"killing me inside"

It's interesting how things work out. I don't know how Jonathan Collins got himself a private jet, but we're on it. However, if anyone's going to ask about the ridiculousness, it may as well be me.

"I've seen your place, you can't just be stashing this somewhere," I say.

"I'm not. It's his," he tells me, pointing at the masked man, WEAPON. "You'd be surprised how much he's worth."

"Might as well be a metal suit, Iron Man," I mumble, glancing at the masked mute. "Listen, Jon, you gotta see this," I say, tossing him my phone. With them primed and ready for him to look at each devious text message, I see life fall from Jon's eyes when he reads the messages about Cassidy's torture. Jonathan Collins has to live with the knowledge his student is screaming for him, hoping she'll save him.

"These could be from Rachel herself, or they could be from her disciple, Jaina Frost. Either way, someone's trying to play a head game with you and me unfortunately," he asks with worry while glancing at me. "Is that what set off your little exchange with Rachel?"

"No," I say looking down at my feet, but he knows the truth. "It was a good idea in theory," I mumble.

"There was hardly anything good about the idea. Rachel is one of the most dangerous minds I've ever encountered in this industry. I told you before she's a match to me intellectually, but she's worse because there's no road she won't travel to make things happen, Mr. Caldwell. The last thing you need is falling into her camp. I tried to stop Cassi--" Jon says before I put my hand up.

"Great, we're dealing with a James Bond villian. What is it with you fuckers and your flair for the over dramatic?" I ask with a roll of my eyes.

"In professional wrestling, we're nothing if not ones with a flair for the dramatic," he replies with a rather smarmy grin. In fact, it's kind of the smarmiest grin I've ever seen and I want to slap it off his face.

"Well this whole thing is ridiculous, Jon. I might be in, but I just don't understand why we're flying back to Japan instead of helping her. She's either gonna be dead, a vegetable, or worse," I say and Jon just looks out the window.

"We'll be dead to her if I know Rachel. And then this becomes far more personal," he sighs, walking away from the rest of us to the other half of the cabin. I don't know what nerve I struck, but I actually feel kind of bad. Getting up to go after him, I see him sitting alone in one of the chairs, already looking out the window.

"Hey, Jon..." I say quietly, and he doesn't look at me.

"I've never told you about my family," he says to me as I sit across from him. "I have three brothers and two sisters, and I'm the second youngest. Behind me was my sister Mara Jade. She...she worshiped the ground I walked on. I could do no wrong to Mara, because I was big brother. When I put my feelers out to become a professional wrestler, she didn't take long to follow suit. She took to it and became amazing from the get go. She's won tag titles with myself and my brother Robbie, and she's done pretty well for herself as a singles star," he says to me.

"Why isn't she in EXODUS?" I ask.

"Because we haven't spoken in ten years, maybe more. After six or seven, it all starts to blend together," he says to me with a distant look in his eyes. "Kadence Snyder and her fell into the same crowd. The sister of my evil mentor corrupted Mara and put a huge strain on our relationship. Last I heard, Mara's working in Japan somewhere. I've tried to put out feelers to find her, but I haven't been able to. And considering what a frustrating relationship I've had with my own family, that's the last of it. I'm an island unto myself, the last of a dying breed."

"So what does that have to do with saving Cassidy?" I ask him.

"Because I don't know if I can save her, and that knowledge itself terrifies me. I've tried to spend the better part of the last few weeks trying to teach myself I can't save everyone. Darrin is asking me to find out what happened to his wife thanks to Daisuke. out of nowhere, Cleon Gray has done something to manipulate Angela Jameson's cousin Brianna. Now there's this. At some point in time, I have to figure out who I can save and what's worth saving. EXODUS Pro? I can save that. The more I want to go rush to Knoxville and take the fight to Rachel and her cult, the more I realize that the very thing I need to save everyone in each scenario is the one thing I don't have," he tells me.

"What's that?" I ask.

"Time," he instantly responds, looking defeated at the mere word. "I'm stretching myself thin to figure this out, thin enough to the point I can't help the Seikigun. It's the very reason I called WEAPON in for help. What's going on in all of this is bigger than me, and I can't help but think that the more I take upon myself, the faster I'm going to either give in and become The Perfect Evil or I'm going to just find that my body's given out on me. I can't save everyone, Mr. Caldwell. Not this time, and maybe never again."

"Jon, you ain't even like...40 yet," I say. The truth is that I've seen very few people in my life as quick as Jon and he's been put through years of abuse. He's faster than me, and I'm starting to question how far is that and what I have to do to get that fast.

"No, but that number is hanging over me. You have a shelf life in this business, Mr. Caldwell. Every man on this plane realizes that when you sign up for this business, you put a sword of Damocles over your head. Sooner or later, the thread is going to be cut, and I'm going to fall. You put the sword over your head just by coming and joining my little menagerie. I've given you a luxury I've never afforded a student prior to Ms. James. Nobody had access to my inner sanctum other than her. Sydney is too far along in her training with Angela Jameson to really be my student, and Shinji will go back to Japan in a matter of months, as he's overdue to return to Kingdom of Japan. Payton and Cassidy were supposed to be my legacy on this industry, but now look at them. She's hospitalized and Cassidy may be lost to Rachel's machinations. The future I wanted for myself and professional wrestling is bleaker than ever," he whispers, shutting his eyes. "I failed this industry."

There's a few things in my life that I haven't really managed to get straight. One of them is my own life, truthfully. I've fucked it up a lot by selling weed, doing petty little things that have had the cops chase me down, and basically started setting my life on a path that I don't know I was ever really going to come back from. Now I'm here and now I'm looking to be in a scenario where a guy who happens to be one of the biggest names in this industry is looking to make something out of me. It's a line of work I don't know anything about, but I know that it's seemingly taken a lot from people I love. It may have taken my girl's life, and it's taking whatever is good and bright from a guy who looks like he had nothing but good intentions. It's often said the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but it's only because we're all going there anyways. I had that decision made a long time ago for me, because I ain't ever really seen a reason for me to think we're saved. God stopped answering when we stopped ceasing to have any form of humanity in us. I've been watching lately and hearing this Christum Furor talk about Gods & Monsters, and the truth is we're all of that. At least that's what we've been raised to believe. We're bigger than this or that. We're a universe unto ourselves, we've often been raised to believe.

We're just a bunch of aimless souls trying to find some direction in a world that keeps minimizing us by the day.

Maybe I'm being a little dramatic myself, and this is just the start of me becoming even more like the rest of them. The truth is I just don't know what's going on and I'm afraid to find out for this future. All I know is that I get what he's saying, I just don't know what good I can do.

"Jon, look at all you got here. You got this army of heavy hitting motherfuckers ready to defend this company because you called their names. You had Cassidy believing she was better than anything Rachel Foxx had planned for her. I heard you cut some promo talking about how you were professional wrestling...well maybe you are. Maybe you're feeling like you failed because you feel like you failed yourself. Man, I would give anything for half your life. You got a nice home, a hot wife, and people love you. Yeah, you got a percentage of people who spit your name out like it's poison, but there are people who call your name and speak of you like you're something. Me? I ain't anyone and I ain't ever gonna be someone, but you? Man, you're Jonathan fuckin' Collins. You're an industry."

"Anyone ever tell you that you have the gift of a silver tongue?" Jon tells me, glancing up at me as his fingertips touch, hands folded on his lap. "You're gonna need that in this business."

"Well I was savin' it for Pay--" and he cuts me off.

"That's more than enough, Mr. Caldwell," he tells me and I snort.

"Well you were askin', chief," I answer with a smirk.

"You should rejoin the others, Carey. I need a few minutes," he tells me, and I split. Sometimes, a person just needs a few minutes to think to themselves and get things off their chest. It's in that moment between silence and solitude that we find out what's really killing us internally. It's been my experience that we're all dying inside, some of us are just better at hiding it than others. Old man Collins here? Well, I think at this point he's just waiting to die. He's trying to find his new war, and the problem is he's got too many to pick from now.

So why not just go to war?

That's the million dollar question.

As I go sit back in the other half of the cabin with the rest of the Turks and the supporting cast, I realize that maybe we're all here for one reason. When someone touches our lives and inspires us to do great things, we're willing to follow them. Some people are just so charismatic, they convince us to do certain things whether they're right or wrong. Am I saying Jon's some charismatic cult leader? I don't get that vibe. He's legitimately torn about whether or not he's leading us to a slaughter, and he'd pull away if he was. I think I'm looking at a man who knows he's wearing a crown and is terrified of it. I don't know his whole story, nor do I think I ever will, but I know that Jonathan Collins may just be the most intriguing island in pro wrestling.

And here I thought I did the lonely road walk well. Jonathan Collins has it down to a science.