Post by Notorious B.O.B. on Aug 27, 2018 1:53:41 GMT
"No, you don’t get it, Trent, I WAS HELD HOSTAGE"
“Yeah, but like, was there anything kinky goin’ on down in that sex dungeon?"
The pair sat together on separate sides of a booth at Bob’s favorite burger joint in downtown Boston. People streamed by outside the window and Bob couldn’t keep his eyes off of them. It was as though he was trying to catalogue each of their faces in the unlikely event he saw them again.
"Trent …"
His friend was still pissy that Bob had refused to sit out on the patio in the beautiful August weather. It had been a beautiful summer in Boston, but right now Bob was still a little gun-shy about public places.
"I don’t know what to tell you other than I was held against my will for a little more than two weeks. This dude tried to break me physically and mentally just because I ‘offended his god’, note the ‘little g’ god and not the ‘big g” God, eh. So he’s all up in arms because I refused to follow orders or some stupid shit so he gets it in his head that he’s going to extract a little revenge for his boss by giving me the Deliverance treatment."
“So you’re saying," Trent began only for Bob to cut him off.
"No, there was nothing sexual going on. The hell is wrong with you?"
”Not even a little butt stuff?” Trent shrugged and gently tapped on his bottle of rootbeer. “So what happens now? Like, you’ve already brought it to the attention of the higher ups at work, right?"
Pooler nods
“And they gave you a match against the dude, right?"
"Which is still weird considering he commited a felony, but yeah."
“Alright, so what’re you going to do about it now then? You won the match -"
"By disqualification because he didn’t care about winning …"
“Yeah, but a win is a win. But seriously, you going to let this rule our life now? I saw the way you acted when I parked the car … making me park up on the damn roof just because you didn’t like the lighting of the garage. I’ve known you longer than almost everybody else in this world and I’ve never known you to be scared. I mean, yeah, you’ve got that thing with snakes that makes you scream like a bitch, but still."
Trent shrugged his shoulders as Bob looked down at his drink, and then out at the street. The faces blended together after a while. A kaleidoscope of multicultural shades. Why was he expected one of those faces to suddenly jump out at him? Why was he expecting to see … him … at any given moment? Oracle might not have broken him in captivity, but releasing him back into the wild seemed to have done far more damage. Bob was free, but still trapped within the confines of his own mind. Constantly fearing the unknown. Every creak or loud noise caused a jump. People brushing up against him as he walked down the street caused him to pull back, withdraw as much as possible. He might not be a prisoner in the house that Angel Blake built, but he was certainly a prisoner in his own mind.
"I don’t know, I just …" he began, "I just don’t know if this is over or not."
“What, you think he’s going to pop out of a bathroom stall while you’re taking a piss and offer to hold your junk for you? Fucks sake man, you’re a man who has made a living punching and kicking people in the face. I’d like to think you’ve be able to handle yourself if this dude came at you again."
Bob smiles a hollow smile, his gaze falling once more upon the crowd outside.
"Yeah," he chuckled, "me too."
The hotel room was comfortable, far more so than the man standing at its center. For the better part of five minutes he’d stood there, rooted to the spot. His eyes danced across the room, taking it in as though trying to memorize every square inch. He’d quickly closed the door behind himself, locking the deadbolt and dropping his large duffle bag just to the side of the door before inching towards the closed bathroom door. He’d eased it open with the toe of his sneakers, eyes on the mirror that reflected the rest of the room behind the door. He’d moved aside the curtain to the tub and gone so far as to pry open the ventilation in the ceiling to look in there as well. In the main space, he’d kicked his way around the pair of beds, satisfied that neither had ‘hiding space’ beneath before taking up his current position in the center of the room.
He’d requested a room as high up as possible, but for a hotel that was only three stories tall there wasn’t very far to go. But he’d gotten an end unit on the third floor away from mostly all the other patrons. The hallway was quiet, as was the parking lot below his small balcony. He was happy to see ample lighting in the parking lot, and the police seemed to routinely drive through. For all intents and purposes, this was a safe space and he could relax … but he just couldn’t bring himself to do that.
With a sigh, he reached into his backpack and pulled out his laptop before falling sideways to the closest bed and opening the screen. A few taps and he was on his Twitch channel. He minimized the feed as he opened his Steam library and scrolled through the list of games. He tapped Torchlight and then began his stream.
"Hey, what’s up guys?" he said to the still minimal chatroom. "Back at it tonight with a little throwback game; I hope you guys light Torchlight, ‘cause I aim to beat this thing!" He laughs, but there’s no real humor behind it. Fact was, he was still a little upset that nobody had noticed his absence for a few weeks and it still hadn’t been addressed, so it just sat there like an elephant in the room. "Hey, you know what," he continued, "before we get to the fun stuff I just gotta come clean here. Now I know that you all come here to watch me game and try and forget about what’s going on in your own lives for a while. That’s why I try and keep things light in here; no drama, eh? But for as laid back and chill a space as we’ve worked to make this stream, I’m a little pissed that nobody reached out when I didn’t show up for my normal stream times. Like, I can see if I missed a show and nobody noticed if I only streamed once or twice a week - but guys, I’m streaming five or six days a week and I vanished for over two weeks … nobody thought to say anything?"
He holds his head in his hand for a moment before looking back up at the webcam, "I mean, I don’t expect ya’ll to have called the cops or whatever but there was radio silence coming from me and you all didn’t even post something on Reddit wondering what was up. Instead ya’ll just checked out Hobbs, Trump, and Ninja n’just forgot about ol’ Bob. That," he says with a sigh, "that just hurts. I go AWOL and nobody bats an eye; but as soon as I start streaming again you figure everything must be cool, right?
Wrong.
I mean, I don’t want to get into details here but I was not in a good place. Like, Farcry five style stuff, ya know? So here I am, ready to move on - but I just wanted ya’ll to know what was on my mind ‘cause it’s been eating me up and I haven’t really even wanted to stream these last few days."
He sighs again, his eyes dropping from the camera to the multicolored comforter as he collected his thoughts. He adjusted himself on the bed, sitting up a little straighter against the headboard as the chatroom continued to fill and talk amongst themselves. There was the usual smattering of ‘kappa’ and ‘kek’, but more than a few heartfelt apologies and hopes that Bob was doing better.
Fact was, after putting it all out there he was feeling better. This stream had been his escape, his lifeblood when everything else around him seemed to be falling apart. The prospect of then losing this was almost too much for him.
"Alright, enough heavy stuff - let’s get questing and talk smack about this week’s ‘victim’" he says with a grin. Torchlight fired up as he continued. "You guys know him, you love him, you’ve already seen him before … I present, Pax Stormcrow!"
There’s a quick pause for applause before Pooler continues, "Yeah, so after all the hullabaloo with their Best of Five series, Nighthawk just couldn’t overcome the odds and fell victim for the third time too young Mr. Stormcrow. I have to hand it to the pair of them as well, the fact that the series even went five matches just goes to show how equally matched they were in that ring, ‘cause they sure weren’t on paper.
You look at the pedigree of a guy like Nighthawk and he’s a guy that should have been a multi-time World champion by now in his career. But, for lack of better phrasing, he hasn’t done squat in this company since he joined. For all his build up as the ‘man of a thousand holds’, he’s just never been able to grab hold of those brass rings. He’s gone from being the ‘best in the world’ to mediocre at best.
But Pax? This is a kid who has all the markings of being somebody in any company he signs with. I’ve seen kids like him come and go and it's the same story each time. They show up, make some noise and then all of a sudden people start calling ‘em out for not having paid their dues like the rest and running them out.
Seems like you’ve heard quite a bit that of that yourself haven’t you, Pax? Your series with ‘Hawk went and proved that you’ve not only got the chops to hang with the veterans, but you’ve got the requisite skills, determination, and heart to come out on top as well. You turned the tables on a guy like Nighthawk and made him start doubting himself, start wondering if he had what it took to beat you. Now if you ask me, that’s a hell of a good thing!
I know, I know," he smiles, "Nighthawk isn’t the only guy who has pulled that age old adage about paying your dues. But the fact is that there are always going to be guys in that locker room who don’t respect you until they feel you’ve earned it; but that’s on them, brother. You’ve already taken a crack at the Strong Style belt and gave me a hell of a run for my money. You then went on to earn this second shot - that’s right, earned, because this match wasn’t something just magically bestowed upon you because you were in the right place at the right time. You battled through five grueling matches against a guy who many still use as the measuring stick of ring talent. You’ve come out the other side of that series with a hunger inside you, Pax; I can see it, you can see it, but just be warned. Don’t try to bite off more than you can chew.
I watched your matches, listened to your promos against ‘Hawk and it’s clear that he got in your head. For better or worse, you let the dude get inside you … rub you the wrong way … and it showed. There was sloppiness, there were mistakes; now in a match against Nighthawk you may have gotten lucky. But, like you said, by that fifth match he was tired, he was sore, he was close to being gassed. Mistakes that he’d have capitalized on if it had been your first match were missed and you live to fight another day. But our match? You can’t afford to make mistakes, Pax. There’s no ‘Best of’ to fall back on here. One match, one chance to go for broke and either soar … or crash and burn.
You’ve developed a chip on your shoulder, dude. Nobody put that thing there but you, ‘cause you’ve been trying so hard to be seen … to be noticed. You want so desperately to step out of the shadow of Nighthawk that you feel like you’ve been placed in, that you’ve lost sight of what matters. We, the people in the back who actually do know who you are, know that you’re not a Nighthawk clone. We understand that you aren’t just a younger, faster, stronger version of him. But see, that’s what people do - they compare the unknown to the known until they’ve made up their minds about them. We’ve all been through that coming up in the business.
Look at any of the greats and you’ll see that they were compared to others; heck even I went through a fun little period when I was compared to a guy by the name of AJ Phoenix back in nCw. Sure, there was a bit of a resemblance and our styles were similar but the dude was dick and it’s pretty obvious that there was a reason he didn’t survive the jump to IWF when we opened. Even guys like Jacobsen fielded comparisons until they found their groove and were able to break out of that mold and become who they wanted to be. That’s where your at, Pax. This is your jumping off point. You’ve earned yourself a shot at the Strong Style Championship, so don’t for one second think that anyone is going to take that away from you.
It’s time for you to take this push, take this momentum and shoot for the moon; ‘cause up until now you’ve just pushed hard enough to ‘be here’.
You’re better than that, we both know it. So bring your best, brother, ‘cause we both know that I’m not going down without a fight. I’ve overcame every obstacle that stood in my path on my way to winning this title, and I’ve overcome every adversity to hold it. Think you have what it takes to do what all others haven’t? Think you have what it takes to become a champion? Or maybe," he grins, "you think that just another aged veteran like Nighthawk who’ll go out with a whimper. S’that it? Well," he continues, lips pursed, "watch me!"
“Yeah, but like, was there anything kinky goin’ on down in that sex dungeon?"
The pair sat together on separate sides of a booth at Bob’s favorite burger joint in downtown Boston. People streamed by outside the window and Bob couldn’t keep his eyes off of them. It was as though he was trying to catalogue each of their faces in the unlikely event he saw them again.
"Trent …"
His friend was still pissy that Bob had refused to sit out on the patio in the beautiful August weather. It had been a beautiful summer in Boston, but right now Bob was still a little gun-shy about public places.
"I don’t know what to tell you other than I was held against my will for a little more than two weeks. This dude tried to break me physically and mentally just because I ‘offended his god’, note the ‘little g’ god and not the ‘big g” God, eh. So he’s all up in arms because I refused to follow orders or some stupid shit so he gets it in his head that he’s going to extract a little revenge for his boss by giving me the Deliverance treatment."
“So you’re saying," Trent began only for Bob to cut him off.
"No, there was nothing sexual going on. The hell is wrong with you?"
”Not even a little butt stuff?” Trent shrugged and gently tapped on his bottle of rootbeer. “So what happens now? Like, you’ve already brought it to the attention of the higher ups at work, right?"
Pooler nods
“And they gave you a match against the dude, right?"
"Which is still weird considering he commited a felony, but yeah."
“Alright, so what’re you going to do about it now then? You won the match -"
"By disqualification because he didn’t care about winning …"
“Yeah, but a win is a win. But seriously, you going to let this rule our life now? I saw the way you acted when I parked the car … making me park up on the damn roof just because you didn’t like the lighting of the garage. I’ve known you longer than almost everybody else in this world and I’ve never known you to be scared. I mean, yeah, you’ve got that thing with snakes that makes you scream like a bitch, but still."
Trent shrugged his shoulders as Bob looked down at his drink, and then out at the street. The faces blended together after a while. A kaleidoscope of multicultural shades. Why was he expected one of those faces to suddenly jump out at him? Why was he expecting to see … him … at any given moment? Oracle might not have broken him in captivity, but releasing him back into the wild seemed to have done far more damage. Bob was free, but still trapped within the confines of his own mind. Constantly fearing the unknown. Every creak or loud noise caused a jump. People brushing up against him as he walked down the street caused him to pull back, withdraw as much as possible. He might not be a prisoner in the house that Angel Blake built, but he was certainly a prisoner in his own mind.
"I don’t know, I just …" he began, "I just don’t know if this is over or not."
“What, you think he’s going to pop out of a bathroom stall while you’re taking a piss and offer to hold your junk for you? Fucks sake man, you’re a man who has made a living punching and kicking people in the face. I’d like to think you’ve be able to handle yourself if this dude came at you again."
Bob smiles a hollow smile, his gaze falling once more upon the crowd outside.
"Yeah," he chuckled, "me too."
He’d requested a room as high up as possible, but for a hotel that was only three stories tall there wasn’t very far to go. But he’d gotten an end unit on the third floor away from mostly all the other patrons. The hallway was quiet, as was the parking lot below his small balcony. He was happy to see ample lighting in the parking lot, and the police seemed to routinely drive through. For all intents and purposes, this was a safe space and he could relax … but he just couldn’t bring himself to do that.
With a sigh, he reached into his backpack and pulled out his laptop before falling sideways to the closest bed and opening the screen. A few taps and he was on his Twitch channel. He minimized the feed as he opened his Steam library and scrolled through the list of games. He tapped Torchlight and then began his stream.
"Hey, what’s up guys?" he said to the still minimal chatroom. "Back at it tonight with a little throwback game; I hope you guys light Torchlight, ‘cause I aim to beat this thing!" He laughs, but there’s no real humor behind it. Fact was, he was still a little upset that nobody had noticed his absence for a few weeks and it still hadn’t been addressed, so it just sat there like an elephant in the room. "Hey, you know what," he continued, "before we get to the fun stuff I just gotta come clean here. Now I know that you all come here to watch me game and try and forget about what’s going on in your own lives for a while. That’s why I try and keep things light in here; no drama, eh? But for as laid back and chill a space as we’ve worked to make this stream, I’m a little pissed that nobody reached out when I didn’t show up for my normal stream times. Like, I can see if I missed a show and nobody noticed if I only streamed once or twice a week - but guys, I’m streaming five or six days a week and I vanished for over two weeks … nobody thought to say anything?"
He holds his head in his hand for a moment before looking back up at the webcam, "I mean, I don’t expect ya’ll to have called the cops or whatever but there was radio silence coming from me and you all didn’t even post something on Reddit wondering what was up. Instead ya’ll just checked out Hobbs, Trump, and Ninja n’just forgot about ol’ Bob. That," he says with a sigh, "that just hurts. I go AWOL and nobody bats an eye; but as soon as I start streaming again you figure everything must be cool, right?
Wrong.
I mean, I don’t want to get into details here but I was not in a good place. Like, Farcry five style stuff, ya know? So here I am, ready to move on - but I just wanted ya’ll to know what was on my mind ‘cause it’s been eating me up and I haven’t really even wanted to stream these last few days."
He sighs again, his eyes dropping from the camera to the multicolored comforter as he collected his thoughts. He adjusted himself on the bed, sitting up a little straighter against the headboard as the chatroom continued to fill and talk amongst themselves. There was the usual smattering of ‘kappa’ and ‘kek’, but more than a few heartfelt apologies and hopes that Bob was doing better.
Fact was, after putting it all out there he was feeling better. This stream had been his escape, his lifeblood when everything else around him seemed to be falling apart. The prospect of then losing this was almost too much for him.
"Alright, enough heavy stuff - let’s get questing and talk smack about this week’s ‘victim’" he says with a grin. Torchlight fired up as he continued. "You guys know him, you love him, you’ve already seen him before … I present, Pax Stormcrow!"
There’s a quick pause for applause before Pooler continues, "Yeah, so after all the hullabaloo with their Best of Five series, Nighthawk just couldn’t overcome the odds and fell victim for the third time too young Mr. Stormcrow. I have to hand it to the pair of them as well, the fact that the series even went five matches just goes to show how equally matched they were in that ring, ‘cause they sure weren’t on paper.
You look at the pedigree of a guy like Nighthawk and he’s a guy that should have been a multi-time World champion by now in his career. But, for lack of better phrasing, he hasn’t done squat in this company since he joined. For all his build up as the ‘man of a thousand holds’, he’s just never been able to grab hold of those brass rings. He’s gone from being the ‘best in the world’ to mediocre at best.
But Pax? This is a kid who has all the markings of being somebody in any company he signs with. I’ve seen kids like him come and go and it's the same story each time. They show up, make some noise and then all of a sudden people start calling ‘em out for not having paid their dues like the rest and running them out.
Seems like you’ve heard quite a bit that of that yourself haven’t you, Pax? Your series with ‘Hawk went and proved that you’ve not only got the chops to hang with the veterans, but you’ve got the requisite skills, determination, and heart to come out on top as well. You turned the tables on a guy like Nighthawk and made him start doubting himself, start wondering if he had what it took to beat you. Now if you ask me, that’s a hell of a good thing!
I know, I know," he smiles, "Nighthawk isn’t the only guy who has pulled that age old adage about paying your dues. But the fact is that there are always going to be guys in that locker room who don’t respect you until they feel you’ve earned it; but that’s on them, brother. You’ve already taken a crack at the Strong Style belt and gave me a hell of a run for my money. You then went on to earn this second shot - that’s right, earned, because this match wasn’t something just magically bestowed upon you because you were in the right place at the right time. You battled through five grueling matches against a guy who many still use as the measuring stick of ring talent. You’ve come out the other side of that series with a hunger inside you, Pax; I can see it, you can see it, but just be warned. Don’t try to bite off more than you can chew.
I watched your matches, listened to your promos against ‘Hawk and it’s clear that he got in your head. For better or worse, you let the dude get inside you … rub you the wrong way … and it showed. There was sloppiness, there were mistakes; now in a match against Nighthawk you may have gotten lucky. But, like you said, by that fifth match he was tired, he was sore, he was close to being gassed. Mistakes that he’d have capitalized on if it had been your first match were missed and you live to fight another day. But our match? You can’t afford to make mistakes, Pax. There’s no ‘Best of’ to fall back on here. One match, one chance to go for broke and either soar … or crash and burn.
You’ve developed a chip on your shoulder, dude. Nobody put that thing there but you, ‘cause you’ve been trying so hard to be seen … to be noticed. You want so desperately to step out of the shadow of Nighthawk that you feel like you’ve been placed in, that you’ve lost sight of what matters. We, the people in the back who actually do know who you are, know that you’re not a Nighthawk clone. We understand that you aren’t just a younger, faster, stronger version of him. But see, that’s what people do - they compare the unknown to the known until they’ve made up their minds about them. We’ve all been through that coming up in the business.
Look at any of the greats and you’ll see that they were compared to others; heck even I went through a fun little period when I was compared to a guy by the name of AJ Phoenix back in nCw. Sure, there was a bit of a resemblance and our styles were similar but the dude was dick and it’s pretty obvious that there was a reason he didn’t survive the jump to IWF when we opened. Even guys like Jacobsen fielded comparisons until they found their groove and were able to break out of that mold and become who they wanted to be. That’s where your at, Pax. This is your jumping off point. You’ve earned yourself a shot at the Strong Style Championship, so don’t for one second think that anyone is going to take that away from you.
It’s time for you to take this push, take this momentum and shoot for the moon; ‘cause up until now you’ve just pushed hard enough to ‘be here’.
You’re better than that, we both know it. So bring your best, brother, ‘cause we both know that I’m not going down without a fight. I’ve overcame every obstacle that stood in my path on my way to winning this title, and I’ve overcome every adversity to hold it. Think you have what it takes to do what all others haven’t? Think you have what it takes to become a champion? Or maybe," he grins, "you think that just another aged veteran like Nighthawk who’ll go out with a whimper. S’that it? Well," he continues, lips pursed, "watch me!"
Well howdy there pardner.