Post by E̷N̷I̷G̷M̷A̷ on Oct 29, 2021 20:45:46 GMT -5
Chaos. The whole point of the thing was your basic trickster bullshit, a little group exercise to prove their unity. He understood the point. Wasn't keen on the whole thing, on the purpose outside of general mischief. Still, the alternative of sitting in the glorified broom closet they called a "luxury suite", lost in his own head until curtain call held little appeal. So they were doing this. Trying to take over the ship with some coordinated attack.
He kept seeing that 'conference' room, the scribbling all over the whiteboards propped against the walls and the trash bin overflowing with empty Styrofoam cups. The plan had gone through several revisions, the whole premise so muddled now that he wasn't even sure what the objective was any longer. Still, it was nice to have a role, much less be considered a vital member of the team. Inching along the ventilation duct, pushing the tactical backpack in front of him, he felt way too much like some shitty stuntman working some heist movie. That brought a chuckle to his lips – Ocean's Five. He'd given them all names in his head, had said it aloud in jest and they'd actually liked it. They each had a role. A job.
The Siren
The Distraction
The Bomber
The Loose Cannon
The Fixer
It was better than some of the others on Team Raven, he reckoned.
He was the latter, the most ironic of them all. What was he fixing, exactly? Saboteur just didn't have the same ring.
"Does anyone actually know how to get to the Bridge?" The radio clipped to his hip crackled, the voice of SEB coming through. He tried to reach to answer it, wanted to remind the damned kid that the blueprints were pinned at the top of their group chat. Was he the only one who'd paid any attention to that? There wasn't enough space to maneuver here, and he kept crawling forward, feeling like an asshole for ignoring the question until it came again, repeated a bit more insistently. "Does anyone actually know how to get to the Bridge? Over."
He didn't envy Bryce, how the young pup must be feeling as the last-minute replacement – he was no stranger to that imposter syndrome bullshit, after all. It was easy to feel useless when nearly everyone else on the team was the same age as his daughter.
"I think we passed a br-" Came Bert’s voice through the radio, but then there was a moment of silence before he finally came back. "Nevermind, Ahmya said that was a dock, yo. Over."
Hot-boxing the engine room – he'd been given a task suited for his skills, allowed to roam freely and indulge in his favorite past-time while the others did the heavy lifting. Bruce wondered if that would play out during the match as well, if Bert was going to lollygag on the outside, picking his spots and reaping the rewards. Could he be trusted? After suckling at the teat of the wildly unstable Matthew Knox, that was unclear. Best case, Raven and Warstein would go after the kid, looking to grind that old axe on an easy mark. Sins of the Father.
Or maybe he was the easy target? No doubt Legacy would bring up his brief stint in Project: Honor, ol' Shawnie gloating about how he'd beaten Bruce and a host of others in a rumble to earn that Tyrant moniker he'd been swinging around like a 13-inch member ever since. Generally, those given that label don't wave it around, ride it down main street like a fucking ticker-tape parade. Wrestlers. What a weird bunch.
"Fuckin' twat," he muttered, knowing it was more sour grapes on the whole company rather than his feelings towards the members of Legacy – Raven and his sidekick (side chick Betsy notwithstanding). He understood the premise of the group, the fact that James Raven would always bill himself front and center but surround himself with far more talented folks in the hopes that nobody would see his glaring faults. It wasn't that he hated Legacy; he'd just never understood the appeal of Raven. Warstein had seemed like a decent enough fellow when they'd crossed paths briefly working on that DC series for SplatTV.
"P:H… the fuckin' litmus test for assholes." He chuckled at the joke, sliding forward a few more feet. It was a good thing he wasn't claustrophobic, or this could be a disaster.
The radio had fallen silent, the chatter dropping off and he wondered if he was just getting shit reception up here or if everyone was out there getting their shit done. The thought that he was lagging made him hasten that slither a few moments later he could see the destination ahead. The duct ended up ahead at a T-junction, the hub where the wires from the security room below fed through the wall into the ceiling, hidden behind a bulkhead. He was directly over the server, could feel the air-conditioning coming through the vent and it was a balm to his sweaty brow. It was easier to access things from here, less likely to cause a scene – less brute force required although he wished he'd pawned this job off on someone a bit less bulky.
Awkwardly, he moved into position and opened the panel, seeing all the gloriously colour-coded wires jumbled up like a container full of neon gummy worms.
"Fuck." He'd expected them to be neat, organized so that he could splice the right ones quickly, bypassing the security monitors outside the engine room, the captain's quarters and the bridge. Distantly, he felt more than heard a rumble. He checked his watch, seeing that it was two minutes off the mark – somehow, he knew that noise was Tony blowing his load, albeit slightly prematurely.
He reached into the hole, LED penlight between his teeth as he tried to find the master feed. If the C4 had already been blown, there was no time for him to finesse this. No time for him to cherry-pick the right ones.
"Amateur bullshit," he grumbled. Something had obviously gone wrong. Tony had a history in the Army, something to do with munitions, he thought. Fumbling for the radio on his belt, he tapped the button.
"Tony… you alright? Over."
Nothing but static answered him and he threw the radio down, frustrated. A moment later he pulled out the laptop. The first thing he did was plunge his hand into the mess, ripping a handful of wires free. He started cutting them, splicing them as he went. There wasn't time to set up a loop, to clear pathways so that the security monitors would show empty hallways. He had to improvise.
Deep down, he believed that Bert and Tony were going to fuck up. SEB was meant to be the distraction, the wildcard – so pretty that he could draw them in like a damned Venus Flytrap. He could be counted for that, if recent social media interactions with the opposition could be counted as gospel. The whole lot of them were in New York now, thick as thieves with the rest of the rotten cunts who'd sent him packing from OPW long before it had crumbled and rebranded into FIGHT! NYC. Only Corey Black was on the outside of that, old Ozymandias himself.
The GOAT.
The King of Wrestling.
The Tyrant.
So much masturbatory bullshit—wait! That was it. A perfect idea came to him.
He pulled up a browser, tapped a few keys into the incognito browser and the familiar orange and black of PORNHUB filled the screen.
"Aye," he muttered, quickly typing in a few keywords.
He needed something jarring, something distracting. It helped that he found a girl with chartreuse hair covered in tattoos. The face was all wrong but from behind she was a dead ringer for Vhodka Black – another damaged wannabe Lolita with a boatload of Daddy issues.
All the wires were spliced, and he wrapped it in electrical tape to make sure none of them came loose before pressing play. He lifted the radio to his lips, thumbing the button to let them know he'd done his part. "FUCK ME DADDY! I'VE BEEN A BAD, BAD GIRL!" The sound of wanton moans filled the small space, and he dropped the radio, immediately hitting mute on the laptop. Nothing happened – the goddamned laptop was frozen. He couldn't shut it down or it would break the connection.
"…one teensy problem," he heard Tony's voice over the radio, heard Seb answering him as he tried to get the laptop to respond. "Kinda, sorta, used too much C4 and ended up falling into the walk-in freezer in the kitchen. It's locked from the outside, and my sausage and beans need a defrost…"
Bruce shook his head, trying like hell to turn down the volume in some way. He was going to get caught. The sound was echoing like mad up here. He thumbed the radio button again.
"Jesusfuck. Shit. Had to improvise." He muttered into the radio, "it's done. Feeds are cut. Ways are clear–"
"AHGAWD! FUCK! FUCK ME WITH THAT BIG DICK! FUUUUCK!!"
"Bloody fuck; sorry… still getting goddamned PornHub on here! Gimme a second," he closed the laptop's lid, leaving it there as he started to back away from the junction. The metal groaned under his weight – he'd gone the wrong way and was now directly over the grate above the computer servers. Finally, mercifully the porn soundtrack cut off.
The radio crackled, fading in and out with Bert's voice, "…hashtag modest McAlroy Monday, yo!!"
He could see the ship's security screens through the grate, could see Vhodka's doppelganger being stuffed six ways to Sunday in every orifice. She'd probably see this as flattering, his choice in anarchic interruption a sort of homage. Maybe, on some level, it was? Once upon a time, he'd been in awe of her skills, her resilience and the way she didn't give two shits about what anyone thought. He envied that most of all. Of all the ones on the opposing team, she was the one he was most conflicted about facing – she'd shown up on the eve of his first championship win, had offered him congratulations and an opportunity to go somewhere he might be better appreciated. He took her at face value, flattered despite the friction he felt with the others she'd brought along for the so-called kidnapping. It had turned into a sort of coercion, and he'd been so damned desperate for more glory that he'd jumped all over it. The best parts of OPW had thrived, had gone on to something better and a part of him wondered what would have happened if he'd stuck it out. Would he have ended up back in the city where it all started? The thought of working alongside most of those people held little appeal. Like Warstein and Raven, most of them were toxic assholes, happy to repeat and regurgitate the party line.
He'd liked Vhodka, had believed it was mutual until recently. Now he suspected he'd just been lying to himself. It wasn't altruism that had sent her to his door way back when. It had been self-preservation. She had been doing the same thing James Raven was. He could see that now. Clarity was a bitch.
Maybe it was time to just retire. To admit he was past his prime and get the fuck off Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Maybe it was time to admit that Atara Themis was a terrible judge of character and that they were all going to fuck this thing up spectacularly.
"Nae," he grumbled, shaking his head in defiance. That turned out to be a mistake, as everything wobbled, and his shoulders wedged in too tight. He was stuck. He was absolutely fucked. Tony was going to freeze to death. SEB was going to end up in the brig. He was going to die of starvation up here, wedged into this little space and nobody would even notice when he didn't show up for the match. They'd probably celebrate – the weakest link took himself out.
"Hell no." He tried to grab the strap on the radio with his teeth, missing by mere inches. Every tendon strained but he couldn't quite reach.
They used to book loser leaves town matches – hell Bert's mentor Knox had gotten out of his deal in Reno with one. Maybe that's what this should have been. Maybe then he wouldn't feel like he was letting the whole team down just by boarding this damned boat.
The People's GOAT.
The Tyrant.
The King of Wrestling.
"There can only be one," he muttered, trying to wiggle free. "King Shit of Turd Island. The three-headed Hydra of snarky bullshit. There's the tie, though. That's their link. Not tenacity. Not skill. Not even fuckin' longevity. It's the numbers game, the faceless arseholes who bolster their own pack and leave the rest out to dry – they dogged ol' Clauson so hard he couldn't even hold onto his first name. What a goddamned travesty. And we think we can compete with that? We're fucked and this… this's what my life's become now. Repeating the same motions, living in the moment, for the moment. There's nothing beyond this. Nothing more to earn, to prove. What happens when we win this? Nothing. What does Atara gain if we pull this off? Bragging rights? A reprieve? Nah. Nothing like that. We get to do the same shit all over again – nothing changes. They go on with their little circlejerk. We mean nothing to them."
He sighed, "they mean nothing to me."
He felt so fucking empty, more aware of the ache deep inside him than ever – no amount of gold was ever going to fix that. He needed to stop lying to himself.
Which ego would implode first? His or theirs?
Would they all follow Corey Black's lead? He'd beaten Raven, after all – he'd earned his stripes. He wondered what they'd say about him, how this match would be received by the critics. Maybe this wasn't a team builder – maybe this was forcing them all to exercise their demons. What a goddamned hoot.
Whose ass was he going to have to kick first? Betsy? Vhodka?
Did it matter?
He finally twisted free, feeling a twinge in his shoulder as he reached for the radio.
"Friends, I've—"
The grating under him gave way, half the ductwork tearing from the ceiling in the process, and he fell in a tangle of twisted metal. When the dust settled, he tried to move, surprised that the table he'd broken on impact had absorbed most of his fall. He groped in the debris, finding the radio just as the room plunged into darkness. Had he overloaded the circuits with his porn prank or had they cut the lights so they could ambush him?
He tensed, bringing it up towards his face as he thumbed the talk button again.
"So, a bit of a snag—"
The door was kicked in, half a dozen cruise ship staff spilling into the room.
"Never mind," he muttered, "security's here."
He kept seeing that 'conference' room, the scribbling all over the whiteboards propped against the walls and the trash bin overflowing with empty Styrofoam cups. The plan had gone through several revisions, the whole premise so muddled now that he wasn't even sure what the objective was any longer. Still, it was nice to have a role, much less be considered a vital member of the team. Inching along the ventilation duct, pushing the tactical backpack in front of him, he felt way too much like some shitty stuntman working some heist movie. That brought a chuckle to his lips – Ocean's Five. He'd given them all names in his head, had said it aloud in jest and they'd actually liked it. They each had a role. A job.
The Siren
The Distraction
The Bomber
The Loose Cannon
The Fixer
It was better than some of the others on Team Raven, he reckoned.
He was the latter, the most ironic of them all. What was he fixing, exactly? Saboteur just didn't have the same ring.
"Does anyone actually know how to get to the Bridge?" The radio clipped to his hip crackled, the voice of SEB coming through. He tried to reach to answer it, wanted to remind the damned kid that the blueprints were pinned at the top of their group chat. Was he the only one who'd paid any attention to that? There wasn't enough space to maneuver here, and he kept crawling forward, feeling like an asshole for ignoring the question until it came again, repeated a bit more insistently. "Does anyone actually know how to get to the Bridge? Over."
He didn't envy Bryce, how the young pup must be feeling as the last-minute replacement – he was no stranger to that imposter syndrome bullshit, after all. It was easy to feel useless when nearly everyone else on the team was the same age as his daughter.
"I think we passed a br-" Came Bert’s voice through the radio, but then there was a moment of silence before he finally came back. "Nevermind, Ahmya said that was a dock, yo. Over."
Hot-boxing the engine room – he'd been given a task suited for his skills, allowed to roam freely and indulge in his favorite past-time while the others did the heavy lifting. Bruce wondered if that would play out during the match as well, if Bert was going to lollygag on the outside, picking his spots and reaping the rewards. Could he be trusted? After suckling at the teat of the wildly unstable Matthew Knox, that was unclear. Best case, Raven and Warstein would go after the kid, looking to grind that old axe on an easy mark. Sins of the Father.
Or maybe he was the easy target? No doubt Legacy would bring up his brief stint in Project: Honor, ol' Shawnie gloating about how he'd beaten Bruce and a host of others in a rumble to earn that Tyrant moniker he'd been swinging around like a 13-inch member ever since. Generally, those given that label don't wave it around, ride it down main street like a fucking ticker-tape parade. Wrestlers. What a weird bunch.
"Fuckin' twat," he muttered, knowing it was more sour grapes on the whole company rather than his feelings towards the members of Legacy – Raven and his sidekick (side chick Betsy notwithstanding). He understood the premise of the group, the fact that James Raven would always bill himself front and center but surround himself with far more talented folks in the hopes that nobody would see his glaring faults. It wasn't that he hated Legacy; he'd just never understood the appeal of Raven. Warstein had seemed like a decent enough fellow when they'd crossed paths briefly working on that DC series for SplatTV.
"P:H… the fuckin' litmus test for assholes." He chuckled at the joke, sliding forward a few more feet. It was a good thing he wasn't claustrophobic, or this could be a disaster.
The radio had fallen silent, the chatter dropping off and he wondered if he was just getting shit reception up here or if everyone was out there getting their shit done. The thought that he was lagging made him hasten that slither a few moments later he could see the destination ahead. The duct ended up ahead at a T-junction, the hub where the wires from the security room below fed through the wall into the ceiling, hidden behind a bulkhead. He was directly over the server, could feel the air-conditioning coming through the vent and it was a balm to his sweaty brow. It was easier to access things from here, less likely to cause a scene – less brute force required although he wished he'd pawned this job off on someone a bit less bulky.
Awkwardly, he moved into position and opened the panel, seeing all the gloriously colour-coded wires jumbled up like a container full of neon gummy worms.
"Fuck." He'd expected them to be neat, organized so that he could splice the right ones quickly, bypassing the security monitors outside the engine room, the captain's quarters and the bridge. Distantly, he felt more than heard a rumble. He checked his watch, seeing that it was two minutes off the mark – somehow, he knew that noise was Tony blowing his load, albeit slightly prematurely.
He reached into the hole, LED penlight between his teeth as he tried to find the master feed. If the C4 had already been blown, there was no time for him to finesse this. No time for him to cherry-pick the right ones.
"Amateur bullshit," he grumbled. Something had obviously gone wrong. Tony had a history in the Army, something to do with munitions, he thought. Fumbling for the radio on his belt, he tapped the button.
"Tony… you alright? Over."
Nothing but static answered him and he threw the radio down, frustrated. A moment later he pulled out the laptop. The first thing he did was plunge his hand into the mess, ripping a handful of wires free. He started cutting them, splicing them as he went. There wasn't time to set up a loop, to clear pathways so that the security monitors would show empty hallways. He had to improvise.
Deep down, he believed that Bert and Tony were going to fuck up. SEB was meant to be the distraction, the wildcard – so pretty that he could draw them in like a damned Venus Flytrap. He could be counted for that, if recent social media interactions with the opposition could be counted as gospel. The whole lot of them were in New York now, thick as thieves with the rest of the rotten cunts who'd sent him packing from OPW long before it had crumbled and rebranded into FIGHT! NYC. Only Corey Black was on the outside of that, old Ozymandias himself.
The GOAT.
The King of Wrestling.
The Tyrant.
So much masturbatory bullshit—wait! That was it. A perfect idea came to him.
He pulled up a browser, tapped a few keys into the incognito browser and the familiar orange and black of PORNHUB filled the screen.
"Aye," he muttered, quickly typing in a few keywords.
He needed something jarring, something distracting. It helped that he found a girl with chartreuse hair covered in tattoos. The face was all wrong but from behind she was a dead ringer for Vhodka Black – another damaged wannabe Lolita with a boatload of Daddy issues.
All the wires were spliced, and he wrapped it in electrical tape to make sure none of them came loose before pressing play. He lifted the radio to his lips, thumbing the button to let them know he'd done his part. "FUCK ME DADDY! I'VE BEEN A BAD, BAD GIRL!" The sound of wanton moans filled the small space, and he dropped the radio, immediately hitting mute on the laptop. Nothing happened – the goddamned laptop was frozen. He couldn't shut it down or it would break the connection.
"…one teensy problem," he heard Tony's voice over the radio, heard Seb answering him as he tried to get the laptop to respond. "Kinda, sorta, used too much C4 and ended up falling into the walk-in freezer in the kitchen. It's locked from the outside, and my sausage and beans need a defrost…"
Bruce shook his head, trying like hell to turn down the volume in some way. He was going to get caught. The sound was echoing like mad up here. He thumbed the radio button again.
"Jesusfuck. Shit. Had to improvise." He muttered into the radio, "it's done. Feeds are cut. Ways are clear–"
"AHGAWD! FUCK! FUCK ME WITH THAT BIG DICK! FUUUUCK!!"
"Bloody fuck; sorry… still getting goddamned PornHub on here! Gimme a second," he closed the laptop's lid, leaving it there as he started to back away from the junction. The metal groaned under his weight – he'd gone the wrong way and was now directly over the grate above the computer servers. Finally, mercifully the porn soundtrack cut off.
The radio crackled, fading in and out with Bert's voice, "…hashtag modest McAlroy Monday, yo!!"
He could see the ship's security screens through the grate, could see Vhodka's doppelganger being stuffed six ways to Sunday in every orifice. She'd probably see this as flattering, his choice in anarchic interruption a sort of homage. Maybe, on some level, it was? Once upon a time, he'd been in awe of her skills, her resilience and the way she didn't give two shits about what anyone thought. He envied that most of all. Of all the ones on the opposing team, she was the one he was most conflicted about facing – she'd shown up on the eve of his first championship win, had offered him congratulations and an opportunity to go somewhere he might be better appreciated. He took her at face value, flattered despite the friction he felt with the others she'd brought along for the so-called kidnapping. It had turned into a sort of coercion, and he'd been so damned desperate for more glory that he'd jumped all over it. The best parts of OPW had thrived, had gone on to something better and a part of him wondered what would have happened if he'd stuck it out. Would he have ended up back in the city where it all started? The thought of working alongside most of those people held little appeal. Like Warstein and Raven, most of them were toxic assholes, happy to repeat and regurgitate the party line.
He'd liked Vhodka, had believed it was mutual until recently. Now he suspected he'd just been lying to himself. It wasn't altruism that had sent her to his door way back when. It had been self-preservation. She had been doing the same thing James Raven was. He could see that now. Clarity was a bitch.
Maybe it was time to just retire. To admit he was past his prime and get the fuck off Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Maybe it was time to admit that Atara Themis was a terrible judge of character and that they were all going to fuck this thing up spectacularly.
"Nae," he grumbled, shaking his head in defiance. That turned out to be a mistake, as everything wobbled, and his shoulders wedged in too tight. He was stuck. He was absolutely fucked. Tony was going to freeze to death. SEB was going to end up in the brig. He was going to die of starvation up here, wedged into this little space and nobody would even notice when he didn't show up for the match. They'd probably celebrate – the weakest link took himself out.
"Hell no." He tried to grab the strap on the radio with his teeth, missing by mere inches. Every tendon strained but he couldn't quite reach.
They used to book loser leaves town matches – hell Bert's mentor Knox had gotten out of his deal in Reno with one. Maybe that's what this should have been. Maybe then he wouldn't feel like he was letting the whole team down just by boarding this damned boat.
The People's GOAT.
The Tyrant.
The King of Wrestling.
"There can only be one," he muttered, trying to wiggle free. "King Shit of Turd Island. The three-headed Hydra of snarky bullshit. There's the tie, though. That's their link. Not tenacity. Not skill. Not even fuckin' longevity. It's the numbers game, the faceless arseholes who bolster their own pack and leave the rest out to dry – they dogged ol' Clauson so hard he couldn't even hold onto his first name. What a goddamned travesty. And we think we can compete with that? We're fucked and this… this's what my life's become now. Repeating the same motions, living in the moment, for the moment. There's nothing beyond this. Nothing more to earn, to prove. What happens when we win this? Nothing. What does Atara gain if we pull this off? Bragging rights? A reprieve? Nah. Nothing like that. We get to do the same shit all over again – nothing changes. They go on with their little circlejerk. We mean nothing to them."
He sighed, "they mean nothing to me."
He felt so fucking empty, more aware of the ache deep inside him than ever – no amount of gold was ever going to fix that. He needed to stop lying to himself.
Which ego would implode first? His or theirs?
Would they all follow Corey Black's lead? He'd beaten Raven, after all – he'd earned his stripes. He wondered what they'd say about him, how this match would be received by the critics. Maybe this wasn't a team builder – maybe this was forcing them all to exercise their demons. What a goddamned hoot.
Whose ass was he going to have to kick first? Betsy? Vhodka?
Did it matter?
He finally twisted free, feeling a twinge in his shoulder as he reached for the radio.
"Friends, I've—"
*CRASH*
The grating under him gave way, half the ductwork tearing from the ceiling in the process, and he fell in a tangle of twisted metal. When the dust settled, he tried to move, surprised that the table he'd broken on impact had absorbed most of his fall. He groped in the debris, finding the radio just as the room plunged into darkness. Had he overloaded the circuits with his porn prank or had they cut the lights so they could ambush him?
He tensed, bringing it up towards his face as he thumbed the talk button again.
"So, a bit of a snag—"
The door was kicked in, half a dozen cruise ship staff spilling into the room.
"Never mind," he muttered, "security's here."
