Being Victims Is Not Our Job

[Delikado/J-Noble]

The Kingdom of Pride's “Oblivion XXVIII”
Tag Team Match: Eddie Nash and Johnny Noble vs. Obscene and Orge Lambart
March 5, 2011

The scene slowly fades into a shot of Johnny standing over a table set up in the living room of the hotel room he and Debra have rented. He is presently looking over an assortment of papers and occasionally at Debra’s laptop that she has set up for them to use. Johnny flips a page, reads a brief paragraph on it, and then returns the paper to normal, shaking his slowly in disgust.

Johnny Noble: These people are all really something, especially this Lambart. He’s been tried multiple times and just as easily acquitted of just about everything, every immoral human action you can think of. Rape, discrimination, murder, some…other unnatural choices. My God, it wouldn’t surprise me to stumble upon something pertaining to bestial group sex in here…

Johnny places a stapled group of documents down and looks at the laptop screen with a small scowl having formed. Just then, Debra Mason walks into the room from the bedroom looking over some paperwork of her own. She walks to Johnny’s side and looks at the computer screen. Her face contorts in disgust as she looks at images of victims from the alleged Orge cases Johnny was speaking of moments ago. Johnny sighs and straightens up his posture as he looks over everything in front of him.

Johnny Noble: Neither of these two, Obscene or Orge, is in this business because they’re good at keeping it alive. They’re just here because wrestling is one of the few places left in the country that would probably take them. And what’s more, they have a system here in Pride that’ll bend to their whim a lot easier than, say, what a preschool would do. If they can cheat those layers of court power and get off virtually scot-free for the things I’ve looked at, getting a job booked in this business week in and week out is a cakewalk. What’s more, people like Kurt and Jeremy will turn a blind eye because their lives up unto this point were rigged with their own twisted episodes as well.

Debra puts her hands on her hips as she continues to look at the pages upon pages collected on the upcoming opposition.

Debra Mason: So what’re we thinking?

Johnny Noble: *sigh* I’m thinking we’re going to end up getting killed by the people who work here before anything really gets done, and I do mean it, we could literally die before this is all over and done. I’m already getting paired up with that psychopathic biker Nash again. Who knows what he will be feeling when we get in that ring with a circus freak serial molester and a raging masochist who’s only concerned with getting rewarded for his efforts here and has no interest in who he rips in half to get to it…

Debra Mason: So the deal with getting his bike down to ringside and then suplexing Paul Sant onto it wouldn’t…?

Johnny frowns and looks to Debra.

Johnny Noble: You know why I did that, Deb. If Eddie Nash wants to view that as a personal attack on his being, that’s fine. Incorrect, but fine.

Debra Mason: I'm just saying, John. I’ve dealt with my fair share of bikers in the past, and they don’t much care for someone else putting their hands on their motorcycle. It's one of those "codes" they go by as motorcyclists, you know? It's like...it's like the one where you don't pull on Superman's cape.

Johnny cocks an eyebrow at the comparison, as if he's never heard of neither the biker "rule" or the Superman one.

Johnny Noble: Oh, so that’s supposed to get him off the hook? Give him a reason to think I was going out of my way to invoke a personal grudge? No. He could’ve been a biker with a motorcycle, he could’ve been sailor with a boat, he could’ve been the ice-cream man with his little truck, and I would have done the same thing. The same thing.

Johnny holds up a file on Eddie Nash himself and lightly smacks a picture of the man with the back of his hand. He then goes through a few documents on Nash and his “Sons of Anarchy” club.

Johnny Noble: What I did…was show this rough and tough biker that he isn’t the only one who can go around and act all rebellious in this place. He can’t bend the system, the WAY the world works…and not expect consequences. The man attacked me, Deb, in the middle of our match against two dangerous people who could’ve put more than just my career at risk. We’re talking my health, and THAT—to me—is far more personal than bringing a man’s over-exaggerated tricycle to ringside and having it take a few dents. If anything, I just showed Nash that he needs to grow up, do what an adult SHOULD have done, and buy something to lock his bike up so that people won’t just waltz in and take it for themselves.

Debra Mason: Hmm…but you do know he’s probably not going to see it that way, right?

Johnny exhales sharply and shakes his head as he places both hands on the tabletop and looks at a picture of Nash on the same motorcycle that Noble brought down to the ring last week and left in the line of fire.

Johnny Noble: I knew he wouldn’t from the moment I had the bike drug out to the curtain and had him see it.

Debra Mason: To be honest, I didn’t know you even knew how to ride a motorcycle. Just doesn’t seem like your “style”.

Johnny looks up from his work, a small grin forming as he responds.

Johnny Noble: I don’t. That was my first time on something as ugly as that. I guess you could just say it was beginner’s luck I didn’t crash the thing on the way down.

Debra chuckles in disbelief as Johnny returns to the desk. He types a few keys on the keyboard and up pops a side-by-side imagery of Lambart and Obscene, their faces looking more like mug shots. Johnny drags a picture of Nash up and then plants it in the middle of the two. His picture IS an actual mug shot.

Johnny Noble: Thug #1, Thug #2, and Thug #3. Who would’ve guessed the “Kingdom of Pride” would turn into the “Penitentiary of Pride”?

Muttering, Johnny slowly turns and walks away from the desk, putting both hands on top of his head in thought as he casually paces back and forth around the room. Debra looks over the computer screen herself in the meantime.

Debra Mason: So a man sets himself on fire while already situated with a job in a wrestling company, nearly dies, and when he is capable of movement again, he tries to go back to the wrestling industry he tried to kill himself in…and he succeeds? Then someone with very, very obvious emotional--and possibly even some physical--abuse walks around demanding things otherwise he’s threatened to cripple people…and no one really says a word? He’s just slapped on the wrist at most?

Johnny Noble: Oh, sure. It’s the classic sign of an owner who has no real intent to see to the well-being of every employee. Tell him to never do it again, otherwise he’s out. Please. If there’s anything someone like Sterling or Kurt does to people like Obscene, they recruit him. They hold him on a leash with promises of a treat if he does the right things to the right people, and then let him go when the going gets good. It’s just like The Krieg. Dogs, “yes men” who don’t even realize how much they’re being used. But the sad part is they probably wouldn’t care even if you showed them their “bosses” were total liars with incontrovertible evidence. Either that or they’d just turn into Nash and lash out at the person who provided such evidence…

Johnny scoffs, shaking his head in silent bewilderment. Debra can’t help but nod softly as she sits down and goes over some old articles on Obscene’s time in Pride. She plays with her silver necklace as she reads aloud her findings.

Debra Mason: Well, everything presented here shows Obscene has been on the chain for a pretty long time. About four years now. I guess life always finds a way to bring a guy like him back to where he came from, huh?

Johnny Noble: It’s clear someone has kept him interested in this place to the point he’d come back after all this time. Unstable people generally don’t just up and return to a place because they’re nostalgic to see their old friends and an updated banner on the wall.

Turning back around after practically pacing the entire hotel room, Johnny walks back over to the desk, standing over Debra and looking at documents. He inhales and then exhales heavily.

Johnny Noble: Just look at these people. They deserve to be sent off to receive help of every practical kind, but the business pays them to stay and looks at their immoralities as “talent.” It hypes up the crazies while overlooking the wrestling talent that made this place what it was years ago.

Debra Mason: John, maybe we should put this stuff out to someone, to people above Noble and Sterling, and see if we can’t start getting people down here who will really look at the shape this roster is in and do something.

Johnny Noble: Oh, sure, I’m thinking we’d get right to outer ridge of this arena before getting sent right back. This here alone, sure, it’s messy and borderline insanity to allow guys like Nash, Orge, Obscene, Krieg, and whoever else is rampaging those halls every night…but businessmen that we’re talking about are in a high level of business because they’re good at it. My brother Kurt, for all his flaws, is a man who knows how to convince a crowd, to get the people on his side. I’m not a man like that, and I couldn’t be because I’ve been made out to be the black sheep of the family from day one. It’s not me complaining or crying foul, it’s just a common acceptance that I’m the “lesser” Noble brother.

Both Johnny and Debra look each other in the eye with serious expressions on their faces. Johnny nods, knowing full well how the Pride public has come to perceive him. Johnny then moves his hand across the desk and flips open a folder, revealing several black and white photos of people, some possible crime scene evidence report photos, and other shady looking images.

Johnny Noble: And the man behind the curtain likes to have his boys here keep me that way. All three people in that ring with me have records, varying in dangerous levels but all still implanted in the “danger zone”. These three all have unquestionable issues, and they have no problem squashing anyone and everyone to get answers to the questions they want. “Where’s my title shot? How far can I really go to hurt this chump here? What could I do in that ring to really screw with people’s minds and show them I’m the most twisted, vicious badass in the history of this sport?” The owners might have had problems with them in the past, but useful is still useful. Nash is blinded by some misguided analogy or channeled rage or whatever that makes him want this situation between us to be personal.

Johnny taps the same photo of Nash on his bike as he speaks his point.

Johnny Noble: This all here isn’t even really a match. It’s a prison fight, and two wardens are willing to let the show go on while the man with the questionnaire is lodged in the middle of it, the guy pondering just why sick monsters like this…

Johnny flips the page showing a bloody faced Obscene standing over a broken man who has had his face scratched out with a sharpie, possibly to keep his identity hidden or to block some of the more graphic details. Either way, Johnny targets it in mid-sentence.

Johnny Noble: …get to live the same sort of lifestyle we do in this company. The people—those fans who root for this sort of thing and hope misery befalls someone like me because I don’t play to the standard they want me lowered to—should question what I question. I want them to feel what I feel on these matters…and they don’t. Their heroes are already chosen and it’ll take a hell of lot more than this collection here to change what years of exposure have made up.

Johnny flips another page, holding up several different photos of female victims of Orge Lambart. Whether they’re victims of rape, assault, or mental torment is irrelevant, but Johnny isn’t concerned with that aspect, as there’s nothing he can do for the women at this point. He shows them to Debra, who frowns in sickened anger.

Johnny Noble: All these here, these women, were made into what we’re looking at by Orge. He got nothing for this, Deb. How does that look to you? What do you feel when you look at these girls?

Debra initially turns her head away, not enjoyng the sights her partner is wanting her to examine.

Debra Mason: John.

Johnny Noble: No, no, no, no, Deb, Debra—just look at these and try to explain to me how you feel knowing that animal is in a job, in a business that you’ve worked to get for years yourself, despite all the cruelty he brings onto the world with his sick little clan.

Debra looks at the pictures, still looking beyond revolted as Johnny holds them before her like a test, as a means to prove a point.

Debra Mason: Outraged. It offends me as an employee of this company and as a person in general. Let's not even talk about how it makes me feel as a woman looking at what happened to these women.

Johnny Noble: That’s right. Yet here I am--as someone who has never so much as talked down to a woman--still being held up as a villain. I’m still in the wrong to the people on this roster, to management, to the people who pay to see these shows, and so on. Obscene attacks everyone he wants, whether they’re men or women, and he’s an antagonist. Orge puts his name in the running for most undeserving of life on the planet, and he’s an antagonist. Women are just the start of what his taste buds prefer. And Nash, well, you know as well as I do that bikers have their opinions on women. They’re almost like objects, props who stand by in their little boy scout lodge waiting to play a role. But the weird thing is, is that’s he is the “good” in this scenario, especially after last week. So there’s three “antagonists” here in this match, one “good guy” that is supposedly the honor in this company…and it’s the biker who has provoked more than his share. If that doesn’t tell the Kingdom of Pride how far this monarchy has fallen, then I’m afraid this is a fight that’s going to HAVE to get physical.

Debra Mason: What about personal…?

Johnny nods in response to the question.

Johnny Noble: Quite the question we have to ask ourselves, Deb. Kurt knows what the score is and he knows I’m still here despite the obstacles he’s been “subtle” about throwing in my direction. He’s turned enemies he doesn’t want my way, and he intends to see that I either shut my mouth and play my role as the black sheep Noble who forever lingers in the shadows of a “Common Man”, or I hit the bricks…by the force of manic brutes if necessary. So yes, it may very well get personal in the coming weeks, but what can’t happen is we can’t allow ourselves to become victims.

Johnny examines the photos in his hand one last time before tossing them down onto the table among everything else he and his partner have gathered so far.

Johnny Noble: To anyone.

Temporarily cutting off anymore chit-chat, the sudden ringing of a cell-phone is heard and Debra finds it to be hers. She answers it.

Debra Mason: Yes?

Silence carries on for a few seconds as Debra takes the call while Johnny navigates his way to the mini bar where he takes a bottle of water that’s already been open and sips from it. Debra nods her head as the call ends.

Debra Mason: Alright, thank you.

She hangs up and then looks over to Johnny.

Debra Mason: That was Adze. Some additional files were recovered if we’re interested.

Johnny briefly glances at his reflection in a nearby mirror, fixes up his collar, and nods.

Johnny Noble: Mmhmm…always interested.

Debra nods in agreement and shuts the laptop. She rises to her feet and takes her coat as Johnny passes it to her. He opens the door and allows his partner to walk out first before he follows behind, taking one last look at the table covered in information before turning off the lights and shutting the door, shrouding the room in darkness.

<END OF FEED>