Post by Jet Somers on Dec 1, 2011 18:38:20 GMT -5
It's already been a long day. You don't have time for this shit.
----------
It had started well enough. A phone call from Robert Ooley to
discuss last minute plans for Horizons. You could never be too
prepared for the biggest show of the year, and you honestly didn't
expect this to be the final meeting of the week.
Imagine your surprise when you stepped into the board room this
morning to see the Director himself, along with the two women he
had asked to sit in for your missing compatriot. Taking the place of
Moss Edwards was both Roxy Malone and Hope Paulson.
You hardly could see the need for their input, especially when there
were the ever prevalent rumors that you didn't need a Pepper
Phoenix to confirm: both of these ladies were linked in one way or
another with various Entertainment Professionals. That's all you
needed, leaked surprises making their way to not only the ears of
your roster, but to the various message boards and e-zines where
fans would inevitably map out the entire show accurately before
Monday even had a chance to break.
As the Executive in title, you could possibly fight to have them
dismissed, but the diminished power you now wielded since Ooley
was fairly preoccupied with his Department meant you needed
voices to back you up on decisions concerning the rest of the roster.
Sighing deeply, tossing Ol' Bob a look to let him know you weren't
happy with this, you had no choice but to take your seat and begin
the proceedings.
----------
Scarcely had you begun to discuss the unprecedented proposition
offered to you by Abigail Knight for the Chaos Championship Match
when The World Heavyweight Champion himself had stormed in.
Your first thought was where had he procured the lush and
expensive office chair, which he was pushing before him. You had
just recognized it as being from Edwards' office when you were
struck by another surprise: He didn't even sit in it. Placing both
hands on the table, he leaned in beside the chair and began making
his demands.
He stopped every couple of sentences to turn his attention toward
the empty chair he had brought, but otherwise his speech seemed
like some epic oration from a skilled and overweight Dungeon
Master. What boiling seas, an army of undead, the corrupt Church of
the Sphinx, or human sacrifice had to do with defending his
championship in a triple threat match you would never know, but he
was beginning to sound like Forewell Boding, if Forewell had been
born in Middle Earth. You let him speak, though. God knew he had
had very little face time as the champion representing the front of
this company, and now he had seemed to find his stage.
His diatribe finished, he excused himself and wheeled the chair back
out of the office, remembering kindly to slam the door. You
supposed you were lucky he had remembered to open it at all
instead of simply walking through it.
----------
The motion passed for the Chaos Champion to go on with her plans,
with one clause you would reveal to her later. You doubted she
would have much issue with it.
Next on the program was to inventory the items to be included in
the Carnage match, and to decide why in the world you weren't
calling it a Carnage match again this year. The current winner of the
match is involved, and it could easily become one of the traditionally
largest matches in the traditionally largest show of the year. Ooley
gently reminds you, however, that you want the show to be called
Horizons, as if everyone is riding bravely into the sunset of the year,
not Carnage, as if everything is falling apart. Having a titled gimmick
match will inevitably lead to the pay per view coming to be known by
that match. The Heavyweight Championship match barely
overshadowed last year's, he reminds you, and that is the more
important match. When you point out that the Vigilante Match was
easily a much more influential and memorable spectacle, he asks
why there isn't a repeat of that one this year. The fact that his
Piercing Weapons are in the two biggest matches of the year for the
second year in a row isn't lost on the room.
Before you can begin the inventory, however, you are interrupted by
the most recent challenger to Tyvola's championship, Gabrielle
Montgomery.
She barely gets in the door before she's posing and slinking her way
up to the table, motions largely wasted in the company in which he
currently finds herself, the feathered cohort running between her
legs notwithstanding.
And so begins another list of grievances, the lady really going
beyond the impossible considering she asked for a match that was
already all but signed, and asked for it at the last minute. She might
as well have asked for the match to take place on the moon for all
the power you had to change Jet's decision.
You are reminded, yet again, of that fabled match against Travis
Roberts, that one and only favorite career highlight of which she is
fond of rehashing when her abilities are questioned... something
none of you had done.
Listening to her go on and on, you were certain of one thing: With
her expulsion from the Department, as well as her repeated
beatings at the hand of Crazy Opie, her relevance was fading as
fast as her beauty. Anyone with above-avian intelligence could see
that the pressures of this year were taking their toll her her physical
as well as mental features, and her effectiveness in the ring just
wasn't what it was during that one defining moment against Travis
Roberts, way back in, what, 1987?
Robert Ooley takes the defensive on this one, reminding her that,
under the circumstances, and given her unfortunately late response
to her Battleground prize, you had done all you could to accommodate
both competitor's demands. If she wished for Jet to be ejected from
the main event, well, to be fair, you could just as easily eject her
based simply on a first come, first served basis. He warns her to be
satisfied with what she's got, because if he had his way, she would
be facing anyone not on the official card in a dark match, and they'd
all be carrying Louis-clones. As her face crumples in on itself in rage,
he also warns her to stop riding Jet Somers' coattails before she
gets thrown off for good.
Boss P levels his weapon at the Director, hoping to avenge the
besmirched honor of his unorthodox love, when of all people Hope
Paulson speaks up, asking if Tyvola was still lingering in the hallway
awaiting our response. Seeing Boss P quail at this is enough to
almost make me want to kiss the young lady and appreciate her
presence.
----------
And now this.
You should have expected it, honestly, given the course of the
meeting so far.
You were just about to drop the bombshell on Ooley that you do, in
fact, have a close match to the Vigilante match. Because as of
Horizons, one cooperative team will officially retire as a team, much
as Travis Roberts and Declan Prescott retired last year. Small victory,
but any stroke of brilliance used to prove Ol' Bob wrong, even by a
stretch, is worth it.
You had barely wrapped up the ideas for the not-Carnage match,
however, when Jet Somers appeared in the doorway.
Now he steps in slowly, and you watch his eyes take in the
presence of Paulson and Malone. There is a momentary hesitation
there that makes you tense up involuntarily. Whatever he's
planning, he's sorry these two are going to be here for it. A glance
to the director, however, and the flicker is gone, and the Twisted
Ninja is back to business. He sets a device on the center of the
boardroom table that looks home made.
Your first irrational thought is bomb, but you quickly dismiss that
idea, realizing that Robert Ooley knows what is going on, and
putting himself at that much risk isn't his style.
Jet strokes a finger across the top of the gadget, and begins to
speak in a low, dangerous growl. It's easy to miss some of what he
says as the little machine begins to whir and hum, and you have to
really pay attention to understand his words. This is probably his
aim, as you have to reluctantly take your eyes off the device and
watch him instead.
The angry rant is to be expected. He was the first to ask for his due
by claiming the main event at Horizons. He is right that you and your
compatriots have repeatedly placed him in large scale matches that
involved him defeating half the roster. He is aware, it seems, that
this means that half the roster has had to suffer through these
matches of course, but unlike the rest of them, his success rate in
these matches speaks volumes of not only his character and
perseverance, but his fortitude, skill, and strength.
A hatch on the machine clicks open, and you glance over only to
discover that the top of the device is spinning so quickly that you
can't really see what made the noise.
Those qualities, he tells you, along with the ability to entertain both
in and out of the ring, are the reasons the HRD should be
representing this company with the largest chunk of gold that can
be offered. It doesn't take long before Jet makes you feel that to
have allowed Tyvola to remain champion for so long bodes little for
the company other than that the image of entertainment portrayed
is one akin to torture porn and snuff films. There are already millions
of sites like that pervading the internet; there always have been.
When you first started, you swore that the product you wanted to
sell was innovative and new. For the sports entertainment industry,
perhaps you have done that. For entertainment itself? Maybe not. Is
your streaming channel any different from some German scheisse
website, or some Iraqi live video feed of POWs getting their heads
blown off? Was that the entertainment you originally set out to
serve?
That's when Jet calls you a terrorist, and all hell breaks loose.
You barely have a moment to register the screech from Roxy Malone
and turn to see what is the matter when you receive a blast of black
paint right in the face. The little device is now spewing black lacquer
in every conceivable direction, covering all one hundred thirty
thousand points of the room as it sprays. You think to make for the
door, but Jet is covering it pretty effectively. Roxy cowers under the
table, Hope shields her face but watches with eyes narrowed as The
Wild Card continues.
Jet reminds you that all the way up to the point in which he decided
to throw in his lot with the Human Resource Department he
defeated and brought down every faction that had ever formed in
the locker rooms of GIW or UGWC including the Human Resource
Department itself. You may think the Human Resource Department
made Jet the most dangerous weapon he is at the moment, but
you'd be wrong. Jet's membership brought the HRD back from the
brink of extinction as Ooley allowed them to use their new weapon
to reap the chaff and cut the dead branches from the faltering tree.
Without the dead weight of Gabrielle Montgomery and, now, Johnny
Blake, the Human Resource Department has become nearly
untouchable. Jet gives Travis and Duncan their due, but it's clear
that he feels that the revival, if not more than half the success of
the current incarnation of the band, is his mantle to wear. The other
mantle he feels he deserves to wear is the World Heavyweight
Championship. And he reminds you that the tyrannical rapist king
you've made everyone bow to for the majority of this year has only
survived coup after coup because of the horrible foresight you've
had in placing multiple variables around him anytime he's had to
defend his throne, and those variables turn in his favor without fail.
As the machine whirs to a stop with the sound of a silver dollar
flopping around at the end of a five minute spin, you stare around
the room in disbelief. Plaques and posters on the walls are
unrecognizable. Entire cartons of t-shirts, playbills, banners, and a
ring apron which were opened in the last meeting and inventories,
are now ruined and will have to be replaced in only a couple of days'
time. Hours of paperwork are blotched and stiffening in the drying
paint. The four thousand dollar suit you're wearing now sports a
black bib that no dry cleaner will touch. Everyone in the room, Jet
included, looks like a drow coming in out of the rain. And the
Director? He's smiling serenely as he wipes his face with a clean
handkerchief.
For his parting shot, Jet tells you he still feels like he is owed a one
on one bout with Tyvola, regardless of the outcome of the triple
threat, and reminds you of the lengths he went to when you
wouldn't give him Fear at the beginning of the year. With that, he
steps out, leaving black bootprints on the cream colored carpet in
the hallway as he goes.
----------
You finally collapse in your favorite recliner back at your beach
house, toweling out your hair as you can finally relax. You had
demanded the meeting adjourned after Jet Somers had left the
room, to be reconvened in the morning so the entire last two thirds
of the show could be gone over.
You reach for the remote as you look at the towel, which is still
picking up black streaks from your hair, dammit. You sigh and pull a
pillow behind your head so as not to stain the upholstery, and flip
on the television. Like salt in the wound, the news report is about a
rapist, and you curse the knowledge the nano-technology will
eventually give you when you check into it; that this is without a
doubt Tyvola's latest escapade. The little man on the screen shames
the World Champion, UGWC, and you along with them:
----------
It had started well enough. A phone call from Robert Ooley to
discuss last minute plans for Horizons. You could never be too
prepared for the biggest show of the year, and you honestly didn't
expect this to be the final meeting of the week.
Imagine your surprise when you stepped into the board room this
morning to see the Director himself, along with the two women he
had asked to sit in for your missing compatriot. Taking the place of
Moss Edwards was both Roxy Malone and Hope Paulson.
You hardly could see the need for their input, especially when there
were the ever prevalent rumors that you didn't need a Pepper
Phoenix to confirm: both of these ladies were linked in one way or
another with various Entertainment Professionals. That's all you
needed, leaked surprises making their way to not only the ears of
your roster, but to the various message boards and e-zines where
fans would inevitably map out the entire show accurately before
Monday even had a chance to break.
As the Executive in title, you could possibly fight to have them
dismissed, but the diminished power you now wielded since Ooley
was fairly preoccupied with his Department meant you needed
voices to back you up on decisions concerning the rest of the roster.
Sighing deeply, tossing Ol' Bob a look to let him know you weren't
happy with this, you had no choice but to take your seat and begin
the proceedings.
----------
Scarcely had you begun to discuss the unprecedented proposition
offered to you by Abigail Knight for the Chaos Championship Match
when The World Heavyweight Champion himself had stormed in.
Your first thought was where had he procured the lush and
expensive office chair, which he was pushing before him. You had
just recognized it as being from Edwards' office when you were
struck by another surprise: He didn't even sit in it. Placing both
hands on the table, he leaned in beside the chair and began making
his demands.
He stopped every couple of sentences to turn his attention toward
the empty chair he had brought, but otherwise his speech seemed
like some epic oration from a skilled and overweight Dungeon
Master. What boiling seas, an army of undead, the corrupt Church of
the Sphinx, or human sacrifice had to do with defending his
championship in a triple threat match you would never know, but he
was beginning to sound like Forewell Boding, if Forewell had been
born in Middle Earth. You let him speak, though. God knew he had
had very little face time as the champion representing the front of
this company, and now he had seemed to find his stage.
His diatribe finished, he excused himself and wheeled the chair back
out of the office, remembering kindly to slam the door. You
supposed you were lucky he had remembered to open it at all
instead of simply walking through it.
----------
The motion passed for the Chaos Champion to go on with her plans,
with one clause you would reveal to her later. You doubted she
would have much issue with it.
Next on the program was to inventory the items to be included in
the Carnage match, and to decide why in the world you weren't
calling it a Carnage match again this year. The current winner of the
match is involved, and it could easily become one of the traditionally
largest matches in the traditionally largest show of the year. Ooley
gently reminds you, however, that you want the show to be called
Horizons, as if everyone is riding bravely into the sunset of the year,
not Carnage, as if everything is falling apart. Having a titled gimmick
match will inevitably lead to the pay per view coming to be known by
that match. The Heavyweight Championship match barely
overshadowed last year's, he reminds you, and that is the more
important match. When you point out that the Vigilante Match was
easily a much more influential and memorable spectacle, he asks
why there isn't a repeat of that one this year. The fact that his
Piercing Weapons are in the two biggest matches of the year for the
second year in a row isn't lost on the room.
Before you can begin the inventory, however, you are interrupted by
the most recent challenger to Tyvola's championship, Gabrielle
Montgomery.
She barely gets in the door before she's posing and slinking her way
up to the table, motions largely wasted in the company in which he
currently finds herself, the feathered cohort running between her
legs notwithstanding.
And so begins another list of grievances, the lady really going
beyond the impossible considering she asked for a match that was
already all but signed, and asked for it at the last minute. She might
as well have asked for the match to take place on the moon for all
the power you had to change Jet's decision.
You are reminded, yet again, of that fabled match against Travis
Roberts, that one and only favorite career highlight of which she is
fond of rehashing when her abilities are questioned... something
none of you had done.
Listening to her go on and on, you were certain of one thing: With
her expulsion from the Department, as well as her repeated
beatings at the hand of Crazy Opie, her relevance was fading as
fast as her beauty. Anyone with above-avian intelligence could see
that the pressures of this year were taking their toll her her physical
as well as mental features, and her effectiveness in the ring just
wasn't what it was during that one defining moment against Travis
Roberts, way back in, what, 1987?
Robert Ooley takes the defensive on this one, reminding her that,
under the circumstances, and given her unfortunately late response
to her Battleground prize, you had done all you could to accommodate
both competitor's demands. If she wished for Jet to be ejected from
the main event, well, to be fair, you could just as easily eject her
based simply on a first come, first served basis. He warns her to be
satisfied with what she's got, because if he had his way, she would
be facing anyone not on the official card in a dark match, and they'd
all be carrying Louis-clones. As her face crumples in on itself in rage,
he also warns her to stop riding Jet Somers' coattails before she
gets thrown off for good.
Boss P levels his weapon at the Director, hoping to avenge the
besmirched honor of his unorthodox love, when of all people Hope
Paulson speaks up, asking if Tyvola was still lingering in the hallway
awaiting our response. Seeing Boss P quail at this is enough to
almost make me want to kiss the young lady and appreciate her
presence.
----------
And now this.
You should have expected it, honestly, given the course of the
meeting so far.
You were just about to drop the bombshell on Ooley that you do, in
fact, have a close match to the Vigilante match. Because as of
Horizons, one cooperative team will officially retire as a team, much
as Travis Roberts and Declan Prescott retired last year. Small victory,
but any stroke of brilliance used to prove Ol' Bob wrong, even by a
stretch, is worth it.
You had barely wrapped up the ideas for the not-Carnage match,
however, when Jet Somers appeared in the doorway.
Now he steps in slowly, and you watch his eyes take in the
presence of Paulson and Malone. There is a momentary hesitation
there that makes you tense up involuntarily. Whatever he's
planning, he's sorry these two are going to be here for it. A glance
to the director, however, and the flicker is gone, and the Twisted
Ninja is back to business. He sets a device on the center of the
boardroom table that looks home made.
Your first irrational thought is bomb, but you quickly dismiss that
idea, realizing that Robert Ooley knows what is going on, and
putting himself at that much risk isn't his style.
Jet strokes a finger across the top of the gadget, and begins to
speak in a low, dangerous growl. It's easy to miss some of what he
says as the little machine begins to whir and hum, and you have to
really pay attention to understand his words. This is probably his
aim, as you have to reluctantly take your eyes off the device and
watch him instead.
The angry rant is to be expected. He was the first to ask for his due
by claiming the main event at Horizons. He is right that you and your
compatriots have repeatedly placed him in large scale matches that
involved him defeating half the roster. He is aware, it seems, that
this means that half the roster has had to suffer through these
matches of course, but unlike the rest of them, his success rate in
these matches speaks volumes of not only his character and
perseverance, but his fortitude, skill, and strength.
A hatch on the machine clicks open, and you glance over only to
discover that the top of the device is spinning so quickly that you
can't really see what made the noise.
Those qualities, he tells you, along with the ability to entertain both
in and out of the ring, are the reasons the HRD should be
representing this company with the largest chunk of gold that can
be offered. It doesn't take long before Jet makes you feel that to
have allowed Tyvola to remain champion for so long bodes little for
the company other than that the image of entertainment portrayed
is one akin to torture porn and snuff films. There are already millions
of sites like that pervading the internet; there always have been.
When you first started, you swore that the product you wanted to
sell was innovative and new. For the sports entertainment industry,
perhaps you have done that. For entertainment itself? Maybe not. Is
your streaming channel any different from some German scheisse
website, or some Iraqi live video feed of POWs getting their heads
blown off? Was that the entertainment you originally set out to
serve?
That's when Jet calls you a terrorist, and all hell breaks loose.
You barely have a moment to register the screech from Roxy Malone
and turn to see what is the matter when you receive a blast of black
paint right in the face. The little device is now spewing black lacquer
in every conceivable direction, covering all one hundred thirty
thousand points of the room as it sprays. You think to make for the
door, but Jet is covering it pretty effectively. Roxy cowers under the
table, Hope shields her face but watches with eyes narrowed as The
Wild Card continues.
Jet reminds you that all the way up to the point in which he decided
to throw in his lot with the Human Resource Department he
defeated and brought down every faction that had ever formed in
the locker rooms of GIW or UGWC including the Human Resource
Department itself. You may think the Human Resource Department
made Jet the most dangerous weapon he is at the moment, but
you'd be wrong. Jet's membership brought the HRD back from the
brink of extinction as Ooley allowed them to use their new weapon
to reap the chaff and cut the dead branches from the faltering tree.
Without the dead weight of Gabrielle Montgomery and, now, Johnny
Blake, the Human Resource Department has become nearly
untouchable. Jet gives Travis and Duncan their due, but it's clear
that he feels that the revival, if not more than half the success of
the current incarnation of the band, is his mantle to wear. The other
mantle he feels he deserves to wear is the World Heavyweight
Championship. And he reminds you that the tyrannical rapist king
you've made everyone bow to for the majority of this year has only
survived coup after coup because of the horrible foresight you've
had in placing multiple variables around him anytime he's had to
defend his throne, and those variables turn in his favor without fail.
As the machine whirs to a stop with the sound of a silver dollar
flopping around at the end of a five minute spin, you stare around
the room in disbelief. Plaques and posters on the walls are
unrecognizable. Entire cartons of t-shirts, playbills, banners, and a
ring apron which were opened in the last meeting and inventories,
are now ruined and will have to be replaced in only a couple of days'
time. Hours of paperwork are blotched and stiffening in the drying
paint. The four thousand dollar suit you're wearing now sports a
black bib that no dry cleaner will touch. Everyone in the room, Jet
included, looks like a drow coming in out of the rain. And the
Director? He's smiling serenely as he wipes his face with a clean
handkerchief.
For his parting shot, Jet tells you he still feels like he is owed a one
on one bout with Tyvola, regardless of the outcome of the triple
threat, and reminds you of the lengths he went to when you
wouldn't give him Fear at the beginning of the year. With that, he
steps out, leaving black bootprints on the cream colored carpet in
the hallway as he goes.
----------
You finally collapse in your favorite recliner back at your beach
house, toweling out your hair as you can finally relax. You had
demanded the meeting adjourned after Jet Somers had left the
room, to be reconvened in the morning so the entire last two thirds
of the show could be gone over.
You reach for the remote as you look at the towel, which is still
picking up black streaks from your hair, dammit. You sigh and pull a
pillow behind your head so as not to stain the upholstery, and flip
on the television. Like salt in the wound, the news report is about a
rapist, and you curse the knowledge the nano-technology will
eventually give you when you check into it; that this is without a
doubt Tyvola's latest escapade. The little man on the screen shames
the World Champion, UGWC, and you along with them: