CowaBRUHnga

At some point, it stops feeling like a hotel room.

Beds drift out of position, suitcases sit half-unpacked, and the television hums quietly in the background on a channel no one has actually watched for the last twenty minutes. The air carries sweat, takeout, and whatever chemical the hotel uses to pretend it’s clean.

And then there’s the pizza.

There’s always pizza.

The boxes are stacked too high on a table that was never meant to support them, leaning just enough to suggest that at any moment the whole thing might collapse under its own weight.

This isn’t a hotel room anymore.

It’s something else.

Not clean, not coordinated, and definitely not built with any kind of plan in mind, but functional in a way that doesn’t need to make sense to anyone outside of it. A place where four people who have no real reason to work together keep finding themselves in the same space anyway.

Rob moves constantly, pacing between the window and the door. Every so often, his attention snaps toward Kerry, lingering just long enough to remind both of them that whatever exists between them hasn’t been resolved—it’s simply been set aside.

Kerry, for his part, doesn’t engage. He sits on the edge of the bed, elbows resting on his knees, his gaze directed somewhere just short of the floor, though his awareness never leaves Rob.

FLAMBERGE remains apart from all of it, positioned near the wall with the same detached stillness he’s held since I walked in. He watches without appearing to, his attention drifting without settling anywhere. He hasn’t said anything, and the longer the silence stretches, the more it feels like he doesn’t need to.

I’ve claimed the edge of the table, working through a slice of Hawaiian pizza that definitely didn’t belong to me when I got here.

“You know,” I say, glancing around the room as the thought finally settles into something I can put words to, “this is starting to feel real familiar.”

No one answers.

That, in itself, isn’t surprising.

I take another bite, chewing slowly, letting the idea take shape. Rob finally stops moving long enough to look at me, his expression somewhere between irritation and curiosity.

“…what are you talking about?”

I shrug, gesturing lightly with the slice in my hand.

“Four guys, same space, nobody agreeing on anything, and we’re still here.”

Kerry exhales through his nose, not quite laughing, but close enough to acknowledge the observation.

Rob doesn’t respond, just watches, waiting to see where it goes.

FLAMBERGE doesn’t move at all.

“Tell me I’m wrong.”

Rob opens his mouth to answer—

—and the door swings open.

Joe Fontaine enters like the timing was entirely accidental, his kimono hanging loosely as if it had been tied at some point earlier in the night and then abandoned halfway through the effort. One foot is covered, the other isn’t.

He stops in the center of the room and looks at all of us.

Then he nods once and immediately throws out a sharp, emphatic dab.

“Balance,” he says.

Rob blinks, his expression flattening.

“…what?”

Fontaine lowers his arm slowly, as if that single motion explained everything.

“Balance,” he repeats, pointing first at Rob. “Angry one.”

Rob exhales. “The fuck are you talking about?”

Fontaine pivots without missing a beat, pointing at Kerry next.

“Other angry one.”

Kerry’s brow tightens. “That’s not—”

Fontaine continues, already moving past him.

“French one.”

FLAMBERGE, without shifting his posture, replies simply, “…non.”

Fontaine nods as if that confirmed his assessment, then turns toward me.

“And snacks.”

I glance down at the pizza in my hand and shrug.

“…fair.”

Fontaine claps once, sharp and satisfied.

“Complete.”

Rob drags a hand across his face, clearly reconsidering every decision that led him into this room.

“This is why I don’t listen to you.”

Fontaine ignores him entirely, already moving again, pacing in a way that feels less like movement and more like momentum without direction.

“People think you need structure,” he mutters. “Plan. Matching pieces. Team chemistry.”

He stops abruptly, turns, and dabs again.

“But that’s cap.”

Kerry actually looks up this time.

“…what?”

Fontaine grins, completely unbothered by the lack of understanding.

“You don’t need to match,” he says. “You just need to move.”

The room settles into silence again.

It doesn’t feel wrong.

I look around the room once more, taking in the same four people who, on paper, should not work together in any meaningful way.

And for the first time, the lack of structure doesn’t feel like a weakness.

It feels like the point.

I take another bite of the pizza, nodding slightly as the thought settles into place.

“…yeah,” I murmur.

“I think I get it.” 🍍🍍🍍 Fontaine keeps moving, still talking, still stringing together thoughts that feel like they shouldn’t connect but somehow refuse to fall apart entirely.

No one really engages with him directly. There’s no need to. The room has already shifted into something that doesn’t require translation, and whatever he’s saying now feels less like instruction and more like background noise that occasionally sharpens into something useful if you happen to be listening at the right moment.

Rob has settled at the window, his posture more still now, though there’s nothing relaxed about it. The tension hasn’t gone anywhere—it’s just been contained, focused outward instead of spilling across the room. Every so often, his attention drifts back, not toward me, but toward Kerry, as if whatever exists between them hasn’t been resolved so much as temporarily set aside.

Kerry, for his part, carries that same awareness without acknowledging it outright. He’s shifted from the bed to the wall, arms loosely crossed now, his posture composed in a way that suggests control even if the situation itself doesn’t offer much of it. If Rob represents motion without structure, Kerry is the opposite—structure without control over the environment it’s supposed to govern.

FLAMBERGE remains separate from both of them, positioned just outside the natural orbit of the room. There’s a distance to him that isn’t physical so much as intentional, as if he’s chosen to participate only to the extent required and nothing more. He watches without investing, listens without reacting, and in doing so, manages to feel both present and completely removed at the same time.

It’s the kind of dynamic that shouldn’t work.

There’s no shared approach or philosophy, nothing that resembles the kind of cohesion people usually point to when they talk about what makes a team effective. If anything, the differences are the most obvious thing about it—four completely separate ways of thinking, operating, and reacting.

And yet, somehow, it holds.

Because no one stopped it from happening.

Rob doesn’t lead in the traditional sense. There’s no attempt to organize or align anything around him. He moves first, acts first, and whatever direction that creates becomes the only one that matters in that moment. It isn’t leadership built on trust or structure—it’s momentum, and the rest of us are forced to decide, in real time, whether we’re moving with it or getting left behind.

Kerry understands that better than anyone in the room.

He sees the gaps. The lack of structure. The way this entire thing leans on instinct instead of planning. And more importantly, he understands what it would take to fix it—how it should look if it were built correctly. But that understanding doesn’t translate into control, because this isn’t the kind of situation that allows for it.

FLAMBERGE doesn’t concern himself with any of that.

His presence here isn’t rooted in the team at all. It’s parallel to it. His focus exists somewhere beyond this room, tied to something larger, something more important in his own hierarchy of priorities. And yet, despite that distance, he hasn’t removed himself from this entirely. He’s still here, still participating, still occupying the same space as the rest of us, even if the reasons for it don’t align with anyone else’s.

That’s the piece that doesn’t make sense at first.

Until it does.

Because this isn’t built on dependency.

No one here needs anyone else.

That’s the difference.

Fontaine’s voice cuts back through the room again, repeating himself like it means something more the second time.

“You don’t need to match,” he says. “You just need to move.”

It sounds just as ridiculous.

It doesn’t feel any less true.

I look around the room again, taking in the same imbalance, the same lack of structure, the same absence of anything that would normally hold something like this together.

And for the first time, it doesn’t feel like a flaw.

It feels like the reason it works at all.

Because the moment something starts, nobody here is waiting for permission.

Nobody’s looking for alignment.

Nobody’s hesitating.

And when four people like that move at the same time, in the same direction—even by accident—that’s not something you organize.

That’s something you survive. 🍍🍍🍍 Mexico City doesn’t get quieter at night—it just changes shape.

The noise settles instead of disappearing, folding into itself until it becomes something constant and low, like a current running beneath everything. Traffic hums instead of roars. Conversations blur together into something indistinct. Even the lights feel softer, stretching across wet pavement and glass like they’ve decided there’s no reason to rush anymore.

From the balcony, the city feels endless.

I rest my hands against the railing and let that sit for a moment, letting the air settle before everything else starts creeping back in.

Because it always does.

As pieces—faces, names, moments—start assembling.

Most people will look at this and see two teams.

They’ll see four and four. Structure. Balance. Something clean enough to make sense.

That’s not what this is.

This is eight people walking into the same space with eight different priorities, and the only thing tying any of it together is the fact that the bell is going to ring whether those priorities align or not.

And when that happens, whatever this looks like on paper stops mattering.

Cecilworth understands that better than anyone.

He doesn’t rely on chaos, but he knows how to use it when it shows up. Everything about the way he operates is controlled—measured, deliberate, built around making sure that when something breaks down, it breaks in his favor. He doesn’t force mistakes. He creates the conditions where they’re inevitable.

And right now, he’s standing in the middle of something that isn’t clean.

Because across from him isn’t just another opponent.

It’s FLAMBERGE.

The Universal Championship sitting between them on Night One changes everything, whether either of them wants to admit it or not. You don’t step into something like that and walk away untouched. You don’t go through a fight at that level and then neatly shift your focus twenty-four hours later like nothing happened.

Not physically or mentally.

So whatever this team is supposed to be on paper—whatever alliances, whatever shared ground exists—it has a fracture running straight through the middle of it before it even begins.

Because one of them is going to walk out of that match with something taken and the other one is going to walk out of it having lost something he doesn’t get back right away.

There’s no version of that where everything just resets cleanly.

Which means when we’re all standing across from each other, there’s already something unresolved sitting in that corner, whether anyone acknowledges it or not.

And that’s before you even get to the rest of it.

Because Coral Avalon doesn’t need any help finding a reason.

That’s already there.

I don’t get to pretend otherwise. I don’t get to smooth it over or reframe it into something that fits better now that I’m standing on a different side of things.

I was part of the Red Army when it happened.

I made the choice that cost him the Universal Championship.

And whether I walked away from that later doesn’t change the moment itself or what it meant when it happened.

It doesn’t.

If anything, it sharpens it.

Because now it isn’t just about what happened—it’s about what it says. About who I was when I made that decision and what it means that I’m standing here now, asking for something different without being able to undo any of it.

Coral doesn’t have to like that.

He doesn’t have to accept it.

And if the opportunity shows up for him to remind me of it in the middle of all this, then that’s not some unpredictable variable.

That’s the bill coming due.

And I already know better than to act surprised when it does.

Danny Christie is different.

He’s already been in there with me. Well, that other version of me.

He’s already felt how that plays out when everything is moving at full speed and there’s no time left to adjust once it starts going wrong.

That changes a man.

The second time isn’t about discovery—it’s about correction. About convincing yourself that the gap between what happened and what could have happened is something you can close if you just handle it differently.

But fights don’t repeat themselves cleanly enough for that to hold.

And whatever version of me he faced the first time isn’t the same one he’d be dealing with now.

That doesn’t make anything guaranteed.

It just means familiarity isn’t an advantage the way people think it is.

Not here.

Not in something like this.

Which leaves Big John Pepper.

And that’s where things stop pretending to be predictable at all.

Because Pepper isn’t tied into any of this the same way the rest of us are. He’s not carrying the same kind of history, not balancing anything from the night before, not trying to reconcile anything that happened months ago.

He doesn’t need a reason that fits neatly into a narrative.

He just shows up.

And when he does, everything else has to adjust around him whether it wants to or not.

That’s what makes him dangerous.

Not just the size, or the strength, or the obvious physical threat that comes with it—but the fact that he doesn’t move according to the same rhythm as everything else in this match. He doesn’t slow down to fit the moment. He doesn’t wait for things to make sense.

He changes the shape of it the second he’s involved.

And once that happens, all the careful structure—the planning, the angles, the expectations about how this is supposed to unfold—can disappear in a hurry.

Because you can account for a lot of things.

You can’t account for something that refuses to stay inside the lines.

I let that sit for a moment, looking out over the city as all of it settles into something clearer.

Not simpler.

Just clearer.

Because when the bell rings, none of this is going to play out the way it looks on paper.

Not with the weight sitting between Cecilworth and FLAMBERGE.

Not with the history sitting between Coral and me.

Not with Pepper waiting to turn the whole thing into something else the second he gets the chance.

This isn’t a team match.

It’s a collision.

And whatever comes out of it isn’t going to be decided by who works together the best.

It’s going to be decided by who adapts the fastest when everything stops working the way it’s supposed to.

I push off the railing and straighten up, the weight of it settling into something familiar.

Because when that moment comes—and it will—there won’t be time to think about alignment, or structure, or any of the things people convince themselves matter before it starts.

There will only be the moment in front of you.

And what you choose to do with it. 🍍🍍🍍 By the time I step back inside, the room hasn’t really changed.

The same noise, the same restless energy, the same four personalities trying not to tear the space apart. But it feels different now—not quieter, not calmer, just… clearer in a way it wasn’t before.

Rob is pacing near the edge of the room, talking through something that sounds like strategy but carries just enough edge to remind you that patience has never really been his thing. Kerry has claimed a section of the table and is reorganizing something that didn’t need to be reorganized five minutes ago, his focus sharp and deliberate in that way that never quite turns off. FLAMBERGE sits where he was before, posture relaxed, eyes distant, like part of him is already somewhere else entirely.

And Joe—

Well, Joe is upside down on the couch.

Legs hooked over the back, arms hanging toward the floor, staring at the ceiling like it might reveal something the rest of us are missing. When he notices me, he lifts one hand without moving anything else and, with complete seriousness—dabs.

Of course he does.

I shake my head as I step further into the room, letting the moment settle instead of trying to interrupt it. For a second, nobody says anything. Not because there’s nothing to say, but because, for once, nobody feels the need to force it.

We’re not pretending.

And maybe that’s the first thing we’ve gotten right.

Because there was never a version of this that was going to be clean. Not with Rob and Kerry still circling each other after the title changed hands. Not with FLAMBERGE standing days away from the biggest match of his career against someone he’s supposed to coexist with here. Not with me carrying everything that comes with my Red Army stint into a room that has no reason to forget it.

“You know,” I say after a moment, glancing between them, “for a group that almost killed each other over a team name, this is… not terrible.”

Rob lets out a quiet snort. Kerry doesn’t look up, but there’s a shift at the corner of his mouth that wasn’t there before. Even FLAMBERGE’s eyes flick in my direction, just for a second, before settling again.

Joe, meanwhile, rolls off the couch in one smooth motion, lands on his feet like it was intentional all along, and points at me like he’s just solved something important.

“Michelangelo,” he says.

Not a question. A conclusion.

I let out a breath through my nose, something close to a laugh but not quite.

“Yeah,” I answer. “Guess that tracks.”

There was a time where that would’ve meant something simple. The easy label. The one who didn’t take anything seriously, who kept things light because it was easier than dealing with everything else that came with it.

That version of me would’ve fit this without thinking twice.

This isn’t that.

I push off the wall and step forward, just enough to feel like I’m part of it instead of watching from the edge.

“Everybody remembers the colors,” I say, letting my eyes move from one to the next. “The personalities. The way it all looks on the surface.”

Fontaine nods immediately, like this is the most important conversation he’s ever been involved in.

“They forget what actually made it work.”

I let that sit for a moment before continuing.

“They trusted each other when it counted.”

That’s the difference.

Not friendship. Not alignment. Not any of the things people think have to be there for something like this to hold together.

Trust in the moment where it matters.

Rob has stopped pacing. Kerry’s hands have gone still. FLAMBERGE hasn’t moved at all, but his attention is fully here now, fixed in a way it wasn’t before.

“And we don’t need to be perfect for that,” I continue. “We don’t need to like each other. We don’t even need to agree half the time.”

A small shrug.

“We just need to not screw each other when it matters.”

That draws a low chuckle from Rob, the tension in the room easing just a fraction.

Fontaine claps once—loud, unnecessary, completely him—and I glance at him briefly before looking back at the rest of them.

“Because across from us,” I say, my voice settling into something firmer now, “they’ve got their own fractures. Their own priorities. Their own reasons for this to fall apart if it goes sideways.”

A beat.

“And it will.”

Not doubt.

Just reality.

“So when it does…”

I let the words hang for a moment before finishing the thought.

“…we’re the ones still standing.”

The silence that follows isn’t empty.

It’s settled.

Understood.

Fontaine raises both hands, eyes wide, and fires off a double dab like he’s sealing the moment himself.

I shake my head, but this time there’s no hiding the grin that comes with it.

Yeah.

Maybe Michelangelo still fits.

Just not the way it used to.