Post by Kyle Shane on Jul 8, 2018 12:52:03 GMT -5
It knew that it was awake.
It came to with an oversensory input of doubled noise and sound and light. Sensation buffeted it on both sides and it came to consciousness thrashing, yelling, confused. It let out a yell of surprise but where it's throat engorged to let it air, another, curious impulse wanted to look at it's surroundings. It did not have any say in it, as it rose from the operating table. A choked double-voice yelled "What have you done to me" and two pairs of eyes fixed on hands that drifted in front of them. Dissonant views lead to different angles as it examined it's hands. Then it shoved aside. It's arms flailed, as one side it's of it's new double perspective, heeding the fight or flight response, tried to push over, panicked, but the legs on it's twin's side did not work. A lumbering stumble and crash followed, as it knocked lab equipment down. The twin to his right was yelling as well, amplifying the confusion as it still retained it's autonomy. The two of them had been fused on this whole. Neither fully in control of it's functions yet, and somewhat horrified by what they had on their hands.
It looked askance to a cracked mirror to it's left, and it saw the second head fused onto it's shoulder. Huffing, snorting, it's mind regressed to primal reactions in the face of pain. "What have you - done" it asked again, and the second head bellowed.
Both sets of eyes fixed on the doctor, his wild hair flying out like wires from his skull. "Don't you see, you are my greatest creation! You're a perfect specimen! Perfect!" the doctor foamed. "I have fused you both together and given you life!!"
****
"So that," I say, pushing the button on the laptop that pauses the sizzle reel, "Is what I was thinking, I know some A/V students at the old college, we can put together our faces and then edit the whole thing together, I think it's going to come off really well."
James blinked at me. He had a pair of sunglasses on and as we sat side by side in the sun-drenched boardwalk of a little cafe in hipstertown Jamaica New York. He removed them, and then laid them very seriously on the mesh table and looked at the laptop with the brow furrowed bemusement of someone really confounded.
"I don't -" he starts, and his eyes glass over for a second and he rubs his temple, "Is this a joke? I - Shane -"
"No, dude, I think that it's a strong piece of work that really advances the metaphor of -"
"Metaphor, every Kyle Shane work is a metaphor, or some kind of maudlin personal drama, or - "
"James, we're trying something different that you don't usually do here, people don't - "
"People don't look at stuff like that and think of James Raven," he says with a sudden force that makes our coffee cups clink on their plates. James settles down, looking around at the staring elderly patrons sipping their lattes with us on the veranda. He takes a breath. "I see what you're trying to do but I don't... Look..."
"No, James, look. I know that the team is on unstable ground. The Tag division itself is on unstable ground, it has lacked the spark of life since the titles were dug up and resurrected, with no forethought. First it was the Extinction and me and Silence, then me and Paul Frost, then you came in to save me from Paul Frost and the Extinction, then Anarchy jumped us and we've been getting laid out by them ever since. The Tag titles have been suffering because of a lack of commitment, and our team... well, we became the poster children of what we inherited. We need a strong show to knock out of the park, to show that we're -"
"I know all of that," James said tensely. "It isn't like me not to show up and give everything. But Shane, that sort of thing there - " indicating the laptop, "- isn't what I'm about."
I'm getting exasperated by our being at loggerheads. "Then what is?!"
"Don't you think it's time you grew up?" James says, almost with a look and recalcitrance in his voice that makes him wish he'd taken the words back.
There's a pause. We both sit back in our chairs, letting the words hang there in the space between, growing like a gulf. It's troubling, and not just because it's him saying it.
"We can -"
I hold my hand up sharply. "Nah. Let's take a break. I'll text you later. Maybe I'll come up with another idea."
"Your idea wasn't bad, it was - "
"Yeah, thanks James," I say, throwing down a bill next to my unfinished Americano. I tuck the laptop back into my Indiana Jones rucksack and stand, walking out of the cafe area to the crosswalk.
I drift through the city for a little while, playing James' words over in my head and thinking, ironically, this is exactly what a monster with two heads was supposed to represent. The fusion of two distinct beings that approach a goal at completely cross purposes into a tag team is never an exact, sure science. But then, I had gotten this idea when I watched an old sci-fi blaxploitation movie, the Thing With Two Heads while getting stoned, and laughing at the visual of a man in a gorilla costume with an extra head sewn on trying to eat a banana. And from there, the metaphor of what living with another head controlling half your motor functions blossomed into what, to me, was a cogent commentary on effective tag team wrestling. It worked, dammit. Except that James was also right, it was a little on the nose, and now I'm feeling self conscious about the whole thing. That's all it takes to completely derail my confidence in my writing is for one person to look at a snippet of something I made and scratch their head in misunderstanding and then I'm crestfallen. And the fucked up thing is, I'm self aware about it and it still happens.
James is right, shouldn't I have grown up by now?
The Game Boy, cringingly enough, is getting close to thirty. I'm not the college boy I was in the XWF Reboot anymore, I haven't had an excuse for the juvenile Game Boyz shenanigans like going wild at Marvel Comics or hitting up SDCC for panels.
(And sometimes the act of sitting down on Sundays stringing together metaphors trying to make sense of what I'm doing when I go out there wearing tight pants seems the most childish of all of them.)
Just saying, wasn't I talking about having an exit strategy from this in 2015? Wasn't wrestling never supposed to last this long?
Every single day of my life I feel like I have another head grafted onto my shoulder as I trudge down the numbered streets. It heckles and pecks away at what's left of my self esteem for the day as I try vainly not to give it the validation it needs. Because metaphor isn't all I work with. I am inappropriately open and candid in all of my work about my struggles with mental illness and the validation that comes from doing this acting like a booster I need. In that sense I do know why I've kept up with wrestling and yet why I hate it so much. I tell the head that it's because I grew up with a parental guidance that could have given two shits about me, so when I found the internet it was a place of constant and instant validation. And therein when I found the WGWF it was a place that said to me here, perform everything, all the time, and get validated. That's why everything I write has such an overly weird, meta bent, because I only know one true skill... seeking validation through what I write.
The head sneers, peels back it's monkey lips, chitters in my ear and calls me pathetic, a worthless little boy. As I wait by the Don't Walk sign, I reflect that it's easy for me to shrug off other people's insults because my other head is always insulting me worse than they ever can. That's the thing with two heads, I guess.
I don't know how far I've wandered, I think I'm out of Jamaica and further into Brooklyn now. Tribeca, perhaps. I feel less threatened than I ever had. I'm in pure white gentrified territory now, as I get passed by a man wearing jeans I could never fit into and a pork pie hat riding a bicycle. I'm just walking by, looking in shop windows. The second head grins at me, and it is more visible than ever. I pull the collar of my shirt up around my cheek, trying to shrink down so that people don't freak out, point at me and ask what my deal is. I'm growing more self-conscious by the minute.
It's when I bump into a young kid holding his smart phone away from his body, peering into the middle distance and not looking where he was going. He sneers at me as he looks up. "Do you even walk?"
"Sorry, dude, I was just - "
"Yeah, well I'm just trying to catch this shiny Gyarados before the event ends and I run into one of the members of the Kings of freaking Leon. Move, would you old person."
I really look at this kid, youthful face, elaborately curled blonde moustache, wearing a vest, suspenders and a blazer. And yet he's playing Pokemon Go. Out in this heat. He must be insane. I squint at him. "You really should have more respect."
"Pffft, whatever grandpa," he brattily spits, but it's in such a refreshing cadence that I'm taken back to my college years. If he had been steeped in 2009 forum humor he could have been the third Game Boy. And then I notice his body, he's surprisingly muscular. He notices me looking him up and down and cracks a smile. "Hey, buy me a drink first." His hunt forgotten for the moment.
"I was just - where do you work out?" I say, my words coming out in a flush, "And what do you do?"
He laughs easily. "Why don't we start with, my name is Ezekiel. I train in the gym down there in the old iron works. It's after hours so you need someone to get you in... but only if you're cool."
"Sorry, Ezekiel, it's just... you remind me of - " I wanted to say my misspent youth, someone I used to be, someone brash and vibrating with energy and unafraid of the world, someone not hyper aware of traumas and who's hunger for validation wasn't pronounced, someone who could joke about blowing off work for nachos. But maybe I was projecting.
He rolls his eyes. "I always remind them of." But he grins a little. "Look, old man, you're great at standing in the way when people are searching for Pokemon, and you're fun to talk to... so maybe I'll give you my number, and after I get this raid and score the prizes, I'll hook up with you later. Cool?"
He writes out a scrawl on a piece of paper, and I take it. And for the first time, as I'm standing down in this hipster metropolois surrounded on all sides by bookstores and Asian fusion restaurants, I don't see people looking at my second head. I start thinking maybe I just need to find a place where such a thing isn't uncommon.
And there was something about that young twink, that stuck in my mind like a splinter as I looked at his slip of paper. Something that reminded me that maybe it wasn't as far back as I thought it was. For now, the other head was mercifully silent.
And then my phone buzzed.
Shane, read the text message from Raven.
I've given it some thought. You do have some good ideas and I think we should give them a try.
Still not calling the team Ravenshane tho.
I grinned.
****
The thing stood among the smoldering wreckage that once was a laboratory. A mad doctor in a white coat lays at it's feet, his neck twisted horribly around. Fires and sparks emit from wrecked machinery, and it lifts both of it's hands in concert. One head on each shoulder, they look to each other, nodding in concentrated determination. Then, with one exerting the utmost mental concentration, the thing's heavy, trunk like leg comes forward, stomping into the earth, then the other. The laboratory walls crumble like paper as it pushes with all of it's considerable might, crumbling brick falling around it. It breaks free. Both heads roar in triumph, and then, left foot, right foot, moving forward. Both halves working to make the limbs of their fused state work.
It was time now.
It was unleashed on the world, and nobody could call it back.
I think you all know that when James Raven and I get completely on the same page there is going to be hell to pay.
I'm not even saying it's happened yet. I can't decry James for being hesitant to jump in with me, nor can I morally high road him about a lack of effort some weeks anymore. But James Raven, he of the Legends Tour this year, has put on some game changers this year, he has shown an unbelievable amount of fire in his gut when he took on MDK and Christian Connolly, so I knew that we could make it work. Even when we're off our game, we've proven we can still knock it out when faced with also rans like Paul Frost and the Extinction. The story between us is just that of two heads that have been sewn together on one body, and are trying to make the limbs work. But after a few faltering steps, I think this monster has finally started to rise.
Sometimes, to get into the mindset for what's ahead, I like to ask myself, "whats the story behind this match?" Not just the surface conflict "I want your title, I'm better than you in every way!" but the wherefores and why all parties are involved. When I went up against Paul Frost the story was that he wanted his soldiers to have the Tag Titles as a show that they were the rightful champions, that they were on the cusp of being Tag champions the last time they were around in 2017 and so with no further resistence or contenders in the way it was clear for them to take it. When Anarchy attacked me and Raven, the story was that, I'd insulted MDK and Alyce Starchylde before, so their hired goons were finally coming to deliver our retribution. But, as Summer Madness looms closer, there's no inherent when it comes to Hawaiian Hardhead and John Tolly. Were they even part of some stable I hadn't heard of prior to this, or was that tag match with John Cable the first that any combination of them has been put together, and now they're getting a shot at Tag title gold for - reasons.
Sometimes it feels like the WGWF Tag Team titles in 2018 were part of an experiment by a mad doctor, who revived a corpse and hooked it up on life support. They were wraiths, wasted, broken, degenerated thing, that hadn't even been given the spark of lightning to bring them fully alive yet.
And it does me no end of frustration to put out there that the Tag titles are on such life support despite all my talking them up and trying to make them seem important. And I don't want to be a DVC and only face contenders for one team every week. But you gotta give me something, here.
What does this match even mean to you Hardhead? Seems like nothing. Why do you want the Tag Team titles? And please spare me the bullshit that everyone and their grandma has been throwing at me, that you think that we didn't deserve it. Or, do you have the Paul Frost mindset that you can coast in here and walk all over these lower card rabble who haven't done anything like your Hall of Fame accomplishments and hold on to, what YOU would likely term a low-level belt to hang on to a scrap of credibility. Whatever your motivation it's pathetic and transparent. In actions, in promo diction and tone you're still the exact same, which is gravy for me 'cause I can have my cake and eat it too. I can win this match without even needing a partner and still give Samoan Nathan Miles and Grown Up Dark Shadow a middle finger and a broken jaw.
You bring nothing special to this title I've spent the last month fighting for and defining. Facing you seems like just another go around with Nathan Miles anyway. You go on the same flat, uninteresting tangents, you speculate that maybe if you hit one of your stupid and confusingly named moves that you will win the match, and you go on to list them all as if simply talking an opponent into a nap is context for a victory. And you're smug because you beat James earlier this year? Hardhead, losing to you didn't break James, it didn't end his career, so little do you mean in the grand scheme of things that he just carried on with his life and has never even bothered talking about you again. But what's interesting about you is that you sermonized about James, talking about history from PWE, talking about what a big deal you should have been. HHH, buddy... I remember you. I remember watching PWE when I was in high school, sad, deflated little offshoot of the XWF in 2009 as it was. PWE was never a big league. PWE was where you took rejects that never really were relevant during the Top 50 days when Centurion, Bigg Rigg, Steve Jason, Jem Williams, Lee Stone or any of those guys were active. It was a fed where a main event between also-rans like K-Money and Jose Chavez for a tinfoil belt was considered their big draw. And then you never really made much of yourself there, either. In fact if it wasn't for PWE, what would your lasting legacy be, dude? I started watching XWF when Downfall arrived in 2008 and you were a nobody on Impact. Downfall didn't even last a year and yet in all that time, you... pretty much floated in and out of Impact. Fuck, even Downfall surpassed you and skipped over the commonly accepted MINOR LEAGUE SHOW and went right to Massacre. You weren't even worth that much.
And since then? What have you even done in that almost decade since the single point of relevance? But you're gonna crow about one win over Raven like it ignited a fire in you? Get the fuck out of here.
You’re not doing anything that Paul Frost, even did better, but the thing about facing that piece of shit was that for that brief moment in time at Wrestlewars Frost acted like he gave a fuck about winning these titles and stealing them out of my grasp. You get lumped together with Tolly for no reason, and nobody is ever really going to buy that you're super into teaming up now.
If you did, you would have picked a FUCK of a better partner than John Tolly.
This is a guy who comes out to nondescript music and throws up devil horns. This is a man who claims to be, oh, god let me get this straight the "Best... wrestler... in... the... world..." and yet his first match saw him getting fucking pummelled by the Sentinel and the only reason he even notched it as a win in the books is because 4 asshats in masks jumped Sentinel. This is a 40 year old fucking guy who claims to be a 25 year veteran of the sport, and yet more people have heard of El Dandy than him. This is a guy who claims all of these amazing title wins like a... Ladder of Chance winner, or a 4 time World champion and yet he couldn't spell "veteran" if you put him in a spelling bee with third graders and a twenty five dollar savings bond on the line. I could spend an hour dissecting the million conflicting, mediocre, or just outright shitty things about John Tolly's ring name, appearance, entrance music, moveset, promo style, general level of talent or win loss record but the simple fact is I'd be beating a dead horse. And the funny - no, hilarious thing is, that it's obvious that we're throwing him a bone and putting him in matches that hide his numerous deficiencies because we need talent around here. But that's the thing. We need talent. John Tolly goes from saying he's the best in the same breath as saying he's always underrated and nobody believes in him. Well why the fuck should they if he can't keep any consistency as to whether he's a technical wizard or a plucky underdog?
John Tolly does damn sure not deserve to be in consideration, and that's not arrogance or overlooking a hungry young fighter, that's me saying we can and should do so much better in the future. Doesn't matter to me, because when it comes down to this, I’ll fight John Tolly harder than he can conceive. And I'll punch him right in his drowned rat face so hard it'll smarten him the fuck up.
The story of the Tag titles being written is something that needs to be addressed and corrected. I won't let it become a poker chip in these games of stable wars. I won't let it become the hot potato passed around whatever shitty stable is aligned with our general manager now. I won't let Alyce Starchylde field one of her ever growing and creatively anemic stable out to pick up the Tag titles so they can parade them around and act like the Royal Family is something special. I won't let some slapped together conglomeration of anybody not IN the Royal Family that is FIGHTING the Royal Family form a coalition that takes the Tag titles so the Royal Family doesn't get them.
And I won't let two fucking never-was or will be's that get put together in their first time out take these Tag belts away from me and James before we get our heads on our shoulders and be the monster force we all know we're capable of becoming.
These Tag titles belong to me and Raven. They will be ours to play with until we get bored. That is my gospel, my truth, and the story I am writing.
But you two? You don't have even the coordination that James and I are growing, or the bond. You're just a Frankenstein of mismatched, ugly, broken pieces that have been lumped together. No soul went into making you. No heart is pumping in time, feeding those limbs into life and rising those bones.
Raven and I. Two heads, one purpose. One mind. We are on the same page now. And this monster is awake. And very, very pissed off.
You're just the dirt that's going to be stomped under the monster's boots.
It came to with an oversensory input of doubled noise and sound and light. Sensation buffeted it on both sides and it came to consciousness thrashing, yelling, confused. It let out a yell of surprise but where it's throat engorged to let it air, another, curious impulse wanted to look at it's surroundings. It did not have any say in it, as it rose from the operating table. A choked double-voice yelled "What have you done to me" and two pairs of eyes fixed on hands that drifted in front of them. Dissonant views lead to different angles as it examined it's hands. Then it shoved aside. It's arms flailed, as one side it's of it's new double perspective, heeding the fight or flight response, tried to push over, panicked, but the legs on it's twin's side did not work. A lumbering stumble and crash followed, as it knocked lab equipment down. The twin to his right was yelling as well, amplifying the confusion as it still retained it's autonomy. The two of them had been fused on this whole. Neither fully in control of it's functions yet, and somewhat horrified by what they had on their hands.
It looked askance to a cracked mirror to it's left, and it saw the second head fused onto it's shoulder. Huffing, snorting, it's mind regressed to primal reactions in the face of pain. "What have you - done" it asked again, and the second head bellowed.
Both sets of eyes fixed on the doctor, his wild hair flying out like wires from his skull. "Don't you see, you are my greatest creation! You're a perfect specimen! Perfect!" the doctor foamed. "I have fused you both together and given you life!!"
****
"So that," I say, pushing the button on the laptop that pauses the sizzle reel, "Is what I was thinking, I know some A/V students at the old college, we can put together our faces and then edit the whole thing together, I think it's going to come off really well."
James blinked at me. He had a pair of sunglasses on and as we sat side by side in the sun-drenched boardwalk of a little cafe in hipstertown Jamaica New York. He removed them, and then laid them very seriously on the mesh table and looked at the laptop with the brow furrowed bemusement of someone really confounded.
"I don't -" he starts, and his eyes glass over for a second and he rubs his temple, "Is this a joke? I - Shane -"
"No, dude, I think that it's a strong piece of work that really advances the metaphor of -"
"Metaphor, every Kyle Shane work is a metaphor, or some kind of maudlin personal drama, or - "
"James, we're trying something different that you don't usually do here, people don't - "
"People don't look at stuff like that and think of James Raven," he says with a sudden force that makes our coffee cups clink on their plates. James settles down, looking around at the staring elderly patrons sipping their lattes with us on the veranda. He takes a breath. "I see what you're trying to do but I don't... Look..."
"No, James, look. I know that the team is on unstable ground. The Tag division itself is on unstable ground, it has lacked the spark of life since the titles were dug up and resurrected, with no forethought. First it was the Extinction and me and Silence, then me and Paul Frost, then you came in to save me from Paul Frost and the Extinction, then Anarchy jumped us and we've been getting laid out by them ever since. The Tag titles have been suffering because of a lack of commitment, and our team... well, we became the poster children of what we inherited. We need a strong show to knock out of the park, to show that we're -"
"I know all of that," James said tensely. "It isn't like me not to show up and give everything. But Shane, that sort of thing there - " indicating the laptop, "- isn't what I'm about."
I'm getting exasperated by our being at loggerheads. "Then what is?!"
"Don't you think it's time you grew up?" James says, almost with a look and recalcitrance in his voice that makes him wish he'd taken the words back.
There's a pause. We both sit back in our chairs, letting the words hang there in the space between, growing like a gulf. It's troubling, and not just because it's him saying it.
"We can -"
I hold my hand up sharply. "Nah. Let's take a break. I'll text you later. Maybe I'll come up with another idea."
"Your idea wasn't bad, it was - "
"Yeah, thanks James," I say, throwing down a bill next to my unfinished Americano. I tuck the laptop back into my Indiana Jones rucksack and stand, walking out of the cafe area to the crosswalk.
I drift through the city for a little while, playing James' words over in my head and thinking, ironically, this is exactly what a monster with two heads was supposed to represent. The fusion of two distinct beings that approach a goal at completely cross purposes into a tag team is never an exact, sure science. But then, I had gotten this idea when I watched an old sci-fi blaxploitation movie, the Thing With Two Heads while getting stoned, and laughing at the visual of a man in a gorilla costume with an extra head sewn on trying to eat a banana. And from there, the metaphor of what living with another head controlling half your motor functions blossomed into what, to me, was a cogent commentary on effective tag team wrestling. It worked, dammit. Except that James was also right, it was a little on the nose, and now I'm feeling self conscious about the whole thing. That's all it takes to completely derail my confidence in my writing is for one person to look at a snippet of something I made and scratch their head in misunderstanding and then I'm crestfallen. And the fucked up thing is, I'm self aware about it and it still happens.
James is right, shouldn't I have grown up by now?
The Game Boy, cringingly enough, is getting close to thirty. I'm not the college boy I was in the XWF Reboot anymore, I haven't had an excuse for the juvenile Game Boyz shenanigans like going wild at Marvel Comics or hitting up SDCC for panels.
(And sometimes the act of sitting down on Sundays stringing together metaphors trying to make sense of what I'm doing when I go out there wearing tight pants seems the most childish of all of them.)
Just saying, wasn't I talking about having an exit strategy from this in 2015? Wasn't wrestling never supposed to last this long?
Every single day of my life I feel like I have another head grafted onto my shoulder as I trudge down the numbered streets. It heckles and pecks away at what's left of my self esteem for the day as I try vainly not to give it the validation it needs. Because metaphor isn't all I work with. I am inappropriately open and candid in all of my work about my struggles with mental illness and the validation that comes from doing this acting like a booster I need. In that sense I do know why I've kept up with wrestling and yet why I hate it so much. I tell the head that it's because I grew up with a parental guidance that could have given two shits about me, so when I found the internet it was a place of constant and instant validation. And therein when I found the WGWF it was a place that said to me here, perform everything, all the time, and get validated. That's why everything I write has such an overly weird, meta bent, because I only know one true skill... seeking validation through what I write.
The head sneers, peels back it's monkey lips, chitters in my ear and calls me pathetic, a worthless little boy. As I wait by the Don't Walk sign, I reflect that it's easy for me to shrug off other people's insults because my other head is always insulting me worse than they ever can. That's the thing with two heads, I guess.
I don't know how far I've wandered, I think I'm out of Jamaica and further into Brooklyn now. Tribeca, perhaps. I feel less threatened than I ever had. I'm in pure white gentrified territory now, as I get passed by a man wearing jeans I could never fit into and a pork pie hat riding a bicycle. I'm just walking by, looking in shop windows. The second head grins at me, and it is more visible than ever. I pull the collar of my shirt up around my cheek, trying to shrink down so that people don't freak out, point at me and ask what my deal is. I'm growing more self-conscious by the minute.
It's when I bump into a young kid holding his smart phone away from his body, peering into the middle distance and not looking where he was going. He sneers at me as he looks up. "Do you even walk?"
"Sorry, dude, I was just - "
"Yeah, well I'm just trying to catch this shiny Gyarados before the event ends and I run into one of the members of the Kings of freaking Leon. Move, would you old person."
I really look at this kid, youthful face, elaborately curled blonde moustache, wearing a vest, suspenders and a blazer. And yet he's playing Pokemon Go. Out in this heat. He must be insane. I squint at him. "You really should have more respect."
"Pffft, whatever grandpa," he brattily spits, but it's in such a refreshing cadence that I'm taken back to my college years. If he had been steeped in 2009 forum humor he could have been the third Game Boy. And then I notice his body, he's surprisingly muscular. He notices me looking him up and down and cracks a smile. "Hey, buy me a drink first." His hunt forgotten for the moment.
"I was just - where do you work out?" I say, my words coming out in a flush, "And what do you do?"
He laughs easily. "Why don't we start with, my name is Ezekiel. I train in the gym down there in the old iron works. It's after hours so you need someone to get you in... but only if you're cool."
"Sorry, Ezekiel, it's just... you remind me of - " I wanted to say my misspent youth, someone I used to be, someone brash and vibrating with energy and unafraid of the world, someone not hyper aware of traumas and who's hunger for validation wasn't pronounced, someone who could joke about blowing off work for nachos. But maybe I was projecting.
He rolls his eyes. "I always remind them of." But he grins a little. "Look, old man, you're great at standing in the way when people are searching for Pokemon, and you're fun to talk to... so maybe I'll give you my number, and after I get this raid and score the prizes, I'll hook up with you later. Cool?"
He writes out a scrawl on a piece of paper, and I take it. And for the first time, as I'm standing down in this hipster metropolois surrounded on all sides by bookstores and Asian fusion restaurants, I don't see people looking at my second head. I start thinking maybe I just need to find a place where such a thing isn't uncommon.
And there was something about that young twink, that stuck in my mind like a splinter as I looked at his slip of paper. Something that reminded me that maybe it wasn't as far back as I thought it was. For now, the other head was mercifully silent.
And then my phone buzzed.
Shane, read the text message from Raven.
I've given it some thought. You do have some good ideas and I think we should give them a try.
Still not calling the team Ravenshane tho.
I grinned.
****
The thing stood among the smoldering wreckage that once was a laboratory. A mad doctor in a white coat lays at it's feet, his neck twisted horribly around. Fires and sparks emit from wrecked machinery, and it lifts both of it's hands in concert. One head on each shoulder, they look to each other, nodding in concentrated determination. Then, with one exerting the utmost mental concentration, the thing's heavy, trunk like leg comes forward, stomping into the earth, then the other. The laboratory walls crumble like paper as it pushes with all of it's considerable might, crumbling brick falling around it. It breaks free. Both heads roar in triumph, and then, left foot, right foot, moving forward. Both halves working to make the limbs of their fused state work.
It was time now.
It was unleashed on the world, and nobody could call it back.
I think you all know that when James Raven and I get completely on the same page there is going to be hell to pay.
I'm not even saying it's happened yet. I can't decry James for being hesitant to jump in with me, nor can I morally high road him about a lack of effort some weeks anymore. But James Raven, he of the Legends Tour this year, has put on some game changers this year, he has shown an unbelievable amount of fire in his gut when he took on MDK and Christian Connolly, so I knew that we could make it work. Even when we're off our game, we've proven we can still knock it out when faced with also rans like Paul Frost and the Extinction. The story between us is just that of two heads that have been sewn together on one body, and are trying to make the limbs work. But after a few faltering steps, I think this monster has finally started to rise.
Sometimes, to get into the mindset for what's ahead, I like to ask myself, "whats the story behind this match?" Not just the surface conflict "I want your title, I'm better than you in every way!" but the wherefores and why all parties are involved. When I went up against Paul Frost the story was that he wanted his soldiers to have the Tag Titles as a show that they were the rightful champions, that they were on the cusp of being Tag champions the last time they were around in 2017 and so with no further resistence or contenders in the way it was clear for them to take it. When Anarchy attacked me and Raven, the story was that, I'd insulted MDK and Alyce Starchylde before, so their hired goons were finally coming to deliver our retribution. But, as Summer Madness looms closer, there's no inherent when it comes to Hawaiian Hardhead and John Tolly. Were they even part of some stable I hadn't heard of prior to this, or was that tag match with John Cable the first that any combination of them has been put together, and now they're getting a shot at Tag title gold for - reasons.
Sometimes it feels like the WGWF Tag Team titles in 2018 were part of an experiment by a mad doctor, who revived a corpse and hooked it up on life support. They were wraiths, wasted, broken, degenerated thing, that hadn't even been given the spark of lightning to bring them fully alive yet.
And it does me no end of frustration to put out there that the Tag titles are on such life support despite all my talking them up and trying to make them seem important. And I don't want to be a DVC and only face contenders for one team every week. But you gotta give me something, here.
What does this match even mean to you Hardhead? Seems like nothing. Why do you want the Tag Team titles? And please spare me the bullshit that everyone and their grandma has been throwing at me, that you think that we didn't deserve it. Or, do you have the Paul Frost mindset that you can coast in here and walk all over these lower card rabble who haven't done anything like your Hall of Fame accomplishments and hold on to, what YOU would likely term a low-level belt to hang on to a scrap of credibility. Whatever your motivation it's pathetic and transparent. In actions, in promo diction and tone you're still the exact same, which is gravy for me 'cause I can have my cake and eat it too. I can win this match without even needing a partner and still give Samoan Nathan Miles and Grown Up Dark Shadow a middle finger and a broken jaw.
You bring nothing special to this title I've spent the last month fighting for and defining. Facing you seems like just another go around with Nathan Miles anyway. You go on the same flat, uninteresting tangents, you speculate that maybe if you hit one of your stupid and confusingly named moves that you will win the match, and you go on to list them all as if simply talking an opponent into a nap is context for a victory. And you're smug because you beat James earlier this year? Hardhead, losing to you didn't break James, it didn't end his career, so little do you mean in the grand scheme of things that he just carried on with his life and has never even bothered talking about you again. But what's interesting about you is that you sermonized about James, talking about history from PWE, talking about what a big deal you should have been. HHH, buddy... I remember you. I remember watching PWE when I was in high school, sad, deflated little offshoot of the XWF in 2009 as it was. PWE was never a big league. PWE was where you took rejects that never really were relevant during the Top 50 days when Centurion, Bigg Rigg, Steve Jason, Jem Williams, Lee Stone or any of those guys were active. It was a fed where a main event between also-rans like K-Money and Jose Chavez for a tinfoil belt was considered their big draw. And then you never really made much of yourself there, either. In fact if it wasn't for PWE, what would your lasting legacy be, dude? I started watching XWF when Downfall arrived in 2008 and you were a nobody on Impact. Downfall didn't even last a year and yet in all that time, you... pretty much floated in and out of Impact. Fuck, even Downfall surpassed you and skipped over the commonly accepted MINOR LEAGUE SHOW and went right to Massacre. You weren't even worth that much.
And since then? What have you even done in that almost decade since the single point of relevance? But you're gonna crow about one win over Raven like it ignited a fire in you? Get the fuck out of here.
You’re not doing anything that Paul Frost, even did better, but the thing about facing that piece of shit was that for that brief moment in time at Wrestlewars Frost acted like he gave a fuck about winning these titles and stealing them out of my grasp. You get lumped together with Tolly for no reason, and nobody is ever really going to buy that you're super into teaming up now.
If you did, you would have picked a FUCK of a better partner than John Tolly.
This is a guy who comes out to nondescript music and throws up devil horns. This is a man who claims to be, oh, god let me get this straight the "Best... wrestler... in... the... world..." and yet his first match saw him getting fucking pummelled by the Sentinel and the only reason he even notched it as a win in the books is because 4 asshats in masks jumped Sentinel. This is a 40 year old fucking guy who claims to be a 25 year veteran of the sport, and yet more people have heard of El Dandy than him. This is a guy who claims all of these amazing title wins like a... Ladder of Chance winner, or a 4 time World champion and yet he couldn't spell "veteran" if you put him in a spelling bee with third graders and a twenty five dollar savings bond on the line. I could spend an hour dissecting the million conflicting, mediocre, or just outright shitty things about John Tolly's ring name, appearance, entrance music, moveset, promo style, general level of talent or win loss record but the simple fact is I'd be beating a dead horse. And the funny - no, hilarious thing is, that it's obvious that we're throwing him a bone and putting him in matches that hide his numerous deficiencies because we need talent around here. But that's the thing. We need talent. John Tolly goes from saying he's the best in the same breath as saying he's always underrated and nobody believes in him. Well why the fuck should they if he can't keep any consistency as to whether he's a technical wizard or a plucky underdog?
John Tolly does damn sure not deserve to be in consideration, and that's not arrogance or overlooking a hungry young fighter, that's me saying we can and should do so much better in the future. Doesn't matter to me, because when it comes down to this, I’ll fight John Tolly harder than he can conceive. And I'll punch him right in his drowned rat face so hard it'll smarten him the fuck up.
The story of the Tag titles being written is something that needs to be addressed and corrected. I won't let it become a poker chip in these games of stable wars. I won't let it become the hot potato passed around whatever shitty stable is aligned with our general manager now. I won't let Alyce Starchylde field one of her ever growing and creatively anemic stable out to pick up the Tag titles so they can parade them around and act like the Royal Family is something special. I won't let some slapped together conglomeration of anybody not IN the Royal Family that is FIGHTING the Royal Family form a coalition that takes the Tag titles so the Royal Family doesn't get them.
And I won't let two fucking never-was or will be's that get put together in their first time out take these Tag belts away from me and James before we get our heads on our shoulders and be the monster force we all know we're capable of becoming.
These Tag titles belong to me and Raven. They will be ours to play with until we get bored. That is my gospel, my truth, and the story I am writing.
But you two? You don't have even the coordination that James and I are growing, or the bond. You're just a Frankenstein of mismatched, ugly, broken pieces that have been lumped together. No soul went into making you. No heart is pumping in time, feeding those limbs into life and rising those bones.
Raven and I. Two heads, one purpose. One mind. We are on the same page now. And this monster is awake. And very, very pissed off.
You're just the dirt that's going to be stomped under the monster's boots.