Post by Kyle Shane on Jul 27, 2020 13:21:06 GMT -5
Monitoring the timeline has been a grind, lately.
It's 9:09 in the morning, and he's sitting, barely awake, eyes burning from getting less than five hours of sleep, a cup of coffee going cold at his elbow, and he aimlessly taps in keys that zoom and key in on his assignment. Ever since he got put on this, he didn't know why, he was struggling with it. The Timeline Bureaucracy had long employed workers to sit on the coms and monitor the comings and goings of various peoples of interest to ensure the timeline stayed stable and they kept on the track of their destiny. But this timeline, spanning three decades of this one man's life... it seemed so... impenetrable. Not to mention absurd.
What was special to the future about Kyle Shane?
He was trying hard not to feel his reddened eyes slip downward. He was trying to concentrate on the sunny vista playing out like a movie on his screen. It was the timeline point x40, four decades into the man's future, and as the agent watched, he was sat on a log, out in a wilderness, strumming a guitar and watching as a skinny young girl looked up at him with fond blue eyes. Idyllic, peaceful, yes, but not very indicative of a historical flashpoint. He sighed, scrubbed his eyes; took a sip of cold coffee. Why had this timeline been marked for him, again? He remembered his supervisor had been confident, when he had handed the file into the agent's cubicle. Had assuredly told him his assignment was to mark and assess the key points leading across three decades, because a flashpoint was rising in this future. He squinted, watching Kyle Shane calmly strum a guitar, his white robe shining.
But this was his job, and he had deadlines for reports due every... other Tuesday, pretty much. It was his duty to maintain the timeline, even the timeline presented to him. And, of course, doing this paid the bills... as little sleep as he got from it, he knew once it was time for him to clock out, he could trudge home, turn on his Playstation 471 and drift off... but there was the cat's vet bills to consider, also, and the rent was going to be due, and, and, and. There was always more, which made the grind neccessary, but the lack of sleep he was getting worrying about it all made him question whether duty and getting paid was enough. He was of two minds, always. He tried to consider the worth of the work yet again. So this wasn't the most flashy or exciting time period. So he wasn't the most enthused about this upcoming "Last White Event" as his supervisor had been when he handed him the folder into his cubicle. So he wasn't able to make others get excited about his findings when he presented his reports. There was still work to be done here... right?
On the timeline view, elderly Kyle smiled genially at the little blonde girl, with a crown of flowers in her hair. He stopped plucking acoustic chords to "Blister In The Sun" long enough to reach a hand down, stroke the side of her face, and beam down at her. "Uncle Kyle," designate Noelani said, "Can you tell me a story about your time wrestling? I want to know why you kept doing it?"
"Of course, child," he said, but his smile was troubled behind his beard. If the agent's eyes were so reddened, tired and out of focus, he might have noticed the glitch on his screen that beat, once, like a heartbeat pulse, and then was gone.
"You lost that tournament you came back for, against the bad man, Grimm... I thought you told us when you came back after your injury, you were like a new person?"
"Well, that's a... complicated question, Noelani..." he said, frowning, and he sat aside his guitar, leaning forward for a Very Special Talk. The agent, watching all of this on the monitor, propped his head in his hand on his desk, bleary eyed and mouth open.
"You said that when you came back," the young girl inquired of her fun uncle, "That when you left, you rededicated yourself to being better than you were before, and that you met Doctor James and he helped you with your attitude, be more positive and stuff,"
"Well, I did, that's true," he hedged a little bit. The glitch overtook the screen, obscuring it with green/pink static and freezing. The agent blinked.
"But all these stories you tell us seem so angry... why were you still angry? I thought Doctor James helped you be better after your accident?"
"Welll... you know, Noelani, that was all so many years ago... change takes time... and I was on a path towards enlightenme- " Freeze, glitch. "-enlightenment,"
"What happened, though? Did losing to the bad man Grimm make you mad?" In that kid way, Noelani continued to question him long after the cues were there that maybe she should stop. Elder Kyle was having a difficult time formulating an answer, and that's when the glitch took the form of a break, splicing in memory, time leaping backward and cutting in.
One might think such an experience would have given one perspective…like, maybe, this federation doesn’t exist to fix anyone. It’s not here to give any one particular person a platform.
Grimm is definitely the main character in PCW lore.
It’s not here to give any one particular person a platform.
Grimm is definitely the main character in PCW lore.
not here to give any one particular person a platform...
And one doesn’t become the PCW Wrestler of the Decade
For some, the day-to-day work required to be successful in this federation for the long haul isn’t the right kind of glamorous. The actual work, mind you, not like that referenced in Hunter’s confession to taking the easy **cough**coward’s**cough** way out of fighting the good fight.
I couldn't handle the workload of Pure Class Wrestling. I was a COWARD. A person who had to take a few months off to heal physical and mental wear and tear. I was a COWARD who LEFT because I couldn't HANDLE THE WORKLOAD, so I took my ball crying and left you alllll high and dry. He wants the idea that anybody who has to take time off as being cowardly and not fit to lace a certain someone's boots to be noted and accepted as their truth for all time. And he wants Pure Class Wrestling to hold many people to that standard. Dominator. Brenna Gordon. David Hunter. Go on. Say the same thing about them.
Grimm is definitely the main character in PCW lore.
One doesn't become PCW Wrestler of the Decade
Nnot here. To give ANY ONE PARTICULAR PERSON. A platform.
"Whoa, whoa, Bryan dude look at your screen!!" another agent wakes the sleeping sentinel at his post, "Dude, it's glitching like crazy, why weren't you watching??"
The agent blinks his bleary eyes, fog clearing from his brain as he stares helplessly at his monitors, now vomiting glitching time, jumping in and overwriting the happy, idyllic sunny timeline. "I was watching, I was trying to watch, I'm just so tired..."
Grimm is DEFINITELY
The MAIN CHARACTER
OF
P
C
W
Looooooooreeeeeeee
He squints his exhausted eyes in consternation at this nonsense statement, like fuck, who says that? Since when did that become remotely true? His fingers dance over the keyboard, going into manual mode to try and rewind back and get away from a glitch point, but the screen continues to be eaten. The timeline of the Last White Event is becoming less and less solid, more ethereal, with the natures of the glitches overwriting the sunny forest sky. It's all breaking down now, and for the life of him he can't even figure out what made the glitches start.
This is going to get him such terrible marks in peer review.
Forget it, least of his problems, he says, setting his jaw and looking over the readouts. Wave functions on his screen are fluctuating wildly, because one or more incidents converging have led to corruption.
"Fuck, dude, you should have caught that," says his cubicle neighbor breathlessly.
"It's still happening," he whispers, horrified, "Time is breaking..."
"Oh, make no mistake, Kyle, the snake still has his venom in reserve when he needs to... The snake did free itself from the skin that held it back, and shed what it needed in order to grow. But at the end of the day, it's nature is still be a snake... and snakes have venom. I see no contradiction. Do you?
Until I’ve stepped into the ring with the best and won, huh? So then why are you here? Son, I’ve gone toe to toe with the best this company has to offer. I’ve stood across from demons and monsters and gone the distance, what have you done?
Jerry Andrews: Holy cow! Shane did it! What an accomplishment!
Ace Anderson: If anyone had doubt about Kyle Shane's abilities before, then they can't argue with those results now.
Sasha Green: Your Winner of the Icemann Invitational Tournament for 2017; Kyle Shane!
"What have you done?"
A ring attendant enters the ring with the trophy. As she hands it to Shane, his eye glow with elation. He drops to his knees, hugging the prize tight, tears in his eyes. The crowd goes wild, cheering for the man who pulled off the impossible!
The bell rings as Kyle Shane bolts up, arms raised in the air! The crowd is electric!
“Here is your winner, and NEEEEWWWWWW PURE CLASS WRESTLING NORTH AMERICAN CHAMPION: KYLE SHANE!!!"
"Whhhhaatt. Have. YoUUUU. Done."
Shane is handed the championship and he raises it high above his head as "In The Morning And Amazing" by Circa Survive plays.
The referee calls for the bell. Kyle looks up in disbelief. LOUD chants of THANK YOU KYLE, THANK YOU are mixed in with his entrance music.
Sasha Greene: Here is the winner of the match, and NEW Pure Class Wrestling World Champion, Kyle Shane!
The best this company has to offer
The best this company has to offer
The agent, sobering and his vision clearing, looks sadly at the anger and bitterness, the emotional darkening that he now sees is coloring the timeline. Replacing the hope and brightness of the future of the Last White Event, something that was leading to a healing, more positive and stronger Kyle Shane, being sabotaged by petty infighting and squabbling egos. He feels a tear shed as he finally realizes that the timeline he wrote off for so long, might actually have been something special and have made the world a better place, but now it was all falling apart. Congratulations. And because of his inaction, his not paying attention, him letting the fighting creep in and the glitches spread, he was at fault for not letting it stop spreading.
"He's just... sitting in his room, talking now," says the cubicle neighbor looking over his shoulder.
"Alexa Black... this fight should have been between you and me."
There's a momentary flash of a bright future, a happy future, where Noelani smiles up at her uncle Bryan and he laughs back, picking up his guitar again, but then it glitches and he's alone, thirty years old, sitting stripped to the waist and curved, his injured spine bent at an uncomfortable angle, and he's gritting his teeth bitterly, using the pain to fuel his own loathing and anger at the subject material. This is not leading to the future he wanted. Not anymore. But he's past the point of caring.
"I wanted to fight you versus me, one on one, for the North American Championship at Return To Glory, because at the time I was strong and secure in my convictions. I saw the way you no-showed your first North American title match, a match I wasn't even sure why you were given because you hadn't really won anything that put you in contendership. Then when Corey left the belt behind, I saw you fight for it against High Tide, and neither one of you really put in the effort that says "I really care about this and I want to make it the best match of my career". I thought that the North American Title deserved better and I picked Return To Glory, symbollicaly because I wanted to bring the North American Title out of the darkness, into a brighter future, even if I had to drag you, kicking and screaming and berate you every step of the way there.
But you couldn't even hold on to it long enough.
I'm disappointed on a surface level that I didn't get to be the one who put you down, but that's just my issues with political overreach, authority figures abusing power, and proclaiming people who have been doing them favors for the last decade as their boys. I mean you can look at the top champions of the company right now, and their so -called Main Character of Pure Class Wrestling, and if you don't see home cooking I don't know what else you could be looking at.
So yeah, it should have been you versus me, but, Loki NEVER liked being behind a desk, and he ALWAYS intended on fighting you after that first punch two months ago, he just finally got around to it. It was always the plan for Loki and you to dance. So I swallowed a bitter pill and got High Tide, watching the results and hoping that you'd find a way to turn back that entitled piece of shit who took our match away from us because he got "An idea".
And you lost.
And that future went away.
My dreams of a strong statement of change and reclaiming old glory and making something better fell apart (Yeah, if you really think one of the old, pre-2014 PCW guys is going to defend his title and be a strong champion, you really aren't paying attention to Stormm and his reign in absentia.) Loki is not showing up on Trauma with that title any time soon. And I'm left with nothing but the former champion and the bitter ashes of our dead dreams; the feud we built up so strongly - I knocked you off a fucking stage, Alexa, now has to be a side piece played out on Trauma. Maybe we'll continue knocking each other's brains out every week and fight for contendership later. And, but, maybe just maybe Loki will nut up, will start putting in appearances on Trauma (unlikely as that seems since he took six weeks between poking his head out of the ground at a time) and he'll face us in a tag match where we're partnered together, unlikely tag team partners against a common foe that still hate each other.
Because Pure Class Wrestling loves beating that old horse.
Either way, you robbed our fight of all it's vim and vinegar just because you can't stick the landing to save your life. You proved everything I said right with barely an effort. If your back is to the wall to prove you can hold on to a division you are the champion of, then quite frankly you should never have been there in the first place. And Alexa, every single iota of your being says you should not be there. You want me to read you, Alexa Black, because you're an open book test, easy as pie. You mouth all of these sadistic words, you play yourself up as a monster. I've never seen someone so willingly and openly describe themselves as a sociopath in their biography, but you go out of your way to do so - which is DEFINITELY something that a person would do. And yet, for all of the words and the bullshit about how you murder people and you're so evil, guys, who have you ever beaten that didn't come back the next week smiling?
You're a fucking joke."
The two agents watching in the cubicle eye each other uneasily. This is so far away from the Kyle of the bright White Event timeline. Not a child or a guitar in sight.
"And please note that I haven't even scratched a surface of your asinine idiocy because crumbling you into bits would be a pleasure. You couldn't accomplish on your best day what I wanted to do with the North American title. You couldn't, really accomplish anything at all. Why does a supposed psychopath who loves to brutally murder people need not one but two managers to come out to the ring to interfere in their matches? So much so that when they're sent away from ringside, you shrieked at losing your advantage against Loki? No Alexa, you're not a weapon... because if you were, you'd have just dropped it on the ground and shot yourself in the foot.
So thanks a lot, Alexa, you made this so special and meaningful, I'm so glad that we get to do this on a random Trauma people probably aren't going to think back on in six months.
Thank you so much for continuing to give me hope."
The screen is overtaken by glitches and green/blue/pink static.
"Bryan, you're going to short it out, escape the program!" says his neighbor, but the timeline agent shakes his head vociferously, "I can't, I have to scan forward, go back to the x40 timeline. If it's all corrupted, it's - "
"If it's glitching like that, it's being overwritten into something darker, you know how this works," he warns against it.
But then, as soon as he sees the orange-colored sky and the people peeking their heads out of the ruined cabin, he knows he's made a mistake and peeked too far into a ruined timeline.
The child at his hip is the same size and structure as the little girl with the blonde curls and the flower wreath placed gently in her hair, but she's missing an eye at this age, as battle hardened as a vet, and her hair shorn. She's by his side as she snaps a cartridge into the shotgun. "You ready, Noey?" He says to the little girl in the road leathers. She considers the gun in her hands. "How many raiders are out there?" she asks.
"Bout ten," the salt and peppered, world weary figure of Elder Kyle says, shouldering his pack and spinning the barrel of his gun into place.
"You ever wonder, uncle Kyle," Noey says, with the air of someone who's already too old for this shit, "How the world got this bad?"
He grimly sights the gun between the boards of the cabin, looking at the raiders sneaking through the bushes, hearing their wild gibbering like hyenas in the night. He thumbs the hammer of the pistol, taking aim.
"I don't care about that anymore, girl," he murmurs, "It was so long ago, who even remembers."
It's 9:09 in the morning, and he's sitting, barely awake, eyes burning from getting less than five hours of sleep, a cup of coffee going cold at his elbow, and he aimlessly taps in keys that zoom and key in on his assignment. Ever since he got put on this, he didn't know why, he was struggling with it. The Timeline Bureaucracy had long employed workers to sit on the coms and monitor the comings and goings of various peoples of interest to ensure the timeline stayed stable and they kept on the track of their destiny. But this timeline, spanning three decades of this one man's life... it seemed so... impenetrable. Not to mention absurd.
What was special to the future about Kyle Shane?
He was trying hard not to feel his reddened eyes slip downward. He was trying to concentrate on the sunny vista playing out like a movie on his screen. It was the timeline point x40, four decades into the man's future, and as the agent watched, he was sat on a log, out in a wilderness, strumming a guitar and watching as a skinny young girl looked up at him with fond blue eyes. Idyllic, peaceful, yes, but not very indicative of a historical flashpoint. He sighed, scrubbed his eyes; took a sip of cold coffee. Why had this timeline been marked for him, again? He remembered his supervisor had been confident, when he had handed the file into the agent's cubicle. Had assuredly told him his assignment was to mark and assess the key points leading across three decades, because a flashpoint was rising in this future. He squinted, watching Kyle Shane calmly strum a guitar, his white robe shining.
But this was his job, and he had deadlines for reports due every... other Tuesday, pretty much. It was his duty to maintain the timeline, even the timeline presented to him. And, of course, doing this paid the bills... as little sleep as he got from it, he knew once it was time for him to clock out, he could trudge home, turn on his Playstation 471 and drift off... but there was the cat's vet bills to consider, also, and the rent was going to be due, and, and, and. There was always more, which made the grind neccessary, but the lack of sleep he was getting worrying about it all made him question whether duty and getting paid was enough. He was of two minds, always. He tried to consider the worth of the work yet again. So this wasn't the most flashy or exciting time period. So he wasn't the most enthused about this upcoming "Last White Event" as his supervisor had been when he handed him the folder into his cubicle. So he wasn't able to make others get excited about his findings when he presented his reports. There was still work to be done here... right?
On the timeline view, elderly Kyle smiled genially at the little blonde girl, with a crown of flowers in her hair. He stopped plucking acoustic chords to "Blister In The Sun" long enough to reach a hand down, stroke the side of her face, and beam down at her. "Uncle Kyle," designate Noelani said, "Can you tell me a story about your time wrestling? I want to know why you kept doing it?"
"Of course, child," he said, but his smile was troubled behind his beard. If the agent's eyes were so reddened, tired and out of focus, he might have noticed the glitch on his screen that beat, once, like a heartbeat pulse, and then was gone.
"You lost that tournament you came back for, against the bad man, Grimm... I thought you told us when you came back after your injury, you were like a new person?"
"Well, that's a... complicated question, Noelani..." he said, frowning, and he sat aside his guitar, leaning forward for a Very Special Talk. The agent, watching all of this on the monitor, propped his head in his hand on his desk, bleary eyed and mouth open.
"You said that when you came back," the young girl inquired of her fun uncle, "That when you left, you rededicated yourself to being better than you were before, and that you met Doctor James and he helped you with your attitude, be more positive and stuff,"
"Well, I did, that's true," he hedged a little bit. The glitch overtook the screen, obscuring it with green/pink static and freezing. The agent blinked.
"But all these stories you tell us seem so angry... why were you still angry? I thought Doctor James helped you be better after your accident?"
"Welll... you know, Noelani, that was all so many years ago... change takes time... and I was on a path towards enlightenme- " Freeze, glitch. "-enlightenment,"
"What happened, though? Did losing to the bad man Grimm make you mad?" In that kid way, Noelani continued to question him long after the cues were there that maybe she should stop. Elder Kyle was having a difficult time formulating an answer, and that's when the glitch took the form of a break, splicing in memory, time leaping backward and cutting in.
One might think such an experience would have given one perspective…like, maybe, this federation doesn’t exist to fix anyone. It’s not here to give any one particular person a platform.
Grimm is definitely the main character in PCW lore.
It’s not here to give any one particular person a platform.
Grimm is definitely the main character in PCW lore.
not here to give any one particular person a platform...
And one doesn’t become the PCW Wrestler of the Decade
For some, the day-to-day work required to be successful in this federation for the long haul isn’t the right kind of glamorous. The actual work, mind you, not like that referenced in Hunter’s confession to taking the easy **cough**coward’s**cough** way out of fighting the good fight.
I couldn't handle the workload of Pure Class Wrestling. I was a COWARD. A person who had to take a few months off to heal physical and mental wear and tear. I was a COWARD who LEFT because I couldn't HANDLE THE WORKLOAD, so I took my ball crying and left you alllll high and dry. He wants the idea that anybody who has to take time off as being cowardly and not fit to lace a certain someone's boots to be noted and accepted as their truth for all time. And he wants Pure Class Wrestling to hold many people to that standard. Dominator. Brenna Gordon. David Hunter. Go on. Say the same thing about them.
Grimm is definitely the main character in PCW lore.
One doesn't become PCW Wrestler of the Decade
Nnot here. To give ANY ONE PARTICULAR PERSON. A platform.
"Whoa, whoa, Bryan dude look at your screen!!" another agent wakes the sleeping sentinel at his post, "Dude, it's glitching like crazy, why weren't you watching??"
The agent blinks his bleary eyes, fog clearing from his brain as he stares helplessly at his monitors, now vomiting glitching time, jumping in and overwriting the happy, idyllic sunny timeline. "I was watching, I was trying to watch, I'm just so tired..."
Grimm is DEFINITELY
The MAIN CHARACTER
OF
P
C
W
Looooooooreeeeeeee
He squints his exhausted eyes in consternation at this nonsense statement, like fuck, who says that? Since when did that become remotely true? His fingers dance over the keyboard, going into manual mode to try and rewind back and get away from a glitch point, but the screen continues to be eaten. The timeline of the Last White Event is becoming less and less solid, more ethereal, with the natures of the glitches overwriting the sunny forest sky. It's all breaking down now, and for the life of him he can't even figure out what made the glitches start.
This is going to get him such terrible marks in peer review.
Forget it, least of his problems, he says, setting his jaw and looking over the readouts. Wave functions on his screen are fluctuating wildly, because one or more incidents converging have led to corruption.
"Fuck, dude, you should have caught that," says his cubicle neighbor breathlessly.
"It's still happening," he whispers, horrified, "Time is breaking..."
"Oh, make no mistake, Kyle, the snake still has his venom in reserve when he needs to... The snake did free itself from the skin that held it back, and shed what it needed in order to grow. But at the end of the day, it's nature is still be a snake... and snakes have venom. I see no contradiction. Do you?
Until I’ve stepped into the ring with the best and won, huh? So then why are you here? Son, I’ve gone toe to toe with the best this company has to offer. I’ve stood across from demons and monsters and gone the distance, what have you done?
Jerry Andrews: Holy cow! Shane did it! What an accomplishment!
Ace Anderson: If anyone had doubt about Kyle Shane's abilities before, then they can't argue with those results now.
Sasha Green: Your Winner of the Icemann Invitational Tournament for 2017; Kyle Shane!
"What have you done?"
A ring attendant enters the ring with the trophy. As she hands it to Shane, his eye glow with elation. He drops to his knees, hugging the prize tight, tears in his eyes. The crowd goes wild, cheering for the man who pulled off the impossible!
The bell rings as Kyle Shane bolts up, arms raised in the air! The crowd is electric!
“Here is your winner, and NEEEEWWWWWW PURE CLASS WRESTLING NORTH AMERICAN CHAMPION: KYLE SHANE!!!"
"Whhhhaatt. Have. YoUUUU. Done."
Shane is handed the championship and he raises it high above his head as "In The Morning And Amazing" by Circa Survive plays.
The referee calls for the bell. Kyle looks up in disbelief. LOUD chants of THANK YOU KYLE, THANK YOU are mixed in with his entrance music.
Sasha Greene: Here is the winner of the match, and NEW Pure Class Wrestling World Champion, Kyle Shane!
The best this company has to offer
The best this company has to offer
The agent, sobering and his vision clearing, looks sadly at the anger and bitterness, the emotional darkening that he now sees is coloring the timeline. Replacing the hope and brightness of the future of the Last White Event, something that was leading to a healing, more positive and stronger Kyle Shane, being sabotaged by petty infighting and squabbling egos. He feels a tear shed as he finally realizes that the timeline he wrote off for so long, might actually have been something special and have made the world a better place, but now it was all falling apart. Congratulations. And because of his inaction, his not paying attention, him letting the fighting creep in and the glitches spread, he was at fault for not letting it stop spreading.
"He's just... sitting in his room, talking now," says the cubicle neighbor looking over his shoulder.
"Alexa Black... this fight should have been between you and me."
There's a momentary flash of a bright future, a happy future, where Noelani smiles up at her uncle Bryan and he laughs back, picking up his guitar again, but then it glitches and he's alone, thirty years old, sitting stripped to the waist and curved, his injured spine bent at an uncomfortable angle, and he's gritting his teeth bitterly, using the pain to fuel his own loathing and anger at the subject material. This is not leading to the future he wanted. Not anymore. But he's past the point of caring.
"I wanted to fight you versus me, one on one, for the North American Championship at Return To Glory, because at the time I was strong and secure in my convictions. I saw the way you no-showed your first North American title match, a match I wasn't even sure why you were given because you hadn't really won anything that put you in contendership. Then when Corey left the belt behind, I saw you fight for it against High Tide, and neither one of you really put in the effort that says "I really care about this and I want to make it the best match of my career". I thought that the North American Title deserved better and I picked Return To Glory, symbollicaly because I wanted to bring the North American Title out of the darkness, into a brighter future, even if I had to drag you, kicking and screaming and berate you every step of the way there.
But you couldn't even hold on to it long enough.
I'm disappointed on a surface level that I didn't get to be the one who put you down, but that's just my issues with political overreach, authority figures abusing power, and proclaiming people who have been doing them favors for the last decade as their boys. I mean you can look at the top champions of the company right now, and their so -called Main Character of Pure Class Wrestling, and if you don't see home cooking I don't know what else you could be looking at.
So yeah, it should have been you versus me, but, Loki NEVER liked being behind a desk, and he ALWAYS intended on fighting you after that first punch two months ago, he just finally got around to it. It was always the plan for Loki and you to dance. So I swallowed a bitter pill and got High Tide, watching the results and hoping that you'd find a way to turn back that entitled piece of shit who took our match away from us because he got "An idea".
And you lost.
And that future went away.
My dreams of a strong statement of change and reclaiming old glory and making something better fell apart (Yeah, if you really think one of the old, pre-2014 PCW guys is going to defend his title and be a strong champion, you really aren't paying attention to Stormm and his reign in absentia.) Loki is not showing up on Trauma with that title any time soon. And I'm left with nothing but the former champion and the bitter ashes of our dead dreams; the feud we built up so strongly - I knocked you off a fucking stage, Alexa, now has to be a side piece played out on Trauma. Maybe we'll continue knocking each other's brains out every week and fight for contendership later. And, but, maybe just maybe Loki will nut up, will start putting in appearances on Trauma (unlikely as that seems since he took six weeks between poking his head out of the ground at a time) and he'll face us in a tag match where we're partnered together, unlikely tag team partners against a common foe that still hate each other.
Because Pure Class Wrestling loves beating that old horse.
Either way, you robbed our fight of all it's vim and vinegar just because you can't stick the landing to save your life. You proved everything I said right with barely an effort. If your back is to the wall to prove you can hold on to a division you are the champion of, then quite frankly you should never have been there in the first place. And Alexa, every single iota of your being says you should not be there. You want me to read you, Alexa Black, because you're an open book test, easy as pie. You mouth all of these sadistic words, you play yourself up as a monster. I've never seen someone so willingly and openly describe themselves as a sociopath in their biography, but you go out of your way to do so - which is DEFINITELY something that a person would do. And yet, for all of the words and the bullshit about how you murder people and you're so evil, guys, who have you ever beaten that didn't come back the next week smiling?
You're a fucking joke."
The two agents watching in the cubicle eye each other uneasily. This is so far away from the Kyle of the bright White Event timeline. Not a child or a guitar in sight.
"And please note that I haven't even scratched a surface of your asinine idiocy because crumbling you into bits would be a pleasure. You couldn't accomplish on your best day what I wanted to do with the North American title. You couldn't, really accomplish anything at all. Why does a supposed psychopath who loves to brutally murder people need not one but two managers to come out to the ring to interfere in their matches? So much so that when they're sent away from ringside, you shrieked at losing your advantage against Loki? No Alexa, you're not a weapon... because if you were, you'd have just dropped it on the ground and shot yourself in the foot.
So thanks a lot, Alexa, you made this so special and meaningful, I'm so glad that we get to do this on a random Trauma people probably aren't going to think back on in six months.
Thank you so much for continuing to give me hope."
The screen is overtaken by glitches and green/blue/pink static.
"Bryan, you're going to short it out, escape the program!" says his neighbor, but the timeline agent shakes his head vociferously, "I can't, I have to scan forward, go back to the x40 timeline. If it's all corrupted, it's - "
"If it's glitching like that, it's being overwritten into something darker, you know how this works," he warns against it.
But then, as soon as he sees the orange-colored sky and the people peeking their heads out of the ruined cabin, he knows he's made a mistake and peeked too far into a ruined timeline.
The child at his hip is the same size and structure as the little girl with the blonde curls and the flower wreath placed gently in her hair, but she's missing an eye at this age, as battle hardened as a vet, and her hair shorn. She's by his side as she snaps a cartridge into the shotgun. "You ready, Noey?" He says to the little girl in the road leathers. She considers the gun in her hands. "How many raiders are out there?" she asks.
"Bout ten," the salt and peppered, world weary figure of Elder Kyle says, shouldering his pack and spinning the barrel of his gun into place.
"You ever wonder, uncle Kyle," Noey says, with the air of someone who's already too old for this shit, "How the world got this bad?"
He grimly sights the gun between the boards of the cabin, looking at the raiders sneaking through the bushes, hearing their wild gibbering like hyenas in the night. He thumbs the hammer of the pistol, taking aim.
"I don't care about that anymore, girl," he murmurs, "It was so long ago, who even remembers."
