SCW Boards
Roleplay Boards => Climax Control Roleplays => Topic started by: Alexander Raven on June 12, 2026, 08:01:08 AM
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“My swansong. That was what Miles called it. It is a hard thing to think about, but the reality is, he is probably right. Some people can do this forever. I want to do this forever, that’s my truth. That is my reality. I don’t want to hang up my boots, I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to turn the lights off, and leave that locker room for the final time. I don’t want to do that.”
“Sometimes we have a choice in how it ends. I had my choice stolen from me. I had my decision revoked, not by Miles, not by Evelyn. The truth of it, if they could see the things my Doctors are trying to prevent me from suffering with for the rest of my life, they’d get it. No, I had my choice stolen by a brazen prick. Someone who saw a thirty six year old man, whose body is falling apart, and decided he’d try and speed it up. To try and take his kernel of glory by attacking the failing man who was making his choice. His choice to leave his boots in the ring.”
“If this is to be my swansong, then they are right. It will be on my terms, in my way. In the only way that it could possibly be. The Alexander Raven way. In a pool of blood, with a broken nose, busted skull, a plethora of new scars and a crying wife who doesn’t know if he is going to even make it to the hospital. Some people want to go out on top, feeling the glory of it all. To have that choice to make to be the last true champion, in their mind.”
“Some want to quietly fade into the night, content to simply let it be. Some feel the everburning desire and cannot simply leave. They tarnish everything they worked towards because they cannot come to terms with the fact the world is leaving them behind. Then there are people like me. People who were born in fire and blood, who will leave in the same way. Agonised and hardly breathing, but never feeling more fucking alive than they do in that moment. My swansong will be that. The truth of it, I can’t just leave. I cannot be denied my desire to stand in this ring. To be known as the man that could not be conquered.”
“There’s a lot they’ve said about me over the years. Some of it hyperbolic, a lot of it true. A lot because of what I put out there. The desperation, the need. The ever burning desire to be at the top, because I do not know when my final day will be here. If they won’t clear me, I’ll fight my way through unsanctioned chaos to keep on doing this. If my body will not go, I will find a way to drag myself through those ropes one more time to make sure that they do not forget me.”
“They won’t forget me.”
“That’s the scary thing for you, isn’t it Brandon? Being the forgotten one. That people will simply look past you, over you, through you. You bit back, claimed my attention brought this down on you. My attention was on you because you felt the need to stick your nose in my business. Something you continue to do. Continue to talk, continue to bicker. A man who needs what I have, and you tried to take it from me at that moment.”
“My moment.”
“Believe it or not, Brandon, I know what you are feeling. I know what it feels like to have such expectations heaved upon your shoulders and to be a miserable sod who just cannot get there. I know, because I was… I am that miserable sod. Covered in the expectations of those around me, because I demand it. I need you to comprehend the difference here, however, the difference between you and me.”
“I don’t scream for attention, I make my presence known. Ask anyone who has stepped in that ring with me. Hell, you’ve done it and been made to look the ass of the ball time over. You can’t compete with me in ring acumen. I might be a bloodthirsty maverick, but I am damn fucking good at what I do. They aren’t empty words or empty praises that people heap upon me. Carter and I went to hell, but we’ll stand in each other’s corner this Sunday because he knows that at the end of the day, there’s few in this world who can do what I do. There is a whole roster of men who Miles could have wanted in that main event at Summer XXXtreme. A whole roster of people who have been waiting for their moment, and he took pity upon the man whose mind is lost to it all.”
“You were overlooked, Brandon. You were overlooked because you aren’t ready. You aren’t able, and you cannot step up to my level. I may not have been World Champion for long, and I may have been lost to the madness of my own mind for it. But there is a reason that I am always in the conversation, in the back of every champion’s mind. There was this old belief, back when I started. That there were people you just didn’t want to be put up against. That no matter how good you were, you prayed they weren’t the person put across the ring from you.”
“I’m that guy, Brandon. Ego or otherwise, I’m the guy that people do not want to be putting their championship up against, because it is never an easy night. It is never a guarantee. It is not a match that is won, it is a fight that ends in survival. Ask Carter, ask Miles, ask Bill or Eddie or Finn. Ask James Huntington Hawkes or Kevin Carter. Fenris, Austin James Mercer, Alex Jones. Ask any single one of them, and every single one will tell you the same thing. No matter how clean, no matter how dirty. No matter how good, and no matter how bad.”
“Alexander Raven is one difficult son of a bitch.”
“Don’t get it twisted Brandon, I’m not going to pretend that I’ve had my eyes opened and been shown how wrong the path I was going down was. I was always aware of the insanity of myself, the delusions and the deceit. A ticking clock doth a desperate man maketh. Yet the reason it bubbled and burned so deeply with every person I crossed? The difficulty of refuting it all.”
“As good as I am in that ring, there isn’t a single person I’ve crossed on the microphone that ever feels like they came away looking better. Sermons, lectures, descent into deluded ramblings. Any way they want to look at it, when it comes to going toe to toe with me? You’d best be ready to look the fool. I pity you, Brandon. Not close to me in the ring, a poor rambling fool without a point to his circles. I pity you, but I do not forgive you.”
“Come Sunday, I’ll prove that I’m still the man to beat. That there is a reason I’m getting my rematch, and that there is a reason that the world doesn’t want me to go away quietly. Despite your best efforts Brandon, you’ve come up short again.”
“It’s not just you though Brandon. We are surrounded by snakes who make me look like a saint in this place. No, there’s this fellow glory chaser, in Logan Hunter. Actually, maybe I should feel a little bit of ego over the existence of Logan. Not just a mirror to you in the snakiness, but a pale imitation of Alexander Raven.”
“A pretty man with the angst of the world etched upon him. Brooke being your very own pale imitation of my wife, Luna. A mirror image of a man you're better, what you wish you could be. It was very nice of Brooke to come to my defense. It was far less nice having to listen to you talk. Sydney is an apt home for you, Logan. The most disdained city in that beautiful country of Australia. A city where you can’t turn left, can’t do a u-turn and can’t drink after 3AM. Perfect for a man who has to be put to bed by his partner just after nine so he doesn’t get too grumpy.”
“I don’t like you Logan. No surprise there, I guess. No one really likes you. The annoying tick that keeps on sucking the blood and talent of those around you. A glory chaser like Brandon, trying to take something that doesn’t belong to you by screaming for the attention of my partner this week, Carter Kasey-McKinney. Just like Brandon, you are trying to make yourself seem more than you are.”
“However, there is a clear difference between these teams. Strange bedfellows if you will, but I know Brandon as well as I know you. Neither of you are team players, and neither of you will be willing to be the idiot who costs the team the match. The problem with that is your egos. Brandon surrounds himself with a plethora of heaters to make himself seem even slightly more intimidating. You, in your poor attempt to be me, keep Brooke tethered to your side. The problem with you Logan, is your inability for subtlety.”
“Take it from me, subtlety is your friend. It keeps people from being too alert, too on top of your actions. Subtlety is your friend, my dearly despised imitator. Learn to read the book and you… well, considering it is you, Logan. You might get a chance to open the show next time, because this main event? It’ll be the last time you get to pretend you are able to stand here. That’s not boastful, that’s not arrogance or brutal. It simply is what it is. The truth, and the truth? It ain’t always kind.”
“Learn to be something of your own, learn to be something other than me. Learn to check your ego, because your ego is the reason the world loathes you. That everyone finds a reason to dislike you. It won’t happen overnight, and that is unfortunate. Unfortunate for you, unfortunate for Brandon. Neither of you have the capacity to rely on someone else. Neither of you can trust in another man, and even if individually one or both of you were the better men? You wouldn’t let the other be the man with the glory for the night. It doesn’t work that way for you two.”
“I was ready to walk away three weeks ago. I was ready to leave this behind. I now go into a rematch for the World Championship in only a couple weeks. My ego is left at the door, because if I win, great. Momentum, a reminder of who Alexander Raven is. A reminder that I am still that guy. That one loss, two losses, ten, fifty, one hundred loses, do not define me. The win? It doesn’t matter if it is me, or Carter. All that matters is that we do win. All that matters is we remind you of who we are. Of who Brandon Hendrix and Logan Hunter have attempted to step to. To go eye to… toe to toe with. This isn’t my swansong, this is just a reminder. A reminder that even on death’s door, Logan, Brandon, neither of you are fit to even walk in my shadow. Remember that.”
“Carter, I ask no forgiveness for my actions. I know who I am, you know who I am. You know this means everything to me. That I would hold the hot poker till the flesh peeled from my very bones if I needed to. I won’t ask you to trust me, I won’t ask you to put your faith in. I just need you to know that I will do everything I need to, to remind them that they are stepping in the ring with two former Worlds Heavyweight Champions. That there is a world of difference between a blindside shot, and the hell we fought over that very championship.”
“Brandon, I’m coming for you.”
“Logan, I’m going to embarrass you.”
“Have you been listening? I hope so.”