Land of Shadows (1.07) Shadow of the Little Dragon

[Stormm]

Swift breaths from the Earth rustled through the trees and tousled the green grass, while also carrying faint whiffs of sea salt in its breeze. There were no clouds in sight, yet the crowd that had gathered in the cemetery that afternoon wouldn’t notice the favorable weather.

No matter the bullshit term used to describe it: laying to rest, celebrating life, what have you, nobody there expected to be burying Johnny Matthews that day. Everybody except those that watched him drink, and smoke, and wrestle until his body couldn’t take anymore for years.

Justin.

Lindsay.

Stace.

They didn’t want to believe it, but over the last week had come to accept it. The three of them had even shared a moment in the Matthews Estate a few nights previously where they agreed that, to their surprise, Johnny hadn’t overdone it and gone sooner.

Besides the closest three to him in his life over the past decade, other extended family gathered with them, as well as the friends that Johnny hadn’t been too condescending to run off over the years. It would be no shock that those were few and far between.

Rounding out the rest of the crowd were the dozens of wrestling superstars that the Man in Black had worked with in some capacity over the years.

There were several that even Justin and Lindsay didn’t recognize that Johnny had impacted while touring the indy’s, and plenty of support in Corpus Christi that day from he and Stace’s Lonestar Championship Wrestling, as well.

Then of course all the usual suspects from all the MWM promotions that had, unfortunately, gotten used to Matthews funerals over the last fifteen years. Glyn Speight, Marcus Cain, Spider, Jason Willard, Quinn Masters, Chris Gil, Landon Divine, just to name a few.

It was also no shock that, besides Michaels and Willard, the Pure Class Wrestling crowd was sparse. In fact, maybe only two or three other past and present superstars from PCW could make it… or cared to show up.

Regardless of the who's who in Johnny’s life, they all cared enough to show, and spend one last day together with another in a long line of men in a family that had been revolutionizing a genre of entertainment for decades.

...Shadow of the Little Dragon...

I can still hear his voice, telling me everything I’m doing wrong, and nothing I’m doing right. He’s been gone for eighteen years now, I think, and sometimes it’s as if he’s in the room with me. That’s the impact your uncle Johnny had on people. His dad, your grandpa, was the exact same way. Your mom has it, and you guys have it too.

“I thought it would be raining.” A thick Asian accent cut through the rustling leaves and gusts of wind as a man came up behind Justin. He was the last man standing at the cemetery, as everyone else had gone their own way, or made it back to the Matthews’ estate. “It was disappointing not to see a hundred black umbrellas out, pouring rain on everyone here, like in the movies.”

Leaning up against a large tree close to the gravesite, Justin looked over his shoulder to see Kinzo Yoshida, the leader of the Black Hand, approach. He, himself, was in a black suit, and while he may be a literal monster, he still pretended to have some manners. “Tell me why I should turn around and choke you out right here and now, Kinzo?” Justin asked, staring at the pile of dirt next to a hole in the ground.

“Because, you have more important things to worry about right now.” Kinzo suggested, knowing he was safe from attack, for the time being. Justin was in too emotional of a state to do anything, even though a lot of pain and heartache could be avenged, and also avoided, if he were to just end it there. “What fun would that be anyway? You’ve never taken the easy path, why should you start now?”

“To prevent you from killing anyone else I care about?” Both fell silent, and only the Earth spoke for several moments. “That is why you’re here, isn’t it? To gloat?” Justin turned toward Kinzo. “To tell me you’re the reason that Johnny is dead?”

With a smile, Kinzo nodded back at Justin. “The Black Hand needed to send you a message, before you decide to do anything brash.”

“Lying about killing my brother-in-law is only going to make me want to come after your piece of shit organization more than before!” Justin exclaimed, pushing himself away from the tree, and running a hand through his growing beard. “The only person that killed Johnny, is Johnny. Years of abuse in several forms is what did him in.”

“And a little vial of something extremely dangerous and untraceable slipped into his whiskey while he wrestled.” Justin lunged toward the man unkindly known as Xiaolong, or, the Little Dragon, by those in his organization. “Just know that it could be you next. Or maybe that pretty little blonde you keep strapped to your arm. Then again, if we really want to keep you in line, the two little, how do you say it here, tykes, would be obvious targets.”

There were only tiny fibers left of Justin’s temper that were keeping him from lashing out. But he refused to become the man that haunted him. The one thing that kept his hands from wrapping around the man’s neck were the facts. The fact that the Black Hand hadn’t actually infiltrated AWE, inc., and Kinzo lied about it. Even if they had managed to spike Johnny’s liquor, which he’d been good about not taking with him to shows, or even really needing like he’d needed in the past, there was no bringing him back. But, Justin did have one of Kinzo’s men now, and from what the Force of Nature could tell, Kinzo was none the wiser to it.

“You know what, the more you come around, the more I’m beginning to understand you again, and if I remember correctly, you were all talk back then too.” Justin smiled, and turned his back to Kinzo, and leaned back up against the same tree as before. “You’ll pay for doing this to him, if you did anything.” He glanced back, through the corner of his eye, and over his shoulder at the man. “But mostly, you are going to pay for thinking you could take advantage of me in any way, shape, or form. So enjoy it while you can, because some day, maybe not tomorrow, and maybe not the next day, but some day, I will come for you, and I will take everything you can only hope to try taking from me!”

Reaching out and patting Justin on the shoulder, the Little Dragon smirked. “Unless you take my life, which I know you’re incapable of, you have nothing left to take from me. But don’t forget about everything you have to lose while you’re digging as deep as you can to come up with a way to stop me.”

Moving his shoulder, and forcing the man’s hand off, Justin nodded with a bite full of his inner cheek. He had a plan, and making a move, despite the opportunity being handed to him on a silver platter, would serve no purpose. Kinzo would be gone, but Justin would end up in prison, no matter how convincing the story might be.

He had too much on the line.

Lindsay.

Joey.

Remi.

His career.

His business.

For the time being, he would let Kinzo keep thinking he had Justin by the balls, and press on. After all, getting an agent of the Black Hand to inform on the organization was a solid plan… as solid of a plan as anyone else had thought of anyway.

I’ll be honest, your dad almost killed a guy that day. I could have easily done it. But I didn’t want to lose everything in the process. I didn’t want to lose you. I didn’t want to lose your mom. I didn’t want to miss wrestling. Believe it or not, that match I had against Grimm and Dominator with Gerard Angelo in PCW the following week, I didn’t want to lose that either.

Grimm and I’s story had stood the test of time, but we still weren’t done writing it. There were many more matches to have between us, and more more titles for us to fight each other for. I wasn’t going to lose those opportunities.

Dominator and I’s story had just begun, and even though he’d gotten the better of me in the early going, I wasn’t about to lose the opportunity to swing things back in my favor. No matter his size. No matter his determination. Nothing was going to stop me from making him realize I was not an old man just waiting to be written off.

Gerard Angelo and I’s story had yet to even begin. People had been talking about it for years, and wondered when it was finally going to happen. Yet another young, arrogant superstar that reminded me more and more of myself early on in the business. Both of us chasing the stars, and doing anything and everything we could to catch something we’ve only briefly tasted before. I wasn’t going to lose the opportunity to see where that went either.

Two dominant competitors with everything they wanted against two starving superstars that would work as hard as they could to get what they had. It was the match that started a long chain of events in PCW that would go on for months, and I tell you what, nobody was disappointed in the end.

Hell, I’m still sitting here talking about it, when this story started off with me talking about losing your uncle, and how I almost killed a guy. That’s pretty powerful stuff right there, if I do say so myself.