Post by The Cosplay Playboy on May 10, 2015 9:35:17 GMT -6
May 2, 2015
Minneapolis, Minnesota
“...but I didn’t expect you to take me up on the offer this fast. Did it have something to do with what happened Monday in San Diego?”
They weren’t too far away from the Target Center in the heart of Minneapolis. A small, but quaint little dive bar within the downtown region. Nothing like the two of them were used to seeing, given at one point their names had been listed under the ownership of “The Hydeout” in Tampa Bay, Florida...but for this particular night, it would do for a meeting spot. Outside of his best friend and brother-from-another-mother Lyn Dallins, this person sitting in the booth next to the number one contender for the SVW Championship was about the only one who knew him as long as he did. Obviously, she kept tabs on the ongoings and as he was only a few nights away from his first SVW main event, it went about the usual way.
He reached out via text. She, through probably some muttering and annoyed grunts, responded. Communication was established, as was a meeting spot. An agreement for drinks was made.
They were about five shots in at this point and counting. Otherwise this particular conversation would be 80% snark and bravado through their guarded personalities with the 20% remaining dedicated to the actual purpose that Chris Strike set out to achieve here.
Now? It was getting to roughly 50/50.
“Mildly that, though I find it sorta funny that what happened is only.... Only concentrated there. Throughout the rest of the wrestling world you’re still beloved. Still hero to millions with their interest put towards other companies as good little wrestling fans often do. So goes life, right? That and I figure in partly you’re the one getting.... Well the better end of this deal.”
Mai Hotaru raised her shot glass and muttered, “かんぱい! (Kanpai!)” - Strike returning the notion - before gunning it down with relative ease before she cleared her throat and rubbed it gingerly.
“Why even do the drinks thing? You and I both know...”
She trailed off at looked at the shot glass. She looked as though she wanted to say it was easy to do sober but there was something about an ex who just had a divorce that didn’t make this easier than she expected it to.
“Never mind,” she pointed at the bartender and then at her empty glass.
“First...those particular fans over there are the jackasses who go to business for themselves and management doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing - there’s a reason why almost anybody who is anybody in the landscape today has avoided them like a plague...hopefully, my time as champion can do something to start bringing some of them back around and changing some things.” An annoyed expression surged over his face. “Second, we actually had a proper conversation about that last bit there, he and I,” he replied back, seeing his own empty glass get refilled along with hers by the bartender over the next few moments as he formulated the words to come. “Paperwork was signed, sealed and it was our own way of making sure neither is stepping over the other’s toes if it comes to that. But surprisingly, not here to bark up that tree...”
He sees another shot glass put down in front of him. “Huh. By the looks of the color, I’d say this one is a surprise...and yet, it looks familiar,” Chris remarked, before looking over at Mai Hotaru with a quizzical expression. “Did you pull the dude aside and tell him how to do his job again or something?”
“No, I’m not the whore.” Hypocrisy, thy name is Mai Hotaru. Even Chris Strike detected the distinct shot was directed at the woman who recently divorced Lyn Dallins and has been putting him through the wringer on a settlement.
“These days when people make me a drink, I just put it down like a good little girl, no questions asked. Alright, if that’s the case then, what is your story, really? What tree are you barking up at I mean?” Mai inquired while looking at the shot glass and the contents within before sniffing at it. Her nose didn’t scrunch up as it probably should have but instead she looked back to her own and regarded it as though it were an old friend who came to pay a visit.
“I smell schnapps.”
“Huh, not the only one then.” Strike grabbed the shot glass, muttered those same faithful words as Mai did earlier and gulped it down in one go before setting it down. “And you know me at this point...this fucking shit draws out a sense of anxiety and I don’t play well with others outside of my own circle. So, it was you or Lyn...and Lyn, well, I’d rather not encourage this habit any further given everything that’s been happening lately. And…well, you seem to understand me better than I understand myself.”
And now, there were the words with regret carrying through them. “Should have listened to you and not let him go through with it, after all.” Chris Strike slid the shot glass forward, his own small way of indicating to be hit with another. They both paid their tabs far in advance, as always. Likely bought the rest of the patrons at the bar a few shots to boot. “But instead, I just had to be the asshole to rub it in further...hell, at times, I’m surprised you haven’t outright just grabbed a kendo stick and tried to kill me with it yet.” He gradually turns back to face Mai Hotaru again. “Why do you put with us the way you do, even after everything?”
Mai Hotaru stared at the glass, still untouched by her fingers.
“With Lyn it’s easy. No, you weren’t an asshole of it. You simply didn’t believe that the industry, this funny little world we find ourselves in would corrupt her so far to the point that she makes me look like a fucking angel. Lyn himself... Lyn is easy to be around, to put up with. A broken man trying to hold up a broken legacy that will refuse to be fixed. An entire dynasty of wrestlers who refused to believe they were better than they truly were and Lyn is simply the product of that. It is Stark... By Stark I mean C... Who somehow breaks that tradition. For being female? For knowing better? For simply being too stubborn even past Lyn’s limits? Who’s to say...? You, however, Chris…”
It was then that the daughter of the legendary Great Hotaru took the shot of alcohol and for a moment. For just a brief shining moment it almost sounded like she had her mother’s charisma, her mother’s ability to suck one in just by the way she spoke.
“I put up with you Chris because you’re truthfully the most interesting man I know. You are at all times temperamental, mad and yet the sanest man in the room. Arrogant beyond compare and yet humble to a fault in these most...intimate of settings. You are nothing like what you present yourself to everyone and yet you embody it. I can honestly say with every single fiber of my being that I should know you and do know you inside and out as we sit here, actively damaging our well beings with every single gulp of spirits we take and yet I can still proclaim even I don’t know you as well as I think I do.”
She laughed.
“Wrestling was made for people like you. Mercurial people like you who can change with the times, who can shift and twist to what a company needs, to what the industry needs, to what the world at large from the fans to the men who sit behind desks to the people who set up the arenas to the wrestlers who stare at you with respect or disdain, needs. You are... You represent all of it.”
“A part of me wishes it could be all different, you know.”
An unexpected response for him, to start things off. At this point, maybe it was liquid courage taking the reins and letting the man who usually kept himself so guarded just go out and speak in the same vim and vigor as the daughter of one of his greatest mentors in the Great Hotaru.
“Adapting and changing and just having to fucking sit here and figure out everything...sometimes, it drains away at you a lot faster than the physical nature of this industry. Because while my mind may have stayed sharp enough to adapt...well, it’s paid the price at times. I mean, do you know how many times I’ve wanted to just look into a camera and say that I’m not in this whole taking down Todd Williams business to be a hero but to actually tell him and the entirety of SVW that I’m just outright better and the only thing keeping me from that being an undisputed fact is that title?”
He glanced down at the refilled shot glass again, resisting any and all urges to laugh.
“Hell, I’d daresay what you saw on EXPRO on Monday is more like me than anything else. The embodiment known as ‘SVW Nation’ seems to get that point enough to where they embrace me regardless of how proud I am or how I’m willing to take a giant dump on the entire roster along with rosters outside of their own and their inability to do something as simple as protect the top championship from a faction with nothing but their own agenda in mind...and yet, I wonder how long even that’s going to last once the news get out that I will damn near kill Christian Kane and the entirety of that company if they try to take the title I hold there from me. Wonder if they’ll realize I’ll do the exact same to anyone here once I win that SVW Championship...”
“You talk as though it would matter.” Mai stretched, showing off a body built entirely and truly for sin. “SVW is a different animal entirely. Here it seems as though anyone who strikes out on their own, daring to seize any power is rallied behind by the fans. Yet all the evils, all the deviants seem ready to get behind one another, much more kind to each other or at least willing to aid the other than those who are cheered or even so much as worshipped by those who pay good money to see them. While in EXODUS…well, the faithful remember everything and they’ll cut their nose to spite their face if you get in the way of their little tales unfolding. Professional wrestling needs to suit them, not the other way around.”
“I’ve noticed that,” he replied, rolling his eyes at the hilarity that the wicked beasts trying to seize power were far more willing to unite under a common banner than the ones who the crowd adored. “It makes me want to beat the living hell out of them all even further, to be honest with you. Good or bad. In my eyes, outside of people that I can count on one hand, everyone has a layer of douchebag that deserves a taste of pain for it. Hell, that whole incident with bringing the War Machines in SVW instead of people in the roster proved just as much...I mean, you saw it. Everyone lost their shit from top to bottom and acted as if I brought out Cthulhu as my back-up and that it would have been less extreme if I counted on the wannabe Power Rangers and Godzillas of the world instead. And then…what I told everybody in San Diego…”
...You could definitely tell the drinks were taking effect by the comparisons alone.
“Goddammit Mai, as much as I’m going to enjoy beating the living shit out of Todd Williams - because Todd Williams is scum of the Earth and deserves every broken bone and gallon of blood he spills - for that title inside of the cage? Deep inside, it’s going to be more enjoyable standing at the top of the mountain in two companies and then staring everybody the fuck down. Making them understand with my actions and the way I step into that ring that their best hope of taking me down IS if the lot of them get brought under one banner and they all try to storm up at once.”
She blinked at him, as though trying to focus on everything but comparisons to Super Sentai and giant lizards. She breathed in and shook her head. “Careful now, Chris. I can tell when it’s just the liquor talking and when other things are at work. You don’t want the whole of a single banner bearing down on you. You don’t want to be the common enemy. No. Well actually I take it back. Maybe you do but I don’t think it would be your favorite thing in the world in the long run. Haven’t you ever heard it’s lonely at the top? No seriously.”
It was then that she killed her shot.
“Even the sex position feels slightly too dominant.”
“Huh. My favorite for the opposing party to take…”
Realizing this was almost too much information, he digressed...by downing another shot. Not much help, but hey, drunk people had a tendency to shoot themselves in the foot at times.
“But I’ll behave myself accordingly and try to not incur the wrath of an entire roster...even if seeing them united under something, for once, would be a nice change of pace. Could always bring back the deity persona and a damned pantheon of sorts if it ever got that far…” He laughed. Almost as if to indicate this was likely to happen somewhere else entirely first. “But the times right now, Mai...they need this whole side of me coming out far more. Somebody that can fight an establishment, big or small and all factions united under it. Somebody that isn’t afraid of doing their share of bleeding and sweating in the process but somebody who’s absolutely terrified of the way things will end up if he so much as lets a power shift happen again.
...it’ll end up lonely regardless, knowing me.”
He blinked a few times, not quite knowing why this particular thought came to mind and like all else so far with the liquor inside of him, he just lets it out.
“Not sure why I’m lamenting about it. I’m used to it anyway.”
“There’s the biggest problem of them all.” She whispered bitterly and looked up at the ceiling.
“No one should be just used to this.”
------------------------
This story, once again, won’t have a Happy Ending…
Hello Seon-yeong. It has been a long time since we last met inside this squared circle one on one. Nine months and twenty days, as a matter of fact. It still feels like yesterday that we were at Korakuen Hall, me as the “Ultima WEAPON” of EXODUS Pro and you as Gods & Monsters’ “Last Clairvoyant.” And yet it feels like an eternity given everything that has changed since that match of ours, Seon-yeong. It was a match for the ages in the eyes of the critics and fans, a match in which you seized victory in the most nefarious of manners with the low blow and the holding of the tights and yet, a match where I was the one who remained standing at the end of it after I made it a point to dismantle you piece by piece for trying to unmask me, for trying to ruin the very surprise I gave Christum Furor an hour later…a beating that I hoped would have actually put you in the shelf for a very long time so that you could have avoided the fate that you suffered from that point and beyond…
You were never meant to be a clairvoyant, Sally Talfourd. You were always meant to be “The Last Magician.” You were never meant to suffer the way that you suffered and that’s guilt that I still carry with me from those events of long ago when I couldn’t put Furor down when I should have the first time around.
We go back, you and I. Further back than anyone realizes. A product of a chance meeting that turned into a career-long friendship. Outside of the legendary Lyn Dallins and Mai Hotaru, you’re one of the few people that I can trust. You are somebody that I will respect to the end of my days, both as a wrestler and as a human being, regardless of what paths we decide to take on this complicated road. It’s not like me to open up to people very easily, but with one small meeting and then the times we’ve ran into one another…be it in Action Packed Wrestling or here in EXODUS Pro, we always managed to end up creating something special to make our own marks in those companies. Either as allies or as foes, the red strings of fate that bind Chris Strike and Sally Talfourd together are ones that won’t break until whenever we call an end to our careers.
This main event match between us will be yet another chapter to a great storybook that the world will read in its full glory one day.
The EXODUS Pro World champion Chris Strike against “The Last Magician.”
Finally, a chapter has arrived where my chance to avenge previous losses have come. Anybody familiar with the history knows very well that I have fallen at your hands every single time we have faced one another. Nine months and twenty days marked that very first encounter as opponents. Long Way Down was another one. But of course, the important part to keep in mind is that in both of those encounters? I faced the so-called “Last Clairvoyant,” the woman who was so broken down and upset at the world at large that she wouldn’t dare fail her mission. Not “The Last Magician,” not the Sally Talfourd that I have known for years and years.
So this is going to be a new experience…for me…and of course, for you Seon-yeong.
As long as you have known me and my career, this is the first time that you have witnessed me being anything like this, haven’t you? Opposed to the whims of a biased crowd, opposed to a roster filled up for the most part with nothing more than placeholders and broken pieces that make for the kind of tales that the crowd wants to root on, opposed to the very notion that anyone or anything can dare defy my hard work to win this EXODUS Pro World Heavyweight championship and now wants to take it away from me. Some may call this new side of me a revelation. In fact, you have done so yourself.
You called me “The Revelation” when I asked you what part of your next magic trick I would be compared to, Sally Talfourd. Something that is revealed or disclosed, especially a striking disclosure, as of something not before realized. Your second act in your return to EXODUS Pro and while not by any means your biggest trick yet, I’m that particular trick that you need to pull off in spectacular fashion if you are going to convince the wrestling world that you have truly recovered from what happened at the Autumn Effect last year and that you’ve come back as the conquering hero that you have always been. I am certain that you will open my eyes to something new when we step across those ropes and the second encounter of Sally Talfourd versus Chris Strike comes to fruition on a free platform for everybody to witness the magic we create, to witness a classic match that will make future “Best of EXODUS” DVD’s and the like.
Even in what some call my “darkest time,” here you are…still looking out for me. So I owe it to you to reveal something of my own and to have an honest conversation with you, my dear.
…You are being deceived once again, Seon-yeong!
You are being deceived by the loud cries of a crowd who goes into business only for their own stories, deceived by a locker room who gives you that narrow glance every time you walk past them in the hallway because of your past actions…and the thing is, you are so desperate to have them back and cheering for you that you don’t realize how easy and quickly they have taken you back. Maybe you might have found it odd but the moment you stood against mara and her children; they immediately came off their seats because something clicked for this particular flock of sheep.
You seek redemption. So, instead of being allowed to do just that, the RIMAC and this EXODUS Pro audience have deemed you yet another one of their “feel good” stories, Seon-yeong. They will root for you over and over and over again until you accomplish that goal – whether that takes a month, a year or even longer than that. But then, what happens when you get it? What happens when you have given everything and anything for this crowd that goes into business for themselves daily? The world will still adore you, Seon-yeong, because professional wrestling isn’t that fucking heartless to those who have sacrificed everything for it over many, many years. But the RIMAC and EXODUS Pro faithful? They’ll just turn their backs on you and move on to cheering some new face with a plucky underdog story like the dipshit Caleb Storms and Carey Deans of the world or cheer an old face gone from bad to good, similar to what they’re doing with you right now.
They don’t love you like I love you.
They will use you and every fiber of your being before tossing you away, Sally Talfourd.
And yet you stand with them, once again turning your back on me in the process…
“I, when I have fought for myself over the years and when I set my mind to that...there aren’t any filters. No seals to hold me back. No boundaries that I won’t cross if it means reaching that objective. Hell, I may end up outright doing things that are frowned upon by just about anybody in this company. Are you still comfortable with walking alongside me throughout it?”
Those were my exact words to you the first time we reunited since your return to us here in EXODUS. You refused me when I asked you to stand by my side long before I took my stance against them and now, you are another happy story that they want to see triumph over mine, just like they wanted to see little Caleb Storm pull off the upset at (R)Evolution Wrestling 26, just like they wanted to see him, Carey Dean and Christian put me and the “BIG BOSS” Chikao Kessin in our places before we revealed our trump card in Venus and made those three look like fools in the process.
But I know why you chose this route Seon-yeong, I do. I know that because of everything you have suffered through that this notion to stand with these flippant fools is something that you have to do for yourself, because you are so far down the rabbit hole that you have absolutely nothing to lose. It’s why you are so persistent on trying, regardless of whether you may or may not end up being betrayed by them down the road as they have betrayed me.
You have nothing to lose and that is the greatest difference between us right now.
I have a responsibility to see this championship raised to great heights and most importantly, I am going to prove that I deserve to be recognized as the greatest World champion in EXODUS Pro history…greater than Omar, Fiona, Furor, Zero, Heather, Lasiewicz, Park and Cannon. The absolute greatest to ever hold this title and unlike the past, I am willing to go beyond the boundaries to ensure that reality is seen through and through. So fuck their feel good stories, fuck their sensitive little feelings and fuck anybody else that tries to defy me and my Pantheon from accomplishing our mission.
I have a bull’s-eye on me daily because while I hold this fifteen pounds of gold on my shoulder. I am a target for the vitriol of anybody that disagrees with my methods, even when I have been forthcoming and honest in saying that I will do anything to defend what I feel is rightfully mine. Unlike Sally Talfourd, I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders, a weight that I had to fight for nearly a year to win the first time around and that I saw taken away from me almost permanently just as quickly before I won it back through tooth and nail to the chagrin of the crowd and the rest of this damned company. No longer am I going to stand there and let them mock me as they take their freedoms with every aspect of my life while they root for the piece of shit who once hired an actress to pass off as my dead wife.
Until you hold this championship yourself Seon-yeong, you may not truly understand this particular point that I am at in my life right now. It’s just like I couldn’t understand the weight of your responsibilities as APW World Heavyweight champion when you went to war time and time again against people like Lester Only a.k.a. Level-One, C.J. Gates, Jason Kash, Phil Atken, Biggs and Michael Callahan.
But that’s the beauty of revelations, Sally Talfourd.
At EXPRO #33, Seon-yeong…a Revelation will indeed happen. A Revelation done out of love, even if it may seem and look painful, even if it may not be done through the right channels as you would expect it to be done. “The Last Magician” will fight the match of her lifetime only to fall short of the mark to the EXODUS Pro World Heavyweight champion.
I will show you a glimpse of what it means to carry the weight that I have to carry, a glimpse to understanding exactly why it is that I have to do and soon enough, you will also comprehend why it is I have to do. Whether you like it or not, you are going to taste defeat by my hand for the first time Sally Talfourd…and no matter how it ends, you will at least be able to walk away with the knowledge of what now makes Chris Strike tick, what drives him to go the lengths that he will go to in order to establish his legacy…
My gift to you, Seon-yeong Kwon. For even as you end up lying there on the canvas, pained, hurt and confused as to what happened to you after it’s all said and done…I want you to remember one simple reality, one that stands above all words and actions done inside of that ring against you on Monday night.
They don’t love you like I love you.
…And there isn’t a damned thing they’ll ever be able to do about it.
-----------------------
? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ?
Again, I was inside of this Velvet Room, at the same lobby from before, blue furniture everywhere – sofa, glass coffee table, carpet, and cabinet. At this point, I knew to just walk on through the door and meet the man sitting on the other side of the desk once again. Like the times before, I grasped the door knob firmly, turned it and found myself entering the room, closing it shut behind me as I found myself in his office…and yet, the moment I entered inside and shut the door behind me, something felt completely and utterly different.
There was another chair next to Shinji Oshima’s and we most certainly were not alone.
“…Ophelia…” I whispered.
“Chris,” she replied back, coolly. Her tone of voice and facial expression indicated she’d been waiting a while and was probably damn near impatient in the process. Which felt weird, given that most of the time, she wore a goddamned moth costume and was known as GOTHRA over in (R)Evolution Wrestling.
“It seems that you recently have been putting some of Ophelia’s own abilities to your own use, Chris,” Oshima replied, sage-like as always. “Don’t get me wrong now; I knew very well that you were going to head into this particular path. I’ve been looking forward to it, in fact. But your recent visit to my territory was actually unexpected. And by far, the only person I haven’t been ever able to read in full is the kaiju to my right.”
“…Why exactly did you come to (R)Evolution Wrestling, Chris Strike?” Ophelia asked, the same authoritative tone that came out of her in short, sweet sentences as the kaiju force known as GOTHRA. “Because it certainly wasn’t just for a dog-and-pony show where you insulted the entirety of the roster for no particular reason…even you have your limits when it comes to antagonizing people.”
“Then you really don’t know me all that well,” I replied curtly.
“He’s right, you really don’t,” Oshima replied quickly, resisting a small chuckle. “There are a lot of things Chris over here is capable of and has done, but let’s not divert from the subject at hand. The facts are known that the Mark of Aquarius’ ability allows its user the wonderful joy of telekinesis. A tiny bit of it like what Ophelia gave you is enough to block out anybody from entering your mind, an expanded power like hers that she retained is enough to speak into and even control minds if she felt like it.”
Shinji places his hand on the deck of cards, laid out the same way as the last time in my visit with the small exception of the Devil card turned sideways while the Magician card was laid out vertically.
“Throughout the entirety of that (R)Evo show, I couldn’t peer into your mind…which also did mean I didn’t see you involving Venus in this entire Pantheon you’re trying to set up,” Oshima said. “Seriously, there’s a level of bitter and petty you’re achieving here that almost equals the shit Christian Kane did to you two years ago…”
“And look who’s diverting from the main subject now…”
“Okay, then tell us what in the hell is going on,” Ophelia replied, her voice not as calm as Oshima’s. “You’ve been basically keeping most of this stuff to yourself with the Marks since your nasty encounter with Gemini…”
I sighed. Well, they didn’t know the details, but they both knew all too well that I used some of Ophelia’s borrowed powers from her Mark to disguise what else I did come to do during my visit there. The running down of the rookies, well, that had a tinge of truth to it in the weirdness of the roster but it was mostly meant as a smokescreen, a means to draw out the strength of one of the Mark bearers…and then, the main purpose.
“…Between Zinkus’ book, some of the clues Simon left me, the encounter with Gemini and the fact that Carey Dean’s own Mark of Taurus has grown stronger, Reika and I ended up discovering something…”
“…That something being…” Ophelia asked, and she wouldn’t have to wait long for an answer.
“The Mark of Libra is amongst one of (R)Evolution Wrestling roster members…and I know who it is.”
I spoke his name…
And for once, even Shinji Oshima showed a glimpse of surprise before a large smile showed in his face while Ophelia looked absolutely shocked.
“So…what’s your next move, Chris?”
“…What else? We help awaken the damn thing.”
Minneapolis, Minnesota
“...but I didn’t expect you to take me up on the offer this fast. Did it have something to do with what happened Monday in San Diego?”
They weren’t too far away from the Target Center in the heart of Minneapolis. A small, but quaint little dive bar within the downtown region. Nothing like the two of them were used to seeing, given at one point their names had been listed under the ownership of “The Hydeout” in Tampa Bay, Florida...but for this particular night, it would do for a meeting spot. Outside of his best friend and brother-from-another-mother Lyn Dallins, this person sitting in the booth next to the number one contender for the SVW Championship was about the only one who knew him as long as he did. Obviously, she kept tabs on the ongoings and as he was only a few nights away from his first SVW main event, it went about the usual way.
He reached out via text. She, through probably some muttering and annoyed grunts, responded. Communication was established, as was a meeting spot. An agreement for drinks was made.
They were about five shots in at this point and counting. Otherwise this particular conversation would be 80% snark and bravado through their guarded personalities with the 20% remaining dedicated to the actual purpose that Chris Strike set out to achieve here.
Now? It was getting to roughly 50/50.
“Mildly that, though I find it sorta funny that what happened is only.... Only concentrated there. Throughout the rest of the wrestling world you’re still beloved. Still hero to millions with their interest put towards other companies as good little wrestling fans often do. So goes life, right? That and I figure in partly you’re the one getting.... Well the better end of this deal.”
Mai Hotaru raised her shot glass and muttered, “かんぱい! (Kanpai!)” - Strike returning the notion - before gunning it down with relative ease before she cleared her throat and rubbed it gingerly.
“Why even do the drinks thing? You and I both know...”
She trailed off at looked at the shot glass. She looked as though she wanted to say it was easy to do sober but there was something about an ex who just had a divorce that didn’t make this easier than she expected it to.
“Never mind,” she pointed at the bartender and then at her empty glass.
“First...those particular fans over there are the jackasses who go to business for themselves and management doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing - there’s a reason why almost anybody who is anybody in the landscape today has avoided them like a plague...hopefully, my time as champion can do something to start bringing some of them back around and changing some things.” An annoyed expression surged over his face. “Second, we actually had a proper conversation about that last bit there, he and I,” he replied back, seeing his own empty glass get refilled along with hers by the bartender over the next few moments as he formulated the words to come. “Paperwork was signed, sealed and it was our own way of making sure neither is stepping over the other’s toes if it comes to that. But surprisingly, not here to bark up that tree...”
He sees another shot glass put down in front of him. “Huh. By the looks of the color, I’d say this one is a surprise...and yet, it looks familiar,” Chris remarked, before looking over at Mai Hotaru with a quizzical expression. “Did you pull the dude aside and tell him how to do his job again or something?”
“No, I’m not the whore.” Hypocrisy, thy name is Mai Hotaru. Even Chris Strike detected the distinct shot was directed at the woman who recently divorced Lyn Dallins and has been putting him through the wringer on a settlement.
“These days when people make me a drink, I just put it down like a good little girl, no questions asked. Alright, if that’s the case then, what is your story, really? What tree are you barking up at I mean?” Mai inquired while looking at the shot glass and the contents within before sniffing at it. Her nose didn’t scrunch up as it probably should have but instead she looked back to her own and regarded it as though it were an old friend who came to pay a visit.
“I smell schnapps.”
“Huh, not the only one then.” Strike grabbed the shot glass, muttered those same faithful words as Mai did earlier and gulped it down in one go before setting it down. “And you know me at this point...this fucking shit draws out a sense of anxiety and I don’t play well with others outside of my own circle. So, it was you or Lyn...and Lyn, well, I’d rather not encourage this habit any further given everything that’s been happening lately. And…well, you seem to understand me better than I understand myself.”
And now, there were the words with regret carrying through them. “Should have listened to you and not let him go through with it, after all.” Chris Strike slid the shot glass forward, his own small way of indicating to be hit with another. They both paid their tabs far in advance, as always. Likely bought the rest of the patrons at the bar a few shots to boot. “But instead, I just had to be the asshole to rub it in further...hell, at times, I’m surprised you haven’t outright just grabbed a kendo stick and tried to kill me with it yet.” He gradually turns back to face Mai Hotaru again. “Why do you put with us the way you do, even after everything?”
Mai Hotaru stared at the glass, still untouched by her fingers.
“With Lyn it’s easy. No, you weren’t an asshole of it. You simply didn’t believe that the industry, this funny little world we find ourselves in would corrupt her so far to the point that she makes me look like a fucking angel. Lyn himself... Lyn is easy to be around, to put up with. A broken man trying to hold up a broken legacy that will refuse to be fixed. An entire dynasty of wrestlers who refused to believe they were better than they truly were and Lyn is simply the product of that. It is Stark... By Stark I mean C... Who somehow breaks that tradition. For being female? For knowing better? For simply being too stubborn even past Lyn’s limits? Who’s to say...? You, however, Chris…”
It was then that the daughter of the legendary Great Hotaru took the shot of alcohol and for a moment. For just a brief shining moment it almost sounded like she had her mother’s charisma, her mother’s ability to suck one in just by the way she spoke.
“I put up with you Chris because you’re truthfully the most interesting man I know. You are at all times temperamental, mad and yet the sanest man in the room. Arrogant beyond compare and yet humble to a fault in these most...intimate of settings. You are nothing like what you present yourself to everyone and yet you embody it. I can honestly say with every single fiber of my being that I should know you and do know you inside and out as we sit here, actively damaging our well beings with every single gulp of spirits we take and yet I can still proclaim even I don’t know you as well as I think I do.”
She laughed.
“Wrestling was made for people like you. Mercurial people like you who can change with the times, who can shift and twist to what a company needs, to what the industry needs, to what the world at large from the fans to the men who sit behind desks to the people who set up the arenas to the wrestlers who stare at you with respect or disdain, needs. You are... You represent all of it.”
“A part of me wishes it could be all different, you know.”
An unexpected response for him, to start things off. At this point, maybe it was liquid courage taking the reins and letting the man who usually kept himself so guarded just go out and speak in the same vim and vigor as the daughter of one of his greatest mentors in the Great Hotaru.
“Adapting and changing and just having to fucking sit here and figure out everything...sometimes, it drains away at you a lot faster than the physical nature of this industry. Because while my mind may have stayed sharp enough to adapt...well, it’s paid the price at times. I mean, do you know how many times I’ve wanted to just look into a camera and say that I’m not in this whole taking down Todd Williams business to be a hero but to actually tell him and the entirety of SVW that I’m just outright better and the only thing keeping me from that being an undisputed fact is that title?”
He glanced down at the refilled shot glass again, resisting any and all urges to laugh.
“Hell, I’d daresay what you saw on EXPRO on Monday is more like me than anything else. The embodiment known as ‘SVW Nation’ seems to get that point enough to where they embrace me regardless of how proud I am or how I’m willing to take a giant dump on the entire roster along with rosters outside of their own and their inability to do something as simple as protect the top championship from a faction with nothing but their own agenda in mind...and yet, I wonder how long even that’s going to last once the news get out that I will damn near kill Christian Kane and the entirety of that company if they try to take the title I hold there from me. Wonder if they’ll realize I’ll do the exact same to anyone here once I win that SVW Championship...”
“You talk as though it would matter.” Mai stretched, showing off a body built entirely and truly for sin. “SVW is a different animal entirely. Here it seems as though anyone who strikes out on their own, daring to seize any power is rallied behind by the fans. Yet all the evils, all the deviants seem ready to get behind one another, much more kind to each other or at least willing to aid the other than those who are cheered or even so much as worshipped by those who pay good money to see them. While in EXODUS…well, the faithful remember everything and they’ll cut their nose to spite their face if you get in the way of their little tales unfolding. Professional wrestling needs to suit them, not the other way around.”
“I’ve noticed that,” he replied, rolling his eyes at the hilarity that the wicked beasts trying to seize power were far more willing to unite under a common banner than the ones who the crowd adored. “It makes me want to beat the living hell out of them all even further, to be honest with you. Good or bad. In my eyes, outside of people that I can count on one hand, everyone has a layer of douchebag that deserves a taste of pain for it. Hell, that whole incident with bringing the War Machines in SVW instead of people in the roster proved just as much...I mean, you saw it. Everyone lost their shit from top to bottom and acted as if I brought out Cthulhu as my back-up and that it would have been less extreme if I counted on the wannabe Power Rangers and Godzillas of the world instead. And then…what I told everybody in San Diego…”
...You could definitely tell the drinks were taking effect by the comparisons alone.
“Goddammit Mai, as much as I’m going to enjoy beating the living shit out of Todd Williams - because Todd Williams is scum of the Earth and deserves every broken bone and gallon of blood he spills - for that title inside of the cage? Deep inside, it’s going to be more enjoyable standing at the top of the mountain in two companies and then staring everybody the fuck down. Making them understand with my actions and the way I step into that ring that their best hope of taking me down IS if the lot of them get brought under one banner and they all try to storm up at once.”
She blinked at him, as though trying to focus on everything but comparisons to Super Sentai and giant lizards. She breathed in and shook her head. “Careful now, Chris. I can tell when it’s just the liquor talking and when other things are at work. You don’t want the whole of a single banner bearing down on you. You don’t want to be the common enemy. No. Well actually I take it back. Maybe you do but I don’t think it would be your favorite thing in the world in the long run. Haven’t you ever heard it’s lonely at the top? No seriously.”
It was then that she killed her shot.
“Even the sex position feels slightly too dominant.”
“Huh. My favorite for the opposing party to take…”
Realizing this was almost too much information, he digressed...by downing another shot. Not much help, but hey, drunk people had a tendency to shoot themselves in the foot at times.
“But I’ll behave myself accordingly and try to not incur the wrath of an entire roster...even if seeing them united under something, for once, would be a nice change of pace. Could always bring back the deity persona and a damned pantheon of sorts if it ever got that far…” He laughed. Almost as if to indicate this was likely to happen somewhere else entirely first. “But the times right now, Mai...they need this whole side of me coming out far more. Somebody that can fight an establishment, big or small and all factions united under it. Somebody that isn’t afraid of doing their share of bleeding and sweating in the process but somebody who’s absolutely terrified of the way things will end up if he so much as lets a power shift happen again.
...it’ll end up lonely regardless, knowing me.”
He blinked a few times, not quite knowing why this particular thought came to mind and like all else so far with the liquor inside of him, he just lets it out.
“Not sure why I’m lamenting about it. I’m used to it anyway.”
“There’s the biggest problem of them all.” She whispered bitterly and looked up at the ceiling.
“No one should be just used to this.”
------------------------
This story, once again, won’t have a Happy Ending…
Hello Seon-yeong. It has been a long time since we last met inside this squared circle one on one. Nine months and twenty days, as a matter of fact. It still feels like yesterday that we were at Korakuen Hall, me as the “Ultima WEAPON” of EXODUS Pro and you as Gods & Monsters’ “Last Clairvoyant.” And yet it feels like an eternity given everything that has changed since that match of ours, Seon-yeong. It was a match for the ages in the eyes of the critics and fans, a match in which you seized victory in the most nefarious of manners with the low blow and the holding of the tights and yet, a match where I was the one who remained standing at the end of it after I made it a point to dismantle you piece by piece for trying to unmask me, for trying to ruin the very surprise I gave Christum Furor an hour later…a beating that I hoped would have actually put you in the shelf for a very long time so that you could have avoided the fate that you suffered from that point and beyond…
You were never meant to be a clairvoyant, Sally Talfourd. You were always meant to be “The Last Magician.” You were never meant to suffer the way that you suffered and that’s guilt that I still carry with me from those events of long ago when I couldn’t put Furor down when I should have the first time around.
We go back, you and I. Further back than anyone realizes. A product of a chance meeting that turned into a career-long friendship. Outside of the legendary Lyn Dallins and Mai Hotaru, you’re one of the few people that I can trust. You are somebody that I will respect to the end of my days, both as a wrestler and as a human being, regardless of what paths we decide to take on this complicated road. It’s not like me to open up to people very easily, but with one small meeting and then the times we’ve ran into one another…be it in Action Packed Wrestling or here in EXODUS Pro, we always managed to end up creating something special to make our own marks in those companies. Either as allies or as foes, the red strings of fate that bind Chris Strike and Sally Talfourd together are ones that won’t break until whenever we call an end to our careers.
This main event match between us will be yet another chapter to a great storybook that the world will read in its full glory one day.
The EXODUS Pro World champion Chris Strike against “The Last Magician.”
Finally, a chapter has arrived where my chance to avenge previous losses have come. Anybody familiar with the history knows very well that I have fallen at your hands every single time we have faced one another. Nine months and twenty days marked that very first encounter as opponents. Long Way Down was another one. But of course, the important part to keep in mind is that in both of those encounters? I faced the so-called “Last Clairvoyant,” the woman who was so broken down and upset at the world at large that she wouldn’t dare fail her mission. Not “The Last Magician,” not the Sally Talfourd that I have known for years and years.
So this is going to be a new experience…for me…and of course, for you Seon-yeong.
As long as you have known me and my career, this is the first time that you have witnessed me being anything like this, haven’t you? Opposed to the whims of a biased crowd, opposed to a roster filled up for the most part with nothing more than placeholders and broken pieces that make for the kind of tales that the crowd wants to root on, opposed to the very notion that anyone or anything can dare defy my hard work to win this EXODUS Pro World Heavyweight championship and now wants to take it away from me. Some may call this new side of me a revelation. In fact, you have done so yourself.
You called me “The Revelation” when I asked you what part of your next magic trick I would be compared to, Sally Talfourd. Something that is revealed or disclosed, especially a striking disclosure, as of something not before realized. Your second act in your return to EXODUS Pro and while not by any means your biggest trick yet, I’m that particular trick that you need to pull off in spectacular fashion if you are going to convince the wrestling world that you have truly recovered from what happened at the Autumn Effect last year and that you’ve come back as the conquering hero that you have always been. I am certain that you will open my eyes to something new when we step across those ropes and the second encounter of Sally Talfourd versus Chris Strike comes to fruition on a free platform for everybody to witness the magic we create, to witness a classic match that will make future “Best of EXODUS” DVD’s and the like.
Even in what some call my “darkest time,” here you are…still looking out for me. So I owe it to you to reveal something of my own and to have an honest conversation with you, my dear.
…You are being deceived once again, Seon-yeong!
You are being deceived by the loud cries of a crowd who goes into business only for their own stories, deceived by a locker room who gives you that narrow glance every time you walk past them in the hallway because of your past actions…and the thing is, you are so desperate to have them back and cheering for you that you don’t realize how easy and quickly they have taken you back. Maybe you might have found it odd but the moment you stood against mara and her children; they immediately came off their seats because something clicked for this particular flock of sheep.
You seek redemption. So, instead of being allowed to do just that, the RIMAC and this EXODUS Pro audience have deemed you yet another one of their “feel good” stories, Seon-yeong. They will root for you over and over and over again until you accomplish that goal – whether that takes a month, a year or even longer than that. But then, what happens when you get it? What happens when you have given everything and anything for this crowd that goes into business for themselves daily? The world will still adore you, Seon-yeong, because professional wrestling isn’t that fucking heartless to those who have sacrificed everything for it over many, many years. But the RIMAC and EXODUS Pro faithful? They’ll just turn their backs on you and move on to cheering some new face with a plucky underdog story like the dipshit Caleb Storms and Carey Deans of the world or cheer an old face gone from bad to good, similar to what they’re doing with you right now.
They don’t love you like I love you.
They will use you and every fiber of your being before tossing you away, Sally Talfourd.
And yet you stand with them, once again turning your back on me in the process…
“I, when I have fought for myself over the years and when I set my mind to that...there aren’t any filters. No seals to hold me back. No boundaries that I won’t cross if it means reaching that objective. Hell, I may end up outright doing things that are frowned upon by just about anybody in this company. Are you still comfortable with walking alongside me throughout it?”
Those were my exact words to you the first time we reunited since your return to us here in EXODUS. You refused me when I asked you to stand by my side long before I took my stance against them and now, you are another happy story that they want to see triumph over mine, just like they wanted to see little Caleb Storm pull off the upset at (R)Evolution Wrestling 26, just like they wanted to see him, Carey Dean and Christian put me and the “BIG BOSS” Chikao Kessin in our places before we revealed our trump card in Venus and made those three look like fools in the process.
But I know why you chose this route Seon-yeong, I do. I know that because of everything you have suffered through that this notion to stand with these flippant fools is something that you have to do for yourself, because you are so far down the rabbit hole that you have absolutely nothing to lose. It’s why you are so persistent on trying, regardless of whether you may or may not end up being betrayed by them down the road as they have betrayed me.
You have nothing to lose and that is the greatest difference between us right now.
I have a responsibility to see this championship raised to great heights and most importantly, I am going to prove that I deserve to be recognized as the greatest World champion in EXODUS Pro history…greater than Omar, Fiona, Furor, Zero, Heather, Lasiewicz, Park and Cannon. The absolute greatest to ever hold this title and unlike the past, I am willing to go beyond the boundaries to ensure that reality is seen through and through. So fuck their feel good stories, fuck their sensitive little feelings and fuck anybody else that tries to defy me and my Pantheon from accomplishing our mission.
I have a bull’s-eye on me daily because while I hold this fifteen pounds of gold on my shoulder. I am a target for the vitriol of anybody that disagrees with my methods, even when I have been forthcoming and honest in saying that I will do anything to defend what I feel is rightfully mine. Unlike Sally Talfourd, I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders, a weight that I had to fight for nearly a year to win the first time around and that I saw taken away from me almost permanently just as quickly before I won it back through tooth and nail to the chagrin of the crowd and the rest of this damned company. No longer am I going to stand there and let them mock me as they take their freedoms with every aspect of my life while they root for the piece of shit who once hired an actress to pass off as my dead wife.
Until you hold this championship yourself Seon-yeong, you may not truly understand this particular point that I am at in my life right now. It’s just like I couldn’t understand the weight of your responsibilities as APW World Heavyweight champion when you went to war time and time again against people like Lester Only a.k.a. Level-One, C.J. Gates, Jason Kash, Phil Atken, Biggs and Michael Callahan.
But that’s the beauty of revelations, Sally Talfourd.
At EXPRO #33, Seon-yeong…a Revelation will indeed happen. A Revelation done out of love, even if it may seem and look painful, even if it may not be done through the right channels as you would expect it to be done. “The Last Magician” will fight the match of her lifetime only to fall short of the mark to the EXODUS Pro World Heavyweight champion.
I will show you a glimpse of what it means to carry the weight that I have to carry, a glimpse to understanding exactly why it is that I have to do and soon enough, you will also comprehend why it is I have to do. Whether you like it or not, you are going to taste defeat by my hand for the first time Sally Talfourd…and no matter how it ends, you will at least be able to walk away with the knowledge of what now makes Chris Strike tick, what drives him to go the lengths that he will go to in order to establish his legacy…
My gift to you, Seon-yeong Kwon. For even as you end up lying there on the canvas, pained, hurt and confused as to what happened to you after it’s all said and done…I want you to remember one simple reality, one that stands above all words and actions done inside of that ring against you on Monday night.
They don’t love you like I love you.
…And there isn’t a damned thing they’ll ever be able to do about it.
-----------------------
? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ?
Again, I was inside of this Velvet Room, at the same lobby from before, blue furniture everywhere – sofa, glass coffee table, carpet, and cabinet. At this point, I knew to just walk on through the door and meet the man sitting on the other side of the desk once again. Like the times before, I grasped the door knob firmly, turned it and found myself entering the room, closing it shut behind me as I found myself in his office…and yet, the moment I entered inside and shut the door behind me, something felt completely and utterly different.
There was another chair next to Shinji Oshima’s and we most certainly were not alone.
“…Ophelia…” I whispered.
“Chris,” she replied back, coolly. Her tone of voice and facial expression indicated she’d been waiting a while and was probably damn near impatient in the process. Which felt weird, given that most of the time, she wore a goddamned moth costume and was known as GOTHRA over in (R)Evolution Wrestling.
“It seems that you recently have been putting some of Ophelia’s own abilities to your own use, Chris,” Oshima replied, sage-like as always. “Don’t get me wrong now; I knew very well that you were going to head into this particular path. I’ve been looking forward to it, in fact. But your recent visit to my territory was actually unexpected. And by far, the only person I haven’t been ever able to read in full is the kaiju to my right.”
“…Why exactly did you come to (R)Evolution Wrestling, Chris Strike?” Ophelia asked, the same authoritative tone that came out of her in short, sweet sentences as the kaiju force known as GOTHRA. “Because it certainly wasn’t just for a dog-and-pony show where you insulted the entirety of the roster for no particular reason…even you have your limits when it comes to antagonizing people.”
“Then you really don’t know me all that well,” I replied curtly.
“He’s right, you really don’t,” Oshima replied quickly, resisting a small chuckle. “There are a lot of things Chris over here is capable of and has done, but let’s not divert from the subject at hand. The facts are known that the Mark of Aquarius’ ability allows its user the wonderful joy of telekinesis. A tiny bit of it like what Ophelia gave you is enough to block out anybody from entering your mind, an expanded power like hers that she retained is enough to speak into and even control minds if she felt like it.”
Shinji places his hand on the deck of cards, laid out the same way as the last time in my visit with the small exception of the Devil card turned sideways while the Magician card was laid out vertically.
“Throughout the entirety of that (R)Evo show, I couldn’t peer into your mind…which also did mean I didn’t see you involving Venus in this entire Pantheon you’re trying to set up,” Oshima said. “Seriously, there’s a level of bitter and petty you’re achieving here that almost equals the shit Christian Kane did to you two years ago…”
“And look who’s diverting from the main subject now…”
“Okay, then tell us what in the hell is going on,” Ophelia replied, her voice not as calm as Oshima’s. “You’ve been basically keeping most of this stuff to yourself with the Marks since your nasty encounter with Gemini…”
I sighed. Well, they didn’t know the details, but they both knew all too well that I used some of Ophelia’s borrowed powers from her Mark to disguise what else I did come to do during my visit there. The running down of the rookies, well, that had a tinge of truth to it in the weirdness of the roster but it was mostly meant as a smokescreen, a means to draw out the strength of one of the Mark bearers…and then, the main purpose.
“…Between Zinkus’ book, some of the clues Simon left me, the encounter with Gemini and the fact that Carey Dean’s own Mark of Taurus has grown stronger, Reika and I ended up discovering something…”
“…That something being…” Ophelia asked, and she wouldn’t have to wait long for an answer.
“The Mark of Libra is amongst one of (R)Evolution Wrestling roster members…and I know who it is.”
I spoke his name…
And for once, even Shinji Oshima showed a glimpse of surprise before a large smile showed in his face while Ophelia looked absolutely shocked.
“So…what’s your next move, Chris?”
“…What else? We help awaken the damn thing.”
