the crap out of each other more than we did our opponents. For shits and giggles, because sure as hell XHWF was never going to provide real competition to the Hardcore Messiah, the Chainsaw Wielding Amoralist, and the Dark Man."
"Oh, that's the place where Desolation has a like a billion titles because they would strip them from him at the drop of the hat."
"Not just him, EVERYBODY. Every time Eastman's group of manwhores lost the Stables Championship, they got stripped from the winning team and re-awarded to the Corporate Thugs. That was literally what they were called, but with a Z. I may be up there with Keith Richards for amount of illicit substance ingested over a lifetime, but I still have fucking standards, goddammit!"
"Well that gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside."
"No, that's probably just a secondhand high from being in here."
"I mean it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling because it tells me that ULW hasn't hit rock bottom yet and isn't the absolute most asstastic wrestling federation the world has ever known. As bad as it is, they could be pulling shit like that."
"Didn't they do that with Jason King's first World title, though, just without the whole awarding part?"
I scowl. "Thanks, SPIDER. Warm fuzzy totally gone now."
"You're welcome." he says, shaking his head and pulling a folding chair out of my Can of Fun before giving it a few whack on the concrete floor.
"If you pre-bend them so that they're not entirely flat it hurts more." he explains.
"If you're not going to let me in on the Halloween mischief, at the very least I can make sure you've got the best shit I've got in my arsenal and guarantee that whoever crosses you is going to have the worst beating of the motherfucking night."
"I never said I wasn't going to be planning some Halloween mischief, I just said that I wasn't interested in having the Loons pull a massive costume party run in. So here's what I've got in mind..."
SPIDER throws out his arms in one of those cross-y back and forth scissor-like cut off motions that signify "NO! NOPE! UH UH! DON'T DO THAT! NOT EVEN IN THE SLIGHTEST!" to everybody within a half mile.
"What we're going to do is leave the garage, go inside, head into the bathroom, have the lights turned out..."
"And say Bloody Mary three times into the mirror?"
"NO! THIS IS SERIOUS FUCKDAMMIT! You don't spill the beans on your master plans when you're under sight of the Invasive Evil Eyes of Motherfucking DOOOOOOOM!"
"By the gods, not this again! Hearing narration and spying eyes of doom that can traverse space and time."
"DOOOOOOOM! SEVEN O'S AND ALL CAPS, DAMMIT!"
"Doom."
"DOOOOOOOM!"
"Doooom?"
"NO, DOOOOOOOM!"
"DOOOOOOOM?"
"YES, DOOOOOOOM!"
"DOOOOOOOM in (dramatic pause) the BASEMENT?"
SPIDER reacts with exaggerated horror as I bring up an absolutely ancient running gag from the bygone days of the XHWF. "Ha, so you DID watch some of the old XHWF stuff after all. And also NO, NOT (dramatic pause) THE BASEMENT~! The bathroom. Because the Invasive Evil Eyes of Motherfucking DOOOOOOOM don't want to watch anybody poop."
"Wasn't it Chris Cortez that was watching everybody poop?"
"Oh sure, just drag out a whole bunch of old, ridiculous memes that like all of three people in existence still remember. This is like down on the chart several pages from cuffi slaps, secret vans, and the blighted Harris Pee Bucket."
"Now shut up, let's get inside so we can have our not actually on television fade to black analog actually fade to black so you can tell me the details of your cunning and exquisite master plan.
"I have the urge to laugh maniacally and stroke a white cat."
"From what you've told me that's normal behavior for someone with that thing on your arm. It's not too worrisome until it gets to the stage where you start tying damsels to railroad tracks. Now come, bring to mind your master plan to the bathroom, and because we are so sinister it shall be the bathroom in (dramatic pause) THE BASEMENT~!"
"NO, NOT (dramatic pause, clap of thunder) THE BASEMENT~!"
"Yeah, Kal, you definitely have a budding supervillain thing going on here. You might want to check if they make a cream for that."
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