Home Town Boy
Nothing much happened after that.
First, the writers drafted a mini-script based on the ideas I'd pitched. Once that mini-script got signed off, it was coordinated with the pieces other writers had produced, and the full script came together.
That was how the main show operated. It favored an even more rigid division of labor than GCW — a system with its advantages and disadvantages as far as I was concerned.
But this week, it couldn't have been more convenient. Checking my email a few times a day was all that was asked of me, and the rest of the time was mine to spend freely. It wasn't as if I had outside appearances lined up like the show's main eventers.
Thanks to that, I got to see everyone I'd wanted to see before the show rolled around. I trained with my old colleagues back at GCW. I had a meal with Ebony and her daughter Jessie, and I visited the pediatric cancer ward and Willie's parents as well.
Having spent my days so well, I greeted Monday night feeling refreshed.
The locker room inside the arena.
I was preparing for the show alongside my partner Booker and the rest of his crew. We'd been spending so much time together these past few months that everyone felt reasonably comfortable by now.
Simmons teased me as usual.
"Have a good vacation?"
"I even met a woman, believe it or not."
"Whew. Guess geniuses really are built different. You got a girl stashed in every state?"
"Fifty's a bit much, don't you think?"
"Hahaha, don't play modest. With your abilities? I'd believe it."
I wasn't sure it was really a matter of ability.
Still, instead of saying that, I flashed a confident grin. Whatever else, the most important thing was not being looked down on by these big lugs.
And so the position I'd carved out in this group was 'the genius.' A slightly bratty youngest member — impossible to hate, but impossible to ignore, either.
Unlike lions or other beasts, humans don't map out the pecking order of a group as simply leader and everyone else. In that sense, my positioning was a genuinely useful one.
I was chatting away with the guys, putting that position to good use, when the locker room door swung open and someone walked in.
Tiffany Maxen.
At the sight of her, Simmons let out another whistle.
She wore a pantsuit, but unlike her usual style, the collar was deliberately loosened just enough to lend her a certain allure. Even so, with her blonde hair pulled back in a severe bun and glasses perched on her nose, she looked like she'd stepped straight out of a man's daydream.
What made it fun was that beneath that costume, her expression was still unmistakably the woman I knew.
Simmons greeted her first.
"Long time no see, Miss!"
"Haha, Rock. Have you been well?"
"Of course! These idiots here haven't been causing you any trouble, have they?"
"Sin's the one bullying me, actually."
"……"
Simmons glared at me. With just a hint of sincerity.
Probably because he'd been in the business so long that he'd thought of Tiffany as a cute kid back in the day.
I dodged his gaze as gracefully as I could, dusted myself off, and stood up.
"Slander later. Let's go."
"See? What did I say~."
Tiffany giggled. Then me and Booker.
The three of us were slated to play a major role in tonight's opening — which meant we had to get moving a beat ahead of everyone else.
"Kill it out there, kid!"
"Booker, don't screw up!"
"Miss! We're counting on you!"
We left the locker room amid our colleagues' boisterous send-off. Standing there looking slightly overwhelmed by all the racket, Tiffany got a light tap on the shoulder from me.
"What's wrong?"
"Oh, honestly? I feel like I've been wound a little too tight."
"Well, of course you have."
"Why's that?"
"Because if we open the show, it means the long two-year reign of the Revolution is finally over."
"Ah. When you put it that way, I suppose it is."
Until now, the opening of the show had been the exclusive domain of the Revolution, the main eventers that they were. We were about to shatter that tradition.
The Revolution would still appear in the opening, of course — but strictly in a supporting role. The stars of the night were me and Tiffany. The two of us.
Let's see what we can do, then.
Steeling my resolve, I headed with the others toward Gorilla Position. Stepping inside, I found the staff busy preparing for the show, and my eyes naturally drifted toward the seat at the back where Bart Maxen sat.
Seated in his chair, he was running his final checks in front of no fewer than eight monitors.
"Bring up camera seven."
Camera seven, which framed the audience in a wide shot, was working perfectly. Once again, every seat in the house was full. Crowds had poured in through the various entrances and taken their places.
Bart shouted one last time.
"Let's make it a hell of a show!"
At his thunderous bellow, the staff roared back in unison. It was so quintessentially him that it made me smile. The chairman of a dinosaur corporation — and yet always at the very front line of the arena, commanding everyone. That was the man called Bart Maxen.
And then the show began.
The screen lit up from darkness, and a pre-produced video played. A limousine pulling into the arena grounds. The car — a symbol of wealth in the flesh — came to a stately halt before the cameras, and as the rear door swung open, someone stepped out. The camera traced a woman's body slowly from the feet up, but never showed the one thing that mattered most: her face.
Who could it be?
As if to sweep away the audience's burning curiosity, the opening continued — a hard-rock track over a slick montage of the wrestlers. Violence, bloodshed, sex. A raw, aggressive opening. When it ended, the cameras panned across the arena, packed to the rafters with twenty thousand people.
Fireworks erupted from the screens above the entrance ramp, announcing the start of the show. The crowd's roar bled naturally into the audio, producing a spectacular moment.
It was time to head out.
There's a term in the business: home town boy.
It refers, quite literally, to a wrestler performing in the region he comes from. American fans, with their fierce pride in their home turf, give a hero returned to his roots an absolutely thunderous welcome.
That was true for me as well. Strictly speaking, my hometown was Los Angeles — but as I'd said before, Georgia was my home too.
The good, conservative people of Georgia treated me as their home town boy. Because of me, they had opened their hearts to Easterners — people they'd once considered utter strangers.
It was a bit of a fanciful notion, perhaps, but listening to this enormous ovation, I decided to believe it. That's the way of it: only when I believe it first can a lie become the truth.
[Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!]
Standing at the top of the entrance ramp, I gazed for a moment at the crowd on their feet, waving their signs like mad. Every one of them was welcoming me with an almost frenzied passion — and I felt my eyes grow hot.
People from GCW were surely in the building tonight, so I kept my emotions on as tight a leash as I could. Imagine bursting into tears of gratitude off-script at a moment like this. How mortifying would that be?
[SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN!]
Even when I pulled on my headband and struck my ridiculous martial arts pose, the crowd remembered me by a different name. This moment would be broadcast around the world, and it was going to send shockwaves through it.
Which was exactly why it had to be Georgia. If I was going to strip off the Kung-Fury mask, there was no better stage than this.
Booker and I climbed into the ring amid the roaring tide of cheers.
[GCW! GCW! GCW! GCW!]
[SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN!]
Through two competing chants, the crowd made it plain that they still remembered me.
I grabbed the microphone.
"Can you FEEL the power of kung-fu?!"
At that opening line, the crowd answered with a resounding chorus of boos, and I couldn't help but crack a grin. They hated my gimmick now — and so, instead of cheers, they gave me jeers.
What followed instead was only a fervent chant of SIN and GCW. I could feel it: the mic-work needed to change.
The original script called for the usual routine — me teaching the crowd kung-fu before landing a single punchline. Something like, 'Work is rough, huh?' or, 'Always read your contracts carefully.'
Ever since we'd become a tag team, Booker and I had mined that formula for some very satisfying reactions. The key was always the final punchline — a line distilling Sin's miserable, hilarious circumstances that had to blow the roof off the place.
And judging by the mood out here, this was the moment to use it first. If I tried to grind through the scripted lines in order, the crowd simply wouldn't stay with me.
The reaction would die on the vine.
I shot a sidelong glance at Booker. Dropping my mic low, I conveyed my intent as briefly and precisely as I could.
"Jump ahead to the punchline lines."
Booker's eyebrows went up. But after a quick read of the arena's energy, he raised his mic.
"That's right — we're in Georgia, aren't we."
The crowd roared at Booker's words. When he turned and looked at me with a meaningful arch of his brow, the noise only swelled.
"Funny, though — the reception out here is way better than I expected. Is Georgia a great city? Or does somebody here call it home?"
[SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN!]
"I honestly can't imagine who you mean. Kung-Fury — does anything spring to mind?"
"Uh… well…"
"Really?"
"L-let's just get to Kung-Fu Time already!"
"These people seem to know something, don't they…? Don't they?"
The reaction was explosive. The crowd's chant had grown past anything we could contain, and I leaned back against the ropes, laughing in spite of myself.
How do I play this?
Kung-Fu Time was supposed to come first, but the mood for it simply wasn't there. In the ring, moments like this happened all the time — the crowd reacting in ways the script never anticipated. The standard play was to plow ahead regardless, but I didn't want to just let it slide.
Professional wrestling is, above all else, the sport that lives and dies on crowd response.
A brief instant — one that demanded a judgment call. The most important moment of the night.
There was Tiffany and the GCW brass, hoping this script would succeed. On the opposite side, the members of the Revolution, praying it would fail. And last of all, Bart — the man holding the final say. I'd already bent the original script out of shape, which meant I had no choice but to wring a performance from the crowd that everyone would have to accept.
My conclusion was simple.
"I signed my contract far too carelessly."
Keep firing off the punchlines, and steer the crowd back into cooperation with the script. They would hear me out — because the very reason they were rejecting tonight's script was their affection for me.
"But what can you do? Word of advice, folks — don't end up like me. Read your contracts very carefully before you sign."
And the people followed me.
I pictured Hunter's face contorting backstage. It felt magnificent.
Riding the wave of the crowd on my side, I kept talking.
"Come on, everybody, just work with me here a little! My t-shirts just dropped, and this is prime time to move some merch!"
I owned the ring like it belonged to me, shouting to my heart's content. And the crowd played along, folding themselves into the bit. Booker marveled at how I'd seized an entire arena in the space of a heartbeat — understanding exactly why a man like me had no choice but to play the Kung-Fury, and meeting me there anyway.
[Kung-Fury! Kung-Fury!]
"Alright! It's KUNG-FU TIME!"
The crowd rose to their feet, laughing. My theme music hit, I tossed Booker a headband of his own, and together we launched into Kung-Fu Time — punching and kicking on the beat, working the crowd into a lather.
"Alright, next up — the straight punch!"
Unlike my past life, Kung-Fury wasn't a bumbling villain — he was a master teaching kung-fu to the people. That, in itself, wasn't a bad thing. A show needs performers like that; variety is what makes a card rich.
The problem, as Hunter had so helpfully pointed out, was that the concept had a ceiling. And to shatter that perception, I had chosen Georgia. And I had summoned Tiffany.
Something so satisfying that even the viewers watching at home would feel a rush of catharsis — that was scheduled to debut tonight.
Just as Kung-Fu Time reached its crescendo, the villains this show absolutely required made their presence known.
Tick. Tock.
The sound of a clock, underscored by blaring rock music.
The men who were about to collect payment for every act of villainy they'd inflicted these past months.
The Revolution.