Don't you know people write songs about boys like you?
Aug 1, 2013 16:49:19 GMT -5
Post by styg on Aug 1, 2013 16:49:19 GMT -5
So here we are: A grimy, dilapidated room with a bare bulb shedding jaundiced light. It's doing a very sickly kind of illuminating, and that light is mostly just making the shadows bigger and less defined. The floorboards are stained and splintered, and the peeling paint on the walls is of the sort of mottled cream colour which you can tell was white a very, very long time ago.
It's sparsely furnished. Dominating the centre of the room are two inflatable armchairs: one in pink with a floral print, one in plain electric blue. A string of multicoloured fairy lights hangs across the back wall. A cheap blue plastic vase full of cheap white and purple plastic flowers sits on a cheap red plastic end table.
Also on the table is a bottle of red wine, with maybe a third left in it.
Sat forward on the blue chair, sipping some wine from a purple plastic beaker as she stares at the camera, is Leanne Evangelista. Lying back on the pink chair with her legs crossed and an arm behind her head is Laurel Anne Hardy. With her other hand, she takes a swig of wine from a green mug bearing a jolly cartoon face.
The women are in their "Dragons Unleashed" ring attire, the one they use in FGA and WARPED, although Laurel has a monochrome The Naked And Famous T-shirt pulled over hers, while Evangelista has on a plain black button-up blouse.
Laurel swallows some wine, takes a quick breath and holds it for just a tiny fraction of a second, then begins to speak.
"When I rammed..."
...and she pauses for a moment, taking care over her words...
"...a branding iron," she continues, "Into Alexander StarrZoe's ribcage, I did it with a smile on me face."
And demonstratively, in both of the relevant senses of that word, she smiles a friendly smile.
"When I repeatedly slammed Brad Jackson's face into an electrified steel cage, it wasn't with malice; I played a little countin' game in me head. When I held the prongs of a light tube to Katsutoshi di Limones' throat and drove it against the mat, it was nothin' personal - it was just youthful hijinks."
Leanne just enjoys her wine, still apparently feeling no need to say anything.
"See, I like violence," continues Laurel, then holds up her free hand in a 'wait a second' gesture, "But not, you understand, because I'm some kind of sick psycho who gets her jollies by hurting people. I'm a very upbeat person - ask me mates, honestly. I'm all about happy, me. Dancin', flowers, bright colours, all that. It's just that, well, if you have to hurt someone, you might as well... y'know, make it fun, yeh? Fightin's just an adrenaline rush, isn't it, an' people wouldn't be in this business - certainly not at this kinda level - if they couldn't handle a little bit of pain."
She finishes her wine and refills it. Leanne, who's already finished her own, says, "Here," and holds her hand out. Laurel passes the bottle across and Leanne drains the last of the alcohol into her own cup.
"You know my accolades," continues Laurel after a gulp of wine, "You know the names I've beaten. It's safe to say I know me way around a bloodbath. I'm hardly shy when it comes to brutality an' sickening acts. But Malcolm Drake now, Malcolm... oh, Malcolm. I... really don't like sayin' this, y'know. I try not to dwell on negativity or think the worst about people, but basically, people like you - you get on my bloody tits so fuckin' much!" she exclaims, face creased up in what would seem to be... disappointment. She's leaning forward now.
"Honestly, mate. Darkness, and screaming and carrion all that shit... no. Stick on some whale song, drink some green tea, an' get the fuck over yourself, you self-indulgent bastard. Listen to some Ke$ha or Swedish House Mafia or something. You'll feel a lot better about yourself, trust me." As she unleashes this diatribe, Leanne smirks into her wine, then reaches behind the red table and pulls another bottle up which she sets to opening.
Laurel's too focused on the matter and hand, waving her arms about. She doesn't even seem to notice as her gesticulations cause her to spill some wine up her own wrist. "Urgh. Look, I'm sorry to harp on about it, but you have no idea how fuckin' angry all that 'dark an' twisted' bollocks makes me. Maybe that's what you want, an' if so mission accomplished I guess, so congrats, 'cause omigod, any time anyone starts rantin' about monsters feastin' on bodies, I just wanna stab 'em in the bloody vocal cords." She finally pauses for a moment, to sink some of her drink. Then it's right back to it. "Listen to yourself, Malcolm, you're one step away from wearin' a mask and threatening to purify the sinners, and let's be honest, once you've crossed that line there's no hope. That's an Ol' Yeller job, that is." And she mimes leading a dog round a corner and shooting it in the head.
Then she gestures a thumb at both herself and Leanne, and says, "Now I know both of us have pulled some shit in our time, especially with The Asylum, but something people need to understand is that we, The Asylum, are not psychos. Everything we did, every act we've committed, has been for a reason. An' I mean a good reason, not just 'to prove our dominance' or 'to watch the world burn' or some trite teenager garbage like that."
Leanne clears her throat. "The Asylum, Ell... better talk about that."
Laurel nods. "Oh yes, we better had. Where to start, where to start? That's the thing." They both cast around for a hook for a moment, then Laurel smiles and says, "Howbout this: A disturbing but charismatic man. Bags of talent despite... apparently.... coming out of nowhere? No history but he clearly knows what he's doin'. A dark man with an incomplete soul, guided by visions of destruction an' bloodshed. His words might not always make much sense, but you can feel the power and wisdom behind them."
Hardy sits back and drinks some of her wine while Evangelista nods and asks, "Does that sound familiar, Dom?"
"But the difference between Malcolm Drake an' Noumenon," says Laurel, taking over again, "Is that Noumenon led us to victory."
The girls glance at each other for a moment and Leanne clarifies, "We're not sayin' you guys can't win your matches, of course. It's pretty obvious you can. Pretty obvious you guys are dangerous opponents, an' like any opponents who've proven their ability, I'm very excited to be facin' yez."
"'specially you, Dom," nods Hardy in agreement, "Gold Rush? Solid work. Takin' the title off Chris Q, even if it was only for five minutes, nice job. Beatin' Ryan Kidd, Pat Junior an' K-Hard in the same match? No easy feat there. But, see... wins aren't the same thing as victory. You can pin someone's shoulders for three, or make 'em tap out, you can even pick up some titles, but are those your goals?"
"You've made it clear, lads, you 'ave bigger goals than that."
"Before the first crow descended, before you two revealed your alliance, before you attacked Akrista O'Hare then got run off by Pat Junior, back when all this was just, I'unno, snippets of shadows of wings flittin' against the Sun... Malcolm, you talked about pecking the corpse of FGA. Meat stripped from the bones, I believe you used that analogy, or somethin' very similar. Mass graves. Funeral pyres. The end of people. The end of FGA. The end of wrestlin'."
She tilts her head a little, and with one hand, reaches over for Leanne to give her a refill. "Here we are, oh..." and with a theatrical flourish, she checks the watch she isn't wearing, "Seven months later, and - yeah. The halls remain. The pillars still stand. Hell, the plaster's barely fuckin' chipped, mate. Never mind dead; FGA ain't even snifflin'. Wrestling as we know it stands firm. You've run a few people out of town, and that's about it. See, when it comes down to it, you guys are no different to most factions in this sport. LEGION, The Godfathers, Blood Circle, White Nights, The Empire of Blood, those guys Stryker had hangin' on his words for a while, whothefuckever. You talk about ending wrestling, or this company or that mindset, or shaping things in your own image."
"AbominationZ," mutters Leanne as she starts to unlace one of her boots.
"Yeah, AbominationZ now, they've actually got pretty close to endin' WARPED, I'll have to give them that. Maybe they even have, in body. But not close enough, not in spirit, because they can't get past the one faction who's actually reshaped wrestlin' in a significant way any time lately. An' I don't just mean bogarted some titles for a while, you understand. I mean really made a lasting, far-reaching change. An' that faction was, well..."
Predictably, she points at herself as she says with a shrug, "Us."
She shows off a tattoo on the inside of her right wrist, and Leanne removes her boot to display matching ink on her ankle. It should be familiar both to FGA fans, as Serena Raine has the same symbol on her wrist, and to FRONTIER fans, as Matt Kail has it on his forearm.
Laurel speaks without either pride or regret; this is simply a description of things that happened. Those who've followed the Dragons' promos in WARPED may know that they have very strong opinions on what they and their allies did all those years ago, but here and now, they're betraying nothing. "Global Extreme Wrestling - a much bigger, richer, better connected, longer established company than FGA, mind you - no longer exists, an' that's because we ended it. We broke the roster's resolve, we played mind games with the owner, we spread the cracks through the power structure, and in the end GEW collapsed because of us - just as we'd promised it would. Noumenon led us to accomplish our goal, an' he did it without crap about feasts an' monsters an' suffering."
"Weeeell," points out Leanne without looking up from relacing her boot back up, "There was a little bit of it."
"Maybe a little," concedes Laurel, "But not enough to piss me off particularly badly or anythin'. But yeah anyway, point is, when we vowed to end a major company, we did exactly that. Seven months on from vowin' to end FGA, how close even are you? Tick tock, Malcolm, but the party don't stop. You've spilled a bit of blood, you've seen the back of a couple of guys. And how close are you to real victory in what you claimed you were gonna do?"
She shoots a derisive sneer in the camera's direction.
"Or... is all that beatin' of wings just to waft some smoke around? Are the crows' beady eyes reflected in mirrors?" She leans a little closer with a knowing smirk playing across her lips. "Are you guys, ultimately, just another bunch of people who want to hurt people or hold some titles? Is that what the talk of resurrection and the cure for FGA's cancer is... movin' the goalposts? Is that who your idol really is behind the veil, Dom? And, like Toto, will the Dragons tear it aside to show a charlatan who doesn't know what the hell he's even doing?" This is accompanied by a mimed gesture of a curtain moving to one side.
After draining her wine and setting the cup down, Laurel slowly, cockily, leans back with her arms folded behind her head. "Time to show me what you're really capable of, lads, because quite frankly, I don't think you guys have it in you to take the damage you've done to another level."
Leanne refills her wine, and while she's at it, pours some more in Laurel's mug too.
Laurel gives a little half-apologetic shrug. "Oh, you know, like we said, we're not tryin' to denigrate your ability to royally fuck up someone's day in or out of the ring. You've proved that plenty times. But that don't impress me much. I've been in the ring with some of the most dangerous people alive, an' fucked up is a day at the office. How much blood have The Murder spilled... what container would it fill? A large coke bottle, maybe? A punch bowl? Or even a beer keg? The blood The Asylum's spilled would fill a fucking oil tanker," she says with a rather arrogant grin. "So I'm offering you a chance, Murder. A chance to prove to yourselves how brutal you can be."
And she leans back forwards again, resting her forearms lazily on her knees. "Once this tournament's done with, how about this: Malcolm Drake, Dom Harter, Bob Pooler versus Laurel Anne Hardy plus any other two Asylum members of your choice, in the match type of your choice. I'll start the bidding with barbed wire ropes an' fans bring the weapons, but if you've got a better idea, I'm all ears. Could be in FGA, could be in FRONTIER, could be on neutral ground. All the same to me."
"Speakin' of neutral ground," cuts in Evangelista, "Don't forget I wanna talk about the other thing."
"Oh aye, that's right. Uh, be my guest," she says, gesturing to her friend to go ahead.
Leanne shrugs. "Nah, you finish your thing first."
"I'm pretty much done, mate. If I say much more, I'll prob'ly just start repeatin' meself."
"Yeah," says Leanne with a polite cough, "'Start.'"
Laurel says nothing, but she jabs Evangelista in the ribs with a fingernail.
"OW! Okay, well, Chandler Scott, this is mainly for you, although it concerns a lot of other people so listen up. See this FGA vs FRONTIER thing coming up? We're proud to rep FRONTIER, an' to test ourselves against the best FGA has to offer, but that's as far as it goes. An' in a few weeks when we're the Mid-Atlantic Tag Team Champions, we won't be swannin' away with the belts and braggin' about how we stuck it to FGA. We'll stay and defend them for as long as we 'old them, an' do it with the same pride and respect we've given the GFC World Tag Team Championship an' the WARPED Tag Team Championship."
"Hell," adds Laurel, pouring the last of the second bottle of wine into the two cups, "No-one's done more than us to defend WARPED from AbominationZ, an' officially, we're not even on their roster."
"So we'll wrestle at the joint show, Scott," continues Leanne, "An' do our best to help FRONTIER win. But we are NOT part of your army, an' we are NOT gonna sell out our friends an' our allies in FGA. Likes of Serena an' Alexia, hell even Kevin an' Jason, mean a damn sight more to us than you do. An' if you have any sneak attacks or the like planned, we won't be part of it. Laurel's in FGA this weekend to test The Murder, I'm there to test myself against 'em, an' we're both there to advance to the final of Dynamic Duos. That's all. All the shit between you, K-Hard, both companies' managements - that's not our war. We got wars of our own to worry about without bein' footsoldiers in yours."
Laurel worriedly checks her imaginary watch again, then announces, "We're just here to wrestle. Our only messages are for the other teams in the tournament. Malcolm, Dom, see you in a few... when you find out what happens to crows when they try to fight dragons."
And the girls clink their cups together and toast the upcoming match as the scene fades out.
It's sparsely furnished. Dominating the centre of the room are two inflatable armchairs: one in pink with a floral print, one in plain electric blue. A string of multicoloured fairy lights hangs across the back wall. A cheap blue plastic vase full of cheap white and purple plastic flowers sits on a cheap red plastic end table.
Also on the table is a bottle of red wine, with maybe a third left in it.
Sat forward on the blue chair, sipping some wine from a purple plastic beaker as she stares at the camera, is Leanne Evangelista. Lying back on the pink chair with her legs crossed and an arm behind her head is Laurel Anne Hardy. With her other hand, she takes a swig of wine from a green mug bearing a jolly cartoon face.
The women are in their "Dragons Unleashed" ring attire, the one they use in FGA and WARPED, although Laurel has a monochrome The Naked And Famous T-shirt pulled over hers, while Evangelista has on a plain black button-up blouse.
Laurel swallows some wine, takes a quick breath and holds it for just a tiny fraction of a second, then begins to speak.
"When I rammed..."
...and she pauses for a moment, taking care over her words...
"...a branding iron," she continues, "Into Alexander StarrZoe's ribcage, I did it with a smile on me face."
And demonstratively, in both of the relevant senses of that word, she smiles a friendly smile.
"When I repeatedly slammed Brad Jackson's face into an electrified steel cage, it wasn't with malice; I played a little countin' game in me head. When I held the prongs of a light tube to Katsutoshi di Limones' throat and drove it against the mat, it was nothin' personal - it was just youthful hijinks."
Leanne just enjoys her wine, still apparently feeling no need to say anything.
"See, I like violence," continues Laurel, then holds up her free hand in a 'wait a second' gesture, "But not, you understand, because I'm some kind of sick psycho who gets her jollies by hurting people. I'm a very upbeat person - ask me mates, honestly. I'm all about happy, me. Dancin', flowers, bright colours, all that. It's just that, well, if you have to hurt someone, you might as well... y'know, make it fun, yeh? Fightin's just an adrenaline rush, isn't it, an' people wouldn't be in this business - certainly not at this kinda level - if they couldn't handle a little bit of pain."
She finishes her wine and refills it. Leanne, who's already finished her own, says, "Here," and holds her hand out. Laurel passes the bottle across and Leanne drains the last of the alcohol into her own cup.
"You know my accolades," continues Laurel after a gulp of wine, "You know the names I've beaten. It's safe to say I know me way around a bloodbath. I'm hardly shy when it comes to brutality an' sickening acts. But Malcolm Drake now, Malcolm... oh, Malcolm. I... really don't like sayin' this, y'know. I try not to dwell on negativity or think the worst about people, but basically, people like you - you get on my bloody tits so fuckin' much!" she exclaims, face creased up in what would seem to be... disappointment. She's leaning forward now.
"Honestly, mate. Darkness, and screaming and carrion all that shit... no. Stick on some whale song, drink some green tea, an' get the fuck over yourself, you self-indulgent bastard. Listen to some Ke$ha or Swedish House Mafia or something. You'll feel a lot better about yourself, trust me." As she unleashes this diatribe, Leanne smirks into her wine, then reaches behind the red table and pulls another bottle up which she sets to opening.
Laurel's too focused on the matter and hand, waving her arms about. She doesn't even seem to notice as her gesticulations cause her to spill some wine up her own wrist. "Urgh. Look, I'm sorry to harp on about it, but you have no idea how fuckin' angry all that 'dark an' twisted' bollocks makes me. Maybe that's what you want, an' if so mission accomplished I guess, so congrats, 'cause omigod, any time anyone starts rantin' about monsters feastin' on bodies, I just wanna stab 'em in the bloody vocal cords." She finally pauses for a moment, to sink some of her drink. Then it's right back to it. "Listen to yourself, Malcolm, you're one step away from wearin' a mask and threatening to purify the sinners, and let's be honest, once you've crossed that line there's no hope. That's an Ol' Yeller job, that is." And she mimes leading a dog round a corner and shooting it in the head.
Then she gestures a thumb at both herself and Leanne, and says, "Now I know both of us have pulled some shit in our time, especially with The Asylum, but something people need to understand is that we, The Asylum, are not psychos. Everything we did, every act we've committed, has been for a reason. An' I mean a good reason, not just 'to prove our dominance' or 'to watch the world burn' or some trite teenager garbage like that."
Leanne clears her throat. "The Asylum, Ell... better talk about that."
Laurel nods. "Oh yes, we better had. Where to start, where to start? That's the thing." They both cast around for a hook for a moment, then Laurel smiles and says, "Howbout this: A disturbing but charismatic man. Bags of talent despite... apparently.... coming out of nowhere? No history but he clearly knows what he's doin'. A dark man with an incomplete soul, guided by visions of destruction an' bloodshed. His words might not always make much sense, but you can feel the power and wisdom behind them."
Hardy sits back and drinks some of her wine while Evangelista nods and asks, "Does that sound familiar, Dom?"
"But the difference between Malcolm Drake an' Noumenon," says Laurel, taking over again, "Is that Noumenon led us to victory."
The girls glance at each other for a moment and Leanne clarifies, "We're not sayin' you guys can't win your matches, of course. It's pretty obvious you can. Pretty obvious you guys are dangerous opponents, an' like any opponents who've proven their ability, I'm very excited to be facin' yez."
"'specially you, Dom," nods Hardy in agreement, "Gold Rush? Solid work. Takin' the title off Chris Q, even if it was only for five minutes, nice job. Beatin' Ryan Kidd, Pat Junior an' K-Hard in the same match? No easy feat there. But, see... wins aren't the same thing as victory. You can pin someone's shoulders for three, or make 'em tap out, you can even pick up some titles, but are those your goals?"
"You've made it clear, lads, you 'ave bigger goals than that."
"Before the first crow descended, before you two revealed your alliance, before you attacked Akrista O'Hare then got run off by Pat Junior, back when all this was just, I'unno, snippets of shadows of wings flittin' against the Sun... Malcolm, you talked about pecking the corpse of FGA. Meat stripped from the bones, I believe you used that analogy, or somethin' very similar. Mass graves. Funeral pyres. The end of people. The end of FGA. The end of wrestlin'."
She tilts her head a little, and with one hand, reaches over for Leanne to give her a refill. "Here we are, oh..." and with a theatrical flourish, she checks the watch she isn't wearing, "Seven months later, and - yeah. The halls remain. The pillars still stand. Hell, the plaster's barely fuckin' chipped, mate. Never mind dead; FGA ain't even snifflin'. Wrestling as we know it stands firm. You've run a few people out of town, and that's about it. See, when it comes down to it, you guys are no different to most factions in this sport. LEGION, The Godfathers, Blood Circle, White Nights, The Empire of Blood, those guys Stryker had hangin' on his words for a while, whothefuckever. You talk about ending wrestling, or this company or that mindset, or shaping things in your own image."
"AbominationZ," mutters Leanne as she starts to unlace one of her boots.
"Yeah, AbominationZ now, they've actually got pretty close to endin' WARPED, I'll have to give them that. Maybe they even have, in body. But not close enough, not in spirit, because they can't get past the one faction who's actually reshaped wrestlin' in a significant way any time lately. An' I don't just mean bogarted some titles for a while, you understand. I mean really made a lasting, far-reaching change. An' that faction was, well..."
Predictably, she points at herself as she says with a shrug, "Us."
She shows off a tattoo on the inside of her right wrist, and Leanne removes her boot to display matching ink on her ankle. It should be familiar both to FGA fans, as Serena Raine has the same symbol on her wrist, and to FRONTIER fans, as Matt Kail has it on his forearm.
Laurel speaks without either pride or regret; this is simply a description of things that happened. Those who've followed the Dragons' promos in WARPED may know that they have very strong opinions on what they and their allies did all those years ago, but here and now, they're betraying nothing. "Global Extreme Wrestling - a much bigger, richer, better connected, longer established company than FGA, mind you - no longer exists, an' that's because we ended it. We broke the roster's resolve, we played mind games with the owner, we spread the cracks through the power structure, and in the end GEW collapsed because of us - just as we'd promised it would. Noumenon led us to accomplish our goal, an' he did it without crap about feasts an' monsters an' suffering."
"Weeeell," points out Leanne without looking up from relacing her boot back up, "There was a little bit of it."
"Maybe a little," concedes Laurel, "But not enough to piss me off particularly badly or anythin'. But yeah anyway, point is, when we vowed to end a major company, we did exactly that. Seven months on from vowin' to end FGA, how close even are you? Tick tock, Malcolm, but the party don't stop. You've spilled a bit of blood, you've seen the back of a couple of guys. And how close are you to real victory in what you claimed you were gonna do?"
She shoots a derisive sneer in the camera's direction.
"Or... is all that beatin' of wings just to waft some smoke around? Are the crows' beady eyes reflected in mirrors?" She leans a little closer with a knowing smirk playing across her lips. "Are you guys, ultimately, just another bunch of people who want to hurt people or hold some titles? Is that what the talk of resurrection and the cure for FGA's cancer is... movin' the goalposts? Is that who your idol really is behind the veil, Dom? And, like Toto, will the Dragons tear it aside to show a charlatan who doesn't know what the hell he's even doing?" This is accompanied by a mimed gesture of a curtain moving to one side.
After draining her wine and setting the cup down, Laurel slowly, cockily, leans back with her arms folded behind her head. "Time to show me what you're really capable of, lads, because quite frankly, I don't think you guys have it in you to take the damage you've done to another level."
Leanne refills her wine, and while she's at it, pours some more in Laurel's mug too.
Laurel gives a little half-apologetic shrug. "Oh, you know, like we said, we're not tryin' to denigrate your ability to royally fuck up someone's day in or out of the ring. You've proved that plenty times. But that don't impress me much. I've been in the ring with some of the most dangerous people alive, an' fucked up is a day at the office. How much blood have The Murder spilled... what container would it fill? A large coke bottle, maybe? A punch bowl? Or even a beer keg? The blood The Asylum's spilled would fill a fucking oil tanker," she says with a rather arrogant grin. "So I'm offering you a chance, Murder. A chance to prove to yourselves how brutal you can be."
And she leans back forwards again, resting her forearms lazily on her knees. "Once this tournament's done with, how about this: Malcolm Drake, Dom Harter, Bob Pooler versus Laurel Anne Hardy plus any other two Asylum members of your choice, in the match type of your choice. I'll start the bidding with barbed wire ropes an' fans bring the weapons, but if you've got a better idea, I'm all ears. Could be in FGA, could be in FRONTIER, could be on neutral ground. All the same to me."
"Speakin' of neutral ground," cuts in Evangelista, "Don't forget I wanna talk about the other thing."
"Oh aye, that's right. Uh, be my guest," she says, gesturing to her friend to go ahead.
Leanne shrugs. "Nah, you finish your thing first."
"I'm pretty much done, mate. If I say much more, I'll prob'ly just start repeatin' meself."
"Yeah," says Leanne with a polite cough, "'Start.'"
Laurel says nothing, but she jabs Evangelista in the ribs with a fingernail.
"OW! Okay, well, Chandler Scott, this is mainly for you, although it concerns a lot of other people so listen up. See this FGA vs FRONTIER thing coming up? We're proud to rep FRONTIER, an' to test ourselves against the best FGA has to offer, but that's as far as it goes. An' in a few weeks when we're the Mid-Atlantic Tag Team Champions, we won't be swannin' away with the belts and braggin' about how we stuck it to FGA. We'll stay and defend them for as long as we 'old them, an' do it with the same pride and respect we've given the GFC World Tag Team Championship an' the WARPED Tag Team Championship."
"Hell," adds Laurel, pouring the last of the second bottle of wine into the two cups, "No-one's done more than us to defend WARPED from AbominationZ, an' officially, we're not even on their roster."
"So we'll wrestle at the joint show, Scott," continues Leanne, "An' do our best to help FRONTIER win. But we are NOT part of your army, an' we are NOT gonna sell out our friends an' our allies in FGA. Likes of Serena an' Alexia, hell even Kevin an' Jason, mean a damn sight more to us than you do. An' if you have any sneak attacks or the like planned, we won't be part of it. Laurel's in FGA this weekend to test The Murder, I'm there to test myself against 'em, an' we're both there to advance to the final of Dynamic Duos. That's all. All the shit between you, K-Hard, both companies' managements - that's not our war. We got wars of our own to worry about without bein' footsoldiers in yours."
Laurel worriedly checks her imaginary watch again, then announces, "We're just here to wrestle. Our only messages are for the other teams in the tournament. Malcolm, Dom, see you in a few... when you find out what happens to crows when they try to fight dragons."
And the girls clink their cups together and toast the upcoming match as the scene fades out.