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Post by PWP Office on Dec 29, 2015 1:30:12 GMT -6
1 RP Max. 300 word minimum. Deadline is Jan 20th at 11:59pm Central.
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Post by whiskey on Jan 20, 2016 21:35:27 GMT -6
It was supposed to have been a moment of catharsis for the slim Filipino. The build up and the grind, the self-doubt... even the homesickness she didn't care to admit to, all of it, every moment of it from the highs of her win streak to the lows of a layoff that last over a half a year and her failure within the confines of Sin City Wrestling's Queen Of Sin, it all built to the moment she felt that plated belt in her grasp.
She had held titles before, of course. Smaller shootboxing and kickboxing promotions that many people would have to struggle to find on an internet search engine. She'd worked hard to attain them and yet... her reigns had seemed passing, fleeting. Yes she was often the best fighter in her weight class - as long as she'd stayed healthy and focused - but the title that currently burdened her hands and thoughts felt different.
Pro wrestling had not even been a fleeting consideration for her growing up, it felt nebulous... like it resided on the fringes of what she HAD chosen. Similar and yet different. Her foray into the profession had been spurred on by simple, honest pragmatism.
She had wanted money and an out for the same existence her family had contented themselves with.
The masked man that had approached her had offered her both, all he asked from her was success.
Now, she held that success in her hands. A visible symbol, and achievement... a trophy.
Tala Multo couldn't place when it had happened between those three points, victories and losses, plusses and minuses, cuts and bruises... but sometime along those lines she'd come to care. Not just about winning or success, not just about money... but a genuine care and affinity for pro-wrestling in and of itself.
The thought hits like lightning and for a moment it feels like a miasma of indescribable emotion and memory flooding her mind and quickening the beat of her heart, but after a long deep breath the roar of the mental tide goes still, soft. Multo was never given to deep, introvertive self-examination and she knew she didn't have the education nor understanding to properly define the nuances of how her thoughts, quirks and opinions came to be, as such she had long ago learned to accept what... was.
With that achievement to her name and that gold around her waist, she simply accepted the fact that this was the moment she knew she was a professional wrestler. Not a former shootboxer, not a fighter... but a wrestler. The genuine article.
It was with that realization - and the acceptance of it - that the gravity of what she was holding and what she'd accomplished finally settled in... and the topic of catharsis setlled in anew.
With that sense of accomplishment and goal met though, another thought settles in and the young Filipino woman feels her lip curl into a grin... dangerous and predatory.
Mister Grey had shown her the image of her first challenger. Inquisitive eyes staring out from a passive - seemingly bored - expression, boring into her eyes as she stared at the picture held out for her shortly after she and her benefactor had arrived back in Augusta.
She knew better then to be fooled by those eyes, that expression. She'd felt first hand the type of dangerous intellect and cerebral instinct that existed behind them. Eyes that betrayed nothing... especially when it would be his actions doing the talking when they'd meet in the ring in Florida.
His actions had defeated her once. Her one and only existing pinfall loss.
Her response had been to defeat him, which she had managed to accomplish.
Now though? There was so much more gravitas for what was to come. Not just belying their history and game of one-upsmanship, but what she held now that he didn't. Tala Multo feels her grip tighten on the PWP Championship, a small exhale escaping her lips, mind focused on the mental image of his face.
Ian Rothburn was coming to take what was hers.
It would be a disservice to them both if Tala Multo wasn't adequately prepared to turn him away.
***
{The camera fades in from black to reveal the masked visage of one Mister Grey, clad in his usual formal attire of an expensive three piece suit and resting his weight on his ornate wooden cane. As the camera pans backwards it is revealed that beside the arisocratic airs of the masked man sits his client Tala Multo, who's clad in a simple pair of cargo pants and a button up denim longsleeve. She's dully observing a rubik's cube she's holding in her left hand}
"Well... I must admit it had been awhile, hasn't it Mister Rothburn?"
{There's a tinge of amusement from the masked man as he nods into the lens}
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but around this time last year I believe...my client had just started her tear through Pride & Honor Wrestling after avenging her pinfall loss to you. Yet despite her overcoming you and turning the score even, I must admit Mister Rothburn that there hasn't been a single opponent of hers since that has... excited me. Made me look forward to when that bell rings, because Ian, everytime you've faced my client, you've inspired her to be something better..."
{Beside him Tala turns several blocks on the cube, a perplexed expression knitting her eyebrows.}
"... nobody but her own personal drive has been able to do so much. Not Brenna Gordon, not Robb McBride... and certainly not Jack fucking Owyns could even attempt to claim half as much, Ian"
{He points into the lens}
"This seems just... all sorts of poetic then, for your third encounter then, doesn't it? A tie breaker... a title on the line, and... what did we go over the last time we did this song Ian? I'm having a little bit of trouble remembering. Oh right!"
{With that the masked man reaches over and snatches the rubik's cube from his client's hands. Nonplussed she follows the object as it gets held out in front of the camera by her manager}
"The last time we met - and Tala here beat you - you and I exchanged witticisms but we both had apt metaphors for what was your confrontations at the time. Even though such masturbatory talk leaves a bitter taste on my tongue... I actually kind of enjoy your oddball approach enough to do you the courtesy and meet you at your Starbuck's poet laureate-level. Last time... you claimed with a bored expression that Tala Multo was a puzzle you had already solved"
{He gestures to himself}
"While I stated that she was something of an incomplete piece of art. As Michaelangelo once stated, a carving already exists in a promising slab of marble, time and experienced hands will chisel away the excess to rebeal it's true beauty, right?"
{He lets out a short bark of laughter, giving his head a shake as he finds the words uncomfortable on his tongue}
"... all very fancy stuff. Even I haveta admit I'm impressed with all of the ten minutes on google to find an attributable example to what I intended to get across... and embarrassed I let myself make it to begin with, but I digress..."
{He sets a calm, firm hand on his client's shoulder, her brown eyes turning towards the lens}
"Cuz you see, if you boil all the five dollar words, verbal symbolism and all that bullshit down to the marrow, you'd see we were both wrong. Not just about Tala, but about wrestlers in general... because there isn't a single piece of art, or a puzzle that continues to evolve and grow from experience... and that's what people - not objects - do"
{He nods into the lens}
"That isn't the trait of a piece of art, or an invention... but rather of an artist, or a creator. Time and trial, wins and losses. Everything molds and affects what will essentially be every person you meet in life, Mister Rothburn. In the ring on January 23rd? You are going to have to meet the currently best version of Tala Multo you've ever had the opportunity to see, let alone squared off against"
{A pause}
"... and then you're going to have to find out for yourself, as you threaten her reign, and her fists and feet are impacting off your face and body, the lights are bearing down on you and the screaming of the crowd feels like it's soaking up every bit of oxygen in the arena: did you grow more than she did?"
{With that a dark chuckle escapes the masked man's lips as he pats the young Filipino woman's shoulder}
"I doubt it, Mister Rothburn... but even if you by some chance do?"
{The screen fades to black}
"Another lesson will be learned"
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max
PWP Competitors
Posts: 11 
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Post by max on Jan 20, 2016 23:03:59 GMT -6
[ROTHBURN] II: “Deja Vu” “‘Once more, into the breach.’” Ian Rothburn’s words come with an almost remorseful sigh, as though our hero laments even having to say them. The slight blurring at the edges of the camera frame resolve quickly, bringing the intended into sharp, clear resolution, the handiwork of one Nohelle Bentley no doubt, who in addition to being Ian’s paramour, has come to be relied upon to tend to the...little details that might slip past our hero’s interest, in the interest of far grander machinations. The lense now focused, the surroundings grow more familiar: A dusty room, in the midst of a most abandoned, yet state-of-the-art, facility buried in the heart of Deep Ellum, Texas. A facility that to most, means nothing...but that to both champion and challenger at PWP 18, has a most profound meaning.
It’s where they were ‘born’, after all.
Rothburn sits in the dead center of what used to be a bustling arena, fingers rapping on the base of his chair with aplomb. the lighting is low, but discernible enough for the bleachers behind him to be visible, in addition to the stains where a ring used to stand, visible even now, after all this time. Ian traces one lightly with the toe of his shoe, frowning slightly before turning his attentions back to the matter at hand.
“It’s fitting, isn’t it?
That it all comes to this. That my...opportunity earned, in such landmark fashion at Pro Wrestling Project 17, would come to fruition in such a familiar way. Some believe life is a series of such events, after all. Familiar patterns, replayed time and again, with only the subtlest of variations to distinguish between them...to make them anything more than a mere feeling of deja vu.”
A sneer, at that term.
“Such a loathsome term, that. I abhor it. Repetition is...the bane of my existence. I’ve been adamant about that from the start. It’s a disgusting thing, to be trapped in such utter ennui. Such things are the death of desire, of ingenuity, of progress. Boredom, in it’s purest since.
And I do so hate to be bored.”
The glimmer of a smile, quickly eschewed.
“But you, of all people, Ms. Multo...would know that.
What luck, then, that I find no such distasteful feelings with what stands before us. If anything, I find this to be proof positive that deja vu is merely a flight of fancy. That life’s experiences, while altogether similar from time to time...are inherently different. Outcomes change. Moments shift.
Growth...occurs.
Such was our story, wasn’t it, Miss Multo. That first encounter was the stuff of legend...The second even moreso. Each time, more intense, more competitive, more strategically and physically combative. Each time, new wrinkles unfolded. Old tactics thwarted, to be replaced by new ones. The Tala Multo who I defeated on that fateful day at Pride and Honor’s inception...was a far cry from the one who claimed victory over me mere months later. It was...an impressive thing, that. To see the way the puzzle had changed. How the solution, admittedly...eluded my grasp on that very night.
It galled me, for a time. I will admit that. Such defeats always do. But even as I was...irked by my failure, to claim that sweet taste of victory...I was emboldened by it. I must say, Ms. Multo, it is high time I thanked you for that encounter...because it was that night, that spurred me to even greater heights. Ever since that night, I have plotted, I have schemed, I have worked in every aspect...I have toiled ceaselessly, in the dark crevasses of my mind’s eye, I have made every calculation, I have toyed with every probability...all in wait for a day that for a time, I was unsure would ever come.
All in wait for the next time that you and I would step between these ropes, and face one another, in a clash for the ages. In the final chapter of what most would call a rivalry...but what I call a master class in what our world can produce, when a great mind and a truly astonishing physical specimen collide. When two of the foremost in the aspects of our industry come together, and put sum and total on the line...for a prize beyond measure.
Not merely some golden trinket. To be a champion is a great honor, to be sure, and one that I will treasure and treat with the utmost respect and reverence. But no, the prize here, the true prize...will be knowledge. Knowledge that one of us has truly, utterly and completely, beyond the shadow of a singular doubt...bettered the other. That this cycle is completed, and that only one of us has walked away...superior.
Heady stuff, that.
An ending fitting of Melville, to be sure.”
A mild chuckle, as the remembrance of the past floats idly by.
“I am excited, Ms. Multo. Truly. Excited to test myself once more. To truly push the limits of what our sport can convey. To give the world yet another gift, one that may not fly so woefully under the radar. To go once more, into the breach, against my greatest foe, in what is sure to be her most powerful iteration…
And defeat her. Summarily.
This is what I must do, Ms. Multo. This is what I will do. You will be in your finest form, to be sure. I’m certain your...verbose cohort will have made sure of that, and will have every advantage plotted to make sure you are at your maximum efficiency. But even without...Mister Grey...or his guidance, I am most certain that YOU will be at your utmost preparedness. Because I know you, and I know your spirit, Ms. Multo. I respect you to the utmost because of that. You are an every growing, ever changing, powerful combatant with a will unlike any other. A puzzle that, admittedly even the greatest mind of this generation, or any other, would struggle to solve.
But unfortunately for you, Miss Multo...I am that mind.
I am the one who met that struggle, and squandered my opportunity to overcome it. And thus, I have worked ceaselessly, tirelessly, to ensure such never occurs again. Because I, like you, Miss Multo, am an ever growing, never halting, ceaseless engine of change and growth. I, like you, Miss Multo, am a Prime Mover.
And this particular movement cannot be halted.
I have had my failure when it comes to you. I have been enriched, and emboldened. I too, have grown, Miss Multo...in ways not yet seen. What was glimpsed against Savannah at Pro Wrestling Project 17 was merely a taster. A modicum of necessity, in order to reach this moment. Savannah, for all her merits, is merely a roadblock. She does not compare. She cannot compare to what we have shared, Miss Multo...pardon the phrasing, if you will. Such words have been...over-romanticized in many respects. But the point remains….We share a certain, intimate knowledge that holds root where I am sitting at this very moment. In this very spot, Miss Multo...you handed me my greatest defeat.
In this very spot, Tala Multo, you spurred the endeavour that has led us both to this very moment.
In this very spot, Tala Multo, you created the means of your own end.
Come Pro Wrestling Project 18, all my work will bear fruit. We will create a battle for the ages, Miss Multo, that I do not doubt. You will come at me like the engine of destruction that you were designed and born to become, you will not err, you will unleash the full might of your arsenal...And you may well come to the cusp of my destruction.
But only to the cusp.
Then, and only then, will I show my hand. Then, and only then, will I show you what I have mastered in our long absence from the presence of one another. I will apprise you of what I have learned since that fateful night, when you handed me that grievous loss...and I will claim ultimate victory, and the Pro Wrestling Project Heavyweight Championship in due course.
It will be a war of epic proportions. A battle for the ages. A clash worthy of every ounce of hyperbole that will follow.
But the ending, Miss Multo, no matter the course...will be the same as the first.
My hand, raised.
The closest thing to Deja Vu….I will ever be willing to partake in.”
A knowing smile played across Ian’s lips then, Miss Bentley choosing to artfully pan the camera’s view over the musty arena in Deep Ellum one last time...before cutting to black. |
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