Post by Swindle Shelldrake on Mar 16, 2022 9:12:02 GMT -5
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---| Proving Ground XXXII: March of Champions |---
---| X-Factor Championship |---
- X -
T h e K r a k e n
S w i n d l e S h e l l d r a k e
K n i g h t l i f e
I’m recording this because this could be the last thing I ever say
The city I once knew as home is teetering on the edge of radioactive oblivion
a three hundred-thousand-degree baptism by nuclear fire
I’m not sorry, we had it coming
A surge of white-hot atonement will be our wake-up call
Hope for our future is now a stillborn dream
The bombs begin to fall and I’m rushing to meet my love
Please, remember me.
There is…no more.
- John Carpenter -
—------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---| SWINDLE |---
---| T h e S i g n a l |---
ROLAND RAITH: “There isn’t anything else that I can do. You already know it, but everything has been leading up to this”.
SWINDLE SHELLDRAKE: “I know”.
ROLAND RAITH: “Are you ready for this?”
SWINDLE SHELLDRAKE: “Of course I am”.
ROLAND RAITH: “I don’t believe you. This isn’t a game now, Swindle. This is your chance to etch yourself into the mind of Project: Honor’s consciousness for eternity. Making it happen here is THE chance you have. After that, it’s all catching up. Again. Do you want to do that, Swindle? Do you want to be chasing them all over again?”
SWINDLE SHELLDRAKE: “Ok. I get the point, Roland-”
ROLAND RAITH: “No, I don’t think you do. This isn’t just some multiman shenanigans that you’ve had in the past to make up the numbers with a reach beyond your grasp. This is a singles bout for gold. No bullshit. No way around it. This is the time to finally start making good on your potential-”
SWINDLE SHELLDRAKE: “I get the fucking point, Roland. Don’t speak to me like I haven’t been doing this for as long as I have. This match is the biggest thing I’ve ever done in Project: Honor and I know that. I already know that very well. If it brings you some solace, I’m not winning it for you or Tetran Kai. After months of this kind of shit, I’m winning it for me. Just for me. I don’t need you to put it all into perspective for me”.
“What sort of perspective can you ever get about professional wrestling from all the way up here. Huh? Tell me how your years of experience are best served up here pushing pencils and pretending to know better”.
The silence and the tension in Roland’s office could be cut with a knife, as both he and The Kraken were staring daggers into each other. After a few moments, Roland leans back from his forward position on his chair, still glaring into his client’s eyes.
ROLAND RAITH: “Mmm fine then”.
SWINDLE SHELLDRAKE: “….That’s it?”
ROLAND RAITH: “Yes, that’s it. What else can I do when you’re finally getting what you’ve been chasing so vehemently. The ball is in your court now, Shelldrake”.
“You either win…or you’re gone”.
The silence makes its return as The Kraken’s eye twitches for a moment. Having spent an entire career living on a shoe-string budget, and holding onto the industry with a shoestring too. Losing his management was not an option. Losing was not an option.
Being rejected from it all with it so close was not an option.
SWINDLE SHELLDRAKE: “You won’t get rid of me”.
ROLAND RAITH: “Succeed in this match, win the X-Factor Championship and I won’t. It’s a matter of IF, not WHEN, Shelldrake. The fact of the matter is that you’re too inconsistent and too unpredictable to be a bankable asset. You have stayed under my watch because I see your potential. That is what you could be, not what you are”.
To his surprise, it was Swindle’s time to retort as the sour frown slowly turned to a wry grin, stretching out across his face.
SWINDLE SHELLDRAKE: “I said, you won’t be getting rid of me. I’m the best thing that you could possibly have under your wing. That Barrick fuckwat is busy beating up nothing more than teenagers who made the wrong decision to enter this industry. And Kenji’s sister….you’ve seen her, she can’t get a win over anyone more than journeymen, even struggling with that-“
ROLAND RAITH: “You have struggled agai-“
SWINDLE SHELLDRAKE: “Shut up. Just shut up and listen. Think about it for a second if you really do boot me out the door. You’ll be left with your vanity hire bodyguard and a naïve little girl. You wanted presence on as many brands as possible, right? Look me in the eye and say that Virgil or Yuriko would ever stand a chance on Proving Ground? That they would be able to do a better job than I am?”
“Look at what I’m achieving beyond your tick boxes for quotas. Victories are a surface level metric when I have brought Tetran Kai to more main event matches than I can count. Be it on TV programming or pay-per-views, I have fulfilled my side of the bargain FOR YOU. My own interests and goals aside, they haven’t done that”.
“My standards for myself are to be champion. For greater reasons than looking over your trophy case hoping you weren’t a broken mess tied together in a suit. But you, they’re to help your brand and make you look good.
“Losing me would be the biggest mistake you could ever make”.
Before Roland could fire off a rebuttal, Swindle stormed out of the office, his long stride taking him right to the door, and he was gone with a big swing of the black-painted door. Roland had partially got out of his chair to stop him, but sat back down with not a word leaving his lips.
The pencil broke in his grip. Shelldrake had called his bluff. He hadn’t wanted to get rid of Shelldrake, and even more painfully, he was right. He had always known that Swindle was right, and this time came too close to letting that fact slip out. The façade of friction that he needed to spur Shelldrake on was razor thin at the best of times….and had almost gone too far.
ROLAND RAITH: "He needs the sword to be hanging over him....I can only hope"
—------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---| SWINDLE |---
---| V i s i o n s o f t h e |---
---| I n v i s I b l e C i t y |---
SWINDLE SHELLDRAKE: “How does one fly through the night sky?”
“I’ve seen your eyes shift over to me in the last few weeks, MYOJIN. When it doesn’t need to be. There could have been a time when we were just ships in the night and never came to blows. Especially not for the title you hold so dear”.
“But you see, WarGames wasn’t about a victory. Walking in there under the Big Drip banner was never going to be able to hold the weight of what we could provide them, MYOJIN. You and I both know we are better than what that vanity project could have ever been”.
“But hey, if you’re….angered that I didn’t play ball in the cage. I’m sorry, but I don’t lie about my deceptions. Teaming with me is a risk and I make no reservations about cutting ties when it no longer benefits me. You knew. Lil’ Petey knew that too. If you’re shocked, or blindsided at that turn of events….”
“....Then that’s on you”.
“Either way, who is the one laughing? Because even with that WarGames loss….it is still me standing across the ring from you, competing for your gold. How does that make you feel? Again, I’d be lying if I was some worthy contender on their winning streak and hot with momentum in that regard. But it’s never so simple, not anymore. Unlike you, I can’t just win my way to the top and that be that. No. That’s the traditional way, for the real shining stars of this business”.
“You found your footing on the road to this title through your victories, yes? Admirable, and I have no doubt you’re a strong competitor, I’d be lying if I said otherwise. A rising star, literally and figuratively. That is the one strand across the web that we share, don’t you think? We have you, The Shining Star, one of the premier faces leading the charge to become a face of not only the brand of Proving Ground, but of the entire wrestling world. Popularity soaring through the roof, talent beyond measure. Yadayadayada you have it all, and that pisses me off”.
“I want you to humour me for a moment, MYOJIN. If you would be so generous….Imagine a world where you are exactly as you are now. The very same down to the last hair on your head. Everything about you, and the life you lead is the same…But the one difference…..”
Swindle pauses and leans in closer to the camera lens, looming over with his height and staring down the barrel ominously.
SWINDLE SHELLDRAKE: “….What if everyone told you ‘no’. They say ‘you’re not the person we’re after, we’re sorry’.....they say…..’better luck next time’”.
“How would that make you feel, Shining Star, huh? How would having all the doors afforded to others that can’t shine half as bright as you closed in your face simply for not being someone else. Feels like shit, doesn’t it? That is what I live in”.
“They could say to my face that I have all the same traits to be utilized. I could even believe it, if it didn’t take me this long to finally be recognised enough for a singles title match. No matter where I go, there is always someone like you in the way, who with a swish of their finger will become the golden child of the promotion. There will be thousands of prodigies like you; talented, charismatic, enigmatic. A lot of them will burn their candle so bright that they fade away”.
“But me? I am here all the same”.
“Your time as X-Factor Champion has been shining. It has. But you have been playing the game without your true opponent. Where have you been to upturn the status quo and make a new norm? Where have you been to assert yourself as THE champion on Proving Ground? None of the talk has been about you, and yet YOU, are supposed to be the heir to Proving Ground?”
“You’re a champion. While I am not. We are on different levels of expectation here. And something that I think, you haven’t been living up to. You’ve had your defences against inferior challengers. While me, I have instigated more change that you could in a year on this roster”.
“Victory isn’t everything”.
“WarGames, The True Society take a victory because I tipped the scales that tiny little bit. That doesn’t make me one of them, or not one of you. That is how it is. The Grand Champion can fall on his sword under my influence because I see a greater goal. The Legacy Championship can come in time, when even in a loss while shackled to Arata Asakura, here I am, challenging you for your title. Greater prizes through losses that isn’t mine. I reap the benefits as you all fall around me”.
“Their victory is in my hands”.
“Your victory is in my hands. I have the control. More than any champion standing”.
“That title has represented a fighting spirit under you, but its time to let the sunlight die down over the X. There’s more than one way to the top, so time to inverse everything you have achieved under this reign”.
“This is a fucking revolution”.
“I want you to think about that before our match, MYOJIN, the star amongst millions”
“I want what all men want”.
"I want everything".
The scenes of a mirrored city in the night through the rippling water begins to timelapse with the matching reflections of a slender person holding a championship over their shoulder. Their reflection stretching out to be far taller than the original, and a seeping darkness wisping out into the water around him. The higher city develops at a blinding pace into seamless and utopic buildings, filled with speckled white lights in their windows. Twinkled stars flying in the night sky.
The reflected city however, sees a different progression. It takes on a more sinister, industrial trend in a rolling black smog, dingy and dirty streets with derelict buildings, with only pops of multicoloured neon lights to give it some life.
“Cave” by Hapax begins to play over the creeping and encroaching darkness that the reflected twin city brings to the light.
This the time when all is lost
Won’t return the father’s force
We are chasing nothingness
Dark and veiled by dreams and wealth
All is lost and we are
All is lost and we are
Now we burn places
The same places we’ll rebuild
Again it’s the time of shrine
Until we’ll come back to the caves
This is the time of the chase
All our lives are linked to machines
The new water has a plastic taste
Some marbles are covered up with dust
All is lost and we are
All is lost and we are
Now we burn places
The same places we’ll rebuild
Again it’s the time of shrine
Until we come back to the caves
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---| Proving Ground XXXII: March of Champions |---
---| X-Factor Championship |---
- X -
T h e K r a k e n
S w i n d l e S h e l l d r a k e
K n i g h t l i f e
I’m recording this because this could be the last thing I ever say
The city I once knew as home is teetering on the edge of radioactive oblivion
a three hundred-thousand-degree baptism by nuclear fire
I’m not sorry, we had it coming
A surge of white-hot atonement will be our wake-up call
Hope for our future is now a stillborn dream
The bombs begin to fall and I’m rushing to meet my love
Please, remember me.
There is…no more.
- John Carpenter -
—------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---| SWINDLE |---
---| T h e S i g n a l |---
TETRAN KAI HEAD OFFICE
ROLAND RAITH: “There isn’t anything else that I can do. You already know it, but everything has been leading up to this”.
SWINDLE SHELLDRAKE: “I know”.
ROLAND RAITH: “Are you ready for this?”
SWINDLE SHELLDRAKE: “Of course I am”.
ROLAND RAITH: “I don’t believe you. This isn’t a game now, Swindle. This is your chance to etch yourself into the mind of Project: Honor’s consciousness for eternity. Making it happen here is THE chance you have. After that, it’s all catching up. Again. Do you want to do that, Swindle? Do you want to be chasing them all over again?”
SWINDLE SHELLDRAKE: “Ok. I get the point, Roland-”
ROLAND RAITH: “No, I don’t think you do. This isn’t just some multiman shenanigans that you’ve had in the past to make up the numbers with a reach beyond your grasp. This is a singles bout for gold. No bullshit. No way around it. This is the time to finally start making good on your potential-”
SWINDLE SHELLDRAKE: “I get the fucking point, Roland. Don’t speak to me like I haven’t been doing this for as long as I have. This match is the biggest thing I’ve ever done in Project: Honor and I know that. I already know that very well. If it brings you some solace, I’m not winning it for you or Tetran Kai. After months of this kind of shit, I’m winning it for me. Just for me. I don’t need you to put it all into perspective for me”.
“What sort of perspective can you ever get about professional wrestling from all the way up here. Huh? Tell me how your years of experience are best served up here pushing pencils and pretending to know better”.
The silence and the tension in Roland’s office could be cut with a knife, as both he and The Kraken were staring daggers into each other. After a few moments, Roland leans back from his forward position on his chair, still glaring into his client’s eyes.
ROLAND RAITH: “Mmm fine then”.
SWINDLE SHELLDRAKE: “….That’s it?”
ROLAND RAITH: “Yes, that’s it. What else can I do when you’re finally getting what you’ve been chasing so vehemently. The ball is in your court now, Shelldrake”.
“You either win…or you’re gone”.
The silence makes its return as The Kraken’s eye twitches for a moment. Having spent an entire career living on a shoe-string budget, and holding onto the industry with a shoestring too. Losing his management was not an option. Losing was not an option.
Being rejected from it all with it so close was not an option.
SWINDLE SHELLDRAKE: “You won’t get rid of me”.
ROLAND RAITH: “Succeed in this match, win the X-Factor Championship and I won’t. It’s a matter of IF, not WHEN, Shelldrake. The fact of the matter is that you’re too inconsistent and too unpredictable to be a bankable asset. You have stayed under my watch because I see your potential. That is what you could be, not what you are”.
To his surprise, it was Swindle’s time to retort as the sour frown slowly turned to a wry grin, stretching out across his face.
SWINDLE SHELLDRAKE: “I said, you won’t be getting rid of me. I’m the best thing that you could possibly have under your wing. That Barrick fuckwat is busy beating up nothing more than teenagers who made the wrong decision to enter this industry. And Kenji’s sister….you’ve seen her, she can’t get a win over anyone more than journeymen, even struggling with that-“
ROLAND RAITH: “You have struggled agai-“
SWINDLE SHELLDRAKE: “Shut up. Just shut up and listen. Think about it for a second if you really do boot me out the door. You’ll be left with your vanity hire bodyguard and a naïve little girl. You wanted presence on as many brands as possible, right? Look me in the eye and say that Virgil or Yuriko would ever stand a chance on Proving Ground? That they would be able to do a better job than I am?”
“Look at what I’m achieving beyond your tick boxes for quotas. Victories are a surface level metric when I have brought Tetran Kai to more main event matches than I can count. Be it on TV programming or pay-per-views, I have fulfilled my side of the bargain FOR YOU. My own interests and goals aside, they haven’t done that”.
“My standards for myself are to be champion. For greater reasons than looking over your trophy case hoping you weren’t a broken mess tied together in a suit. But you, they’re to help your brand and make you look good.
“Losing me would be the biggest mistake you could ever make”.
Before Roland could fire off a rebuttal, Swindle stormed out of the office, his long stride taking him right to the door, and he was gone with a big swing of the black-painted door. Roland had partially got out of his chair to stop him, but sat back down with not a word leaving his lips.
The pencil broke in his grip. Shelldrake had called his bluff. He hadn’t wanted to get rid of Shelldrake, and even more painfully, he was right. He had always known that Swindle was right, and this time came too close to letting that fact slip out. The façade of friction that he needed to spur Shelldrake on was razor thin at the best of times….and had almost gone too far.
ROLAND RAITH: "He needs the sword to be hanging over him....I can only hope"
—------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---| SWINDLE |---
---| V i s i o n s o f t h e |---
---| I n v i s I b l e C i t y |---
SWINDLE SHELLDRAKE: “How does one fly through the night sky?”
“I’ve seen your eyes shift over to me in the last few weeks, MYOJIN. When it doesn’t need to be. There could have been a time when we were just ships in the night and never came to blows. Especially not for the title you hold so dear”.
“But you see, WarGames wasn’t about a victory. Walking in there under the Big Drip banner was never going to be able to hold the weight of what we could provide them, MYOJIN. You and I both know we are better than what that vanity project could have ever been”.
“But hey, if you’re….angered that I didn’t play ball in the cage. I’m sorry, but I don’t lie about my deceptions. Teaming with me is a risk and I make no reservations about cutting ties when it no longer benefits me. You knew. Lil’ Petey knew that too. If you’re shocked, or blindsided at that turn of events….”
“....Then that’s on you”.
“Either way, who is the one laughing? Because even with that WarGames loss….it is still me standing across the ring from you, competing for your gold. How does that make you feel? Again, I’d be lying if I was some worthy contender on their winning streak and hot with momentum in that regard. But it’s never so simple, not anymore. Unlike you, I can’t just win my way to the top and that be that. No. That’s the traditional way, for the real shining stars of this business”.
“You found your footing on the road to this title through your victories, yes? Admirable, and I have no doubt you’re a strong competitor, I’d be lying if I said otherwise. A rising star, literally and figuratively. That is the one strand across the web that we share, don’t you think? We have you, The Shining Star, one of the premier faces leading the charge to become a face of not only the brand of Proving Ground, but of the entire wrestling world. Popularity soaring through the roof, talent beyond measure. Yadayadayada you have it all, and that pisses me off”.
“I want you to humour me for a moment, MYOJIN. If you would be so generous….Imagine a world where you are exactly as you are now. The very same down to the last hair on your head. Everything about you, and the life you lead is the same…But the one difference…..”
Swindle pauses and leans in closer to the camera lens, looming over with his height and staring down the barrel ominously.
SWINDLE SHELLDRAKE: “….What if everyone told you ‘no’. They say ‘you’re not the person we’re after, we’re sorry’.....they say…..’better luck next time’”.
“How would that make you feel, Shining Star, huh? How would having all the doors afforded to others that can’t shine half as bright as you closed in your face simply for not being someone else. Feels like shit, doesn’t it? That is what I live in”.
“They could say to my face that I have all the same traits to be utilized. I could even believe it, if it didn’t take me this long to finally be recognised enough for a singles title match. No matter where I go, there is always someone like you in the way, who with a swish of their finger will become the golden child of the promotion. There will be thousands of prodigies like you; talented, charismatic, enigmatic. A lot of them will burn their candle so bright that they fade away”.
“But me? I am here all the same”.
“Your time as X-Factor Champion has been shining. It has. But you have been playing the game without your true opponent. Where have you been to upturn the status quo and make a new norm? Where have you been to assert yourself as THE champion on Proving Ground? None of the talk has been about you, and yet YOU, are supposed to be the heir to Proving Ground?”
“You’re a champion. While I am not. We are on different levels of expectation here. And something that I think, you haven’t been living up to. You’ve had your defences against inferior challengers. While me, I have instigated more change that you could in a year on this roster”.
“Victory isn’t everything”.
“WarGames, The True Society take a victory because I tipped the scales that tiny little bit. That doesn’t make me one of them, or not one of you. That is how it is. The Grand Champion can fall on his sword under my influence because I see a greater goal. The Legacy Championship can come in time, when even in a loss while shackled to Arata Asakura, here I am, challenging you for your title. Greater prizes through losses that isn’t mine. I reap the benefits as you all fall around me”.
“Their victory is in my hands”.
“Your victory is in my hands. I have the control. More than any champion standing”.
“That title has represented a fighting spirit under you, but its time to let the sunlight die down over the X. There’s more than one way to the top, so time to inverse everything you have achieved under this reign”.
“This is a fucking revolution”.
“I want you to think about that before our match, MYOJIN, the star amongst millions”
“I want what all men want”.
"I want everything".
The scenes of a mirrored city in the night through the rippling water begins to timelapse with the matching reflections of a slender person holding a championship over their shoulder. Their reflection stretching out to be far taller than the original, and a seeping darkness wisping out into the water around him. The higher city develops at a blinding pace into seamless and utopic buildings, filled with speckled white lights in their windows. Twinkled stars flying in the night sky.
The reflected city however, sees a different progression. It takes on a more sinister, industrial trend in a rolling black smog, dingy and dirty streets with derelict buildings, with only pops of multicoloured neon lights to give it some life.
“Cave” by Hapax begins to play over the creeping and encroaching darkness that the reflected twin city brings to the light.
This the time when all is lost
Won’t return the father’s force
We are chasing nothingness
Dark and veiled by dreams and wealth
All is lost and we are
All is lost and we are
Now we burn places
The same places we’ll rebuild
Again it’s the time of shrine
Until we’ll come back to the caves
This is the time of the chase
All our lives are linked to machines
The new water has a plastic taste
Some marbles are covered up with dust
All is lost and we are
All is lost and we are
Now we burn places
The same places we’ll rebuild
Again it’s the time of shrine
Until we come back to the caves
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------