OOC: Necessary coding finished. Coding further after posting.

September 11th, 2024

It was the clawing that was the worst part.

The steady sensation of being eaten alive. Ned dragged his nails down his arms, tracks of parallel red emerging from pale flesh. A small gesture, barely capable of achieving the goal he longed for, yet near enough to be the prevailing thought. The television in his apartment gave a sparkling glow over his dim surroundings, consumed by the New York dusk only achieved with a thick curtain. There was something inane playing, a mindless distraction failing in the latter as Ned’s focus returned to where it had been.

The clawing. The scraping sensation of twisted need flaying the back of his mind. Alcohol always managed to reemerge, attaching itself to his other thoughts like a devious parasite. He had recently exploded from the pressure surrounding him. Seeing his ex, Darcy, get engaged and disapprove of his actions at Leap of Faith. The drone of the TV increased in volume alongside his thoughts. Witnessing his tag team partner slip into darkness. Watching helplessly as he blew up at Amelia, the woman he sponsored at AA, seeing heartbreak in her eyes. Ned thought about eyes often. The ones constantly surveilling him. Despite his attempts to be decent, even the fans he bled for abandoned him. Turned their backs on the man who aspired to be their hero and left him as this.

Alone.

He nudged the curtain shielding him from New York’s artificial evening light, gazing from the chamber he called a living space and down at the streets. A bar stood out, just barely visible from the corner: The Golden Goose. He’d fought every urge he had not to stumble within its clutches, beating them back with the fierceness he gave any other opponent. But the clawing wasn’t like any human. It never ceased, never faltered for a passing moment. Even when it was defeated, it merely continued to strain him as if he’d never addressed it in the first place. Never dead. Always merely waiting.

His eyes stayed trained on the bar.

What was he staying away for? A woman who didn’t love him? A partner who wanted him gone? Countless people who would rather despise him so they could cheer some aspiring conqueror? He’d forced himself not to fail for people who didn’t even care about him. And, in that moment of perverted clarity, the clawing spoke, as if outside his own body.

“They don’t get to decide what failing is for you.”

His hand clenched, desperately trying to avoid the impulses overcoming him. Trying to keep him from donning his coat, locking the apartment behind him as he swiftly traveled down his elevator and across the street. He stood before the bar once more, but there was no hesitation, no moment of awaiting better thoughts to prevail.

He simply entered.

The lights held Ned’s gaze with a gentle grace, the smooth, inviting interior that surrounded most of his relapses. The loving glow of a warmer world. The pleasing form the devil chose to assume. He sat on a bar stool, flagging the bartender down for a simple request. The voice echoed in his mind, booming despite being a whisper.

“We can’t leave our amber mistress waiting.”

“Whiskey,” Ned ordered, “just a shot.”

It wasn’t long at all before the shot was delivered. Its color that of weathered leather, its scent of charred bark. Ned’s fingers clutched onto the glass, curled in a death grip as the aroma seemed to overwhelm every molecule of his being. He placed it down, seeing the slightest bit of his reflection staring back.

“A glass of water, too, please,” He added, swallowing his accumulating saliva while drumming his fingertips against his own palm. All of it felt like a pressure valve rusted close, destruction its only option. His world seemed to fade around him, plummeting into that feeling, succumbing to the clawing that tore him to shreds.

And then, a voice.

“You look like Hell, buddy,” it originated from a man sitting at his side, orange hair tinted red by intense mood lighting. A pair of glasses rested towards the tip of his nose as he lifted his own cup, enjoying a swig of some clear liquor.

“You wouldn’t know the half of it,” Kaye answered, chuckling a bit at feeling momentarily grounded. His hand ran down his face, like wiping the fog off a pane of glass.

The stranger turned to inspect Ned further, softly snapping as he tried to regain some resemblance of memory.

“Uh… Ed, right? Ed Something. You’re one of those wrasslin’ boys.”

“Ned, actually,” Kaye answered. The stranger didn’t seem like a wrestling fan, but Ned often had that hurled at him during his youth, so he didn’t press.

“Ah,” The man shrugged, “sorry ‘bout that.”

“What brought a big sports guy like you here, then?”

“The booze, clearly."

“I’ve… been in a rough place recently. I just need… I dunno, a break from it all,” Ned admitted, taking the brief opportunity for a confessional.

“I get you, buddy. Life’s been rough. I can only imagine havin’ that sorta spotlight on you,” the man said sympathetically, “I guess I enjoy being able to pound a few back and not have to act right for every damn person.”

“Yeah,” Ned nodded, lifting his shot glass, readying himself for a familiar taste, “maybe it’s about time I stopped thinking about all that.”

Abruptly, the man’s hand glided then hovered over Ned’s drink, preventing him from sipping, then retreated.

“Let’s not get hasty. Just ‘cause the world sucks doesn’t mean you have to handle your problems like mine. What about all the people who are pulling for you? Doesn’t that matter?”

“If it did, would I be here?” Ned questioned matter-of-factly. 

The man waved his hand, smiling softly as his gaze and Ned’s stayed trained on one another.

“I’m not talkin’ ‘bout that. I mean, doesn’t it matter to you?” He reiterated.

Ned placed the drink down, his elbow propped on the bar so his chin could rest, pondering the question.

“It does…”

“It matters to me, but I… I’m trying hard for that to mean something. Like being me is something worth being,” Ned sighed, his finger tracing over the caramel bartop.

“Oh, I assure you it does, but you ain’t gonna find that at the bottom of a shot of whiskey. Anybody’d tell you that.”

“You’re right,” Ned inhaled, lifting up his glass of water and taking a swig, noticing its almost cloudy appearance against the light. He wasn’t the kind to expect the cleanest glass in New York, but it still felt like adding insult to injury.

“I shouldn’t be here,” Ned acknowledged, half saying it to the stranger, half to himself, “thanks for helping me not do something I’d regret.”

“Anytime,” the stranger smiled, satisfied immensely as he drank from his clear glass.

Ned got to his feet, feeling the world spin around him. Vertigo was making an ugly return. Still, the fog on his mind seemed to grow, intensifying. Shaking his head, Ned reached forward for a handshake, shrugging off the lack of balance.

“I didn’t catch your name,” Ned felt weaker as the words left him, shaking his head more to force the dizziness away in vain.

“Curious,” the man’s tone shifted, sounding like a completely different person, “the vertigo truly did take a lot to get through, didn’t it?”

“H-h-how?” He could barely force the word out. That’s when realization washed over him.

Stupid.

Stupid.

Drugs in the water. That’s why he kept eye contact. The assured smirk. Even the red hair seemed familiar. Had he been waiting for this moment? Ned’s mind did the screaming his throat failed to as the man accepted Ned’s delirious handshake.

“Most people would’ve been knocked out near instantly from that strong a dose, but you’ve always been more than most, haven’t you?”

Ned tried to shift his body away, feeling the stranger catch his weight and “assist” him outside.

“Don’t worry, buddy. I’ve got you. We’re going to do some great work together.”

---

September 14th, 2024

“What do you mean he’s gone?”

Darcy rubbed her eye, body leaning against the doorframe of her apartment. Standing on the opposite side was one of the last people she wanted to speak to. Amelia stood, face uncharacteristically concerned as she fidgeted with her hands. One of the major factors that lead to Darcy breaking things off with Ned was specifically putting this wild kid close enough to them to sell Darcy’s old Chameleon data off.

“Do I have to fucking write it out for you? He’s G-O-N-E, Darce,” Amelia's trademark impatience boiling over even her most genuine concern.

“It’s really not as big of a deal as you think, he just-,” Darcy’s lungs decompressed as she grappled with the discomfort of the situation, “he does this sometimes.”

Anna, Darcy’s betrothed, peaked from outside of the bedroom, her hair bundled together messily after an impromptu awakening.

“Everything alright, sweetie?” She called from the other room, barely noticing the visitor hovering outside the apartment.

“Yeah, everything’s fine,” Darcy reaffirmed, eyeing for Amy to take her leave. Huffing, the younger woman added one final statement.

“If something happened to him and I gave enough of a damn to look and you didn’t, you’ll have to live with that,” she spat, kicking at the floor of the hallway as the door shut behind her.

“Jesus Christ,” Darcy muttered, her back leaning against the door. She attempted to repel Amy’s words with a hastily made coffee, but they lingered. Like the scent of a chronic smoker. It was enough to make her call around. Darcy tried to assure all involved that the situation was utterly normal, but the uncertainty ate at her like termites chewing on pulp.

“Hey, Theo, just wanted to leave a message to see if you’ve heard from Ned the past couple of days. Apparently things have gone dark and I’m- some people are worried,” she hung up, shrugging to think how long it would take for Pryce to get through his lengthy inbox. If anyone would know, it’d be him. She was prepared to just move on. Then, her phone vibrated.

“I was actually about to ask you.”

Shit.

Darcy’s hands went flat on the table. She frantically dialed some acquaintances Ned had, but all came back empty.

He was missing.

Pressing her phone to her ear, she felt her chest tense as she prepared to call someone who might actually be able to do something.

“Hello?”

Darcy had never liked this guy, but Ned insisted he was worth… well something.

“Mark, I called because I need to talk to you about something important.”

A passing silence.

“I’m sorry, but you got the wrong wrestler. This is MIKE. MIKE-UL GRAVES.”

Flynn was infamous for engaging in these kinds of activities at the most inopportune times. Darcy was frustrated to see that the habit hadn’t broken even a tad.

“Look, I don’t know what stupid bullshit you’re up to, but I know it’s you, Mark-”

"Man, lady I've never spoken to or planned the gifts of your potential child before, you sure are bad at pronouncing Mike!"

…

"I'm not doing this right now,” Darcy said clearly, hanging up the phone. Her hands clutched at her hair, cheeks puffing as she forced the air in her lungs out. Anna meandered to the kitchen table, sitting aside her.

“No luck, huh?” She asked, her palm gingerly patting against Darcy’s back.

“This is precisely the kind of stuff I left Ned over. I was so sick of getting caught up in this world and then my life would halt so I could focus everything on him! It’s just miserable!” She shouted, finally freeing a frustration she stifled for ages.

“You don’t have to deal with all this,” Anna affirmed, gripping at her partner’s hand, her gaze soft and loving.

Darcy smiled weakly before the pit in her stomach split further, its cracks running deeper than she imagined.

“I know he’s not my responsibility, but… I’m really worried, Anna. Something about this feels… wrong.”

Anna grabbed Darcy by the wrists, her reassuring eyes beaming.

“Hey, he couldn’t have gone too far, right?”

---

September 15th, 2024

Cold.

The elevator air was frigid as the mechanism raised him skyward. Kaye Holdings had been earlier projected to have its best year, but despite many accomplishments, the truth had been unfortunately clear: there wasn’t money to be had in these massive businesses owned by professional wrestlers. Despite years of his father’s influence at the helm, the nepotism that forced him into place could only hold him above water for so long.

The waves hugged his neck.

The machine that dutifully lifted him to the head office hummed alongside his droning thoughts. As the doors opened, he stepped into the room before him, a large conference table, peppered with executives and “yesmen” who found themselves among the great Ned Kaye, his business acumen unrivaled, barring this recent collapse and the countless months of uncertainty prior.

A strange, thin-faced man wore a red suit at the head of the table, softly fiddling with some unseen object.

“Welcome,” he declared, “we were anticipating a quicker turnaround, but given the emotional investment you have here, we knew you might hesitate.”

Channeling his best snark, Ned replied, “Well, I’d been trying to seem enthusiastic about you yanking the rug beneath me, but I guess my poker face is a tad rusty.”

Several briefcases overflowing with sensitive documents were pried open by the executives. Among the papers slid in front of Ned was one worn from the tide of time. The one he had signed to inherit Kaye Holdings from his father. His memory distilled into a singular document whose value was on the verge of dissipating.

“So, you’re just seizing everything I’ve built and slapping your company on it, huh?” Ned probed dismissively.

The man in red clicked through the side of his teeth in disagreement, “We’ve no interest in merely assimilating your business into our own. What you and your father left for us is immaculate. Perfect for the empire we’re building. You aren’t some afterthought, but the key to all of our goals, Kaye, even if we had to achieve this a tad crudely.”

“Then I guess,” Ned shrugged, feeling the noose of his circumstances tie tighter, “you’ve got me fully on board. Not like I have much of a say otherwise.”

“Aiwass would want nothing less from a deal of this magnitude.”

Ned pinched the paper before him, its thinned texture obvious to the touch as-

No.

Something was wrong.

This was all wrong.

Ned had never lived this life. No corporation. No merger.

No.

NO.

The intense shocks surged through Ned’s body as the headset was removed, dire screams expelled from him, his arms restrained while his body thrashed. The vision melted as reality reasserted itself, its form harsh and foreboding. A dingy basement, musky and decrepit met him, a crude set of machines with a discolored statue looming over.

“I know… that name,” Ned’s breath was heavy as his memories reasserted themselves. He hadn’t been in some highrise, overlooking a business empire. He was down here.

In the cold, dark nothing, surrounded by brick as a rudimentary attempt to recreate The Chameleon project zapped at his mind, the shocks doing the rest to his body. That was his last few days. Endless probing of his thoughts. Ceaseless torment of his form. But this was new.

“You’ve typically passed out after rejecting artificial reality. Now, this is exciting! Progress!” The stranger clapped his hands together gleefully, motioning for two guards to move the table Ned had been restrained to so their eyes could meet.

“You know,” The man chuckled, glancing at the control panel for confirmation, “I never did introduce myself. I’m the Archduke Bishop Pongarith, but Archduke is more than permissible. I'm the one who gave life to this experiment you’ve caused so much grief to. I am The Commissioner of The Chameleon project.”

“But…I thought Dante Cormack was the creator…”

The Archduke laughed somewhat, raising a hand to beckon someone nearer. Dante emerged from behind the control panel, his face a reminder of the most desperate time of Ned’s life.

“The ideas have always been his, but the funding? Why, I was the guiding hand that brought you here the first time, whether you were aware of it or not.”

Ned shook his head, feeling the simmering sting of his flesh, “Doesn’t make sense… why me?”

“Oh, please, Ned. You have to be more intelligent than all that. The name, Aiwass, you’ve heard it before, no?” The Archduke inspected Ned’s face, seemingly enjoying the pained details.

Ned experienced realization like a new shock.

“That’s the god that that cult was trying to summon. You brainwashed Corey Smith. You were disbanded.”

“It’s true. So many of us accepted Smith as the only savior. I think of that commune and my skin shudders at the thought of a child leading us. But a few continued searching for the next envoy of the apocalypse. But I knew, even then, I was certain it was you.”

Ned’s chest heaved, laughing off the man’s delusions, “I’m the last person to pick for something like that. I barely have anything to do with Corey or all this religious endtimes shit you’re trying to push.”

“You’re mistaken, Ned,” The Archduke’s confidence seemed to pull at all the eeriness in the room and condense it into one sentence.

“You faced Corey when he was inhabited by The Engineer. He brutalized your best friend to get at you. You broke bread with the original man to hold that title when training to face Robert Main. Your first match as The Chameleon had you on the path to facing Corey Smith. Do you think all of this was a coincidence? The Church of the Dark Star was so committed to finding an Engineer for the end of all things, that they ignored The Catalyst sitting just underneath their noses. Tell me, when did your breakdown happen? When did you start “hallucinating” a voice for your darkest thoughts?”

Ned gulped, thinking back through everything. It was after the match at March Madness 2020. After he faced The Engineer.exe.

“You’re insane,” Ned forced out, certain that Pongarith was crazy, but increasingly fearful of the alternative.

“You’re beginning to see it. Good,” The Archduke smiled widely, “Increase the voltage, Custodian.”

Dante inhaled sharply before doing as commanded, hearing Ned’s bellows of pain echo against the walls.

He’d almost grown used to it.

---

September 18th, 2024

Amelia’s foot tapped against the floor, its rapid rhythm filling Alcoholics Anonymous with a steady drumbeat, her heel’s clattering surpassing all other sounds until it was all anyone could hear. Save for herself. It might as well have been silence to her ears. Ned disappeared off the face of the planet and yet it felt like she was the only one who gave a damn. The only one wanting to do anything. Was she happy about his outburst towards her? Far fucking from it, but she had watched him go through Hell for other people just because he simply thought that that’s what others deserved. Few people held themselves to half the standard Ned did and he’d always given her the benefit of the doubt. Why was she left to fight for him? Why only her?

“Amelia,” A voice attempted to interrupt the continuous clatter of shoe against tile.

The rhythm continued. Amy’s thoughts longed to cave in, imploding under their calamitous perception.

“Amelia!” Kelly’s voice raised, finally breaking the limbo of concentration. She lifted her head, seeing thinly veiled deep sympathy. No one enjoyed seeing Amelia in this state, even though many had suggested she merely forget about Ned after the incident. It was an appealing notion. An empty one. One that she would have taken in the past easily, when she was sleeping around and getting wasted every other evening. Before her sponsorship.

Before Ned.

The thought lingered over her as the blithe day lurched forth, dragging her behind it. Until another idea grabbed her attention, its nails digging into the forefront of her mind.

She had yet to check his apartment.

She raced up the stairs, finding his apartment number, checking back and forth for any company before removing a hairpin from her pocket, sucking in a lungful of frustrated air through her nostrils as she meddled with the lock.

“C’mon, girl,” she mumbled beneath her breath, feeling relief cascade over her as the lock popped affirmatively.

She slid inside the apartment, seeing the glow of the television illuminate the abandoned interior. No signs of a struggle. Nothing out of order. It was peppered with wrestling memorabilia and minimal furnishing, save for a cramped whiteboard, string adorning the details all surrounding the case he had been working on with Isaiah. A strange set of locations, each seemingly disconnected, victims in an array of bizarre motivations. What was at the center? A blank space on the white board that happily reflected Amelia’s own face. The answer staring her down like a freight train.

Ned. Ned was the center of all of these bizarre arrangements. All concluded in greater violence. But why? She looked outside the window of his apartment, seeing the locale that used to be his prized local establishment, “The Notorious Gym.” Despite the evening’s hands having a firm grasp of New York, it appeared like it was slightly busy inside.

Then she saw something fall from the roof.

---

30 minutes prior

Dante was an artist.

Whereas brutes would demand their visions be implemented, Dante preferred his hand steady, thoughtful in its dissective qualities. He had been plucked from his place behind bars a year prior, but only now had the pieces fallen into place. The data, faculty, machines, and, of course, the subject. Months of calibration had culminated in this moment, even as members of the Archduke’s splinter faction had begun to shed until they’d shrunk to about a dozen true believers and himself. They all worshiped the endpoint of this project, a final note that had been telegraphed to him towards the beginning of his involvement. They were people of faith.

He was an artist.

The others had mostly drifted off to an early slumber as Dante approached his magnum opus in the holding room, two stories underground. Cormack’s footsteps echoed in the vacuum he inhabited, the weakened specimen he had dedicated the last year to perfecting once more in a heap before him. Strapped to a table, starved, and physically worn from a week of having his entire world ripped away from him forwards and backwards. Something about it all seemed… barbaric.

“Come to gloat?” The specimen asked, his voice drained.

“No,” Dante answered, his face stuck in a sort of permanent scowl.

“Then why…?” His “work of art” demanded, struggling at the straps despite his body trying to fail him.

Cormack’s world had little use for emotion, viewing it as the chaff carved away by an inhuman degree of reason. Something that exceeded mere human thought. He was not one to be subject to bouts of sentimentality.

As if acting autonomously, Dante’s hands undid the restraints on Ned’s arms, lifting the man up as he struggled to get to his feet.

“W-why?” Kaye questioned before being hushed swiftly.

“Quiet,” Dante ordered, adding, “we wouldn’t want to alert anyone.”

He carried the man up several flights of stairs, making sure to avoid the few guards who’d stayed active as they made their way to the roof. Ned spoke as they got to the upper levels of the building, his observant mind still kicking despite the torture.

“It’s the gym… you used that big company as a front for this… to get me off the trail.”

“Yes,” Dante confirmed as the night air rushed into their faces, seeing some of Ned’s energy return merely with the ability to stand. They walked to the edge, looking over the city Ned had given everything to. The only place that would ever truly feel like home outside of a wrestling ring. The two took the moment of respite as it came.

“Why free me?” Ned asked, breaking the silence.

Dante placed his hands behind his back, looking upwards towards the stars as he thought best of how to answer.

“Do you recall how the last Engineer was born? Out of blood. A vicious, murderous sacrifice,” Dante looked over the edge, quietly determining the height.

“Oh,” Ned said with expectant disappointment, “so this was just about saving your own skin, then. You didn’t have to get me out of there, Dante. I’m not a killer. Not like you.”

“You’re closer than you think.”

Ned recoiled at the sentence, forcing a silent voice down.

“You are, however, mistaken,”Dante corrected, “there is no way out of this where I walk freely. Once the Archbishop is done with my contributions, I will be cast aside like the tool I am for him.”

Ned looked on confused, his hands rubbing his wrists, where the straps had been tightest.

“Then why do it?”

And then he heard a noise he wasn’t sure he ever had heard.

Dante laughed.

“I suppose I am uncertain myself, Ned. Perhaps I merely realized I was working on a different project than I first thought,” he stepped up to the ledge, glancing back as Ned looked on horrified, hearing the rushing of guards up the fire exit.

“Dante, you don’t have t-”

“Y’know,” Dante interrupted, his eyes finally catching a clear glimpse of stars, “it really was a worthwhile endeavor, in the end.”

He stepped forward, leaving the mark only esteemed painters and sculptors would, the slight indent on the concrete sharing a piece of his formas the guards apprehended Ned, forcing him back towards the chamber he had been stuck in for weeks. A permanent etch on the sidewalks of New York City.

Dante was an artist.

---

Amelia flung her body against the glass door of the gym, running past a nameless body as her shoulder caused the glass to creak and crack, panic taking hold. She’d only been able to place one call before rushing over. She merely prayed that it was a wise one. Her body strained with each impact, cursing beneath her breath. Summoning strength she was unaware boiled within, she crashed through, slamming herself into one of the armed guards holding onto Ned, scratching at the eyes of the other, watching him plummet to the ground.

“Y…you came for me?” He asked, bewildered by her appearance, a smile on his tired face.

“Of course, I did, idiot,” she replied, assisting Ned upwards, “couldn’t spare a shower, huh?”

The moment was painfully brief, just like the jolt in Amy’s stomach. She glanced down, seeing the crimson flood pool from her as her body failed her and, suddenly, Ned had to carry her.

“What a nuisance,” the Archduke sighed, the pistol he held still smoking from the shot. Amy’s breathing grew more shallow before it ceased, terror stuck on her face.

“You truly shouldn’t have allowed your friends to interfere, Ned,” The Archduke Bishop’s lip turned into a cruel, grinning snarl, “you know what happens to those closest to you.”

“He doesn’t get to say what you are. He doesn’t get to say a damn thing,” The clawing cried, fierce and quiet. The Archduke barely saw what happened when Ned lunged at him, raining blow after blow downwards in a violent and bloody display, the vile man’s face becoming pulp, anticipating the end as Ned lifted the gun, pressing the barrel into his forehead.

“You want this.”

Ned’s hand strained as he heard a voice call out from behind him. It was Darcy’s.

“Ned, Amy called, I-... oh my god.”

She fought back the urge to vomit as she looked onward, witnessing the dark urge in Ned’s gaze through his backwards glance.

“This isn’t like you,” she said, uncertain of the look in Ned’s eyes. The Archduke chortled through mouthfuls of maroon.

“Don’t you get it? This is what power is.”

Ned contemplated for moments that crawled like eons. Trying to convince himself to give into the voice. To fall into the dark pit designed for him.

He removed the ammo from the weapon, tossing the gun to the side.

“You’re wrong,” Ned forced out, placing a foot on the Archduke’s hand to pin him in place.

“Power isn’t about conquering or exerting your will over others. It’s about acting in ways that matter. In ways that help. You want to create some twisted, broken mess that exists for your amusement. It’s a world that only suits you and the fools you’ve convinced to walk behind you. And we don’t need it anymore. We never did.”

Ned looked back at Darcy, his eyes lighter despite the wear on his body, seeing her only as she embraced him tightly, feeling her warmth.

“It’s good to have you back,” she spoke through hushed sobs.

Ned took a deep breath, feeling the clawing dissipate. Sensing the healing quality of a merciful act done for its own sake, watching Amelia be taken out on a stretcher, clinging to life.

“It’s good to be back.”

---

---

---

“A little over five years ago, I walked into the XWF. A perpetual indie darling with a penchant for coming up short. I was the kind of guy everyone said nice things about. A few years later, I risked ruining all that, succumbing to mental illness, concocting an identity of some dark force that possessed me. I then tried to remove it all, root and stem, rejecting myself with the help of an ambitious project that turned out to be little more than a scheme by vile people to do the same thing some have been doing for ages:”

“Reshaping the world in their image. Destroying instead of creating. Belittling rather than uplifting.”

“They can apply whatever gravitas they’d like, but the story’s the same. Played out since the dawn of time. And I wondered what drew people to Sebastian Everett-Bryce, why the fans got caught up in his shallow opulence- in the orbit of a dead planet. To admire a man who would rather permanently injure an opponent than dare lose. Why support you and reject me? But that’s when it became clear, SEB. You, in all your hollow glory, are precisely the kind of person society pretends is worth respect. The kind who thinks reality’s a synonym for misery. Who’d rather sling generic insults at someone than take ten minutes to learn a damn thing. You talk big about empires, conquering, placing this company under your thumb, but not once do you think about improving it outside of just “being here.” Because that’s what you think of us. That we’re beneath you. That we exist to step atop. You don’t view others as fellow climbers of the ladder, but the rungs.”

“You are infected with a sickening hubris. And people love it.”

“You seem to think that this attitude has also translated to a higher relevance for the XWF due to your presence. I hate to channel Mark Flynn, but check the buys for each PPV since you entered the main event. The drop off is massive. Isaiah and I headlined a show with nearly four times the buys of Leap of Faith this year. So, while you yap about how management brought in somebody who would bring the numbers, maybe you should go count them before writing checks your name can’t cash. Hell, in the lead up to Leap of Faith, all anyone wanted to talk about was Thad. People were beefing with your friend and manager more than the Universal Champion. That’s how much of an afterthought you let this belt become, and I swiftly corrected the greatest failure of my career by reclaiming it. Because I was done with the Dollys and Saharas of the world making that belt smaller than your BFF. You happily slotted into being an extension of him. Hell, you even synchronized your divorces. #BestieGoals as Lacklan would put it., I’m livid with you for allowing yourself to become that kind of wallpaper. You became set dressing in your own world and were content to line the fucking walls until I broke through.”

“And O Mighty Ruler, where were you during your reign? Because you sure as hell weren’t here! I’ve been on each Warfare in a match since reclaiming this belt. You only started showing up to work because I embarrassed you slightly. I don’t have a problem with newcomers. It’s with you and your view. That we’re just a piece in your glorious Empire. If it’s so great, Sebastian, why is it made out of paper mache? How come Sean Parker left after that title match? How come you struggled to find opponents for the most prestigious belt in this industry? How come your arsenal includes moves to remove people from challenging you again? I cannot stress this point enough: You not only speak like you’re content to rule over ashes, you back it up with your actions and the results speak for themselves. You are the golden boy to an audience of one: yourself. Sure, you’re talented, SEB. Even pleasant, but you had to be dragged into prioritizing the XWF. You couldn’t be trusted to do it yourself. An “Emperor” I had to lead to do the bare minimum.”

“You wanted glory, but at the cost of everyone else. You don’t care about the XWF. About its history, nor its future. Your greatest accomplishment, should you manage to weasel your way back to holding this belt, will be ensuring there’s no 30th Anniversary show. You are content- no, excited at the prospect of being the catalyst for a future of bones.”

“They deserve better. We deserve better.”

“The XWF deserves someone worth believing in, even if they choose not to.”

“And you’re staring at him.”

“Because I remember when there was something more to believe in. Those two words, “I remember,” mean more than you will ever be capable of comprehending, SEB. Your idea of making a memory is getting your BFF to hook you up with a big PPV match in your home country. You think making memories is a business endeavor. Raising a percentage. You hang around the flattest, most chronically online people I’ve ever seen outside of Thunder Knuckles. Everything is metrics and engagement. None of it’s magic. None of it’s faith. I might not be religious, but belief is the most powerful force in the world and you’re void of it. You don’t believe in this company. You think it's a lost cause for a prettier waist. I don’t push back against you because you’re new, but because you don’t represent any real future, SEB. Now, it’s easy to want to retreat into nostalgia. To look at all the greats who’ve come before me. To think that the XWF should be only what it was formerly, but that’s wrong, too. Moving forward is embracing memory, yet changing regardless. What will the XWF be in the next 25 years? I don’t know! And that’s exciting and terrifying and a journey I’ll take with every hopeful who walks through the same doors I chose to.”

“But it’s only that if I slay you, Sebastian, and I’ve seen enough altars to false gods in my lifetime already. So, on the grandest stage in the world in front of an audience I expect to hate me with every ounce of being they have, I will beat you into the ground. Because just like at Leap of Faith, I’ll have to be fucking dead before I stop kicking out of your moves. Even then, I might continue kicking out! I’m fighting for an idea. For a memory. For a legacy. I have something to believe in.”

“And you just have two falls waiting for you.”

"You can't run from yourself."