OOC: Formatapalooza


“Ned.”

Ned’s stomach churned as he heard his name uttered again by the figure, hair still covering his face. On its waist was the Universal Championship. Clutching the sides of his head, Ned shut his eyes, desperately attempting to make the vision dissipate. But it simply wouldn’t. It grew closer, lumbering towards him, each footstep reverberating louder and louder. Fear surged through Kaye, knowing full well it wasn’t going to leave him be. It never did.

“Get away!” He cried out, hoping the figure might heed it.

Ned peeked through his fingers to be met with the eyes he dreaded so much staring back at him. It parted it’s hair, looking at Ned with its whole face. Prim and proper, confidence exuded in its mere presence. The man Ned had always been afraid of: The Notorious One. Sure, it was a moniker he carried for ages, but it wasn’t the title that haunted him, it was the him that so many expected him to be.

“What brought you here exactly?” asked the vision, a hint of compassion in his voice.

“Just stay away from me!” Ned shouted, retreating towards the mirror and slamming into the crack in its center, decimating it instantly and leaving it as a pile of glass surrounding him.

“Calm down. It doesn’t have to be like this.”

“Yes, it does! You don’t get it! Nobody does!”

“Ned… what are you so afraid of?”

“Isn’t it obvious?!” Ned shot back, falling to his hands and knees, emotion overcoming him, “I’m afraid of being trapped here inside of myself! I don’t want to be forgotten! I don’t want to let everyone down… but… I can’t be what they want me to be… I can’t be you!”

The Notorious One kneeled down, placing a hand on Ned’s shoulder.

“Then don’t be. But that’s your choice, Ned.”

“No, it isn’t… there’s something else in here…”

The Notorious One looked around.

“I don’t see anyone else here, but you.”

Ned rubs his eyes, inhaling uncomfortably.

“You just don’t get it…”

The Notorious One stood up, adjusting his title belt as he readied his posture.

“If you want to believe that, then that’s your decision and the life you’ll have to accept alongside it. But you know what’s really at play here, even if you don’t want to admit it. You have a choice as to what you’ll become. Always have.”

Ned looked up, seeing the room vacant once more.

“Choose.”

---

Ned’s eyes lazily opened. He had felt like hell ever since they returned from whatever strange Woodstock fueled drug bender they had all shared. Sure, it was a fun time, but the others were under the possibility that any of this was real. As much as Ned would enjoy meeting a rock legend and spending a while at some great epicentre of universal love, it felt very outside the realms of plausible reality, so he just dealt with the hangover and let the others have their delusions. Hell, he knew he had plenty of his. The Nefarious One looked at a clock, finally realizing exactly where he was. He had passed out, somehow, on the bar of some tiny little bar and restaurant they had managed to find after appearing on the island. Only a few seconds of consciousness brought the many drinks back to his mind, in painful fashion. Feeling a queasiness in his stomach Ned gulped as he saw someone approach him, only recognizing Jim Caedus’s face when he was a foot or two away. Jim sat at the bar confidently, a drink in one hand and the other slapped down on the bar.

“Thank Christ, you’re finally up, Ned! I been meanin’ to talk with you!”

During this entire escapade, Jim had been under the illusion that he and Ned were kindred spirits of some sort due to their connections in APEX. That the mere association made them brothers, but Ned hadn’t much patience for this view. Sure, he’s put up with Caedus, but they weren’t as alike as Jim would pretend. Jim was the man whose shoe’s Ned filled. The great third member of APEX that people spoke about, but Ned was nobody to those few, just a pretender in the spot of a legend.

“About what?”

Ned asked as politely as he possibly could, but the truth was that he was minimally interested in the answer.

“Well, y’know! Partner shit! Team shit and such! You know how it is for us, Nedly!”

He slapped Ned’s back, a habit he had made far too common already.

“You should save your breath, Caedus. I’m in this match for Robert. I’m not a teammate like you and the others are.”

Jim took a swig of his drink, cocking his head a bit.

“I know you’re lookin’ at Robert, hell, I am, too, but don’t sell yourself short.”

Ned’s ears perked up, a bit of shock surging through him as the words hit his ears.

“You don’t really mean that, Jim. I’ve seen how Robert and Drew talk and they’ll build you up to be this thing they want you to be, but they ignore who you really are. They don’t know me, so they can’t communicate who I am to you. We’re practically strangers.”

“I don’t see it that way. Shit, I was a little worried havin’ to slot back in after you had your time with them! They talk you up tons, kid! I come in thinking I mighta lost a step AND having to fill the slot of some Ned Kaye kid? Sheesh, I was sweatin’ for a while.”

Ned laughed a bit, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Impossible. You’re Jim Caedus. The world was wide open for you on name alone. I had to earn everything I have.”

“Guess again! You don’t own a monopoly on being stuck in your own spotlight, Nedly! Don’t start thinkin’ you do!”

Ned shrugged, tracing his finger on the rim of his glass.

“How did you get past it?”

“Hm?”

“That feeling of being in your own shadow?”

“Well, not by cryin’ about it, I’ll tell you that! It took a ton o’ work and I was a bit scared, but I knew I could do it and I did. Just like you did, brother.”

Ned smiled a bit, exhaling deeply. Jim looked at him, his tongue sitting uncomfortably in his mouth.

“Y’know, I think they’d prefer if you tried talkin’ to them again. Ever since Avalanche an’ all that, you’ve been kinda distant from them. I won’t say too much, but it ain’t fun for them. You’re APEX, even if you don’t always see yourself that way.”

“I guess… in a way, I already knew that,” Ned’s thoughts turned to War Games. To what he knew he had to do.

“I knew ya did,” Jim smiled, raising a glass, [color=#00BFFF]“Now why don’t you share a drink or two with a brother?”

A soft smile crossing his face, Ned nodded in compliance.

“Sure… brother.”

With a clink of the glasses, the two men began to talk as the sun rose behind them.

---

---

---

Oh, no, I see a darkness
Did you know how much I love you?
Is a hope that somehow you
Would save me from this darkness?

The Nefarious One sits in a dimly lit room, a glass of whisky in hand. With a small movement of his wrist, he swishes the whisky around in the glass, the amber liquid dancing solemnly before he swallows it in one gulp, taking a breath to let the burn simmer across his throat.

“The thing that separates a fine whisky or scotch from their truly excellent counterparts is the singe it leaves as it travels into your stomach. In a lesser whisky, it is sharp and cluttered, confused in some ways and overbearing to the flavor. Heat at the cost of quality and clarity of tastes. But the best whiskys have something far more robust. Certainly it is oftentimes smoother, but equally intense without distracting the palate. It is this distinction that seperates a group of randomly selected individuals from a true team. Sure, there may be some fire that you notice, but it is unfocused and ineffectual. These are the differences between the well-oiled, precision violence that team… “Acockalypse Now” has as opposed to the clumsy inelegance of something like… let’s say, BOB.”

Ned pours a shot of into the glass, preparing to place it to his lips before interrupting himself.

“Oh, did you think I meant to mention Charlie’s island of dipshit toys? Please, even Jim Beam deserves more respect than being compared to that pit of sewer water.”

“But I suppose I do need to address them. I mean they’ve done such a wonderful job undermining their own qualifications against a team with a penis joke in its name, but no one really expected them not to do that, so it’s really just all business now. For the most part. I guess that means I have to talk about Marf.”

Ned downs the shot in a split second.

“Alright, onto Dolly Waters-”

Rolling his eyes, Ned sighs and shrugs.

“Fine, I guess I should probably try and mention Marf. I mean, it’s more than your partner will do in six months. Usually I’d ask how you manage to go to sleep at night, knowing that you have about as much staying power as a father who went out to get a pack of cigarettes, but I’m more interested in how the hell you manage to stay up. You’re essentially living in a nightmare, Marf, one where you’re not good enough to be a singles guy and you’re bad enough to tank your tag team. I don’t mean to be hyperbolic, but if Lycana began partnering with a framed photograph of herself, she would likely see more tag team success. Hell, the team might actually be popular! As it stands now, Marf, I just hope you enjoy 30 second segments in “Where’s this wrestler now?” videos because you are going to occupy quite a few in two years time.”

“Alright, now I get to shit all over the queen of the flyover states, Dolly Waters. I’m pretty sure the only reason anyone refers to that collection of landmasses as such is because Waters and her inbred, hick family lives there and their collective lack of importance infected the dirt itself. I blame you for that. I forgive you, because otherwise people would have to occupy fucking nowhere alongside you, but it’s still your fault to begin with. Maybe you should recruit more of those cousin-siblings you inevitably have strung across America and see if they’ll take a fall so you can actually get a couple of wins under your belt. That said, I don’t think even the most braindead hillbilly would find being pressed beneath you as one of the most repulsive experiences of their life, so don’t count on that. If anything, just keep counting on your fourteen fingers and toes that no matter what you do, Ghost Tank will do it better. God, what a miserable existence.”

“Oh, Charlie. Need I explain in any further detail how supremely useless you are to the universe no matter what name or face you put on? Should I point out how you’ve squandered each and every opportunity to make something of yourself or the fact that you couldn’t help but act like hot shit backstage for drafting someone who commands infinitely more respect than you as your first pick? You are truly classless and that’s not just an indication of your intelligence, but of your approach to everything. I’m halfway surprised you don’t just demand every match of yours to be some backyard shithole-style deathmatch because the only thing you do impressively in professional wrestling is bleed. Hell, one of your choices was the man who ripped your only accomplishment out of your fingers and you almost certainly only chose him for the sake of feeling like you have some real power in the dynamic. Oh Charlie, I hate to break it you, but you lost your greatest accomplishment to the guy who’s about to benchwarm for a photo of his partner. I wish I could express in words how profoundly and utterly pointless you are, but your own teambuilding has done that for me long before your twerpy little existence ever could. I know you think that there’s the beginning of some rivalry between you and I, but this is not the case. You’re simply the body I intend tossing aside before focusing on the only person who matters on your team.”

Ned pours another shot out, not going to drink it instantly.

“But, the saddest part about this team isn’t its poor choice of membership or its lackluster captain. No, it’s the knowledge that this is the beginning of Robert’s twilight and it is wasted on bottom of the barrel “talent.” I let the world know what was next for Robert, but it seems even he’s in denial of that truth as it slowly twists his head towards the sunset and my finger towards the trigger. This is my destiny, Main, it always has been. Do you know how sickening it has been to watch others try and steal that away from me? Chris Page tried his best to kill you, but he was too much of a coward to do it himself. He kept you drugged and blind and slid back under a rock as he realized BOB wasn’t going to be able to protect him. It was never his privilege to end you. As for TK, he inherited his shot at you from Page and came at you with a passionless, needless attempt on your life. It was never his right to try and kill you. The collapse of your career is something so many will try to claim, but it has only ever been me, Robert. That’s why you wanted to switch to talks of Caedus trying to close the book on your time. You know it’s me and you don’t want to look your Grim Reaper in the eye. But as the old poem says, Death be not proud. It was a Dead Man’s Hand that first lifted me up in the eyes of many and it will be a hand of the man you left living that closes your casket. This is my favor to you. This is my mercy.”

“But it is not a gentle mercy. How could it be in the slightest? I bear this cross and you don’t even have the courtesy to truly give me your focus. Don’t you understand what I’m trying to do for you? To save you from? You’ve never been turned on by them like I have, Robert! You don’t understand how it feels and you’ll never have to. I am your ferry to Valhalla, the keeper of your pearly gates, the liberator of your fading legacy and I will be fucking acknowledged by you. If not by your words, then your blood. You might walk amongst those lesser opponents, maybe even pretend to be one of them, but you’re not. Me, you, even Jim? We’re not like them. Hell, you’ve more in common with Dick Powers and Geri than you do any of those you stand aside now. But us? We are APEX, kin forged in flames that others don’t even dare to glance at. We are violent men who face violent conclusions. You will not go silently in that long sleep of death to be forgotten. I will make sure of it. So, do what you must. Make peace with your family and your fans. Make peace with the end of your days as the death of your ego awaits. However, if I’m to be honest, I don’t believe you will. You’ll cling to a normality long past, wholeheartedly believing that there is no end in sight. That you will be someone forever. And even when you look in my eyes, like the hound to the owner, you won’t recognize my merciful intentions until the birds are flying above your remains. It’s like I said, Rob.”

Ned pours himself another shot of whisky before tossing the glass away and taking a deep drink from the bottle. He pauses for a moment, the drink dripping down his chin as he stares into the camera.

“Sometimes you just don’t know who you’re dealing with.”

"You can't run from yourself."