Post by Zane on Mar 29, 2024 22:08:12 GMT -5
“Punto e basta!”
Italy to Donovan Hastings, 2024 (Maybe)
Italy to Donovan Hastings, 2024 (Maybe)
“Most people think this child is adorable because she’s being so adamantly Italian in the middle of her kitchen. If she pulled this routine at, say, the Pantheon, I bet the majority of people would find it far less endearing.”
“As of this moment, you are the little girl if she was standing in the Pantheon.”
He pauses, running his hand down his slightly graying beard.
“Let’s be honest, Donovan, you don’t give a damn about the Cross-Hemisphere Championship. You haven’t held or cared about it since August of two thousand and nine.”
“That’s almost fifteen years.”
“Fifteen.”
He says “fifteen” slowly, dragging it out for emphasis, his voice tinged with disgust.
“Everyone knows this has nothing to do with the championship itself.”
The only championship that’s ever mattered to you is the World Championship. This challenge for the Cross-Hemisphere Championship is nothing more than a tantrum aimed at making your “father” in wrestling, Phrixus, angry.”
He adjusts the championship on his shoulder, then takes out a cloth and wipes the plate off, causing it to shine brightly.
“Normally, I’d be smiling like the Joker any time you want to poke ol’ Phrix in the eye.”
He shakes his head angrily.
“But not this time. This time you’ve interjected the greatest championship in the history of this company into it. You’ve turned it into a revenge prop and nothing more.”
“I find that to be deeply offensive.”
His baleful glare burns into the screen.
“This championship represents tradition, hard work, dedication, sacrifice, and honor. It’s the workhorse championship of UGWC; and might be the most respected championship we have, dating back to its creation in Lock Wrestling. It’s been held by a ‘who’s who’ of talents throughout our history, including the current Creative Director, Deimos, Dave Rydell, our current World Champion, Alan Wallace, Lucy Wylde, Sebastian Bryce, Moss Edwards, Killian King, Tempest, and JC.”
“Wrestlers who enter this company know they can build the foundation of a highly successful career by claiming this championship and holding it with distinction.”
“For others perhaps, it’s been more of a Nightmare.”
Multiple points of light shine down, making it appear that needles are driving into the floor.
“Speaking of ‘nightmares,’ I do find it entertaining that this match was made by a man who calls himself ‘Deimos,’ which is the Greek variation of ‘Metus,’ the Roman god of terror.”
“I don't doubt that he’s memorialized somewhere in Rome. They were not ones to waste a chance to memorialize those who they felt directed the world around them.”
He smiles out of the corner of his mouth.
“That’s what you want from UGWC. What you demand.”
“Worship and deification.”
He seems to be moving as we can hear footfalls clicking on what sounds like a stone floor.
“You want to be seen as Jupiter, the all-powerful All-Father” his tone is understanding, almost sympathetic. “Others see you as Nefas, the God of Delusion.”
He shakes his head. “You’re neither.”
He looks up into the light.
“Careful, Icarus.”
He smiles devilishly. “I know you better than most here. I know that when you get fixated on something, when it gets into you like an itch you just can’t scratch and it desperately needs to be, that you’re closer to something else...”
“Therion.”
“An animal.”
He shifts the championship to his other shoulder.
“When you’re truly desperate and flailing for something that you absolutely have to find, this switch goes off in your head and you act like you have no regard for yourself. Like you’re the Toughest Man Alive.”
“You’re a tough SOB, Donovan. I know that as well or better than pretty much anyone, but you have your limits.”
He stops in front of a statue and looks up at it. It’s a matronly, caring-looking woman.
“We’ve been mortal enemies, cautious allies, and ever so briefly, friends. I’ve seen both the best and the worst of you. You give everyone small glimpses of how incredible of a father you are to Scarlett and Katie, but I’ve seen it for real and it’s more awe-inspiring than anything you’ve done in the ring. I understand why you wouldn’t want people to see it too much, though.”
“It humanizes you too much. It causes you to appear like a servant of Vesta, rather than Algea. Less the servant of Pluto, god of the underworld, and more of Bacchus. That duality casts you rather much in a similar vein as our own talent who’s always been at war with himself.”
“Holden Orson.”
There’s a subtle touch of scorn in his tone.
“That just doesn’t work for you professionally. People need to temper that image of the careful, patient, loving father with your ‘Lord of Pain’ image, a man with no conscience who’s driven by an obsession with making his enemies suffer mentally and emotionally.”
He nods his head toward a statue of a man with a scepter and key in hand, with a large dog lying at his side.
“There has to be that contradiction in play, that juxtaposition between the human, and the monster you want people to see. You have two rather substantial hills to surmount against me. The first is our pay-per-view match history. Let’s politely remind the world that it’s not favorable toward you. That’s not to say that you can’t beat me, because we both know you can.”
“But you’ve hardly been the Emperor of our long, bloody, and often misery-laden history,”
He walks, finally stopping in one of the needles of light. It appears to go through him.
“You’re going to hate this comparison, but I think it fits. You remind me a lot of our current head of HR, Robert Ooley. He too, is a former Cross Hemisphere Champion. He too is a man who hides a deep abiding love of inflicting violence and pain on others, a genuine dangerousness, behind a facade of buffoonery, and although he’s loud and blustery all of the time and you aren’t, those similarities are still there. He has his cornflower blue pen and ‘Louis,’ and you have “your cape and a now forgotten interest in trap doors.”
“Don’t think I’ve forgotten that.”
“Ooley is great evidence of the fact that just because one can hold a championship, doesn’t mean that one should. There’s more to being a champion than simply dropping a belt on your shoulder, or clipping it around your waist and insisting that people acknowledge you for it.”
He takes the championship from his shoulder and holds it in both hands so that the light makes the faceplate glean like its ablaze.
“You have to love it and respect it.”
“You understand this, Donovan. Just not about this championship. To you, this championship is a prop. It’s means to an end, not an end itself.”
“It needs to be theend in order for the holder to be worthy of it.”
His statement betrays great certainty.
“Let us keep in mind that the last time you held the World Championship and went on your ‘grand tour’ of facing former World Champions, who did you skip?”
A skeptical look comes to his face.
“No, not ‘skip,’ using that word is far too forgiving. You didn’t ‘skip’ me.”
“You avoided me,” he says tersely, sneering.
“You defended the World Championship with glaring display of cowardice. Why is that?”
A slow smile pulls across his face.
“It simply wouldn’t do for one greats, one of of the pantheon of UGWC, it’s ‘Mount Rushmore,’ which you more than definitely are, to lose to a talent who’s always been looked on as a second tier talent on his best day.”
“That simply wouldn’t do.”
His tone drips with sarcasm.
“You’ve never beaten a ‘second tier talent’ for the World Championship.”
His mocking smile widens. “Ever.”
“That has to sting a little.”
He walks up to an altar and places the Cross Hemisphere Championship down on a stone pedestal.
“Lastly, but by no means least, I still owe you for betraying me like you did. Yes, I understand why you did it, and I even find those intentions a bit noble, and you did apologize. But you took something far more valuable away from me that night. More valuable than what I’d thought was our friendship.”
His expression and tone harden, revealing genuine anger.
“Unkee Zane.”
“You took the unquestioning and unconditional acceptance and love of your daughters away from me.”
“At a time when desperately I needed that from anyone.”
“Again, I completely understand why you did. I can understand your fatherly instinct to protect them, but they never needed protection from me. I would’ve protected them with my life if it’d come to that.”
“There’s a part of me that still hates you for that, and might always hate you for it.”
He takes a deep breath, reasserting control over himself.
“Your motivations for this are nothing more than petty grievance. You don’t want the Cross Hemisphere Championship. You don’t respect the Cross Hemisphere Championship. It means nothing to you except a prop that you can torment Phrixus with because your old mentor has made you angry.”
“You can’t be allowed to hold this championship.”
“And you won’t.”
He leans back, opening his arms out from his sides, causing him to be blanketed in the light by the central oculus.
“Much like Nero is reputed to have done to The Eternal City, and as was once done to this very Pantheon, before you can be allowed to claim my championship…”
He snaps forward and stares into the camera, his eyes burning with malice.
“I’ll see that you burn.”
We hear a match strike and the final image is of Zane’s maniacal eyes lit by the flickering flamelight.
2013, '18, '23 
2013 
