act three: remnant of the past
After all, he was the man who'd help set me out on this path in the first place, wasn't he?
He was one of the people who'd known about my plans, one of the people who wasn't 100% certain what I was thinking when I'd first came up with it, but despite that he still supported me along the way. He always challenged me to get better, and to this day he still pushes me to conquer the dreams I'd set out to realize. He pulled me out of that dark place I'd hit after retirement and reminded me who I was at the time, and now that Suki had finished restoring that person entirely... I was finally ready for the plans to come full-circle.
"Seems a bit soon, don't you think? Sure you're not rushing into this?"
He hadn't noticed yet, he'd been focused more on the shot of whiskey he'd just downed when he asked me that question with a curiousity in his eyes. Fact of the matter was, he'd not yet noticed the change in me, the return of the warrior that once dwelled within. No, Remnant's face masked my own easily, Remnant's face kept those sort-of things obscured from him. It would take my words to pierce through the barrier Remnant had constructed so that he'd see the truth behind the mask.
"Couldn't be more sure, man, it's what I have to do. I made it my responsibility, there's no backing out now."
The first spoken sentence was all that it took for him to start realizing the change in me, that first revelation of a warrior's words addressed directly at him. An amused expression played across his face and I remember this excited look flashing through his eyes, the mention of this impending war lighting a fire in the heart of the warrior within him. To be honest, it almost hurt me to see that happen when it did... he was done with the game, he wasn't coming back for a good long time, but the desire was still in there and alive as ever. In a way, I'd like to think he was just as prone as I was to wanting to return to that ring, the difference being that he had already accomplished all he'd set out to accomplish while I was still left with so much still to be done.
He reached over to the center of the table and grabbed the bottle of whiskey he'd left there for the occassion, readying his glass. I looked at him and almost wished there was a part of him that'd just relent and return already, I could tell he wanted it still and he was only just as far along into retirement as I was. Yet if there was one thing about him that I knew to be true, it was that he had that little bit more of control than I did over his emotions towards the business. He truly loved all of it, from the people in the seats to the people backstage, and the only thing that really turned him off the most was the politics that played out when the curtain fell on the proverbial stage. Still, despite those politics, he loved wrestling more than so much in his life because for the longest time, wrestling was his life.
Yet with all that he'd done, and with everything he'd accomplished... he could feel content about his ending. I could not.
He could control those emotions that told him to return to the game again.
I could not.
"Heh, you never did know when to quit." He seemed to say that at the time as if he'd known exactly the things going through my mind. Chances are, in some ways, he did know. We understood each other perfectly then and we still do today, and that's something I've came to count on quite often. Beneath the mask of my creation, I'd sat and stared upward with eyes closed and focused on visions of the past. It was true, ever since the very beginning I'd always pushed forward against all logic telling me to quit and save myself the trouble.
'A Pericolo never gives up.'
Cliché though it may be, that phrase had always stuck with me since the day I'd heard my dad utter it as a reassurance to me. It was a philosophy that I believed in whole-heartedly, a way of life that I followed to the best of my ability and, in the end, it was those five words that had powered me through life and the business itself.
I'd learned so much from my past, and still today it's the lessons of the past that push me forward and have taught me how to handle the events and tribulations of today. You see... the past is important to me, it's the greatest weapon that I could possibly wield and I've learned to master my own past for exactly that purpose. It was because of that, in fact, that even in the face of the dangerous Dillon Durst... I felt as though he'd let go of the past in order to push forward with his ideas, and I felt as though he would pay for that error the instant he revealed it to be true.
"They've forgotten, you know. They've forgotten the lessons of the past, after all that they had gone through, after the hardships that they'd faced... they'd forgotten it all."
It wasn't just Durst who'd abandoned the past though, sadly... it was the federation itself. From Midvalley all the way down to Texas Tim, people were concerned and afraid of the man Dillon Durst had became, and of the army he'd thrown together to take the company on. They'd forgotten the endless stream of threats that the NLCW had faced up until that point, almost as if federation-wide wars had never occurred before for them and they were virgins to the whole endeavour.
They'd dropped the lessons of the past for fear they might hold them back and, in the process, they let a demon of the past sneak in to try and take over. To say I was disappointed would have been an understatement, at the time I was completely saddened by the NLCW's lack of resolve in the face of the threat it had encountered.
To me, they'd all been reckless and unappreciative, and in the face of their mistakes they stood around asking "Why?" as if everything that they had done had somehow gone terribly wrong along the way, rather than accept the notion that everything that they did was terribly wrong the whole of its journey.
Of course, he summed up my thoughts of the matter fairly simply.
"It's the nature of the beast. You get used to peace, you start softening up."
I could feel the disgust in those words of his, the disappointment he'd felt for the place as well. It was starting to fall apart without us there, which seemed sad to the both of us as, well, we were only two people. Perhaps it was nothing more than an illusion of our own grandeur, but something told us that had we been there throughout all of this it would have never even left the damn ground to begin with. Had we not ended it all for each other back then... the NLCW wouldn't have found itself in the tight spot it was in.
He downed another drink and then casted a glance off to the side, lost in his own thoughts at the time. Anger was boiling in the both of us and as always it was he who was the reserved one towards it all whilst I seemed unable to contain that emotion towards the business, my words stinging with unnecessary venom as I spoke them.
"Back then, it would have been finished by now. Their game would have ended, and--"
It's good to grow on the past, but it's never good to dwell on it for too long, lest we find ourselves stuck in it for the future. He and I knew this almost better than anyone, and so when I let myself lose just that little bit of cool I had towards the whole thing, he was the one to step in and restore it.
"Ah, but times change, old friend... there's not much we can do about that."
He'd stopped me before the venom could take hold in my heart, before the anger reached an apex and turned to bitterness for the company I was about to set out to help. No need to bregrudgingly help the NLCW... I was supposed to be gaining something positive from all of this planning after-all. If all I was going to let myself gain was a grudge over the simple fact that the people operating within the company were prone to being human and making mistakes like anyone else, then I was in the wrong business to begin with because those sorts of things were bound to happen all the time.
More than that, if I was going to really make an impact in this war they were all having, I was going to have to remember exactly who I was supposed to be focused on. Not my allies, not the people who worked behind the scenes to make everything operate the way it should... and definitely not the bitterness I'd let myself feel momentarily towards the company itself for the mistakes they'd made since our departure.
Hell, to be honest, I wasn't even meant to be focused on the army that stood in the face of the NLCW and taunted it, readying to strike it down once and for all. More than any one of the soldiers on their front lines, I was meant to focus on the general leading them into battle.
I was meant to focus on Dillon Durst.
"It's going to get dangerous out there... if you're going to fight in this thing, you need to focus on taking out the head of their operations. The little guys can fall around him, but so long as he's still there, they still stand a chance."
No matter what the numbers advantage, no matter how many of us worked together to bring that man down... unless we were focused on him and him alone, there was never a moment to feel safe against Dillon Durst. He was one of the few elite of the NLCW that I had ever stood against and failed to conquer despite all my planned-out efforts and attempts for success in the face of his adversity. I'd only ever faced him twice, and only defeated him when the second time was unexpected... and with the fact of that weighing heavy on my mind I refused to really consider that second victory a victory at all.
No, I wouldn't allow myself to have my victory over Dillon Durst until I could face him one on one, one more time.
Yet even despite that desire for my victory, I knew it was a dream for another day. The war that was about to go on was not a war circulated around myself, but rather around the safety of the NLCW. In the end, I would have to focus my efforts towards that cause above all else, even if it meant resorting to the element of surprise to overcome the might of a Dillon Durst determined to meet the success he craved so badly.
"You've seen the way he operates. He attacks all aspects of the person's life. I must become the shadows in order to face him. I must beat him at his own game."
What I was thinking at the time was exactly what I needed to be, because the fact of the matter was that in order to conquer Dillon Durst I would have to become everything about him that I'd hated the most. It was a mantra that I'd repeated to myself over and over again, Dillon Durst was a manipulative man, a warrior of deceipt and one of the most cunning individuals I had ever stepped foot in the ring against. In order to overcome such an obstacle, I would have to force myself to practically mime that very obstacle and try to beat it at its own game.
"It suits you, really." He said as he studied my expression. He knew I'd changed, he could hear it in my voice and I knew from his own actions in our conversation that the change in me had sparked something off in him in the process. I'd never felt more confident in the face of an oncoming battle than on that night, and he knew that all too well. "You've changed since then, something about you... I'm not sure what. You seem ready for the challenge either way, though."
I owed everything to the two of them in the end. Suki was the one to restore my confidence and he was the one to have set me on the path in the first place. Without the both of them, I'd have never been ready for what was still to come, and I felt like he needed to know that before we began.
"You've taught me a lot, enough to come this far anyway," I'd chuckled, watching on as he pushed his glass off to the side of the table, "It's because of you that I'm ready to do this."
True to form, his answer was swift, "You can kiss my ass another time. Right now, we have to plan."
That was just the way that we were back then. That's just the kind-of people we are today. When something needs to be done, when half a year's worth of planning and the future of a family rely on the success of everything goin as it needs to... we were short on compliments and long on strategizing. It was at that point in time that the warriors in the both of us had surfaced to prepare for battle, and for him it meant cutting to the chase as quickly as possible.
"Don't think for a minute that all your training's been enough. You can take out the no-names easy, it's him that I'm worried about."
Dillon Durst, once again. The man that Suki believed with all her heart I would be able to easily overcome, and the man that Champion knew in all his experience would prove to be the hardest challenge for me to overcome. Both sides were right, in all honesty... it was just going to come down on me to find a balance between them.
"Alright then, let's do this."
The words flowed out natural to me, as if I'd prepared them long in advance for that exact moment. The fact of the matter was that when I spoke those words, my voice had an ally in the spoken words of Remnant, who had began to take hold in my mind as the persona I needed to become. He stood beside myself, prepared to do what was required of him... and there was a shared determination inside of me that was ready and willing to stand up against Durst and all the hell he would bring.
Even if it was, for a time, nothing more than a one-off encounter... it was an encounter that would mean a great deal to the NLCW, and one that would mean a great deal to me.
There was a reason why they called it "War Games", after-all.