Reach

I’m home, Dad. 

But the world changed while I was away. 

Well, okay, let’s be real here…

Nothing has really changed, other than me. Which I suppose is to be expected after being halfway across the world for most of the year. 

But now Seattle just feels like another city. 

I may be home, Dad, but I’m hardly at rest. 

Because whenever I close my eyes, all I see are the specters of my past.

Sometimes Beto, up in Vancouver. Sometimes Ioanna, over in London. Sometimes Rocko, back in New Orleans. 

Sometimes you.

The storm in my head continues to swirl. Continues to brew.

Continues to make me into something less than human.

And the scary thing is, Dad, that further I get into this hole… the harder it is to pull myself out of it.

All the same, I reach for the top.

“NEXT TIME ON… GETTIN’ SERIOUS!!!”

The bombastic voice of an announcer precludes an energetic funk soundtrack. We’re in a stock interrogation room, deep within the bowels of an unknown precinct. 

“THE BOYS TURN UP THE HEAT… ON A HOODED MENACE!”

Beneath a low-hanging light, Scott Hunter (dressed exactly like Sonny Crockett) is getting rough around the collar with noted D-class spook-jabroni, Reaper Green. Quietly leaning against the wall, obscured in shadow, Kerry Kuroyama (cosplaying Rico Tubbs) smokes a ciggy and quietly observes.

“TELL US WHERE YOU GOT THE GLOWY KENDO STICKS, GREENIE!” demands Scott with a forcible shake.

Yet the pissant in the perp seat stubbornly shakes his head.

“Up yours, Hunter!” he spews back.

Scott snags Reaper Green by the cowl and repeatedly slams his veridian skull mask into the table.

“You know what happens to nerds like you in the CELL? They get BROKEN IN HALF! And then they get broken IN QUARTERS!! Then EIGHTHS!! SIXTEENTHS!!! Then whatever comes after SIXTEENTHS!! They get put through tables! Chairs! TV trays! And sometimes wicker ottomans that don’t have much give!! It’s HELL!!”

Greenie groans in pain, but once again defiantly shakes his head.

“I ain’t tellin’ either one of you NOTHIN’!” he stammers. “And if you’re supposed to be the BAD COP here, then we’re in for a LOOOONG night!”

“Public safety enforcer.”

Kerry’s sudden and subdued correction suddenly takes the attention of the room. He pitches the dart and pushes himself off the wall.

“For the last fucking time, we are not cops,” he says, quietly. “We are public. Safety. ENFORCERS. The only shooting we do is shoot wrestling. Oh, and by the way, you got it wrong…”

A murderous grin forms on his face as he steps into the light and gives his neck a crank.

“See, I’m the bad one.”

SMASH CUT to… “Hunkett and Kurbs” strapped into the front seat of a Ferrari Testarossa, hauling ass down a crowded street.

“THEN, PREPARE TO BE TAKEN INTO OVERDRIVE… WHEN THE WINGMEN TAKE TO THE STREETS AND KICK ASS-PHALT!”

“Quick, Scott!” commands Kerry, pointing ahead. “Chris Chickentenders is getting away in that CyberTruck!”

“Not for long…”

Scott SLAMS on the pedal. The car tears forward. Hunter cranks the wheel, weaving in and out of traffic while Kerry keeps eyes on the target and works the radio.

“This is Car Oh-Sixty-Niner,” Kuroyama calls in to dispatch. “We’re in hot pursuit of a target wanted on suspicion of public gooning and illegal amounts of Jiles worship!”

He points again, as two workers slowly and steadily haul a loading crate of game systems across the street.

“Look out for that crate of PS5 Pros, Scott!”

Instead, Hunter presses down on the gas and swerves right into it. What follows is a spectacular and wholly unnecessarily explosion of expensive equipment being strewn in every direction.

With a scoff, Scott pops on the wipers and clears a smashed box from his view.

“More like PS5 Amateurs,” he says, in his best Dirty Harry voice.

SMASH CUT once more to… the heads of Scott and Kerry.

Strangely, their hair seems to be standing on end.

“AND LATER, THINGS ARE LOOKING… DOWN???”

The view makes like Fox McCloud and does a barrel roll, revealing the Wingman in their proper alignment. They’re upside down in a dank, narrow shaft, suspended from the top by cables of barbed wire.

Mere feet below their heads is… a TABLE…

On top of ANOTHER TABLE…

Which has TACKS on it…

And it’s also on FIRE!

“MWAHAHAHAHAHA!!”

Visible through a metal grate at the top of the shaft, the insidious MAGNUS DESTRUCTO maniacally cackles down at them.

“I FINALLY HAVE YOU RIGHT WHERE I WANT YOU, WINGMEN!!” he says, in what can be considered his indoor voice. “NOW HARDCORE DEATHMATCHES WILL FINALLY TAKE THEIR PLACE AT THE TOP OF THE WRESTLING MOUNTAIN, AND MAGNUS DESTRUCTO SHALL REIGN SUPREEEEEEME HAHAHAHAHA!!!”

Beneath him, Kerry reacts with an unimpressed yawn.

“Scott, buddy?”

Hunter looks to his Wingman.

“Dude?”

“Guess you could say things are looking… pretty serious.”

SMASH CUT TO… a beach, and a voice-over.

”YEEEEAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!”

Kerry Kuroyama and Scott Hunter are roaring through Puget Sound in a speedboat through a series of explosions in slow motion.

“ALL THIS AND MORE IN THE SHOW THAT BRINGS YOU NONSTOP THRILLS AND THE BEST WRESTLING SKILLS! TUNE IN AND JOIN THE WINGMEN ON THEIR NEXT ADVENTURE OF… GRRTTIN’ SURRRIURRSS!!!”

“Anyway, it’s just a proof of concept at this point.”

Said Kuroyama, in regards to the video playing on his held out phone.

“Supposed to have a pitch meeting with some VanHorn person from the ACE Network next week.”

Leaning in and watching along with a vacant expression was his cousin, Zack Daymon. Or, as he was better known to Kerry's Vae Victis cohorts, “Rocko's dumbass kid.”

“Patrolling the streets and fighting outlaw clownshit,” Daymon observed out loud. “With more outlaw clownshit?”

Sliding the phone into his back pocket, Kerry shrugged.

“Can’t really help what people gravitate to in terms of entertainment these days, Zee,” he said. “I just try and adapt. Anyway, we got a job to do…”

Zack nodded, and approached the roll-up door of the six-by-four unit. At this late hour, the storage facility was empty except for the two of them. The lock unclasped with the turn of a key, and the door came up. Light filled the storage space, revealing a small collection of cardboard boxes and the angular shapes of tarped-over equipment.

The sight of it left Kuroyama instantaneously struck with disappointment.

“This is it?”

Daymon nodded solemnly.

“Unfortunately, yes,” he said, scraping aside a layer of dust from a box surface. “What you see is all that remains of the Dojo. A couple weight resistance machines older than me. A ring so ate up by rust, I wouldn’t drop Teri Melton on it. Some other odds and ends, most of it broken or missing some hardware.”

He snorted.

“The worthless shit Dad couldn’t sell off before he skipped town.”

Kuroyama entered the space and dug in. The first box contained assorted sizes of black t-shirts bearing The Dojo’s logo on the front.

“You’re serious about reopening, then?”

Kerry set the box of shirts aside and opened another, finding a sweat-stained folded-up square of canvas and the tatters of what was once a ring apron.

“Gettin’ serious is what I do best, Zee,” he answered, flashing his cousin a smirk.

Zack’s eyeroll spoke volumes.

“Whatever… is this shit useable or not?”

A third box came with a label that read “WALL DECOR”. Inside, Kerry rummaged through a collection of framed photographs, and a few defunct championship belts with the names of their fathers still engraved on the plates.

His cousin’s assessment was spot on. Almost all of this was worthless shit.

“Doubtful,” he said pessimistically. “I’m going to have to start from scratch in terms of equipment. And then, obviously, there’s the matter of finding a new place to put it in…”

Zack clicked his tongue.

“Sounds expensive.”

Kuroyama nodded in agreement.

“Now you know why I started doing dates for DEFIANCE again.”

“I gotta ask, man… do you honestly have any idea what you’re doing?”

Kerry took a moment to consider his answer. He realized there was no point in denying the truth of it.

“Honestly, I haven’t the first fucking clue, Zee,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m just doing it. Because… I don’t know, I've been crawling out of my skin since I got home, and I need to do something with myself right now.”

Daymon nodded, deep in thought.

“Does this have to do with the thing with Beto?”

The image of a haggard, knife-wielding Beto Gutierrez approaching him on the streets of Vancouver briefly flashed through Kerry’s mind, prompting a shudder.

“Maybe,” he said. “I don’t know, that night was…”

He trailed off, suddenly realizing he never shared with his cousin the details of that experience.

“Hang on, how do you know about Beto?”

Daymon immediately winced in guilt. A telltale sign that tea had unintentionally been spilt.

Only then does Kerry finally put two and two together. The name subsequently spills forth into the world in the form of a feral snarl.

Wrathful. And wounded.

“Marina…”

The name hadn't crossed his mind in years. It's very utterance broke away a mental scab. Painful recollections bled forth, painting the walls of his skull an angry shade of red.

Fucking Marina Gutierrez…

“She called after it happened,” said Zack, confirming his suspicions.

Kuroyama was buzzing.

“She called you,” he said pointedly. “But not me?”

Daymon gave him a glare. A warning.

“You know why she didn’t call you, Kay,” he said. “Seriously, imagine how awkward that conversation would have been.”

“Zee--”

“‘Oh hey Kerry! It’s me, your ex-fiance. You know, the one you broke it off with nine years ago so you could focus on your wrestling career? Anyway, I guess my deadbeat brother tried mugging you, and you ended up defending yourself by way of putting him on life support. So, how’s your mom?’”

From the darkest recesses of Kerry's mind, words and phrases from a conversation long scrubbed from memory were clawing their way back into the waking light.

“How long can you keep going like this?”

“You don’t always have to live your life in your dad’s shadow.”

“I love you, Kerry. Don’t you understand that?”

“You were supposed to be my champion, Kerry. ‘Until the end’, you said.”

“Do you remember?”

“Kerry, do you remember…?”

He did now.

And its weight brought his ass falling onto a box for support.

“I need to get ahold of her…”

Daymon could only groan with frustration.

“Man, that is the last thing you should do.”

Kuroyama shook his head in refusal.

“The least I can do is cover his medical bills,” he said. “I don’t know what Beto was thinking by coming at me like that, but… I didn’t mean to beat the kid within an inch of his life."

Zack waved him off.

“Again, man, you need to leave this alone,” he said. “And don’t worry about the hospital expenses. We talked with Marina, and Leo and I agreed to cover it.”

“You what?!”

Rage flaring up once more, Kerry jolted back to his feet.

Before he could get a word out, Zack's hand swiftly came up.

“Kay, listen,” he began. “You’ve had to look out for me for years, and I'll always love you for that, man. But just this one time, let your baby cousin look out for you, huh?”

Kuroyama paused. And pondered

“By the sound of things, you’re going to need every last penny to get this new school off the ground,” continued Daymon. “Besides that, you have more important shit to be focusing on. More important than bringing back the Dojo, and more important than your 'gettin' serious' bullshit. You've got defense number three in Spokane, right?”

Kerry stared blankly into the pile of assorted leftovers stacked haphazardly into the small storage unit. The red waves of rage gradually receded from the shores of his conscience.

“Spokane…” he echoed, after a beat. “Right.”

The phone came back out from his pocket. He cued up another video and tossed it into his cousin’s hands.

“What, more clownshit?” scoffed Zack.

“Yeah,” replied Kerry. “Seeing as how you’re so concerned as to where my focus is, maybe you see for yourself. Be back in a sec…”

Kuroyama abruptly turned and left.

On his own, Daymon tapped the ‘Play’ arrow on the screen…

Back in the interrogation room, with the point of view now coming from the other side of the table.

The door opens. Kuroyama enters first, followed by Hunter, who shuts the door behind them. The two are still dressed like Crockett and Tubbs, only Kerry now has the Wingman Championship draped over his shoulder.

He hands the belt over to Scott, who immediately posts up against the wall and stands at the ready. Then, Kerry approaches the table

Slow and meticulous with every action, Kuroyama drops onto the table a manilla folder with the name “HARRISON, STEVE” printed on the tab, readjusts his collar, pulls out the chair, seats himself, leans forward, and smiles.

It’s the untrustworthy, conniving smile of a salesman.

“There’s no easy way for me to break this to you, Steve, so I'm just going to come right out and say it…

“ReVival… is not going to be a good night for you.”

He holds back a chuckle, and lightly massages his knuckles.

“Granted, that's seldom if ever the case for anyone that steps in the ring with me. But you, sir, happen to be facing a rare and unusual set of circumstances.

“The kind that don’t work in your favor.

“Bad luck, I'm sorry to say. Like any right-minded wrestler in this industry, you came to PRIME putting your best foot forward. And three matches deep, you've proven yourself to be just competent enough to rise above the field of other potential contenders.

“But in doing so, Steve, you unwittingly signed your own death warrant.

“You couldn’t have known this, of course. PRIME is, as you may have noticed, a rather large wrestling federation. And many of us here are all more or less too involved in our own respective bullshittery to keep tabs on everything going down. I don’t pretend to be any different, so I can’t really blame you for not being up to speed on current events.

“In the non-snowglobe sense, anyway.

“In any case, allow me to explain the situation to you… because I’m sure you’re sitting there right now, scratching your dome, wondering what it is that you’ve been missing out on.”

He snaps his fingers. Scott comes forward, bringing the Wingman Championship into the dim single cone of light bearing down on them from above.

“What you see here may be what’s on the line. But you’d have to be some sort of moron, Steve, if you honestly think this match is your opportunity at something better.

“Per the stips of this title, I vacate after three defenses and trade up. However this plays out, the reign ends at ReVival.

“Which means I’m not fighting to protect anything, Steve. All that’s left for me is to gain.

“This is the final lap, and I’m putting my foot to the pedal. The bases are loaded, and I’m swinging for the fences. The river card is about to be turned, and I’m putting all my chips on the table.

“Because if the reign ends, then it ends with a bang.

“Specifically, your skull hitting that mat.

“And I have a strong feeling that you, sir, don’t quite yet realize the fucking massacre that's waiting for you.”

He pats the manilla folder.

“Mind you, I’m not presuming this based on what I’ve seen. Rather, this is all based on what I don’t see…”

Kerry flips through the folder. Page after page after page listing off the various counterfeit and bogus wares found at IHOPS.

“Because nowhere in that bright and shiny table of yours do I see any fuzzy green KerBears, made in the finest sweatshops of North Korea…

“No exclusive Wingmen Scott and Kerry action figures, now equipped with Kung Fu grip and fewer choke hazards…

“No big green dragon rub-on backpiece tattoos that easily come off with a safe, healthy concoction of bleach, lye, and turpentine...”

He closes up the file, and shakes his head disdainfully.

“Seriously, Steve… you’re just leaving money on the table by not jumping on these ideas.

“Could it be that you just haven’t seen how profitable the Emerald Apex brand can be? Or, have I simply not done anything of note to pop up on your radar?

“For a so-called Vendor King, it’s disappointing to see that you’re not on top of your market. I sure as shit hope you’re a better wrestler than you are a hawker.

“But the good news is, I’m about to be a top seller for your enterprise. Because kicking your ass will make me the second man in PRIME history to successfully make it three wins as champ.

“And sure, there’s not much in the way of bragging rights by saying you’re the second person to do something…

“But, as Scott here wisely pointed out to me earlier today, I can always be the first person to do something for the second time.

“Consider also the fact that I’m undefeated in singles competition since Tropical Turmoil, and coming off of a hometown victory alongside my Wingman here.

“On top of that, this match marks the end to my first year of action here in PRIME. Can you believe that Scott’s been with me the entire time?”

He holds a hand over his shoulder, and Scott gives him five.

“Now, I’m looking at the rare opportunity to end a successful Year One on a high note, with a chance to catapult myself into this federation’s upper echelons. My stock has never been higher, and it only continues to climb.

“Suffice it to say, Steve… I’m feeling pretty damn confident in myself lately.

“And I’m not about to let it all go to waste at the hands of a bald-ass Billy Mays.”

He runs a hand through his hair. Because he can.

“In my home of Seattle, we have an expression for what it is I’m about to do to you. We call it ‘Beast Mode’. And Seattle’s Beast is hungry for your blood, Steve.

“Nothing personal… outside of the false advertising that woefully comes along with naming your business IHOP, while not providing pancakes.

“Because there are some of us in Vae Victis that take the denial of pancakes very seriously.

“Fortunately for you, being more of an eggs and protein shake breakfast kind of guy, I'll let you off easy by just stomping a dent in that shiny cueball, and sending you on your way.”

Kuroyama rises up to his feet.

“I’ve been climbing in PRIME for a good year now… and the Apex is finally within sight.

“I’m ready to reach, Harrison.”

He holds out his open hand. Scott returns the Wingman Championship to its rightful holder, who places it back over his shoulder.

“Are you?”

“What’s all that?”

Zack nodded questionably to the box cradled in his cousin’s arms upon his return.

Kuroyama walked by him. The whisky bottles within lightly clinked against one another.

“Emergency provisions,” he answered ruefully.

The container joined the other boxes of forgotten relics. Once Kerry stepped out, Zack brought the door down and locked it after him.

“I want in on the school,” he proposed. “By the sound of things, you’re going to need the help.”

Kerry nodded, as if he had been expecting this.

“Figured you would be,” he said. “And yeah, you’re probably right.”

Zack extended his hand, and offered him the key.

Kerry could see it was a gesture of trust.

“But seriously, we need to talk about Beto…” said Zack, as they began the walk to the storage facility’s exit.

Kuroyama sighed.

“Later,” he said. “Right now… I’m hungry.”

Can’t say I blame Zee for feeling the way he does.

It’s one thing to tragically lose your father.

It’s another thing entirely to be betrayed by him.

The anger I still carry in my heart can’t possibly compare to what’s in his.

I don’t really know what I plan to accomplish by reopening the school. 

Maybe I still long for what I left behind in London. Or maybe a part of me just longs to somehow make things right again.

Hard to say, Dad.

So much of my life has been shaped around trying to continue your legacy. But after this year in PRIME, I’m finally understanding that the only way to do it is by focusing on my own.

I admit, I’m going to miss the Wingman Championship. But this reign was only ever meant to step forward.

The path is clear, Dad. All that remains is my ascent.

Come what may...

I'm going to reach.