==========================================================
===========================================================
Shake-Up
Columbus, OHIO -- GalaxyCon Columbus 2023
1st December 2023
OFF-Camera
For the record, I hate this. However, given that I have basically proven myself expendable over the last couple of shows, I am not really in a place where I can say no when I get told to show up at events. It doesn’t matter that this sea of midwest nerds probably couldn’t care less about a wrestler from the west coast. It doesn’t matter that even those in the crowd that knew who I was still wouldn’t want to stop and talk to me. It doesn’t even matter that in the three hours I have been sitting at this desk, not a single person has asked for an autograph. It is still an event where someone representing Sin City showed up, and put up all the signage. Even if people didn’t stop and talk to me, maybe they would at least check out the company. My job was to simply be a billboard. It hadn’t mattered much when it was Eiley and I doing things like this together, because we could keep one another entertained. Doing it solo made time feel like it was standing still.
The worst part of it was that I used to love places like this. Anywhere that people were more focused on what they were seeing than what I was taking out of their pockets would have been a five-star day before Sin City came around and made me a semi-notable individual. There was too much risk in it now. Even if nobody here knew who I was, if anything I did made it to the internet there was an entire Sin City fan base ready and willing to throw me under the bus. Therefore, there was absolutely nothing to do other than sit at this table and count the minutes until I could finally pack up and leave this shit hole. I still needed to track down Eiley before then so that we could reattempt to have the conversation that fell apart a few days ago.
FAN: So you’re definitely losing this rematch coming up, right? I’m not going to be disappointed if I bet against you, am I?
I don’t know how long I have been lost in my thoughts. I had definitely dissociated long enough for whoever this individual was to sit down at the desk across from me. For all I know, I could have been absent-mindedly talking with the girl this whole time, because the way she was acting made me feel like we were in the middle of a conversation that I didn’t remember ever happening.
OZ: I’m sorry, but what?
Whoever she was, she laughed in my face. It already felt like she was more comfortable at this table than I was, which put me on edge. There was something vaguely familiar about her, but I couldn’t quite place it.
FAN: The rematch that Limitless has coming up. You two are going to bomb, right?
I blinked a few times, and did my best to try and look like I wasn’t totally lost in this conversation. I looked around at the signage around the table, and then back to the girl across from me in disbelief.
OZ: You actually know who I am?
She seemed confused given that even if she had no clue who I was I was surrounded by more than a handful of helpful hints.
FAN: Yes?
My mouth fell open and closed a few times wordlessly before another fan stepped to the table, and tried to pull the conversation away from her. He pointed at me first, and was working his way towards her before she even noticed the lurker over her shoulder.
FAN2: I’m sorry, are you two jus--
If I had blinked at the wrong time, I would have missed what happened. It was so fast that nobody at the surrounding booths had a chance to react before the man’s head was slammed into my table and held there by the girl that had pulled me out of my thoughts. She had grabbed him by the wrist, and quickly wrenched his arm behind his back which is what gave her the leverage to slam him face-first into the table. I watched him try and push himself up with his free arm, but she must have wrenched his arm even harder, because he thought better of that almost instantly.
FAN: Can you not tell when people are in the middle of a conversation?
He didn’t answer right away, so she added a little more torque to her grip in order to elicit a response.
FAN2: OWWW!!! What is wrong with you? I ju---
His words cut off and his face twisted in agony as he did his best not to let her know how much it hurt. The man punched the table with his free hand, which just got another laugh from his assailant.
FAN: You feel that, huh? Just a little bit further and I could probably snap this thing and then you’d have to explain to all of your idiot friends how you got beat up by a teenage girl….
I looked up at her, surprised at her age, and she took her attention away from him long enough to wink at me with a slight shrug while mouthing the word “nineteen”. Apparently that was enough of a distraction for her to slightly loosen her grip, because the man that she had trapped found the willpower to speak up, this time with a little more bass in his voice.
FAN2: Lemme go!
She cranked one more time on his arm, and then dropped her lips nearly to his ear, speaking so low that we were likely the only three people that caught the words.
FAN: If when I let go, you don’t walk away with your tail tucked between your legs, the next thing I grab hold of is getting separated from you, feel me?
She may have just been a teenager, but a chill ran up my spine when I heard the words come out of her mouth. They were chilling, but more importantly, the man believed them. He nodded once, and she let him go. He immediately took a step back from the table, and looked back and forth between the two of us a couple of times before quickly shuffling off into the crowd wordlessly. I was impressed, to say the least.
OZ: Seems almost like you should be on this side of the desk… uhhh.. Sorry, I am not sure that I got your name.
She extended her hand with a smile.
FAN: Roux.
I shook her hand, albeit a little on edge from what I had just seen her to do the last person that gave up an appendage so easily.
OZ: Nice to meet you, Roux. I thought you midwesterners were supposed to be a whole lot nicer to each other than big city people, ya know? Not that I am complaining about the show or anything.
She smiled but shook her head before correcting me.
ROUX: Oh, I’m not from here. Long Beach born and raised. That guy was probably from around here though, and today he learned a very valuable lesson about trying to cut in line.
I looked around at the sea of people moving through the aisles behind her. Nearly every other booth had lines, and some of them had lines big enough to have their own turnstyle of ropes to herd the masses in an orderly fashion towards whatever pseudo-celebrity they were dying to meet.
OZ: Well, not much of a line. You’re the only one that has stopped all day.
She shrugged her shoulders again, likely just trying to make me feel better about being an insignificant draw.
ROUX: What do you expect? This isn’t really a hub of popularity for Sin City Wrestling. When was the last time they even booked a show all the way out here? It’s usually either the west coast or some foreign country.
She was giving me information without really telling me anything. Whatever this was, she had definitely planned it out.
OZ: True enough, yet they still sent me. The better question is, what is a random girl from Long Beach doing in Columbus, Ohio of all places? Especially if you have moves like that!
I wanted to see how she took the compliment, but instead of addressing it at all, she moved right past it. Whatever she was actually after clearly wasn’t my attention or blatant flattery would have gotten some kind of response.
ROUX: Not all of us are lucky enough to get our foot in the door of a place like Jet City.
My stomach turned, and I sat up straight in my seat. It suddenly felt like she could see straight through me. She knew about the company I was representing. She knew about Jet City even though it wasn’t featured on any of the signs around us. This was feeling less and less like a random occurrence by the second.
OZ: I get it. You know your shit. You know about the company that I work for, and the gym that I train at. I can’t help but feel like I am being set up or something.
She shook her head with a half-frown on her face.
ROUX: Setups are usually your thing though, right OZ?
I could feel my blood pressure spike. This wasn’t just some casual fan that came across me at a convention. The way the corner of her lips turned up into a devilish smirk when she asked the question told me that she knew something of the life I was leading before coming to Sin City. I supposed that could have been because of the massive stories about Kris’ return to the realm of the living, but I wasn’t so sure about this. It didn’t feel like she had some inkling about the person I used to be. It felt like she knew everything about me.
OZ: Who are you?
I could tell that she tried very hard not to laugh at the question, and at first she didn’t answer at all. She pushed herself up out of the seat across from me, and grabbed one of the photos from the table with Eiley and I holding up the SCW Mixed Tag Team Championships.
ROUX: In a word? Trouble.
She picked up one of the sharpies from the table, and bit down on the cap to pull the marker free before writing a number across the very center of the photo. Frowning at it, she shields it from me before starting to draw on the rest of it.
OZ: That much is obvious. This doesn’t feel very random though, and you don’t really seem to be the comic-con type. Why do I get the feeling that you’re just here to talk to me?
She shrugged before turning the photo back around towards me. She had successfully scribbled Eiley out of the photo, and drawn a stick-figure labeled as ROUX standing next to me with her hand holding up Eiley’s half of the championship belts.
ROUX: Just introducing myself before you hear any of the bad stuff. I wanted to make a first impression before somebody else did it before me. Is that so wrong?
The number written across the center of the photo wasn’t long enough to be a phone number. If I had to guess, it was a room number, but it could have been to any number of hotels in the area. If I wanted answers, I was going to have to earn them. Although, there was always the option of throwing the picture in the garbage and choosing not to play her game at all. Something told me that she knew that wasn’t going to happen though.
OZ: In my experience, you shouldn’t trust anyone that knows way more about you than you do about them.
She shrugged, and backed away from the table.
ROUX: Well, when you’re done with all this… come find me. Maybe we’ll talk.
I looked down at the number on the photo again, but when I looked back up from it, she was gone as quickly as she had appeared.
OZ: I might just do that…
==========================================================
>One Match at a Time
==========================================================
”None of us can change the past…”
”The losses that Eiley and I have suffered lately as a team can’t be wiped away. My loss last week will be in the record book forever. Losing the Mixed Tag Team Championships will be part of High Stakes history whether I like it or not.”
”There is nothing that I can do about any of it. It is what it is. Just like there is nothing that I can do about the fact that everything that has been said about this match has been absolutely true. Eiley and I have been on a downward spiral lately. We have been coming up short more often than we have been having our hands raised in victory. It has been a long time since the two of us have left an arena on the same page, and I am not exactly sure how we are going to fix that moving forward.”
”...so I am just not going to dwell on it.”
”You all can if you want, and I am sure that you will let us hear about it during our match this weekend at Climax Control. Fans don’t have to get into the ring and actually back up the things that they say, so they can afford to have long memories. I can’t. I can’t let the things that have gone wrong get in my head, or they are bound to keep repeating themselves. If you go into a match thinking that you are going to lose, that’s exactly what is going to happen. If you walk down the aisle thinking that your teammate won’t have your back when you need them to, they won’t. If you are expecting something to go wrong, it will. Competing in that ring is all about tuning out the noise, and doing what it is that we do best and that is exactly what Eiley and I intend to do once the bell rings. Nothing else that came before matters. Nothing that happens weeks from now is within our control.”
”Eiley and I need to put on a performance at Climax Control that reminds this division why we were at the very top since the Mixed Tag Team Championships were reactivated.”
”It really is that simple.”
”That’s not to say that it is going to be some kind of walk in the park. Sure, we have beaten the team of Bill and Bea before, but right now the two of them have nothing to lose. Limitless is the team with the guaranteed Mixed Tag Team Championship match coming up. We are the ones that are in position to take back our titles, regardless of what has gone wrong in the last couple of weeks. Bill and Bea can leapfrog every other team in the division if they were to take us out on Sunday. They can go from the bottom rung of the Mixed Tag Team Ladder, to the rightful number one contenders if Eiley and I can’t get our shit together when the bell rings, and that makes them dangerous even if their record in this company says otherwise.”
”What Eiley and I proved over the summer was that even the longshots can make some noise if they are given the right opportunity, and I am sure that Bill and Bea are looking at this match as their next big break. This the gateway to them getting their hands back on the Mixed Tag Team Championships, and a step towards the entire division having to take them seriously…. ”
”...but therein lies the rub, ya know?”
”See, for as long as they have been here nobody takes them seriously. For as big and imposing as Bill is, he doesn’t inspire fear in his opponents. The fans look at this card, and they see one thing: an opportunity for Eiley and I to get right before our rematch for the Mixed Tag Team Championships. Because that is what this really is. While Eiley and I have been trapped in a downward spiral due to a handful of losses, Bill and Bea have been operating as usual. Not because they have been successful lately, but because nobody expects them to be. All they have to do is show up. Their losses aren’t critiqued. Their shortcomings aren’t put under a microscope. The reason that Eiley and I are catching all kinds of shit from the roster, is because we have fallen off the top of the mountain. Bill and Bea have never risen above sea-level. They have nowhere to fall when they lose, because that would mean that at some point in their time here, they would have had to do something worthwhile.”
”As little as people think of me, the last time I was in the same ring with Bill, he was the one that was forced to tap out in the center of the ring. So people can talk about how Eiley and I can’t manage to get on the same page all they want, it didn’t seem to stop Finn and Kayla from winning the Mixed Tag Team Championships, did it? Those two weren’t even speaking to one another heading into High Stakes, and they still managed to overcome the odds. Seems to me like Eiley and I have a lot more of a chance to walk out of this match with a victory than anyone is willing to give us.”
”So go ahead and put all your money on Bea and Bill. While you’re at it, hold your breath for the two of us to call it quits as a team and strike out on our own. Just don’t be surprised when you end up penniless and gasping for air as Eiley and I are celebrating in the center of the ring; one step closer to regaining the championships that we should have never let anyone take away from us.”
”Like I said, I can’t change anything that has already happened, but I can make sure that the spiral ends on Sunday.”
”First The Barnharts. Then the champions.”
One match at a time.
