Blood on the Asphalt
My forehead was burning. I kept pressing a towel to the wound, but the blood showed no sign of letting up.
After the segment where Orton ran in had ended, I made my way back to Gorilla Position with the referee supporting me under his arm. The bastard had made a mistake. He'd attacked with completely unnecessary roughness, and my forehead had split open for it.
I checked the monitoring TV right away. Orton was still out there working the mic, riling up the crowd. And not a single soul spared me a thought—Bart had glanced back at me once, and that was the extent of it.
What exactly was I supposed to do with that?
Nick Flair had come out to back Orton up, and the two of them brushed me off like I wasn't even there.
I laughed out of sheer disbelief. 'These absolute morons?'
A mistake that no wrestler should ever make had just happened, and everyone was simply letting it slide. Why?
Well, the answer was obvious. Orton was a rising star. I was an unproven rookie.
I took a moment to steady my breathing, cooled the heat in my chest, and leaned back against the wall. That was when the referee who'd helped me back spoke up, carefully.
"Hey, uh, Fury. Why don't you head inside and get that bleeding stopped first? You're losing a lot of blood."
"...I've got things to do. After it's done."
At that, Nick Flair turned around. Unease flickered across his eyes, and I couldn't hold back—I glared at him, hard.
I'd just been through something like this, and not one of them could be bothered to come over and say sorry? Not even a word of concern? I wanted to kill every last one of them.
Which is to say, Orton's little stunt hadn't been entirely unintentional either. The bastard saw me as a joke. He didn't see me as a fellow worker at all.
When a man pulls something like that, the textbook response is to twist his neck clean off. So I waited, quiet and still.
Orton's segment passed its midpoint, and one of the staff members, apparently unable to stand the sight any longer, addressed me bluntly.
"Excuse me. If you're going to stand there reeking of blood, it makes it hard to work."
"...I'm sorry, what?"
When I asked him to repeat that, the pudgy staff member retracted his neck like a startled turtle. But he'd already torn open the fury I'd been barely holding down—peeled it apart like the wrapper off a burger.
"What, do I look that tasty to you, like a bleeding steak? I get that you're a pig. But no matter how hungry you are, don't you dare crack me open."
"U-uhm..."
My words rang out through the whole of Gorilla Position. A few of the section leads shot sidelong glances at Bart Maxen.
But Bart, catching my eye, smirked and simply watched it all play out.
I'd known he would. If I'd gritted my teeth and swallowed this, that man would actually have been disappointed.
Why? Because taking an injustice lying down wasn't 'what a man does.'
And he'd be right about that. I was no pushover who could play the gentleman through something like this.
Only then did Nick Flair seem to grasp how serious things had gotten, and he came over. Suit on, he did his best to soothe me with all the softness he could muster.
"Easy there, young fella. You holding up?"
"What is it?"
"Just take it down a notch. How about you step outside and grab a beer first, hm? Whatever else this is, this is the company. You can't go getting this worked up..."
"So cracking my skull open wasn't an emotional act, then. Good to know."
"That's, well..."
"Flair, I may be a rookie, but I'm not so green I don't know how this business works."
If I gave ground here, I'd be treated like a sucker for the rest of my career.
And right at that moment, Orton—his ring segment wrapped up—came through the doors. He took in the scene at Gorilla Position and put on an expression of pure arrogance.
"What's got into everyone?"
"Everyone's frozen stiff from watching what you did to me. Lance Orton."
I walked straight toward him. Flair grabbed my shoulder; I ignored it.
"See this?"
"What?"
"The wound you opened when you drove me into the ring post. And here's the lovely result."
"Oh, that? Should've watched yourself."
Orton played the arrogant prince while quietly scanning the staff for their reactions.
And I knew exactly what that meant. The little brat had figured that apologizing here and now would put a crack in his precious pride.
So I grabbed him by the collar.
"Wh—whoa, hey! Fury, come on, calm down—!"
"It's because you held on to the very end that this happened. Did your fancy family never teach you even that much?"
"...What did you just say?"
"I bring up your family and suddenly you can hear me? They coddle you rotten, so you've decided you're a king or something?"
"You little bastard!"
Orton shoved me, seething.
"Both of you, knock it off!"
With Flair wedged between us, he and I tangled and snarled at each other for a while. And yet, through all of it, my mind stayed ice-cold.
Other staff, who could say—but Bart Maxen would be watching this little war of ours with genuine interest. Because he was a man who believed that backstage fights and razor-sharp tension were good for the actual show.
And in truth, they were.
The wrestlers of the old days thought of each other not as colleagues sharing a workplace but as rivals squaring off over the belt. Fights like this backstage were practically routine, and every one of them made pro wrestling feel that much more real.
Because those men genuinely hated each other.
The industry had grown, and that side of things had faded—but Bart, without question, missed those days. So I gave him a reenactment.
And while I was at it, I made something very clear to the men who thought I was a joke: that I was not some idiot who would sit quietly and swallow injustice.
Pretending to be overpowered by Orton's strength, I backed my way out of Gorilla Position.
A long corridor ran straight onto the locker room. The wrestlers, catching wind of the commotion, came drifting out, murmuring.
"You dare insult our family?!"
"Ha! If you cared about family that much, you wouldn't wrestle like garbage!"
"You son of a—!"
"Enough! Both of you!"
Flair threw himself between us and strained against us both, but there was no sign of the situation coming under control.
Orton ground his teeth, then seized my collar and tried to drag me down with it.
No technique, nothing—just schoolyard violence. And naturally, I had no intention of taking it.
'The roster's all gathered around. About time I showed them what I can do.'
With that thought, I caught the fingers Orton had clamped on my collar and snapped them back.
His brow knotted at the flash of pain, and he immediately tried to headbutt me.
That brand of childish pettiness was so absurd I almost admired it.
'Unbelievable.'
I knocked his head aside and gave ground—and in the same motion clamped onto his waist.
"What the hell are you—"
In one fluid motion, I hurled him sideways.
Orton's hulking frame, all 190-plus centimeters of it, couldn't resist so much as an inch before it was swept up in my technique.
However it might have looked, I had drilled a whole arsenal of martial arts in my past life, and all the more relentlessly since my regression. And the one I trusted most of all was wrestling. Orton, senses scrambled, was driven flat into the floor.
"Kghk?!"
But I hadn't put my full force into it, so it amounted to little more than a bruise or two.
I lowered my mouth to the ear of the still-reeling Orton and whispered, cold as steel.
"This floor is asphalt."
"What..."
"If I'd treated you the way you treated me in that ring, something of yours would be broken by now. So now you know, don't you? Just how dangerous what you pulled really was."
"What the hell are you talking about?!"
No getting through to him.
Ashamed, perhaps, at being pinned by me, Orton twisted and thrashed in resistance. It was no use. With his core muscles neutralized, I toyed with him like a child with a doll.
The Burning Kong roster was soon snickering at the sight and giving him hell.
"Seriously, Orton?"
"You start the shoving match and end up like this?"
"Come on, at least try to break out!"
Revolution's infamy was well known even among the roster, and plenty of them had been grinding their teeth over Orton's attitude in particular.
So even as I taught Orton his lesson, I was banking their goodwill, one laugh at a time.
"Stop tensing up. Relax. Your back's going to give out."
"Grrk—ghkk...!"
"Hmm, this isn't working. Maybe I should just choke you out. That might calm you down?"
"Y-you son of a bitch...!"
"A man who doesn't even know locker-room brotherhood—maybe a humiliation like this is exactly what it takes for him to wake up, right?"
I wrapped both hands around Orton's neck and head and began to squeeze. Blood flooded into his bone-white face, and in a matter of seconds he was on the verge of blacking out—
"ENOUGH!!"
The roar tore through at exactly that moment. I lifted my head to find Bart Maxen standing there. I released the choke at once and rose to my feet.
"Khoff! Khoff! Khh—!"
"Lance...!"
A heartbeat later, Flair—who had stood frozen through it all—hurried over. At the boss's grave expression, the wrestlers cut off their jeering, and a few of them slipped quietly away.
Me? I brushed off my backside and stood up like nothing had happened.
Bart spoke.
"That's enough. Get that bleeding stopped, and I'll see you after the show."
"B-Bart, this bastard—!"
"And what exactly are you shouting about, like you did something great? If you treat a colleague like that in the ring, you apologize first!"
Orton, mid-excuse, was struck completely dumb.
'There it is.'
At the look of pure satisfaction on the faces of the wrestlers around us, I allowed myself a small grin.
And so, having caused one magnificent disaster, I found myself abruptly at the center of every rumor in the building. In its wake, the entire roster began quietly showing me a warmth they hadn't before.
The best part? I got to shampoo my hair twice.
There was an unwritten rule that rookies only got to use the shampoo stocked in the arena—and only one wash at that—but today, not a soul said a word when I went in for round two!
'...Truly a festering ill of the sports industry.'
But hey—it was, in its own way, a rule built on clear standards and a purpose behind it, so I decided to let it pass. Even though I couldn't for the life of me figure out why a second shampoo was forbidden.
Anyway.
After waiting out the show in the quiet locker room, I gave it a respectable interval and then headed for Bart's office. The facility crew were bustling about—probably because the arena was booked only through tonight.
I passed the ring coming apart piece by piece, followed the corridor inward, and before long stood at Bart's office door and knocked.
"Bart. It's me."
"Wait a moment."
At that, I stood in the dim corridor and waited for the invitation to enter.
That said—if I could already guess who was in there with him, did that make me a prophet?
Because in a situation like this, only one man came to mind as the kind who'd be sitting down with Bart for a chat.
Triple H.
He'd been busy prepping his own match—the only reason he hadn't wedged himself between Orton and me—and right now I had no doubt he was raising his voice at Bart, demanding I be punished.
And I was right.
"..."
A moment later, Hunter flung the door open and stormed out, Nick Flair hard on his heels.
He came straight at me like he'd been waiting for this all night, voice rumbling low.
"You. Come see me later."
"Whatever you say."
"Hunter, let it go. Go on."
Fortunately, Flair—the closest thing Revolution had to a moderate—held him back. Thanks to that, after nothing more than a few brief exchanges of glances, I took Bart's office without shedding a single drop of blood.
"There you are."
"Yes, boss. I gathered we had an appointment."
"You invited yourself."
Even as he said it, of course, Bart would have been nodding solemnly in front of Hunter about how he'd give my punishment 'serious thought.' In that one snake-in-the-grass respect, the man was truly magnificent.
The office had been stripped of most of its fixtures and stood bare and hollow. Bart, standing there in his suit, let out a long sigh.
Then the grin spread across his face.
"That felt damn good."
"Really?"
"It did. I know I shouldn't say this, but that choke of yours was killer."
"Men like that need a proper education. It was high time somebody gave him one."
"If it were up to me, I'd write that education into a script myself."
"But if you did, wouldn't that put a crack in things with Hunter?"
"...You know, sometimes you say things that make me wonder whether you really are a rookie."
"I'll take that as a compliment."
"The way you sweet-talk the scriptwriters. The way you turned Kung-Fury into a character I can't stand."
"You can't stand it?"
"I can't. I've never cared for that sort of thing. Everyone's laughing and I'm the only one sitting there gloomy. It puts me in a foul mood."
"Then before long, Chairman, I'll show you a script that even you can enjoy."
"You? Entertain me? An old man like myself won't be easy to please."
"It's easier than you'd think."
"You truly are a fascinating one. Arrogant—yet it's an arrogance that makes me look forward to things."
"Give me the chance, and I'll do everything in my power to be worth it."
"Yes. That's exactly it..."
I watched Bart, anticipation swelling in my chest. He held his tongue for a moment—and then he let one more line loose.
And it was nothing like what I'd expected.
"I'm giving you a push. As a tag team."
"I'm sorry—what?"
"First things first—go find yourself a partner."
I floundered for a beat at that—then Bart Maxen's intent snapped into focus.
'A feud with Revolution.'
The reigning tag team champions were Nick Flair and Gabe Batista. Bart wanted to see whether I had the justification to climb any higher.
Not that I'd never given the tag division any thought, of course.
'This is going to be fun.'
I smiled, brimming with confidence.