*Hunter Hearst Helmsley was not a man accustomed to failure. He wanted to be a bodybuilder: and he won Mister Teen New Hampshire at age Nineteen. He wanted to work in a physical environment, and ended up becoming the manager of Gold’s Gym within less than a year of working there. He wanted to be a wrestler, and he became a twelve time world champion. But no matter how successful he seemed to be in his professional life, his personal life had always been something of a rollercoaster. He mentally damned his tendency to be attracted to women that were in some way tied to wrestling: now he had an ex-fiancée, an ex-wife, and a soon-to-be ex-wife working for the same company as him. One of them was currently living with his best friend. One of them almost had a baby with his brother in law…and the other one…the other one it seemed was in the process of shacking up with his opponent for Warfare. It was this match that occupied his mind now. Well, not so much the match itself rather than the person he was in it with. Hunter couldn’t count the number of times he’d seen Steve and Megan together when they thought he wasn’t home, “innocently” crossing the street, visiting each other’s houses. Hunter didn’t even care that they were spending time together. He didn’t even care that they might end up sleeping together, all he cared about was his daughter…how she was currently spending more time in the arms of a raving lunatic than she was in his own. That made him mad. And yeah, he probably could have done something about it…he could have gone to Megan, told her he was spending the day with his child whether she liked it or not…but he really couldn’t stand the thought of talking to anyone about anything at all, much less his less-than-exemplary love life, and much less with the woman he was failing with. His cell phone rang again. He was driving, so he didn’t answer it…but he could guess who it was. Shawn. Or Joanie. Or the other Sean. Hunter usually would have appreciated their concern for his emotional wellbeing, but right now he could have used one of them to beat the other two with. He finally arrived at the arena, and got out of the car. Then, he checked his voicemail. Sure enough, it was Shawn, asking the usual…Hunter flipped his phone shut and sighed. Now wasn’t the time. He walked into the arena and started to make his way to his locker room. He didn’t get very far though, because he turned the corner and was accosted by a camera crew, along with Todd Grisham. God. Didn’t people know to let a man at least drop off his bags before putting him on television?*

Todd Grisham: Triple H if I could just--

Triple H: Not in the mood, man…sorry.

Todd Grisham: But I just wanted a quick word on your match with Sting, especially after the rumors about--

Triple H: *he cut Grisham off for the second time* About him and my wife?

Todd Grisham: Well, yeah…considering all the drama in your life, how do you feel about your match?

Triple H: Let me tell you something, before we start this thing…. You don’t get to ask me how I feel about anything. In fact, I’m so fucking sick of people asking me how I am, that the next person to do so might feel more than the wrath of my words. You want my thoughts, pal? Well you’re gonna get them…you want an interview, you’re gonna get a shoot promo, so sit back and let me express myself. *Hunter looks at the camera* It’s kind of a strange, sick coincidence that I get stuck in a match with Sting this week, huh? The week after I leave my wife, I get put in a match with the guy who’s trying to fill my void in her pants. See, I know Sting… he has a thing for younger girls that he can play hero to. And since he’s too old to start a family of his own, he figures he might as well try and steal mine. Well, Sting, I don’t give a flying fuck what you do with Megan. You and her could be studying the Kama sutra together in her brother’s bed, and I still wouldn’t give a shit. No, all I care about is the fact that Megan is so naïve that she thinks there’s something other than a raging psychopath inside you. All I care about is the fact that she somehow thinks you’re stable enough to play stand-in parent to my child. To that, I say bull-fucking-shit. You can’t even take care of yourself, let alone try to play daddy to my baby and husband to my wife. And I’m telling you right here, and right now, that you will never ever get anywhere near my daughter. Just because Megan and I aren’t together any more, that doesn’t make my opinion on the subject null and void, and if you were any kind of man you’d realize that I am Morgan’s father, not you. You’re dangerous, and believe me, it’s not solely up to Megan which freaks get to be around my baby. After I’m done kicking your ass, I’ll probably take some kind of legal action, but for now, I’ll be satisfied just to beat the knowledge that you’re not welcome near my daughter into your head. You know there’s a reason you’re “Uncle Steve” or the Sweet Big Brother, right? That’s because you can tell Uncle Steve or the sweet Big Brother to fuck off when you get tired of him. You play those roles because you’re not capable of playing anything else, because any woman you care about doesn’t ever care about you enough to let you play anything else. Yet you still think you’re better than me when it comes to determining the best future for my family. Well, you’re not. It’s my place to decide how to live my life, and Steve, if you even begin to insult my abilities as a father in whatever shitty holier than thou promo you’re planning on cutting, I swear to god, it will be the last thing you ever do with those lips of yours, and no, I won’t let you make out with my wife before I rip your tongue out of your head and clean the canvas with it. Steve…let me make something absolutely, perfectly clear to you, so that even your little pea brain can understand it… It is not your place to sit back and judge me, hell, even my best friend in the world Shawn Michaels, who is a much better man than you, and much more qualified to give marriage advice, hasn’t tried to tell me what to do with my home life. Sting, you need to let it enter into your psychotic little mind that sometimes relationships just don’t work out, and that there isn’t always someone to blame and punish. I’m not the “bad guy” for breaking it off…I’m the smart guy who recognized that the train was rolling off the tracks, and jumped out of the carriage before it flipped over, killing everyone inside. Would you prefer that I lie to her, pretend I was in wedded bliss? Would you have preferred for that hot little red headed number to do that to you? Probably, so long as she didn’t dump your ass. This isn’t The Crow “City of Angels”… in real life sometimes people have to accept things being a little less than perfect…if this was fairy tale world, Megan and I would have lived happily ever after, and so would you and Montanna. I could have pretended to be just fine with being lectured every time I had to go to work, but would that really have done me or Megan any good? No. All that would have happened is that we’d have woken up in ten years and despised each other for taking away what could have been a much better life. I didn’t want to live a lie. And if that makes me the kind of man that the “vigilante” needs to come after, then whatever. Go for it, swing your big black bat at me and see what I do with it…and I think you’ll find that if you pull that baseball bat out, doctors will be removing it from your colon into the hours of Tuesday Morning. Sting…if you’re the hero who straightens out the villains, the guy who rights all the wrongs in the world, maybe you’d better swing that bat closer to home, say…at your own reflection. It wasn’t me who went crazy and put my best friend in a coma. I know, I know, you’re in “therapy”, but let’s face it, some of the wiring in your head is severely disconnected from the circuit board, and lying on a couch for an hour a week is not going to magically put those wires back into place. You think I want my daughter exposed to someone like that? God no! I may be a bad husband, but at least I’m not a would be killer. Is this the kind of warped world we live in, where you are the savior? If that’s the case, then god help us is all I can say. And if you are the comfortable alternative to me, then god help Megan too, cause someone needs to tell her she has a month in a hospital bed in her future. If I’m the evil bastard of the story in your mind, she must be telling some convincing fucking sob stories to you about me. Megan, sweetheart, let’s face facts… I did every fucking thing you wanted me to, I did every single thing you ever asked of me, and I did it with very little complaint. And the one thing I asked in return was that you understand that I was, am a professional wrestler. You knew that when you met me for the first time. You knew that when you married me. You knew that when our child was born, but the day that finally sinks in, I turn into the heel? Nuh uh, it doesn’t work that way. Forgive me if I can’t spend every minute of every day by your side! Forgive me for having a job and friends and a life that doesn’t always involve you! Do you have such low self esteem that you need my constant, undivided attention or something? And of course, the second I become friends with my ex-girlfriend again it must mean I’m cheating on you, right? Get. A. Fucking. Grip. Get over yourself. It doesn’t always take the lure of another woman to make a guy realize the wedding ring on his finger is a mistake. No, sometimes it’s the woman who put the ring there in the first place that makes the guy realize that. But no, precious Megan Flair can’t possibly be to blame, right? God, you must be deluded. Maybe next time Steve goes to the loony bin you can go along for the ride, maybe the two of you could ever share a cell. But hey, that probably wouldn’t be a good idea, cause if you two were to procreate then there’s no telling what kind of manic depressive, attention-whoring, psychopath would come out.

Triple H: *He pauses for a second* Okay, that was kind of harsh…and off topic. Back to Sting… you can watch this tape back and come to conclusions about what a horrible human being I am for all the things I’m saying about you, but Steve…what were you hoping for? Some kind of friendly match where we could talk about the good old days we had in the Horsemen together beforehand, and then shake hands afterwards? Nuh uh. Not gonna happen. I have real friends from my past that I can share road stories with, what do I need you for? I have people in my life that aren’t going to hold a baseball bat to my throat when I make a few mistakes…people who don’t think they’re better than me just because they watched The Crow one too many times. I have too much crap going on in my life right now to worry about offending poor Steve Borden’s feelings. Forgive me for being blunt…forgive me for cursing and ripping into people… forgive me for not standing here and pissing and moaning about how awful my life is because I’m in the middle of a break-up. You know Steve, not all of us need to treat our wrestling promos as our own personal myspace page. Not all of us need to delve into extravagant poetic philosophies about love and war, and human tragedy, and the pain of a broken heart. Just because I don’t wax lyrical about those things at the drop of a pin, that doesn’t make me any less human than you, and it certainly doesn’t make me the bad guy that you need to go out and punish. Listen up, Draven, you’re not some guardian angel sent to earth to right the wrongs… you’re just plain old Steve Boring Borden…Steve Borden who’s passed his prime, Steve Borden who couldn’t get into my wife’s pants even if he loaded her on ketamine instead of slipping it to her brother, Steve Borden who can’t make these fans care about him no matter what color face paint he wears. And oh yeah…Steve Borden who couldn’t beat Triple H if his life depended on it. You and I never got along…we never saw eye to eye, we just pretended like we did so as not to upset the equilibrium of our little group, and hey, it worked…we got a slammy award for that. But don’t make the mistake of thinking we were some sort of happy family. Need I remind you that during my first few weeks with the company, you broke into my house and assaulted me with a baseball bat for no good reason, because you felt it was your place to do the “right thing”? If the right thing is breaking and entering followed by assault, I’d hate to see what a bad guy looks like in your eyes. But that wasn’t the end of it, was it Steve? No, who can forget the phase where you refused to let anyone in the world call you “Steve” because you were stuck in vigilante mode for a week and a half? And I really should remind you that I beat your ass in Ric Flair’s home to earn my spot in the Horsemen. You’ve never pinned me in your entire career, and I don’t see why that should change now when your career currently sucks harder than Stephanie McMahon on a Saturday Night. You forget that I see past that mysterious aura you work so hard to create. I see what’s behind the face paint, and I don’t fear it. You’ve had your day in the sun…you’ve had your time in the spot light. Your era is over, and to be honest, it was mine and Ric’s effort in the Four Horsemen that made the fans care about you for so long anyway. You can list your accomplishments, talk about how you’re a great hardcore champion, a great IC champion and all that jazz, but remind me…how long ago were those reigns again? The most memorable thing you’ve done in the last two years of your life is go crazy over some readheaded chick who decided she didn’t want to keep fucking a guy old enough to be her dad. And even that’s been forgotten about because it was overshadowed by the feuds I was involved in. Does the nWo invasion ring bell to anyone? All I had to do was put on a black and white shirt and I created more buzz than you did by putting someone in a coma. Once Ric and I were out of the picture, you floundered without us. But I’m making a mistake, aren’t I, because I’m talking about business…and everyone knows this thing between us, this isn’t professional tonight…it’s personal. And I am in too big of a bad mood to give a damn about anything Sting has to say. Given his history, does anyone believe a word that comes out of his mouth any more? He can play the calm, understanding friend, but come on…we all know the sadist in him is dying to get out. What kind of guy takes advantage of a woman who’s in the middle of a break-up by pretending he just wants to be “friends”? I’ve been involved in this storyline before, except at least Kurt Angle actually made a believable opponent. At least I’m not pretending to be anything I’m not. I can be an insensitive asshole, I admit that, but when people see me, they know I am what I am. That’s not the case with Steve Borden…he has more split personalities than I can count on one hand. The vigilante, the Christian, the psychopath, the brother, the wrestler… Which is the real him? We don’t know. It doesn’t matter anyway though…not tonight. Because whether it’s the Sane Steve Borden or the Psycho Sting that walks down that ramp tonight, he’s gonna get his ass kicked…I may be the Game, but tonight I’m not in the mood to play them, and Sting if you want to take my wife to the prom, you do it on your own time rather than wasting mine. That’s all I have to say right now. Anyone else who puts a camera in my face won’t be met with a very pleasant reaction.

*With those words, Hunter took off down the hallway and disappeared out of the shot.*