Post by JNS on Jan 25, 2021 5:28:58 GMT -5
OOC: I wanted to wait till a little later today but I have a appointment and wanted to get this up today for sure. Enjoy all, and good luck to you Carl!
Legend
John: Blue
Victoria: Purple
Meghan: Red
Tamika: Green
Harold the Cameraman: Yellow
Axl: White
Brothers of Mayhem Firestation Clubhouse
Redwood City, California
December 24th, 2020
John was putting all the pieces together for the newest charter in his self built motorcycle club, The Brothers of Mayhem. John had given the President flash in Manitoba to his former vice president, Axl. Now he was making a Nomad charter out of the suburb city he and Victoria had recently relocated. John had been meeting with local MC presidents to find the right crew to carry the Happy Boy patch, but it wasn’t something that was going to happen overnight. Still, the Outlaw of Project: Honor knew this move was for John and his club; it was also to build a relationship with his niece and help her break into the business. He stands in the garage area’s centre, looking down at the Happy Boy painted onto the floor. He was happy with how everything was turning out so far and was starting to feel at home. His hair cut short, he runs his right hand through it and winces as his fingers brush the patch that Indy ripped out at Unbreakable Resolution.
“Looking good, Hap,” he says, smiling at the patch of his club.
John’s attention suddenly turns up the firepole as his niece slides down it with a look of glee on her face. She looked like she had seen better days physically, and even though she didn’t win her debut, she didn’t feel so bad with John not being able to finish off Nathaniel Darling for the X-Factor title.
“Enjoying that pole, eh kid?” he asks with a chuckle.
“You know it! I may like girls, but I am down with this pole,” she says, giving her uncle a wink.
He shakes his head and laughs.
“You and your jokes.”
“You love it!”
John puts his arm around the younger Strader’s shoulder and pulls her in with a hug and a kiss on the top of her head.
“Well, I love you, kid. Bad jokes and all.”
She jabs him playfully in the gut—John motions to the motorcycles.
“Wanna go for a ride? Nice night out. I am told the coast this time of night is quite peaceful.”
Victoria is already halfway to her bike, making him smile, even though doing that physically hurts him, that goddamn Indy Darling. After riding for 30 minutes, John points over with his right hand at the turn off they will take. Their Harley’s come to quiet rumble before the ignitions are switched off and propped to the left with the kickstand. John and Victoria take off their helmets and clear lens Harley riding glasses. John has a leather jacket under his Kutte, and his niece is wearing a support hoodie that’s dark blue with the hood up to cut the wind coming off the Pacific in Northern California. Victoria skips ahead as she sees a large rock along the shoreline and calls over to him.
“Over here!”
He makes his way over and sits on her left as he digs the heel of his boots into the sand. She leans her head on his shoulder, snapping him out of his trance. He puts his right arm around her and sighs.
“What’s wrong, Uncle John?”
“Just got a lot on my mind, kid...”
“Indy?”
John lets out a small laugh.
“Naw, I’m over it. He pulled it off, and only time will tell if he can get consistent with it because he showed he could do it.”
“Well, if it’s not Indy, what is it?”
John kicks a bit of sand into the water.
“I got a call from Axl up in Winnipeg... the old man pulled the support out,” he said quietly with a touch of anger.
“Oh damn... what does that mean for you?” she asked carefully of her words.
“Well, it means business is changing, kiddo. The 12-year relationship between the fat Mexican and Happy Boy is over. I managed to settle a peace with Spike in Texas,” he replied.
“So no, retaliation?”
John nods that they are safe.
“No, but it means our connection at the port in Montreal is over. Axl has the garage, so the boys still have income coming in, but I need to get something set up here.”
“You know you don’t have to tell me any of this, right?” she asked because John wasn’t known for sharing his feelings or situations with anyone, the exception being Aunt Tamika or her mother.
He pulls her in with a gentle squeeze.
“Well, kid, you are living with me in the new clubhouse; I rather have you know what’s happening to a degree. I trust you; you are so much like your mom and aunt that I know I can. Besides, what every outlaw needs, and they don’t teach you this, but they need someone to confide in. I don’t have an old lady, I don’t have any brothers here yet, and truth be told, Vic, I need you much more than you need me,” he said as honestly as he could.
Victoria can’t help but feel bad for him. She often wondered how a good looking man, the heart of gold with the total bad-boy image, wasn’t with anyone. She never asked, but before she could stop herself, the words came out of her mouth.
“Why don’t you have an ‘old lady’? That’s a terrible term, by the way,” she said in her reply to her uncle.
“Listen, all women get treated with respect in my club. If they aren’t, there are consequences.”
“Nice deke, you should be a centreman in the NHL,” she snapped back quickly.
“Naw, I am not the most proficient in skates.”
“Fine, you don’t have to tell me now, but you will have to one day,” she said with a small amount of hope.
He doesn’t respond and just looks up at the clouds floating through the night sky as the moon illuminates them as they dance between the stars.
Brothers of Mayhem Clubhouse
Redwood, City California
December 25th, 2020
John wasn’t much for the holidays, but he could see Victoria was into it as he had looked around the old fire station at all the Christmas decorations that were up before settling in his office. Although finding an evergreen tree down in these parts wasn’t the most straightforward task, she had set up a few Palm Trees instead in front of the big garage door. Victoria was busy putting up tinsel and mistletoe everywhere as John was in his office with a Santa toque his niece forced upon him. His kutte is hanging up behind him, a clean plain black t-shirt, and his everyday jeans with snakeskin boots on his feet. He doesn’t see them enter, but he knows the sound of these ‘hoof beats.’
“You can’t sneak up on me, ladies,” he says out loud to those crazy sisters of his.
“Why do we even try? Huh?” Meghan asks, not at all expecting an answer.
John can’t help but smile when he sees his sisters, especially now since the Cowgirls From Hell have relocated back off of Venice Beach in Scott’s former beach house, and he can see them more often than he had been over the past twelve years. Strader’s are a peculiar set of people in their own right, as they don’t function as a so-called “normal” family should. Scott was the worst of the family, and his siblings in Ryan, Vanessa, Payton, Kaleb, and Vicca Li weren’t exactly stand up citizens either. Scott was who he was by circumstances he created and did unthinkable things for his self-gain or amusement without any real sleep loss at night. He loves his kids, but he never has and never will properly show that. Chances are he would catch a bullet one day, and without a doubt, it will be from the gun of one of his offspring. Tamika follows in, pushing the stroller with Dustin and Meghan’s twin babies, sliding it along the right side of the love seat in John’s office. After being nearly knocked off his chair, he returns the hug just as strong as he gets up and crouches down in front of the twins, and they both take a hand, each grabbing onto his rings. Lil’Scottie peeps around the corner (this being the 10-year-old son of Simon and Tamika Kalis, and it should be noted that Simon is a man of African descent, so he is indeed a black man). Lil’Scottie, his street name apparently from what he told his mother while watching Handy Manny on the Disney Channel.
“Eh, you wee little shit! Come here!” he exclaimed, reaching out for his nephew.
It’s a very touching family reunion of sorts as for as long as he has been active again within the family over the past few months, he still hadn’t been with all his nieces and nephews before and not even on Christmas, so this was new to him. John had spent the last eight Christmases alone in Winnipeg as he wasn’t one for taking time away from his club no matter the occasion, and while that hard work had paid off in spades and it was certainly at a cost. Building a new charter here in California and finding a new product and source to help feed the mother charter was important not just for his club’s future but also for the Strader family. John’s office is suddenly very full, with him sitting on a dark blue loveseat along the wall beside his oak desk in the light blue painted room. Meghan sits on the edge of his desk, holding her little Lizzie, while Tamika has plopped down beside her twin brother holding little Cla. Lil’Scottie is up under his uncle’s right arm as he plays on his phone.
“Well, Johnny, I didn’t expect my daughter and my little brother to host Christmas in sunny Northern California,” Meghan said in her matter-of-fact tone she was known to take.
“Yeah, that’s our thing, baby brother,” Tamika said with a casual smart ass wink because she is only 4 hours older than him and was born on the 20th of March while he was the 21st of March.
“Yeah, well,” he says while taking a breath “It’s 2020; how could this year get any fucking weirder?” he asks with a exhale, and his hands turned palms up.
“How are you two adapting to life on the coast?” she asked, hearing her oldest laughing out in the central area with her husband Dustin and brother-in-law Simon, which made her smile.
“Good, ya know? Vic is a terrific kid who is eager to learn and better herself. She held up pretty well after downing a sixer of beer in her match,” he said, pride beaming from the shit-eating grin that crept upon his face.
“Yeah, maybe no drinking? Remember what happened when Megz decided to drink in a match?” she asked while bouncing her wee niece on her knee.
“Well, Vic learned a valuable lesson that unless it’s one of us out there with her, she is not to trust anyone, or trust who’d you think someone is and underestimate them,” he says while lowering his head.
John sighs as he leans back. Lil’ Scottie is up and out the door very quickly as he can hear his dad talking to his cousin Victoria just down the hall in the central area that she had been making into a Californian Christmas.
“Is that what happened with Indy last Sunday?” she asked bluntly. Meghan was always good at being blunt and straightforward.
“Maybe, or maybe he just got the better of me,” he says with a sigh, and he takes little Clay from Tamika and bounces him on his knee. “Either way, it’s done, I have moved on, and I hope to be drafted to Fallout, or I am going to rip up mine and Vic’s contract,” he said with conviction.
“Well, that’s a little rash; why would you do that?” she asked while making faces at little Clay, making the baby giggle in John’s arms.
“Because Meek, that brand is my style. It’s the show that is perfect for an Outlaw, and I want to rule it with an iron fucking fist!” he says quite loudly, causing the babies to stop cooing and giggling just to stop and look at him. He smiles.
“Well, that’s enough shop talk before my former partner and I started shooting on each other,” she said, giving Tamika a wink.
Tamika pops her fists up like she’s fighting Irish.
“Bring it, ‘Bruce McLeod thirst trap’!”
Meghan rolls her eyes.
“I know I am, and so does my husband” she can’t help but laugh as she walks out of John’s office, Tamika grabbing the little boy from John’s lap before she follows her big sister out.
John leans back into the soft cushions of the love seat and lets out a sigh. He looks to the roof, but that isn’t what he sees as the sad words fall from his lips.
“Wish you were here, mom. You would’ve loved this.”
He sighs one more time before pushing himself up to spend some quality time with a family he hasn’t spent that much time with in the past dozen years.
Brothers of Mayhem Mother Charter Clubhouse
Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada
January 25th, 2020
John sat at the head of the table (in what members of the MC called chapel) out of sign respect to the founding father by the Manitoba charter’s newly minted President, James ‘Axl’ St, Jean. They have been in a deep collaboration of what the MC will now do since moving away from the cocaine trade they had profited off for the better part of ten years. Axl was supplementing the loss of the cocaine trade with crystal meth, and it made John’s skin crawl, but like Axl pointed out, John didn’t exactly bring a solution to the table either, at least one that was netting hand over crankshaft’s (meth was called crank back in the day because bikers smuggled it in their bikes crankshaft) worth of cash. John stared at the centre of the table that had ‘Happy Boy’ carved into it.
“And it was unanimous?”
“I know you don’t want to hear it, but I am doing what you would do in this situation. I am keeping this charter moving forward,” he said desperately to make John understand.
“I get it, Axl. I do. It just feels fucking dirty, brother,” he replied flatly. “Do what you got to do for now, but once I have an alternative income set up, prepare to let that go.”
“Yeah, brother, you got it,” Axl gets up and rubs John’s shoulder before opening the double soundproof doors leaving Strader to sit alone in the chapel. His cell phone begins its text message array of beeps, and he reaches into his kutte, pulling out a ZTE flip phone but tosses it in front of himself as he digs back into his pocket, pulling out the noisy culprit, his black iPhone XR. He gets up and closes the chapel doors as he opens the text message, and it’s from Lillie Saint. He opens the message and replies to it.
He returns the phone to the inside pocket of his kutte as someone starts knocking on the chapel doors.
“Come in,” he says, raising his voice slightly.
The doors open up to reveal Harold The Cameraman, the personal cameraman of the Strader family. His eyes are entirely pinned as he swoons into the chapel. John has a smile for the opiate and hooker addicted man.
“Harold, my man, I see you got your vitamins,” he says as he looks into the man’s eyes as Harold put’s his camera down on the table. “How much did it set you back?”
“Oh, about eight bills, so I may need an advance on my pay,” he says as he holds his hands together in front of him, lowering his head and looking upwards to see if John will say yes.
“Yeah, Harold, that is fine,” he replies as Harold bows his head at the Brothers of Mayhem President. “Let’s get this promo done now, a’ight?”
Harold nods and picks up his camera throwing it up onto his shoulder. Strader nods, and Harold starts recording.
START BROADCAST
Our scene opens up in the cold and sometimes dreary city of Winnipeg, Manitoba. John Strader sits at the head of the heavy oak table in a high back black leather chair that sits in front of a dozen mug shots that are framed and placed on the wall behind the President of the Brothers of Mayhem, where we can even see one of his pictures up on the wall. He gives one of his famous smiles that drop panties and probably some boxer briefs as well.
“Well, it’s been a minute since I had to do one of these promotional videos,” he says with a sigh. “However, that has been godsend because I needed some time to think about what direction I was going to go because after all, that was a mighty large slice of humble pie I ate at Unbreakable Resolution,” he says, as he runs his right hand through his hair.
“Speaking of which, I know I already said it on social media, but good job Indy. You did what you said you were going to do, and as usual, you showed up when it mattered. Hell, that is probably why you won that championship ménage-a-trois at the draft show. You may not have pinned the Grand champ, but he didn’t exactly pin anyone. It looks like Colton Saint, and I taught you something, and if you keep it up, fuck bro, you’ll be the Grand Champion in no time.”
The Outlaw of Project: Honor leans back, that grin still on his face.
“Speaking of the draft show, as you all could see, I wasn’t exactly thrilled about being drafted to Proving Ground, or was that Proving Grounds?” he slyly asks, giving a wink into the camera. “No matter, I said before that I wanted to be on the Fallout brand, and Christian DeMarco was quick to make that happen, so thank you, boss,” he says with a nod meant for the General Manager of the new brand. “Not too many people know this, but I asked to be kept out of the Legacy tournament, and I am sure you want to know why I would do that.”
He reaches into his kutte, pulls out a brown pack of cigarettes and is quick to light it. He takes a deep drag and exhales the smoke with the answer.
“One of the reasons I didn’t win the X-Factor championship is because I lost focus on the task at hand: Just wrestling matches. I didn’t come here with any plan to win the big titles and show off how great I am. I went into this business to do the task of wrestling for a paycheque. Not to win championship belts. I came into this business to hurt people and get paid to do it. I lost focus and made it about the title glory, I mean, hell, some of the best hockey players in the world never win a Stanley Cup, but it doesn’t take away from their Legend status, so why should it be any different in this sport?” Which is a good question, isn’t it?
“Fallout is the brand I can be myself: someone who enjoys hurting others for a paycheque. I also won’t forget what Christian did for me, so boss, you point, and I’ll shoot.” He stands up and sits on the right corner (John’s right) with his right leg down and foot on the floor while the left dangles off the side of the table. He places his left elbow on his left thigh, and his fingers are stroking the beard coming off his chin.
“I didn’t ask to be made a Prime Championship contender through a qualifier match. I never asked for the shot at the X-Factor title either. I am not as arrogant as a few around here demanding shit they don’t deserve, expecting things to be handed to them on a silver fucking platter. That’s not me,” he says as he brings his hands together on his lap, sitting up straight. “I would never do that; hell, my sisters wouldn’t even fucking do that. Just because I don’t want things handed to me doesn’t mean I like losing, and if that means advancing in some Prime Title Qualifier, well, I will.”
“So that means, Pyro, that you are going to dance with the real Outlaw of Project: Honor in a few days from now, and an appropriate match for the pressure cooker that is Montreal, Quebec: an inferno match.” John raises his hands, wiggling his fingers like he is pretending to be scared. “Pyro, it would seem that you and I are being pitted against each other to try and claim to be the first-ever Prime Champion, and even though I don’t give a rats ass about gold, I do like winning because, as you know, you make more money that way. You like to hurt people because you can, and I want to do it because I get paid to do it. I guess that’s the difference between us.”
He takes a drag of his cancer stick, and his grin starts to slowly turn to the infamous sneer that seems to be blessed (or is it cursed) on the Strader family.
“Proving Ground was never meant for someone like me, you know? I am not a title hungry Strader like my sisters over in Revolution1 Wrestling. I just like being able to take my aggression out in any way I fucking want. Maybe that’s pulling a gun on a crazy mail carrier, perhaps that’s using a cage like a cheese shredder on someone’s face, or perhaps it is getting the opportunity to set some sociopath on fire,” he says, the cigarette smoke leaving his nostrils. “See Pyro, Fallout… this is my show. After being here six weeks (at the time), it’s no wonder that the announcement came for this wild west type brand that I am here for. Even when it looked like they tried to keep me from being my true self, I still made it onto Fallout. I fought to get to a brand like this, and I’m not going to let it go by letting some sociopath take my fucking throne.”
Strader stands up and quickly straightens his denim as the boot cut falls perfectly on his snake-skin boots.
“When the match was first announced… it was me that suggested it be an inferno match to the GM. You see, while I am glad my battle with Indy helped get him to that next level in what proved to be an advantageous situation for him in the steel cage, I am still not happy I lost the match, and I want someone to pay. That someone is you, and nothing will scratch the itch to make things right in my world again, like setting your crazy ass on fire. Besides, you threatened to hurt my niece, so either way, this dance of fire between us will not end well for you. I give you props for wanting to prove yourself amongst your peers after losing on the same show I did with trying to goad me into a Twitter war, but I am not my big sister, and I will reply by setting your hair or underwear on fire in the ring instead.”
“That should tell you who I am though, that of me suggesting a match that surely gets your dick hard. I almost felt bad for you because you do deserve a chance to win, but fate rolled the dice, and you got the snake eyes. Like I have said before, Fallout is my show, and if I got to move through the competition to the possible crowning of the first Prime Champion,” he says with confident energy. “Then, whatever shit god I believe in as my witness, I will plow through every single last one of you to show you who is the goddamn king over on the ‘Project: Honor after dark’ brand.”
He reaches behind him and grabs the ashtray so he can butt out his death stick.
“You will learn why I am the three most feared initials in professional wrestling, and you, Pyro, are Fucked with a capital ‘F’. I have no problem setting you on fire, and it’s unfortunate for you that I have to make us smell your cooking flesh, but this is my goddamn show, and I don’t care who I have to hurt to prove it. I’ll see you Thursday at Centre Bell, big man, and remember flame retardant clothing is cheating, so don’t make me set your hair on fire.”
The sneer has fully taken control of his mouth as he damn near seethes into the camera at us watching.
“There is a reckoning coming, and I am it’s judge, jury, and executioner.”
Our scene fades slowly zooming in on his sneering face and it goes to the Fallout logo, followed by the crest of Project: Honor.
