Hunting for VVild Goat

🐐

“SHUCKS!!”

The doors to Erik Black’s executive office flew open.

Wide-eyed and blubbering, the man himself spilled out into the reception area like human effluvia jettisoned from the figurative congested nostril of his downtown Indianapolis skyscraper.

“KATALINA DENNINGUEZ…” he barked toward the receptionist desk. “CALL SECURITY!!”

Much to his horror, he discovered the desk standing empty. The buxom, full-lipped, curly-haired brunette he had specially imported from Venezuela was nowhere to be found.

“What the HECK is GOING ON HERE?!” he barked in exasperation.

“What’s wrong, dipshit?” a voice ominously called from the room behind him.

Kerry Kuroyama gently pushed his way through the office doors to follow him out, sarcastically shaking his head in pity.

“Your secretary cut out early?”

Bursting out after him came RIA Lockhart, with a less-than-kind smirk on her face.

“Guess that’s what happens when you hire them based on their looks instead of their skills!”

She cranked her neck and lightly bounced the business-end of a baseball bat into her open palm.

The founder and CEO of the bafflingly-named Kuroyama And Black Athletic Legion (no relation to Kerry, it should be stressed) turned as pallid as the pearl white suit he was wearing.

“WHOOOOOOOAAAAASHUCKS!!” uttered Black, fleeing for his life.

🐉

“I gotta hand it to Ami,” said Kerry. “This ‘team building’ exercise she suggested is a pretty solid idea.”

Walking alongside him, the Rainbow Riot nodded in agreement.

“She’s good like that,” RIA observed. “Though I’m surprised ya didn’t think of doing this sooner.”

Kerry shrugged. “Honestly, I didn’t think it would be as simple as just walking in and swinging a bat around. But… yeah. Should’ve nipped this in the bud long ago. I’ve reached my limit with all the asshole henchmen being sent after me.”

They followed the hallway in the direction Black had last been seen, taking their time as they walked along.

Like predators, savoring the hunt.

Lockhart chuckled low in her throat. “Yeah… better to straighten this bitch out now than have some ninjas or vikings or whatever fucking with your shit at Ascension.”

“Exactly,” Kerry concurred. “The important thing for me right now is to get back to form and focus on what matters. Like getting ready for the Anglo Luchador…”

“Yeah?” RIA responded, glancing at him thoughtfully. “On that note, there a reason why ya snubbed him on the handshake?”

The Five Star Champion groaned. In his mind’s eye, he could still recall that first dance with the Last Son of Tenochtitlan back at ReVival 44 as clear as day.

The loss alone had been a blow to his confidence. But the memory of the scorn and contempt in Tom Battaglia’s blue eyes as he shook his head in cold refusal hurt more than anything else.

“He had the chance to shake my hand last year,” he grumbled. “But since he was apprently too good for it then, I don't see any reason to give him the honor now.”

“Okay… so you felt slighted,” scoffed the Psychoberry. “And that’s enough to hold onto a grudge for a whole-ass year?”

Kerry's face flushed, suddenly feeling very called out. Thousands of miles away, back in Seattle, he could practically hear the tell-tale buzz of the Salty Bitch Detector.

“It’s... complicated,” he said. “Getting rejected by a guy I looked up to as a hero when I was younger just... felt like a slap to the face. Like I was nothing to him but an extension of Stainslob, because of that War Games bullshit. Would've loved to have been with him on Team Good Guys, but what can I say? I guess they needed room for future stars like Adam Ellis and Dabney Doubleday...”

“That whole situation was fucked,” said RIA, shaking her head. “But quitting had to cross your mind at some point.”

True, the option to walk was always there.

Yet even knowing that, he chose not to.

“And where did that get you?” probed that internalized voice of his late father from within.

What it got him was a brief, almost forgettable appearance in the feature attraction of last year's Culture Shock, fighting a losing effort alongside a ramshackle team of random assholes.

“Yeah, I probably should have quit…” Kerry begrudgingly admitted. “Guess I figured at the time it was better to be on any team than no team at all. But... hindsight’s twenty-twenty, as they say.”

“I mean, I had my problems with Tom a few years back,” Lockhart went on. “He can be an ass. But his heart is usually in the right place. You sure that snub matters that much to you?”

Kuroyama shook his head indifferently. “All that really matters now is that he’s the next one gunning for my stars. Regardless of how either of us feel about the other, the end result is the same: His head, smacking the mat. And some lucky chiropractor in Philadelphia getting the biggest payday of his life.

“That’s the spirit!” said RIA, slapping him on the shoulder. “By the way, I’m not trynna judge ya or anything. Just don’t want ya to lose focus.”

Around the corner ahead of them, Erik Black’s squawked panic could be heard.

Wearing matching smiles, they picked up the pace.

🐐

“FRICKING ROCKO!!”

Black's voice rasped in terror.

He stood before the bank of elevators, both index fingers frantically tapping the call button.

“You told me you FIXED THESE!!”

Just then, his pursuers then rounded the corner.

Leather quietly crackled as RIA squeezed down harder on the grip of her bat.

Kuroyama calmly cleared his throat to signal their approach.

Time had run out. Desperate, Black turned and bolted up the nearby flight of stairs.

“SHUCKS-SHUCKS-SHEEEYUUUUCKS!!!”

🌈

Watching the man in white scramble up the steps in a way his former self would have if he were told there was a pound of free weed at the top prompted Kerry and RIA to exchange looks and trade smiles.

Then, quite conveniently, the elevator doors slid open.

Kuroyama gestured toward the empty car, and Lockhart graciously entered first.

“Speaking of holding grudges…” said Kerry, joining her inside. “What's going on again between you and Nate? I thought he was cool.”

Lockhart sighed and pushed her hair back.

She had known the subject would come up at some point, yet couldn't help but feel a mild sense of dread towards talking about it.

The Colton Complex.

No doubt, she had plenty of reasons to be pissed off about the state of things as of late. And while she made many efforts not to direct those negative emotions toward anyone who didn’t deserve it, Nate’s recent behavior made for an easy target to cast the blame.

Even then, the Psychoberry knew the truth: This wasn’t all on the New Diamond. A history of putting a number of people upon pedestals had taught her the importance of learning to shoulder her own share of the blame.

The past couple years in PRIME had brought about a series of eye-opening events. People retired. Some altered their thinking, and even took extreme actions to show off their “new and improved” mentalities.

Time moves on and so do people, she told herself. A cruel reminder to her emotions that no one person is infallible.

The time of seeing others -- wrestlers, especially -- as “better than” was over.

She held a twofold mentally towards that. In one part, there would be no more feeling let down by those that didn't concern themselves with how she felt; that was a treatment that she never felt entitled to anyway.

In the other, there was the unresolved matter of rebuilding her self-confidence.

“Like you said…” she began, pressing the button to go up. “It's complicated.”

The doors slid shut, and the elevator car began to rise.

“Nate still seems to be pining over an ex,” continued the Rainbow Riot. “He swears I don't know the full story… and maybe I don't. Regardless, he hurt Kohime. So now I'm gonna hurt him.”

He raised her bat into the face of the Five Star Champion.

“Keep that in mind, in case ya think of doing anything to hurt Ami!” she said, flashing him a wry smirk accompanied with a daring glare.

Kerry’s crossed eyes honed in thoughtfully on the tip of the bat's blunt end, mere inches from his nose. Then, with a chuckle, he gently pushed it aside.

“Heh… noted,” he replied. “Look, I’m not saying you’re not somewhat justified to be angry by all that. But by your own admission, you don’t have the full story here.”

“What would it change, Ker!?” she countered, throwing her arms into the air. “‘Oh, I do love Kohime, even though this other chick still has my heart but HEY, it's totally okay because I’m being HONEST about it!’ Nah, fuck that…”

🐐

“WHERE the HECK IS EVERYBODY?!”

Gasping and red-faced, Black burst through the stairwell door and spilled out into the building’s unfinished top floor.

“I TOLD these SCABS that the SATURDAY SHIFTS were MANDATORY!!”

Wheezing for air and desperate for a moment at reprieve, he desperately scanned the sprawl of abandoned workstations and dust-covered construction equipment for a viable hiding spot.

Regrettably, the only thing he could immediately notice…

“OHGOSHDARNIT!!!”

…was the lit-up floor indicator over the nearby elevator, signalling that it was coming up to his level.

His head frantically whipped left and right, while his cartoonishly bugged-out eyes searched for an out.

That's when he saw it…

SALVATION.

🌈

With a light and melodic DING, the elevator doors whooshed open.

The two wrestlers stepped out into a floor that looked permanently frozen in a state of ongoing renovations. Kuroyama looked right while RIA glanced to the left, only to find no sign of the man in white.

“I liked Nate,” said RIA pointedly, continuing the conversation from the ride up. “And I respected him! And a part of me still wants to believe he's a good guy… but THIS motherfucker gets held up by all the others as a ‘GREAT’ guy, and now I've lost faith in that! So even if it ain't to the same level as ‘Hime, he hurt me too!”

Kerry sighed, understanding her anger, but finding himself unsure how to respond.

“People are going to stick to their perceptions,” he reasoned. “Even when they're wrong.”

The Rainbow Riot flashed her killer’s smile.

“Kinda like us?” she suggested, probing his ribs with her elbow. “Shit, there was a while there where we hated each other’s guts! But now? We’re regular peas in a POD, KerBear!”

“Yeah… it’s amazing how much two people can change after they beat the hell out of one another in a ring,” he replied with a light smile. “But, even then, sometimes a person’s perception can be right. And Nate? Okay, maybe he’s not as infallible as everyone else chooses to see him. All the same, aren’t you worried about pushing yourself too hard here?”

“Dude, I'll be honest…” Lockhart said, a softness creeping into her voice. “There's more to it.”

“Then why not just lay those cards out on the table? I mean…”

Kuroyama gestured vaguely around the seemingly uninhabited top floor of the KABAL skyscraper.

“...it’s not like we don’t have time to kill.”

Remembering what it was they came to do, the Psychoberry grunted, and immediately let her impatience be known by way of a one-handed swing of her bat, busting apart nearby drafting table with an ear-splitting CRACK!

“COME OUT, COME OUT, WHEREVER YOU ARE, BITCH!!” she snarled.

Kerry shook his head at this outburst.

“RIA… sorry to say this, but you’re being too emotional right now.”

Lockhart blinked a few times and tilted her head. As if the very notion of there being a “too emotional” was a foreign concept.

“Yeah… AND??”

Suspiciously eyeing the bat held tight in her unpredictable grip, Kuroyama threw up his hands in an effort to quickly walk back on the situation.

“Look, I get it…” he said in a tone that was somber, even though the slightest bit of a smirk played on his lips. “We’re all devastated by the news of Werner Herzog’s passing, but that’s no reason to be flying off the handle.”

Literally not more than five feet away from where they were standing, the lid flung off the top of a large waste basket.

Like a manic whack-a-mole, Erik Black’s head popped out, shock and horror caked on his face and a banana peel splayed out on top of his head.

“Hang on, HE’S DEAD?!”

A pause.

An expression of dread formed itself on the former punk rock wrestler’s face upon realizing he had just given away his position.

“Ooooohhhhh SHUCKS!”

Lockhart charged, her bat slamming against the garbage can before the master of Capitalist sleaze even had a chance to free himself.

Unbalanced, the trashcan tumbled over, spilling both Black and its contents across the floor.

“AAAAHH!!”

Like a beetle on its back, Erik desperately clawed at the ground, his legs spastically trying to push his way forward.

In a flash, Kuroyama took hold of an ankle. Dropping the bat, RIA rushed over to his side and grabbed the other.

“GUYS-GUYS-GUYS, HEY NOW, C’MON, LET’S TALK IT OUT HERE!!”

Black continued to sputter, struggle, and wiggle as the Vae Victis duo dragged him off, only for his efforts to be in vain.

Escape was no longer an option for the erstwhile “Escape Artist”.

🐉

“HEY LOOK NOW, GUYS, JUST LISTEN TO ME HERE! Now I KNOW we’ve had our differences… but BELIEVE ME, we can WORK THIS OUT!”

Black dangled before them, strung upside down by his rope-bound ankles hooked across a leftover construction pulley.

“Where is the TRUST here, you guys?!” squealed the man in white as he continued to flail in an effort to free himself. “KERRY! COME ON, buddy, you and I go WAY back! Together, we can TOTALLY take care of this pesky yakuza problem! And RIA! BABY! DARLING! You know you’ve ALWAYS HAD MY SUPPORT! And if you could just see it in your heart to LET ME GO and FORGET ABOUT ALL THIS, then I PROMISE that I’ll--”

The heel of Kerry’s boot parking itself between his endlessly flapping gums to finally shut him up.

“Hey, you mind giving us a minute here?” he rather calmly asked of the man in white. “We were in the middle of a conversation.”

He motioned for RIA to continue from where she left off.

“Okay, think back to when we hated each other's guts,” she began. “I knew you were a badass going into things, and you showed that. But do you remember your initial thoughts and approach towards me?”

Kuroyama grimaced. Much like recalling the Anglo Luchador’s rejection of his handshake offer, thinking back to that time was nothing short of an unpleasant experience.

“You may not like what you have to say,” said the voice from within. “But you owe it to her to be honest.”

Swallowing hard, he answered from the heart.

“Yeah,” he said, his face darkening with shame. “I… treated you like a joke. Just another novelty garbage wrestling act.”

Obviously, things were different now. So much had changed in a year. Within the world around him, and within himself.

The truth of it was, he looked back on their Alias Title battle back in Lisbon as the turning point of his PRIME trajectory. Not simply by winning the championship, but by being put through a baptism of pain and passion.

He realized how narrow-sighted he had been back then. How she was a true warrior in the ring, constantly fighting under conditions against her best interest. Even in defeat, she won his respect.

And in doing so, gifted him the most valuable lesson of his career.

“I can ASSURE YOU, RIA…” interjected the upended Black, still wriggling before them like a worm on a hook. “I NEVER ONCE thought you were a JOKE! IN FACT, if YOU RECALL, I--”

RIA glared at the former Rezin, huffed, and gave her bat a hefty swing.

It crashed against Erik Black’s ribs with a satisfying thwack, causing air to audibly rush out of his lungs.

“PFWAUGGHH!!”

Her anger-filled eyes stayed on him while she shook the bat into his face.

“SHUT UP, bitch!” she scolded. “We’re having a conversation here!”

She quickly turned back to Kerry.

“That’s what I'm getting at,” she said, insistently. “All I am to most people is just another ‘deathmatch’ act... but I don't feel like I'm respected enough as a serious wrestler! I mean, yeah, maybe I am a bit at home in the extreme… but all the same, after doing this for almost fifteen years, I still haven’t stopped growing! Even if not by leaps and bounds, I still feel that I'm one of the best female wrestlers around! Not just in PRIME, but on the planet!”

“YEEAAAAHHH, you GO GIRL!” cheered Black in yet another feckless, last ditch effort to win over their forgiveness. “We are all PROUD and INSPIRED by your COURAGE to GROW PAST that GARBAGE WRESTLING NONSENSE and FINALLY FOCUS ON--B’HOOOFFF!!”

Kuroyama grunted as his boot found the ribs opposite of the ones RIA had assaulted earlier.

“Dude, seriously… you need to SHUT UP right now.”

Kerry turned back to the Rainbow Riot.

“So, what you're saying is, you feel overlooked…”

The Psychoberry smirked before giving the Emerald Apex a gentle elbow to his arm.

Despite the brief rivalry the two had engaged in, RIA had been playfully casual with Kerry for a while now. Respect had been earned and shared between the two.

“You know a thing or two about that, right?” she stated.

“Damn right I do,” said Kerry with an agreeable nod. “When I lost to Winters, I didn’t know if I could ever recover from it. I thought for sure that was my own personal glass ceiling in PRIME. But... I kept believing in myself. I stuck with the climb. Partly because it was the only way I knew how to move forward, and partly because I was inspired by the efforts I was seeing in Scott. And, if I'm being honest, in you as well.”

“And LOOK AT YOU NOW, KYURRY!!” said Black, incapable of keeping his trap shut while the blood continued rushing into his head. “The ETERNAL CLIMBER is now a FULL-FLEDGED CHAMPION! Of course, you’d have to give some credit to ME, considering my generous contributions…”

It didn't take a psychologist or a mind reader to decode how the two Vae Victis members felt about this latest interruption.

In near perfect synchronization, Kuroyama kicked his side of Erik’s ribs while Lockhart swung the bat into hers.

“PFYYYEEEOUUCHH!!”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” they bellowed together.

The KABAL CEO groaned in a cocktail of agony and misery as he continued to sway upside down.

Meanwhile, the large, weathered hand of the Emerald Apex found a place on the Psychoberry’s shoulder. Kerry looked down at his smaller-statured -- but no less fierce -- partner in crime.

“Right now, you need to do the same, RIA,” he said. “Because more people believe in you than you’re willing to admit. Myself included. You stick to that path, and in time, you'll change the perception. The world will finally come around to seeing you the way we see you. And the first step on that path? The two of us beating the shit out of TAL and Nate. Sound good to you?”

She smiled brightly before giving a firm shake of her head.

“We got this shit!”

“Okay… then let’s get back to work here.”

Kuroyama knelt before Black and, grabbing him by his sparse, silken hairplugs, pulled his face close to his own.

“Hey there, Erik,” he said firmly. “Have I got a business proposal for you…”

Pitiful and desperate, Black forced an ugly, inverted smile.

"Trust me, Ker... I'm ALL EARS!!"

🍔

“How’s the chevon patty taste?” asked Kerry.

Some while later, the two of them sat on the curb outside of the building and chomped down on a set of gourmet burgers.

“Kinda gamey, to be honest,” RIA replied, looking questionably into her sandwich. “Might be too much bastard in all this goat meat.”

“Sure…” Kuroyama chuckled before taking another bite. “But nothing beats the taste of a fresh kill.”

“So hey, I was wondering,” said Lockhart, nodding across the street. “What exactly is the plan for that thing?”

Kerry followed her stare to the large eighteen-wheel flatbed trailer idling on the opposite curb. Putting the finishing touches to the act of strapping down the cargo, the two Reapers on his payroll moved into the cab, started up the truck, and rolled off.

There on the bed, barely hidden beneath a tarp, was a certain dipshit’s “deathray”.

“Guess we’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” said the Emerald Apex.

He stuffed the last of his goat burger into his mouth.

“But I’m open to suggestions.”

The Psychoberry grinned wide.

“Oh… I can think of a few!”