- Event: #97RED
10:55,
05/08/23 (Or 08/05/23 if you do dates wrong…),
Somewhere on King Island,
Tasmania,
Australia
King Island is one of those small little isolated islands you sometimes find dotted about the place, if you’re someone who’s used to living near the coastline. Of course, we’re talking about Australia here, so it’s not exactly like an island you’d find off the coastline of Scotland that’s got room for one cottage and 54 sheep and fuck all else. Nah, it’s big enough for a couple towns, an airport, a dock, and, well, a whole fucking bunch of trees. And tungsten, if you’re into your rarer metals. None of these things on King Island are the sort of size you’d hope for, neither town breaking 500 people, for example. Lots of empty space.
Lots of empty space for someone to go plot the demise of a worldwide Taco Empire, though.
And today, dear viewer, it’s where we find ourselves, as we join our protagonist, High Octane Wrestling’s Rhys Townsend on what might well be the most harebrained scheme the Welshman has ever concocted during his time as a sports entertainer slash professional wrestler.
See, despite his upcoming match with Sektor at the pay per view, our protagonist has not come to this island to conduct some super exclusive, highly scientific, extremely expensive training, like filling up full of all the performance drugs before running around the coastline for long enough, and fast enough, that you cause the island itself to combust, or something equally as outlandish.
No.
No, despite his long history of being little more than a boring fucking professional wrestler who goes to the gym every single week like a good little boy, who occupies himself in his spare time with watching the finest sports entertainment slash professional wrestling from around the globe and is, as I already said, generally little more than a professional wrestler, he is not doing that. He’s not doing the good guy veteran thing where he gets all the local independent wrestlers in to help him train, he’s not walking around the streets looking for a fight like some asshole wrestlers might do, he’s not picking on rookies…in fact, he’s about as far away from a professional wrestling ring as he ever could be at this given moment.
Which, if you’re not gathering, is WEIRD.
If you’ve followed this man’s career, or even if you’ve just followed him since his return, you’ll know that he has an almost slave-like devotion to professional wrestling, when he’s engaged. I mean, a guy coming from fuck all – the Job Centre – and then walking into a High Octane Wrestling contract at the age of 18 just simply because his trainers thought he might be a prodigy? It’s gonna make you kinda obsessed with being exactly that. Everything has always been about the graps for Rhys Townsend.
So unless today is a trial of a new gimmick, or a ring is about to suddenly drop from the sky, I think we can assume that it’s a safe assumption that he’s not gonna do any of that today. No, what we’re seeing, dear viewers, is the hunk of man meat that is Rhys Townsend, the exquisite body he possesses, carved from taco is, well…it’s as if someone decided that they wanted to be Rambo for Halloween so they went and hit up the local army surplus store. Badly applied camouflage paint, webbing that’s meant to sit over some sort of jacket or top just worn straight on skin, and of course, camouflage trousers. If you wanna be real nerdy about it, it’s AUSCAM. Or, y’know. An old, surplus Australian army pattern. Most likely the cheapest one available.
He’s got the newest member of his entourage, the young Australian we met just last time, Sturt, last name currently unknown, though undoubtedly it’s something stupid. I mean…Sturt, Australia? Did you miss out the A from Stuart and just decide you couldn’t be fucked to put it back?
Anyway…
The two are standing at the edge of a forest, the murky weather above them making you feel like it might rain at some point soon, deep in discussion, Townsend showing off what appears to be your bog standard assault rifle. We’re not talking about the cheap Russian shite, of course.
“…And see, this thing, it ain’t actually a gun, Sturt. I ain’t stupid, I don’t want Australia’s Elite Drop Bear Commando Squad to descend upon me and shred me into tiny pieces to feed the kangaroos with, I ain’t gonna mess with a real gun. But this thing, ohhh baby. I know a guy, and see, he engineered these for me. 5mm tortilla chip, 80 round clip, fires 10 chips a second on full auto…designed to destroy some luchadores who think they are taco revolutionaries!”
“Not worried ya might kill a cunt with that mate?”
“Nah. I mean, if a chip destroys you, were you even meant to live? Couple chips fired from this should knock you over, shouldn’t kill. I mean…it’s just corn, right?”
“Never had the sharp bit stab the roof of your mouth?”
“No?”
“Fuckin’ lethal, mate.”
“Really?”
“Fuckin’ oath. One of my cousins did it once, had to take the cunt down to the ED. Turns out, chip pierced the top of his mouth and went into his fuckin’ brain. Cunt’s fixated on Bluey now, he’s like 42.”
“Sure he don’t have kids? I know people my age with kids who are obsessed with Bluey.”
“Mate, cunt’s got teeth coming out his teeth. He ain’t got a Sheila.”
Townsend merely grunts agreement, fishing in some of the many pockets (He has enough to make an appearance in a Rob Liefeld comic, for sure. Not enough to be the main star, though.), before producing, well…do you really need me to tell you he’s pulled out a joint, lit it, and is having a smoke?
If you do, then hello, welcome to the world of Rhys Townsend!
“Aaaaanyway…we’ve also then we got these…”
Again, reaching into another one of the many pockets dotted about his person, Townsend pulls out what appears to be a tortilla, rolled up into roughly something of a baseball size and shape.
“These here are the pinnacle, something we created back at the Taco Shack as a side that, well, it turns out, with a little modification, make a pretty great weapon. See in here, we got some spicy nacho cheese. And like, I mean…SPICY, right? So you hurl these, and something…I dunno what, I’m not an engineer or a chemist happens, and then within 10 seconds or so? BOOM! Nacho cheese death!”
“So we’re gonna fire tortilla chips and nacho cheese at the cunts?”
“Exactly! Though…”
As if by magic, the sound of a helicopter approaching quickly becomes clear. There’s an almighty thump, almost as if an artillery shell hit nearby but didn’t explode. Sturt leaps in surprise, but Townsend? Townsend only turns around with a smile.
See, dear viewer, a Challenger Mark 5 tank just dropped out of the sky, and the glee is evident on Townsend’s face. You ever seen that man smile?
It’s fucking disturbing.
“…we also got that.”
A grandiose gesture towards the tank follows, the Welshman walking over to it, running his hand along the tank’s flank, obviously taking pleasure in what, one would assume, is his tourist purchase from Australia.
Nobody ever said these professional wrestlers were a sensible, sane lot, did they?
“A beautiful Centurion tank, cannon modified to fire 58mm Birria beef burritos, machine guns modified to fire 50mm chip ammo, a whole system to disperse my weed smoke around the tank as our smoke cover…ain’t she just fucking beautiful, Sturt?”
“Fuckin’ oath, mate. But where in all of fuck did you get a tank from, you cunt?”
“You lot love saying cunt…and some cunt in Queensland. Was selling em. Dude owns a whole bunch of tanks, sells rides in em. I just figured it’d be easier to buy a tank than rent a tank.”
“Ain’t it illegal to own one?”
“Not if it doesn’t have a gun. This one has no guns. Therefore, it’s legal.”
“But ain’t it a bit bloody dangerous, mate?”
“We’re talking about some assholes who say they blew up my taco truck. Now, don’t get me wrong, Sturt, I know we got no actual evidence for that, and it’s a million percent more likely it was Lee Best, or some asshole from High Octane Wrestling. But either way, these fuckers have been messing with my tacos…so…”
“Yeah, but I mean, it’s a fuckin’ tank. What about us? We might fuck this up..”
“Do you see any walls about?”
“Nah mate…but I don’t quite get what walls have to do with any of this?”
“Well, I’m just saying, if you can’t see any walls, then there’s no fucking way I can smash the fourth one, right?”
“Right…this is starting to sound like some fucking stoner shit, mate…”
Townsend, still gently caressing the tank with one hand takes a long, deep hit, before he replies.
“Maybe. But I’ve got a little experience with tanks, and I’ve never really been in any shit with ‘em. Except when I’ve driven through a bunch of walls. Usually smashing the fourth wall I come across…never ends well. Here, though, I see no walls…so I fail to see how anything can go wrong!”
“Sure…”
Sturt trails off, looking a whole lot less sure about this expedition. Sure, if you dangle the opportunity to hang around with a Hall of Famer – a five time HOW World Champion Hall of Famer at that – to some no name independent like Sturt, of course he’s going to jump at it, and of course he’s going to be up for it. Right now though?
You get the sense there might be a vague sense of regret bouncing around inside his mostly empty skull. But then again, perhaps not.
“It’ll be fine dude. It’s just a tank. They ain’t hard…this one even has an instruction manual, apparently. So how about you hop inside and learn how to drive a tank?”
“Me?”
“Yeah. You. I gotta stand in the turret like a commander, right? That’s how this works. Crazy expedition just before a supposedly important professional wrestling match, I gotta go all fucking in, right? I gotta be stood there, spliff in mouth, bandana on, looking slightly greasy and worn, the whole shebang, right?”
“I mean…I guess? You seriously want me to drive this?”
“Yeah. It’ll be a right ripper!”
“Mate, I appreciate the use of the Aussie slang…but I ain’t so sure about this. Seems…dangerous.”
“Life’s dangerous! We’ve got an evil Taco hating terrorist organisation to hunt down, Sturt! We do not have time to debate the danger, we only have the taco truck to avenge! I mean, potentially avenge. I’m pretty sure these dumbasses are pretty useless…”
There’s merely a grunt from Sturt as he clambers up onto the tank, a massive look of trepidation written all over his face, chewing a little bit at his moustache as he worries. This though, viewer? Unless you want to spend the next twenty minutes watching a man attempt to learn how to drive a tank, this is where we take a brief sojourn to commercials. Or…just a quick camera cut. One of those swooshy ones…
—
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—
15:22,
05/08/23 (Or 08/05/23 if you do dates wrong…)
Disappointment Bay,
King Island,
Tasmania,
Australia
…Because if we didn’t cut to commercial, it would be horrifically boring, wouldn’t it? We would have been sat there watching the tank start and stop, belch smoke, move a couple inches, go back the other way, and generally, well, a shitshow – that would be an ideal word, or pair of words, depending on how you want to interpret it for this duo’s attempts to move the tank.
But like I just said, dear viewer, we skipped that, didn’t we?
“D’ya really think it’s a good fuckin’ idea to be doing this shit? I mean, really, it ain’t like Sektor’s a bad wrestler, and you couldn’t seem to give two fucks…not saying you’re not a top cunt, Rhys, but…”
The blond, moustached head of Sturt pokes out the little hole for the driver at the front of the tank, as it rolls across the green hills of King Island. Above him stands our protagonist, looking like he’s having the time of his life, a spliff that’s about as thick as a sub sandwich hanging out of one corner of his mouth.
“He’s a cunt who could easily tap me out, and I should probably have shown more respect to him than just being honest about not really wanting, nor caring that much about the match…yeah, I know.”
“So…”
“So why go off on an adventure in a tank?”
“Exactly.”
“Because all my career I’ve slaved away inside of fucking gyms, spent hours staring at screens watching footage, thrown everything I have at the pay per view matches the exact same way I would every week. And…I lose ‘em. Well, most of ‘em.”
“So…trying something different?”
“I mean, why not, right? The result of the match doesn’t matter in the long run, y’know? I’ve lost enough matches to enough people that I don’t really care about a loss anymore. So…why not? Why not do something different?”
“Yeah, I mean, I get your point. Just seems like a bit of an odd play, that’s all.”
“Maybe. But we’re in a tank, right…? So….”
There’s a whistling sound, almost shriek-like in it’s intensity before there’s a big FWOMP, followed by an explosion that seems to consist mostly of ground beef! More whistling sounds follow, explosions obviously imminent…
“CLOSE THE FUCKING HATCHES! PREPARE TO RETURN FIRE!!!”
Is a thing that Rhys Townsend screams aloud, though the sound of his companion’s hatch slamming shut is the only response he gets. More ground beef splatters against the tank, a few little pieces of shrapnel causing yelps of pain as the hot beef splatters on the Welshman’s bare skin. He drops down, the explosions continuing to go off as the hatch slams behind him.
Immediately the tank starts to fill with the smoke of his oversized spliff, but it doesn’t stop the Welshman from immediately starting to operate the cannon, before – FWADOOPH, the cannon fires a searingly hot burrito, loaded with the birria beef and it’s consome towards, well…anything, really. He turns from the aiming apparatus, quickly loading another burrito into the breach, preparing the cannon to fire. He stops for a moment, the stoner in him overcoming his need to complete the task in front of him, trying a bit of the ground beef shrapnel that hit him.
“Sturt…the fuckers are firing Taco Bell at us! Forward!”
“Mate, do you even know where those cunts are firing from?”
FWADOOPH!! The report of the cannon checks in once again, as Townsend fires yet another burrito shell in a random direction.
“Nope. Not a clue. I’m just firing blind right now…”
“Might wanna aim at that lighthouse in front of us mate…and any chance you could put that joint out? I can’t see shit right now…
“Sorry, essential wartime supply! I’ve got a prescription and everything!”
FWADOOPH! Again, the cannon goes, rocking the tank. There’s a moment where there’s nothing but the noise of the tank, before an almighty sound comes, the tank having been hit by one of the Taco Bell artillery shells! The tank continues rolling – FWADOOPH – firing as it does so.
“Mate, I really can’t fucking see, and the sea is right fucking there…I did fucking say that DIsappointment Bay was a bad idea!”
“We’re fi….grab your gun and exit the tank!”
“What?!”
“GET OUT THE TANK!”
For you see, this is around the time that, well, a stoner’s gonna stoner. In his haste to fire more burrito artillery, our protagonist placed that oversized joint down for a moment, so he could use both his hands without smoke getting in his eye.
Just…I think you know what I’m about to say.
The man placed it on top of the ammo.
#PREDICTABLE
The two men do, however, successfully manage to scramble out the tank, clutching the nacho chip assault rifles that our intrepid protagonist somehow engineered in his spare time. Or perhaps he paid someone to do it. Trent Trent Trent’s Fucking Engineering, perhaps? Really wouldn’t be something surprising if it was, would it?
They hit the beach in Disappointment Bay, immediately scrambling over to some rocks, the large white Lighthouse not too far away, but the territory between here and there is filled with trenches, the various metallic and iridescent fabrics used on the luchadores mask show that the trenches are filled with the Wish.com Taco Terrorist luchadors.
And about now is when there’s a pretty fucking big explosion behind them, pieces of both tank and taco raining down all over the place, missing our two intrepid heroes, but the screams of dying luchadors, and luchadors realising they’ll never be able to hit a Tope Con Hilo ever again in their life fills the air. Rhys Townsend seems as happy as the proverbial pig in shit, even as the whistling noise slightly changes, an ear splitting FWADOOM following. The onslaught starts back up, Townsend looking over the rock at the enemies, quickly ducking down behind it as nacho chips fly off the rock!
“They’re firing Crunchwrap Supremes at us! They’re pulling out the bigger guns!”
“Mate, I could go a crunchwrap right now, won’t lie.”
“Hungry?”
“Yeah.”
“You know you can just eat one of your grenades, right? Dual purpose munition – ration and munition! Genius.”
Sturt takes one of his grenades from one of the many random pockets he has, and, hesitantly, takes a bit. And then enthusiastically takes another bite. The Hall of Famer merely smiles, pulling out yet another baseball bat sized spliff, sparking it into life.
“So what’s the play?”
“Sturt, I reckon the play is to lob a couple grenades and charge the tower! Like…like real nineteen eighties action men!”
“Mate, it’s real life, not a movie.”
“Feels like a movie to me. Weaponised Mexican food? As if some real world military, or terrorist organisation would use such things…”
“You designed some, didn’t you? So some other cunt might have done the exact same thing. Has done the exact same thing, even…”
A brief moment of contemplation follows, the Welshman puffing away on the blunt like it’s a cigar, and he’s the typical cigar smoking marine Sergeant.
“Maybe. But I still think the play is to charge the tower.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I do.”
“Mate, I feel like this is gonna end with us being dead cunts…”
“Nah, it’ll be fine!”
It’s around this point that Townsend arms himself with a pair of Nacho Cheese grenades, lobbing them over the rock, towards the budget luchadores. More screams follow, many of pain, one of fury as our six foot one, two hundred seventy pound protagonist presents a giant target as he leaps out from behind the rock, immediately spraying his load all over the place, emptying out chip after chip after chip, the clip seeming to go on forever. Eventually, it comes to an end, and a forward roll leads up to a dive into a trench, reloading his rifle as he smashes into the trench. His companion appears from behind the rock as Rhys hits dirt, shooting with the precision of a man who’s spent far too many drunken hours playing laser tag, luchadores taking chip after chip to the centre of their forehead with the precision of a 12 year old who does nothing but play Call of Duty!
There’s a moment where his clip is finished, before he starts to move where time seems to hang still as a hexagonal browned tortilla flies towards his face. The slow mo kicks in as it tumbles end over end before it smashes into his face, his screams of pain filling the battlefield as he drops like a sack of shit.
A pained yell is heard from Townsend as he pops up out of the trench, spraying wildly, but seeming to hit the few remaining luchadores from the battlefield, taking them out with the random spray of chips. He turns, seeing his comrade clutching at his gut, the spray of Taco Bell’s chicken and vegetable combo all over his gut and chest. He falls to the floor with a gasp of pain, as Townsend runs over.
“I’m not gonna make it, cunt. I’m gonna die here from a crunchwrap…this was the most stupid idea…”
“No, Sturt, it wasn’t. It is brilliant. You might have been the first casualty of the Great Taco Wars, but I promise you, I’ll take vengeance upon these terrorist assholes!”
“Mate, I’d rather just get a helicopter to hospital. You mind getting my phone for me? I can’t…”
“Oh. Sure.”
The brief moment of mundanity pierces the action movie fantasy our hero was living. Though, as soon as he’s handed the phone over, he seems to go straight back into the fantasy.
“Now though, Sturt…now I’ll go get vengeance! And revenge!”
“See, I know you’re a top cunt mate. See you after 97Red?”
“If you make it…though I know you’ll make it, Sturt. It was only a crunchwrap.”
“I mean, they can do pretty serious damage to your digestive system mate…”
“Touche. But when you make it…”
“I’ll come collect on that training you said you’d do, but bailed on because you found a taco truck you wanted to eat at.”
“Right. Exactly. But now…I gotta go do revenge.”
With that, Townsend gets up and turns away from the man, striding towards the tower with purpose, past the many, many luchadores attired in the absolute cheapest wrestling gear they could get their hands on. The mismatched gear is strong here, so if that’s not your thing, you should probably turn away.
He gets to the door of the lighthouse, taking a moment before booting it open to find…absolutely nobody! The lighthouse appears empty as the Welshman starts to cautiously climb the stairs, nacho chip rifle at the ready…but all he finds is stairs. And nobody. He keeps ascending, getting to the top, presented with yet another door. Again, it’s booted through, and this time?
This time there’s someone.
As for the first time, Rhys Townsend comes face to face with the man who has decided that he wishes to be his nemesis.
It’s a one sided relationship so far.
But El Terroristo stands there in all five foot nine, hundred eighty pounds of his glory. Naturally, stood across from Townsend…he looks small. But there’s fury in the brown eyes, his face hidden by his taco themed mask.
“Ahh, Rice Townshed, I see you found your way to my lair, hombre. This is the time when I explain to you that first, it was a taco shack. Then it was your truck. And from here, see, ese, we will take control of your wrestling career, we will get you to do our bidding, and once we have a professional wrestler, we will be unstoppable! We will launch the most boring, most plain, most unauthentic tacos we can create, we will partner with big chain taco sellers, we will force our bland tacos upon the world! And you, puta, will be powerless to stop us! Because…”
He looks to continue his monologue, but there’s a roar of anger cutting him off, before the most devastating knife edge chop in all of professional wrestling in the year 2023 does it’s absolute best to cave in the chest of El Terroristo! He stumbles, but Townsend keeps firing chops in, machine gun like in their frequency, the intensity of the chops turning the extremely white chest of El Terroristo a bright, salsa red.
“Thought you were gonna monologue on me, did you?”
Chop after chop after chop flies in, the smaller luchador unable to do anything about the chops, eventually sending him flying over the oversized desk he appeared to have acquired.
I guess you need an oversized desk if you’ve got designs on being an Evil Dictator, right?
Townsend goes to scramble over the desk, but a packet of supermarket taco seasoning flies into the air, and his eyes! He stumbles, temporarily blinded, El Terroristo leaping up for a hurricanrana, but the wrestling instinct of Townsend, and the fact that El Terroristo would be an extra on a televised show, at best, means that Townsend instinctively drives him into the desk with a powerbomb! Screams of pain follow the cracking sound as Townsend keeps the hold in, swinging him around into the wall, before swinging him through the window!
The almost comical sound of someone screaming as they fall further and further away, before we hear a dull thud, followed by an “Ouch.” Randomly, something in the background catches fire, but it’s at this moment, this time, that Rhys Townsend really is deep in the weeds with his little fantasy.
“El Terroristo…fuck you. I stopped you here today, put an end to the Taco Liberation Front, because I am a fighter for the freedom of all tacos, and for all humankind to be able to eat good, well priced, authentic, wrestling themed tacos. Sure, my primary goal in life is to be the greatest professional wrestler ever, but my secondary goal? The tacos. I did this for you, Sturt…”
Are the last words out of his mouth, before he stares out the window, at the horizon. There’s a brief moment where he appears to realise that the tower is on fire…and so we fade to black as the tower explodes, Townsend jumping out the window, his taco empire’s future secure…
…For now.
—
23:45,
05/08/23 (Or 08/05/23 if you do dates wrong…)
Disappointment Bay,
King Island,
Tasmania,
Australia
The wrecked body of El Terroristo can be found lying flat on his back, near a crater. Parts of his mask are missing, blood appears everywhere and, well, one of his legs is just plainly facing the wrong direction. His eyes briefly flutter into life as he utters a few words.
“Rice Townshed…I will destroy you.”
He passes back into unconsciousness as a pair of luchadores turn up, the red cross obvious on their cheap masks, medical kits appearing quickly as they find their leader on the precipice of death. And this? This is where we actually fade to black.