The Blunderful Wizard of Straws

SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW

That’s how long it took me to grasp the quill of destiny and etch our name into the history books.

How long you had to wait before you could finally look down on your boy and be proud, seeing that you bred and raised a certified fucking champion.

And yet, we did nothing to commemorate the occasion. No big celebration. No victory speech. No after-party.

No uncorking of the champagne, for obvious reasons.

You’d think it was earned, after fifteen goddamn years of grinding, grifting, and fighting my way to get here. But not only would that have been a slap to the face of my predecessor, it also wouldn’t have felt warranted.

Although maybe it’s less of a feeling, and more of a determination. Based on repeated observations.

I hear it in the reviews, that go by with barely a mention of the new Alias Champion and the reign that will follow.

I see it in the crowd, in the homemade signs that still stubbornly acknowledge RIA as champ. Or welcome the oncoming reign of my first challenger

I can sense in that locker room, by the way they freeze me out, and look past me, and do everything in their power to let me know that I am not nor will I ever be accepted as one of them.

It’s a weird feeling, Dad. Knowing I’m the one holding the belt, but thinking that RIA came away from Tropical Turmoil with something even more valuable.

A global sense of respect. And acceptance, from the fans and the locker room.

A feeling that’s worth more than its weight in gold. And no matter how hard I’ve worked, it’s always been just out of my reach.

I walked away from that match with the belt… but there’s no point in holding it over my head if the world refuses to acknowledge me for what I am.

Until I’m in that place, Dad -- the place where RIA is -- until I feel that respect, then I’m not sure this title will ever feel anything other than empty to me.

But I’ll be damned if I don’t give it some meaning.

So what’s it mean to me, Dad? It means it’s less a belt around my waist and more a torch in my hand.

One that I intend to use to light a fire so goddamn big, the world will at last have no choice but to see this legacy -- our legacy -- for what it is.

The Alias Championship is just the first step in a greater journey.

And the only road I walk is one of violence.

IT’S A TWISTER! IT’S A TWISTER!

LONDON - JUNE 30TH

She stood in the open doorway to Kerry’s leased caravan, her rime blue gaze piercing through him like dual lances. Kuroyama, shamefully, avoided it by continuing to pack the suitcase he’d been living out of for the past three months.

“This wasn't an easy decision, you know,” he said. “I’m honored by your invitation to stay here and train at the Pit. Under the right circumstances, I’d take you up on it in a heartbeat. But I have to finish what I've started with PRIME. I just wanted you to know that I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for me, and I’ll always--”

“Fuck your false gratitude! You have insulted me enough!”

Kerry wordlessly kept packing away. There was no avoiding the unpleasantness of this conversation. In any effect, it was a guaranteed lose-lose situation, because regardless of his choice, he was almost certainly getting an ear torn off by a powerful, angry woman.

He could have avoided it completely out of Lisbon and just ghosting on the situation altogether, but knew he could never live with the guilt. It would have been the ultimate disrespect, after their time together.

She deserved to hear it from him personally. Even if it meant having his balls torn off in a spontaneous matriarchal rage.

Setting his neatly folded black tracksuit neatly on top of the stack of carefully organized clothing, Kerry found that only one thing remained before he’d be fully packed and ready to go…

“'Was not easy...'” Drakos mimed. “Perhaps it was made easier after a cheap bauble was given to you to keep you in line?”

He could feel a warmth rise up in his chest. It didn’t sit well to have it suggested that the title was something that could be “given”.

The belt itself rested on the small nightstand at the head of his cot, where it had been since he hopped off the train from Lisbon the other night. Now, he took it up in his hands.

“With or without this,” he said, holding out the Alias Championship. “I would have made the same decision.”

Refusing to see it, the furious glare To Minoikó continued to fixate on her wayward pupil.

“That is your decision, then,” she contended. “The pitiable existence of another clown in an endless circus.”

He delicately swaddled the belt into a square of velvet. It found its new place on top of the clothing stack in the suitcase, which he immediately zipped shut. All that was left was to lock the door, turn in his key, grab the next flight out across the pond, and Kerry Kuroyama’s European excursion would officially be over. Hoisting the bag to his side and giving the trailer one last look over, he turned to leave.

But Drakos wasn’t about to give up her position from the doorway.

He let out a labored sigh. “If that’s how you choose to look at it, then I won’t bother changing your mind. But circus or not, I will never be one of the fucking clowns. I choose to be one of the beasts.”

He remembered saying as much to his cousin Zack earlier that year, as a way of validating their roles in a business that seemed to be endless trending toward the absurd. Still, his metaphor only prompted a dismissive snort from Drakos.

“Yes, ‘beasts’,” she growled mockingly. “And you are a dancing bear, koutávi. Toothless. Domesticated. Neutered. Troy has enough ‘beasts’. The only use you have is in being her bitch.”

He could not restrain a sneer of reproach from appearing on his own face.

“As opposed to what?” he bit back. “Being a bitch for the Pit?”

She blinked, and pursed her lips. Kerry moved to exit, and she finally yielded and stepped to the side. Outside, a heavy rain was falling, turning the park’s web of interconnected dirt paths into torrential rivers of mud.

“I wish you could understand your value to us, Kerry” she said, low and quiet.

“I wish I could as well,” concurred Kerry with a shrug. “But whatever my value, to the rest of your Spartan squad of superfighters, I’ll always just be a tourist.”

The door to the caravan slammed shut. The key turned in the lock for the last time. All he had to do now was leave it in the drop box at the gate.

“I’m sorry it had to be this way, Ioanna” he said, turning back to his teacher and mentor these past three months with an apologetic grimace. “I really am…”

“I told you I have no desire to hear your pathetic apologies!” snapped Drakos, words dripping with spite. “Just take your gilded yoke of a title, and enjoy a life of toiling for your masters.”

Again, Kuroyama felt a warmth rise up in his chest. While it was fair for her to be upset, he’d finally had enough of her slinging shit in his face.

“...but let’s not pretend your motivations aren’t selfish here.”

Through the rain, he could see her blue eyes widen. Emboldened that he had finally been rendered silent, he went on.

“You live to fight at your best. I get that. I also get that I’m one of the few people in this world that can actually bring you to your best. Staying here obviously benefits you, but… let’s be real here, how does that benefit me?”

He shook his head.

“You tell me I have a natural will to fight. But if it’s my choice on how to use it, then I want it to be worth something. I want to use it in a way that can actually change this industry. And there’s no way I’m doing that by wasting the rest of my active years hiding away from the world in the back of some rotting warehouse.”

He took a step toward her. Defiant and resolute, she stared back with amazonian fury.

“Is that what you really want out of your life, Ioanna? Fuck, if you really wanted it, you could take over the whole world. But still you hide. Maybe instead of standing there, begging me to stay, you tell me why the fuck you’re so afraid to come with me?”

Slowly, Drakos unfolded her arms, and craned her head to the side.

“You think me afraid?” she whispered.

When Kerry opened his mouth to clarify, he suddenly found himself unable to speak.

All he could do was gasp for air.

He heaved, and folded in on himself. Stunned. Confused. Only then did he notice hands, balled into quivering fists.

Had she hit him?

Force exploded beneath his jaw, throwing his head back. Now there was no mistaking it.

A pained gurgle escaped him. It would have been a scream could his lungs manage it.

Only then, cutting through the veil of pain that wrapped itself around him, did the horrific revelation reach him. That after all these weeks and countless sparring battles spread across them, she had been pulling her punches.

Now he was feeling her full strength.

The blows continued to come, cutting through him like a corsair's cannonfire. His skeleton shook with every woeful strike. Unable to react or defend himself, Kerry’s body uncontrollably writhed and flailed and buckled.

The world spun around him. At some point, his legs finally gave out. He couldn't feel himself hit the ground, but he felt plain as day the wad of her effluvia on his face as she spat on him.

“Go home, koutávi,” he could hear her rasp, followed by her retreating footsteps.

Lying alone in the mud, pummeled now only by the heavy rain that continued to fall on him, Kerry’s only companions were the sharp aches in his body and the lingering misery.

He felt his eyes close, and hoped he would never have to open them again.

TOTO, I DON’T BELIEVE WE’RE IN KANSAS ANYMORE

His eyes came open.

Scott Hunter was concernedly looking at him from the other side of a large, round table with a map of the globe finally etched into its surface.

Then he looked over to discover standing beside him a man wearing a white jacket and a featureless beaked mask, holding ready a pen and a pad of paper.

“Steak,” said Kerry, without thinking. “Ribeye. Medium rare. And, if possible, could you just load it up with maple seasoning?”

Waiter plague doctor (for lack of a better title or nomenclature) put his pen to work, and proceeded to show him a one-sheet menu with ornate lettering at the top that read “Absinthe and Spirits”.

“No, thank you,” dismissed Kerry with a wave of his hand. “I'll just have a… cranberry juice, thanks.”

With that, waiter plague doctor bowed and retreated. Kerry blinked, trying to remember when he arrived in…

Wait, where were they again?

SAN FRANCISCO - JULY 20TH

Specifically, they were guests in the home of their friend and Vae Victis’ co-consul, Henry Keyes.

The lair of the airship pirate -- appropriately named Steam’s Progenitor -- was an odd, three-story townhouse that stood on a hill at the head of the irascibly inclined Filbert Street. The building’s fantastical interior was much more spacious than the outside let on. It boasted impeccably tall ceilings and alcoves harboring turning gears and hissing pipes.

It was additionally furnished with dated and ornately crafted pieces of furniture that Kerry initially found to be strangely shaped, until he realized that most of it had been made for their host’s pet tiger.

The strange machinery was tended to by Keyes’ personal detail of mute, masked plague doctors. They were initially reclusive, only coming out of hiding when the Queen herself, Lindsay Troy, dropped in for a quick visit. Since then, they seemed to be everywhere all at once, eager and willing to tend to every one of Kerry and Scott’s whims.

Near the table, a twelve-foot tall abomination of tubing, crankshafts, bells, and whistles suddenly spurted to life. Through a foot-wide slot, a dozen or so steaming pancakes spilled out onto the table.

“Hell yeah!” exclaimed Scott, scooping a portion onto the empty plate sat in front of him. “More pancakes, Kerry? Dude, we need to ask Henry how to set this thing to make chicken and waffles!”

Kuroyama looked over the piles of pancakes without emotion. The place was downright weird. And Kerry was staunchly the type of wrestler who made great efforts in keeping shit grounded in a certain degree of reality.

However, he’d also come to learn through experience it was simply better to roll with the weird than to push back against it. So he didn’t ask about if and how the plague doctors received compensation. He didn’t ask how the building could be fitted with an air dock, or how owning and flying a steam-powered airship would work in regards to American airspace laws. And he didn’t ask as to why or how their generous host needed an apparatus for producing an endless stream of pancakes.

Until he left London, he world seemed to be in black and white. Now, he had come to accept that this was the only world he had left to live in.

“You feeling alright, dude?” inquired Scott, in earnest. “You’ve been actin’ kinda funky lately.”

As it just so happened, Kerry had not been feeling alright.

The occasional memory loss caused him to wonder if the drubbing he incurred at the hands of Drakos had somehow left him brain damaged. And yet, the concussion protocol came up negative, and a physical examination revealed nothing was broken or failing.

He assumed, then, that the aching feeling that continued to haunt him was more mental than physical. Her personal vengeance, scarring him in a way where he couldn’t immediately heal.

“I'm fine,” Kerry insisted, wanting to change the subject. “So long as you understand this Wingman stipulation.”

Scott energetically nodded. His attempts at speaking invariably became muffled behind the mounds of pancakes he was busy stuffing into his gullet. Even so, Kuroyama could easily recognize the pattern of lilts and inflections in his voice to be saying something along the lines of, “No prob, bro! You can count on me!”

“Good,” said Kerry. “Because I need to know I can rely on you, buddy. Crash had my number last time around. And this time, there's something more at stake.”

Scott gulped down a mouthful of batter and buttermilk and arched an eyebrow his way.

“But, dude… didn’t you just order the steak?”

“Yeah, sure, I did…” grumbled Kuroyama, clenching his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose to fight off the pangs of irritation. “But what I’m trying to say, Scott, is that Jackson’s been on a roll as of late, and I fully expect him to be bringing even more of a fight than last time.”

Nearby, the Alias Championship belt -- freshly replated and reannointed as the “Wingman Championship” -- rested on the table.

“I may be going in there with this around my waist,” he said, pulling the title closer to him. “But honestly, buddy, I’m not really feeling like the favorite to win. So to keep this reign going, the both of us are going to need to be on our shit. I’ll handle the business in the ring. You just be ready to call for the break, but only when I absolutely need it. Cool?”

“Cool, cool…” Scott resplied, thoughtfully nodding to himself while he cut through his way through another stack of flapjacks. “Only, dude, there’s one thing that’s kinda had me scratching my head lately…”

Kerry sighed, and braced himself for whatever insipid question that was sure to come.

“Okay, et’s hear it, buddy."

To his surprise, when Scott looked up from his plate, his face was thoughtful and curious.

“Why’d you pick a stip where you need my help to win?”

Kerry pondered for a moment on how to answer.

“Here’s the deal, Scott…”

He pushed himself up from the table, draping the belt over his shoulder as he rose.

“Recently, I had to make a really tough decision…”

Slowly made his way around the table, Kerry inspected Keyes’ personal collection of engineering marvels.

“I suppose time will tell if the choice I made was the right one. But the thing is, buddy, the more I think about it, the reason I made the decision I made was because of you.”

With crumbs still falling from his lips, Hunter looked up from his plate and stared, dumbfounded.

“When I came to PRIME, you were the first and only person to have my back,” he continued. “And yet, all this time later, it still feels like you’re the only one I can really rely on. The only one in this entire company with the balls to go to the plate for someone like me.”

Coming around to where Scott was seated, Kerry set his hand on the shoulder of his one true “wingman.”

“I wouldn’t be standing here right now with this title if it weren’t for your support, buddy,” said Kuroyama. “Which is exactly why I want you to be a part of this reign. To be my faithful companion on this journey we’re embarking on.”

Kerry reached across the table, index finger finding California coastline etched in the surface. Specifically, their present location: the San Francisco Bay.

Meanwhile, Hunter turned in his seat and looked at him.

“We’re on a JOURNEY?” he asked in astonishment. “So like, we can do this any way we want it, that’s the way we need it, any way we want it? So long as we don’t stop believin’ and hold on to that feelin'? Where we going then, dude?”

Kerry’s finger traced the path up along the coastline, coming to rest at the Puget Sound.

Seattle.

Home.

“We’re going right to the Emerald City, buddy.”

Scott’s face brightened.

“The Emerald City! Dude, do you think the Wizard has anything for me in that magic bag of his?”

Before Kerry had a chance to answer, a plate carrying twenty ounces of steaming ribeye beef (and one small glass of cranberry juice) appeared on the table before him.

The sharp aroma of maple assaulted Kuroyama’s senses. Ever so briefly, the dull aching feeling that corrupted his body these past few weeks returned in full force.

It would surely be a long time before it ever left him.

Ignoring the pain, Kerry clapped his wingman on the shoulder. As he did, the machine spewed pancakes across the table like frisbees.

“I’m sure he’s got something for the both of us, Scott.”

FOLLOW THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD

I know what everyone’s probably thinking.

Putting my trust into Scott is probably akin to career suicide.

But what they think doesn’t compare to what I know about him. What I’ve known since my first match in this place, when the two of us met between the ropes.

His thinking may be bizarre. Absurd, even. But crazy as it may seem, it motivates him into doing some amazing things.

And I’m banking on the hope that the rest of the world has overlooked his greatness in the same as they’ve overlooked mine.

But they won’t be able to overlook us much longer, Dad. Because this is more than just a first title defense to me. It’s an opportunity to even the odds against someone who, in the eyes of the rest of the world, has my number.

I took Crash Jackson for granted last time, and paid the price for it. A necessary mistake -- one I promise I won't repeat -- to learn a valuable lesson.

A lesson that pushed me to stop acting like a champion, and begin fighting like one.

I needed to be embarrassed. Humbled. Left without a reason to believe in myself. Left to rot in the mud, without pity.

Empty, like this title I hold. Begging to find meaning to my existence.

I know that meaning now, Dad. I know just how to find it. That violent road is stretched out before me, begging to be walked.

And I’m following that road, Dad.

Your boy -- your champion -- is coming home.