"EUGENE!"
"Hyahhyahhyahhyahhyah!"
"Hey, Eugene!"
"Hyahhyahhyahhyahhyahhyahhyah!"
"Eugene, what the hell are you doing?"
I guess we're going to beat a dead horse and fade in on yours and my favourite scene, the Dewey family's basement. Both brothers were doing as they usually would, Wayne was struggling to reach the top of the wardrobe where he was attempting to hang a bed sheet that he'd spray painted 'ULTRATITLE' onto in big, black block capitals, and Eugene sat on the brown, stained couch flicking away at the control sticks and hammering away at the buttons of his Xbox 360 controller.
"HUH!?" Shouted Eugene over the blaring television.
"I said, what the hell are you doing!" Wayne shouted back as he craned his neck around to look at his brother.
"Playing Street Fighter!" Replied Eugene, slightly perplexed as to why Wayne was asking a question with such an obvious answer.
"No, I mean..." Wayne sighed as he dropped the sheet and stomped over to the couch. Once there, he grabbed the remote from the arm and hit 'mute' as dramatically as possible. "That's better. I meant, why is the only thing I've heard for the last hour Chun-Li's attacking shout?"
"Oh, I've been trying to get her to do a Shoryuken but can't." Said Eugene sounding a little disappointed, "Do you think Troy Windham has some kind of special edition that I don't know about?"
"I think you need to put the controller down and come help me set up the recording area." Said Wayne bluntly, "You know I can't reach the top of the wardrobe."
"Fine." Eugene sighed as he flicked the control stick a little and hit a couple of buttons, sending Chun-Li into a superkicking frenzy until she'd KTFO of Seth. “Maybe he gets different DLC on Planet Windham...”
Our hero threw the controller down next to the half eaten bag of Cheetos onto the spare seat beside him and straightened up. He stretched, yawned and scratched his vast belly, leaving a couple of orange powdery streaks across his gut, as he turned to view his brother's pathetic attempt at preparing the scene for Eugene's planned address of his first round ULTRATITLE opponent.
"You know that sheet's too wide, right?" He said as his yawn drew to an end. "You're never gonna get the whole word in shot."
"I've been trying" Replied Wayne as he walked back over to the wardrobe, "But then I had an idea. Here check it out. If we slide this part along..."
Eugene licked his fingers as he headed over to join his brother and grabbed the sheet right where he was pointing in order to slide it over to where he was told.
"And then we spread this part out as much as we can..." Wayne instructed.
And Eugene obeyed.
"Then we can fit the end on..." He added as Eugene reached up and shifted the dumbbell they kept on top of the wardrobe into place to hold the sheet down. "And we're done. What do you think?"
Together the brothers took a step backwards to admire the set up.
"HA!" Laughed Eugene, "Perfect!"
"See, told you I had an idea." Wayne said proudly. "Now go get the camera, we've got work to do."
And with that Eugene waddled off to Wayne's desk and scooped up the video recorder sat upon it. He bent down and pulled out the tripod from besides the chest of drawers next to said desk and lugged it all back over to his brother.
"Right, I'll set up the tripod, you go sort your hair out. You look like a mess." Said Wayne as he took the AV equipment from Eugene's hands.
"Wash the dishes Cinderelly." Whispered Eugene as he walked over the full length mirror that sat in another corner of the room.
"What's that?" Asked Wayne as he extended the legs of the tripod.
"Nothing!" Replied Eugene as he licked his finger tips and tried to tame the beast atop his head, otherwise known as his jew-fro.
"Ok, I'm all set!" Called out Wayne as he finished tightening the camera onto the tripod. "You done?"
"You tell me." Replied Eugene as he turned to face his brother, despite trying to fix his hair he'd somehow made it look even worse.
Wayne looked the fat sack of fat in front of him up and down before shrugging and sighing "It'll have to do. Now, in the infamous words of Scorpion, GET OVER HERE!"
Eugene obliged and joined his brother in front of their camcorder. Wayne reached into his pocket and pressed the remote, the little red light lit up just to the side of the lens that meant they were now recording.
Not that they weren't being recorded before. But now they're recording within a recording. It's kind of like Inception, just nowhere near as needlessly complex.
"Allow me to open with a word of thanks." Wayne said, chaging his tune almost instantly from grumpy to sincere, “Thanks, Troy, for the ‘Wrestling 101’. Let me guess, next week, body slams? Am I going to have to take you on a ‘Gaming 101’? If I do then lesson one is you never blow on the cartridges. Nintendo say so themselves. Next week, how not to be a noob. I’d highly recommend you don’t miss that one; being blissful in one's ignorance is never a good thing.”
Wayne grinned as Eugene shifted uncomfortably in his skin. He wasn’t a fan of straight up taunting and insulting his opponents, even if Wayne was. That probably had something to do with the fact that he was always the one in the ring with them taking the brunt of their frustrations, not his brother.
“I know overconfidence stems from arrogance,” Wayne continued, “But I’d never have thought you to be so up your own ass to assume that everyone in this world knows who you are by name alone. You claim to know ‘a lot...”
Oh yeah, air-quotes have been used.
“About Eugene here, but you don’t know that until a year and a half ago he had absolutely no knowledge of anything wrestling based?” Asked Wayne, “No, see, as we were growing up, Eugene was interested in Dungeons and Dragons, Hero Quest, Warhammer... You know, the cool stuff. I was always the wrestling geek. And I knew from the moment our bracket was drawn, Eugene would be in for a tough ride. I just let him find out exactly how tough it would be in his own time.”
“It’s all about character building, you see?” Wayne added as he jabbed his brother in the ribs with the point of his elbow, a pretty obvious attempt to get him to step to the side and reveal the banner they had hung not too long ago. “You’re probably more used to character defamation though, right? So you’ll probably get a real kick out of this.”
With a wide smile Wayne stepped aside to fully reveal, what should become, the new ULTRATITLE logo.
'U RA TIT'
"Convenient, isn't it?" Asked Wayne as he stepped back into the centre of his shot. "Omit a couple of characters and you can turn something as epic, and as awesome, as ULTRATITLE into a scathing attack on an opponent."
Wayne gestured for Eugene to step back in and join him, which his brother did willingly.
"Maybe that not so subtle insult isn't quite what we should be doing against a man with your reputation, but sometimes you just can't help but play with fire, eh Troy?" Said Wayne with that smirk that we'd all come to know and love, "But then you should know all about that, huh?"
"Mr Risk-taker himself. The Daredevil of the ULTRATITLE." Exclaimed Wayne, maybe with a little too much grandeur, "Forgive us for being so bland, but the risks we take tend to be a little more mundane than dangerous driving or possession of hard drugs that could lead to being banged up in a federal pound-me-in-the-ass penitentiary."
"Heh, Office Space." Eugene giggled to himself.
Wayne simply ignored his brother's comments and continued on regardless.
"No, the risks we take are more along the lines of..." Wayne paused to the ponder for a moment, "Fishing in Orgrimmar as a Human Warrior. Seriously, do you have any idea just how dangerous that can be for one's repair bill? But unlike the reckless endangerment of every living soul on I-10, our risks have a payoff greater than mere bragging rights."
Eugene nodded along with his brother's words.
"Eugene here spent over twenty hours one day trying to catch 'Old Crafty', all for just a few achievement points." Said Wayne, he genuinely sounded like he was pleading for donations for clean water in Africa or some other Susan Sarandon led cause. "Can your mind comprehend just how long it can take to even find a safe spot to fish in the opposing faction's main hub? Do you even know how long it takes to run back to your corpse from the graveyard? Do you know how many steps you can get before you're struck down again?"
Wayne wiped his eyes and sniffed as Eugene started solemnly at the floor.
"And then, once that safe haven from the city guards has been found, do you have any idea about the mental anguish one goes through being under constant threat of gang rape from a party of Tauren and Trolls?" Wayne continued, "And it goes without saying that the inevitable happened as some orc jerk came along and camped Eugene's corpse for almost two hours!"
Again, Eugene nodded along in verification of his sibling's tale.
I love reading the thesaurus.
"And why did he keep up the unrelenting assault for such a sustained period of time?" Wayne asked rhetorically, "Because he, the orc, thought he, Eugene, didn't belong there. He only saw Eugene as an Alliance member in the Horde's home, it's not because he posed a threat, it's not because he slaughtered all the NPCs in a three zone radius, no, it was simply because he felt he had no purpose being there."
‘Smack’ went Wayne’s fist as he brought it down into the palm of his other hand in a hammer blow. He snorted in anger and shook his head.
"Needless to say, Eugene rode out the assault until the Orc finally vanished... Did he simply get bored? Did he log out? Did he continue with his dailies? Who knows, all we know for sure is that Eugene completed his goal and earned his achievement." Said Wayne as he patted Eugene on the shoulder, the bigger of the Deweys smiled proudly as he folded his arms and puffed out his chest, "I'm sorry, Troy, a man of your age probably doesn't have the faintest idea of what we've been on about. So, allow me to tell you quickly about something from the real world."
Now was Eugene’s turn to shake his head in disappointment. Not at the fact that his brother had just rambled on about something that may be lost on its intended target... but because it probably would be lost on its intended target. How can anyone not know every minute detail of the world’s most popular game?
"I don't think it's any secret that Eugene had his fair share of bullies back in high school." Said Wayne sympathetically, "And, much like any ginger, freckled, acne ridden, coke bottle lens glasses wearing, nerdy freak across America, Eugene lived in constant fear for four long years of a handful of jocks.”
“Walking into school would be like running the ‘Wipeout Zone’ for poor Eugene.” Wayne said with a slight smile as anyone would have were they to imagine Eugene bouncing across those big red balls, “Except instead of dodging boxing gloves, he was dodging real bare knuckled fists. And instead of winning $50,000 at end of it, he’d be able to buy lunch, provided he made it through to lunch without getting knocked out.”
“He wasn’t successful in avoiding the attacks every day though.” Wayne conceded, “But as the old saying goes, ‘It’s not how many times you get knocked down, it’s how many times you get back up’. And every time Eugene got knocked down, he made sure he was right back in that hallway the next day to show those jerks that they couldn’t break him.”
“That and Mom wouldn’t let me drop out and get a GED...” Eugene added quietly.
“Kind of stepping on my point there, Dude...” Wayne replied equally as quietly.
The brothers stared at each other for a moment in silence.
…
“The point I was trying to make...” Said Wayne getting this train right back on track, “We can have all the fun and games we want defacing the ULTRATITLE logo, but when we tell a story, every single character is important. I could have told you about how Eugene caught ‘Old Crafty’, then went back to Stormwind and logged out. I could have told you all about how Eugene used to lose his lunch money on the odd occasion, but they’re not accurate retellings of those stories. So whether it’s true or not you can claim Eugene needs me to get pumped for this match, but the fact is, as long as I’m around, he will be pumped. And when he is pumped, it doesn’t matter whether he’s in some fantasy land online or in the real world, Eugene won’t give up, and that’s why he’s in this ULTRATITLE tournament.”
Wayne slapped Eugene on the chest a little harder than he normally would. Probably because he was still annoyed over the point stepping.
“Eugene might spend more time playing games than in the gym, Troy, but who are you to look down your nose on that?” Asked Wayne “Didn’t you spend the majority of your time hoping your opponents would come in unprepared for what you brought to the table?
Research really does tend to pay off.
“All you should be hoping for right now is that your eighteen year career isn’t brought to its knees by a guy that’s been competing for less than eighteen months. Because you, I, Eugene, the fans... everyone in the whole world knows...” Wayne said before pausing for more dramatic effect, “Three seconds under Eugene will leave more than a big red blotch on your stellar career.”
“It’ll damn well kill it.”