Art for art's sake.

The first order of business after one nearly gets their arm snapped off is to calm the hell down. After all, going after the cunt isn't going to do you any good if you're hurt.

The only thing hurt is my fuckin' pride, thank you. Figured we'd get used to it after a while. That seems to be all this place does.

Stop. Now, on a scale from one to ten, how's the pain?

Right now. Fuck, I dunno. A three? I managed to tap out on time. I will never give him or any of those idiots the satisfaction of breaking us. Especially since none of them deserve the honor.

So by three, you mean about a six. Sucks, but we can make this work. Regulate the breath and loosen your posture in order to help the process while we kickstart the endorphins.

Never mind that shit. How's ‘Tona?

Considering he just powerbombed a man that's about a billion pounds? The Chinese have their work cut out for them if they want to get him back to the dance in time for Ascension.

Of course. Of course we'd be the one to fail. What else is new?

Screw the self-pity. We're too deep in the game for that. Just relax. Relax and play the dumb horse girl game. Do whatever is necessary to detach.

I'm crying.

Before you get all macho, look again. Those tears are orange. Artron energy. The kidneys must be expelling too much for the healing process. In any case, the arm shall be back to one hundred percent function momentarily. As for your pride…well, might I recommend not having any?

Why? So I can stay depressed and eternally angry like I've been for years? No thanks.

This is only one match. It's a meaningless match at that. It doesn't change anything in his path or yours.

That's kinda the point, ain't it? Everything's meaningless until they want to rub it in your face. Then all of a something, it does mean something. Rules for thee–

–but not for me. I'm aware. Even so, now is not the time to act. Everything in its proper time and place.

Well, at the very least, we should save the tears in a vial. His handlers can use the leftover energy as an oil or some such to heal whatever wounds he may have.

Are you saying we should give such power to corrupt humans? Have we really gotten that lax with our superior biochemistry? That's exactly why we didn't join the Russians wholesale in the first place!

Shit, you already know the Americans have an idea of it hidden in their vaults thanks to dear old Dad. They're just too stupid and lazy nowadays to seize opportunity.

The Chinese would turn it into some bioweapon. They ain't that much better than Gallifrey.

Okay, enough complicating things. Can we just put it in his roids? What they don't know won't help them.

Yes. Let's do that.

DING!

…

…

…

Who in the fuck is Charles de Lacy?

________

I’ve learned by now that no one, not one human being on the planet, could tell Anna Daniels what to do or how to do it – she’s going to do things her way and her way alone, even to her frequent detriment.

Dear Richard Parker,

We hope your ballsack gets swallowed by a giant fucking snake and the rest of your body goes along with it.

You are the single most worthless person in the history of PRIME and nobody will miss you when you are dead. There will be no tears shed and no ten bell salute because you are such a pathetic reprehensible shitstain on the porcelain throne of life. But most importantly, you are a part of the problem.

“...even to her frequent detriment”, your boss purrs in your ear and you repeat it like a little lapdog knowing full well that at any moment we would kick you so damned hard, we would make Rampage Jackson's kid look like a creampuff. And you've done it

Every

Single

Time

for the past three years. You badmouth us when we were a part of the “faces”. You badmouth us when we're a part of the “heels”. Apparently, to be detrimental is to fight back. To be detrimental is to not be an absolute pussy. It's funny, you seem to be okay when your butt buddy Cecilworth actually does things that are the detriment to everything. Like, say, opening the door for a tulpa to win a murder rumble or selling his values down the river. That's all a-okay, right? That's okay because you get to fondle your Cardboard Farthy late at night and pretend he gives a damn about you.

Suck our metaphorical and metaphysical cock. Maybe then you'll actually gain a damn purpose.

…

Art is subjective.

A painter paints. A sculptor sculpts. A musician plays. A writer writes. They have ideas and thus they put it towards their mediums of choice with gusto. Some are abstract and some are perfect replicas. Some are classic, some are modern. But all of it–every inch of it–is done with intention. Even if said intention is “because I felt the urge”. Each piece is built with soul.

Then, if one is lucky, it is displayed for an audience. It doesn't have to be a giant gallery

(though that tends to be how the plebians think)

or a museum. It can be a dismal art show at a middle school in Bumfuck, Nowhere. A public sidewalk covered in your chalk and effort. A refrigerator door held up by an alphabet magnet. It could be just about anywhere where another person's eyes could behold the latest masterpiece. The where, when, and who matters not.

And at that moment when the sight hits their cornea, the intent and thought process of the artist also matters not.

You may have had an idea of what you were doing when you were creating. You were converting every shred of emotion and every thought in your skull into something much more workable than brain patterns and fluctuating chemicals. You were performing alchemy, non-fiction into fiction, in a way to simply cope with the Herculean task of survival. To have a bodily form is to be weighed down with burden. You are fluid soul trapped into solid meatsuit, raised in a culture of must be solid, and struggling with the contradictions of self until the meatsuit can no longer contain your essence.

Art pieces are one's attempt to deal with small portions of this. Yet once somebody else looks upon it, they project their own ideas, thought processes, and soul onto it. Sometimes, your mission statement and their interpretation align rather well. Oftentimes, however, they do not. In those moments, they see their own vision of what you do.

That’s when you fell into the trap, I fear. You try to correct the perception of a few with more masterpieces. You have conversations. You do lectures and Q and As and have full blown arguments to try to get them to understand where you were going. You try to use different words in an attempt to make the path much clearer, only for them to be led further astray. The few do not see what you see and you don't see what they see.

Perhaps this is what they truly meant by “blind leading the blind”.

Or maybe this is just another interpretation that's hideously incorrect.

Either way.

________

We had mousy hair once.

Actually, not just once. We had it over and over again for several centuries before finally saying fuck it and committing to the blond. But this still remains a god-awful small affair. Even with the bass booming from the loudspeakers threatening to create a pounding headache if the cheap ass champagne don't get the job done. Couple of months back, the very idea of this party would've caused us to hatch the second coming of Athena.

But now?

Fuck it, we'll ball.

That's been our whole thing now. Pure unadulterated “fuck it”. Steaming hot “fuck it”. Slowly but surely, we go back to the beginning of things whilst systematically moving forward. We watch as Fred Dick tells another dumb joke to half the damned world. We see Rob Williams doing what could only fully be quantified as “Rob Williams Things” Most importantly, we observe the star of this show weaving his half-bullshit stories and flirting with every thrice-divorced muppet he could possibly find.

We see Daytona Diamonds…and we envy him.

Not because of his position as number one contender. Because of his bravado. The man is ignorant, but he isn't as ignorant as we thought he was.

THIS WHOLE PLACE LOSE ITS GODDANG MIND WHILE I WAS IN CHINA OR SOMETHIN’?!

Favoritism! Clear as crystal, Queenie! He gets spa weekends, I get fines and threats of drownin’! You don’t want a wrassler, you want a goddang pool boy!

He knows. Somewhere beyond the ego, drugs, roids, and Chinese brainwashing, DD grasped exactly what we've been screaming at the entire roster for over two years. He knows the odds and how they're stacked. He knows he's fucked. He knows exactly what this match is…

And yet here we are under a banner signifying his premature claim as champion.

We cannot help but feel somewhat detached from this predicament. It is a scene from a motion picture, the equivalent of a law man beating up the wrong guy. There is no such thing as escapism. Merely different ways of seeing things, ya know. Daytona Diamonds is a foolish man of flesh and bone. Yet in this moment, he is something more. A goddangged muscled up disco ball of defiance.

Wait…didn’t we say this about Fred too?

Maybe that's why the Whoresmen work so well once we scrape away the dead weight.

(literal in terms of that Harvey guy)

Rob and us have seen too much bullshit–both together and apart--and been through too much disappointment to have the egotistical and often delusional bravado of ‘Tona or Fred. Yet all of us in our own way are chronically damned and still willing to take a few souls on our roads down to Hell. We all strangely balance each other out. And with any luck, maybe some ragged bits of one side can stick to the other.

We hope it's theirs sticking to ours and not the other way around.

“FRANKIE! THERE HE IS!”

There he always was, ‘Tona. This mopey little puppet man you call manager and brother. We don't actually know this Frank. He sticks to the shadows of your universe just as much as the woman on her tablet. But today…

Ah, today.

Neither one notices the spotlight upon his head or the claxton bells a-ringin’. Perhaps we are the only ones to see and hear. His words are lost to us, but we don't need them to grasp what's happening. The facial expression and body movements of the brothers are enough for us to know.

Today, the puppet thinks he's human. And his anger is set in the wrong damn direction.

We're gathering our drink and readying our phone call to Jacky before the yelling can start. We may not have been the sharpest tool in the shed back at the Academy. But we do know the equation b + be + hs = botf.

(Betrayal plus big event plus high stress equals blood on the floor.)

The fact that it is somebody designated as “brother” doing the backstabbing? That would make it b to the thousandth power. Then add in ego, rage, and the super serum…

Dear Frankie Puppet and tablet girl. On our way out, we shall send a prayer to the Wrestling Gods that this doesn't become a Wild Pegasus-level incident.

________

You were not originally built to be an artist.

You were birthed and created against your will to become a warrior. Thus you fight with a warrior's hearts. Finding the art in your own canvas--the one that stretches along metal skeletons and wood beams--is a tricky thing when in the heat of battle. In the thick of it, you can only think about one thing: to conquer. It has been that way ever since the human Broodmare shat you out

(A lovely phrasing, “shat”. Not many use the past tense. We really should use it more.)

and your handlers swept you away. It has certainly been that way ever since we've been in here. You cannot help but fight, child, for that is the way you're programmed. You learned under the suffering that if you didn't fight back in some way or manner, you would turn to dust.

So you do. You fight against the enemy. You fight against your peers. You fight against the powers-that-be. You fight against the parts of you that have absorbed their teachings. You fight every minute of the day against something because you must. And you, my dear, will never understand those that refuse to fight for themselves. They don't fight for their dignity, nor their legacy, then wonder why they ain't missed.

Who in the fuck is Charles de Lacy?

On the surface, he is Farthington-lite. He is certainly promoted as such. LT even said as much the millisecond she saw him. Something along the wording of I have a version of you already and I like Cecilworth better.

(As if she hasn't made that crystal fuckin' clear given her actions towards him.)

He has no face and ultimately, the vibes around ol' Charlie range from “...who?” to “he'll wash out within six months max”. There's been a lot of those in ReVival's history. How many names since we got here have carried the same vibe and fulfilled their predestined role? The odds are high that he will do the same. Not to mention he clearly hasn't even so much as watched what he's even gotten into.

PRIME offers something very few promotions do – an audience with an appreciation for the sport of professional wrestling. 

…yeah. Not only does that not at all dispel the Chinese knockoff of an already inferior product-ness about him, it's also pretty damn hilarious. This alone would be enough to arouse your ire. After all, the actual guy tried to take a limb off. But the sentence before that also gives us pause.

A man such as I can’t rest on his laurels, especially when there are frontiers left uncivilised.

That sounds like you in the beginning of this entire mess. Maybe this is the half-human bit making patterns out of nonsense, but the feeling of him being the mental love child of earlier versions of the current golden calf and Anna Daniels?

…well, we've always been pro-abortion.

________

Glass Jaw Academy. Sydney.

Above ground is polished. The colors are bright but not distractingly so. The ring stands in the middle, properly maintained in part because it has been loaned as opposed to owned. The butcher's bell that hangs over the front door was there even at the start of the Academy’s founding, still giving a distinct ding-a-ling warning that somebody has just come through. All throughout its walls are both the blessing of history and the hope of tomorrow.

By comparison, the room formally known as the Hall of the Ratman is the flip side of the underdog wrestling school's coin. A bare bulb enlightens a ring stolen from a long dead promotion. Only by effort alone does it not contain the must guess of decay and mildew. Here is where everything is stripped down to the barest bones, a thought process only half formed and the occasional scattering of stuff.

Leaning towards a nearby turnbuckle is Anna Daniels looking nothing like the polished menace she often shows in front of cameras. The make up is nonexistent, the curls have been flattened, the pure white singlet replaced with a t-shirt with the school’s name emblazoned on the front and yoga pants. The working boots stay on. They always do. Sweat pours from her flesh. She gasps for breath.

“You sure you want to do this, beloved?”

On the other side, Jacky is equally drenched and opts to peel off his shirt entirely. He gives the cotton a squeeze in an attempt to wring it out. Their eyes meet. For the first time in a year, the question doesn't quite reek of worry as it has.

She nods. “We're sure.”

The words are light enough to prevent an echo in the canyonous underground. The aging bleachers at ringside remain covered with dust, but the energy is still there. It's as if ghosts are watching. For a second, the Aussie thought he could see the jovial figure of his trainer.

“Once you go down this path, there may not be a way back.”

“At that place? There is no back. The past is a meaningless thing, the present is temporary. Forward's the only way. And in order to move forward, we have to be the strongest we've ever been.”

“Even if that means nothing will be the same again.”

She shrugs, for there was nothing else to do.

“We've already mourned for what we’ve lost there, Jack. All the crying's done and all that's left is fisticuffs.”

He nods in understanding. There had been a chip on her shoulder before she even came to PRIME, the endless need to prove to others. But over the past few months, something was breaking through. Just under the bleachers, their pet whines. Jacky laughs.

“Alright, Bucky. We'll do one more round and then we'll take ya home!”

The black lab wags his tail in the affirmative.

________

We know what the assignment is. We're not daft.

All the signs are there. The dominoes have been set up. We are supposed to graft all of our anger and frustration built up from the genuine article onto this older and much more boring clone man. We're not supposed to see Charles. We're supposed to see Cecilworth. And in our blind fury, we are supposed to fail specifically because Charles de Lacy isn't Cecilworth Farthington. He's close. But he ain't him.

We graph that anger onto him? We lose.

We overlook him? We lose.

It's a damned if we do, damned if we don't situation.

Since we're damned anyway, why not do both?

Because you see, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we were already going to be there regardless of whether we were booked or not. We already had plans. So we're not exactly going to praise the higher ups for gracing us with a big show paycheck because quite honestly, we're worth more than that. We're turning over an old leaf. We're not going to whine about getting our hands dirty over a nobody.

The best course of action is to just enjoy the art for art's sake.