Round 3 (Part 1): Express (and Enjoy) Yourself

Clients Posts : 56 Join date : 2020-02-24

Emmy’s WrestleWorld Appt.
Neutral Territories

Round 3 (Part 1): Express (and Enjoy) Yourself 7cb0a5f9a34a4a97b9e3b0d4822af8ea

While it wasn’t quite as luxurious as her previous accommodations while Shogun Champion, Emmy still had one of the nicer homes in the area. Being one of the top draws in the company counted for something, right? The place was big enough for her to have a comfortable guest room for her bodyguard Sonya who would stay with her while they were visiting WrestleWorld for business. The guest room was empty, however, as Emmy made her rounds in an oversized navy pinstriped pajama set. Sonya wasn’t much of a ‘people person’, so Emmy had one clue as to where she would be: the balcony. And there she was, simply staring out into space. Emmy pulled up one of the chairs and sat next to her, both of them peering out over the skyline.

“Do you have any idea what fuckin’ time it is?”

“....................”

“Trouble sleeping?”

“A little.”

“You’re not the one with the big match coming up, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“What is it that’s bothering you? Wanna talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“......Did you have the dream again?”

Sonya fidgeted and looked away, obviously uncomfortable with the question and the subject matter. She very much wanted to leave the issue there but she could tell when Emmy would press. The American had a way about her with certain things: most times when her friends were struggling with something she left them alone to figure it out. Other times she was insistent on refusing to be shut out, doing whatever she could to help. Not talking didn’t seem like it would be worth the effort.

“I did.”

“I have a question. When you came with me, was part of it because of some shit that was happening over there?”

“Hai. When I was there, even though I made it through the dojo system, I wonder sometimes if it was even worth it. Every day being called names, picked on because I was one of the bigger girls, things like that. They did everything they could to break me. The physical things, the training, the stretching, the hazing? You heal from that. You don’t heal from some of the other things. The way they would talk, the way they treated me like I was nothing because I was clumsy starting.”

“But you did heal. You proved em wrong. You made it through and you were a wrestler, you WILL be a wrestler when you decide to go back. You can’t let that shit keep holding onto you like that. I’m not saying let it go completely, but use it. Use it for inspiration. Use it to keep moving forward.”

“There’s something that I never got about you: you’re a rich woman already. You could have a cozy job somewhere, be a model, an actress, whatever. Why do you do this? What’s your inspiration? What’s your ghost that you’re chasing?”

“Lemme tell you a story, Sonny. When I was in middle school, I was going to a public school. Before I got heavily into water polo in high school, I played basketball. I was the smallest girl on the team and was one of the point guards. Every practice girls used to beat the shit out of me. Most of them were not as well off, bigger, whatever. They saw this skinny little girl and thought I was just playing on the team to check off a box for college, you know? Then when we scrimmaged I would play pretty well and talk shit back even while they were roughing me up. I don’t know if some of them ever actually LIKED me, but I think that the way they treated me as a teammate I at least earned respect. There was somewhere I wanted to be, something I wanted to do...and I wasn’t going to let anybody stop me from seeing through what I had in mind for myself. I wanted to be that team’s starting point guard. By the end of my eighth grade year, damn it, I was starting.”

“.....Fine story.”

“Thanks.”

“But that’s not what I asked you.”

“Nani? What do you mean?”

“Why are you here in WrestleWorld? What’s the ghost that you’re chasing?”

It was Emmy’s turn to bristle uncomfortably. She scoffed for a moment and got up, making her way back towards the bedroom.

“Some ghosts we gotta deal with on our own. You have yours, I have mine. Let me deal with mine the way I please. I’m going back to bed, got a radio show to do in the morning. Don’t stay up here all night, huh?”

“You know something, Emmy, when it comes to certain things you’re an extreme hypocrite. You know what I’m getting at right? You want to help others sometimes, but then you want no help at all.”

“Yeah, I know. Night, Sonny.”

“......Night.”

“GOOOOOOOOOD MORNING! Coming to you live from the Capitol Media Studios here in the WrestleWorld Capital of the Neutral Territories, it’s me, Digger Hearns and Big Tonga with the Morning Sports Block on Westwood One, the most popular radio network here in the Territories. We’ll have all our usual rundowns of all the football coming up this weekend. We’ll talk to ESPN’s David Pollack about the big LSU and Southern Cal vacancies on the college football front. Premier League preview coming up, A quick recap of some of the Major League Baseball playoffs going on but, big man, we’ve got a very special guest here to kick off the show.”

“Damn right, family. We have one of WrestleWorld’s top Clients, the Platinum Standard herself, Emmanuelle. She’s got a huge match with Reginald Dampshaw III coming up this weekend for a spot in the King of the World tournament finals. You know she’s come out strong since that loss of the Shogun Championship at Arcadia and has been blowing up all over the world.”

“That’s right, man. She’s getting settled in here, getting the headset on and all that. Former Project Honor Warrior Rising Champ, Former WrestleWorld Shogun Champion, one of the top wrestlers on the planet. Emmanuelle, thanks for joining us, welcome to the show.”

“Thank you, Digger, Big T. Listen to you guys when I have the chance while traveling.”

“Thank you for that. Real talk. So….let’s just jump right to it! You and Dampshaw for a spot in the tournament final, the most grueling tournament in WrestleWorld. You have said from the beginning that this tournament is an opportunity for you to make a statement. What statement do you think you would make by not only getting to the final but by beating a dangerous man like Reginald?”

“......... What has he done in WrestleWorld that makes him so fearful? Why should I be scared?”

“Well he’s-”

“Done what? Squashed a few kids who didn’t deserve to be here? Beat a few washed up people past their prime and of no use? Hell, he just beat half of one of the most mediocre tag teams on the planet. Why should I be scared?”

“He’s been on a tear of late. I think that him beating Pendragon the way that he did has given him a bit of a springboard into this tournament. He’s got every motivation to prove to the world that he’s this sort of God, you know? I think that motivation is a powerful thing and having that giant of a bodyguard that he has could even trump your associate Sonya.”

“-sigh- Look. I didn’t want to come across like this, but look at his record in big matches and look at mine, okay? He’s failed at, bare minimum, THREE championship challenges that I could document on major WrestleWorld PPVs. He couldn’t close the deal for the Shogun Title or the American Dream title. When I saw that his name popped up on those little tournament bracket graphics that go up on TV broadcasts, I’m surprised that his actual name popped up instead of ‘Arata Asakura’s Bitch’. Look at what I’ve done compared to him: I win a six-pack challenge full of fellow debutants to make a statement. I win the Dreamscape match as the favorite with everyone in the field gunning for me. I beat the guy that’s Dampshaw’s kryptonite, clean as a whistle. Then on top of that, I go to another company and win ANOTHER belt against a man that’s twice my size, literally, in Scott Oasis, a wrestling legend. When people say that I should proceed with caution, that I should be wary...that doesn’t jive with me. Everything he’s talking about doing, being a God, sitting on top of the wrestling world? I already have that in the rearview mirror, you get me?”

“Reginald seems to be one of the latest in a long line of people that resent how you operate in the wrestling business and-”

“In what respect do you mean? I didn’t mean to interrupt you there but just to clarify, you know?”

“In the sense of you not giving the respect that the business deserves. A lot of people seem to take your pretty calm, nonchalant approach to things as disrespect.”

“I say this pretty often: this is a job to me. I didn’t grow up wanting to be a wrestler, and even though I enjoy a lot of the perks that I get I don’t enjoy the way this stuff runs. I don’t like how people get on top and then try to politic and play games to stay there. I don’t like the way places treat newbies just trying to get their foot in the door. I don’t like how you can claim a ‘meritocracy’ but then have people that you play favorites with, that you give opportunity after opportunity to even when they don’t deserve it.”

“To be fair, you have been given your fair share of the spotlight.”

“I have.”

“I saw they made you into a character for a new wrestling game coming out in Japan.”

“That’s nice, I saw the model they used though and the gear is sadly a few months out of date. They don’t have 2021 Emmy on the game. But that’s still surreal and something not everyone gets. Burning Legend: Heroes of the Ring is the title, I'm told. Should be out in the US next spring.”

“You had that big match in Japan with Sakuya Goto for the Shogun Title, the first defense outside of WrestleWorld for any WrestleWorld title.”

“I had to advocate for that. So much campaigning went into that most of the people out there will never get how close that match was to not happening. And you have tons of people, who don’t pick up their ball and go home, of course, that lose a title and get relegated to the backburner. Most former champions in any wrestling promotion in the world get a rematch if they ask for it. I made my intentions known that night and got nothing. I had to fall back in line and enter this tournament just like everyone else. That’s a perversion of equality and let me explain why. I believe in wrestling people should be treated FAIRLY, not EQUALLY. Why do I have to enter this tournament with people who haven’t proven what I’ve proven? I mean, I’m going to do it anyway and win it, but why are you making me jump through hoops that people who are on my level don’t have to? It’s bull.”

“Dampshaw asked this question and I would like to ask you, why enter this tournament? What does being in this field genuinely mean to you? What would winning this tournament mean?”

“First of all, it would mean a lot to me simply as bragging rights. I have close friends in this sport, people like Diantha Rosso and my trainer Carlos, who have never won a big tournament like this as a singles competitor. Second, it would make good on my promise to get back to the top after I fell off at Arcadia. It would prove that I’m the best that the company has to offer and that I should be catered to accordingly. Last, I want to banish a certain narrative that creeps up when people talk about me. For some reason, people seem to think that I just smile, look good, take selfies and s**t like everything’s copathetic all the time. They don’t see the work that goes in. I don’t walk around happy all the time, bragging about what I have. I’m constantly working for more. More money, more titles, more leverage with the companies I work for. That trophy, crown, whatever it is, isn’t the target. It’s an arrow. There’s other things that I mean to do in WrestleWorld and the first step of all is to win this tournament. People look at me and they just assume that because I’m pretty they won’t get f***ed up. That’s on them.”

“As you size up your opponent as well as the other two competitors meeting in the other semifinal, what do you see as the key to winning this?”

“Well, as far as the other semifinal goes, it’s Asakura versus a crustacean. A giant freakin’ crab. Whoever wins that, I don’t care. I would love to draw the crab and get the fastest main event win in WrestleWorld history in the final, but Arata is someone who I have history with. I know how to get in his head, how to beat him at his own game in the ring. He’s not been the same since I took the Shogun title from him again and I would love the opportunity to show that my victory was no fluke. Right now, I’m focused on the task at hand though. As much as I’ve talked down on Reginald, he’s good. He’s brutal, he’s tough, and he definitely has a belief that it’s his time to do...whatever it is he claims he’s going to do. Eat worlds, restart time, build the Daleks from Doctor Who in his basement, whatever. He really needs this to make his name, so I expect every dirty trick, every ploy to get it done. I don’t believe in destiny and things being preordained. We make everything for ourselves. That’s not just wrestling, that's business, school, life, whatever. He can talk about it being his time to become God, but he has to beat someone who has already been a Goddess to claim that title and he’s not ready for that in my eyes.”

“One last thing before we have to let you go, the producer is in my ear screaming we’re going long: Oregon or UCLA?”

“C'mon….You already know the answer to that. I’m a Bruin through and through. UCLA. I would love to be at the Rose Bowl myself, but when you gotta work, you gotta work!”

“Emmy, thank you so much for your time this morning and good luck with everything this weekend and beyond.”

“Thanks for having me, fellas. The pleasure’s been all yours.”