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Roleplay Boards => Archived Roleplays => Climax Control Archives => Topic started by: Kristopher Ryans on September 29, 2017, 11:25:22 PM

Title: Miracle
Post by: Kristopher Ryans on September 29, 2017, 11:25:22 PM

 â€Forward”
Jet City, WA
27 September 2017
OFF-Camera

Jason had been driving past the Jet City Sports LAb on his way from the Pride Arena back to his house when he noticed lights through the window. It caught him so off guard he almost ran head-on into another car as he pulls into the parking lot. There were no cars in the parking lot, and no windows broken. He drives through the parking lot to the far side of the building, and down the small alley leading to the employee entrances. Again, there were no cars in the parking lot. However, it was where whoever was in the building got in. One of the entrances was lit up, with a paint can propping the door open. The light inside was on, which was enough to make Jason whip his car around next to the door. He steps out and closes the door of his car quietly. Before pulling the door open, he leans close to the crack, listening to see if he could hear what was happening inside. There was nothing to be heard. He pulls the door open and steps inside, walking slowly, and checking around corners before rounding them himself. If whoever broke in was robbing them, they were doing a terrible job because all of the valuable equipment seemed to be in place, and the office had not even been opened. Just before he gets to the end of the hallway leading into the main room of the gym, he finally hears something.

*THWACK* *THWACK* *THUD*

Jason leans against the wall, looking around the corner without exposing himself to whoever it was. The same sequence of sounds echoes through the gym again, and then a third time before Jason finds the source of them. When he lays eyes on the intruder, his anxiety skyrockets. Not because it was a stranger, but precisely the opposite. Standing in the center of the ring was his half-brother. He has a heavy bag set up in one of the corners of the ring, and Jason watches. Kris sprints towards the bag, getting airborne just a few steps before he reaches the corner. He drives his forearm down into the top part of the bag, and lands on his feet in front of it. In rapid succession, he follows with a knee to his would-be opponent’s rib area. Jason can see the wheels turning in his brother’s head, trying to find a way to close the move. He takes a step towards the rope, jumping to land on the middle rope. He tries to propel himself towards the corner, sending a kick at the bag, but his trajectory is off. He misses the bag, and the loud thud sound that Jason was hearing was Kris falling back to the mat in disappointment of having failed. He smacks the mat and rocks back on his shoulders. He kicks his legs, and rolls forward, kipping back up to his feet. He was winded, and his red shirt was dark with sweat. It brings a smile to the older brother’s face as he moves away from the wall and into the light.

JASON: “You only need one foot on the rope. Don’t linger long enough to have to put your hand on the top rope. Think like those wall runs and ping-ponging back and forth on walls in all those games you used to play.”

Kris wheels around towards the sound of the voice, raising his hands up on top of his head. He tries to catch his breath and appear more together than he is, but fails miserably. He leans forward, putting his hands on his thighs and breathing heavy. He points towards the bag.

KRIS: “I can’t without having to take a step back first, and if I let them have space they are going to kick me out of the air on the way down.”

Jason shakes his head, surprised that Kris even acknowledged him at all. For the most part, they had not spoken since Summer XXXtreme. Kris had been clear that they were not family anymore. He had even relinquished his half of the gym they were standing in. Yet, here he was. Even better, he was taking criticism without bringing up their issues. Jason could not help but feel like Kris was here to get his attention. Jason hops up on the apron, and then between the ropes. Kris steps into his path, having started to catch his breath, but Jason holds his hands up and moves around him.

JASON: “Just trust me here….”

He moves around Kris, taking a few quick steps towards the corner. He leaps, mirroring the first two strikes in Kris’ new combination. However, instead of turning towards the ropes for the springboard, he takes one running step to the opposite side of the corner. He plants his right foot on the middle rope, and springs left, rolling his body, and able to catch the top of the back with his toe and he rotates to the ground. He lands on his stomach, but gets his palms planted on the mat, and pushes up to be standing face-to-face with an unimpressed Kris.

KRIS: “You’re still as big of a show off as ever.”

Jason shrugs his shoulders, not letting his brother’s attitude take the smile off of his face. He did not expect Kris to cave in just because he saw it done successfully. He just wanted to be able to prove his usefulness.

JASON: “Why are you here?”

It cuts right through all the small talk, or circle-talking. There was really only one thing that the two of them needed to talk about, and as much as he would enjoy helping Kris with his ring problems, it was not the pressing issue.

KRIS: “You want me to leave?”

There it was, the flight option. Kris never wanted to talk about anything serious, but he was always too big of a pansy to take responsibility for that himself. He always threw it out as an option for others to terminate the conversation. Jason was not dumb enough to take the bait though. The two of them had been playing this game for too long for him to lose that easily.

JASON: “No, I want to you to come back to Seattle, to Jet City, and throw me some kind of lifeline here. I crossed a lot of lines. I apologized. I gave you space, now I want to fix this. It’s been long enough, and I don’t think you’d be here if you didn’t think the same thing.”

Kris did not expect this kind of honesty, but Jules had already done a number on Jason since confronting Kris a week ago. He sighs, and takes a step away, turning back towards the corner with the heavy bag.

KRIS: “Your wife came to see me. She said I’ve been slipping lately. That ever since I left Jet City I have been coasting. I have had to get more and more underhanded to keep my title, and my ring game just isn’t looking as sharp. She actually has me convinced that even though I’m not losing, I’m getting worse, all because I’m not here.”

On one hand Jason is quite impressed by the mindfuck that Jules must have laid on him to get him this twisted up. Jason was smart enough to know that all of the self-doubt his brother carried around never went away. He did a damn good job of hiding it in front of a camera, or on social media, but he also had all of those people convinced that he actually liked himself, so how smart could they be.

JASON: “I don’t think just being in the gym is what she meant, Kris...”

Kris waves him off before he can even finish the thought. He did not need to hear it.

KRIS: “Oh, save me the nauseating pitch! I know what she meant. She meant I need you, Parker, Coby, Violet, the students, and the feeling of being part of this place if I am going to keep getting better. She meant that I got to where I am because of what we built, and without it I am just stagnating instead of moving forward…. I get it,,. Trust me.”

Jason shrugs his shoulders, raising his arms out to his sides.

JASON: “You expect me to tell you that she’s wrong?”

Kris spins back towards him, anger on his face now. The smug way that his brother talked down to him was not going to make this situation any easier for either of them.

KRIS: “What would you know about it Jason? You haven’t paid any attention to my life since you left SCW. Now you have your own company to deal with, and all your big names on the roster. Is it enough to make you happy? Is people talking about you, and all the well-known asking you for a paycheck what you always wanted? I hope it is, because you finally got what you wanted. You got your perfect little picture now. You have the girl, the company, probably a new family before too long. Tell me I’m wrong!”

Kris’ voice steadily raises as he goes, and when he pauses it is only because he runs out of breath. Jason tries to interrupt him, but before he can even produce a single word, Kris is back on offense, dumping out all of the things he was holding back.

KRIS: “You cut the dead weight. Maybe you didn’t mean it to go as bad as it did, but you don’t have to worry about me fucking up your name anymore. Isn’t that what you wanted? You don’t have to be associated with all my fuck ups. It makes it a little easier to walk away when you don’t have to see your name attached anymore. I’m just another face in the crowd.”

Jason holds up his hand, not appearing to get riled at all. From the moment he laid eyes on Kris in the gym he was waiting for this. In fact, he was hoping for it to happen. It had been months since they said more than two words to each other. Jason would take this over nothing.

JASON: “I know you’ve been seeing E.G and talking out your problems. That you and Holden have been spending a lot of time together, so much so that you are actually just waiting on paperwork to get back to confirm your name change. I know you are just two weeks away from breaking the Roulette record, which was something you have been talking about since the day I asked you to sign with the company again. I know that each of these defenses has gotten harder for you....”

Kris tries to cut his brother off, but Jason raises his hand to quiet him before he can argue. Kris mouth slams closed, and Jason continues in the same even tone as before.

JASON: “You cheated at Summer XXXtreme to beat Keys at the end. At Violent Conduct you let the other two do most of the legwork against each other. Even against Devereux last week you didn’t look yourself, and I know where it started too.”

Kris rolls his eyes, and sighs heavily, turning away from Jason. He had already heard this from Jules. He was not about to listened to it from Jason as well.

KRIS: “You don’t know shit….”

Jason steps forward as Kris tries to escape through the ropes, done with the conversation. However, as he leans forward, Jason catches him from the side, taking his younger brother’s wrist in his left hand and applying the thumb on his right hand to a spot on the base of Kris’ neck. Almost as once the smaller man falls down to a knee, and yells out in pain. Jason raises Kris’ arm higher, and as he goes the pain on the champion’s face becomes more and more pronounced.

JASON: “It was when Joshua Acquin ripped that thing off the wall in that bathroom and hit you with it. I saw it then, and I have seen it in every match since. It’s why they didn’t want you to leave the hospital after the match, and it’s why you’ve been struggling since. You can’t even take pain medication to make it go away.”

The last bit may have been the reason that Jason had been keeping his space. At the very least, he could see from his performance that his brother was not using again. It was a step in the right direction.

JASON: “Not that I am complaining. I’m proud that you have gone so long without slipping.”

He releases his grip on his brother, and Kris immediately pulls away. He raises a hand up to his shoulder, rolling it a few times. As he gets back to his feet, he tilts his neck at an awkward angle and it pops. He seems almost instantly relieved.

KRIS: “I can manage. It’s only another couple weeks and I can drop the title and take some time off. I just have to make it through the end of October.”

The stupidity of the statement finally causes Jason to raise his voice.

JASON: “You’re not going to make it that long without our help. You need to have Parker look at it. You need to have someone like Coby around that can push you, instead of those idiots you have been picking on at gyms on tour. You need someone like me who is going to see through your bullshit, but isn’t going to get tired of dealing with you.”

Kris shakes his head, but immediately regrets it. Whatever Jason had done to him had landed perfectly. He could still feel the pain radiating all the way down his arm and into his hand.

KRIS: “I’m supposed to trust you not to bail? Yeah, that’s going to happen. We are supposed to just act like the last few months didn’t happen? You left me to drown during the worst time in my life, and instead of helping you made it worse on purpose. What am I supposed to do with that?”

Jason’s answer was simple enough to say, but he had been struggling with actually it.

JASON: “You have to accept it as something that happened, that you can’t change, and then you have to move on. It sucked. I’m sorry. But it’s over now. There’s only one direction we can go: forward, but it’s up to you if you want the help.”

He backpedals across the ring, away from Kris.

JASON: “Just think about it.”

Jason steps between the top and middle rope before dropping to the floor and walking off towards the office. Kris crosses the ring like he is going to follow him, but stops. He shoots a look back over his shoulder to the heavy bag, but before he does anything looks back to make sure Jason has already turned down the hallway. He approaches the bag, taking a leaping side-step with one foot landing on the middle rope. He rolls his body just like Jason had, and brings his foot up, tagging the top of the bag and actually knocking it over. He lands on his stomach, just like his brother had, but tucks his head and rolls forward instead of pushing up from the mat. He rolls back to his feet to find his brother leaning against the wall, having only faked walking down the hallway. His eyes are locked on Kris’, and he nods, clapping so softly that Kris could not hear the sound. He lingers for a second, and then rounds the corner for a second time, leaving Kris to think over his offer.


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“The Miracle”
ON-Camera


The the camera starts rolling the fans are quick to realize that it is not the typical set up that we are used to from Kris. He appears to have the camera somehow mounted to his wrist. We get a long view all the way up the left arm of the champion, who wears the smile of a young child who has just laid eyes on presents on Christmas morning.

“People have been asking me if I have been enjoying the tour, but to be honest, I have had a little bit too much on my mind lately.”

Wind muffles his voice, and from what little we can see from around Kris, he seems to be high up in the air. There are straps over his shoulders, and someone behind him seems to be attaching wires to his back.

“I mean let’s be honest, I have never been a fan of international travel. Tours have always been difficult for me. As a matter of fact, the last time I was part of an SCW tour, I lost my championship. How is that for a mindfuck?”

He frowns, but it only lingers on his face for a half a second.

“This time was different though. I brought my family. I brought friends with me. Yet, I have found myself sitting out on my balcony and asking myself questions. I watch back a lot of the shows, including parts that have me on it. Today I made the mistake of reading back through a lot of my tweets, and interactions with everyone. I have been forced to ask myself over and over again, if that is the person that I want to be. Is that the person that I really am?”

The person behind him pats him on the shoulder, telling him that whatever it is that they were setting up was ready to go. Kris nods back at him, but turns back to the camera without giving the man much thought.

“To be honest, I’m surprised that the questions did not come sooner. I’m surprised that it took me this long for it to catch up to me. I have been doing this whole thing for four years now, and only now am I starting to have doubts about parts of it. I guess you can say that I have been trying to clean up my act for the whole last year though. I came back to correct the path that I was on, and fix the legacy that I was leaving behind. I never thought that I was going to rise to a point where I was the most paid-attention-to person on the roster. I never thought that people would look at me as a standard bearer. If you would have asked me last year if I would be standing here now, I wouldn’t have been able to give you an answer. It’s nothing short of a miracle that I have come this far.”

Kali Fox steps into the frame, reaching out for Kris’ face. Without taking his eyes off of the camera, he allows her to pull his glasses off of his face. She folds the arms closed on them, and then trades him for something else, the SCW Roulette Championship. Harness, wires, and what appears to be a flight suit, don’t stop him from taking it and slinging it over his shoulder.

“Yet, here I am, and the thoughts that have been kicking around my head as of late have been about that very subject. From Summer XXXtreme until now, my life outside this job has seen a ton of changes. All of you were quick to pick up on the fact that my name officially changed to that of my actual father. I left Jet City. I have been on a roll that nobody has been able to stop in SCW. It seems like everything I say ends up working out in my favor. For someone that has stumbled through life, I have started to look at each of these things as a small miracle of sorts.”

>[He shrugs his shoulders. It did not seem too far-fetched to him, but for the fans that were not sold on it, he elaborates./i]

“I spent my whole life weighed down by being in Jason’s shadow, or blaming the person I thought was my father for my shortcomings. I was always able to point, and lay blame on someone else. Finding out more about myself this summer, has help me to reframe all of my actions, to take responsibility, and to move forward, not backwards. Yet, it all hinged on one piece of information falling into my hands that I was deprived of for twenty-eight difficult years. Any one of the times I have stumbled could have been the end for me. I was a bastard child that should not have been born. I was a drug addict that pissed away his career. I was a loudmouth that shit all over the fans. I was horrible to be around and pushed everyone in my life away before they could leave of their own accord.”

He holds his arms out to his sides, his head turning so that his eyes can stay focused on the camera. We can now see that Kris is standing high above Auckland, New Zealand. In fact, he was currently higher than just about any other living person in the southern hemisphere. Behind him, the camera catches a banner reading ‘SkyTower SkyJump’. Suddenly the wind, the harness, and the wires made perfect sense to the viewers.

“The fact that I am here, have the beautiful family that I do, have all the success in the world, and walk into an arena where people cheer me despite some of the horrible shit that I have said, is miraculous. There’s not a single person that can deny that fact. I should be dead, alone, or at the very least, strung out on a couch somewhere without being able to tell you what day it is. But here I am, standing on top of the world by literally and metaphorically.”

He brings his arm back down so that the camera is in front of his face.

“I am the best of the best that SCW has to offer. I have beaten just about everyone that has been around longer than a half a second. I have taken down all challengers. I have three amazing women in my life that joined me on this trip, and two beautiful kids. Oh, and I am standing on Observation Deck of the SkyTower here in Auckland.”

He turns his wrist so that the camera moves from his face, looking straight down from the deck to the ground below. People walking on the sidewalk are barely visible. Kris holds the camera on the ground for a second before rotating his wrist to put the camera back on his face.

“That’s six hundred and ten feet straight down to the ground. Normally they make you take everything out of your pockets and get into one of these flashy suits.”

He pulls on the collar with his free hand and scrunches up his nose to signify he was not a big fan of it.

“Then, as you saw, they take your glasses or anything else you might be in danger of dropping. If anything falls off of me and hits the ground, it can injure someone. Even this camera is basically bolted to my wrist so that I can’t drop it without losing my whole arm. That’s actually the reason that I have been up here for a few hours already. See, I had to talk to just about everyone working here, and convince them all of something that you fans already know. As you can see, I am strapped in and ready to go, so obviously they ended up seeing things my way. What was my point though? So glad you asked.”

He shrugs his shoulder, angling the camera over to the SCW Roulette Championship draped there.

“My point was that they didn’t need to worry about my championship slipping through my fingers on the way down. I had to explain to them, at length, that there isn’t any way that I am letting it go until I am damn good and ready to. At first they weren’t really receptive, but give me enough time, and I can win anyone over. For almost an entire year now, SCW has been sending people at me with the aim to beat me, or at least shut me up. Everyone has failed. Nobody has been able to pin me. Nothing and nobody could pry this championship out of my hand until after I break a couple records. I am so close now, but it has been brought to my attention that some people are starting to think that I am slipping. I have something to show them though….”

He looks back over his shoulder and gets a nod from one of the workers, and then steps off the ledge. The camera follows his short free fall, as the cords catch, and propel him a safe distance from the tower. He angles the camera to be on his face, knowing he only has precious few seconds before he plummets to the ground.

“Ready for another miracle?”

There is the faint sound of two clicks, and wind rushes up around Kris. He clutches the title to his chest with one hand while keeping the camera extended for the entire fall. The top half of the belt flaps against the helmet on his head, while the bottom half appears anchored with the harness. Kris is screaming, but not in fear, more out joy than anything. As he starts to slow with the aid of the cables attached to his back, he catches his breath, a smile appearing across his face.

“That was insane... ”

His eyes are wide, but the look of being overjoyed does not fade from his face as his feet hit the ground gently. The crew on the ground are quick to help him shrug out of the harness, and he makes his way away from the drop zone. He still has the camera held out, but angles it up so that the viewers can see how far he fell.

“I’ve never experienced anything like that before. That was pretty awesome.”

He brings the camera back down to his face, and rocks his shoulders a little to draw attention to the fact that the title was still there.

“Miraculously, terminal velocity does not apply to me. Clearly I am incapable of dropping this title no matter what the circumstance. Joshua Acquin should have learned that by now, but I’m kind of glad that he hasn’t. That guy got the better of me not too long ago, even though I walked away with a win. You don’t forget about the guy that tried to smother you to death during a match. You don’t let it slide when a guy rips a tampon dispenser off the wall and bludgeons you with it. We have done this a few times now Josh, and every time I have walked out with a victory. The problem was, I have never really gotten to enjoy it, so I am glad that you came out and asked for another shot without Sam around to mess it up for you.”

In a rare moment, he seems totally sincere. The smile even wavers on his face.

“The first time, Tim did most of the work. Every time since, has been in the middle of this big shit storm that became of my life. You caught me in a time of rebuilding. You caught me at my weakest, and because of that, you were able to do a whole lot of damage. I have bad news for you though Josh, that time in my life is over.”

He shrugs, not even thinking about apologizing for that fact. He normally would have tacked on a wink and that cocky smirk for good measure, but for some reason, he does not show any signs of it.

“This isn’t going to be the fifth, sixth, or whatever nth time it is that Kris Halich will have beaten you. This isn’t going to be another beatdown brought to some chump by Kris No-Last-Name-Here. No, this is going to be the debut of a whole new me. This is going to be the start of something all new. I’m not weighed down by all that bullshit that I have been letting hold me back. I’m not standing in the shadow of someone else’s name anymore.”

He smiles widely, possibly the happiest he has ever looked on camera in SCW.

“I’m Kristopher Ryans, and I’m the miracle that you’ve all been waiting for. I’m sorry I took so long to figure that out.”

He winks, but there is no sarcastic smirk accompanying it.

“See you soon….”

With that, the camera is cut off and the screen goes black.