(FADE-IN)
As the camera fades in, the only thing that is visible on the television screens of ESEN viewers the world over is the painted face of the Spirit of ACW, one Orphan. With a black background behind him, the fal’Cie appears not from the Almasy Estate, but rather from a television studio in Greensboro, North Carolina.
ORPHAN: Welcome, Leyenda. You are a man enthralled by the eight and sixteen bit adventures that dotted our childhood, but when it comes to “old school” in what we do, THIS is Atari 2600. Just you, me, and a camera, Leyenda. I will not lie, I hate doing this. I never liked it, I never have, but this is important to me, so I’m going to kick it old school for a little bit, because there is a lot I need to say to you before my conscience is clear with what’s going to happen in a few days as we do battle in Round Two.
His eyes are bloodshot, a clear sign that he hasn’t slept well for several days. His posture is threatening and aggressive. Though Leyenda de Ocho is thousands of miles away, it feels to the fal’Cie as if he is right next to him.
ORPHAN: First and foremost, I am more than willing to stand here and treat you with respect, and I still will, but you have pushed a button that you have no business pushing. You want to call my Party slaves, Leyenda?
His eyes flash with rage, with the sort of hatred that it takes most men effort to summon up.
For Orphan, that hatred is the reality of his everyday life.
ORPHAN: Those three women are my FANS. MY BEST FRIENDS, YOU SON OF A *****! When the entire world abandoned me, they alone stayed. I would do ANYTHING for them! And if they willed it, for the slight you have committed against them, I would rend you limb from limb in the middle of that ring. I would stretch you in ways that your young mind cannot comprehend. But I will not, because they understand, Leyenda.
His voice almost cracks on the word “understand,” pain in his words that only he can comprehend.
ORPHAN: They know what it is like to be you, my diminutive luchador, because they understand what it is like to be me, or rather, what it WAS like to be me, back when my name was Seymour Almasy and I was considered Primetime Central’s franchise player. ACW’s World Champion. One of the best wrestlers in the world.
He shakes his head, letting it fall into his hands as if trying to deny the memories as being pleasant in the slightest.
ORPHAN: …a hero. A good guy.
It’s almost impossible for even the man himself to imagine, in spite of spending almost a decade as Almasy and a scant few months as Orphan.
ORPHAN: My legal name is Seymour Almasy. I had it changed from Jason Seymour Wilson back in aught five. My nickname was “The Final Fantasy” – you might have played the first few games in the series, given that it was on Nintendo and Super Nintendo until Sony snapped SquareSoft up, but as usual, I digress. My inspiration was the heroes of roleplaying lore. Men like Cloud Strife, Squall Leonhart, Crono…there’s one you might know. Link, though I wasn’t a huge Nintendo fanboy. White Mage? That’s old school enough for you, right?
Love of the game has never left the Spirit of ACW. Even today, Orphan spends a good deal of his time playing the games he loves, but the man who stands outside the arena has been irrevocably blackened by that which occurred to him inside of it.
ORPHAN: We’re the same size roughly. Similar height. Similar weight. Were this a few years back, we’d have a similar penchant for flippy moves. It’s funny. It feels almost like I’m fighting an alternate universe of myself, back when I started on this long, crazy adventure to become a professional wrestler in 2003 as a dropout of Penn State University. In a different world, you and I could well be partners, fighting our way to the top of a promotion together as sworn brothers.
Just the thought of that is enough to make the tears begin to flow. In that moment, Orphan imagines a universe in which his hand had not been forced. A world in which he still fought the fight millions around the world wanted him to.
If only for a moment, it is a truly pleasant fantasy.
ORPHAN: The truth is, my luchador friend? I’m a little jealous of you. Because we can both walk to that ring and put on a clinic, but only one of us, win or lose, can go back to the locker-room and be completely comfortable with who they are. I am Orphaned because All-Star Championship Wrestling decided to cast me aside as a relic of a bygone era. I look into the eyes of my Party every single week as I commit yet another atrocity, yet another sin, yet another action that I should not, and I see the pain there. The frustration. The sorrow, Leyenda. I know that I’m causing them pain, and it tears me up inside! But there is no other way. Seymour Almasy cannot exist in professional wrestling, because Seymour Almasy got taken advantage of, time and time again.
The fal’Cie’s red face paint streaks from tears streaming down his face. The memories are still there, still fresh, and in truth, they define Orphan far more than his Party, an alliance with Keith Scott Zimmerman, or a penchant for punting people in the skull.
ORPHAN: I was you, Leyenda, and like you, I thought that good would always triumph over evil. It seemed true; after all, I defeated virtually everyone in my path. I slayed villains, vanquished giants, and did whatever I could to fight the good fight. And I’ll give you credit; it worked for a good long while. And then, Leyenda, I met Khristain Keller. I met SilverHAWK, the owner of ACW. And then, my masked friend, I knew true evil.
He can see the faces of both men. He will see them until the day he dies, and if things continue as they are, he might well see them while burning in the fires of Hell.
ORPHAN: True evil isn’t the caricatures that you see in the video games we play so much. Very, VERY few people are utterly irredeemable. No, many of those we consider evil have simply been wronged so much that they decide to take matters into their own hands. Khristain Keller left me for dead in a straitjacket the night I was scheduled to make the biggest title defense of my life. He was sponsored in that action by the man in charge of ACW. THE MAN IN CHARGE! And yet, when I was gone, ACW prospered. ACW grew. ACW rose to its formerly lofty pedestal. And to many, Leyenda de Ocho, that justified their actions.
The Orphan breaks up utterly, sobbing as if at a funeral – appropriate, as this feels like nothing short of a eulogy of the man who he once was, delivered by the man who he has become.
Once, he thought Seymour Almasy and Orphan two sides of the same coin.
Now, he doubts the Final Fantasy will ever return.
And for that, he will never forgive the sport he loves.
ORPHAN: But that isn’t how it works. Good people can still do bad things. SilverHAWK made a bad choice that day. He’s dead now, and quite frankly? I’ll never forgive him for taking two years of my career. But he wasn’t otherwise a bad man, just a man turned evil by his desire to make ACW the biggest professional wrestling company on Earth.
The message is clear. There is no good. There is no evil. There is naught but a world of grey.
ORPHAN: So too is it with me, Leyenda de Ocho. I make no apologies for what I am, a twisted, fallen hero who wants to save this profession from itself. I am a man who wants to ensure that no other professional wrestler is broken as I am, injured and beaten and spat upon with actions that do not belong in our noble profession. That’s why punting Khristain Keller in the head isn’t enough. That’s why I can’t just excise one evil, because two more rise up in their place. I walk to the ring every night with three blaring red buttons at ringside in the form of my Party. I will allow NO HARM to come to them. And if that means that I have to prove night in and night out that to **** with them is to court horrific, nuclear retaliation? So be it.
The Party flashes in his mind’s eye, and just the thought of harm befalling them is enough to make the sobs that soak through his words cause more hitches.
ORPHAN: You can claim good always triumphs over evil, but all you have to do is look out the window to see that to be an utter fallacy. Dozens of oligarchs of industry make billions of dollars, while hundreds of thousands starve on the streets of every city in America, to say nothing of the rest of the world! The only place where good wins is fiction, and even THERE today people want to read bad endings, because good winning is just ever so passé. And believe me, Leyenda, I know your pain. I know how much that hurts, because I fought that my entire career. I fought my heart out as my opponents were cheered because they looked cooler than me, or had a tougher name, or said the word “f---“ more times than I did. And I accepted their scorn. I looked the other way. I did the good and just thing to do, and I felt like a...failure.
By the time Orphan has wiped the freshest tears from his eyes, his face paint is virtually gone; Orphan blended into Seymour Almasy and back again. Seymorphan, whatever one wishes to call him, is all that remains, an undeniably talented competitor driven to extremes by the depths of despair.
ORPHAN: I am not an evil man, Leyenda. I do evil things, maybe, but my goals are pure. I want to make this sport safe for people like you. I want to win the ULTRATITLE and use it to bring about true change in this profession. I don’t want people like Castor Strife taking up bounties to break people’s necks and end their livelihoods. I WILL BURN IN THE FIRES OF HADES IF I RETIRE BEFORE I MAKE THIS BUSINESS SAFE FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF DREAMERS! EVERY TIME I LOOK IN A LOCKER ROOM AND SEE A NEW KID, I KNOW IT’S ONLY A FEW YEARS BEFORE WRESTLING SKULLF---S HIM INTO SUBMISSION!
His friends, to a man, all fell to the dark side at some point or another. Andy Sharp. Christopher Sheffield. Keith Scott Zimmerman. All of them. Not a single one spared.
ORPHAN: And it’s not your fault, Leyenda, I know. You’re one of the few good ones. One of the few genuinely compassionate souls who calls this lunacy a profession. But you stand here in the way of my noble dream. You stand in the way of me annihilating the cancerous tumors from what we do for a living. I need the ULTRATITLE, and you are coming to the ring to do everything in your power to prevent me from getting it to achieve your own dream. For that, I will not hesitate: I will cut you down with everything in my power. I will ensure that Goliath beats David. I will have achieved one more victory on my grim march to the ULTRATITLE. And then, when it is all over? I will shake your hand, because I UNDERSTAND YOU. It is not a luxury I extend to many these days, my respect, but you deserve it.
A small smile crosses his face, as if proud that he’s still capable of such sentiments in spite of his horrific suffering.
ORPHAN: You said that you pitied me, Leyenda. I appreciate the sentiment, but I do not need your pity. Instead, it is you who needs my pity, because you blindly wander on towards the abyss with pluck and a slingshot, ready to take on anything and everything with your “aw shucks” and “Oh Gosh, I just know I can win this!” attitude. I have a flash of reality for you, and it is one that I wish to Yevon someone had shown me years ago.
The mocking in his voice fades away, because he knows that Ocho believes it. Believes every word, and in the end, the Orphan cannot bring himself to truly mock a man after his own former heart.
ORPHAN: Because I know how this story goes, Leyenda! I know the beginning, the middle, and the end! I know what it means to be a noble man in the most ignoble business that there is, how it feels to suffer week in and week out because you bind yourself to a morality that the rest of this sadistic bloodsport pisses on. I know what it is to stand utterly alone because EVERYTHING ELSE IS GONE! I would not wish that fate upon my worst enemy, let alone a man in whom I see myself.
Not even Khristain Keller, the man whom he hates more than any left alive on this Earth, would he damn to such a fate.
ORPHAN: You are Leyenda de Ocho, yes, but under that mask, you have a face. You have a name. You have a family, a mother and a father who love you. Perhaps you have a girlfriend, a fiancée, or a wife. Perhaps you even have children. You have a life, Leyenda. You have an OPTION! You have a CHOICE! I have no options and no choices. All I have remaining in this world is professional wrestling and my Party, because I have had every single other thing in this world that I have ever loved ripped from my bloodied, helpless hands.
His lips move, but no words are audible. Careful lip readers can make out “Grandfather” and “Laura” amidst what otherwise appears to be borderline psychotic babble.
ORPHAN: I don’t want to hurt you, but I have to. Because I owe it to you, to an Orphan who still has his family, to prevent the fate that befell me from befalling you. Don’t worry; I won’t cripple you too badly. I’ll break an arm, maybe. Or a leg. Or give you one of those concussions that forces you to re-evaluate your choice of livelihood. There’s a lot of scary research out there these days, after all.
Madness reigns in his eyes to some, but to others, there is but a frightening lucidity, a pureness of intent (if not of means) that has plagued All-Star Championship Wrestling’s fan base since the rebirth of one of the few genuinely good people in the company’s star-crossed history as one of its most hated yet justifiable villains.
ORPHAN: There’s still time, Leyenda. Still time for you to leave this tournament and this sport. Time for you to flee back to your loved ones, as I wish I’d done a hundred-thousand times over the past five years. Get out of the ULTRATITLE Tournament. Get out of the so-called sport of kings.
The last three words were tinged with such venom that one might have imagined them to be hateful curses or ethnic slurs.
ORPHAN: But if you must insist on doing battle…I’m right here, Ocho. I will not shrink from your honorable challenge. If you want to be the ULTRATITLE’s hero, if you want to be the man who saves that belt from being held by a pariah of one of the largest wrestling companies in the world, if you want to save it from being held hostage for and used for my own selfish ambitions…all you have to do is beat me. Pin my shoulders to the mat for three seconds. Make me submit. Beat me so badly that I cannot return to the ring within a ten count. Get me disqualified. It sounds so simple, doesn’t it?
Through tear-blurry eyes and a face covered in streaked makeup, the Orphan looks confident. Ready. Focused on the terrible mission that is “saving” a man by destroying his livelihood.
ORPHAN: Considering your penchant for the eight-bit classics, though, I’m sure you’re well aware that it is the simplest challenges in concept that prove the most exasperatingly difficult. Your dreams are on a road to Heaven, but I assure you, after our battle, you will wish I was an enemy beatable by something as flimsy and foolish as human prayer. Though the multitudes in attendance will cheer you, their prayers will count for nothing, I PROMISE you that. And when it’s all said and done, and your dreams, your hopes, your silly prayers all are for naught, don’t blame me, Leyenda. Blame yourself.
The final words of the fal’Cie were calm, softly-spoken, yet delivered with an intensity that made them seem a solemn vow.
ORPHAN: …or God.
(FADE-OUT)