A classroom. At the front is a single chalkboard… NK, dressed in his military regalia, wielding a single piece of chalk.

“Okay. Let’s... talk... strategy…”

Flynn walks up, dressed in a suit… He slips the chalk out of NK’s hand and writes the question of the day on the board...

“How do WE beat Them No Good Bastards?”

Flynn stares at this question, pondering it deeply, before turning back to NK.

“Let’s start with the homework. Did you watch OCW: Master of Macabre?”

“I did, Mark Flynn.”

“Thoughts?”

“A garbage product that could only entertain those without taste.”

Flynn laughs.

“Anything else? There have to be SOME valuable takeaways... This is the first time in many… MANY months that The Bastards lost a title defense.”

“Yes, and it took a corrupt official fast-counting AND openly attacking The Bastards AND COUNTING THE PIN ON THE WRONG MAN… And Thunder Knuckles and Bobby Bourbon STILL almost won. A laughable facade. OCW had to hold a kangaroo court of a match to get their belts back and they still barely pulled it off.”

“Yeah, I thought I got fucked at Relentless when my ironman match with Thad ended in a draw, holy shit. The Bastards got screwed in every direction. Without a drop of vaseline.”

“Cashe & Riddle were apparently two of the greatest legends in OCW’s Hall of Fame and they still needed a third legend AND a complete and outright rigging of the match to get the titles…”

NK smiles and yanks the chalk out of Flynn’s hand.

“And that bodes very well for us, Mark Flynn.”

Flynn raises an eyebrow.

“How so?”

“If Cashe & Riddle won by cheating, we can win by cheating! We’re much better at cheating than those talentless, knuckle-dragging rubes!”

Flynn winces at this accusation.

“Cheating?!? Us?!?”

“Mark Flynn, you might be the cheating-est wrestler I’ve ever met... Besides myself, of course.”

“I resent that, NK! Name one time I’ve cheated.”

“At Relentless, you tossed the official into the ropes so Thaddeus Duke would lose his footing.”

Flynn waves his hand dismissively.

“Cheating? Noooooooo. Frowned upon? ...Arguably, yes. But not cheating.”

“What about two Warfares before? Choking LSM behind the referee’s back with tape?”

Flynn grits his teeth.

“...I would argue if we DID get caught, we’d have gotten a very stern talking to from the official. Disqualified? Very unlikely. Not cheating.”

“Mark Flynn, you might actually cheat more than I do.”

“Ridiculous, NK! You cheat in matches that aren’t even yours. How about you doing some Fraternal-Twin Magic when I wrestled the Wizard last Warfare! And YOU got caught!”

NK stomps his foot.

“I tell you, If you had gone along with my plan, no one would have been the wiser! And by your own argument, Mark Flynn, The referee merely asked me to leave the ring! By YOUR definition, not cheating! BUT IT CLEARLY IS.”

Flynn snatches back the chalk…

“I just don’t like the term ‘cheating’. Cheaters get banned from the Hall of Fame and have their titles stripped retroactively…”

“I prefer to think of us as creative exploiters of loopholes… Or social engineers, finding flaws in the security system that is the wrestling rulebook. That’s the nature of the Optimal Path.”

Flynn writes down ‘The Optimal Path’ on the chalkboard. Once he’s finished writing, NK snatches the chalk piece back.

“Mark Flynn, The Optimal Path is like 80% cheating and 20% random bullshit just working out.”

“Either way, Them No Good Bastards are apparently vulnerable to... creative rule exploitation.”

“Then, let me write that down.”

Underneath ‘Optimal Path’, NK scribbles ‘CHEAT CHEAT CHEAT’ across the chalkboard. Flynn sighs, but shrugs.

“All right. What else did we notice about The Bastards against OCW’s Finest? They almost had the match won, right?”

“Nearly a half-dozen times, Mark Flynn.”

“Which means they could have won the match if they were faster. So their speed is a weakness!”

“...I hesitate to make that claim, Mark Flynn. On the Auditory Shove-It you hosted, you ascribed Bobby Bourbon as deceptively quick.”

“And TK can move when he wants to, sure. But, as a unit… These motherfuckers are glacial.”

Flynn stumbles from one side of the chalkboard to the other, hands in front of him, stumbling like a mummy from a cheesy 1930s horror movie… NK stretches his lips and nods, acknowledging that as a fair assessment.

“All their tandem moves are fucking knock-out, but they take a lot of time to set-up… I mean, The Rainbow Laser Death Sequence… There’s a whole few seconds of Bourbon getting the opponent into the air… Then TK has to move into position… Then the whole thing has to come together…”

Flynn claps his hands together and NK grimaces thinking about the pain that would come from getting Rainbowed and Lasered and Deathed… All Sequentially.

“We’re talking about 4 to 5 seconds to develop a counter!”

“Mark Flynn, that’s not much time to plan at all!”

“That’s an eternity, NK! If we’re prepared…”

Flynn snatches the chalk back from NK...

“Which is why we need to pre-plan our counters… And practice them until they’re imprinted into our brains like muscle memory.”

Flynn writes down ‘HIT AND RUN’ and ‘MOVE MOVE MOVE’...

“We’re about 150 pounds lighter than they are. If we stay on our feet and look out for the finishing blows… We can wear ‘em out and steal this one…”

“It should be easy to stay out of their grasp, given the match is Falls Count Anywhere.”

“That’s another thing to keep in mind. It’s Falls Count Anywhere… NOT Tornado Tag.”

“What’s the difference, Mark Flynn?”

“Well, NK. Tornado Tag is just a fuckin’ fight. No legal man. No tagging in or out. Anybody can get pinned at any time. It’s chaos. It’s a fuckin’ riot that happens to take place in a wrestling ring. BUT, falls only count in the ring.”

“...How is that ‘Tornado Tag’?”

“It’s a figurative name. It’s a match… like a... tornado? It was invented in Texas, I dunno.”

“Yes, fine, I understand figurative speech, Mark Flynn. But how can you call it ‘Tornado TAG’... when there’s no tagging?”

Flynn raises a finger, opening his mouth… Before dropping the finger, dumbstruck.

“Huh. Never thought of that.”

Flynn scratches his head with the hand that has the chalk. The second his hand goes to his head, NK slips his fingers and sneaks away the chalk, holding it behind his back.

“So, Falls Count Anywhere… is NOT like a tornado?”

“Falls Count Anywhere means that we still deal with constructs like the legal man and tagging BUT we can take the action outside the ring. Which is significant on two levels.”

Before NK can ask what levels, Flynn walks behind NK and snatches the chalk out of his grip. He snaps it in half and hands a piece to NK.

“NUMBER ONE: We can use leverage OUTSIDE the ring. The referee might complain if we put our feet on the ropes during a pin. But, feet on the announce table? Feet on the ramp? It’s a loophole!”

Flynn writes down ‘LEVERAGE’.

NK draws an arrow from ‘LEVERAGE’ up to his previous bullet point about cheating.

“NUMBER TWO: We can take the action away from the ring… BUT, we can only tag in and out inside the ring, because the tag ropes are still in effect. WHICH MEANS…”

NK thinks for a moment…

...

AHA! NK’s expression screams ‘eureka!’.

“We can lock in who’s legal and ISOLATE THEM COMPLETELY by dragging the action away from the ring!”

Flynn claps emphatically.

“YESSSSSSSS! Exactly! The ol’ isolation play!”

Flynn scribbles the word ‘ISOLATE’ on the board.

“Now, this is a rope we can weaponize, but we can also hang ourselves with it. Once we drag the action away from the ring, they can’t tag out…”

NK connects the dots more quickly this time.

“But neither can we, as long as the action is away from the ring...”

“So, we’re going to need to make the call well in advance on who should be the legal man when we make our move to break out.”

“Yes, agreed, Mark Flynn.”

“...Only question now is…”

“...Who should it be?”

***

Several Hours Later…

The chalkboard is now filled-to-the-brim with diagrams and outlines of a strategy. In the center of the board are capitalized objectives like ‘ISOLATE’ and ‘CHEAT’… But in slightly smaller print, you see a number of ‘plays’. Itemized lists of actions, that are topped with a key phrase in quotes. Plays like ‘DEFUSE THE POWERBOMB’, ‘KILL THE LIGHTS’, ‘GUTEN TAG’ and ‘CHEESE IT’.

Flynn and NK both check their work, scouring the board for any gaps or errors.

“...I think we’re good.”

“Oh, I know we’re good, Mark Flynn.”

Flynn smiles and sticks out his fist. NK bumps it.

“I guess, last point of business?”

“Piss off the bastards and throw them off their game?”

“Hell fuckin’ yeah.”

Flynn and NK turn away from the chalkboard and look into the camera.

“Well, well, well. Them No Good Bastards…”

“Bobby Bourbon and Thunder Knuckles.”

“One of the most dominant tag teams in XWF history.”

Flynn leans in and presses a hand to the side of his face like he’s telling a secret.

“Relatively.”

NK is mock-flabbergasted.

“Mark Flynn! You mean to tell me we SHOULDN’T be impressed by The Bastard’s nearly 7 month title reign? It’s almost the longest in XWF history!”

“Oh, it’s real impressive to beat T.H.U.G.S. twice, Marf & Lycana twice and then Betsy Granger and whoever the hell she can dig up twice. With a tag division this lackluster, they need to put a lot of asterisks next to The Bastards’ dominance.”

NK laughs and then wags his finger at the camera.

“You want to pick on us decimating the Green Order and defeating LSM & Dolly Waters? Beating LSM & Dolly would only impress on Anarchy, you say? The same show you two clowns lost a match against THUGS? You pair of nimrods have a loss on your records against Tommy FUCKING Wish.”

Now it’s Flynn's turn to be mock-offended.

“NK! I’m sure the Bastards will act like that match didn’t count! No one watches Anarchy!”

“If anything, it counts double, Mark Flynn! They lost a match on a show Miss Fury was GMing! In a match with “Fury’s Rules” as a stipulation! They had the OCW-style home field advantage and they blew it against John Black and Tommy WIsh!”

Flynn & NK both howl laughing. Flynn straightens himself out and gets serious.

“Let’s get one obvious thing out of the way. We have to acknowledge: Y’all got fucked at Masters of Macabre.”

“Shameful. If OCW is going to pretend to be worth XWF’s time, they should at least act like they’re not the minor league and try to win fairly.”

“Because XWF was playing in OCW’s backyard, Cashe & Riddle get four strikes instead of three when they’re at the plate? Foul balls count as fair? What are they, the wrestling world’s kid sister?”

“I mean, if they did play fair, the XWF would still have three of OCW’s six titles.”

“Bad look for the company when half of your champions only work there part-time.”

“It took THREE OCW Hall-of-Famers to take out TWO bastards…”

“Although, is OCW Hall of Fame really that big of an achievement? I feel like that ‘OCW Hall-of-Famer’ on the scale of things to be proud of... should fall somewhere between ‘Burger King Employee of the Month’ and ‘Killed #BOB once and for all... while members of #BOB’...”

NK and Flynn both nod, agreeing that this is the correct assessment and no one would ever visit OCW Hall of Fame

“Still, that fuckface, Mario Maurako… Wow. Not ONLY fast-counting… Not ONLY openly attacking y’all to make every confrontation 3-on-2… BUT, then, counting a pin on Bobby Bourbon when TK was legal?!?”

Flynn and NK both start retching with disgust…

NK forces his notebook of wrestling rules in the air.

“Fast-counting is within the official’s right. And if the official also wants to fight AND call the match, good on him to multi-task. BUT THE LEGAL MAN IS A LEGALLY BINDING RULE ACROSS ALL TAG TEAM ACTION!”

NK flips through a few pages.

“Unless there’s a tornado in Texas... or so I’ve heard.”

Flynn peers confused, then shrugs.

“You’re a little confused, but you’ve got the spirit.”

“The point is… The Bastards got robbed by low-down, underhanded tactics.”

NK and Flynn shake their heads disappointed… Before nefarious smiles cross their face.

“Which… Oof, means you’re going to have a tough time against us, guys.”

“We are masters of the art of rule-bending.”

“I haven’t followed the spirit of a rule in my entire life.”

“And I just straight-up cheat.”

“If you came home to the XWF and were hoping to have a fair, straight-up contest to get the taste of getting cheated out of your mouth?”

“No such luck, boys. You’re about to get a second helping of free-thinking bullshit.”

“And if you came home ready to get your anger out and just beat down two motherfuckers...”

Flynn and NK shake their heads back and forth.

“Unfortunately, this might not be your week either… Take it away, NK.”

Flynn slips out of frame.. NK steps forward, grinning deviously.

“Bobby Bourbon, as you have alluded to… twice now in your promos. We have history. We faced off twice for the NORTHKOREANWARCRIMINALWEIGHT championship, as I demanded it be referred to.”

“You were determined to take that belt off my waist. To destroy my new championship belt and revert it to the Federweight title. For the XWF. And for America.”

“AND YOU CAME UP SHORT TWO DIFFERENT TIMES!”

“You double-chinned double-failure! You double-cheeseburger-eating, double-width-on-your-airplane-seating, TRIPLE-X-GODZILLA-PORNGRAPHY-READING TRIPLE-CORONARY-BYPASS-NEEDING MOTHERFUCKER!”

NK giggles insidiously.

“Considering you’re the Sultan of Smacktalk, you got thrashed hard enough by my words to get DEPOSED from your caliphate of cutting criticism!”

“I’ve got your number, Bobby Bourbon! On the mic and in physical contests...”

“You know it.”

“I know it.”

“Everybody knows it.”

“And as for Thunder Knuckles…” NK puts a hand up to his ear. “For a TK update, we go live to Mark Flynn at the news desk. Mark Flynn?”

We cut to a second camera angle at the teacher’s desk in the classroom, where Flynn is sitting, straightening papers in his hands.

“Thanks, NK! This reporter did as much research as possible into Thunder Knuckles and HOLY FUCK, TK! When was the last time you actually had a match by yourself?”

Flynn starts making it rain with his papers.

“I climbed through MONTHS of the XWF archives! MONTHS! You know the last time you had a singles ANYTHING, TK?!? APRIL. And it wasn’t a match! You and Bobby had a GOD-DAMN BULL TESTICLE EATING CONTEST!”

NK walks over and leans into the news desk.

“Who won?”

“Bobby Bourbon by a score of 1 to nothing. Dear God, even in an eating contest, TK would rather stand on the apron and collect his effort-less paycheck than actually compete!”

Flynn shrugs. NK smiles.

“I mean, I get it. Why work hard when you can sink your anchor into a former heavyweight champion and let him carry you to relevance?”

“How can someone let themselves be carried to glory by a clearly superior wrestler like that?”

Flynn side-eyes NK, before shaking his head and continuing.

“Long gone are the days of Thunder Knuckles, two-time Hart champion. And the days of Thunder Knuckles, two-time heart-transplant recipient, are coming sooner than we think. Back to you, NK!”

Flynn scoots over to the right in his rolling chair. NK slides up in one of his own, beside Flynn.

“Thanks, Mark Flynn! While we’re airing dirty laundry, holy shit, how often do the Bastards ambush people?”

Flynn shakes his head.

“So fucking often. They did FOUR different post-match attacks on the Savage leading-up to WarGames. FOUR OUT OF FIVE MATCHES ended with a Bastards ambush alongside the rest of BOB…”

“And one of them, it didn’t even make sense! I had already gotten ambushed by Tommy Wish… Why even bother roughing up an unconscious man? To send a message? To who? I had to find out when watching the re-run that they had even assaulted me!”

“I mean, can you argue with their results?”

...

“...Serious question. Can you?”

“They barely made it out of the first round of WarGames and then lost first in the finals.”

“All that effort to come in fucking third?”

“Correct.”

“So, in short. Yes, you can absolutely argue with their results.”

Flynn and NK cackle in unison.

NK smiles at the camera.

“In conclusion, Them No Good Bastards…”

“You say you’re going to bring the smoke?”

“Bring it. I can’t wait to see a redux of your Federweight challenge misses, Bourbon. With the lackluster Thunder Knuckles providing back-up vocals.”

“Crack wise on NK’s nightmarish homeland.”

“It’s a wonderful place, but to people raised on a lifetime of western propaganda, it might be an acquired taste.”

Nk leans in.

“Crack wise on how un-American Mark Flynn for being not openly jingoist.”

“I mean, I’m a morphine addict from Michigan. That’s the opioid crisis AND the rust belt… I’m American as fuck. Plus, I’m not from DC like Bourbon, so my vote actually counts.”

“That’s disturbing.”

Flynn winks at NK.

“Roast our faces! How I look like a Hollywood actor and Flynn looks like he tries to usher kids into an unmarked van.”

Flynn raises an eyebrow.

“I don’t think the one you did about yourself was a roast, NK…”

“Play the dozens on our mothers!”

“Mine’s dead.”

“I actually have a great relationship with my parents.”

Flynn turns on NK, shocked.

“Okay, no no no, that’s disturbing.”

NK smiles as Flynn shakes his head in disgust imagining NK having a quiet, pleasant meal with his mom and dad.

“LIGHTS US UP on all the personal matters and skeletons-in-our-closet you can think of.”

“Because, in the ring… Referencing our history in the ring?...I think you two jokers are gonna run out of material real quick.”

“Because you’re facing…”

Flynn points at NK.

“An undefeated competitor... Someone who has never lost a match in his entire XWF career.”

NK points back at Flynn.

“And a two-time XWF Tag Team Champion… And Two-Time XWF World Champion. Someone who they had to screw with a phony draw to keep the Supercontinental belt off of him.”

NK and Flynn bump fists again, then point their fingers at the camera in unison.

“I hope you two enjoyed your winning streak! Your dominant rise! Your secured place in XWF History. You two have surely climbed to the top of the mountain.”

NK cackles mischievously. Flynn smiles and cracks his knuckles.

“But you already lost one set of title belts this month.”

“And once you start falling from the top…”

“It’s a long way down.”

The scene cuts to black.