I worry about you, Charlie.  Not because of your lack of significant results in wrestling.  I mean, we’re all pretty used to that by now.  Some got it, some don’t, but that’s okay.  I worry about you because every time you open your mouth about me, it's full of inaccuracies.  It's as if you just grasp at any straw you can get your hands on and hope that the ominous 'they' will believe you.  That ‘they’ will believe in you.  I don't expect you to know everything about me.  I'm me and even I don't know everything about me.  However, I do expect you to get the basics right. I do expect you to realize that the man signing your New York Pride checks has never missed a game.  I have been in the owners box every Sunday without fail.

Just because I refuse to engage in your antics and I refuse to acknowledge your childish little games, does not mean I’m hiding.  What I do in my time away from the ring is not of your concern.  But I get it man.  For two and a half years you’ve always wanted me to acknowledge you.

I don’t hide from anyone.

Not ever.

If I did, I sure as hell wouldn’t start with you.

You’d know that too if you ever took five minutes to get to know who it is that you’re up against.

Tell a lie big enough and often enough and the people will believe it.  That’s your philosophy, that has always been your philosophy straight out of the mind of a madman.  The madman isn’t even you though, is it?  Naw the madman is the author of Mein Kampf.

That’s just like you, isn’t it?  It’s incredibly transparent.  Suffer enough defeats and ol’ Charlie borrows another idea and pulls it off so poorly that he becomes a caricature of a caricature.  The edgelord of all edgelords finds a way to add yet another layer of edginess.  But really… its just the same old overdone played out reused and rehashed shtick its always been.

Borrowing from another and crediting yourself.

Stolen Valor, that’s what we call it in my world.

---

“Come with me,” Doc says as he turns and exits my bathroom.  Across the threshold and into my bedroom, Doc-me becomes just Doc.

“What’s that?” I asked him as he motions with his hand toward a box resting on a walnut credenza.

“It’s yours,” he answers while urging me with his eyes to open it up.  “It was the gift I gave you for your twenty-third birthday.”

Looking at the box, I glanced back at him.  “I never opened it,” I admitted to him.

“I know Thaddeus, but I believe it’s time you did,” he says as I place my hands upon the box.  “Have you ever wondered what makes Charlie Nickles, Charlie Nickles?” he asks me.

“No,” I answered him quickly.

“The man lies on your name every time he opens his mouth and you were never curious?” he questions further.

“I never gave a damn about Charlie,” I defend my position.  “Why would I start now?”

“It doesn’t give you concern that our friends in the XWF might believe his lies?” he questions with his ice blue eyes figuratively piercing my soul.

“If anyone believes a thing that falls from his cum dried lips, that’s kind of a ‘them’ problem, don’t you think?”

Doc says nothing but emits a light chuckle.

“I’d never ask him to take a dive for anyone,” I said to D’Ville.  “Lauren doesn’t need my help to beat anyone.  Certainly not him.”

“So you do care,” he surmises.

“I don’t like liars,” I say quietly.

“When you nearly kicked Corey Smith’s head from his neck and told the world it was all his fault,” he pauses as my gaze meets his again.  “Was that not you lying to everyone?”

“No,” I insisted.  “I was lying to me.  And I didn't much like myself.”

“I see,” he says quietly.  “And when you tell all the gawkers that feasted like crows on the carcass of your split with Sebastian, did you not insist that you were never romantically interested in Sloane Taylor?”

For the moment, I clench my jaw while saying nothing.  “In a different dimension perhaps,” I say hesitantly.  “Not here.  Never here.”

“Interesting,” Doc says as he lifts the box and holds it between us before shoving it into my bare chest.  “Open… the box,” he insists.

Hesitantly, I open the box.

---

Curiouser and curiouser, isn’t it Charlie.  In reviewing your promo from last week I can’t help but feel like you shit the bed in the most Charlie way possible.  It’s not unlike you to shit the bed and the world knows that’s true.  What boggles my mind was just how badly you shat it.

I mean, not only is practically everything you said to and about me a verifiable lie, but you didn’t even sound convincing.  You said it all with the conviction of a man that’s just counting down the days until his number is up and the bell rings.  Said like a man that knows when it’s bell time and the time for talk has passed, that he’s hitting the showers and going home a loser.

I mean, the shower is a metaphor, because I don’t think you’ve seen the inside of a shower stall in at least two months but I highly suggest you do.  I’ll be getting hosed down and deloused and I blame Atty for taking the L last Warfare for me having to do that.

I guess it’s a good thing I already cut off all my locks and I don’t have any hair from the neck down anyway.

You are right about one thing.  I used you.  My kid was kidnapped.  While it took an hour to get him back and not weeks like you so eloquently put it, I found the source.  I outed the piece of shit responsible for selling out a child… not just any child, my child… and I used you to help me publicly decimate him and I’ll tell you something else.  There isn’t a city ordinance, or a state law, or a federal law, and hell, there’s not a single law in the god damn Geneva Convention that I wouldn’t break in order to exact revenge on someone that hurt my kid.

Fact is, I went easy on him out of the goodness of my heart.

As dumb as you are Charlie, you know that too.

---

“Doc,” I say quietly with a smile.  “Is this your power glove?”

“My what?” he asks.

“Never mind,” I say as I lift the gauntlet from its resting place.  “No this one isn’t yours.”

“No,” he agrees.  “That’s yours.”

For the moment, I can’t help but run my fingers along its delicate carvings.  The gauntlet is gilded with vines and floral patterns engraved in its surface.  The knuckles contain five stone: sapphire, ruby, emerald, amber and diamond.

“This must’ve cost you a…” my voice trails off as I place my right hand into it.  At once, it grips around my wrist and forearm like a vise.  Intense pain follows, before turning almost… euphoric.

“How does it fit?” he asks.

“Like it was made just for me,” I answered him as Doc walked past me and into the bathroom.  “Where you goin’?”

“We,” he answered.  “Let’s take it for a spin shall we, Thaddeus?” he asked invitingly.

I could almost sense him using my first name mockingly but nevertheless, I followed him back into the bathroom.  On the other side of the door wasn’t what I was expecting.  Instead, it was a playground outside what looks to be an elementary school.  In the yard, dozens of kids run around beneath the warmth of a late spring day.  One child, a boy, sits by his lonesome beneath a shade tree as a trio of other boys approach him.

“Is that…?”

“Watch!” Doc interrupted.

The trio points and laughs at the lonely child.  The boy stands to his feet and shouts obscenities at the trio until the larger of the three shoves him.  He stumbles back and trips over a tree root sticking up above the ground.

“Nah,” I mutter to myself as I attempt to approach.

“No,” Doc says as he grips my shoulder.  “Just watch.”

The small boy tumbles down a small embankment as the trio is in hysterics.  One of the boys throws a rock at the embattled small child, hitting him in the back.  Shaking my head in disgust, I wipe a tear from my eye.  The trio retreats and runs off with the others leaving the lonely boy to himself.

“Come here,” says the young boy to a squirrel.  Tears fill the boy's eyes while he sniffles.  “You’ll be my friend, won’t you?”

The squirrel approaches the young boy.  Just now, the way he cocked his smile, I realized who it was.

“Charlie,” I say quietly to myself.

The squirrel approaches, but turns and tries to get away.  Young Charlie is quick, surprisingly, and traps the small animal by its tail.  Using the rock that was thrown at him moments ago, Young Charlie bashes the squirrels skull causing me to shut my eyes and turn away.  When I turn back, the playground is gone and Doc and I are back in my New York City penthouse.

“That wasn’t actually Charlie, was it?” I asked him.

“In one dimension or another,” he answers with a grin.

“What was the point then Doc?” I asked while throwing out my arms.

“I’ll answer you, but answer this first,” D’Ville insisted.  “What are you going to do to on Warfare?”

His question throws me for a loop for a second.  That’s when it hits me.

“I’m planting my flag back in my house,” I say to Doc, albeit a bit angrily.  “My name didn’t start this company.  My name didn’t start the flagship.  But it is synonymous with it through hard work, through grit, through determination, through refusing to quit, through refusing to fucking die.

“When this company damn near folded ten years ago, my father picked it up and put it on his back.  He carried the XWF into its new generation when guys like James Raven, guys like Centurion, guys like Mark Flynn and Chris Page all left for greener pastures.  It was my father, my name, that ensured this company's survival.

“I know what I’ve said about him.  I know what I did to his legacy.  But, how it took Vinnie Lane and my uncle that long to enshrine him into the Hall of Legends is a fucking tragedy.  Without my father, without the name Duke, there is no XWF for any of us to stake our legacies on.

“Warfare is the House That Duke Built and I’m coming to Warfare to punch my ticket through to the next round of March Madness and there isn’t a god damn thing Charles Dicksauce can do about it.

“He made a joke a couple years ago, Doc.  Charlie joked that Chris Chaos was my very own personal jobber.  I laughed.  It was funny, I’ll give him that much.  What he didn’t know then, was that two years later, he too would become my personal jobber.

“Through various personas and a handful of matches, he’s never been good enough.  Never.  Not even once.  And he won’t be on Saturday night.”

“That’s what I wanted Young Duke,” he finally replied.  “All I wanted was for you to look past the why’s and the what’s.  None of that matters.  The only thing that matters, was you finding that killer instinct.”

“Did I pass your little test Doc?” I asked as I pushed past him.

“Welcome home, Thaddeus Duke,” he concluded with a grin.