---

---

Mr Imperial had all five fingers of his left hang wrapped tightly around the throat of a man. He seemed to be in his mid-twenties, no hair and a little teardrop tattoo under his left eye. Well, his left eye was the one that wasn’t bruised and bloodied. The only one the poor guy could still look out of. Imperial however sat, mounted on his chest, breathing heavily. A few specks of blood stained his face, his eyes wide and almost smiling.

”Whu, wha, I don’ have wha’ ya wan’!”

Cracking out of his trance, he turns his attention to the man before him, his fingers squeezing tighter. The man under him chokes under his grip, blood rushing to his face and his eyes turning red. Danny shakes his head, laughing softly under his breath. He moves his face down, bending down and letting his forehead press into the man’s. The man tries to shirk away, but he’s too busy trying to breathe.



”On the contrary, Stevie. You have exactly what you want. You have this.”

Danny squeezes a little bid, feeling the jugular pump blood rapidly under his thumb.

”You have life, and fight. That’s more of a gift than I could ever ask of you, for that, I thank you.”

Stevie’s eyes begin to flutter shut, his pupils rolling into the back of the head. Danny feels the pulse weaken under his thumb and he relaxes quickly. Air rushes into Stevie’s head and his eyes widen and he coughs from the sudden change. Danny’s knee’s keep their pressure on his shoulders, holding him down to the floor.

”Were you going to fall asleep on me? That wouldn’t be polite at all would it?

Danny tsks and shakes his head, wagging his index finger left and right.

”Your buddies and yourself decide to come talk to me and now you’re going night night before I’m done having fun? I don’t think so, buddy, not tonight. Tonight, there is cause for celebration!”

Stevie’s breaths are ragged and harsh. He spits blood out of his mouth, splattering on the white shirt of Imperial.

”YES! Now you’re getting in the mood, paint me brother!”

Danny catches himself, straightening his back and covering his mouth with his hand.

”Oops, can’t be going around calling you that, we barely know each other! I’ll have to invite you for a circle jerk before we get that close, aye?”

The man is struck by confusion, skewing up his already brutalized face a little more.

”You fuckin’ craz man!”

Danny brings the back of his left hand hard on the right side of Stevie’s face.

”YEAH, you’re getting it Stevieboy, really get into it. I’m fucking crazy, you’re fucking hurting, and we’re all fucking entertained, that’s really the bottom line isn’t it?”

Danny wraps his hand around Stevie’s chin, shaking his face violently.

”Come on you little shit. Keep it going, scream at me, fight me, writhe under me until you just can’t anymore! Then just die.”



Danny throws his head back and laughs into the air as he brings his squared fist into the bridge of Stevie’s nose. He feels the cartilage give way under his knuckle, and the blood gush onto his fist. Sighing in joy, he smiles drunkenly. Looking down, he opens to address his friend again.

”I can’t wai-“

Screwing up his own face this time, Danny gets his face close to Stevie’s once more. Noses almost touching, Danny sniffs.

”Oi!”

Stevie lies motionless between Danny’s knees, much to our hero’s frustration. With another resounding backhand, Danny tries to awaken his newfound friend. The head rolls to the direction of impact, before lolling back to face Danny. Danny’s scrunched up face morphs into a pout.

”No… We didn’t’ even get to pillage temples and steal back souls.”

Almost as quickly, it shapeshifts into a scowl.

”I SAID I’M NOT DONE YOU SON OF A BIT-“

Danny has both fists raised in an axe-handle, almost bringing them down before he catches himself. He inhales deeply and breathes out. As his breath leaves him, his hands lower to his side. He pushes his body off the limp frame of Stevie.

”You’re no fun when you’re just lying there, anyway.”

Danny begins to turn away from Stevie, before he stops and faces the limp body.

”Can I get a kiss though? I’m about to go to war, I don’t know if I’ma see you again, sweetheart.”

He awaits a response, for a second, two, three, before huffing.

”FINE. Be selfish. Don’t say it was my fault we drifted apart.”

Danny looks down at his attire, shirt untucked from the scuffle and a slight tear in his suit jacket. His white shirt is a mess, redder and maroon than white now. Pulling at his waistband, which has some give, he tucks his shirt once more and smooths it out to the best of his ability. Danny clears his throat, and walks back to his suitcase, where his Hart title is propped up. Picking up both items, he turns on his heel to continue his walks towards his new apartment. The man he’d known for ten minutes, lying still, but alive, behind him.

---

”I thought we were one and the same.”

Dany has his phone in one hand, the voice of Robert main fading away in the background.

”I GAVE YOU A CHANCE BECAUSE WE WERE ALIKE.”

Imperial tucks his phone into his back pocket, shaking his head.

”Clearly I was mistaken, clearly I’ve wasted it.”

---

Danny turns the rusted brown key in the lock of a jet black door. The neon lights of the corridor flickered unsteadily, yet still illuminating the puke-green corridor. The once-red carpet under his feet was stained with everything from dried beer to, much to his disgust, the remnants of fornication.

Pushing the door in as he hears the lock move, Danny takes in the scent of his new apartment. The hours he’d spent walking over from upstate Manhattan, he’d called someone to come prepare the apartment for him. He was “on his own” now, but he didn’t have the time to go about cleaning some apartment, he was Imperial.

Yet, it still smelt like an old hospital, reeking of bleach from the cleaning that doesn’t quite takeaway the scent of desperation from the room. Why did he own an apartment here again? He couldn’t remember.

He put his suitcase down, throwing his title on a little wooden chair he assumed was for dumping the laundry on. A few more steps in, and he saw the small six by six kitchen, stocked with a single plate, bowl and set of cutlery. Open concept, over the kitchen counter was his ‘living room’, made up of a single futon and a coffee table that looked to be on it’s last legs. The futon itself was resting against the foot of a super-single bed, at least that had pressed sheets, and a pair of pillows on it.

”Not too shabby Imperial, not too shabby at all.”

”I don’t believe I’ve ever seen this door open.”

Danny looks over his shoulder, body still standing to the entrance of the kitchen.

”I’ll say this once, fuck off.”

Danny turns away, walking into his kitchen and waiting for the sound of the door to close, which never came. He grunts to himself.

”I will carve up your scalp and use your skull for morning cheerios, sugar.”

He turns around as he speaks, and he sees his visitor standing by the door, with his Hart Title in her hand.

”I thought I’d seen that pretty ponytail of yas before.”

Imperial grunts once more, tilting his chin up into the air and rolling his neck just once.

”I’m not telling you again”

He begins to walk towards the girl, the poor lighting shrouded most of her features. Her silhouette was about five’five, petite, hair tied up into a ponytail like he had his. His hand raises up, as he gets to her, pushing her up against the back wall by the neck.

”If you know me, you should definitely be pissing yourself ri-“

”Meeeeow, aren’t you feisty.”

Her mouth is curled into a grin, the tip of her tongue dancing along her cracked lips. Pushing her up against the wall revealed her face and messy uncombed hair, messily tied up. She had no makeup on, face slightly sprinkled with acne.



”Yeah, so maybe I’m a fan. Maybe I stalked you all the way from your fancy apartment in Manhattan, maybe I’ve been watching you shower for the last month.”

Danny breaks into a smile, easing the grip around her neck.

”Aren’t you something.”

She scoffs openly.

”Or maybe I just have cable and XWF won’t stop advertising it’s new Hart Champion all over the network. I live down the corridor and saw you walk past right as I was about to go buy some tampons.”

Danny’s hand drops from her neck completely, taking the Hart title off her hands and slinging it onto his shoulder.

”Out. Now. I don’t have time for your stupid little games.”

The lady laughs, a high pitched cackle almost, before walking towards the door.

”Thought you weren’t going to tell me twice? Also, you didn’t even ask me for my name, rude Danny, just rude.”

Before Danny can correct her for calling him anything other than Imperial, she’s gone.

---

Adjusting the camera with both hands, which seems to be his phone propped up on a tripod, Danny eases onto the foot of his bed. He’s changed out of his blood-stained clothes, which until he was taking off, hadn’t scared that girl one bit. His hair is slightly damp and hanging loosely around his shoulders, beard a fizzy mess and clad in nothing but a pair of grey pants.

”I’m going to keep this one nice and simple for you. Just so you can follow it from top to bottom without getting bored or forgetting where you were. You know, those are signs of onset depression, delusions… Dementia. Similarly to thoughts of grandeur and importance, so it looks like you have a basket full of symptoms, take your pick of the disease… Main.

I thought we were the same, Main. I really did. I thought perhaps out of all the crazy, sex-crazed, boredom-reeking, trashtalking sons of bitches that fill our locker room… I thought I’d finally found someone who would give me the entertainment I was, no, am, desperately craving. You showed me a glimpse of it during our rafters match at Leap of Faith, and ooh I felt my blood jump in joy as I flew off those metal beams. Finally, somebody who was willing to dish out as much pain as I could possibly want. I’d found him, someone who was less concerned with winning than he was with the craving for power and the fight…. I’d found my next meal.

Alas, you disappoint. As you very often has, it seems. The Main who beat me before I left, he was just a wrestler. Arrogant, self-entitled little shit who struggled with the death of a childhood friend and always had something to prove. That, was a carbon copy of just about everyone else here, Scully and his failed marriage, Caedus and having been touched as a kid, Trax and the weird experiments they did on him… You catch my drift.

I too was a different man, every glued to the idea of glory. Trusting the fates and forgetting myself, giddily drunk on my own successes and overwhelmed by the pace at which I was progressing. And of course, a chair shot to the head sent me packing, there’s a reason the WWE has them banned after all. You seem to believe you’d done it, when obviously my losing path started with Nixon who took my title away from me and ended with my match against Chaos, which I've rectified. Hell, even The Monster Htaed had me beat in my first try at the title. Nevertheless, friend, you still beat me, you still… Won.

I returned, conflicted but hungry. Ready to feast my way through the locker room. Through the pathetic little shits that had gotten comfortable in their seats, that had forgotten the art of pain and no longer wanted to feel or dish it out. Fools. I plowed through Chrissy and Jimmy, coincidentally tag champions today, and a few other scraps here and there. The LOF match was simply part of my everlasting search for the ultimate fight, and I almost got it too. I almost had the chance to fly, rip glory from the hands of another and watch as the pain contorted them… But you got in the way. Not by any brilliance, skill or real hunger… Just insanity and a petty ‘If I can’t have it, surely neither can Danny’ attitude. Not to worry, that briefcase means nothing if I still get to sate my hunger… I told myself.

So, you were the obvious next choice. YOU picked a fight with me, skidmark. You came at me when you’d lost and been discarded because you felt cast aside. Just remember that before you come touting your bullshit about having defeated me a second time. You haven’t even faced this side of me, Main, let alone defeated it. But you wanted to. You saw my thirst, you saw my hunger and you saw yourself in the mirror, perhaps a distorted one… Well at least I thought you did.

Now I know I was mistaken.

The only one that saw himself was the Devil in you.

And I believe you Main, when you say you dance with the Devil. I really do.

I realise that it is he who I want to dance with, not you… Not Robert Main.

You didn’t out perform me, you were thrown off. You didn’t outwrestle me, you out lumberjacked me, you didn’t out think me, you weren’t even thinking. And you fought nobody but steal poles whilst I fought in the air for the fun of it. Let’s be honest Main, Leap of Faith wasn’t your time to shine, nor mine. Caedus won the case, Chaos dangled from it. I had it in my grasp before tumbling to my fall. Scully used gravity to take you out of the equation like you used it to take me out of it. It’s uncouth to brag about a situation you didn’t win in… Unbecoming.

You see, the Devil gave you a chance at glory and you squandered it. What have you done with the power of the Lord of Lies himself? Got yourself a match against the King of Lies, Engy. Arguably the most devilish of superstars we have today and all because of the Devil you flirt with and what… You want to get rid of him? You WANT to go back to that boring ol’ Omega, with the gun fingers and the pew pew pew AX3 bullshit you used to do? You’re half way there with your hands down your better halves’ pants. Whilst he had his forced into the tights of another one of your old brothers. You three are all back together like some Frankenstein human centipede where instead of mouths sewn to asses, you have your palms sewn to cocks. Cuck.

That’s what you are now, you realize? A cuck. That’s what you get for fighting the evil gifted to you. You laugh at my loss, at the hands of Chaos, in the rumble… Where were you? I came in first, I got to fight twenty other men, I might not have lasted to the end but ooohweee did I enjoy the taste of blood in my mouth when I was done with it. Where did you find the testicles to bring the rumble up when you were busy trying to figure out how best to propose to your ‘brother’… I like the idea of doing it front of the clinic you plan on getting your transitional surgery in… It’d be awfully symbolic. Now that, that Sugay bitch is out of his life, he needs another hole to fill anyways.

A cuck. Who has to watch his boyfriend defend titles with another man. The same man who ripped apart your previous little circle jerk. Life is ironic isn’t it? Fate has a funny way of fucking with us when we don’t learn from our mistakes. You fight the Devil that brought you glory, you get a barbed wire bat stuck up your ass in the form of Chris Chaos.

You see, sunshine, I love where I am right now. Danny wanted to fight me off, but we came to a… Mutual decision. We stopped fighting. Now I’m free to enjoy every aspect of the opportunities thrown at me. Rafters match? Mine. Cadryn Tiberius? Mine. Doc’s Rumble? Mine. The lockerroom? Mine. You get it? I don’t need to win. I just win when I do. But every match is a new meal, some like Sunday’s, a feast.

I’m no threat because I want to beat you. I’m not a threat because I might even be a better wrestler than you… I’m a threat because you think you gave it up. I’m a threat because you’ve gone back to that boring old wrestler that lost his Hart Title, whilst I’ve evolved and embraced this new side of me that’s pleasured me more than any bitch… Or in your case, any Caedus, ever could.”



Danny shakes his head in disgust at the camera, lighting a cigarette and putting it to his lips.