Post by KALLIE REZNIK on Feb 11, 2021 23:55:57 GMT -5
the butterfly effect // perseus  Cement walls, cement floor -- it wasn’t the type of place that anyone would have thought a person like Kallie Reznik would be. The thought that she’d be in a room filled with Cherry Blossoms and pretty pink things, just like her personality. But serious times called for serious measures, not silly blogs or bad versions of recreated material from the early two-thousands. We're living in twenty-twenty-one, right? Serious business, and all that jazz. Plastered across the entirety of the room were pictures and notes, similar to a crime scene investigation. In-Ring shots of the competitors in the War Games match, plastered across in various colors with notes and scribbles written across them. Out of ring shots, provided by the competitors themselves probably on their social media accounts, also were posted. Seated in the center of the room on the floor, her legs crossed and wearing a Wolfslair hoodie over her torso, sat The Butterfly herself. Miss Kallie stared at the notepad lying upon the ground in front of her, her chin propped up upon her hand, which was connected to her elbow as she rested it against her folded knee. She tapped a pen against her lips, pulling them in and looking up nervously at the pictures along the wall. Her eyes glanced down again, not to the notepad, but to the book next to it. Benvenuto Cellini’s beautiful marble statue depicting Perseus and the severed head of Medusa took up a full page, the adjacent page filled with words relating to the picture itself, the label “Perseus and Medusa” across the title. “I know what everyone thinks of me.” She says, softly. It’s almost difficult to hear her, but she looks up from the paper, staring up at the paper-covered walls. “I’m not ready for a match like this. I’m not...I’m not good enough, like the rest of the roster. I’m not a veteran, I don’t come from a wrestling family, I don’t attack people directly, and I don’t try to hit and hurt. I’m sweet, and I’m only in this to get a guy and get out. Just like the dumb blonde persona that exists in everything I do.” She turns her head and she looks over at the camera for a second, her long eyelashes falling upon her cheekbones. “I get it. I’m five foot four, I don’t weigh a lot, and yeah, I’m blonde and young. I’m not expected to do well, especially when you look at the majority of this match in front of me. You have men and women who have traveled this globe, up and down across all seven continents. Men who have more titles than I can ever imagine, women who have more attitude than I could ever even attain. Are you going to say things about me that are conjecture and drivel? Are you going to push the script and make up things that don’t even make sense because it pushes your rhetoric? That’s what these matches do -- let’s do something completely different than what we normally do because in the end, that’s what will make me win, right?” Placing a hand against the wall, Kallie hangs her head slightly, nearly pressing the flat of her forehead to the cool, uncovered stone. She seems despondent, a little off. Not quite the bubbly princess portrayed in her tweets, in her work with her bestie, Alex Andrews. “I have one championship under my belt, and that’s the OATH Tag Team Championship. Sweet Treats, no matter what anyone has wanted to think of them in the past, finally reached a plateau in which we have become something grand, despite what the naysayers want. And here I am, nervous regardless of my accolade. Nervous because I care so much what you all may think of me in the future. Nervous because I am the least apt wrestler on that roster and I feel like I people are going to believe that I don’t want this as much as someone else does.” Another pause issued from her body as she inhaled slowly, exhaled with slow grace and frustration. “No, I’m not the X-Factor Champion, or the Tag Team Champion in Project: Honor. I’m not a man who stands behind one who thinks they’re going to win the world at their hands, greedily given an opportunity that they don’t deserve. I stand alone on a roster where none seem to have one another’s back except to have and stab. No, this was not what I imagined as I entered Project: Honor. This was not what I came into, what I expected to happen. And yet, here I am.” Alone. She would always be alone, wouldn’t she? Kallie lifted her head and shook it briefly. Her thoughts nearly turned inward. Her heart began to race as she thought of the week she’d had. The eyes she’d seen. The clenching of her body, the fists that she’d had as her coffee spilled to the sidewalks of New York. The tapping on her shoulder. The fact that she couldn’t tell a damn soul because they wouldn’t help her, they would only pity her. Pitiful. No. Not Kallie. Kallie was better than that. Stronger than that. Wasn’t she? “Perhaps that’s what Christian DeMarco and Callum Walker wanted, as they built their houses only for stones to be thrown at them. While our General Managers fight one another, putting their soldiers on the line to fight for their honor, they didn’t take into account that their rosters were calm and collected, most strangely pleased with their new predicaments, the excitement that would fester from their rosters when they got into it, and now they’re throw into battle in order to...prove their worth? Prove what? That we can be the most egregious and angry person in the entirety of Project: Honor. A tyrant?” Her eyes narrowed as she allowed her breath to fall out of her. “When I first heard this match was being done, I felt terrified. Completely and utterly terrified. Here I was, new to this company, I didn’t even do anything in the Purge match, and now I’m set to face fifteen other people possibly to get a label added to my name that tells everyone how vindictive and vicious I could be. Ferocious. Because,” she snickered, “that’s me, right? Super ferocious. But I sat down. I sat down and I looked in the mirror and I told myself, I could do this. Me. Charlie, the main trainer for women, told us all that we had the power to look inside ourselves and become what we wanted to be. A champion. A Queen. More than a Wolfcub.” She winked slightly. “I guess that was to me specifically because she wanted me to know that I had it in me to know I was ferocious. A fearsome person, no matter what all of you say. Yes, I’m a youngling. Yes, I have the world in front of me, but this? Who would guess that I would be an option for the Tyrant of Project: Honor?” She frowned a bit more. “None of you do. Not sweet little Kallie Reznik. Not the silly girl who thought that it might be a good idea to pop out here and talk in a Tyrannosaurus costume because of the word connotation from tyrant to the king of the dinosaurs. No. Not me. And who, in their right mind, would say to you that this girl could beat the men and women in this match? I’m not Perseus, the son of a god. I’m not given extra tools to survive, not given extra benefits and clout like some of the rest of the people on this roster. I’m meant to do this on my own.” She pressed a hand along the wall as she walked to the one labeled ONE in big letters. A pretentious picture of Bruce McLeod is plastered upon some scribbled facts. She stared hard at the photo. “Alone.” Her eyes searched the black and white photograph and, very much unlike her, her lip curled in an aggressive manner. “But maybe. Just maybe, I have been given a mirror. Maybe I am Perseus, and my moment right now is an opportunity to give you all a taste of your own hypocrisy. A taste of the fact that what you do and say does matter, regardless of if it is in the ring or not. Maybe the help and tool I’ve been given, as Persus was given from Athena, is the promotional material to use as a mirror for you all. Maybe I just need to look at the bigger picture and realize that Persus’ greatest foes were once the Gorgons, and that Medusa really is just a metaphor for Project: Honor. And maybe now I just need to be Persus and cut off Project: Honor’s head. I guess I’m not like Bruce McLeod. I guess I really don’t care how my name is misspoken, especially if it sounds the same as what it is. You could put an “a” where my “e” is and it’d still be Reznik, maybe with a bit more of a drawl, but then again...I don’t go to Twitter to instacomplain like instathot. But you know what? You wrote it in your highly non-inventive blog that we won’t like you anyway, so lo’ and behold, you were only right about one thing. What I’ve learned from Wolfslair, the people in it, the pride in which they have, is that you face people up front in order to give them respect. Hiding behind a blog that has been done before like a petulant little cunt -- I am sorry, Aiden and Johanna’s vernacular comes out a bit, sorry sorry sorry -- doesn’t always help in the end. Because it makes the rest of us feel highly disrespected, and maybe...just maybe, that’s what you’re going for. Because who needs to care what the Wrestle Da thinks? You sat there and you bitched about how people think it’s really intriguing and pulling research when people pull material off of a biography that we all add to when we sign for companies, or posting about anything on Twitter. And yet, guess what you do three seconds after someone has mispronounced your name? Complained on Twitter. Think you got under someone’s skin? Rejoiced on Twitter.” Kallie shook her head again, lifting it to look up at the picture of McLeod on her wall. Her eyes gazed hard into the picture of the old man who keeps trying to come back for more. “But we’re to...what was it…?” She raised her head, looking upwards as she thought. “Oh right. ‘More likely to find you in the gym in the wee hours of the morning’” her voice adopts a really bad version of a deep Scottish accent, “Just like everyone else in this sport. Do you think that makes you far more apt to receive this glory, far more apt to become a tyrant if you cannot face your opponents head on? I know you have this trite perspective that what you do in the ring means more than what you say, but words have consequences, not just actions.” Her fingers clenched around the picture’s border, her nails digging into the wall as she all but tore the paper off and threw it to the ground. She turned her head, looking at where it fell, before raising her head and looking directly towards the frame. “But then again...hold on...then again, we don’t all have the ability to just walk away from winning a championship because we don’t like something about it, as you did in AGW. We don’t have these options to beat legends, earn first singles championships years after we’ve started and throw away our accolades because we think we’re better than we really are. We aren’t Bruce Mc-Louds. We don’t talk in parables, we don’t talk in myths. We don’t talk like the rest of the world is lesser than us. We aren’t so high and mighty that we think our shit doesn’t stink and that we can do the exact thing we’ve asked other people to stop. Me? I respect everyone in this ring because I understand who they are, what they’ve done, and why they’ve accomplished what they have. Except for you. Your disrespect, your thought that being an anti-hero means you get to be a fucking twatcunt because your life hasn’t gone the best way and that allows you to be rude rather than what it truly means in not following the status quo and the world around it, is what has turned me off from you. You're a hypocritical bastard and I hope I eliminate your roided-ass seconds in. You’re not a tyrant, you’re a bitch, and I hope you go to complain on Twitter.” Kallie spoke the last part of her rant extremely quickly, inhaling heavily and exhaling loudly. She pressed her hand to her chest and breathed laboriously, before smiling finally for the first time. “Sorry. I just …. I just needed to get that off my chest. I just...I hate people who don’t look at themselves in the mirror and see they are everything that they abhor. Or people who portray themselves one way, and then in the next, think it’s so cool to be rude because they think that’s what’s going to get them ahead. Like. Like Victoria Strader.” She took a few steps forward and looked up at the glamour shot of the youngest Strader in the company. Victoria’s doe eyes and sweet smile, she knew, hid a venomous streak. Snakes weren’t the best in the world. “I have never understood why women lean towards the Queen gimmick. Like, like…” Kallie’s voice adopts a sweet, valley-girl-esque intonation. She rolls her blue-green eyes and giggles slightly, obviously mimicking the bubbly, somewhat vapid Strader girl. She curls her fingers around a strand of her hair. “Like, like, I just, like, I don’t get it. There are a thousand and one different names that someone can go for, and unless you are the matriarch of a family, wrestling stable, whatever...you don’t deserve the queen title. But you know what? You’re probably going for some sort of superiority because you realize that it was taken from you by the fact that you were abused. I’m sorry. I know how that feels, and I know how that might be liberating, but in reality? It’s pretentious. It’s pathetic. A queen is someone who turns around and lifts up the people around her, not tears them down. Perhaps that really makes you a tyrant -- but then again, it’s kind of rude to be calling yourself a queen when you act like a peasant. The only person you seem to raise above you is your Uncle, and sweetie, after the tantrum that he had on the draft show, I’m not sure that’s someone I would want to raise. But you know what? We all have our own thoughts and beliefs, and you? Well, clearly, your beliefs and your arguments haven’t taken you far here in Project: Honor. Your record in this company, is almost the same as mine, except unlike you, I defeated a Nazi and then my borrowed-polar bear ate him. You, on the other hand, haven’t won a match yet. Pretty sad, when it comes down to it. But, like, you know…it’s whatever you think makes you better right? I didn’t grow up like you with a wrestling family. I got to see a show when I was a kid, and then I knew that this was where I wanted to be. This isn’t in my blood, but even I know better than to try to equate myself to people who are far better than me. And there are those people in this match. Women like Kasey Winterborn, Kayla Richards...they’ve gone far and above the rest of us. You don’t want to be underestimated, but….but you’ve given us every reason to look over you because you refuse to see people for what they are. Trying to appease people you will never work with, the ones above you in the grand scheme of things, and looking like a brown nosing bitch the way you add everyone else’s names to make it look like you’re that much more important doesn’t mean you are.” She exhales, and she looks up once more at the face of Victoria Strader, the headshot that looks so pretty, but so much like someone has shit under their nose and knows it. “You are not a Queen, Strader. You are far from it. Like me, you have so much more to learn. You think you dig with your cute smile and edged words, but you don’t. You’re not special, nor interesting. You are vanilla as fuck, and I wish you could see that in the mirror. You are not like Kasey.” She took a sharpie, and she lifted it to the image, crossing out an X over her glamour shot. Her eyes followed the trail, and as she walked forward, she looked at the red-headed vixen in Kasey Winterborn. “Kasey Winterborn. Kasey, Kasey, Kasey. You know, I like you a lot. I respect you for what you’ve done, here and outside of this company. No matter what you do, you fight, you persevere, you....you make a name for yourself like a queen should. You fought your way up the beginning ladder with Dickie Watson and with Jason Terrance, and you made yourself a contender for the main championship of Proving Ground, of Project: Honor at the time. You fought with everything in you and made yourself the best female this company could offer.” She shook her head, scrunching her forehead together, creating lines within it that were barely visible, but clear for her consternation. “But then you disappeared, and I don’t understand why. Is...is this what happens when you finally reach the top and you feel like you’ve got nothing left because you lost? Kasey, I know you can do so much better than what you’ve shown. You beat Strader and Jason Long last week, and yet here you are, silent because I know you doubt yourself. We all do. We all doubt ourselves day in and day out because we don’t ever know that we’re good enough. You have everything to make this better. To push yourself ahead. To take the reigns once more and become the champion that you deserve to be. But your biggest flaw is that you’re too afraid to take it. You’re too afraid to figure out what to do with it so you stall out and you stop.” Again, her fingers touch a pretty face on the wall. Kasey smiles brightly, her fingers up in peace signs and the apples of her cheeks shimmer brightly, almost giving off the feel of a color photograph despite the black and white. “You may have wrestling skill, you may be from a family of wrestlers, but you don’t have what it takes to become a tyrant. You’re not mean enough, vicious enough, angry enough. You don’t have to fight to take back your dignity that’s been stolen from you.” Her teeth clenched -- there was a story here that she wasn’t going into. “You cannot be the Tyrant. I won’t let you. Just as much as I won’t let someone like the man you beat last week, Jason Long, be it either.” She passed forward, looking at the sunglasses face of Jason Long and his better-than-you smirk. Her smile, light until this moment, faded as she looked at his picture. She took it off the wall and she stared at him. “I know what the stories are about you, Maverick. I know you’ve buried him in a pile of ash and debris and now you’re just Jason Long, wrestler extraordinaire, with accomplishments and championships in a list a mile long. You are, by all means, the most decorated wrestler in this match. For sure, I shouldn’t be in a ring with someone such as you. Not you, who appeared as one of DeMarco’s lap dogs. Not you, who wrestles in several companies and has accolades from them all. Not you, who has been sold as a fearsome competitor, and yet...could not make the same waves at Fallout’s first show as he’d done in a thousand companies before.” She tilted her head a bit and she looked down at his picture as she held it level with her chest. “Maybe it’s because you’re focused on the wrong things. You’re not focused on this match. You’re not focused on this company. You’re just here because you think you can pad your winning ways with more championships because we all know your name, but you know what? I won’t let you. I will not. You see, there are a lot of things that make people Tyrants. Bad, crappy attitudes, I guess...but what doesn’t make people a tyrant is having your mind in all of those places at once. When I see your Twitter feed, when I see you promo, I know that you’re not a man that minces words. But I see you in places like KINGDOM, where what you say matters more than the brutality in the ring, and I see someone who hasn’t figured out yet that there are people who are better than them. I look at Omega Wrestling Alliance, where I see a man who proclaimed he was going to come out the winner, and yet...was the thirty-first elimination in a match of men of all kinds of levels. That’s not a knock against you, Long...but you can’t seem to decide who you are.” She tilted her head, and she let his picture fall to the ground, her fingers opening softly as she watched it fall to the floor. “Are you Maverick or are you Jason Long? There must be a difference, or are both names the same man trying to be something he’s not? You performed as Maverick, but here you’re...Long. Usually, when someone moves to a given name, they’ve opened themselves up to vulnerability, but I don’t think you know what that’s like. I don’t think you know that to win in the big leagues like this, you have to open yourself up to threats to be more than the threat you think you are. Because to me? You’re not. You’ve been labeled a killer, but unless you’re too focused on furries, the most you are is a chop off the ol’ block and nothing different. Be different, Long. Be better. Be ferocious. Be the Tyrant you say you are -- or face the consequences that a bubbly, happy girl with a bit of an edge that’s only been wrestling for less than a year is better than you.” Her eyes fall on the next opponent on her list. Her lips turn upwards. “Julius Fairweather has made a name for himself from day one, pushing the phrase motherfucker like a repeat from a cult-fiction classic turned movie. That doesn’t mean that he isn’t a threat in the ring, but I wonder if his bark is worse than his bite? We all laugh every so often when he posts The F Word, and Victoria Strader seems to think if she mentions him enough, she’ll get on his show and be recognized for something other than being a tag along who doesn’t belong in wrestling, but you know what? Props to you, Julius, for making people laugh. Props to you for being nothing more than a person who tries to make comments that seem scintillating, but aren’t. I don’t not like you, Julius. You make me giggle a bit...but when I think about a person who stands at the top of this company as being the glory holder? It isn’t you that I see. You’re nothing more than a comedic face on a poster who needed something other than people who were going to fight with everything inside of them. In Perseus’ mirror, you see yourself as what you are, and you know it...and that is why you rely on what you’ve seen in the past -- perhaps you think it works for the masses, but eventually...we’re all just going to be asking why you were even here when comedy does not equate to tyranny.” She ripped him off the wall, as she’d done to the others, letting them fall to the floor. As she walked, her head tilted as she came to her final two on her own side. “Pyro.” She said. “And Kayla.” Her eyes shifted between the two and she set her lips thinly over her teeth. “Pyro is a man that needs help. He needs help. I’m all for wonky setups and I appreciate the thought and creativity, but the thing about Pyro that I’ve come to realize is that this isn’t a joke for him, it isn’t something to make him seem fearful. And that…being the Nightmare itself might lend himself to being the Tyrant. Maybe that’s what he needs to be. Maybe...no. No, Pyro needs help. The gore, the addiction to fire, the...travesty of his life right now makes me think that unhinged is bad. It’s very bad for all of us in that ring and maybe he is the reason I was so nervous to do this. I don’t want to face him. I don’t want to be near him. He is frightening.” She paused for a second, closing her eyes and thinking. For a few moments, silence was all that was heard over the transmission. But then, she turned her head and chin lower, opening her eyes. “Charlie would tell me to be brave. Johanna would tell me to get over it and bash him in the face with my fist. Aiden would tell me that despite the grody and gorey behavior, Pyro is not someone I need to fear. Pyro is lost, Pyro is shaken, and he will be only a worry as long as he is in that ring with me. He is not a tyrant. Not completely. And I would do badly, I would not show my true strength and abilities if I cannot get past him. I will get past Pyro. I will succeed. I may not be as big, I may not have as much hair, but I have heart, hope and belief that I am the one that needs to rise above everyone else.” She stopped forward once more and she pursed her lips again. “Kayla Richards. The one underestimated. The one not talked about. The queen of Hybrid, the woman who ends careers, the woman who ruined the lives of so many.” She stares at the vicious expression on the picture placed upon her wall of Kayla. “I ask you...what happens when you don’t succeed here?” A smile came to her lips once more, and she turned her head to look at the camera. “What lies in your mirror, Richards? Do you hate yourself when you look into it? Is that why you turn around and treat people with disrespect? Is that why you spend so much time bashing and berating the people you face? Is that why your sole focus on people is not to just win, but to decimate their entire lives just so you have a sense of success? I remember watching Hybrid, not too long ago, and you ruined the lives of the Matthews. Because you could. You took the Hybrid World Championship and you carried it with pride and spite. Anger seeps out of every one of your pores, and yet...yet you allow it to fester within you and make you irate, furious, upset. Why? Because you don’t feel seen? Because your goal is to kill everyone’s dreams?” She leaned forward for a second, putting her hands behind her back. “Who killed your dreams, Kayla? From what I can see, you’re standing tall at almost every promotion you reach, and yet, here you are...overlooked and ignored. And you step forward every day with a chip on your shoulder because of it. In a way, I kind of feel like you right now. The most I’ve done in this company is lose a Purge match because the bookers don’t take any stock in me. Could I be one of the best on their roster? I guess we’ll see, because that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to be the best, and maybe I could do it a little differently than everyone else. Maybe I should. Everyone seems so focused on tearing each other apart that they’re not willing to look at themselves in the mirror.” Kallie pressed her hand to her chin, huddling into herself a little as she thought. She pressed her finger to her chin and shook her head. “Maybe you’re just scared to look in the mirror, Kayla, because what you see you won’t like. You’ll see the success your sister has. You’ll see the happiness she has, and then look at yourself and wonder why, even when the world was at your feet, you still responded in anger. Your behavior may seem tyrannical, Kayla. Maybe you should have been the poster child for this match. But I promise you, Kayla...I will be the one to kill your dreams. Drawing board, stat.” She stopped there. Turning and looking at the other side of the room, her eyes glossing over the people that still remained. “I wonder what it will be like, should I get to the end of my side. Seven people will have been felled, and there I will stand, alone. Like I am every day on this roster. I do not have my friends to help me. I do not have my wrestling gym to help me find my way. No, I will be stuck staring at the options that I will have in front of me, wondering if I’ll be able to face them with a smile on my face and determination in my heart. I love this sport. And sometimes, I wonder if it loves me just the same. But what happens if I get there? What happens if I’m one elimination from becoming the Tyrant of Project: Honor.” She smiled softly, laughing a little. “What happens when the smiling, bubbly girl from Fallout becomes the most aggressive member of the roster to be feared? What happens then, everyone? Do I get a surprise? Do I get kudos? Or do I get untold opportunities unimagined yet?” “I guess if we were to start somewhere, we could start with the debuting names in this match. Kagome Akaibara, Blair Regent, and Emmanuelle. The women to represent Proving Ground are unknown and untested, and yet, here we stand, letting them have the same opportunity as a man who is six and one in Shawn Warstein. Sometimes I just wonder if this is an opportunity for the top to see who really wants this, to see who pushes ahead further than the rest.” Kallie stepped forward, taking the chair in the room, tilting it and turning it backwards as she dropped down into it, wrapping her arms around the back. “Kagome Akaibara isn’t new to wrestling, save for being new to Project: Honor. She’s like us. It seems to be the easy way to just say you’re bubbly and happy, and then see for sure that no one likes you, so you can be a vicious human being without recompense. I know that’s what people like Kagome think -- and maybe that’s what I should suspect from someone who watches a bit too much InuYasha. Cat people really don’t exist, you know, and standing there, thinking that you’ve got a hand in a win here...well, I’m not buying it. You’ll be one of the first to be eliminated. But, if somehow, you make it to the end and I end up facing you? Well you can bet, my Blade of Nagasaki, that the person you’re going to get on the other end is not going to take well to someone as new as you representing a brand that already has a history while you have no stake in the company yet. You want to win...why? Because you’re new and it’d be a good thing? Unlike you, I have a desire to be the best. I want to be just like the legends in my gym, the people who train me, the people who are better than me. I want to belong with them. And you...you don’t have that yet. You don’t have a stake in this company. Sorry, but it’s true.” She shrugged once, before glancing at the next person. The short, cropped haircut of Blair Regent was the most striking picture. “I suppose I could say the same for Blair Regent. The Downer...what a name.” Her eyes glazed over for a second before she sighed briefly. “You know, I dislike people who think that just because they’re a little different than the rest of us that they’re more special, more underdog-y than the rest. But you know what stuck out of me the most when I read the brief information provided to all of us? You don’t care. You don’t give a flying fuck about wrestling, and here you are, using it like you think it matters. You’re in this match because they didn’t have a place for you on the card, and yet...you think you can become a tyrant, you think you can cut off the head of the beast, without doing much.” Kallie’s lips turned upwards in a sneer. “You’re disrespectful to all of us who actually want to be here. You don’t want to be here. You don’t want to try. You’ll say you do and that you want to reach for the stars, but when you don’t win this match because you didn’t succeed at pushing yourself, attaining glory? You’ll disappear just like the twenty-some people that realized that they weren’t ready for a company like Project: Honor. Maybe you’ll do better in a place like Uprising. Maybe OATH. Maybe you can chill on Livewire and not do anything, but even the people there try. They want to be the best and they put in the effort. You don’t. You might talk a lot, but your talk isn’t what you walk, and I swear to God, if you end up on the other side, I’m going to take you by your hair and throw you out of the ring. You do not deserve this, and me? I’m gonna be that tyrant that makes sure you’ve got no leg to stand on.” “But Emmanuelle. You’re different than the two before...it says you’re a naturally gifted athlete...but…” Kallie lifted her hand and held her palm over her face. “Doesn’t want to be here.” She tilted her head backwards and looked up at the ceiling. “Proving Ground, this is what you wanted to represent your brand? You don’t want to be here, Emannuelle. You don’t want to wrestle, you just want a paycheck, you just want to get out of here while making a few bucks on the side and I just absolutely do not understand why anyone would get into this business without wanting to succeed. I want to be here. I want to succeed. I want to make sure people know I’m not just a cute little face and a happy go lucky attitude. And maybe that’s why I’m approaching this the way I am. Maybe that is why this is the moment in which I finally look at this and go….why? Why is this happening, why are we here? Do you want to be anything? Do you even want this? I don’t think you do. I think you like the glory, but you don’t like the sport, and that is what’s going to kill you in the end. You’re facing people who love this sport more than anything, and that is what’s going to get you into the ground this time. Carlos’ quick pep talks aren’t going to help you.” “And no,” she added, shaking her head. “The thousand bits of information proclaiming you’re a star from Wrestleworld will mean just about as much as my title does at OATH here in Project: Honor. Absolutely. Nothing. About the same as Alex Slayer, in the end. I know he’s there. I know he’s persevered. But I just...I don’t see this coming out with a win over his shoulders in any way, shape, or form. Sorry, Slayer. Maybe another time.” Her eyes floated over to the next person on her wall, and she shakes her head at the monster, Cthul’u-- I mean, Ozymandias. “I’ve never understood cult wrestlers, but...here we stand with Ozymandias. You know, I hear things. I hear a lot of things. But what I’ve gathered is that Ozy is a man who has stood at the top of promotions only to lose that top place and disappear into obscurity. He’s moved from place to place, not quite gaining a lot of traction, and when it finally drops out, he moves on to greener pastures. I know he was the European champion at Wrestleworld at one time, but he was felled by one Colt Montoya...you know, Colton Saint who disappeared like a bat out of hell after he got booted from the company by MYOJIN. I look and see the accolades that Ozy has, but fail to understand why he has them right now. Why should I fear a man afraid to show his face? Because that’s what a mask is. Why should I fear someone who plots and schemes, but has yet to prove their ferocity? Ozy, you’re a good competitor. I hear this. You destroyed Pat the Postman in your first match here, but you have yet to contend with the hearts of Indy Darling and Shawn Warstein. You have yet to contend with Mark Hunter. You have yet to contend with me.” She smiled softly, knowingly. “I know what you’ll do if we end up facing. You will spend the entirety of the match thinking I know not what to do with you. You’re bigger than me. You’re stronger than me. You’re a monster compared to me. But how funny would it be if the small, still training, still learning, still growing competitor that is me defeated you? What leg would have to stand on? Would it take away from your monster tendencies? Would you fall apart at the seams? Maybe. Maybe all of it is conjecture and I’ll never get there, but I think I have a good chance. I think I have the opportunity to make it further than you, and then what will they say when the Butterfly fells The Butcher? Funny…” She ran her thumb across her lip, tilting her head once more and smirking slightly. “Butchers run in the family. Reznik isn’t exactly the nicest name, my monster friend. But it could not be you. It could be someone like Indy Darling…” She looked at Indy’s picture, shaking her head again and keeping that smile plastered upon her lips. “Indy is a half-half winner. Does really good some weeks, fails miserably others. He has a technical win over the Grand Champion, and you better bet he’s going to use it to gain some clout. But in reality, he pinned TJ Thompson because in all honesty...pinning Dickie Watson is apparently the most difficult thing to do that this company has experienced. But I digress. Do you have heart, Indy? Yes. Do you have desire? Yes. Do you have a death certificate at your hands? Maybe, if you believe the papers. But Indy, as much as you’ve proven yourself to be a force only yet reckoned with, I wonder truly if you have the desire to destroy the lives of people around you, just as a tyrant does. I don’t think you do. Like so many people in this match, you have the want, but you don’t have the skill. You’re too good, too kind, too….too Darling. If I end up facing you, it’ll be a moment you need to see for yourself. Me, the Wolfcub. You, the son of a wrestler. Me, the one who no one would expect to come out the gate swinging. You, the one that might be a favorite to win? How much of an upset would it be if Kallie Reznik beat Everyone’s Favorite? I don’t think poor Julius’ Motherfucking heart would be able to handle it.” She shrugged once more, giggling to herself about her joke. “I would spend time on Mark Hunter, but I think I know where his brain is at. His focus is on the briefcase, and the second he knows what it is, he’s going to be focused on that. If it’s a P.F. Chang’s certificate, maybe he’ll be thinking about what he wants. If it’s a title shot? His mind is going to be on the champion and what they might have to say towards him in the following weeks. I just...I know he’s not here for this. Not to the level he should be. He already won one match like this, and this isn’t his forte. He hates matches like these, and I honestly don’t know how many people actually like them. I don’t. But here I am, willing to do whatever it takes to win. Just like...well, just like Shawn Warstein.” She stops on the last person. Shawn Warstein. The Tag Team Champion, and one perfectly as petty as the next person, but equally strong. “Shawn Warstein has only lost once in this history of his tenure here at Project: Honor. He took the tag team tournament by storm, he succeeded where others were favorites to win. And yet...yet he still stands, having fallen to Elena DeDraca for the Legacy Championship opportunity. Of all the men and women in this match, I think Warstein is one of the ones that might be favored to win this, and I kind of hope that the opportunity that I have will be against him. I want to go toe to toe with one of the best wrestlers this year. I want to see what makes James Raven tag with him, what makes Betsy Granger work on his side. What makes Legacy tick...and maybe he thinks less of me. Maybe he thinks I don’t belong in this place, but you know what….? Maybe he’s right.” She paused once more time, and then she turned her eyes to glance into the eyes of the viewers. “Maybe I don’t. Maybe I don’t have the love of my peers, maybe I don’t have the skills that it takes for a man to succeed. Maybe I just don’t have the it factor that he seems to have. But you know what I do have? Desire. Skill. Need. Want.” She rises to her feet and she looks directly forward, arms set, eyes focused. “I need this. I need to know that I’m not just floundering around, that I can be something in this company. That I can be better than the actors and the naysayers, more than the parables and relations to the Bible to try and gain some sort of education factor that some people just don’t think anyone is capable of. I look at this match and I see liars and snakes. People who don’t want to succeed, people who don’t care, and people who only care for themselves. Maybe it’s not tyrant behavior, but I do want to see them burn. Women like me, we put our heart and our soul into this. We want to succeed. We want to breathe this business, be this business. I know I’m the least expected person to succeed. I know what you all think. But...but I have this opportunity to prove you wrong. I have this opportunity to be Perseus. I have this opportunity to take my mirror and freeze the monsters who think their tyranny is their stronghold and bring Project: Honor to heel. I have the ability to stand here and open my mouth because I watch, I learn, I become and I do what I say I will. If I don’t get to the end of the Fallout side, know that the tyranny I hold within me is enough to get me near to the end, and I will be damned if I let some of these people get on my wrong side. I haven’t had the best life this week...and maybe I should have shared that with you, but I will not be the first one out. I will not eliminate myself. I will not be the joke. I will face these demons and I will prevail. Medusa is dead.” Her fists clenched briefly, and she held herself strong, tilting her head upwards with a smile. “My name is Kallie Reznik, and I am the Wolfcub, the Butcher, the Tyrant of Project: Honor.” A smirk. A peace sign held up happily by her fingers. “Watch me fly.”  END. |