The League, Redux: Seasons 8 and Beyond Game Thread

[Derek B]

Is this marketable enough for you?

A two minute video has began to circulate around social media, going viral in certain circles of wrestling fans, people who hate their jobs and people who think they are better at life than they really are.  The host of the "Chatty" Cathy Graham show is full of her usual fake TV enthusiasm, the sort that would put even retail workers to shame.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I'm joined today by professional wrestler and two time champion of The League, Nuclear Templeton.  You look good tonight in that suit, very different from your usual ring gear"

"This little thing?  You like it?  I like it, it's so marketable"

Nuclear sits in the centre of the guest couch, his muscular heavyweight frame covered in fine Italian materials that we are more familiar with almost seeing his fine Italian friends wearing.  Nuclear smiles at Cathy the way a shark smiles at a fish.

/cut/

Cathy's face tells a story her mouth is trying to avoid, her eyes widening as she finds it increasingly difficult to keep her plastic smile on her face.

"And that's why I left Reno. Once you've watched the light go out of a man's eyes, it really changes you, don't you think Cathy?

"I... uh.... I... yes?"

"Cathy, do you not like my backstory, is it not marketable enough for you?"

/cut/

Cathy lips are pursed, her smile all but gone after what has clearly been a difficult interview.  But she has obligations to fulfil, sponsors to please, questions she's mandated to ask in order to justify having her guests on the show.  Against her instincts, she soldiers on.

"So, Mr Templeton, you've are champion of The League once again, what does the future hold for you?"

Nuclear's shark-like grin bears no shortage of malice as he "cordially" welcomes the question he's been waiting on.

"Wrapping up the interview so soon? I guess time really flies when we're having fun.  The future?  I'm SO glad you asked."

Nuclear pulls himself up from the guest couch, takes an intimidating step towards Cathy who visibly squirms backwards in her chair before Nuclear walks to one of the main cameras, pulling it into an extreme close up, his eyes showing no sign of the false friendliness he has been putting on for the interview so far

"The future is simple.  I am League Champion now, I will be League champion again.  I am the main event whether you want to accept it or not.  I am inevitable.  But the cowards in charge of The League refuse to give me what I have earned.  They hide behind stats and metrics and marketing tricks, and try to claim that others are more worthy while I rain Nuclear hellfire down on them all.  It's just as well that Phoenix retired never to rise again, because now he has a front row seat to be wrecking his marketable toys on my way to another championship.  Because I am the champion, I am unstoppable, I am... The Oppressor"

 

[ShadowedFlames]

THE LEAGUE, FOURTH INTERLUDE PART ONE: HAMMER TO FALL

The Aerie School of Professional Wrestling—Bel Air, Maryland

April 22, 2024, 1:41 p.m. local time

 

“Time!”

Both students in the ring stepped back to their respective corners as I climbed up onto the apron and stepped between the ropes. “Mister Garcia, nice recovery and improvisation. If I was a casual watcher I’d never have expected it. Mister Russell, good on you for being ready to work around it. That’s all for today; same time next week?”

Both young men nodded and left the ring as I remained in the center of it, looking around. The gym was emptier than normal, as the nice spring weather had most people out enjoying the outdoors. Plus things had slowed down a little since The League had begun, and I knew I was to blame for that. What was planned to be a two, maybe three season stint is about to start its fifth season in a month or so as things seemed to just continue to fall The League’s way. The YouTube deal, along with other sponsorships, actually had The League decently in the black. I wasn’t about to stop that momentum knowing that this was really the last dance for this idea under my banner.

In a few hours, the Omega Division crew would descend on The Aerie, and we’d have another round or maybe two of matches as the postseason continued. But my mind wasn’t on what was impending. It wasn’t even on the sudden twists that week fourteen had taken, denying Nocturne and Kichi Hida promotion berths when they seemed to have things under control earlier in the season.

No. My attention was turned to the top part of The League, and more specifically, the two-time League Champion. Here was a man whose bruised ego could smother The League and doom it to perish for good. That interview he was on this morning did The League no favors in the positive media department. Last I checked, telling someone you watched a man die in Reno went out of fashion with the late Johnny Cash. Fates alone only knew what sort of twisted individuals would be watching The League now, hoping to see that happen before their very eyes.

Yes. I have that little faith in humanity as a whole.

This was a situation I was going to have to be careful with. Templeton had put me in a bad spot, and any number of reactions would be devastating for the perception of The League. A hasty reaction would do none of us any good.

Not for the first time in the last few months, my mind wandered to another idea, hare-brained as it was. If Templeton only respects force…why not give it to him?

No. I promised Tori when Carnage shut down for good that I was done. I was done chasing the glory, the spotlight. There were any number of folks who relied on me now to be their mentor, to guide them into the same realm that I had been a part of for over twenty years now. One of them had even made a name for herself in the Delta Division.

My in-ring days were done, and I had no regrets.

My body was on auto-pilot as the two students I had just dismissed left the locker room and left the building. I was alone in a gym, three wrestling rings set up, one surrounded by an old-school steel cage. Everything I could ever want I had within a quarter-mile of me. This school, The League, a friend and kindred spirit, my wife, and our two children. A far cry from the “working poor” life I endured growing up not even a mile from this spot.

Any further ruminations were interrupted by my right-hand-woman entering The Aerie. Marriage and reclaiming her motherhood had done Amelia a world of favors. The brooding, taciturn woman who was our twentieth member of The League in Season Seven was gone, replaced by a woman who lived for her daughter and her hubby. If I hadn’t witnessed the turnaround myself I’d never have believed it.

It’s the look on her face that strikes me a worrisome as she comes to within speaking range. “Will, we’ve got a problem.”

“Look, Amelia, I told you. I’ve got ninety-nine pro—”

“I’m being serious, Will. I sent you a link on your phone. Go grab it and take a look.”

For Amelia to interrupt an attempt at humor…that’s not good. Leaving the ring, I jogged back to my office, grabbing my cell phone off the desk. Several missed emails, a voicemail from an unknown number, and finally the link Amelia had mentioned. A few quick taps on the screen brought the video embedded in the article into motion.

“Yes, Steve, I’m standing outside a hotel here in Newark, New Jersey, and the scene behind me, as you can tell, is unsettled at best. Authorities state that hotel employees were asked to deliver a meal to one of the guests in the hotel, and when no one answered, management went inside to find one person unconscious with multiple bruises, and blood splattered throughout the room.

“Authorities state that 29-year-old William Stennick was rushed to the hospital, and treated for multiple contusions of the face and a grade-3 concussion. He is in serious but stable condition.

“Newark police currently are investigating the crime, and have refused further comment at this time as they attempt to track down persons of interest.”

The normal outro and transition by the newscasters went unheard as Amelia walked into Will’s office. She was first to speak. “How many knew he was in Newark preparing for a flight west?”

“I certainly didn’t. You may have been the only one since you helped set up transportation, right?”

“Yeah. He had been complaining of headaches recently so I offered to set the flights up as a favor to him. Let him get home and have time to recover before next season. But Will…that sounds like someone deliberately assaulted him.”

“It does, yes.”

“…are you thinking what I’m—”

“Not a word, Amelia.”

“But—”

“Not. Another. Word. If you’re going to trust me on only one thing ever, do it now. Head home, talk in person to Terry. All of us in the inner circle—you, Tori, and I—need to discuss things with him in person. Let him pick a place and time and let us know. I’ll explain then.”

She nodded, spinning on her heels and taking off like a shot out of The Aerie. The last time I had seen that look on her face, it was when a gang had beaten her to within a hair’s breadth of her life. She knew I was worried, and had good reason to be. This wasn’t some random act of violence. No…this was sent as a message, specifically to those of us in The League. The fact that most of the damage was focused on the head instead of the body screamed it to me.

Most people wouldn’t know the name William Stennick. He wanted it that way. Most people around here knew him by the name he’d borne to the ring both in Japan and in The League, and now I was going to have to do some creative division manipulation once again. Grade-3 concussions were no joke, and I wanted to give him all the time he needed to recover.

The Beta Division could get by for a season without The Mastodon, especially given the alternative was losing him permanently due to rushing him back.

Biting back an expletive, I sat down at my computer and started looking at the layout of the divisions. I was going to need a few backup plans ready just in case this ended up being the first of a wave of injuries this off-season.

\___(^)___/

Annie’s Playground, Bel Air, Maryland

April 22, 2024, 4:18 p.m.

“You said you needed to see all of us in person, Will?”

“I did, Terry. Thanks, and thanks for thinking of this spot so we can let the kids play while we handle business away from possible prying ears.”

“Do I need to—”

“No. You’re the one I actually want most in this conversation.”

“Will, you’re starting to scare me.”

“Hon, I’m sorry,” I replied, turning to look at my wife. “But this situation may be getting out of hand and I want to try to get ahead of it before we lose everything.”

“It can’t be that bad, can it?”

I shifted my gaze, going between Tori and Terry to her left. “Remember the situation with the Callonis?”

Tori paled a bit and I saw Terry’s shoulders tense up. Amelia didn’t understand the question but saw that it had affected her husband, and turned to me.

“Before your time here, Amelia. Long story short, sometime around 2011, an Italian mob group tried to blackmail me, they alienated my then-wife from me, got her pregnant, and then after their leader was killed by the police while trying to off me, she had a mental break and ended her own life immediately after the divorce was decreed, there in the courtroom. All of that could be traced back to one Italian family of criminals who thought that by blackmailing me, they could make a bunch of money betting on professional wrestling.”

“And you survived all of this?”

“Barely. Tori was the one who had to mentally and emotionally stitch me together. Physically, aside from a flak jacket bruise, I was fine. And somewhere in the midst of all of that, the first six seasons of The League were run, too. I didn’t have a choice but to survive.”

“So how does all of that link to this?”

“I’ll answer that, dear,” Terry chimed in as he squeezed Amelia’s hand. “What Will is very carefully not saying is that he suspects a certain someone’s friends, of Italian origin, to be behind the beatdown that The Mastodon received in his hotel room.”

I knew my face scrunched at hearing it out loud from someone other than me, and I’m fairly certain my face lightened a shade or two as well. Thankfully, Amelia didn’t seem to notice. “So why isn’t he saying it?”

“You never know who might be listening, or where. That’s why he wanted us to meet somewhere public. Less chance of someone overhearing, and in public there’s less chance of someone trying to make a spectacle of things. It doesn’t hurt to be overcautious. Will knows that from experience. Plus this way he can say with a clean conscience that those words never left his lips.”

An uneasy silence settled over the four. A few yards away, Melody was playing ring-around-the-rosy with Elyssa, while Will II tottered along near them. All three were within sight of the elder Will and Tori, the latter of whom never took her eyes off the children.

The silence was broken a few moments later by Amelia again. “So now what?”

“Now we start shoring up our defenses. It may be too late to simply get rid of his manager; that’s a ticket to mutually assured destruction. Same if we do anything to him. But we can prevent The League as a whole from falling under their crosshairs. If we can direct them down certain paths, ones that we’ve prepared and are ready for, we’ll be in fine shape to prevent further problems and maybe even counterattack as well.”

“And how do we do that?”

Something must have shown on my face as Terry and Tori both glared at me. My wife spoke first. “No. You said you were done. You have a family now!”

“She’s right, Will. You can’t think only about yourself. Elyssa, Will, and Tori are going to be affected by this.”

“I know this. But y’all are not aware of the entire story.” That’s when I grabbed my phone and played the voicemail from the unknown number.

A stunned silence followed the minute-long voicemail, finally broken by Tori. “So…that’s it? They’re determined to come after you physically?”

“It sounds like it.”

Tori let out a most-unladylike exclamation. Terry, ever the professional, added, “We have to presume they’re going to be serious about this. We also have to presume that both the local and county police are compromised. We may have to go to the state level, even the feds.”

The words sat sourly in my stomach as I heard them. This would be the certain doom of The League. No one would want to stick around after this. Maybe he had already won.

But, perhaps there was hope yet...

“Or...fine, we still go to higher-ups, Terry. But we play a stalling tactic. We work on agitating them enough that they slip and make a mistake. And then we execute the Rook’s Gambit to perfection.”

“Will, no!”

“Tori. Love, please, listen. They won’t bite any other way. It has to be me. Otherwise, they come after you and the kids to get to me and I will be cold and stiff in the ground before that happens!”

Another long, uncomfortable silence followed before Tori spoke. “You haven’t even wrestled in four years in a competitive match. You’d be no match for him!”

My shoulders shook in a silent chuckle, and Amelia caught sight of it and laughed. “You have something up your sleeve, don’t you, Will?”

“I do. It’s high time I cashed in a few favors. And you forget, hon...what do we collectively own here in town?  Would y'all mind giving me a minute or two alone? Go ahead and round up the little ones, I’ll treat for ice cream at the Arctic Circle. I have a phone call or two to make.”

The group split up—with Tori looking worriedly at me—as I pulled my phone out of a pocket and dialed a phone number from memory. Five seconds later…

“Wilson.”

“Thirteen years ago, I did your department a professional favor, as a personal one to my then-fiancee. I never planned to cash this marker in, not after what it cost Elyssa…but I have to now.”

A pause, then the male voice responded. “It’s about damn time, Mr. Prydor. We’ll be in touch tomorrow. Expect us.”

The call dropped without further warning, and I heaved a sigh. That was one part. Once again, I dialed a number from memory, since it was one of about four dozen numbers I did not want leaked to the public if anything ever happened to my phone. One ring became two, became three before the call connected, to a different voice. “Start talking, it’s your quarter.”

“It’s Will. I need you to spread the word around on the quiet. I need everyone—all five divisions, with one lone exception—to whip me back into fighting shape over the next couple of months. You’re essentially the locker room leader here, that’s why I’m coming to you.”

“Finally going to do something about the top dog, boss?”

“Gonna try. This has gone on too long with me turning the other cheek.”

“All right. Better late than never.”

“I know. Believe me, I’m kicking myself over it.”

“I’ll spread the word. See ya soon, boss.” That call disconnected without fanfare as well.

The dice were cast. The opposition wanted to bring out their big guns, and threaten my family?

It was time that turnabout became fair play. For when the opposition decided to take action, they’d find that nothing they had expected would be the same. They wouldn’t find someone reeling and trying to react to the unexpected.

They would find a fully-prepared and willing-to-fight William Prydor waiting. I may not carry the moniker of The Phoenix any longer, but the same heart still beat in my chest. The same will still burned in my chest.

And those who made the mistake of threatening my heart, my very reason for life?

They would soon come to regret it. For I would see it done.

 

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

And now, the behind-the-curtain portion of this post.

 

There were some changes to the expected divisions, given the pending returns of Daniel Simmons to Gamma and Erick Gibson to Delta that were not accounted for in the closing weeks of Season Eleven. The addition of Simmons to Gamma meant that Lance Heartilly, who finished sixth in the division, was sent back to Delta to make room for Simmons to return, and Gibson’s return (essentially in place of Sterling Silver) combined with Heartilly’s added drop to Delta meant that Nocturne was also bumped out of Delta due to the glut of PCs in the division.

With the sudden hospitalization of The Mastodon, Nocturne gets that spot back as things open up from Beta and trickle down. The current division structure looks like this, with around a month of the off-season remaining:

ALPHA DIVISION

Nuclear Templeton (defending champion)

George Mastachas

Brandy McDonald

Brian Blackfield

Jean-Paul Ouilette

Mel O’Hallister

Lucas Molina (promoted from Beta)

Christian Priest (promoted from Beta)

 

BETA DIVISION

De’siree Mitchell (relegated from Alpha)

Reverend Johnny Gross

Yoshii Nakamatsu

Billy Norris

Angela Wassermann

Pulsar (avoids relegation due to this event)

Monty Dhillon (promoted from Gamma)

Diego Rodriguez (promoted from Gamma)

 

GAMMA DIVISION

Blood River (relegated from Gamma)

Kichi Hida

Indigo Rose

Big Scott Weathers

Daniel Simmons (returning from bereavement)

Lance Heartilly (retains Gamma position due to this event)

Rock Sheridan (promoted from Delta)

Leon de Ramos (promoted from Delta)

 

DELTA DIVISION

Markus Clay (relegated from Gamma)

Terrance Stevens (relegated from Gamma)

Nocturne (keeps her spot in Delta as result of this event)

Diamond

Scott Stevens

Mickey Steele

George Stevens

Erick Gibson (returning from averting hostile takeover of company)

[ShadowedFlames]

Been slowly puttering away at Omega rounds, in another night or two I should be to the point where I’m ready for another update as I’ll be 2/3 complete. At least, that is the hope. 

Work currently has me mentally run ragged so at night my attention span for League stuff is a bit low. I’ve been barely able to get two rounds of Omega stuff done the last two nights when normally four or five in the norm. This is what happens when you’re down half your staff and for two days you were the only person in a 4-person unit who was actually at work due to a myriad of reasons.