The scene opens up in a nondescript, rundown conference room….

“Ladies and gentlemen… By joining me here today, you guarantee your place in HISTORY! The chairs you perch upon will one day occupy MUSEUMS! The BUTTPRINTS currently spreading on your seats, your posteriors on the interior… will be studied by ARCHAEOLOGISTS as the HINDQUARTERS that rose and demanded, in one sharp, united utterance…”

…

“Revolution.”

Despite the impassioned cry of the man pacing at the forefront of the conference room, the cobwebs and 1980s overhead projector make the room feel more like a failed startup’s last gasp, rather than a launching pad of the workers’ uprising.

…That man, currently rubbing a purplish bruise brewing under his eye… is Mark Flynn. Still battered and beaten down from his… unorthodox match on the WarGames Pre-Show…

He rapidly scrawls out a series of words on the chalkboard behind him.

OPERATION: Proletariat LARIAT!

Flynn nods frantically to himself. He’s dressed in a mismatched button-down dress shirt, one sleeve rolled noticeably shorter than the other… Despite his hands’ quick movements to straighten his tie, it dangles askew, as if rejecting his most minor efforts to organize even himself.

“These PEOPLE!” Flynn spins toward the collective gathered with him this very night… “That you see around you! Will be spoken of in hushed whispers by future revolutionaries as a rallying cry… A reminder, a mantra, a benediction of DEDICATION to the mission of RETURNING to the wrestling talent the reins of production!”

“THIS ROOM! Will one day be spoken with the same weight as the Tennis Court Oath of 1789! As the Bastille itself! AS JESUS CHRIST, IRWIN, WHAT? WHAT?!? WHADDYA WANT ALREADY?!?” Flynn spins, pointing!

…

Before Flynn, in the rest of the room, there are four rows of six chairs, twenty-four in total.

Only five are occupied. Among them?

Two students of Gravy, sitting on the left hand side of the classroom…

Two people, a man and a woman, both sporting paper cups of coffee, who… it looks like are here thinking this might be an AA meeting?

And fifth, Sitting front-and-center in the front row, is Flynn’s number one fan, Irwin, who started politely raising his hand the moment his hero started speaking.

While Flynn screaming at him did cause his face to flinch, his hand remained determinedly extended, until he was given permission to speak.

”W-w-well, sir. I thought it might benefit the rest of the attendees to go over what we’ve accomplished already!” Irwin smiles, nodding.

…Flynn purses his lips, thinking.

”RIGHT YOU ARE, Irmano!” Flynn claps his hands. ”See, WE pulled off the HEIST of a lifetime!”

Flynn pulls down a projector screen… As the projector whirs to life… Showing pictures from War Games.

”That CLOD, the Bashmaster thought he had us over a barrel. By booking Mark Flynn in a title match against…” Finger-quotes “Anarchy champion ‘Micheal Graves’... He thought he could catch us off-base! That he’d cast away the disguise of revolution and leave us exposed to the harsh mistress of our corporate masters…”

Flynn shakes his head!

”But! Thanks to Peter Parkor for playing the initial starring role so well…” Flynn nods at a seat in the second row…

Where Peter Parkor is currently lying face down at a desk… seemingly unconscious.

”...At least until he made a blocking error and got cold-cocked straight in the face.” …Flynn sighs, rubbing his temples.

Flynn exhales… Then, snaps his fingers, pointing a finger-gun at Irwin! “At which point, our understudy under-the-ring, and apparently actual master-of-disguise slipped into the role perfectly and carried the scene over the finish line.”

…Irwin beams from ear-to-ear! His hero is acknowledging him! This is a dream come true! He delivers the most earnest, practiced salute in the history of subordination!

“Happy to serve, sir! I would gladly give my life to any cause you champion! I would give MY SOUL TO IT! I’d even give m-”

“GIVE ME YOUR SHUT MOUTH, IR-DAWG!” Flynn hisses.

…Irwin draws his index and thumb across his lips in a zipper closing motion.

…

“POINT BEING.” Flynn sneers. “Not only did we pull off the operation and keep the wrestling union afloat without being discovered by the Anarchy General Manager… BUT! Thanks to our improvised combat narrative and my FLAWLESS SENSE OF INTERNAL TIMING! We pulled off a major victory for our cause! For, after YEARS of campaigning… we managed to HOODWINK, DUPE, and OUTMANEUVER MANAGEMENT… Into installing instant replay on Anarchy!”

Flynn smacks his fist against his desk!

“Finally! We have created a POWERLINE, straight from the hard work of the dedicated and passionate to success in the ring! NO MORE will lousy, biased officiating corrupt and obfuscate the truly stellar from their place in the winner’s circle! NO M-”

“Mrow!” From the seat beside the unconscious Parkor, Miss Furry, a bearded woman in a latex catsuit raises her paw…

…Flynn sighs.

”Yes, Furball? Got a question?”

”I do!” Furry smiles like the cat about to devour the canary whole, as she twists the edges of the mustache above her upper lip. ”While I understand, leading a meeting like this might feel like… herding cats? I must ask what makes YOU think YOU have the right to present our mission! Our teacher, Master Graves, should be educating us on our next steps! Not a simple student!”

Swip! A sheet of paper is slipped from the front of the class back onto Furry’s desk!

”Furball, I have permission… DIRECTLY FROM THE MASTER! To speak on his behalf today!.”

“IMPOSSIBLE!” Furry scoffs… Or maybe she just hacks part of a hairball.

Furry lifts the paper with her claws, eyeing it suspiciously…


…

“You win this round, Student Flynn.” Furry hisses bitterly. “But I’ll be watching you like a hawk!”

”Great. So, as I w-”

”A KITTY-HAWK!”

…

”Anyway. We’ve successfully completed our first step toward our utopian future!”

Irwin begins clapping from his chair.

…No one else joins him, but still he persists politely cheering Flynn.

”Naturally… this is very bad.”

…Irwin stops clapping.

”What? Why?”

”Now that we’ve experienced the dizzying heights of a minor change in administrative policy, the XWF corporate hierarchy will have us on their radar. From this point, they will likely do EVERYTHING in their virtually-unlimited power to stamp-out our movement.”

”Now, wait a moment, s-sir!” Irwin clears his throat. ”I mean… it seems that Mister Bashmaster was quite happy to implement your instant-replay system! In fact, he seems to think it was his idea! Why would they stamp-out our movement when we’re making this better AND making it seem like they’re doing it!”

”Great question, Ir-man.” Flynn leans against his desk. ”Because we occupy space. Because we seek the bare minimum necessities to survive. Food, water, oxygen. And the shareholders know that every crumb we scrimp, every drip from the faucet we suckle, every gasp of stale air we struggle to take… Every moment we commit the SIN of LIVING is a moment we rob from the executive’s bottom line.”

“Because while we live! Those shareholders suffer, in their view, NON-OPTIMAL PROFIT SHARE. Every single dignity we fight for is a line on the balance sheet they’d cut in a heartbeat if they could, to drop our pennies into their overflowing pockets.”

…

“That’s the end. That’s their game. To crush us while we remain a fledgling front, a newborn network, a developing development. To annihilate us, our membership, and everything we represent. To send a message to anyone sympathetic to our cause… That WE… and anyone who thinks like us… will not be tolerated!”

…Flynn reaches to the desk behind him and straightens his papers.

“It’s quite likely that… most of you will be dead before our mission is over.”

…

One of the AA people quietly stands up and leaves the conference room.

”Understandable.”

Irwin dry-swallows. He meekly raises his ha-

“I understand your fear. But, rest assured, this isn’t about YOU!” Flynn declares, his eyes scanning the motley group of his Gravy’s students!

“This is about US. It’s about the COLLECTIVE! It’s about doing what we can now to build a better future for wrestling-kind… IN SPITE OF… THEM!” Flynn points to the ceiling dramatically, as his mouth drips with toxicity and fury.

Irwin hesitantly raises a hand.

”Ir-dawg, go.”

“Uh… for the record… who is ‘them’, in this context, sir?”

“Our Corporate overlords, Mi Irmano. The fat cats sitting on their golden thrones! The kind of men with more money in their bank accounts than your body has heartbeats left to lend the cause!”

“We’re on the frontlines of the Culture War, facing an impossibly large, well-funded, and morally-bankrupt opponent. We’re outmanned, out-resourced, and outgunned… LITERALLY, if they hire a private military company!”

…The other AA person goes to head out as well. Miss Furry tries to hand them a flyer for the next meeting as he walks by.

He doesn’t take it.

”POINT BEING! Our only chance of not being wiped off the face of the Earth before the Culture War’s starting gun has even sounded… is GETTING ORGANIZED!”

Flynn furls the projector screen back into the ceiling and begins fiendishly scrawling on the chalkboard behind it.

”Thus… begins…” Flynn mutters, as he scrawls. ”My multistage plan… to build a worker’s army… to oppose the rapidly-approaching onslaught of corporate mercenaries coming to slit our throats to defend the shareholder’s dividends!”

Flynn spins dramatically, as he points to the board.

”STEP ONE!”

RECRUITMENT!

”In order to match the corporate robots we’ll face on the battlefield, we’ll need footsoldiers. Grunts willing to feed themselves into the capitalist war machine until it jams, sputters and dies!”

”Thankfully, we have Student Irwin…” Flynn points to his lackey in the front row. ”Using a message template I’ve dictated to him and his lifetime subscription to Microsoft Works, Irwin has already relayed our group’s message to the four corners of the wrestling’s world radical independent circuits!”

Irwin stands up and salutes. ”I also sent it to my own inbox for organizational record-keeping purposes.” He sits back down.

”Now, our ranks will be flooded with THOUSANDS of radical, unionist wrestlers! From the laborer-first wrestling hubs of Portland! Paris! Paraguay! And Psenegal!”

”...I think it’s pronounced ‘Senegal’, sir.”

”Common misperception, Irwinner. The ‘P’ in Psenegal is silent.”

”...Wait, if the ‘P’ is silent, why are you saying it like ‘Puh-senegal’.”

”REGARDLESS! Our message is being disseminated… spreading from mind-to-mind among the free wrestling community like a river from stream-to-stream… Until it reaches the ocean of enlightenment!”

”Ahhh, so you’re the soothsayer screaming into the senseless space.”

A sudden scraping noise interrupts Flynn, like a chair being dragged across the floor. The group turns in unison to see a man sitting in the shadows at the back of the room. He wasn’t there a moment ago, and yet, here he is.

A deceptively scrawny-looking man wearing aviator sunglasses indoors, a worn jacket that might’ve once been expensive, and a wide-brimmed hat tilted to one side. A cigarette dangles from his lips, unlit but chewed to the filter.

“Interesting plan.” the man drawls, his voice a low rumble laced with gravel and bourbon. He leans forward, resting his elbows on the table. “But flawed.”

Flynn squints. ”Who the HELL are you?”

…The man’s eyes widen, as if he’d ordered a dish of intellectual pursuit., thinking himself starving, but before the main course came, he’d filled up on dinner rolls of free-thought and vamoosed before the check came.

”What a concept. Who *are* any of us? Our actions, our thoughts, our deeds? Are we who present to the world or who we hide in our closets, in our backrooms, in our arena tours where we make our audiences drop the phone in a green felt lock pocket? Are we ourselves in the rearview, in the here-and-now or through the phone screen of tomorrow, spread through the viral nexus of the digital war brigades?”

The man chews on his unlit cigarette, before pointing at Flynn, like this guy gets it. ”Great thought experiment. I like your style, Ché.”

…Flynn shakes his head. ”No, like… what’s your name, freaknik?”

”My name?” The man looks left and right like, maybe he’s not where he thought he was… ”What are you, a cop?”

…Flynn exhales impatiently, before snapping his fingers. ”Furball! Did Warhol here sign in?”

”If he did, we’ll CATch his name!” Furry smiles, as she flips her clipboard.

”...Jesus, could you turn it off for five m-”

”Here!” Furry pushes over the meeting’s sign-in sheet.

”Aha!” Flynn scoops the sheet to his schnozz, drawing the name column straight to his eye. ”I have you now, Mister…”


…Flynn exhales, racking his brain…

”...Wait.” Flynn snaps his fingers! ”Wait a sec!” Flynn points at this strange interloper. ”You’re that guy Caedus boxed in Paris with the Uni on the line! You’re… uh…” Flynn weaves his hand through the air, trying to summon this stranger’s backstory to his mind…

The man pushes his sunglasses down his nose, revealing wild, dilated eyes that gleam with something unhinged, yet intelligent.

“They call me Schism. And you, my dear boy, are an architect of madness.”

“...Coming from *you*, that... feels like a compliment.” Flynn blinks, “But, what dragged you in here?”

”Was it a ca-”

”NO MORE FROM YOU!”

Schism takes another drag.

“The etchings of a lunatic brought me here. A manifesto scrawled in the margins of sanity. I found it in the Parisian Undergrounds-”

“Ah ha!” Flynn boasts and points to the ceiling! “The pamphlets made their way to the leftists in France. Perfect!”

“Indeed. I found your manifesto in a sewer in Paris.”

Flynn’s expression falls into a frown, as Schism continues…

“It was scrawled on a flyer, floating in a puddle of god-knows-what. A desperate plea for revolution, etched by a madman beating his skull against the padded walls of society. Beautiful, really. Written on the flesh of a whipped back, of a shoulder upon which giants have trodden… Scribbled with the sweat of the brow of a man who had been worked to death, saw a glimpse of the other side, and came back to lead his fellow man to the promised land.”

…

“It was printed on card stock, actually…” Flynn clears his throat.

“Maybe to you, pig!” Schism waves a dismissive hand.

“PIG?!? I WROTE THAT CALL-TO-ACTION!”

“Maybe. Or maybe it was written by the sanguine remains of the American Dream. Because what I read was written in blood. Yours, or someone else’s. Doesn’t matter. What matters is the madness of it all! The glorious, reckless, unbridled madness!”

The room falls silent, the weight of Schism’s words hanging in the air like a confusing cloud,

Finally Irwin clears his throat “Okay, so… does that mean… you’re here to join us?”

Schism leans back, tapping his fingers on the table thoughtfully, muttering at first before his words grow audible, “Am I? Don’t know. Might have to now. I was on a quest. Something… important. Gravely important. Life or death, you understand. But somewhere along the way, I forgot what it was. A mountain, maybe? Cigarette trees? Candy with a K? No, that’s not right…” he trails off, muttering to himself again.

Irwin gives a perplexed look to Flynn who seems to be weighing something he hadn’t considered yet,

“Oh, he’s here to join us alright.” Flynn smirks as he watches Schism tilting his hat back. ”Here’s here to fill a gap in our ranks… The megaphone.”

”...Megaphone?”

“The revolution needs a voice. And this guy…” Flynn points two finger-guns at Schism, who reflexively raises his hands in the air! “is nothing if not a voice. A raving, ranting, rambling voice, sure. But that’s a key demographic we need to tap into.”

Suddenly there’s a loud grunt from the doorway.

Everyone turns to see A Literal Gorilla standing there, holding a letter in its hand.

…

“...Did you bring… a Gorilla?”

“Oh, Ishmael?” Schism glances over his shoulder, unfazed by the gargantuan primate that just walked on his hands to a chair beside him, “This whole time, I thought he was with you.”

ALG lumbers into the room, dropping the letter on the table before settling in the corner to scratch himself. Irwin hesitantly picks up the letter, unfolding it.

“It’s from Senegal,”

”PSENEGAL, you mean.”

“It says ‘Hello…’”

…

“No thank you.’”

…

”Sincerely,
The Psenegalase Wrestling Community.”

Irwin finishes reading with a smile, before double-taking at the signature line.

Flynn snatches the letter, staring at it in disbelief.

“That’s it? That’s the entire response?”

Schism nods like a sage, “Psenegal...” he sucks at his teeth. “She’s a harsh mistress, my friend. Their silence speaks volumes.”

Irwin squints, perplexed at Schism’s claims! “What does that even mean? Look,There’s no way that he…” Irwin points at ALG, “Wrote this!” Irwin points back to the letter “Or even read the recruitment letter! Gorillas can’t read English!”

“Dissatisfaction with the status quo is a universal language.” Schism interrupts. “You don’t need to speak English to read the writing on the wall and want to punch through it. Red is the color and Ishmael knows how to paint a vivid, profane tapestry with red alone. He’s your muscle.”

Flynn blinks in Schism’s direction, taking in these words.

…

”...Oh my God! Yes! YES! Of course!” Flynn snaps his fingers “I’m a GENIUS! The recruitment was an INCREDIBLE SUCCESS!”

”Incredible success!?!? You said we’d have numbers in the thousands, Mister Flynn!” Irwin cries out, pointing at the two newcomers. ”You reached out to FOUR countries and the only new members we have are an animal and a transient!”

…

Irwin coughs awkwardly, nodding politely at the two.

”Um, no offense!”

”None taken. Not the first time I’ve been called an animal.” Schism says.

”THIS is perdition! The breaking of the dam that shields the fatcats from the river of labor begins with a simple trickle! If anything, these two me-... er, peop-...” Flynn clears his throat. “These two living creatures of different species are the first crack in the dam that portents the coming FLOOD OF REVOLUTION!”

Schism grins, his yellow teeth gleaming like a predator’s. “I agree. Every revolution needs a little chaos. No Huckleberrys today though… I’m your harbinger of doom, your herald of anarchy.”

“The perfect first tool in the tool belt.” Flynn nods, wringing his hands fiendishly. 

He spins back to Irwin, Peter and Furry.

“Alright, so recruitment is… done.”

“Wait, done?!? We recruited two people?!?”

“DONE FOR NOW! We’re done (for now) with STEP ONE!” Flynn reaches into his pocket for the chalk… But it’s not there!

Flynn glances over at Schism who has now moved to the chalkboard, and is doodling something incomprehensible while muttering cryptic phrases about capitalism and bananas.

Flynn exhales, with a shrug. He scoops an extra piece of chalk and checks ‘phase one’ as complete.

“Which means it’s onto…”

”STEP TWO!”

WAR CHEST!

”An army fighting in the Culture War marches on its pocketbook. The fatcats are going to hit us where we’re vulnerable… Our income streams. Our contracts will be burnt, our merch will get hidden by the corporate algorithms. The XWF will do everything in its power to starve us out.”

Flynn smacks the chalkboard. Schism looks up from his drawing, like he doesn’t know who just did that… Before resuming to drawing a sentient banana dressed like General Patton.

”We need capital and QUICK. To keep our printing budget above the red line. To keep food on the plates of the strikers in the face of scabs stealing their paychecks and spots on the roster. To paraphrase famed intellectual, Marcus Marcus and his Funky Bunch… We need MONEY.”

Irwin raises his hand.

”We could sell baked goods!”

”Or Scratching posts!”

”Or Radio waves in the key of E.”

…Flynn gently, imperceptibly pushes Schism off to the left of the chalkboard. He doesn’t seem to notice, simply continuing his chalk drawing on the bulletin board of upcoming events at the conference center…

Flynn shakes his head, using the full chalkboard to draw out dollar signs and a lot of zeroes to represent the XWF. ”We don’t have time to fund-raise. We’re dealing with a mega-conglomerate corporate empire that has more disposable funds ready to deploy at the drop of a hat than most developed COUNTRIES!”

…

”What we need is an angel investor. Someone with deep pockets and no sense of self-preservation! Willing to drop cash RIGHT NOW on something as crazy and unrecordable on a balance sheet as PRINCIPLES and IDEALS.”

”You’re saying you want a dreamer with deep pockets?” Schism drops his chalk to the floor, having finished drawing a pencil mustache on his Banana Republic Banana General.

”Like… a mega-billionaire? Otherwise, how could we possibly match the XWF’s warchest?”

Flynn scratches his chin thoughtfully ”We don’t need to match it, per se. We just need enough liquid assets to sail on so our movement canoe doesn’t get blown out of the water before we’ve left the nascent concept harbor!”

”Ahoy!” Schism calls from the bulletin board, ripping a flyer from the wall. ”Ishmael, ready your harpoon, because a big sucker fish has been spotted in the ocean of ‘haves’.”

Schism holds up the flyer as the rest of the room, Gorilla included, gathers around him…

Flynn parts the crowd, shoving his way to the front, before seeing the flyer in Schism’s hand.


…

”...Fuck.”

…

”The things I do for the working class.”

---

SMASH CUT TO…

Peter Principle’s office

The General Manager of Warfare is on his big red phone, glancing furtively out his window to the XWF backstage area.

”Yes, Mister Lane…”

…

”Of course, Mister Lane, don’t worry about a thing! I know things haven't been perfect since I’ve taken over, I KNOW THAT… But, all those things you were worried about, I have under control! Morale is higher than ever, we have a NEW Television ch-...”

…

”Oh. You’re… still getting those… Wrestling Union pamphlets?”

…

”NO! No no no noooooo, god no!”

…

”No, of course the talent is happy! They’ve never been happier! They’re… uh… they’re TOO happy, in fact! They’re asking us to do LESS things for them, haha…”

…

Principle shakes his head. ”No, no, sir! Leave it to me! I’ll handle this… ‘wrestling union’ nonsense myself!”

…

Principle’s wristwatch chirps.

…

He looks at it…

And breathes a sigh of relief.

”In fact… I’ve just gotten word that…”

”My operative is about to infiltrate the union from within…”

TO BE CONTINUED...