[finnwhelan]

PARADIGM SHIFT IV // FLOODLIGHTS ON THE SQUARE
IT’S ALL GOING WRONG. GOT A SANDPAPER TONGUE. I DON’T KNOW WHAT I WANT, BUT IT’S NOT THIS
BOSTON MANOR



••••••

WOLFSLAIR TRAINING FACILITY
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, USA
AFTER CLIMAX CONTROL 372

A collective groan issued from the crowd surrounding the ring as a decisive crack issued and reverberated through the floor. A thud issued as a trainee known as none other than “Kyle” – or maybe it was “Steve” – hit the canvas with a finality that signaled to everyone outside the circle that the moment was done. Sparring? Ended. A trickle of blood from broken capillaries at the knuckles of Callien O’Hanlon’s right hand slipped down his fingers as he lazily hung his closed fist towards the floor, his blue eyes focused on the lump of a human who had been smarting off just twenty minutes earlier. Callien, known the world of professional wrestling as Finn Whelan, didn’t whoop and cheer when he brought his opponent down to the ground. No – he only stared at him as if he was less than nothing.

Viciousness hadn’t even settled into the man’s bones, and yet most people thought he was the quickest to get angry. And perhaps he was. Perhaps he was angry, but it no longer showed on his face like it would have in months – years – past. Stoic calm, the type that most people hated because they couldn’t read the truth in the expression, laid like it was at rest across the face of the Seattle Saint. People began to disperse, and yet Finn could only look down at the body in front of him.

“Pathetic,” he muttered.

The newest recruits to the gym weren’t plucky, they weren’t punctual and they certainly weren’t any form of perceptive. He may have stopped his career for the time being, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to pop someone who mouthed off to him. And mouth of they did. Kyle-Steve had been in a promotional class that Finn was giving and asked the simple question as to why someone would want to learn from him when he wasn’t even actively participating in the ring.

Finn showed him why.

He shook his head and swung a leg through the ropes, leaving the knocked out body in the ring to be tended to by his classmates. Alex would probably have his head, but Finn didn’t particularly care…not that he ever did. Sonja had hired him, and Alex and he had a tenuous relationship at best. Most of the people in Wolfslair respected him, but he didn’t really care either if they did. It was a badge of honor for the men and women who chose to call Wolfslair home to exist in such a facility, but for Finn, it was just another day at the office. It wasn’t as if he didn’t appreciate his place, but at the same time, he didn’t wear the company on his sleeve.

Like everyone used to think he did.

He climbed the steps to the offices and dropped into the chair at his own desk, tilting his head back and shaking his head. He stretched out his fingers, cringing as the skin opened a little more around the joints of his knuckles, twinging with pain. He couldn’t deny that the action of knocking the kid out felt good. Maybe he was just going too hard at it. Maybe it was just a minor frustration. Maybe…maybe he was just fucking frustrated because Miles Kasey pretty much up and abandoned everyone and everything without a word and then got a nice little cheap win on his name.

Yeah. That was more likely the culprit.

He tried to immerse himself in reading his emails. It wasn’t like Finn didn’t know what it was like to lose. He’d done it multiple times before. He just didn’t think it would be so fucking callous and disrespectful from a kid he’d trained, that he’d mentored. Miles threw it in his face, and then would go on to lose against another wordy bitch in Harris, fuck around on Twitter and maybe somehow save face in front of everyone because of his beau. Every word uttered, every move made, it was a performance that needed to be handled appropriately, and all he could think was that he was made a laughing stock by thee laughing stock.

Finn placed his hands over his eyes and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. He was tired, that he knew. Ever since she was gone…well, he hadn’t slept. Not very well anyway.

Maybe he shouldn’t have stepped into the fray. Maybe he should have just sat back again and trained people. Godforbid he wanted something for himself, wanted to step into the world with something other than a chip on his shoulder. The story was trite and overplayed at this point. Maybe this wasn’t worth it anymore.

There was no point in waiting around here. He was fed up, tired, and clearly didn’t have the constitution to stay here today without laying everyone he talked to flat. Finn wasn’t particularly keen to have a conversation with anyone, or more than that, he wasn’t keen to get into an argument with anyone either. Instead, he sighed to himself, rose to his feet again as he slammed his laptop shut, and slammed the door of his office on the way out. Annoyance settled within his bones, and he just wanted to be out of the building. He beelined for the doors.

“Mate!” Behind him, he heard the deep cockney accent of his “little brother”, one Dickie Watson. For those of you who knew him, he was an ever present force in Finn’s life now, kind of the conscience that he’d once lost. The kid knew him better than most. “Hol’ up!”

He was also the one who knew where his mind was at a whopping ninety-five percent of the time.

“Not now, Dickhead.” Finn nearly snarled, rolling his eyes childishly.

“Classic insult,” Dickie replied, stopping briefly. Finn didn’t see him, but he knew the little shit flipped him off. Nevertheless, he heard his booted feet hit the floor and run up behind him, catching up easily at the crosswalk. “Not gonna get rid of me that easily.”

“Your mother should’ve swallowed you.”

Dickie contemplated this, pursing his lips slightly as people began to crowd around them. The streets of New York City would forever be busy, this they both knew, but they’d both long grown used to the chaos. “Yeah? Well, yours should have gotten it in her eye.”

Finn turned his head, looking at Dickie in muted surprise, and also annoyance. “Are you insulting my mother?”

“No more than you’re insultin’ mine, Mr. Male-Period.”

Finn sighed. He wished he’d taken his car instead of walking today. It would have gotten him back to his destination (i.e. his house) in a shorter amount of time. Actually, a bike would have done better. Maybe he should purchase a good ol’ crotchrocket, one that he could weave in and out of traffic like a douchebag. That could be his midlife crisis. Go down in a burning mass of flames because he zoom-zoomed a little too quickly and played chicken with a semi.

“Just had a question, to be honest. And then I’ll leave ya to talk your ass home.”

“What?”

“I mean, kinda obvious question, but are you nervous?”

Finn scoffed and shrugged. Nervous? For what the fuck reason for? To make an ass out of himself again, to fail miserably in the next match that Sin City placed him into because he wasn’t ready to return? Or maybe he was to be the new chopping block for the shitheads in brass, destined to fail over and over again. “No,” he replied with a derisive tone, “Why would I be?”

They began walking across the street, following the crowd, melding into them despite their statures and their appearances.

“I mean, because you’re teaming with Kayla–”

“I’m doing what?!” Finn snapped, stopping so abruptly that the person behind him rammed into him, jolting him forward a bit. Dickie’s eyebrows shot into his tousselled hair and he grinned slightly.

“You’re teaming with Kayla. Didn’t you look at the card that you were sent? It was up on the board this week. Figured you’d at least seen it by now.”

Finn felt like the scenery around him was shaking. He knew that he’d eventually run into Kayla backstage at one of the events, but he hadn’t considered that they were going to actually make them into a tag team. Not after their dissolution of even remotely a friendship, not after the fact that she’d bounced into a different dimension, different playing field, different…different wants, desires, needs, whatever the fuck you wanted to call them. Dickie grabbed his arm and pulled him with him as the light began to turn yellow, and then to red. He didn’t stop until they were safely standing by a storefront, the edge of the pavement more than ten feet from their last position.

“I didn’t.” Finn replied.

Dickie’s eyes narrowed. “You mean you didn’t put it together? You and Kay aren’t even talking?” His eyes widened then and he cringed. “Fuck, man, and you’re teaming against siblings…”

Finn swallowed and stared at his little brother with his face growing pale. Fuck wrestling, how the fuck was he supposed to even be in the same vicinity with the woman? She hadn’t spoken to him in months now, not after the Emily fiasco, and he wasn’t about to reach out to a woman who would more likely tell him to go fuck himself with a rusty spork than even listen to anything he had to say. He told her she didn’t have to leave, and yet, she did. And now?

Now he was forced to work with her in close quarters.

He was fucked. This he knew.

••••••

UNKNOWN LOCATION
UNKNOWN TIMEFRAME

“I’ve never been great at the whole tag team thing.”

With his right combat boot propped up against a metal railway, Finn Whelan sat lackadaisical – elbows keeping his body upright behind him, lazy hands, relaxed position as he stared down the lens of the camera like a barrel of a gun. The empty alleyway behind him could have been in any major city, what with unfocused cars visible as they passed across the frame in the back, the dumpster that was overloaded with trash and the general uncleanliness of the area.

“The last time I found myself as a tag team partner was back in twenty-eighteen, when my godforsaken sister and I not only took the whole of the company on our backs, but we also took it by storm. We weren’t only good, but we knew each other like the backs of our very own hands. I didn’t have to question their abilities, and she didn’t have to question mine. We were fluid, but we knew what to do. And now?”

He frowned, dropping his leg with a thud on the ground.

“Now, I’m saddled with the fact that not only do I have to tag with a person I’ve never worked with personally before, I have to tag with a person that despises my very presence. A silly trick of the powers that be, right? These two don’t even interact backstage now, but we heard whispers that they were going to tag a long time ago, and now, all of a sudden, here we are.”

He raised a hand, his mouth twitching in irritation slightly, but nothing more. His face remains as impassive as it always has been.

“But before we even get back to that, let’s talk about everything up until now. End of 2022, sometime in October, I rose to the prominence of this company in less time than it took for Ariana Angelos to make a fool out of herself for at least the billionth time and I did the thing that everyone expected me to implode upon. I beat Ken Davison for a hot potato’d World Championship. He wanted to come at my throat, wanted to treat me like I was a fucking idiot and had no way of winning the match against him. And then I did. And the whole Saviours bullshit faded away for a little while as Mac Bane and Goth and whoever the fuck was a part of that little shitshow disappeared. For a while, it was good.

Then I lost it, because I got too lackadaisical. I’m not even going to say it was erroneous and blame other people. I lost it. I lost a lot of things that day, and maybe it was just involved with my will to even be present in this business. Maybe I thought it was just that I didn’t give a shit. Maybe I just wanted to stop dealing with the bullshit that surrounds people in this sport. Maybe it was just because the barista at Starbucks put oatmilk into my pumpkin spice latte, I don’t fucking know. I mean, when I discussed with Christian what I was going to be doing briefly, I centered my eyes on the Internet Championship because hey, I might as well triple-crown the shit. Roulette, World, the only one I was missing was the Internet one. Lo and behold, the fuckin’ Internet Champion is too busy fucking around with Miles Kasey, trying to make himself look good so when he goes up against someone with more skill than a Twitter Shitposter and loses, it’ll garner him points and he won’t look quite as bad. Not only that, he blocked me because he’s a little bitch, but more on that next time, am I right?”

A smile crossed his mouth and he pushed himself forward, crossing his body with his arm and propping it up on his knee. Finn was always one to give commentary on what he thought about the rest of the company, and that wasn’t going to stop because someone didn’t want to face someone else. You didn’t get the choice of your coworkers, right?

“But you’re going to tell me, right, the following: You lost to Miles Kasey. Why, yes. Yes I did. The little shit won on luck, and let’s be honest on that. I came in because Austin made the match. I could have thrown the whole thing, you know. Could have given a shit less, as well. Why? Because even if Miles sits there and is so happy about his little win against me, the fact of the matter is that he’s still scared of me. I could come up and whip his ass, and he knows it, I know it – hell, the person in the highest row that got in at the show for less than fifty bucks knows it too. And maybe for longevity’s sake, I’ll always be waiting in the wings so that when he mouths off to me like Eddie Lyons trying to look like a threatening Ed Sheeran, I can turn around and pop him and kill his vibe like I always have and always will.”

Finn rose to his feet then, crossing his arms as he did so and turning his head slightly as he smiled at the camera.

“I’m always watching. Vaguely, though. It’s not enough to capture my attention by simply being present in the company, but as always, I am taking every bit in when I need to. And I think that’s what you all need to recognize. I don’t just look at the last couple of weeks. I dig into everyone and I don’t give a flying fuck who you are, new, old, or…what the fuck was said, talented? Keep in mind…talent is just like beauty: in the eye of the beholder. It’s all about perception…and if you’ve got an inflated sense of that, well…you’re just not going to cut it here. You’re not going to cut it against me, and you’re not going to cut it against anyone fucking else.

My failure last week in losing to Miles really only resulted in me getting to this point. A few months ago, Kayla Richards and I were floating around as whispers to be a tag team. The Mixed Tag division was floundering, and we were set to work with one another…which was all fine and dandy when we were fucking speaking to one another. And now? We haven’t spoken in months, and honestly, I’m fairly certain she’d rather slit my throat than tag me in. But nevertheless, here we are. Stuck in a match, forced to work with one another…and to be honest, I’m not thrilled. I don’t like to think that through the entirety of this match, I’m going to have to make sure that I watch my opponents and my own partner.

See, I know Kayla Richards well enough to know that she’s more of a threat than most people would like to give her credit for. She singlehandedly took the Internet Championship division from the tyranny of a fucking psycho and made it something to not laugh at. When she lost it to Aleesha, it was at a point where there was no fucking problem. She was ready to move forward, and that, we all knew. I may not have been here, but I was always watching. Always waiting for her to be greater, to step forward, to do more. She doesn’t step out of her circle, she doesn’t try to be something she’s not. But she is great. And she is vengeful. Malicious. Angry. No matter how deep you think your venom goes, hers goes that much further.”

It’s almost as if despite his words, he still respects her. And maybe that’s true. Maybe it’s more. But he doesn’t say anything else on the topic.

“We’re both good, and that cannot be denied. But this? This forced bullshit makes me cringe. You see, Kay and I could have been good together,” he paused for a second, as if he didn’t realize what he was saying. He shook his head slightly and continued on, “as a team. But now? Now, she’s angry, and I’m just as annoyed. And that…well, that’s just not the best combination for our lucky, plucky new team gracing the dastardly Sin City with zero talent on its roster.

The Rat Pack, hailing from ye ol’ yonder Tennessee. One Tyler McCulligan and his ickle sister, Jane. Strong words, you know, from the ol’ princess when she faced Harper Mason. Something something Go Gym, something something Hero Academy, something something better than everyone in the world…if that’s what I recall your promotional vid was on. How’d that go for ya? Hm?”

He waited for a second, tilting his head. A long thought out pause, one that was surprising, but nevertheless, disconcerting. His words were, obviously, filled with mirth because Jane hadn’t come out of that one well enough. The light Irish accent that Finn held in his voice was pronounced as he snorted and continued on.

“Aye, pretty sure Ms. Mason won, and props to her, even though she has a porn sounding name. But now you’re back and ready to face myself and Kayla, right? You’re gonna win, beat us to a pulp, because you’re so fuckin’ talented and you’ve fought from the bottom all the way to the top. Right. Everyone sucks.

Maybe look in a mirror.”

He shook his head again, dropping his arms and shoving them into the pockets of his skinny jeans. He grins, his pearly white teeth contrasting with the dark hair and the persona he wore. Finn wasn’t goth, but he wasn’t emo, and he just certainly might have fit rocker boy with a penchant for problems.

“You see, I don’t give a flying fuck where you and your brother come from. Tyler, right? Haven’t said a fuckin’ word and from the dossier on you, essentially you’re a good little boy within a bunch of angry little fucks. Well let me tell you, bro, it’s a dog-eat-dog world, and you’re now facing two of the most single-handedly pavlovian dogs in this business. You ring a bell, and we both salivate at the thought of tearing a piece of meat to shreds…and the meat in this equation is our opponents.

When you face me, mate, when your sister is so drawn out and tired from fending off every attack Kayla has shoved down her throat, you’re getting a bloodthirsty, angry motherfucker who is tired of being thought of as anything less than great. Tired of being considered to face two fuckwits that don’t even belong in Sin City, let alone a wrestling ring on this side of the Colorado. Especially not two fuckwits who don’t know their ass from their mouth. You’re not special, you’re green. And like little babes on an Autumn night, whisked away by the fae, you’ll come back in a changed state, as changelings who have learned they’re not ready for this business, no matter how many times someone says they are.”

He shrugs then.

“I’d say I didn’t warn you, but the warning is there. You don’t want this. So maybe be good little kids and stay backstage to preserve yourselves. Because Finn Whelan is back in Sin City, and no one…not even those who think their shit doesn’t stink…are going to want to stand across the ring from me. I have something to prove with a vengeance more than anyone else, and now that you’re in my way? You’re not going to be seen in this ring for a long fuckin’ time. Kayla and I are going to come out on top. And you?

Gonna need floodlights to find your remains.

Good fuckin’ luck.”