The King's Betrayal
After that.
With Bart Maxen himself butting into the discussion, the script wasn't finalized until thirty minutes before the show was set to begin.
First, Greg's retirement ceremony would proceed as originally planned, kept simple and respectful.
And then, we'd move the main event into a tag team match—
'Russell attacks me, and the show ends on that shocking note.'
It wasn't a bad idea.
For now, the most important thing was that we had too many ideas at once, and we needed to dole them out carefully, one by one.
So that none of the big moments died on the vine.
And so the story wouldn't move so fast that the audience couldn't follow without getting lost.
In other words, the plan was to advance the narrative by unraveling and planting one hook per week.
Russell's turn to the dark side.
Hunter's return and his purging.
Russell joining Revolution.
Hunter and my alliance.
Every single one of those ideas was strong enough to carry a weekly show's closing segment on its own.
For the first time in a long while, I felt my body tremble with excitement.
If this script was executed properly, the reaction would be absolutely explosive. I felt it in my bones.
And I wanted to hand the credit, entirely, to the fool standing beside me.
Russell Hart.
It could have turned into an awkward mess, but because he brought it up first, everything resolved in a good direction. A good man, after all.
Who would have thought he'd propose solving the problem that way, in a situation like this?
'Well, strictly speaking.'
He wasn't solving the problem so much as weaving it into a script.
But if this let him externalize his emotions, wouldn't that be considerably therapeutic, from a psychiatric standpoint?
When I asked him that, thinking exactly that—
"I'm not a psych major, so I wouldn't know."
Mr. Russell, with his dead-serious answer, obliterated the mood in an instant.
The show began, and Greg Hart's retirement ceremony was in full swing.
The wrestlers climbed into the ring in the predetermined order, celebrating Greg's career, while Russell and I stood in the hallway before Gorilla Position, waiting for our turns.
I was last.
Russell was scheduled to go in one slot ahead of me.
Originally, since Russell had no real stake in the script, he was supposed to enter early on and offer his congratulations—but that was how it had turned out.
I was watching the monitoring TV with that thought in mind when Russell spoke up, carefully.
"……But if that's the case, wouldn't you say it's fortunate that we're pro wrestlers?"
"I suppose so."
"I think so too."
Russell smiled.
"Because I've managed to turn feeling jealous of you into an opportunity."
"R-right."
"It's almost funny, when you think about it. Even this is something I learned from you."
Russell closed his eyes for a moment, as if recalling the old days.
"The way of melting the reality we're living into the script."
"Which, right now, is the emotion called jealousy."
"Exactly. And my job is to play it out in a way people can't sympathize with, and become the villain."
"And I'll become the hero, playing it out the exact opposite of how we did it in GCW."
Russell and I were thinking the same thing, and we nodded to each other.
Counting GCW, this was the third time I'd feuded with the man. But it wouldn't feel stale in the slightest.
As I'd said—the hero and the villain had swapped places, and the feud itself, Revolution included, would grow far larger.
Faction-versus-faction warfare wasn't the kind of rivalry you saw every day.
But handled well, it could become a script that bent an entire show around its will.
That was why I had an intuition this script would turn out to be something quite special.
The wrestlers involved all carried serious prestige, and the flow of the story was fresh, to boot.
As I was thinking that, Russell held out his fist to me.
"Lead us beautifully this time, too."
"Take it and run."
Grinning, I tapped his fist with mine.
Our entrance time was approaching.
When Russell went out to the ring first, the crowd greeted him with cheers.
[Yeaaahhh!]
Lukewarm.
Neither bad nor good.
His first feud with Orton having fizzled along conventionally, the man had somewhat slipped from the crowd's attention.
Ordinarily I might have worried a little, but since we could exploit that for our own ends, it was almost a pleasure.
Russell climbed into the ring, embraced Greg, and exchanged a few words.
And following right behind him, it was finally my turn to enter.
"Sin."
The head of the audio team beside me looked at me with eyes full of anticipation.
"This is going to be really something."
"I think so too."
"Hoping those camera idiots actually get the shot right."
"They will."
I nodded, swept the curtain aside on cue, and walked out.
The reaction was…….
[Yeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaahhhh!!]
Words wouldn't have done it justice short of tearing my throat.
The moment my music hit, the crowd rose from their seats.
Then they sang along to the music, descending into pure chaos among themselves.
'……This is insane.'
Standing at the top of the entrance ramp, I went blank for a moment at the sight.
Of course, instead of letting that emotion show, I grinned and played through it.
The wrestlers in the ring, too, all wore faces of no small astonishment at the reaction.
[SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN!]
This was Greg Hart's retirement ceremony, and still the crowd erupted like this.
For a second-year rookie.
Every active wrestler on the roster stared at me in genuine disbelief.
In the midst of all that, I climbed into the ring and walked toward the one man who had been smiling all along.
Greg Hart.
Alongside John Michaels beside him, he seemed to take pride in being able to elevate me.
"Congratulations, Champion."
"Congratulations to you, Legend."
We spoke so quietly the crowd couldn't possibly have heard.
And that was why a faint tension crept through the watching audience.
We had been fighting over that very belt in this very ring mere moments ago.
And that wasn't all.
As I said, we'd fought over so many things. And as the winner, I had come away with a great deal.
The fans' adoration.
This belt.
And the symbolism of having beaten Greg himself.
So it was only natural that the audience, knowing all of that, felt a flicker of unease.
After a deliberate silence, I lifted the belt from my shoulder and draped it over Greg's.
At that, a great cheer burst from the relieved crowd.
Greg smirked and looked at me as if to say, you little rascal.
I had dragged the moment out a bit longer than the original plan called for, after all.
"You really are……"
"It's fun, isn't it?"
"Well. It is that."
He nodded and raised my hand. The wrestlers standing around us applauded.
The audience joined in, and in the midst of that roaring sea of applause, I carried on the ceremony with Greg.
Then came the moment Greg and Michaels fastened the Intercontinental Championship belt around my waist.
As for Russell, whose expression was hardening by degrees in the background—nobody noticed a thing, the ceremony was that beautiful.
The main event was a tag team match: Sin & Sell against Revolution.
Tiffany McMahon, watching the show in the cracks between work, thought everything was unfolding beautifully.
The poolside at the Malibu mansion.
Burning Kong projected onto the wall carried a raw, overwhelming power that a television simply couldn't match.
Tu-quah-quah-quah-quah-KWAANG-!
As pyro erupted, Sin and Russell strode out to the ring and climbed in with real momentum.
The three Revolution members were driven back down the ramp by the sheer force of it.
A magnificent picture.
Listening to the commentary, Tiffany couldn't help but marvel.
[Sin and Russell Hart—the two of them were a tag team back in GCW!]
[They were massively popular then! No, wait—they're massively popular RIGHT NOW!]
The crowd's reaction was excellent.
As the SIN-SELL! chant rolled through the arena, even Russell—who'd drawn only a lukewarm response minutes earlier—was being welcomed once more.
That was Sin's greatest strength.
He never rose alone.
He always thought of the partners around him and worked to get them over together.
His love for this industry ran far deeper than any ambition he carried.
And that was precisely why Tiffany McMahon couldn't help falling for the man.
'Come on, Sin.'
Praying that no unfortunate accident would occur, Tiffany turned her eyes to the match as it began.
The match flowed along smoothly.
The standard formula.
The lower-card Russell gets worked over by Revolution's dirty tactics.
Sin takes the hot tag at the decisive moment and sweeps the ring in one motion.
The crowd roared at the scenario playing out exactly as expected.
The reaction was strong, and the commentary lifted the atmosphere further.
[He's worthy of Greg Hart and that entire era of validation! Sin is dismantling Revolution perfectly!]
[Ha-hah! Look at Orton out there! Sin is locking in the Sharpshooter!]
[He's using it like it's completely his own move at this point?!]
[He has no choice! It's the technique he inherited from Greg Hart himself!]
[At this rate we might as well start calling him SIN HEART!]
'That'll never happen.'
Tiffany narrowed her eyes.
That would, after all, mean Sin had become the Hart family's son-in-law.
[GYAAAAAAAH-!]
Orton screamed in the ring. The man had earned his fans' respect since his feud with Sin.
He'd carved out his own niche as the wrestler who could lose cleanly without ever losing standing.
By now he seemed fully settled into the show as a proper mid-carder.
When the agonizing Orton tapped out, a roar of celebration poured into the arena.
DING-DING-DING-!
The ring bell sounded, and Sin released the hold and rose coolly from the mat.
A clean, unremarkable victory.
[SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN!]
"SIN……! SIN……!"
Clapping along with the crowd, beaming, Tiffany watched Sin celebrate his victory in the ring.
And then, in that instant, a thought brushed across her mind: something somewhere felt off.
It had been a perfectly serviceable weekly TV match. Which was exactly why Tiffany found herself puzzled.
'This isn't Sin's style.'
Russell jobbing conventionally. Orton and Batista running rampant with heel tactics.
Flair strutting at ringside, mockingly taunting them both.
The beloved hero, Sin, arriving to deliver righteous comeuppance.
Granted, that formula worked. People watched pro wrestling precisely because they wanted catharsis from watching exactly these kinds of stories.
But Sin was the one who added dramatic craft to even those stories.
Protecting Russell's image while showcasing Revolution's strength—that was his signature approach.
'What is this?'
A vague unease settling over her, Tiffany kept watching.
Sin, continuing his celebration to the crowd amid his theme music and the roaring ovation.
The camera zoomed in close on his face.
'Huh?'
In that framing, a single thought surfaced in Tiffany's mind.
At Greg's retirement ceremony, she'd felt Russell had been given less spotlight than he should have been.
And a tight close-up camera angle like this one was unmistakably……
framed to hide whatever was about to happen just outside the shot.
'No way.'
The moment the ominous feeling hit—
Russell, rushing in from behind, cracked Sin across the back of the head.
[Ooooooohh?!]
The crowd gasped in horror.
It was, truly, stunningly sudden.
Tiffany shot to her feet without realizing it, watching the unfolding scene with wide, shocked eyes.
[Damn it! Can you believe this?! Russell Hart has attacked Sin!]
[What on earth is going on?! Why would Russell turn on his own partner?!]
The commentators shrieked in manufactured chaos.
In the middle of it all, Russell drove Orton out of the ring and seized total control of it.
The camera panned across the audience—hands clamped over mouths, fingers clawing at scalps in disbelief.
And then it came.
Russell began to receive a torrent of boos the likes of which, honestly, felt all-time historic.
[Booooooooooooooooo-!]
Watching it, Tiffany felt a shiver run through her entire body.
With this, Russell went from a wrestler who drew only a lukewarm response without Sin—
to a villain drowning in boos of that magnitude, in a single stroke.
Truly, magnificently, brilliant booking.