Emergent Time

Pom Academy. Six weeks at least had passed since Tom Battaglia was last there, yet to him, Ayame Hasegawa’s room felt just as new as it had before Clash of Aces. Was the time between a dream? Two trans-Pacific flights, a treasure hunt, the apparent loss of a tag team partner, threats from two familiar fronts, did it really happen?

What is time?

“What is time?”

The older male voice asked from Ayame’s JBLs. At least the black lights and lava lamp were turned off in favor of natural incandescence this time.

“It’s the fourth dimension, right?” another voice asked.

“Well, yes and no. There are some really heavy-duty debates among physicists that say time is an emergent property.”

“But emergent from what?”

“Quantum entanglement.”

Tom could feel the blood start to ooze from his earholes.

“Have you always been interested in this stuff? Your Aunt Pom did tell you I barely graduated high school, right?”

“No,” she answered with a coquettish giggle. “Oba Pom only ever told us about you as a fighter. We can turn this off if you want and you can tell me more about my father.”

“WHAAAAAA?” a third voice, a more ostentatious sounding one, the only one of the three on the show that didn’t belong to a scientist, bellowed. “You mean to tell me that time is fake?”

Time. Fake.

FLAMBERGE on his right with a bottle of Zapp Scatino. Maximilian Wilhelm Kael on his left flanked by a reanimated rotting head and a grotesque homunculus of a herald, all three with a looming red ursine shadow behind.

January of what year?

On a podcast featuring two astrophysicists, the one who made the most sense to the Luchador was the everyman comic relief. Time is fake. It always has been.

Hasn’t it?

Did he still have his neck? Did he not go through that drywall? One glance and he was back at the MGM Grand addressing Garbage Bag Johnny. Then in a maternity ward watching a slimy infant being pulled out of his wife. Then whipped back to a marina in Darwin before swirling back to a foot planted directly on the neck of a hairy Canadian. Each memory flashed faster than the last, a kaleidoscopic whirl of strings vibrating in the cosmic goo surrounding the mind of one Thomas Francis Xavier Battaglia. His eyes bulged from his skull, glazed over like trailer hitches after an ice storm. Drool began pooling from the corner of his lip, slowly lurching down the side of his chin. The world was no longer a discrete place in the vast universe. It compacted in near singularity around him in extreme time dilation.

“Oji! Snap out of it!”

In an instant, the 13.8 billion years that rewound around him blasted forward into present configuration. He looked around and all he could see were the posters illuminated with photons generated from tungsten filaments, his niece, the picture of her parents, Pom, and himself on the wall.

“Oji, are you okay?”

“I…”

He looked at the picture again, and the image looked so familiar to him that he could remember posing for it like it were yesterday.

“I really don’t know, Ayame.”

-

Pom sat at her desk furiously typing an email. Life had finally settled back to a semblance of normal now that she’d come out on the other side of her bird war victorious. Invoices, recruiting, coordination, all of it leapt out at her in an ambush after she’d thought she’d finished with war. But it took a day back in the office for her to realize that war never ends; it just metastasizes.

Her focus broke at the loud rapping on her office door.

“WHAAAT? Come in, god.”

Tom slowly opened the door and meekly passed through the jamb, face pale and eyes bugging.

“I told you I’d come for you when…”

“Yeah, and you also said you were going to be done an hour ago.”

She sighed.

“Look, Luchador, just because your fancy company comes strutting into town doesn’t mean I stop running my school.”

“Yeah, you just stop doing that when you decide to make hunting birdmen your entire personality,” he snarkily retorted as he took a seat in front of his longtime friend.

And then it happened again. The room changed in a flash. It wasn’t January 2025 anymore, but April 2022. The Bang! Hardweight Championship sitting behind Pom disappeared. Newly earned lines on her face disappeared. And then the room as soon as it traveled to the past rebounded back to the here and now. Even more color drained from Tom’s face.

“My God, Luchador, you looked like shit when you walked in here and now you look even worse. Did Ayame give you drugs?”

“No.”

“Okay, did Kaori give you drugs? She’s on much more potent…”

“No one gave me drugs, Pom.”

Pom shot a side-eye before she continued.

“Okay then, did Chiyo have Peppa Pig on too loud again? Heaven knows that puts me in a foul mood.”

“N… no. It’s…”

Pom rolled her eyes and shook her head at her friend’s sudden loss for words.

“Spit it out, my heavens.”

“It’s work.”

Pom’s face cooled into solid rock. She’d only heard him refer to wrestling as “work” once before.

-

The time was 2004, early in the year. Aoki Uematsu, the Shogun, had just elected to go on hospice care. Kaori, still in shock over her husband’s death, still hadn’t held a public memorial for him, and the task of burying her father stood as tall as the kaiju over Tokyo in the monster movies she couldn’t get enough of in her childhood. Pom, still in the surreal bliss after her secret and technically illegal nuptials to Shoko Nabigata, fell into the bittersweet duty of memorializing a friend and a mentor while still in the afterglow of the sweetest moment of her life.

“Tom, I know it’s late for you over there but…”

“I haven’t slept much anyway. I wish I could say it’s because I missed your wedding…”

“Pfft, shut up, everyone missed our wedding except three or four people. It’s not even on the books here, but you know I never let a silly thing called the law get in the way of what I want.”

Tom chuckled.

“And I wish I could wish away the other reason why I wish I could be so worn down…”

“You say wish too much, Luchador. Live in reality. I still cry over Nob, and I’m going to cry over Aoki. But, what is it you Americans say? Oh yeah, shit happens.”

“You can say that again.”

“So what’s going on then that you’re not sleeping? That blonde isn’t keeping you up, is she?”

Tom chuckled again.

“I mean, yeah, but before, not sleeping because of that never made me tired.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s work.”

Pom never heard what they did for a living referred to as “work” before, mainly because the kind of person whom wrestling attracted never saw it as a job as much as they did the only outlet they had for their bloodlust and flamboyance. Even teaching at her ramshackle little school gave Pom such a feeling of freedom and satisfaction. She had to ask him just to be sure.

“What, A1E not paying you enough you need a second job to support you and all the condoms you and that blonde are going through?”

Tom muffled another chuckle.

“No.”

He went on to relay everything that the company was putting him through. The times they sidestepped promoting his title shots when he’d earned them through a tournament or a battle royale for more “lucrative” matchups. The harassment Marcus Westcott would levy on his girlfriend, soon to be fiancee. The constant rejection of his requests. The office even going so far as to reject travel expense forms. The feeble attempts at blocking him from joining Empire Pro Wrestling. Threats of legal action if he ducked out of his current and interminable contract.

Pom understood. She faced similar hurdles before she met Aoki, but never to the degree that Tom had mentioned to her.

Later that year, when Tom and Tam came over for the joint memorial service and final interment under the tree outside Pom Academy, she paid for the night of debauchery they all had in Roppongi.

-

“I thought PRIME treated you well,” she asked with a tinge of surprise on her voice, remembering to the last time he’d described wrestling as work. “What did I miss while I was wrestling the birds and dealing with your infernal hayseed of a nephew?”

“First off, I would love it if people just dropped the nephew thing. It’s…”

“Funny. You have to admit it, come on.”

Tom rolled his eyes.

“Second, no, this isn’t like the last time. PRIME is wonderful. Lindsay had my back when my brother tried to go Blue Lives Matter all over my ass, and I’m successful, and I even think I might have gained the respect of the greatest Universal Champion ever in the process.”

“This is where you Americans insert a ‘but’ that you think is poignant.”

Tom once again rolled his eyes.

“Thank you, Miss Omniscient.”

Her gaze was stony again, but this time less from concern and more from utter lack of amusement.

“But.”

They shared a sarcastic but knowing look at each other with eye contact.

“I feel like…” he stopped for a second to recollect his thoughts until the metaphorical lightbulb went off over his head. “Better yet, you know the phrase, ‘be careful what you wish for. It just might come true?’”

“Yeah, you Americans and your shitty, pithy little aphorisms.”

“Yeah,” he continued, ignoring her snark. “Well, I think that might be happening here.”

“I’m going to have to ask you to back up a little. You’re co-holder of the Tag Team Championships, and you’re about to embark on a tour here that’s going to land you in the Tokyo Dome for the first time in your life unless you do something stupid like get caught with drugs, which seriously, I stress, you’re nowhere near as slick as Kaori or Ayame with and will get caught.”

Tom rolled his eyes and mouthed “drugs.”

“What is it that has you so bummed? Unless I could have discerned it easily from watching your television show the last few weeks, which, I’m sorry, but I’ve had to run this school. Wait, you still are the Tag Team Champions, right?”

Tom nodded.

“Yeah, but uh, I don’t know where my partner is, and it was strongly hinted to me that the guy who took my neck two years ago around this time was the one who put him on the shelf.”

“Okay, okay, you need to name names now, the last time I kept track of people who defeated you, it was a quarter-century ago, Luchador.”

“You know who my partner is, right.”

“Yeah, the guy your kids tell me smells like if moldy cheese was a person, and that person rolled around in gingko fruit.”

“Yeah, well, I haven’t seen him since the last, uh, the only time we defended our titles, at Colossus. And FLAMBERGE, the French kid with the longest winning streak in company history, he not-so-subtly implied that he was the one who did away with him.”

“And what was the part you wished for again? I’m confused since all you ever seem to do is wish for things.”

Tom gulped hard and put his head down.

“No time for sulking, Luchador,” Pom barked. “The longer you keep me from replying to emails, the longer it takes for us to get out of here. And I’m not the sakura blossom I was 20 years ago, you know.”

“I don’t think I wanna go out tonight anymore, to be honest.”

Pom shook her head.

“Okay, chin up, tell me what the hell it is that has you acting like a shell of the headstrong idiot I know and barely tolerate?”

“I was almost glad when I realized when FLAMBERGE showed me the bottle with Zapp’s name on it.”

“Okay. That’s what you wished for then?”

“I mean, yes and no. I mean, I tried, I really did. I saw vulnerability in him, and we had some good adventures together, even separating from anything we did in the ring. And it took awhile to warm up to him, but every time I came home, or every time he left my house, I just felt more and more tired. And deep down, I wished that there could have been a better way to deal with this conman who wormed his way into my life other than just see the good, and I know that’s selfish and not at all the example I wanted to be for my kids or for any fans out there, but then in Australia, I finally told off Roderick, and that felt like a relief but…”

“Okay, okay,” she cut his rambling off at the pass. “You’re going on and on, but I don’t see what the problem is. Your stupid wish came true.”

Tom stared his old friend right in her face.

“That’s the thing. It didn’t.”

The unexpectedness caused Pom to contort her face.

“In a moment of selfishness, weakness, I wished for something that was making me stronger, making me a better person, I wished it away, and the Universe answered by sucking me back down into old battles, wars I can never escape. Not just FLAMBERGE, but the Red Army. Like, I’m back under attack this week, Max Kael, one of the devils who assaulted me back in Brooklyn. Arguably Ivan’s second-in-command, and wherever Max goes, you know Ivan’s not too far away. It just feels like spacetime, the gods, the Universe. None of them want me to break free.”

Pom rolled her eyes.

“Really? You think an unfathomably large collection of all the shit that has ever and will ever exist in reality is conspiring to make your life inconvenient?”

Pom mockingly frowned and did the “falling tears” motion with her hand under her one good eye.

“Oh fuck off.”

“No, you fuck off, Luchador. You do not realize how ridiculous you sound. Fate, conspiracy, you sound like a lunatic, and not the good kind that once sprayed lighter fluid on your chest and goaded Dragon into lighting it on fire either.”

“That was sick, wasn’t it, I was in the burn unit for a week.”

“Shut up! Don’t deflect when you come into my office and start babbling like a moron!”

Tom shot up.

“I don’t need this!”

He stormed out of Pom’s office, slamming the door behind him. Pom’s scowl morphed into pained resignation when she realized the distraction her friend brought to her was over. She had to finish that email trying to persuade parents of a young prospect that she was in fact done fighting birdmen and that their daughter should not go to the Ichiban Puroresu Nippon Dojo instead of her school.

She didn’t notice the feather that fell from the vent behind her.

-

As Tom walked down the steps of the academy, he was shocked to find Kaori, seated on the grass, leaning against her late husband’s headstone, knees scrunched to her chest. He ambled over.

“You always hang out in the graveyard?”

“Yes, actually,” she replied with a chuckle. “Nob and I used to hang out in cemeteries all the time. Peaceful. Just the right amount of weird for both of us.”

Tom nodded as he leaned on Aoki’s headstone.

“So is this where you do your drugs, and if so, you got any for me?”

Kaori rolled her eyes and shook her head.

“Number one, I’m not sloppy, and number two, why do you think I would share my drugs with a rude American who can’t even learn Japanese for his friends?”

“Sheesh. I was only kidding about wanting them anyway. The way Pom just talked about you in there, one might think you were one step from rehab.”

“No, it’s not even like that. I take, what is it you call them, psilocybin? They’ve helped with a lot of the bad memories.”

Shrooms. Tom remembered the last time he took them, and again, the bad memories started flooding back, overwhelming him in a state of distressful catatonia. He stiffened and lost his balance. The tumble over the gravestone knocked him out of his trance. Kaori shot to her feet and pounced over.

“TOM! Are you okay?”

“No,” he muttered, shaking out the cobwebs. He rolled over before crawling to the tree. Hyperventilating, he moved to one knee and leaned his arm against the massive trunk of the sugi hanging over the graves of his friends.

“I haven’t been okay all year so far. And I just yelled at Pom, and that’s why I’m out here, and…”

Kaori detected a whimper in his voice, and she bent down to put her arm around his shoulder.

“It’s okay, Tom. Why did you yell at Pom? Well, not that you needed that big of a reason to.”

The little jab was just enough to get him to assuage his burgeoning breakdown. He turned around and leaned his back against the tree.

“I was spilling to her, saying I subconsciously wished for Zapp, my tag partner, to somehow disappear out of the picture, and that the Universe punished me for it by throwing me back into old wars, ones I thought were settled, and she started getting mad like I was an idiot for believing in fate or the supernatural or that the Universe had desires and…”

Kaori sat down next to him.

“I mean, part of me has accepted that whenever Pom starts yelling about pragmatism that she might be right. Things happen, and sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason to it. Either the Universe had to be insane to plan things that way, or it had no hand in the matter.”

Tom looked up at Kaori, defeat written on his face. The reason he left the office was to get away from the truth, but it followed him out to the mini-graveyard outside of the school.

“But, these people who are continuing to nip at you. They must have their reasons, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“You say that you fell back into your old wars. Maybe when you beat these fighters, they…”

“Gonna stop you there. One of them famously took my neck two years ago. And the guy I’m wrestling the next show, well, I have a history with him, but it’s more of the guy he works for. He beat me pretty emphatically last year around this time too. I’ve made peace with it because it set me on a different path, one I thought would make me reach enlightenment, but…”

“Wait, you’re saying you have unavenged battles in your past? And those are the ones catching up with you?”

Kaori threw her head around and smiled devilishly.

“I knew it. I knew Pom was full of shit.”

“What do you mean? You were just saying her pragmatism…”

“You know my daughter is getting very interested in space and physics, right?”

Tom nodded. “I mean, that’s how this breakdown started.”

Kaori looked confused, her synapses not firing to allow her to understand how Tom got from that point A to the current point B. But nevertheless, she persevered.

“Anyway, she made me listen to this one podcast, where these people, they were saying that maybe everything that will happen has already happened, and no one has any free will. I didn’t quite get it, but it made me think hard. That maybe the universe does have a plan, or maybe it does things and nudges the people to action.”

“You are thoroughly confusing me right now, K.”

“I confuse myself sometimes. And that’s when I know it’s time to take a mushroom.”

She smiled wryly as Tom shook his head.

“Regardless,” she continued, “whether it’s you who act or it’s a cosmic force, I do think the Universe has an idea of where we should be.”

Tom furrowed his brow.

“Maybe the Universe isn’t punishing you,” she continued. “Maybe it knows you have unfinished business, and it’s guiding you there for some closure. Even if you didn’t start it, you’ll feel good when you end it, no?”

Tom finally understood. He nodded and smiled. Just then, the door to the academy flung open.

“Okay Luchador, are you done with your temper tantrum?”

“Yes Pom,” Tom shouted, getting up from his seat under the tree. “But I still think you’re wrong, and I’m going to prove it to you over dinner.”

Pom shook her head and rolled her eyes.

“If you can convince me of your nu-age bullshit having any merit, I will pay for your bar tab.”

Tom smiled devilishly, thinking he was going to get a full night of liquid therapy paid for out of this whole deal.