Post by Dave D-Flipz on Apr 9, 2023 22:48:02 GMT -5
MARCH 30, 2023
Look at this beauty. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to finally lock down a win like this.
Death Trap sits cross-legged on a pad on the floor of the Japanese hotel room where Top of the Class is HQ’d for their time in the historic nation. A huge title defense against Black Knife Cabal is on the horizon, and the team is taking the final days before it happens to relax and defrag. On DT’s lap sits the XHF Global Tag Team Championship belt he has held for eleven months. He takes a deep breath and then looks up at the room around him. Sitting cross-legged on another pad across the room is Sarah, the young ward of his manager, Dr. Chaos. She is playing with her pet rat.
Sarah: Cheese!
She shoves a piece of mozzarella (shockingly common in Japan) into the face of her new pet and DT smirks as the rodent hungrily and greedily wolfs down the dairy delight. His manager Dr. Chaos enters the room, being flanked by his tag team and life partner, Mistress Discipline. The two ladies look resplendent in their new shopping conquests. Chaos had taken them to a boutique earlier and the two ladies got some real fancy kimonos. Mistress, in her powder blue sits down next to DT with a bowl of soup in her hands. Chaos, in pink, sits down next to her daughter. They each begin to sip their soup. Death Trap smiles as he looks at his partner and puts the belt behind him and picks up a plate of sashimi that had been on the floor near him. He glances at Mistress as she blows on the soup.
Look at this beauty. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to finally lock down a win like this.
DT raises a small glass, in it seems to be a lightly pink sparkling beverage. Being a narcissist, DT can’t bring himself to drink Hitachino Nest Red Rice Ale or Super Sake on camera without proper compensation… so this is clearly Sakura Pepsi.
Death Trap: Let us raise a glass in toast. To Top of the Class, the greatest tag team in the XHF. To continued success … and continued victories. And to leaving a legacy!
Everyone raises a glass, excluding Sarah who is now crawling around the floor with her rat on an RC car and making VROOM noises as she drives him all around the room. After the toast, Chaos glances at her daughter as the rat rolls around the room.
Dr. Chaos: It’s too bad Mary won’t allow us to put the rat in a CAR race without a support team.
Mistress Discipline: It seems odd to me that this would be the line she draws when there is a team of dogs allowed to participate.
Dr. Chaos: I KNOW! And Bruce Whine ALWAYS needs treats to boost his confidence because he hates the car! I swear he must be spending too much time around Brittany. Taking on her characteristics.
LATER THAT EVENING
Death Trap sits on the couch of their communal living room. The room is mostly dark but for a small desk lamp shining onto DT’s lower body and the table the lamp sits on. DT is alone in the room, with his belt on his lap. He seems deep in thought, ignoring the snores coming from the bed room he shares with his wife. Ignoring the sounds of a sneaky child sneakily playing Switch after bedtime from the next room over. Ignoring the sleep talk coming from behind that same door.
Dr. Chaos: *snooooore* That’s not the proper technique … *snoooore* that’s better, turn on the electrical stimulation … now milk that bos Taurus dry! … *sniff snort* Now bring that to the pen with the females …
DT sits with his hands tented in front of his face, elbows resting on his knees, belt positioned center on his legs as he looks at it. His eyes shift ever so slightly up towards the recording phone placed on the table. He inhales deeply before letting out a large sigh. It is a cross between contented and longing.
Death Trap: The world remembers us by the legacy we leave. What did we do with our careers? Have you achieved enough to even merit remembrance? I’d like to think when my career is over, that I’ve done enough to go down in history. Let’s face it, I need that. I’m nothing if not a self-aggrandizing, self-promoting, hero-playing, showboat, narcissist. And barring a bit of growing pains in 2005 and 2006 … I’ve always hunted that high, that legacy … by being a man of the people. By being a small bit of light in the darkest of days, helping people get through tough times through entertainment. … I’m not naïve … I know that anything I do as a professional wrestler is not going to change the world. But I put smiles on people’s faces. I make people gasp in awe and tell their friends about the amazing match they just saw. And yet …
He again looks down at the title. Forlorn … melancholy … hopeful … prideful … a swirling cauldron of emotion wells up in the 44 year old.
Death Trap: It’s ironic isn’t it. That I talk of leaving a legacy, of being remembered for all I achieved … as if I hadn’t all but forgotten about this. Ten years. I spent ten years suffering the consequences of my choice in vocation. There may have been people who talked about that ECF maverick that came in and made a career in XHF. There were probably kids who grew up loving the show I put on, fighting the powers that be, being the unlikely hero. But me? I didn’t even remember what I had for lunch any given day. And when I got that part of me back … when the true DT reemerged in my head, when the fog cleared and the haze dissipated … the first thing I did was look for more of that high. More of that thrill. The same … damn … thing. And why? Because my legacy was not yet written. Because as good as I had been … I was not … good enough.
He looks back at the camera on his phone and sighs. He leans back and rests into the couch. He looks around the room, taking in the enormity of the situation. An American gaijin on hostile ground, ready to play hero again for a crowd that needed some flicker of hope and light in their dreary existence. Ready to once again pretend to be a younger man and deal with the slings and arrows, or in this case razors, of the hellscape Kira had fostered.
Death Trap: If you looked back at my achievements … they were huge. Most would kill for a career like me. Saved my home fed from an invasion, won the world title, became the face of the place … only for it to be pulled out from under me. I saved the place for like … a few months before Harry sold out. Phoenix Champion, mid-card champion, World Champion … X*Crown champion … do you know what people remember about those title reigns? DT broke his neck, DT got a concussion, man he lost his belts so fast … HEY isn’t that the guy who got buried by eight men on the order of his jealous boss? Really left my mark didn’t I. Savior of a dead place, the guy who always WON the big matches then lost whenever he had to repeat the feat. Paper tiger.
Not like they were WRONG about me …
Death Trap: I couldn’t … let that be my legacy. I couldn’t stand to FAIL to leave a mark. I had my head too far up my own ass for that. Like I said, I’m a narcissist and I know that. A man came to me, asking me to help him make his startup fed the place to be. The voice of a generation of XHF fans, Aleister Mayfield. He came to me with an offer to step into MCCW and show the world that DT was not a fluke champion, that DT was as good as advertised. That the moniker of “XHF LEGEND” wasn’t just given to me because I existed in this place before the network came into being. Two losses to Nelly Angel told me I had a lot to prove. But I marched onward. And I climbed. And I took the title from that thankless so and so, Eichi Yamaguchi. Between him and Justice, it’s hilarious that more people would call THEM my true rivals over Mongo or Reeshi or Venom or Gravedigger. All the hellacious feuds I’d been through in old XHF … buried by the owner, violently beaten by the ace, made a fool of multiple times … abandoned by my best friend. All the bad memories and bad blood … and this little place made DT a household name and provided the cast of characters most people associate me with nowadays.
He glances back at the bedroom where the snoring as ceased and a stillness has come over the room. In that room is another vestige of MCCW that everyone would now permanently associate with Death Trap.
Amazing how much I owe to MCCW …
Death Trap: Death Trap, multi time WORLD Champion, end of days winner, X*Crown champion. All that came under MCCW’s banner. DT’s greatest rivals? Eichi, Justice … my first encounters with Raiden … and my first meetup with a certain super-fan and head of my own fan club. Oh yeah, the revelation that I had a fan club was an ego boost for sure. Still … I lost the MCCW title pretty quickly too. Lost the X*Crown after a month. Again. And yet … here was a new opportunity to leave a lasting legacy. And the legacy isn’t my own achievements … it’s behind that door, sleeping in a blue kimono, waiting for me to beat my insomnia and enter that room.
He turns back to the phone and smiles. He leans forward and we hear the tone of his voice change from one of retrospection and introspection, to one of anticipation and contentment.
Death Trap: It is important for me to give back to the sport that gave me an outlet, a joy I never knew. My career has been one of legendary caliber. I know this. And I decided to pass on everything I knew to the next generation of talent. To bring new blood into the scene. Anyone who saw the 2020 rumble will know what a talent she is. From never having fought in a professional ring before seeking me out in MCCW, she has become something of a special attraction. And that is my legacy being written. I trained her, molded her, built her up. I nurtured that natural talent. I brought forth a force from within she never suspected she had. I’m not going to take credit for her singles title in Fireside. That would be stupid. But it does my heart good to see her taking to heart all the lessons and putting them to use. But then … something more defining happened.
He pats his title belt and lifts it over his shoulder. The camera now gets a good view of the title faceplate instead of a side-on view where looking at it risks looking at DT’s crotch.
Sometimes all that glitters really is gold…
Death Trap: You see this belt? This belt has been on my shoulder for eleven months plus. Not only have I broken the curse of DT, WE have become the most dominant tag team in XHF History. Mistress Discipline and Death Trap, Top of the Class … in name and in historical fact. The two of us together have been unstoppable. Mentor and trainee, partners … and now husband and wife. Our names are etched into the history books. This here? THIS … is a legacy worth leaving.
He sighs and places the belt down on the table.
Death Trap: But there can always be more. Legacies are always being written. I remember her coming out party to the XHF. The two of us showed the force we could be all those years ago. In the XHF Rumble. An event I have yet to win. An event I have come close to winning twice. And a chance to put my name in the books not just as one half of the greatest tag team champions ever. But as one of the best to ever do it. A chance to boost the status of myself and my partner. She has much more to give, but I have plenty left in the tank. Just like we elevated these belts … I think it’s time to write the final chapter in my singles career. Three time X*Crown champion. I can’t let Zoran and Dylan have all the fun right? Don’t make any mistake. I do this for both of us. Me and her. I do this to take any shadow of doubt off of the history book view of my career, and hence hers by association. This belt here, means the world to me.
He pats the title again, staring at it like his own child.
Death Trap: This belt has given me so much. It clarified my career to me. It showed me what I still had to give, and it solidified my place in the history books. No longer will people only remember the failures, the stumbles, the bumbling. The title XHF Legend is one that now accurately describes Death Trap. And it is through this title here, through that woman in that room, and because of an upstart fed run by the greatest announcer in XHF history. This belt … means more to me than any of my other runs. Sure, my career was built on the ECF World title, on that World title run, on that second X*Crown run 15 years later, on those 2 MCCW title runs, winning End of Days. But this belt … is what legitimized my career. This epic run is what made people understand what I’ve been saying all along. DT … is the Main Attraction. And now that we’ve done this? I need to try to do it one more time on my own. I need to get back into the title hunt. I need to finish this fairy tale ending. I need to take down my white whale. The Rumble. Overcoming Zoran Sainovic, overcoming Dylan Black, overcoming my own history of close but no cigar. I need to put that X*Crown … next to this tag team title … and hold them over my head… and hear the crowd chant my name … I need to put that memory into everyone’s minds forever.
A door slams open from behind him and a pillow smacks him in the back of the head
Dr. Chaos: You NEED to go to bed!!!! SOME OF US ARE TRYING TO SLEEP!
DT looks back behind him at the disheveled blonde bed-head of hair, the pink kimono all askew from tossing and turning. He smirks …
Death Trap: Are kimonos really appropriate attire for birthing calves Chaos?
His manager goes pink with embarrassment.
Death Trap: Hey how’d you make your face match your outfit?
… she slowly steps towards him … from behind him he hears.
Sarah: Mistake…
Death Trap: Yeah probably…
Fade out
