renner
League Member
- Joined
- Mar 4, 2004
- Messages
- 178
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- Age
- 40
- Location
- Oakland, TN, USA
- Website
- www.fetchquest.com
This is my roleplay for the Elite Championship finals.
* . *
Steve Knox liked to make people believe that he was just an average guy.
Truth was, maybe he was an average guy. But he sure as hell attracted some weird folks.
His girlfriend was a flighty, carefree girl who sometimes gets angry at him for doing anything that would go against his own moral code. He was employed to a guy who ran a "Professional Wrestling Heel Academy", whose World Champion happened to be Nova. His brothers were a dismissive jerk and asshole, and a guy who wore an American flag on his head. He was friends with Mega Job.
All of these things just conspired to make Steve Knox seem like he was a weird guy, himself, but the truth was, little was weird about the NFW's brightest rising star.
The only really bizarre thing about Steve was the fact that he never kept up with current events, because his focus on professional wrestling was so narrow that he couldn't let anything other than his immediate life get in the way. The only way he knew how to deal with things that required knowledge of simple pop culture events like American Idol would be to relate it to professional wrestling.
So maybe Steve wasn't the average guy he'd like you to believe he was.
However, on a distinctly unaverage day, Steve Knox was about to have his most bizarre encounter to date.
* . *
August 2nd, 2008; Charlotte, North Carolina
The story of this day began a few days after Steve Knox had overcome SCCW's top star, Lance Marshall, in the semi-finals of the Elite Championship tournament. He was taken out for a night on the town along with Alexandria Malone, Nova, and Craig Miles... a trio that happened to be every bit as frightening live and in person as it was on paper.
Steve couldn't properly recollect too much of what happened last night. For some reason he couldn't put a finger on, his memory of last night was a fragmented mess of memories. He remembered Craig Miles saying some weird things about how all of the spirit energies of the universe would coalesce into a singularity that would shape the very fabric of space-time. He also remembered Miles being every bit as stoned as Nova was at the time. He remembered Alexandria leaving because she got some sort of phone call from her older brother.
Everything else that happened after that was more of a blur. He didn't remember anything he saw, only that he felt some sort of interconnection with the universe that he had never felt before. Did he get stoned too? Or was it just an effect of hanging out with Nova and Miles for too long?
Steve wasn't too sure, himself.
The only thing he knew was his present.
* . *
August 2nd, 2008; ?????
Steve Knox was standing in front of a house.
The house was small, perhaps only large enough to contain a living room, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen. The outside paneling was one of those layered types that shielded the walls from the rain, and it was painted a pale yellow. Steve saw that the roof of the building was shaped in a typical upside-down V fashion, and that it was painted brown. There was a pair of small gardens filled with daffodils to the left and right of the front door of the building. The grass in the yard in front of the house was green, well-maintained, and clearly handled with a fair bit of love. The only features noticable in the yard were a small, recently-planted tree on the left side of the yard, and a small cobblestone path that led to the front entrance of the home.
Steve looked around at the features around the house, but was staggered to find them to be atypical to what was in front of him.
The sky was a haze of unnatural red and purple hues, waving and weaving around the sky like smoke. There were no discernable features, as if this house in the middle of nowhere was the only thing that really existed in the world. In fact, upon closer examination, it appeared as though the house itself was standing on a pillar of stone very similar to that of Devil's Tower, Wyoming. Steve walked towards one of the edges of the stone tower he had somehow found himself on top of, and looked down, only to find that there was nothing but abyss below him. Quietly, Steve backed away from the edge, not entirely willing to fall down an abyss any time this century.
He looked back towards the house to find that the front door was now opened.
The door practically beckoned to him, and considering Steve's surroundings, he didn't feel he had much of a choice but to approach the opened door. He saw that the darkness inside the house prevented him from just being able to peer inside, and he hesitated to actually continue.
"Don't just stand there." a voice said to him. The voice sounded intimidating, almost as if it was James Earl Jones who was speaking to him. He hesitated, but eventually decided he had no other choice but to walk into the darkness.
As soon as he stepped through the door, he found himself not in any place he expected to be. Rather, he found himself in a flowery field. Steve at first noted that the flowers were still daffodils. The field was surrounded by blue skies with only a few clouds lining the sky.
The most odd thing about this field was that the field was curved unnaturally, as if it was really a tiny sphere. In fact, Steve looked behind him just to make sure, and found that the horizon of field actually drops off ludicrously short, as if the planet he was on was actually much smaller. He also found that the door he entered was no longer there, the strange house he was first presented with now only a distant memory. So, Steve turned around and walked through the field, before he happened upon the only feature on the small sphere of a flower field: a lone, mushroom-shaped tree.
The unusual feature about the tree wasn't the tree itself, but what was underneath the tree.
A small picnic table was set directly underneath the shade of the tree, with a white blanket laid out on top of the table itself. Sitting on top of the table, with her feet resting on one of the seets, was a young, sullen-looking girl. She spoke simply to Steve Knox, "Welcome."
Steve walked towards this girl, becoming more wary of his surroundings as he progressed.
The girl hopped off the table and stood at her full height. Steve noticed that she was much, much shorter than he was, and suspected that she was at least two feet shorter. She had long raven black hair, pale blue eyes, and almost a permanently sullen expression on her face. She wore a sleeveless greenish white dress whose skirt went to her knees and a pair of wooden sandals, similar to Japanese geta. She also wore numerous blue beads, including two sets of beaded headbands wrapped around her head, a pair of beaded bracelets around her wrists, a beaded belt around her waist, and a long necklace that was double-wrapped around her neck. The end of this necklace had a red, crystal-like charm on its end. By Steve's estimation, the girl was probably in her early teens, around fourteen years old.
She placed her hands on her hips, and looked up at the much taller Steve Knox.
"Go and sit down. I'll be with you in a moment." she told him.
"Uh... sure." was Steve's answer. He walked over to the picnic table and sat down where the girl's feet once rested. Suddenly, he felt the entire bottom underneath the picnic table fall out from beneath him, and he and the table fell for a bit, until they hit the ground. Strangely, neither Steve nor the table were damaged in the fall, although Steve was more than a little surprised by it. Steve looked around at his new surroundings.
Steve found himself in what appeared to be the inside of a tent. The tent wasn't anything particularly unusual, except that he noticed that the table was now surrounded by at least twenty candle stands with lit candles on them. Steve looked around behind him for a few seconds before returning his gaze to his front, only to find that the girl was now seated across from him.
"Sorry about the scenery changing. Most people I commune with usually don't believe in what I am unless I show them what I can do first." she explained. Steve stared blankly at her for a few seconds.
"Okay. Who and what are you?" Steve asked, clearly confused.
"Ah," the girl said. Her expression didn't change too much, but Steve could tell that she hadn't thought about introducing herself first, "Sorry. I'm Talila. I'm a shaman."
"A what?" Steve asked. Apparently, the word 'shaman' isn't exactly in his vocabulary.
"One who communes with a some part of nature. A mystic, if you will. In my case, I am at my most powerful when I'm within a dreamscape," Talila explained. She rested her elbows on the top of the table and linked her hands together by the fingers, before resting her chin on top of them, "Basically, I commune to the living and to the dead through dreams. Regardless of time, regardless of place."
Steve nodded, almost as if he understood all of that, "Well, after what happened in Pasadena, I'm willing to believe anything."
"I see," Talila said, "I know not about a 'Pasadena'. I'm not really from your world."
Steve decided to ask the obvious question, "If that's the case, how come you can talk to me?"
"Think of dreams as a leyline to other worlds. My world is very much different from yours, yet I am able to speak with you because we are connected by our dreams," Talila explained, "Those who don't really have a mind for dreaming will often find themselves wandering into bizarre worlds."
"What I've seen so far is pretty bizarre, you know," Steve said, before he thought about it and added, "So, why'd you bring me here, anyway?"
"You misunderstand." Talila said, before she started casually playing with a strand of her hair, twisting and twirlling the strand around her left index finger, "I never really bring anyone to me. They... usually come to me."
"I came to you?" Steve asked.
"Yes."
"Well, I'm not sure how awesome THAT is..." Steve said.
Talila gave him an almost girlish giggle, which caused Steve to raise an eyebrow at her. Seeing the look, Talila gave him a small smile, "Sorry, sorry. That's usually the response I get when I tell them that. Let me see if I can get a rough estimation of what you came to me for."
Talila held her arm out with the palm of the head facing upward, and then she turned her hand over, and placed it on the table. Somehow, a strange deck of cards emerged from beneath her hand, which she did spread out on the table. Steve almost expected them to be tarot cards, but they were not... in fact, he didn't even know what they were. Talila picked up one of the cards and examined it.
"Your father died?" she asked.
"Yeah," Steve responded, with a nod, "About seven years ago."
"I'm sorry," Talila said, "But... you seem to be following in his footsteps a little bit, at least to a certain point. You entered his profession, and you succeed rather well in it. But he also had another profession, didn't he?"
"He was an actor." Steve said, "He made a couple of movies."
"I see," Talila said, "But you didn't want to follow in that, did you? So, you walked out on a guy who could've put you on that career path, and now he's angry at you."
"I've gotten a couple of angry phone calls, yeah." Steve responded. He remembered that episode all too well, he verbally agreed to do a commercial with William Wilkerson, a producer who once worked with his father. However, the commercial wasn't exactly what he had in mind when he tried to do it, and his attempts to improvise led to him just getting yelled at. So, Steve walked out in frustration, and he'd been dealing with the fallout ever since.
"You made a powerful enemy." Talila observed.
"Yeah, I kinda did." Steve admitted.
"Don't worry," Talila said, "He can't really meddle with you too much. He has no say in your world, much as you have none in his. So long as your paths do not cross again, he should not become a bother."
"Uh, that's great." Steve said, though he was unsure of the validity of Talila's words. Nevertheless, Talila continued by drawing another card from the pile she had created.
"It would appear that your family has more or less fallen into disarray since your father's death," Talila observed, "So, your father was the glue that held that together?"
"Something like that. My younger brother admired him greatly, perhaps too much. He changed, probably for the worse. My older brother was doing fine away from the business, but dad's death sort of made him come back to it. My sister hates me for not spending time with the family." Steve said.
"Why don't you?" Talila asked.
"Well, I have a lot of wrestling commitments. I can only come by if a show happens to be near Providence." Steve replied.
Talila sort of cringed her nose, as if she detected something was amiss, and she spoke again, "So, do you love wrestling more than your own family, then? It seems sort of odd that you would continue to avoid your family by travelling a lot in order to participate in a business that, to my eyes, would appear to be done only by those who hate themselves."
Steve blinked, then sighed, slumping his shoulders and letting his arms pass by the seat of his chair, "For a kid, you sure have a way of hitting me where it hurts."
"I suppose I should say... I'm meant to help you, not to point out your flaws," Talila said, quietly adjusting the headband beads before she looked at Steve Knox with a serious gaze, "Mr. Steve... the reason you are here is because of something else. Something you think I can help you with."
"Look, kid," Steve said, getting back up to a more imposing posture, "I'm going to level with you. I don't if you know this or not with your deck of cards, but I'm pretty awesome. Why would I need the help of a girl who's yet to hit puberty for anything?"
Talila seemed hurt, "You know, I was going for honesty when I appeared before you in my normal form..."
She then paused, and then shrugged, "You want to know whether you will succeed or not in your latest endeavor."
"My lstest endeavor?" Steve Knox asked.
"Yes," Talila said, before she picked up another card from her pile and examined it, "Something about an Elite Championship?"
Steve blinked, and then nodded, "Yeah. I'm involved in that. I made the finals of the tournament, though. Beat two World champions doing it, by the way. So I don't see why you think I would need your he--"
"You're unsure." Talila interrupted.
"Don't you know it's rude to interrupt adults when they're ta--"
"You think you might actually lose." Talila interrupted, a second time.
"I... what?" Steve asked. The frankness in the girl's voice, a sincere honesty he wouldn't normally expect from nearly anyone else he knew, convinced him that Talila might actually know what she's talking about.
"Don't worry," Talila said, "Even the most confident of people have doubts somewhere in their subconscious."
"But.. I'm me. Steve Knox. Captain Awesome. Hell, Craig Miles wants to call me the 'Champion Killer'. Why would I have doubts about winning?" Steve asked.
"The same reason why you're talking to me within a dream. You need guidance, and you can't ask for it from anyone else you know... not your girlfriend, your co-workers, or your family. You want advice from someone above the natural. Someone like me, who transcends the natural world." Talila said.
Steve blinked, and then asked, "What, Mike Randalls isn't enough of a supernatural force for you?"
"You wouldn't understand anything he told you, anyway." Talila said, once again speaking very frankly to Steve. She paused, before she continued, "All you have to do is stay confident. You shouldn't have doubts if you truly think you're as awesome as you always say you are. Doubting yourself when you're this close to success is the same as giving up."
Steve couldn't exactly find fault with comments as astute as those.
"Regardless, you have to understand... you may see winning this championship as being a step in the right direction, but it can just as easily bring you more sorrow than you can know." Talila said, crossing her arms as she said this.
Steve Knox hated it when he got a comment about the consequences of whatever actions he took. He was very much a "charge headlong into things and not worry about the consequences" sort of guy.
"What do you mean by that?" Steve asked, with a clearly agitated tone in his voice.
"It is up to you whether you'll have the strength to take this championship. But you must understand that the championship... I feel that something sinister looms over it. A paling, if you will. I don't believe it's the prize you think it is," Talila said, as she gathered her cards together on the table, and back into a simple deck again, "It could bring ruin to you and those around you."
The walls of the tent around the two of them suddenly came apart, and blew away in a heavy gust of wind. Steve looked around and realized that they were now right in the middle of a busy intersection in some city. Cars zoomed past the picnic table, and while Steve looked just a touch worried, Talila remained as calm as ever.
"Mr. Steve. This is all I can do to help you," she said, as she adjusted her seating on the table so that she was seated on her knees, with her elbows and most of the upper half of her body leaning onto the table itself, "I'm not a deity, though you may think me as one when in this realm. Outside of this dreamscape, I'm as helpless as any other fourteen-year-old. The only thing I can do is give you advice. What you do with my advice..."
Talila then shifted herself further forward, so that her face was that much closer to Steve's own, "...is up to you."
After that, she adjusted her whole body so that she was now seated, Indian-style, on the very top of the table.
"Anyway," Talila said, "I suppose I can let you go now. I'm sure you'll come back, though. I'm sure you will have much to ask me, later."
Talila held her hands out, as if she wanted Steve to take hold of them. So, Steve took them and watched as Talila closed her eyes and looked up at the sky. A brilliant flash of light came out of Talila's body, blinding Steve to the point that he had to close his eyes, himself.
* . *
August 3rd, 2008; Charlotte, North Carolina
When he was able to open them again, he was in a bed... his hotel room, to be exact.
Steve shot up to a seated position, and almost instantly regretted it. A wave of pain crashed into the shores of his brain, and he held his head in agony. The swift motion in which he got up also woke up Alexandria Malone, who was sleeping beside him, still fully-clothed.
"Urrrnh..." she went, "You picked a fine time to startle me awake."
"Sorry," Steve said, wincing in pain, "What the hell happened last night?"
"I dunno. Nova didn't give me any details. He just said, 'Come pick Steve up, he's kinda thrashed'. And he said it in a sing-song voice. It was adorable." Alexandria said, now more awake. It should be noted that unlike most of the rest of the population, Alexandria Malone was a morning person.
"That's... great." Steve muttered, "Wonderful, even."
Steve Knox always thought he was kind of a normal guy, it was just the people around him that were strange.
However, his entirely-too-vivid dream began to sow a seed of doubt in his mind.
The only thing he knew about the championship was that he was representing New Frontier Wrestling in the attempt to acquire it, and that it would be a high honor to be the first champion. But was the Elite Championship really the prize he thought it to be? Or was there something else going on, something he couldn't sense?
Whatever the case was, Steve Knox would have a week to prepare for the biggest match in his career.
He didn't have time for doubts.
* . *
Steve Knox liked to make people believe that he was just an average guy.
Truth was, maybe he was an average guy. But he sure as hell attracted some weird folks.
His girlfriend was a flighty, carefree girl who sometimes gets angry at him for doing anything that would go against his own moral code. He was employed to a guy who ran a "Professional Wrestling Heel Academy", whose World Champion happened to be Nova. His brothers were a dismissive jerk and asshole, and a guy who wore an American flag on his head. He was friends with Mega Job.
All of these things just conspired to make Steve Knox seem like he was a weird guy, himself, but the truth was, little was weird about the NFW's brightest rising star.
The only really bizarre thing about Steve was the fact that he never kept up with current events, because his focus on professional wrestling was so narrow that he couldn't let anything other than his immediate life get in the way. The only way he knew how to deal with things that required knowledge of simple pop culture events like American Idol would be to relate it to professional wrestling.
So maybe Steve wasn't the average guy he'd like you to believe he was.
However, on a distinctly unaverage day, Steve Knox was about to have his most bizarre encounter to date.
* . *
August 2nd, 2008; Charlotte, North Carolina
The story of this day began a few days after Steve Knox had overcome SCCW's top star, Lance Marshall, in the semi-finals of the Elite Championship tournament. He was taken out for a night on the town along with Alexandria Malone, Nova, and Craig Miles... a trio that happened to be every bit as frightening live and in person as it was on paper.
Steve couldn't properly recollect too much of what happened last night. For some reason he couldn't put a finger on, his memory of last night was a fragmented mess of memories. He remembered Craig Miles saying some weird things about how all of the spirit energies of the universe would coalesce into a singularity that would shape the very fabric of space-time. He also remembered Miles being every bit as stoned as Nova was at the time. He remembered Alexandria leaving because she got some sort of phone call from her older brother.
Everything else that happened after that was more of a blur. He didn't remember anything he saw, only that he felt some sort of interconnection with the universe that he had never felt before. Did he get stoned too? Or was it just an effect of hanging out with Nova and Miles for too long?
Steve wasn't too sure, himself.
The only thing he knew was his present.
* . *
August 2nd, 2008; ?????
Steve Knox was standing in front of a house.
The house was small, perhaps only large enough to contain a living room, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen. The outside paneling was one of those layered types that shielded the walls from the rain, and it was painted a pale yellow. Steve saw that the roof of the building was shaped in a typical upside-down V fashion, and that it was painted brown. There was a pair of small gardens filled with daffodils to the left and right of the front door of the building. The grass in the yard in front of the house was green, well-maintained, and clearly handled with a fair bit of love. The only features noticable in the yard were a small, recently-planted tree on the left side of the yard, and a small cobblestone path that led to the front entrance of the home.
Steve looked around at the features around the house, but was staggered to find them to be atypical to what was in front of him.
The sky was a haze of unnatural red and purple hues, waving and weaving around the sky like smoke. There were no discernable features, as if this house in the middle of nowhere was the only thing that really existed in the world. In fact, upon closer examination, it appeared as though the house itself was standing on a pillar of stone very similar to that of Devil's Tower, Wyoming. Steve walked towards one of the edges of the stone tower he had somehow found himself on top of, and looked down, only to find that there was nothing but abyss below him. Quietly, Steve backed away from the edge, not entirely willing to fall down an abyss any time this century.
He looked back towards the house to find that the front door was now opened.
The door practically beckoned to him, and considering Steve's surroundings, he didn't feel he had much of a choice but to approach the opened door. He saw that the darkness inside the house prevented him from just being able to peer inside, and he hesitated to actually continue.
"Don't just stand there." a voice said to him. The voice sounded intimidating, almost as if it was James Earl Jones who was speaking to him. He hesitated, but eventually decided he had no other choice but to walk into the darkness.
As soon as he stepped through the door, he found himself not in any place he expected to be. Rather, he found himself in a flowery field. Steve at first noted that the flowers were still daffodils. The field was surrounded by blue skies with only a few clouds lining the sky.
The most odd thing about this field was that the field was curved unnaturally, as if it was really a tiny sphere. In fact, Steve looked behind him just to make sure, and found that the horizon of field actually drops off ludicrously short, as if the planet he was on was actually much smaller. He also found that the door he entered was no longer there, the strange house he was first presented with now only a distant memory. So, Steve turned around and walked through the field, before he happened upon the only feature on the small sphere of a flower field: a lone, mushroom-shaped tree.
The unusual feature about the tree wasn't the tree itself, but what was underneath the tree.
A small picnic table was set directly underneath the shade of the tree, with a white blanket laid out on top of the table itself. Sitting on top of the table, with her feet resting on one of the seets, was a young, sullen-looking girl. She spoke simply to Steve Knox, "Welcome."
Steve walked towards this girl, becoming more wary of his surroundings as he progressed.
The girl hopped off the table and stood at her full height. Steve noticed that she was much, much shorter than he was, and suspected that she was at least two feet shorter. She had long raven black hair, pale blue eyes, and almost a permanently sullen expression on her face. She wore a sleeveless greenish white dress whose skirt went to her knees and a pair of wooden sandals, similar to Japanese geta. She also wore numerous blue beads, including two sets of beaded headbands wrapped around her head, a pair of beaded bracelets around her wrists, a beaded belt around her waist, and a long necklace that was double-wrapped around her neck. The end of this necklace had a red, crystal-like charm on its end. By Steve's estimation, the girl was probably in her early teens, around fourteen years old.
She placed her hands on her hips, and looked up at the much taller Steve Knox.
"Go and sit down. I'll be with you in a moment." she told him.
"Uh... sure." was Steve's answer. He walked over to the picnic table and sat down where the girl's feet once rested. Suddenly, he felt the entire bottom underneath the picnic table fall out from beneath him, and he and the table fell for a bit, until they hit the ground. Strangely, neither Steve nor the table were damaged in the fall, although Steve was more than a little surprised by it. Steve looked around at his new surroundings.
Steve found himself in what appeared to be the inside of a tent. The tent wasn't anything particularly unusual, except that he noticed that the table was now surrounded by at least twenty candle stands with lit candles on them. Steve looked around behind him for a few seconds before returning his gaze to his front, only to find that the girl was now seated across from him.
"Sorry about the scenery changing. Most people I commune with usually don't believe in what I am unless I show them what I can do first." she explained. Steve stared blankly at her for a few seconds.
"Okay. Who and what are you?" Steve asked, clearly confused.
"Ah," the girl said. Her expression didn't change too much, but Steve could tell that she hadn't thought about introducing herself first, "Sorry. I'm Talila. I'm a shaman."
"A what?" Steve asked. Apparently, the word 'shaman' isn't exactly in his vocabulary.
"One who communes with a some part of nature. A mystic, if you will. In my case, I am at my most powerful when I'm within a dreamscape," Talila explained. She rested her elbows on the top of the table and linked her hands together by the fingers, before resting her chin on top of them, "Basically, I commune to the living and to the dead through dreams. Regardless of time, regardless of place."
Steve nodded, almost as if he understood all of that, "Well, after what happened in Pasadena, I'm willing to believe anything."
"I see," Talila said, "I know not about a 'Pasadena'. I'm not really from your world."
Steve decided to ask the obvious question, "If that's the case, how come you can talk to me?"
"Think of dreams as a leyline to other worlds. My world is very much different from yours, yet I am able to speak with you because we are connected by our dreams," Talila explained, "Those who don't really have a mind for dreaming will often find themselves wandering into bizarre worlds."
"What I've seen so far is pretty bizarre, you know," Steve said, before he thought about it and added, "So, why'd you bring me here, anyway?"
"You misunderstand." Talila said, before she started casually playing with a strand of her hair, twisting and twirlling the strand around her left index finger, "I never really bring anyone to me. They... usually come to me."
"I came to you?" Steve asked.
"Yes."
"Well, I'm not sure how awesome THAT is..." Steve said.
Talila gave him an almost girlish giggle, which caused Steve to raise an eyebrow at her. Seeing the look, Talila gave him a small smile, "Sorry, sorry. That's usually the response I get when I tell them that. Let me see if I can get a rough estimation of what you came to me for."
Talila held her arm out with the palm of the head facing upward, and then she turned her hand over, and placed it on the table. Somehow, a strange deck of cards emerged from beneath her hand, which she did spread out on the table. Steve almost expected them to be tarot cards, but they were not... in fact, he didn't even know what they were. Talila picked up one of the cards and examined it.
"Your father died?" she asked.
"Yeah," Steve responded, with a nod, "About seven years ago."
"I'm sorry," Talila said, "But... you seem to be following in his footsteps a little bit, at least to a certain point. You entered his profession, and you succeed rather well in it. But he also had another profession, didn't he?"
"He was an actor." Steve said, "He made a couple of movies."
"I see," Talila said, "But you didn't want to follow in that, did you? So, you walked out on a guy who could've put you on that career path, and now he's angry at you."
"I've gotten a couple of angry phone calls, yeah." Steve responded. He remembered that episode all too well, he verbally agreed to do a commercial with William Wilkerson, a producer who once worked with his father. However, the commercial wasn't exactly what he had in mind when he tried to do it, and his attempts to improvise led to him just getting yelled at. So, Steve walked out in frustration, and he'd been dealing with the fallout ever since.
"You made a powerful enemy." Talila observed.
"Yeah, I kinda did." Steve admitted.
"Don't worry," Talila said, "He can't really meddle with you too much. He has no say in your world, much as you have none in his. So long as your paths do not cross again, he should not become a bother."
"Uh, that's great." Steve said, though he was unsure of the validity of Talila's words. Nevertheless, Talila continued by drawing another card from the pile she had created.
"It would appear that your family has more or less fallen into disarray since your father's death," Talila observed, "So, your father was the glue that held that together?"
"Something like that. My younger brother admired him greatly, perhaps too much. He changed, probably for the worse. My older brother was doing fine away from the business, but dad's death sort of made him come back to it. My sister hates me for not spending time with the family." Steve said.
"Why don't you?" Talila asked.
"Well, I have a lot of wrestling commitments. I can only come by if a show happens to be near Providence." Steve replied.
Talila sort of cringed her nose, as if she detected something was amiss, and she spoke again, "So, do you love wrestling more than your own family, then? It seems sort of odd that you would continue to avoid your family by travelling a lot in order to participate in a business that, to my eyes, would appear to be done only by those who hate themselves."
Steve blinked, then sighed, slumping his shoulders and letting his arms pass by the seat of his chair, "For a kid, you sure have a way of hitting me where it hurts."
"I suppose I should say... I'm meant to help you, not to point out your flaws," Talila said, quietly adjusting the headband beads before she looked at Steve Knox with a serious gaze, "Mr. Steve... the reason you are here is because of something else. Something you think I can help you with."
"Look, kid," Steve said, getting back up to a more imposing posture, "I'm going to level with you. I don't if you know this or not with your deck of cards, but I'm pretty awesome. Why would I need the help of a girl who's yet to hit puberty for anything?"
Talila seemed hurt, "You know, I was going for honesty when I appeared before you in my normal form..."
She then paused, and then shrugged, "You want to know whether you will succeed or not in your latest endeavor."
"My lstest endeavor?" Steve Knox asked.
"Yes," Talila said, before she picked up another card from her pile and examined it, "Something about an Elite Championship?"
Steve blinked, and then nodded, "Yeah. I'm involved in that. I made the finals of the tournament, though. Beat two World champions doing it, by the way. So I don't see why you think I would need your he--"
"You're unsure." Talila interrupted.
"Don't you know it's rude to interrupt adults when they're ta--"
"You think you might actually lose." Talila interrupted, a second time.
"I... what?" Steve asked. The frankness in the girl's voice, a sincere honesty he wouldn't normally expect from nearly anyone else he knew, convinced him that Talila might actually know what she's talking about.
"Don't worry," Talila said, "Even the most confident of people have doubts somewhere in their subconscious."
"But.. I'm me. Steve Knox. Captain Awesome. Hell, Craig Miles wants to call me the 'Champion Killer'. Why would I have doubts about winning?" Steve asked.
"The same reason why you're talking to me within a dream. You need guidance, and you can't ask for it from anyone else you know... not your girlfriend, your co-workers, or your family. You want advice from someone above the natural. Someone like me, who transcends the natural world." Talila said.
Steve blinked, and then asked, "What, Mike Randalls isn't enough of a supernatural force for you?"
"You wouldn't understand anything he told you, anyway." Talila said, once again speaking very frankly to Steve. She paused, before she continued, "All you have to do is stay confident. You shouldn't have doubts if you truly think you're as awesome as you always say you are. Doubting yourself when you're this close to success is the same as giving up."
Steve couldn't exactly find fault with comments as astute as those.
"Regardless, you have to understand... you may see winning this championship as being a step in the right direction, but it can just as easily bring you more sorrow than you can know." Talila said, crossing her arms as she said this.
Steve Knox hated it when he got a comment about the consequences of whatever actions he took. He was very much a "charge headlong into things and not worry about the consequences" sort of guy.
"What do you mean by that?" Steve asked, with a clearly agitated tone in his voice.
"It is up to you whether you'll have the strength to take this championship. But you must understand that the championship... I feel that something sinister looms over it. A paling, if you will. I don't believe it's the prize you think it is," Talila said, as she gathered her cards together on the table, and back into a simple deck again, "It could bring ruin to you and those around you."
The walls of the tent around the two of them suddenly came apart, and blew away in a heavy gust of wind. Steve looked around and realized that they were now right in the middle of a busy intersection in some city. Cars zoomed past the picnic table, and while Steve looked just a touch worried, Talila remained as calm as ever.
"Mr. Steve. This is all I can do to help you," she said, as she adjusted her seating on the table so that she was seated on her knees, with her elbows and most of the upper half of her body leaning onto the table itself, "I'm not a deity, though you may think me as one when in this realm. Outside of this dreamscape, I'm as helpless as any other fourteen-year-old. The only thing I can do is give you advice. What you do with my advice..."
Talila then shifted herself further forward, so that her face was that much closer to Steve's own, "...is up to you."
After that, she adjusted her whole body so that she was now seated, Indian-style, on the very top of the table.
"Anyway," Talila said, "I suppose I can let you go now. I'm sure you'll come back, though. I'm sure you will have much to ask me, later."
Talila held her hands out, as if she wanted Steve to take hold of them. So, Steve took them and watched as Talila closed her eyes and looked up at the sky. A brilliant flash of light came out of Talila's body, blinding Steve to the point that he had to close his eyes, himself.
* . *
August 3rd, 2008; Charlotte, North Carolina
When he was able to open them again, he was in a bed... his hotel room, to be exact.
Steve shot up to a seated position, and almost instantly regretted it. A wave of pain crashed into the shores of his brain, and he held his head in agony. The swift motion in which he got up also woke up Alexandria Malone, who was sleeping beside him, still fully-clothed.
"Urrrnh..." she went, "You picked a fine time to startle me awake."
"Sorry," Steve said, wincing in pain, "What the hell happened last night?"
"I dunno. Nova didn't give me any details. He just said, 'Come pick Steve up, he's kinda thrashed'. And he said it in a sing-song voice. It was adorable." Alexandria said, now more awake. It should be noted that unlike most of the rest of the population, Alexandria Malone was a morning person.
"That's... great." Steve muttered, "Wonderful, even."
Steve Knox always thought he was kind of a normal guy, it was just the people around him that were strange.
However, his entirely-too-vivid dream began to sow a seed of doubt in his mind.
The only thing he knew about the championship was that he was representing New Frontier Wrestling in the attempt to acquire it, and that it would be a high honor to be the first champion. But was the Elite Championship really the prize he thought it to be? Or was there something else going on, something he couldn't sense?
Whatever the case was, Steve Knox would have a week to prepare for the biggest match in his career.
He didn't have time for doubts.