A Little Respect, and Some Delicious Fruit Pies.
Jul 7, 2020 17:43:06 GMT -5
Holden Ross and Gerard Angelo like this
Post by Kyle Shane on Jul 7, 2020 17:43:06 GMT -5
Pirates.
He asked for little, all things considered, and in return, he was given... fucking pirates.
He sat in the dark in the lakehouse, computer screen washing green over his features and blurring his scowl as he sat, chin in his hand, and considered the letter he was strongly considering drafting.
He just... couldn't take, couldn't even fathom the level of disrespect shown to him, by Loki, by PCW culture as a whole, and his finger wavered; hesistantly hemmed, and he finally backspaced and deleted 196 letters worth of invective. He wanted to fucking shred the smarmy little prick, but he knew he was super close to burning his bridge in Pure Class Wrestling (one too many times taking a joust at Grimm, even if they were completely deserved and logical), and anyway it never felt like they attempted to understand where his gripe came from. He could bear the new perception of him as a "complainer" because he ultimately didn't care about the whispers. His "complaints" were the voice of someone sticking up for themselves because they knew their worth. He was the exact same person he had been when they had voted him Most Loved. All that he was asking for was basic fucking respect. And in return, he got... pirates.
Loki had locked him out of a match he had been working towards ever since Mass Destruction, had written him off with a pithy one liner about how Kyle didn't respect the veterans who had built foundations yadda yadda. How he had arrogantly overwritten the narrative. Kyle was painted as just a mealy mouthed Johnny Come Lately punk kid who'd walked in the door weeks ago and demanded a title shot... not a former World Champion who wanted the company to move away from celebrating people who have done nothing for this company except gatekeep; who devalue it's prestigious championships, ya know, by pulling shit exactly like this.
He glanced over at the Icey award now serving as a paperweight, a framed plaque that read "Most Innovative, July 2020".
One show after giving him an award for being the Most Innovative, the company he came back with the full intention of giving everything to, of devoting energy that Loki could simply never match, let Loki use some bullshit "executive power" that was as much farce as anything going on in the offices of the Mango Mussolini. If Pure Class Wrestling was removing Loki from a position of power, they could have vetoed any single act he carried out, including replacing a contracted talent in a match that Loki had not even worked for. They did not, because they just didn't care enough to. Two shows after giving him an award for Most Innovative, he was being asked to stretch his muscles, flex his creativity and give purpose to a clash against High Tide.
He picked the award up between two hands, turning it this way and that as he weighed it's balance. Did Loki even know who he was, was the question, did Loki even know Kyle WAS a former champion who had been here for three years? Odds were, as absentee as Loki had been on the shows (David Hunter had even had sex on the man's vacant desk) that the dude didn't have the faintest of who anybody who's check he'd signed in the last five years were. But instead of respect, he used his "power" to give Kyle this, leaving Kyle in vain to try and scrape together a modus about how beating up poor pitiful fucking High Tide would gain him momentum and seal his place in the North American division pecking order.
He... couldn't do it.
It was a nothing match against a fucking pirate while the real ultimate battle he had been training for and pushing Alexa for was being contested by an authority figure abusing power, the same old boring trope done infinity-times more interestingly everywhere else for twenty years. God, PCW really did love it's nostalgia.
Should High Tide even deign to show his face before his and Kyle's scrap (like he didn't, for a championship match, two times in a row) he'd no doubt give some rah rah spiel about getting his career on track and being written off as a joke for too long. Maybe even swear to give Kyle a beating for running roughshod over him and using him as an example in the opening gambit months ago. The man who swaggers out with a Walt Disney World Pirates of the Caribbean cosplay is gonna lower some bass into his voice and suddenly try to convince people that he's threatening and should be taken seriously.
He sighed, looking at his distorted, inhuman frown stretched in a reflection on the pane of glass of his Most Innovative appeasement.
He pitched the frame and the cheap paper it was printed on into the waste paper basket at the foot of his desk, where such empty platitudes and paeans to principles of innovation Pure Class Wrestling didn't even believe or adhere to belonged.
He wanted desperately to talk to someone. He pulled out his phone, wanting to text Array. To ask her advice, as he sometimes did when he felt lost. To ask her for advice on what, exactly, he could do to pull some kind of worthwhile, meaningful engagement out of talking about a dude in a bad Depp costume. But he hadn't talked to her in months, and now, in the first few months of this timeline, he did not have her as his contact with the human world. She, wrapped up in her own life, would be confused and easily write off Kyle's attempts to have a heart to heart. So he couldn't ring her up, letting him fall into the familiar rhythms of their repartee and their easy chemistry. Hey beautiful, everything the same? No. Because that would be hollow, and meaningless, and a lie, because he knew he couldn't just talk about moving forward, he had to be about it.
And yet it was a cold and lonely thing to contemplate that you weren't someone's person anymore. That someone who held you in the apple of their eye just scant months or years ago now took everything you said as an insult and misunderstood your intentions; The uneasy dance of walking on eggshells in every interaction; Not wanting to completely burn the bridge down but not knowing how to repair it. The relationship soured to such a degree that intimate dance partners and companions now were virtually strangers in your life. So it was with her, so it was with the company he worked for.
Thoughtfully, his mouth puckered into a moue. In the darkness, he looked from the cursor blinking at his screen, down to the edge of the Most Innovative award frame sticking out of the edge of the wastepaper basket.
And he bitterly thought of being forced to talk about pirates again.
He shook his head, walking off to another part of the house, and putting his phone down on the counter so his intended text to Array was blinking in Messenger, it's blinky cursor and empty, deleted paragraph a mirror of what he wanted to say to PCW.
His last thought before exit was that throwing the award into the basket wasn't enough, he'd probably wipe his ass with it later on.
But for some, strange reason, he had a hankering right this second for delicious Hotess fruit pies. "Mmm, flaky crust," he could be heard to mutter to himself.
The receipient on the other end of the Messenger connection was, at that very moment, scantily clad and stretched out on a towel, sea spray whipping her hair around her face as she posed and arched.
The photographer was in her space invasively, pecking in and out like a bird to snap a shot. Array had to adjust against the winds to keep her fashionable wide-brimmed hat from being blown off.
Really all she wanted to do was get the shots perfect so she could get off the front of the boat and put some clothes on, but here we are.
It was a simple, cakewalk shoot off the coast of Barbados, expenses paid by the brand, with incentive of making Array the face of a campaign. Array never would have thought of herself as an influencer months ago, but the opportunities had arisen through the interconnected web of people her girlfriend knew. No corporate boardrooms, no lawyers and contracts. Marki had brought to the bar a cabal of young social media moguls who didn't fit normal millionaire profiles. Everyone had agreed on handshake principle for her to boost their content with ads, gain likes, be pretty for them. And they were paying for it...
And yet she felt more than a twinge of selling out, of selling more than a soul. She had gone into this, at bottom, with the stipulation that just because she did ads for clothing and teas to promote on the Gram, that they'd still respect her as an artist and let her do her own thing.
"Arch your feet more, love, point your toes downward and let your tushy firm up..." the photographer said, swooping over to her flank.
Such respected, very artist. She sighed, closed her eyes, and tried to imagine putting a hoodie over the tiny bits of string covering her.
Sean the photographer was changing film, and Array noticed another boat, on a perpendicular trajectory. She looked out over the crystalline waves, wrapped her arms around her knees, projecting casual ease to go with her modesty. She at least thought, hearing her stomach grumble, that she wished she could rummage through the cooler. She knew that it was packed to the brim with delicious snacks. But oh, no, models couldn't eat the contents inside, they were empty calories, countered Sean, Tyrannical Sean, who ran this modelling shoot like a gulag, the models in their branded string bikinis little more than convicts picking at rocks. According to Sean, any model who took one bite of the delicious, flaky crusted, fruit filled delights within the cooler would be summarily fired.
That boat is getting close, huh?, Array thought errantly, trying to take her mind off the cooler full of fruit pies and her growing dissatisfaction with the gig. Was 100,000 likes (and a percentage of profit for her per milestone) really worth all of this? She shivered, despite the sizzling tropical heat. Her thoughts, all over the place, on the demeaning shoot and the placement of these strings in various crevices of her body, on the fascistic Sean and his demands for perfectly arched feet and a firm tushy, on her bosses promises, and... yes, her current lack of fruit pies... it was really all about respect. She was never afforded a lot of respect in her time, having to scrap and fight for it where she earned it.
Was she really complaining, and rocking the boat, if she just asked for a little bit more respect, from everybody?
There was a fraction of a second where, in the lull of activity, Array picked up her phone and started to open Messenger, scrolling down the names, but then -
Array felt a shadow coming over the sun. Her brow knit. It was like an omen, passing in the night... and then, the deck of the boat heaved, throwing Sean, the other models and the just random pretty Insta influencers who'd come along for the ride asunder. The boat had been smashed into with force.
The boat that had been approaching them was now forceably docked with them. And, in less time than it takes to tell, grappling hooks shot out, cords entangling, catching purchase against the side of their pleasure yacht. Screams went up from the influencers as rough looking men swarmed over the side of the boat, boarding onto their yacht. Pointing guns and swords, the Caribbean men fanned out, armed and dangerous. "We are the Phoomie Goonies," called one of the Caribbean men in a swarthy accent, and he gestured at them with his assault rifle. "And you rich American gringoes are now hostages! Your decadent capitalist masters will have to pay the ransom to our revolutionary cause or they will be washing their hands in the blood of you sycophantic party goers! Give us your money and jewels!"
Array looked on, mouth agape. Pirates. Pirates had attacked her modelling shoot.
Like the self-important, swellhead that he was, Sean deigned to stand up while the other models kneeled around him fingers laced together behind their head. He jammed a thumb into his chest and said "This yacht belongs to my father and these girls are models for @fashion Nova, which has 1 million followers on Insta -"
The butt of an assault rifle smashed Sean's pudgy cheek so hard that he spit out a mouthful of blood and a tooth, and the Phoomie Goonies all began to gather around, taking a protracted minute to club Sean and stop him from talking. It was violently, absurdly satisfying to include that bit.
"I am the captain now," said the lead pirate, completing the whole, insane picture.
Array looked around, not knowing what to do. She wasn't one of the influencers cringing and shitting themselves in their cheaply made knockoff merchandise but there were half a dozen pirates standing there fully armed, and she was functionally naked standing on a boat in the middle of the ocean, with no way to call for help, with no weapons, the only things around her were lighting rigs, flutes of champagne and trays, and -- Ooh, a cooler.
"Oh boys," she singsonged, and a wicked grin split her face. "You've been working sooo hard," her voice became a playful, sexy purr, and she allured them by arching over the cooler and bending over so that thanks to the incredibly skimpy clothes they all got an eyeful of her. She caressed the lid of the cooler. "Been out here in the hot sun, pirating on the high seas, wouldn't you like a delicious treat?" Her voice had all the come hither seduction of a playmate. "I know I have some pies you'd love..."
The ridiculously named pirates gathered around the cooler, which she opened like a treasure chest. X marks the spot. Glittering from within. A cavalcade of bounty. Tears formed on their eyes, and the lead pirate dug in, taking a big bite, his cheeks bulging and his eyes faraway, indulging in pleasures from the Elysian fields. No mortal pastry had ever been as satisfying, the pies the Phoomie Goonies were taking bites of were like the ambrosia of the gods. The lead pirate couldn't stop himself, remarking "Real fruit filling, mmmm, delicious apple... light, flaky crust..."
A bottle of champagne slammed across his head, bursting and erupting and shattering from the force of the swing. He went down in a daze.
The resounding smash of the bottle echoed over the waves. The influencers looked up, seeing that Array had swooped in on the distraction and laid him out. They began to get to their feet as well. The models, all of who where wearing similar apparel and who were expected to post this to their Gram and gain enough likes, had surged forth, suddenly very frurstrated and enraged, out for blood. They picked up clubs, forks, plates, and the models began to get very angry as they surrounded the five remaining Goonies.
"We surrender!!" one of the pirates called, around a mouthful of moist, deliciously glazed, crusted cherry pie, "We surrender... just, please, gringoes... don't take away our delicious Hotess fruit pies!"
A cheer went up from the influencers and the party goers. The seagulls cried happily. The Phoomie Goonies, now being tied and lashed together in a clump by spider-straps and bungie cords, couldn't have cared less as each had one hand free to shove a fruit pie in their mouths. Sean lay bleeding on the deck, and Array, covering herself with a towel, looked down at a shaky hand, reaching up to paw at her. "Murrghle... a... little help?" the bloody mess croaked.
Array frowned, and looked down at her phone.
Fucking pirates.
He asked for little, all things considered, and in return, he was given... fucking pirates.
He sat in the dark in the lakehouse, computer screen washing green over his features and blurring his scowl as he sat, chin in his hand, and considered the letter he was strongly considering drafting.
He just... couldn't take, couldn't even fathom the level of disrespect shown to him, by Loki, by PCW culture as a whole, and his finger wavered; hesistantly hemmed, and he finally backspaced and deleted 196 letters worth of invective. He wanted to fucking shred the smarmy little prick, but he knew he was super close to burning his bridge in Pure Class Wrestling (one too many times taking a joust at Grimm, even if they were completely deserved and logical), and anyway it never felt like they attempted to understand where his gripe came from. He could bear the new perception of him as a "complainer" because he ultimately didn't care about the whispers. His "complaints" were the voice of someone sticking up for themselves because they knew their worth. He was the exact same person he had been when they had voted him Most Loved. All that he was asking for was basic fucking respect. And in return, he got... pirates.
Loki had locked him out of a match he had been working towards ever since Mass Destruction, had written him off with a pithy one liner about how Kyle didn't respect the veterans who had built foundations yadda yadda. How he had arrogantly overwritten the narrative. Kyle was painted as just a mealy mouthed Johnny Come Lately punk kid who'd walked in the door weeks ago and demanded a title shot... not a former World Champion who wanted the company to move away from celebrating people who have done nothing for this company except gatekeep; who devalue it's prestigious championships, ya know, by pulling shit exactly like this.
He glanced over at the Icey award now serving as a paperweight, a framed plaque that read "Most Innovative, July 2020".
One show after giving him an award for being the Most Innovative, the company he came back with the full intention of giving everything to, of devoting energy that Loki could simply never match, let Loki use some bullshit "executive power" that was as much farce as anything going on in the offices of the Mango Mussolini. If Pure Class Wrestling was removing Loki from a position of power, they could have vetoed any single act he carried out, including replacing a contracted talent in a match that Loki had not even worked for. They did not, because they just didn't care enough to. Two shows after giving him an award for Most Innovative, he was being asked to stretch his muscles, flex his creativity and give purpose to a clash against High Tide.
He picked the award up between two hands, turning it this way and that as he weighed it's balance. Did Loki even know who he was, was the question, did Loki even know Kyle WAS a former champion who had been here for three years? Odds were, as absentee as Loki had been on the shows (David Hunter had even had sex on the man's vacant desk) that the dude didn't have the faintest of who anybody who's check he'd signed in the last five years were. But instead of respect, he used his "power" to give Kyle this, leaving Kyle in vain to try and scrape together a modus about how beating up poor pitiful fucking High Tide would gain him momentum and seal his place in the North American division pecking order.
He... couldn't do it.
It was a nothing match against a fucking pirate while the real ultimate battle he had been training for and pushing Alexa for was being contested by an authority figure abusing power, the same old boring trope done infinity-times more interestingly everywhere else for twenty years. God, PCW really did love it's nostalgia.
Should High Tide even deign to show his face before his and Kyle's scrap (like he didn't, for a championship match, two times in a row) he'd no doubt give some rah rah spiel about getting his career on track and being written off as a joke for too long. Maybe even swear to give Kyle a beating for running roughshod over him and using him as an example in the opening gambit months ago. The man who swaggers out with a Walt Disney World Pirates of the Caribbean cosplay is gonna lower some bass into his voice and suddenly try to convince people that he's threatening and should be taken seriously.
He sighed, looking at his distorted, inhuman frown stretched in a reflection on the pane of glass of his Most Innovative appeasement.
He pitched the frame and the cheap paper it was printed on into the waste paper basket at the foot of his desk, where such empty platitudes and paeans to principles of innovation Pure Class Wrestling didn't even believe or adhere to belonged.
He wanted desperately to talk to someone. He pulled out his phone, wanting to text Array. To ask her advice, as he sometimes did when he felt lost. To ask her for advice on what, exactly, he could do to pull some kind of worthwhile, meaningful engagement out of talking about a dude in a bad Depp costume. But he hadn't talked to her in months, and now, in the first few months of this timeline, he did not have her as his contact with the human world. She, wrapped up in her own life, would be confused and easily write off Kyle's attempts to have a heart to heart. So he couldn't ring her up, letting him fall into the familiar rhythms of their repartee and their easy chemistry. Hey beautiful, everything the same? No. Because that would be hollow, and meaningless, and a lie, because he knew he couldn't just talk about moving forward, he had to be about it.
And yet it was a cold and lonely thing to contemplate that you weren't someone's person anymore. That someone who held you in the apple of their eye just scant months or years ago now took everything you said as an insult and misunderstood your intentions; The uneasy dance of walking on eggshells in every interaction; Not wanting to completely burn the bridge down but not knowing how to repair it. The relationship soured to such a degree that intimate dance partners and companions now were virtually strangers in your life. So it was with her, so it was with the company he worked for.
Thoughtfully, his mouth puckered into a moue. In the darkness, he looked from the cursor blinking at his screen, down to the edge of the Most Innovative award frame sticking out of the edge of the wastepaper basket.
And he bitterly thought of being forced to talk about pirates again.
He shook his head, walking off to another part of the house, and putting his phone down on the counter so his intended text to Array was blinking in Messenger, it's blinky cursor and empty, deleted paragraph a mirror of what he wanted to say to PCW.
His last thought before exit was that throwing the award into the basket wasn't enough, he'd probably wipe his ass with it later on.
But for some, strange reason, he had a hankering right this second for delicious Hotess fruit pies. "Mmm, flaky crust," he could be heard to mutter to himself.
The receipient on the other end of the Messenger connection was, at that very moment, scantily clad and stretched out on a towel, sea spray whipping her hair around her face as she posed and arched.
The photographer was in her space invasively, pecking in and out like a bird to snap a shot. Array had to adjust against the winds to keep her fashionable wide-brimmed hat from being blown off.
Really all she wanted to do was get the shots perfect so she could get off the front of the boat and put some clothes on, but here we are.
It was a simple, cakewalk shoot off the coast of Barbados, expenses paid by the brand, with incentive of making Array the face of a campaign. Array never would have thought of herself as an influencer months ago, but the opportunities had arisen through the interconnected web of people her girlfriend knew. No corporate boardrooms, no lawyers and contracts. Marki had brought to the bar a cabal of young social media moguls who didn't fit normal millionaire profiles. Everyone had agreed on handshake principle for her to boost their content with ads, gain likes, be pretty for them. And they were paying for it...
And yet she felt more than a twinge of selling out, of selling more than a soul. She had gone into this, at bottom, with the stipulation that just because she did ads for clothing and teas to promote on the Gram, that they'd still respect her as an artist and let her do her own thing.
"Arch your feet more, love, point your toes downward and let your tushy firm up..." the photographer said, swooping over to her flank.
Such respected, very artist. She sighed, closed her eyes, and tried to imagine putting a hoodie over the tiny bits of string covering her.
Sean the photographer was changing film, and Array noticed another boat, on a perpendicular trajectory. She looked out over the crystalline waves, wrapped her arms around her knees, projecting casual ease to go with her modesty. She at least thought, hearing her stomach grumble, that she wished she could rummage through the cooler. She knew that it was packed to the brim with delicious snacks. But oh, no, models couldn't eat the contents inside, they were empty calories, countered Sean, Tyrannical Sean, who ran this modelling shoot like a gulag, the models in their branded string bikinis little more than convicts picking at rocks. According to Sean, any model who took one bite of the delicious, flaky crusted, fruit filled delights within the cooler would be summarily fired.
That boat is getting close, huh?, Array thought errantly, trying to take her mind off the cooler full of fruit pies and her growing dissatisfaction with the gig. Was 100,000 likes (and a percentage of profit for her per milestone) really worth all of this? She shivered, despite the sizzling tropical heat. Her thoughts, all over the place, on the demeaning shoot and the placement of these strings in various crevices of her body, on the fascistic Sean and his demands for perfectly arched feet and a firm tushy, on her bosses promises, and... yes, her current lack of fruit pies... it was really all about respect. She was never afforded a lot of respect in her time, having to scrap and fight for it where she earned it.
Was she really complaining, and rocking the boat, if she just asked for a little bit more respect, from everybody?
There was a fraction of a second where, in the lull of activity, Array picked up her phone and started to open Messenger, scrolling down the names, but then -
Array felt a shadow coming over the sun. Her brow knit. It was like an omen, passing in the night... and then, the deck of the boat heaved, throwing Sean, the other models and the just random pretty Insta influencers who'd come along for the ride asunder. The boat had been smashed into with force.
The boat that had been approaching them was now forceably docked with them. And, in less time than it takes to tell, grappling hooks shot out, cords entangling, catching purchase against the side of their pleasure yacht. Screams went up from the influencers as rough looking men swarmed over the side of the boat, boarding onto their yacht. Pointing guns and swords, the Caribbean men fanned out, armed and dangerous. "We are the Phoomie Goonies," called one of the Caribbean men in a swarthy accent, and he gestured at them with his assault rifle. "And you rich American gringoes are now hostages! Your decadent capitalist masters will have to pay the ransom to our revolutionary cause or they will be washing their hands in the blood of you sycophantic party goers! Give us your money and jewels!"
Array looked on, mouth agape. Pirates. Pirates had attacked her modelling shoot.
Like the self-important, swellhead that he was, Sean deigned to stand up while the other models kneeled around him fingers laced together behind their head. He jammed a thumb into his chest and said "This yacht belongs to my father and these girls are models for @fashion Nova, which has 1 million followers on Insta -"
The butt of an assault rifle smashed Sean's pudgy cheek so hard that he spit out a mouthful of blood and a tooth, and the Phoomie Goonies all began to gather around, taking a protracted minute to club Sean and stop him from talking. It was violently, absurdly satisfying to include that bit.
"I am the captain now," said the lead pirate, completing the whole, insane picture.
Array looked around, not knowing what to do. She wasn't one of the influencers cringing and shitting themselves in their cheaply made knockoff merchandise but there were half a dozen pirates standing there fully armed, and she was functionally naked standing on a boat in the middle of the ocean, with no way to call for help, with no weapons, the only things around her were lighting rigs, flutes of champagne and trays, and -- Ooh, a cooler.
"Oh boys," she singsonged, and a wicked grin split her face. "You've been working sooo hard," her voice became a playful, sexy purr, and she allured them by arching over the cooler and bending over so that thanks to the incredibly skimpy clothes they all got an eyeful of her. She caressed the lid of the cooler. "Been out here in the hot sun, pirating on the high seas, wouldn't you like a delicious treat?" Her voice had all the come hither seduction of a playmate. "I know I have some pies you'd love..."
The ridiculously named pirates gathered around the cooler, which she opened like a treasure chest. X marks the spot. Glittering from within. A cavalcade of bounty. Tears formed on their eyes, and the lead pirate dug in, taking a big bite, his cheeks bulging and his eyes faraway, indulging in pleasures from the Elysian fields. No mortal pastry had ever been as satisfying, the pies the Phoomie Goonies were taking bites of were like the ambrosia of the gods. The lead pirate couldn't stop himself, remarking "Real fruit filling, mmmm, delicious apple... light, flaky crust..."
A bottle of champagne slammed across his head, bursting and erupting and shattering from the force of the swing. He went down in a daze.
The resounding smash of the bottle echoed over the waves. The influencers looked up, seeing that Array had swooped in on the distraction and laid him out. They began to get to their feet as well. The models, all of who where wearing similar apparel and who were expected to post this to their Gram and gain enough likes, had surged forth, suddenly very frurstrated and enraged, out for blood. They picked up clubs, forks, plates, and the models began to get very angry as they surrounded the five remaining Goonies.
"We surrender!!" one of the pirates called, around a mouthful of moist, deliciously glazed, crusted cherry pie, "We surrender... just, please, gringoes... don't take away our delicious Hotess fruit pies!"
A cheer went up from the influencers and the party goers. The seagulls cried happily. The Phoomie Goonies, now being tied and lashed together in a clump by spider-straps and bungie cords, couldn't have cared less as each had one hand free to shove a fruit pie in their mouths. Sean lay bleeding on the deck, and Array, covering herself with a towel, looked down at a shaky hand, reaching up to paw at her. "Murrghle... a... little help?" the bloody mess croaked.
Array frowned, and looked down at her phone.
Fucking pirates.
