- Event: Chaos 042
Chaos 41
It was Chaos!
Literally, and figuratively.
It was a living hell!
An apocalyptic wasteland.
The war had begun and John Sektor was the devil behind it all.
He had no concern about taking on the young Kostoff that night. He had masterfully sowed the seeds of distrust at the bar with Blaire Moise, confirming his name as an odious miscreant. Kostoff likely felt that he had a chance to best Sektor and make a statue of himself as champion with his first major title in hand. Sektor would not allow it to happen.
He could have just beaten him in the ring. The odds from the HOG were ever in his favour. but Sektor never trusted luck or odds. He always played it safe and calculated risk, and now he was doing just that: Risking nothing for the reward of eliminating his rival’s son from competition, ensuring the belt remained around his waist. In a few hours it would be done, a quick and easy job written on paper, and the God of HOW would have agreed with a smile on his face for the son of his oldest rival to be destroyed in such a manner. A simple job and then into a cab and straight to the airport.
He didn’t account for good samaritans like Hollywood and Steven’s showing up and getting involved. On reflection he should have. After all, both men were staking claim to position themselves for another opportunity at his HOTV championship. Wrestling is all about opportunity and seeing what went down in the back was as good an opportunity as there ever was to engineer their way into a match.
When Hollywood and Steven’s double teamed him he feared the worst. He’d been blind sided and was out numbered two to one. He certainly didn’t expect his fellow Alliance members to show up and make the save. Even Jatt, who he had shit on from a great height, was there to have his back like he always did.
He felt a sudden reassurance. It was a humbling moment looking around and seeing all of his stable mates there to protect and support him. It was the first time in a long time that he felt included. Sektor had been operating as a lone wolf but there is power in numbers.
The rage he felt towards Stevens and Hollywood combined with his new found confidence from his team mates laid to him making a completely irrational decision. He wanted to show courage and save some face so he issued a challenge for the main event to be a triple threat against Steven’s and Hollywood. It was a dumb move. Triple threats are the worst way to try and defend a championship, because you don’t even have to lose the match to lose the title. Adrenaline, anger, ego’s and overconfidence lead to rash, knee-jerk decisions which could prove costly.
As Asia once said..
..it was the heat of the moment!
Next thing he knew he and his team mates were being clobbered from behind by Ward and Townsend. All hell broke loose as it became the Final Alliance vs the rest of the locker room.
After squeaking out a victory in his title defence the war continued. The whole locker room was at ringside and it was a warzone. Sektor found himself cowering in the corner, trying to shield his face from the onslaught of kicks and punches being rained down on him by the two men he had just beaten, Hollywood and Stevens. A barrage of flesh-on-flesh thudding filled the arena, and each impact made the world feel like it was shaking.
Stevens’ face was livid with rage, as if it were possessed by some spirit or power. The veins in his forehead bulged like worms breaking through an apple’s skin, and his eyes were rolled into the back of his head. He looked almost deranged. Hollywood’s expression was angry but focused; this was what he lived for. Each kick that landed felt like a hammer against Sektor’s body. With every blow that came in, Sektor could feel himself getting closer and closer to blacking out. A sharp kick to the temple later—like a bomb had gone off next to him—and it was all white.
—
“..where are you taking him?”
“To the ambulance..”
“Why?”
“Are you kidding me? He lost consciousness…he’s barely awake NOW!”
Sektor could hear the voices talking but he couldn’t connect the dots. Their words seemed to be an indecipherable jumble, just noise that he wished would go away because of the increasing pain in his head. He didn’t know where he was being taken or why. The blur of white floor tiles, perfectly clean and as cold as ice, whizzed by on either side of him as a medic pushed him through a corridor. His face was already bruising and swelling.
“I need him cleared to compete next week.”
“You can’t be serious..”
“Hey! I’ll remind you to watch your tone with me!”
“..*sigh*..he clearly has a concussion. There’s laws about this now..”
“Which is precisely WHY I don’t want him going to the hospital.”
“What are you saying?”
Sektor’s eyes fluttered as the blur of white came to a standstill and the motion sickness he was beginning to feel ceased. He remained static but still could not decipher what was going on around him. It was like slowly awakening from a general anaesthetic, when you are barely conscious but sense there is something wrong. It felt like consciousness without any actual awareness. He wasn’t even sure if he was alive.
“He has a title defence next week. If THEY diagnose him with a concussion then that can’t happen..”
“I really don’t understand this! You’ll honestly risk his well being for the sake of having to miss a few weeks on the sidelines?”
“This is what he would want. He’s a fighting champion and if he can’t fulfil his contractual obligations then he will be forced to FORFEIT. I wouldn’t want to be in the room when YOU have to explain that to him.”
“Unfortunately, SIR, I can’t explain it to him because he doesn’t even know where the fuck he is! So I have to act in his best interests.”
“Now you listen to me! My, BROTHER, loves this man more than you know. He would NEVER risk his ‘well-being’ unless he knew it’s what HE would want.”
Sektor was slowly beginning to become more aware of his surroundings. He remained heavily confused but was now realising that the sensations he was experiencing were real, not a dream. His head whirled violently and he instinctively wanted to put one foot on the floor. It was a trick he learned in his younger years to stop the world spinning after ingesting copious amounts of alcohol.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m just trying to process this. It completely goes against my ethics. I assumed you would want him to get the best treatment, with him being an Alliance member and all..”
“Assumpion, is the mother of all fuck-ups! And we don’t pay you to assume!…do you know how many times he’s been hit in the head in his career? He’s a tough bastard!”
“..is that..is that supposed to make me feel better?”
The Gold Standard was now actively trying to establish his surroundings. His primitive instincts for survival were giving him the strength to try and push himself up on the gurney.
“John?”
His hand shot to his head as he felt a bowling ball crash from one side of his skull to the other.
“Easy now, don’t try to get up,” advised one of the men, a voice whom Sektor didn’t recognise, nor cared to try and recognise.
“John,” added another voice. This one he recognised but again couldn’t care to place a face to. “How are you feeling?”
It took Sektor a moment to respond as fireworks exploded in front of his eyes, which he screwed up tightly.
“Like hammered shit..”
“Do you know where you are?” asked the same voice.
It took a huge effort to pry his eyes open. The bright lights back stage looked as if they had been dipped in hot wax and were now burning him like pepper spray. He couldn’t see anything through them, but he could hear someone talking to him. It sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a well, but he knew it was familiar.
“I think so..”
“You see! Nothing to worry about!”
“Adam?”
“Hm?..”
“Where’s Adam? Is he ok?”
“Adam?” asked the familiar voice, sounding confused.
“He’s talking about Adam Ellis. Don’t you get it? He’s completely confused. He doesn’t even know what planet he’s on.”
There was an abrupt pause and an even more unsettling silence. Sektor wasn’t able to comprehend any of it, the pain and nausea was all he could focus on.
“He cannot go to the hospital,” the familiar voice, explicitly, replied.
“So what do you suppose I do with him?”
Following another pause for thought the familiar voice eventually replied.
“Take him to the treatment room. Take care of him. Do your fucking job! Do whatever it is you need to do so that we can get him to the hotel carefully.”
“This is ridiculous. Everyone’s packing up! The arena staff will want us out of here within the hour. There is absolutely no way you can expect him to be on his feet that quickly..”
“Leave the arena staff to me. I’m sure once he gets some ice on his head and some fluids and pain relief he will start feeling better..”
With that came the sound of a wet smack on the arena floor, like the last quarter of green bile smoothie being spilled. The bile pooled underneath Sektor’s mouth, which dripped with the same remnants of the smoothie as he dry heaved the rest of his empty stomach. His intracranial pressure rose with every heave and soon he was sweating profusely and clutching his head as though it was a bomb about to go off.
“…he’ll be fine.”
—–
God’s House
“I’m going crazy here, Clyde.”
The HOTV Champion bobbed gently on a pool raft at Lee Best’s spacious outdoor pool. It was a typically warm and beautiful morning in Miami, but soon he would be heading for shelter from the afternoon’s rain. He had been concussed and beaten up during the chaos at the end of ‘Chaos.’ Only snippets of memories of being kicked and punched and seeing people fighting all over the ring area remained. He suspected that there were gaps in his memory – chunks where time went missing.
MIchael Oliver Best had him under close supervision in his hotel room, and had to stay in Columbus an extra day before it was deemed safe to fly him back via private jet to Lee’s home in MIami.
He was given strict instructions to do nothing except rest. No training, no weights, no exercise or physical exertion what-so -ever. He simply needed to stay within the confines of Lee’s home and wait until the day of his next title defence.
“I have never felt so unprepared for a title match in my life,” he groaned, staring up at the blue sky through his tinted sunglasses.
The swelling on his face had gone down through a combination of regular icing and some herbal creams and arnica. The blackish bruise beneath his shades had transformed from the size and shape of an egg to a small, pulsing cyst. His olive skin did well to mask the worst of it.
He knew the rationale. He was well aware that he was suffering from a concussion. The headaches you get carry their own signature. What he didn’t understand was why the match was booked in the first place. Lee had told him explicitly that he would have to defend every week as all prior champions had to, but he didn’t expect to be forced to work with a concussion. Sure, ten-fifteen years ago when nobody knew the risks, but not in this day and age.
He didn’t question it. He didn’t argue against it. He was a loyal soldier and this was war, after all. More importantly he had too much pride to throw in the towel, and too much fear and shame to disappoint Lee.
Xander Azula was awaiting him and, that much, was certain.
Azula was another struggling contender. Ten losses and only two wins in this calendar year and an even poorer overall win/loss ratio. He was another bottom feeder that Sektor had to mop up as he climbed the ranks further away from the bottom half, looking for the bigger fish who cruised around on the surface.
Regardless of records or form, on his best day Azula was a threat to his championship. He was a living breathing person with skills and attributes to put Sektor to the test.
This wasn’t going to be Sektor’s best day. Far from it. Carrying a head injury was one thing, but not being able to physically train and prepare his body was a new challenge for him. Sektor was committed to perfecting every bit of his preparations, especially in title defences. All he could was mentally train, but the painkillers and headaches made that a challenge.
“You know what? Fuck it, I can’t just lie around here. I have a fucking title to defend what am I doing?”
He turned his head to the side, glancing at Clyde the Orangutan for support. Clyde just at the side of the pool sucking on an orange and making a mess.
“You won’t say anything, right?”
As if by divine intuition, Sektor’s phone began to ring and he knew instantly by the ring tone who it was.
Lee Greenwood doesn’t lie..
Sektor rolled off his floatation device like an alligator entering the swamp, submerging his head and allowing the cool water to sooth his hurting brain before engaging with the video call. Eventually he surfaced and dried his hands on a nearby towel before answering.
“Heyyyy, how’s my patient doing?” enquired and overly pleasant Lee Best.
“Hey Boss! I’m actually feeling pretty good. In fact, I was just saying to Clyde how I feel ready to get back in the..”
“Woah, woah, woah hold the fucking phone, twenty-second-timeout-brrrrrrrrrrrp! You were just saying to Clyde? I’m worried about how much time you two are spending together. You know he’s a monkey right?”
Clydge groaned loudly at his owner’s lack of recognition for his primate species.
“Sorry, sorry, ORAN-GU-TAN! How you doing big fella? John here taking good care of ya?”
Sektor tilted the phone so that Lee could see his pet. Clyde just shrugged.
“More like you’re looking after him, huh?”
Sektor forced a smile of pleasantry before centering the phone’s camera back on himself.
“Yeah, I’m just checking in on ya. Making sure you’re behaving, and not doing anything stupid like pumping blood into that rattled old brain of yours..”
Sektor rolled his eyes beneath his shades which Lee couldn’t see.
“I’m doing exactly what you told me,” he half-heartedly replied.
“Good boy! What I like to here..”
“..but I think I’m ready to start training now,” he continued, adding some firmness to his words.
“No, John, absolutely not. It’s not worth the risk..”
“Boss, how am I supposed to prepare for a title defence if I cannot train? It goes against everything I’ve ever known. I’m going fucking crazy just sitting here and waiting,” he ranted. He’d taken his foot off the break and allowed himself to go full throttle. “This is absolute madness. If you don’t think I am safe to train then I shouldn’t be competing at all!”
“Woah! Simmer down, now, simmer down..”
Sektor breathed heavily, subtly slapping his hand against the surface of the pool water in frustration.
“Look, I get it! You’re like a caged tiger right now, and I know you’re itching to get in the gym and do what you do best. But trust me, man, Azula just isn’t worth breaking a sweat over. You’ll breeze past him easily, you won’t even need to prepare.”
Sektor closed his eyes, feeling his chest growing tight with frustration. Lee just didn’t understand how he truly felt.
“I appreciate your confidence, boss. I really do. But I only know one way to defend a championship and that’s MY way.”
“Sektor I am hand feeding you easy opponents. I gave you Kostoff’s fastest sperm last week and you still went and forced a more difficult match. This week you’re facing a guy that can’t summon a win from whatever weird deity he worships. Right now you’re biggest threat is YOU!”
“Then why am I competing at all?” he asked, sincerely wanting the answer to that question.
“Because you’re on a fucking heater! You need to keep going and keep winning because I can feel the machine in you starting to fire on all cylinders. You’re almost back to your full best and I for one want that. More importantly, now that we are at War with fucking everybody. I NEED that.”
Sektor sighed quietly. He understood Lee’s logic but it was an agree to disagree type of situation. In the end he knew Lee well enough to know when he wasn’t going to get his own way.
“So rest. Relax and take the easy fucking win!”
Sektor nodded, digesting his defeat before forcing another smile to respond.
“Ten-four!”
All Sektor could do was confirm that he understood his orders. Who was he to go against his commanding officer?
His concerns over the title defence were not going away, any more than the situation he was in. In the end he would have to suck it up and accept it. Xander Azula has nothing to lose and everything to gain. That makes him dangerous. He didn’t buy that he was a stat padder or soft title defence, he was a living, breathing threat to his reign as champion.
On Sunday he would have to stand across from Azula, under prepared and wearing his best war face. He would have to dig deep and fight to survive and in the end he would simply have to hope.
Aside from not being able to train, this was nothing new to John Sektor.
This was his life and his reality…
..the reality of being a champion!