Post by robriot on Apr 21, 2024 9:47:30 GMT -5
<<Immediately following WarZone>>
SMASH!
That’s the sound of a large bench being plucked up off the ground and then hurled at a wall by Rob Riot and Eddie Williams. It’s thrown with such force that it splits upon impact and then falls to the floor, breaking into more pieces as it does so. Those pieces join the remains of a television set, a table, a few chairs, and anything else that The Bastards could get their hands on and throw.
This was, until a few minutes ago, The Bastards’ backstage dressing room at the Crypto.com arena in Los Angeles, California. It now looks more like something from Fallout. They've wrecked it, and they're still going. As Riot and Williams take a second to look upon the debris they've created, Frank Windsor is at work with a tin of spray paint - the same tin, in fact, that they'd used an hour earlier to write the word 'FAKE' on the exposed skin of Abel as they made a point in the corridors. The words Frank is painting on the wall are considerably more offensive than that. In giant, jagged letters, he's written:-
FUCK THIS COMPANY.
The moment he’s done, he tosses the can away in disgust.
"Fuck, man. FUCK! I'm trying not to swear these days, but we got fucking screwed again! I'm done."
With those words, Frank Windsor appears to be ready to pack up and go home. He’s already reaching for his gear bag, which is one of the few things in the room that hasn’t been destroyed. Eddie Williams shares his sentiments.
"It was bullshit. That wasn't a lumberjack match; it was a scam. McClancy's in on it. He just stood there and watched it happen. Nobody can win a fight against us, so they stack the deck and play favourites. They did it to you two in the Chamber; now they're doing it to all of us."
“It’s a numbers game. And we’re losing it.”
Since throwing the bench, Rob Riot seems to have calmed down. He stands now with his hands on his hips, surveying the scene and bringing his breathing back under control. As he does so, and the adrenaline wears off, the pain starts to kick in. He winces a little and subconsciously grabs at his ribs. Ladder matches are never easy, but part of him was sure that they didn’t hurt quite this much when he was younger.
Frank’s curiosity has been piqued by the ‘numbers game’ comment.
“So we do what? Expand? Do I need to get back on the phone and build some bridges with Fowler?”
In the background, Eddie Williams visibly rolls his eyes at the suggestion, but Riot shakes his head.
”No. Fowler is dead wood. We don’t add to the numbers. We just start playing with a different kind of numbers. We start doing business.”
“Bruv, I don’t need the cryptic shit right now.”
“I’m not being cryptic. I’m being serious. Bad Company, and Salazar in particular, are trying to make this personal. He’s never got over losing the title to me. That’s why he screwed us in the Chamber. That’s why he screwed us tonight. He’s going to keep doing whatever it is he thinks he needs to do to drive The Bastards out of CWF, and we need to stop getting drawn into that game. There are other ways to beat him, and other ways to win.”
“Such as?”
Surprisingly, given the situation that they’re in, Riot bares all of his teeth in a sinister grin.
“Boys, have you ever noticed that the only real way to stay on top in this company is to become part of the staff?”
Windsor and Williams glance at each other, and then at the camera in the corner of the room that’s recording all this.
“I, uh, I thought we weren’t going to do break the fourth wall from now on?”
"No, I mean literally part of the staff. Actually having a seat at the table. And I think I know how to get one for us. I'll meet you two at the airport - there's a conversation I need to go and have. Trust me. I know how to fix this."
With that, Rob Riot turns and leaves the broken remnants of the dressing room. Frank shakes his head.
“I hate it when he does that.”
<<Roughly one hundred and twenty seconds later>>
CWF’s policy of putting names on locker room doors is probably bad practice in terms of making it easier for enemies to locate each other, but it’s great for navigation. Rob had no idea where the room he was looking for was when he left his own, but it didn’t take him long to find it. Now, he stands outside it, uncertain of the reception that might await him when he enters. He raises his hand to knock on the door, but then pauses.
Knocking on the door is something that you do when you’re entering a stranger’s house. The person Rob Riot is calling on this evening is anything but a stranger.
With a deep breath, he slowly and quietly opens the door and enters the locker room of Valora Salinas.
Whether it was down to Rob’s stealth or the ringing in her ears that Val was still experiencing from her war with Steve Murdock earlier in the evening, she didn’t hear him come in. She’s half-dressed after hitting the showers, and is still in the process of packing away her gear. With a half-smile, Riot stands back and folds his arms, looking her up and down and taking in the view. He could happily have done so for longer but he has business to attend to, so after a few seconds, he announces himself.
“You know….I’ve been thinking about a figure.”
The double-entendre is very deliberate, but Val doesn't appreciate it. Started by the sudden interruption, she automatically spins on her heels in a fighting stance - a warrior's instinct. It only takes her a fraction of a second to realise that it's Rob, but that doesn't seem to matter in this instance. In what's almost one smooth movement, she crosses the floor to close the gap between them and cracks Riot hard across the face with a stiff, open-palmed slap.
The strike was harder than most people’s punches. Riot, with his head forcibly turned to the side from the blow, spits on the floor. When he opens his eyes, he’s surprised to see there’s no blood in the spit. Come to think of it, he’s surprised not to see a tooth. It takes him a couple of seconds and a crack of his shoulders and neck to turn back to face Valora, and when he does, he finds her looking at him like she’s about to do it again.
“Gilipollas!”
Riot winces. His Spanish isn’t fantastic, but he knows what that word means.
"OK, so that's where we are, is it?"
"You fucking tell me. It's been weeks, Rob. People have been asking me what's going on. Where we stand. Where you are. They've been asking you, too. I understand the strong and silent approach in public, but in private? That's just fucking dumb. Dumb, selfish, and insensitive. Do you know what it takes for me to let my guard down for someone? And how much less likely I am to do it again when someone takes advantage of that?"
"I didn't take advantage, Val. Not intentionally, anyway."
“So how would you describe it?”
“I ran away.”
It’s such a frank and unexpected confession that it momentarily stumps Val. She walks back across her room and sits down heavily in a chair, staring at Riot with anger, still, but perhaps also with the tiniest discernible amount of concern. Riot moves as if to occupy the room’s only other chair, but he’s quickly cut off.
“I didn’t say you could sit down.”
Riot nods his understanding and remains upright.
“OK, so you ran away. That’s still selfish, but it’s not like you. From what? And why?”
“From failure. From exposure. From my mistakes.”
Another unexpectedly frank confession. From Rob’s point of view, it has the desired effect. Valora sucks her teeth as she thinks about it, but softens her tone just a little.
“You can sit down.”
“Thanks.”
The Riot Star takes a seat, and as he does so, he finally registers how tired his body is. He’s been standing since the end of the ladder match, and taking the weight off his feet has him wanting to close his eyes and go to sleep then and there. That’s not an option, though, and so he presses ahead.
"I let everybody and everything get inside my head, Val. And I include you in that, even though I wanted you to be in there. There were too many distractions, too many opinions, too many factors. They all got too loud. I lost it for a while there. Damn near lost my mind. I got screwed in that Chamber, top to bottom screwed, but I also took my eye off the ball. I should have seen it coming, but I was lost. But now I'm found."
“And ‘found’ for you is back home with The Bastards and fuck everybody else, right?”
“No to the second part, yes to the first. Because here’s the thing, Val. You hate Frank. I get it. Everyone hates Frank. But you told me Frank would screw me. Kronin tried to tell me Frank would screw me. Hell, anyone and everyone tried to tell me Frank would screw me, but he didn’t. Everyone else did. The company did. Frank’s got my back. He’s my brother. Eddie is my brother. The Bastards are family to me, just as much as anyone else is. I don’t expect you to like that - I know you won’t. But it’s true. Frank had my back and still has my back. I’m recommitting myself to the people who I can trust, and that matters more than ever right now because this entire promotion is trying to fuck with me.”
"Are you trying to tell me that you don't trust me? After everything we've been through? Everything we've said and done? Because it sure sounds like it, Rob. And if you are, you better stand up and leave this room right now before the medical team has to come and drag your lifeless body out of it in ten minutes time."
“I didn’t say that.”
“You implied it.”
“No, you heard an implication where none existed. This is the thing, Val. We’re not communicating as well as we should, you and I. That’s why I’m here. I want to fix that. In fact, I want to take it to the next level.”
Valora raises her eyebrows.
“And you think I’m the kind of woman who just sits around waiting and wondering whether her man is going to come home, what he’s doing, and who he’s with? Whether you ran away or not, you pushed me out. Why should I entertain whatever it is you’re about to say?”
“Because it will show you that I’m serious.”
“If you’re about to propose, I can tell you exactly where I’m going to shove your ring.”
“I’m not about to propose.”
She sighs. Part of her wants to wrap a tequila bottle around Rob’s head, but another part wants to hear what he has to say. She knows which part is going to win, so she goes with it.
“OK. Speak.”
Rob nods his thanks.
“What did I say when I walked into this room?”
"You said, 'I've been thinking about a figure' while ogling me like a fourteen-year-old kid who just found a porno mag in a bush. What the fuck does that have to do with anything?"
“It wasn’t your figure I was thinking of - that was just a bonus. Before all that shit went down at the end of Season 2, we talked about buying our way into this company. You and I, taking the reigns. I’ve been thinking about what kind of figure we’d need to come up with in order to do that.”
This was not the pitch that Valora Salinas had been expecting. She throws her head back and laughs.
“Now? You want to come back to that idea now? You and me, buying CWF and running it together? That was barely more than an idea the last time we talked about it, and a hell of a lot has happened between then and now. Why would I still be interested in doing that?”
“Because this company is a fucking mess.”
"Why? Because you got screwed out of a couple of championships, and you want to make someone pay for that?"
"No, because it's falling to pieces, and it needs people with wrestling brains at the top to save it. Armand has never had a brain for wrestling. McClancy is someone's errand boy. I'm still trying to work out who runs him, but he's not his own man. There's no structure and no leadership. Did you hear that rambling statement earlier tonight? 'I'm not in charge of the card but I kind of am in charge of bits of iK0n, but only the Trios division?' How does that even make sense, Val? What kind of rank is that? What else are we going to have around here? A General Manager of the Pre-Show? Director of Cruiserweight Matches? Commissioner of Tag Teams? It's fractured, broken nonsense, and it means bullshit like tonight is allowed to go down because nobody can be held accountable. There's no point of authority."
Despite herself, Valora smirks a little.
“And that’s who you think we should be? Authority figures? We’ve spent our whole lives fighting against authority. Is this how old we are now?”
“Maybe we are. Or maybe we’re just the only people who’ve been around the block enough times to know how to run it. I was no fan of Joey Lazarus, but this place has been a basket case ever since he checked out. From hooking up with iK0n to allowing literal clowns to join the roster, it’s been a rolling shitshow. We have to stop it rolling, or it won’t survive.”
“And you want to do this with me? Not Frank and Eddie? How’s that going to play out with them? Have you even thought about that?”
The expression on Rob’s face confirms that he has indeed thought about that.
“Look. If The Bastards bought this company, there would be an exodus. We’re not popular guys. Almost everyone on this roster hates us. We have the money, but we wouldn’t be able to hold the locker room. You and I, though - we appeal to different people. If people don’t like me, they like you. The same is true in reverse. As a joint ticket, it would work. I know it would.”
“You can’t know it would work. I sure as hell don’t know it would work. I can imagine how it might, but I can also imagine how it would go to shit double-quick. And where would that even leave us? The same problems would still exist. You’d still be torn between me and Frank. You still need to come to terms with who Abbigail is. The whole situation….it’s just impossible.”
“I know that, Val. I know. It’s impossible. But you and I - when have we ever let a little thing like that stop us?”
The words hang in the air, and there’s a sparkle in Rob’s eyes - one that Valora hates herself for noticing. She holds his gaze, trying to piece together her response inside her head. But we don’t get to hear it.
Because that’s when Abbigail Dresden walks in.
She’s presumably come to see her mother, but she absolutely wasn’t expecting to find Rob Riot in the room with her. When she does, she unexpectedly finds herself lost for words.
Riot takes a long, deliberate look at the iK0n Trios Championship hanging over Abbigail's shoulder and then into Abbigail's eyes. Eyes that are so very familiar. With a grunt, he stands and walks across the room, pausing next to Abbigail and patting the title belt on her shoulder.
“Ah, the recklessness of youth.”
He turns and looks back at Valora.
“It’s all there for us, Val. If you want to take it, think of a figure. And call me.”
With those words, Riot is gone, leaving Abbigail to look between the swinging door and her mother. Finding her voice again, she fixes Valora with a glare.
“What the fuck is going on?”
<<Several days later>>
“Portland, Oregon.”
Rob Riot absent-mindedly swipes at the single naked lightbulb that hangs over his head, almost like a cat playing with a toy. It swings back and forth above him, casting alternately long and short shadows over his shirtless form as he sits stock-still on a wooden chair and faces the camera head-on.
"A place unlike any other in the United States of America. One of the hardest things to love about the USA as a supposed friend of the United Kingdom is how backwards most of it is. In everything from civil rights and healthcare to fundamentalist religion and schooling, the USA is a Grade A shithouse, masquerading as the greatest country in the world despite not having a single favourable statistic to back it up with. In most places in the USA, the people have attitudes so ignorant and jingoistic that they would make people in North Korea look sane and balanced. But not here. Not in Portland, Oregon."
There’s been a strong emphasis on the words ‘Portland’ and ‘Oregon’ both times he’s said them. For whatever reason, he seems to enjoy the sound they make in his mouth.
"Portland is more like a European city. There are bicycles everywhere. People like to read, and paint, and drink craft beer. People like to go to gigs and get high. People brew artisan coffee and think about the environment, pursue creative careers, and devote themselves to progressive politics. People in Portland think about the future and about sustainability. When I walk around Portland, I feel a lot like I'm in Amsterdam. I like it here. But to ninety per cent of Americans, Portland is full of weirdos. It's become a place for people who don't fit in anywhere else. People whose faces don't fit. But you know all about how that feels, don't you, Ahklut and Kalea?"
That long, winding introduction was always going somewhere, and so here it is.
"I don't imagine you've had it easy growing up. You're both so young that you're still in the process of growing up, but the road will have been hard already. You don't look Hawaiian enough to be accepted by Hawaiians. You don't look Alaskan enough to be accepted by the Tlingit tribespeople when you go home to Ketchikan. You belong to two entirely different cultures in mind, body and soul, but you're accepted by neither of them. I think that's probably why you try so hard with the masks, the gear, and the entrance. You're desperately trying to embrace a culture that wholeheartedly rejects you, but you keep trying because you want to feel like you're part of something. That you belong. That your faces might one day fit. I understand that, Thlunauts. I sympathise with it, to a degree."
With his index finger, he draws a circle in the air around his own face and then points to it.
“My face doesn’t fit here either. I speak the same language as these people, but the accent is a dead giveaway that I don’t belong. I’m not at home in the US, and I never will be. Someone, in some tiny way, makes me aware of that every day. We’re kin, you and I, trying to exist in a system that doesn’t want us. But I’m not necessarily just talking about the USA. I’m talking about the Conquest Wrestling Federation.”
Closing his eyes for a moment, he flexes and cracks his neck to gain a few seconds of respite from an old and increasingly troublesome injury and then continues.
"The things that happened at Urban Warfare were unfortunate for all of us. I lost my championship in highly questionable circumstances to Kronin Reinhardt. Your tag team championships also now belong to the Reinhardt family. You might have your own reasons to feel aggrieved about that. It won't have escaped your attention that my brothers and I were thoroughly shafted once again in Los Angeles. We're being told, indirectly, that we don't belong here. That we're not management's chosen ones. That CWF is a closed club, and we're not invited. In any other circumstances, we'd be natural allies. Perhaps that's why management has chosen to pit us against each other."
He sits back in the chair and taps the side of his head with his finger.
"I may not like the people in charge, Thlunauts, but I have to acknowledge that they're smart. We can't team up and tear them down when we're fighting each other for scraps, right? But scraps are all that's on the table for us right now, and I'll be damned if myself and Frank Windsor are going to let you or anybody else eat them. See, we're hungry. We're really hungry. We're hungrier now than we've been in years, and a few scraps don't make for a feast, but they'll give us a taste for blood. We need that right now, Thlunauts. We need it real bad. And that's bad news for you. It's especially bad news because they didn't just give you any old random two-man combination of The Bastards. Oh no. They gave you the most decorated tag team champions that this industry has ever seen."
He raises his hand in a way that suggests that he’s about to start listing things, but then lowers it again, shaking his head a little.
"I was going to reel off everything Frank and I had ever won, but actually, I don't need to do that. You already know. Everyone does. Everyone knows that we've torn up every tag team division we've ever been involved in, and everyone knows we've been forced out of promotions when they couldn't get the straps off us. We're trouble, Frank and I, but we're the best in the world at what we do. I know Frank will have words for you, and I know the things Frank has to say are going to make you real mad. That's what Frank does. Love him or hate him - and I sometimes think I'm the only one that loves him - he gets in your head and under your skin. Me, on the other hand? I don't get in your head. I physically pick you apart. And when I say 'you,' I specifically mean you, Mister Sea Wolf."
This time, Riot does have a few stats to reel off.
"Six feet and eight inches tall. Over three hundred pounds. A power guy. A football player. An all-around outstanding athlete from top to bottom. I'm not worried about your sister, Sea Wolf. I'm going to let Frank have his fun with her, and when he's done, I might pick up what's left of her and throw her at you. But you? Maybe you're a threat. So I'm going to do what I always do. I'm going to systematically tear you down. That big frame comes with big targets. Joints. Limbs. Pressure points. I know how to find them, and I know what to do with them. You might be stronger than me, and you might be faster, but up here?"
He taps the side of his head.
“I know this game like the back of my hand, and you’re still in the nursery. I can and will wrestle rings around you, and I’ll make a point of doing it. When I’m done, ask not why I decided to make an example of you. Ask not why The Bastards took such pleasure in beating down Pacific Rim and tearing them apart. Ask not why we seemed to love it. All of that is just business to us. Ask yourself a different question instead. Ask why the people who run this company - people who knew what kind of mood The Bastards would be in - decided to throw Pacific Rim to the wolves instead of facing the music themselves. Ask yourself whether you and your sister are happy being pawns in someone else’s game. If you can come up with the answers to those questions, and if the answers make you mad, ask yourself one more question. Ask yourself what you’re going to do about it.”
He reaches up to the lightbulb above his head.
“I am Rob Riot. This is a movement for change. And there will be no peace in CWF until there’s justice.”
He pulls out the lightbulb, and we’re plunged into darkness.
SMASH!
That’s the sound of a large bench being plucked up off the ground and then hurled at a wall by Rob Riot and Eddie Williams. It’s thrown with such force that it splits upon impact and then falls to the floor, breaking into more pieces as it does so. Those pieces join the remains of a television set, a table, a few chairs, and anything else that The Bastards could get their hands on and throw.
This was, until a few minutes ago, The Bastards’ backstage dressing room at the Crypto.com arena in Los Angeles, California. It now looks more like something from Fallout. They've wrecked it, and they're still going. As Riot and Williams take a second to look upon the debris they've created, Frank Windsor is at work with a tin of spray paint - the same tin, in fact, that they'd used an hour earlier to write the word 'FAKE' on the exposed skin of Abel as they made a point in the corridors. The words Frank is painting on the wall are considerably more offensive than that. In giant, jagged letters, he's written:-
FUCK THIS COMPANY.
The moment he’s done, he tosses the can away in disgust.
"Fuck, man. FUCK! I'm trying not to swear these days, but we got fucking screwed again! I'm done."
With those words, Frank Windsor appears to be ready to pack up and go home. He’s already reaching for his gear bag, which is one of the few things in the room that hasn’t been destroyed. Eddie Williams shares his sentiments.
"It was bullshit. That wasn't a lumberjack match; it was a scam. McClancy's in on it. He just stood there and watched it happen. Nobody can win a fight against us, so they stack the deck and play favourites. They did it to you two in the Chamber; now they're doing it to all of us."
“It’s a numbers game. And we’re losing it.”
Since throwing the bench, Rob Riot seems to have calmed down. He stands now with his hands on his hips, surveying the scene and bringing his breathing back under control. As he does so, and the adrenaline wears off, the pain starts to kick in. He winces a little and subconsciously grabs at his ribs. Ladder matches are never easy, but part of him was sure that they didn’t hurt quite this much when he was younger.
Frank’s curiosity has been piqued by the ‘numbers game’ comment.
“So we do what? Expand? Do I need to get back on the phone and build some bridges with Fowler?”
In the background, Eddie Williams visibly rolls his eyes at the suggestion, but Riot shakes his head.
”No. Fowler is dead wood. We don’t add to the numbers. We just start playing with a different kind of numbers. We start doing business.”
“Bruv, I don’t need the cryptic shit right now.”
“I’m not being cryptic. I’m being serious. Bad Company, and Salazar in particular, are trying to make this personal. He’s never got over losing the title to me. That’s why he screwed us in the Chamber. That’s why he screwed us tonight. He’s going to keep doing whatever it is he thinks he needs to do to drive The Bastards out of CWF, and we need to stop getting drawn into that game. There are other ways to beat him, and other ways to win.”
“Such as?”
Surprisingly, given the situation that they’re in, Riot bares all of his teeth in a sinister grin.
“Boys, have you ever noticed that the only real way to stay on top in this company is to become part of the staff?”
Windsor and Williams glance at each other, and then at the camera in the corner of the room that’s recording all this.
“I, uh, I thought we weren’t going to do break the fourth wall from now on?”
"No, I mean literally part of the staff. Actually having a seat at the table. And I think I know how to get one for us. I'll meet you two at the airport - there's a conversation I need to go and have. Trust me. I know how to fix this."
With that, Rob Riot turns and leaves the broken remnants of the dressing room. Frank shakes his head.
“I hate it when he does that.”
<<Roughly one hundred and twenty seconds later>>
CWF’s policy of putting names on locker room doors is probably bad practice in terms of making it easier for enemies to locate each other, but it’s great for navigation. Rob had no idea where the room he was looking for was when he left his own, but it didn’t take him long to find it. Now, he stands outside it, uncertain of the reception that might await him when he enters. He raises his hand to knock on the door, but then pauses.
Knocking on the door is something that you do when you’re entering a stranger’s house. The person Rob Riot is calling on this evening is anything but a stranger.
With a deep breath, he slowly and quietly opens the door and enters the locker room of Valora Salinas.
Whether it was down to Rob’s stealth or the ringing in her ears that Val was still experiencing from her war with Steve Murdock earlier in the evening, she didn’t hear him come in. She’s half-dressed after hitting the showers, and is still in the process of packing away her gear. With a half-smile, Riot stands back and folds his arms, looking her up and down and taking in the view. He could happily have done so for longer but he has business to attend to, so after a few seconds, he announces himself.
“You know….I’ve been thinking about a figure.”
The double-entendre is very deliberate, but Val doesn't appreciate it. Started by the sudden interruption, she automatically spins on her heels in a fighting stance - a warrior's instinct. It only takes her a fraction of a second to realise that it's Rob, but that doesn't seem to matter in this instance. In what's almost one smooth movement, she crosses the floor to close the gap between them and cracks Riot hard across the face with a stiff, open-palmed slap.
The strike was harder than most people’s punches. Riot, with his head forcibly turned to the side from the blow, spits on the floor. When he opens his eyes, he’s surprised to see there’s no blood in the spit. Come to think of it, he’s surprised not to see a tooth. It takes him a couple of seconds and a crack of his shoulders and neck to turn back to face Valora, and when he does, he finds her looking at him like she’s about to do it again.
“Gilipollas!”
Riot winces. His Spanish isn’t fantastic, but he knows what that word means.
"OK, so that's where we are, is it?"
"You fucking tell me. It's been weeks, Rob. People have been asking me what's going on. Where we stand. Where you are. They've been asking you, too. I understand the strong and silent approach in public, but in private? That's just fucking dumb. Dumb, selfish, and insensitive. Do you know what it takes for me to let my guard down for someone? And how much less likely I am to do it again when someone takes advantage of that?"
"I didn't take advantage, Val. Not intentionally, anyway."
“So how would you describe it?”
“I ran away.”
It’s such a frank and unexpected confession that it momentarily stumps Val. She walks back across her room and sits down heavily in a chair, staring at Riot with anger, still, but perhaps also with the tiniest discernible amount of concern. Riot moves as if to occupy the room’s only other chair, but he’s quickly cut off.
“I didn’t say you could sit down.”
Riot nods his understanding and remains upright.
“OK, so you ran away. That’s still selfish, but it’s not like you. From what? And why?”
“From failure. From exposure. From my mistakes.”
Another unexpectedly frank confession. From Rob’s point of view, it has the desired effect. Valora sucks her teeth as she thinks about it, but softens her tone just a little.
“You can sit down.”
“Thanks.”
The Riot Star takes a seat, and as he does so, he finally registers how tired his body is. He’s been standing since the end of the ladder match, and taking the weight off his feet has him wanting to close his eyes and go to sleep then and there. That’s not an option, though, and so he presses ahead.
"I let everybody and everything get inside my head, Val. And I include you in that, even though I wanted you to be in there. There were too many distractions, too many opinions, too many factors. They all got too loud. I lost it for a while there. Damn near lost my mind. I got screwed in that Chamber, top to bottom screwed, but I also took my eye off the ball. I should have seen it coming, but I was lost. But now I'm found."
“And ‘found’ for you is back home with The Bastards and fuck everybody else, right?”
“No to the second part, yes to the first. Because here’s the thing, Val. You hate Frank. I get it. Everyone hates Frank. But you told me Frank would screw me. Kronin tried to tell me Frank would screw me. Hell, anyone and everyone tried to tell me Frank would screw me, but he didn’t. Everyone else did. The company did. Frank’s got my back. He’s my brother. Eddie is my brother. The Bastards are family to me, just as much as anyone else is. I don’t expect you to like that - I know you won’t. But it’s true. Frank had my back and still has my back. I’m recommitting myself to the people who I can trust, and that matters more than ever right now because this entire promotion is trying to fuck with me.”
"Are you trying to tell me that you don't trust me? After everything we've been through? Everything we've said and done? Because it sure sounds like it, Rob. And if you are, you better stand up and leave this room right now before the medical team has to come and drag your lifeless body out of it in ten minutes time."
“I didn’t say that.”
“You implied it.”
“No, you heard an implication where none existed. This is the thing, Val. We’re not communicating as well as we should, you and I. That’s why I’m here. I want to fix that. In fact, I want to take it to the next level.”
Valora raises her eyebrows.
“And you think I’m the kind of woman who just sits around waiting and wondering whether her man is going to come home, what he’s doing, and who he’s with? Whether you ran away or not, you pushed me out. Why should I entertain whatever it is you’re about to say?”
“Because it will show you that I’m serious.”
“If you’re about to propose, I can tell you exactly where I’m going to shove your ring.”
“I’m not about to propose.”
She sighs. Part of her wants to wrap a tequila bottle around Rob’s head, but another part wants to hear what he has to say. She knows which part is going to win, so she goes with it.
“OK. Speak.”
Rob nods his thanks.
“What did I say when I walked into this room?”
"You said, 'I've been thinking about a figure' while ogling me like a fourteen-year-old kid who just found a porno mag in a bush. What the fuck does that have to do with anything?"
“It wasn’t your figure I was thinking of - that was just a bonus. Before all that shit went down at the end of Season 2, we talked about buying our way into this company. You and I, taking the reigns. I’ve been thinking about what kind of figure we’d need to come up with in order to do that.”
This was not the pitch that Valora Salinas had been expecting. She throws her head back and laughs.
“Now? You want to come back to that idea now? You and me, buying CWF and running it together? That was barely more than an idea the last time we talked about it, and a hell of a lot has happened between then and now. Why would I still be interested in doing that?”
“Because this company is a fucking mess.”
"Why? Because you got screwed out of a couple of championships, and you want to make someone pay for that?"
"No, because it's falling to pieces, and it needs people with wrestling brains at the top to save it. Armand has never had a brain for wrestling. McClancy is someone's errand boy. I'm still trying to work out who runs him, but he's not his own man. There's no structure and no leadership. Did you hear that rambling statement earlier tonight? 'I'm not in charge of the card but I kind of am in charge of bits of iK0n, but only the Trios division?' How does that even make sense, Val? What kind of rank is that? What else are we going to have around here? A General Manager of the Pre-Show? Director of Cruiserweight Matches? Commissioner of Tag Teams? It's fractured, broken nonsense, and it means bullshit like tonight is allowed to go down because nobody can be held accountable. There's no point of authority."
Despite herself, Valora smirks a little.
“And that’s who you think we should be? Authority figures? We’ve spent our whole lives fighting against authority. Is this how old we are now?”
“Maybe we are. Or maybe we’re just the only people who’ve been around the block enough times to know how to run it. I was no fan of Joey Lazarus, but this place has been a basket case ever since he checked out. From hooking up with iK0n to allowing literal clowns to join the roster, it’s been a rolling shitshow. We have to stop it rolling, or it won’t survive.”
“And you want to do this with me? Not Frank and Eddie? How’s that going to play out with them? Have you even thought about that?”
The expression on Rob’s face confirms that he has indeed thought about that.
“Look. If The Bastards bought this company, there would be an exodus. We’re not popular guys. Almost everyone on this roster hates us. We have the money, but we wouldn’t be able to hold the locker room. You and I, though - we appeal to different people. If people don’t like me, they like you. The same is true in reverse. As a joint ticket, it would work. I know it would.”
“You can’t know it would work. I sure as hell don’t know it would work. I can imagine how it might, but I can also imagine how it would go to shit double-quick. And where would that even leave us? The same problems would still exist. You’d still be torn between me and Frank. You still need to come to terms with who Abbigail is. The whole situation….it’s just impossible.”
“I know that, Val. I know. It’s impossible. But you and I - when have we ever let a little thing like that stop us?”
The words hang in the air, and there’s a sparkle in Rob’s eyes - one that Valora hates herself for noticing. She holds his gaze, trying to piece together her response inside her head. But we don’t get to hear it.
Because that’s when Abbigail Dresden walks in.
She’s presumably come to see her mother, but she absolutely wasn’t expecting to find Rob Riot in the room with her. When she does, she unexpectedly finds herself lost for words.
Riot takes a long, deliberate look at the iK0n Trios Championship hanging over Abbigail's shoulder and then into Abbigail's eyes. Eyes that are so very familiar. With a grunt, he stands and walks across the room, pausing next to Abbigail and patting the title belt on her shoulder.
“Ah, the recklessness of youth.”
He turns and looks back at Valora.
“It’s all there for us, Val. If you want to take it, think of a figure. And call me.”
With those words, Riot is gone, leaving Abbigail to look between the swinging door and her mother. Finding her voice again, she fixes Valora with a glare.
“What the fuck is going on?”
<<Several days later>>
“Portland, Oregon.”
Rob Riot absent-mindedly swipes at the single naked lightbulb that hangs over his head, almost like a cat playing with a toy. It swings back and forth above him, casting alternately long and short shadows over his shirtless form as he sits stock-still on a wooden chair and faces the camera head-on.
"A place unlike any other in the United States of America. One of the hardest things to love about the USA as a supposed friend of the United Kingdom is how backwards most of it is. In everything from civil rights and healthcare to fundamentalist religion and schooling, the USA is a Grade A shithouse, masquerading as the greatest country in the world despite not having a single favourable statistic to back it up with. In most places in the USA, the people have attitudes so ignorant and jingoistic that they would make people in North Korea look sane and balanced. But not here. Not in Portland, Oregon."
There’s been a strong emphasis on the words ‘Portland’ and ‘Oregon’ both times he’s said them. For whatever reason, he seems to enjoy the sound they make in his mouth.
"Portland is more like a European city. There are bicycles everywhere. People like to read, and paint, and drink craft beer. People like to go to gigs and get high. People brew artisan coffee and think about the environment, pursue creative careers, and devote themselves to progressive politics. People in Portland think about the future and about sustainability. When I walk around Portland, I feel a lot like I'm in Amsterdam. I like it here. But to ninety per cent of Americans, Portland is full of weirdos. It's become a place for people who don't fit in anywhere else. People whose faces don't fit. But you know all about how that feels, don't you, Ahklut and Kalea?"
That long, winding introduction was always going somewhere, and so here it is.
"I don't imagine you've had it easy growing up. You're both so young that you're still in the process of growing up, but the road will have been hard already. You don't look Hawaiian enough to be accepted by Hawaiians. You don't look Alaskan enough to be accepted by the Tlingit tribespeople when you go home to Ketchikan. You belong to two entirely different cultures in mind, body and soul, but you're accepted by neither of them. I think that's probably why you try so hard with the masks, the gear, and the entrance. You're desperately trying to embrace a culture that wholeheartedly rejects you, but you keep trying because you want to feel like you're part of something. That you belong. That your faces might one day fit. I understand that, Thlunauts. I sympathise with it, to a degree."
With his index finger, he draws a circle in the air around his own face and then points to it.
“My face doesn’t fit here either. I speak the same language as these people, but the accent is a dead giveaway that I don’t belong. I’m not at home in the US, and I never will be. Someone, in some tiny way, makes me aware of that every day. We’re kin, you and I, trying to exist in a system that doesn’t want us. But I’m not necessarily just talking about the USA. I’m talking about the Conquest Wrestling Federation.”
Closing his eyes for a moment, he flexes and cracks his neck to gain a few seconds of respite from an old and increasingly troublesome injury and then continues.
"The things that happened at Urban Warfare were unfortunate for all of us. I lost my championship in highly questionable circumstances to Kronin Reinhardt. Your tag team championships also now belong to the Reinhardt family. You might have your own reasons to feel aggrieved about that. It won't have escaped your attention that my brothers and I were thoroughly shafted once again in Los Angeles. We're being told, indirectly, that we don't belong here. That we're not management's chosen ones. That CWF is a closed club, and we're not invited. In any other circumstances, we'd be natural allies. Perhaps that's why management has chosen to pit us against each other."
He sits back in the chair and taps the side of his head with his finger.
"I may not like the people in charge, Thlunauts, but I have to acknowledge that they're smart. We can't team up and tear them down when we're fighting each other for scraps, right? But scraps are all that's on the table for us right now, and I'll be damned if myself and Frank Windsor are going to let you or anybody else eat them. See, we're hungry. We're really hungry. We're hungrier now than we've been in years, and a few scraps don't make for a feast, but they'll give us a taste for blood. We need that right now, Thlunauts. We need it real bad. And that's bad news for you. It's especially bad news because they didn't just give you any old random two-man combination of The Bastards. Oh no. They gave you the most decorated tag team champions that this industry has ever seen."
He raises his hand in a way that suggests that he’s about to start listing things, but then lowers it again, shaking his head a little.
"I was going to reel off everything Frank and I had ever won, but actually, I don't need to do that. You already know. Everyone does. Everyone knows that we've torn up every tag team division we've ever been involved in, and everyone knows we've been forced out of promotions when they couldn't get the straps off us. We're trouble, Frank and I, but we're the best in the world at what we do. I know Frank will have words for you, and I know the things Frank has to say are going to make you real mad. That's what Frank does. Love him or hate him - and I sometimes think I'm the only one that loves him - he gets in your head and under your skin. Me, on the other hand? I don't get in your head. I physically pick you apart. And when I say 'you,' I specifically mean you, Mister Sea Wolf."
This time, Riot does have a few stats to reel off.
"Six feet and eight inches tall. Over three hundred pounds. A power guy. A football player. An all-around outstanding athlete from top to bottom. I'm not worried about your sister, Sea Wolf. I'm going to let Frank have his fun with her, and when he's done, I might pick up what's left of her and throw her at you. But you? Maybe you're a threat. So I'm going to do what I always do. I'm going to systematically tear you down. That big frame comes with big targets. Joints. Limbs. Pressure points. I know how to find them, and I know what to do with them. You might be stronger than me, and you might be faster, but up here?"
He taps the side of his head.
“I know this game like the back of my hand, and you’re still in the nursery. I can and will wrestle rings around you, and I’ll make a point of doing it. When I’m done, ask not why I decided to make an example of you. Ask not why The Bastards took such pleasure in beating down Pacific Rim and tearing them apart. Ask not why we seemed to love it. All of that is just business to us. Ask yourself a different question instead. Ask why the people who run this company - people who knew what kind of mood The Bastards would be in - decided to throw Pacific Rim to the wolves instead of facing the music themselves. Ask yourself whether you and your sister are happy being pawns in someone else’s game. If you can come up with the answers to those questions, and if the answers make you mad, ask yourself one more question. Ask yourself what you’re going to do about it.”
He reaches up to the lightbulb above his head.
“I am Rob Riot. This is a movement for change. And there will be no peace in CWF until there’s justice.”
He pulls out the lightbulb, and we’re plunged into darkness.