Post by ROUND II | Ross Hanson on Oct 2, 2021 11:46:12 GMT -5
Repeated coughing pierces the darkness when the final installment of Ross Hanson’s trilogy of terror begins to play. Some light banging is also heard.
"Jesus...Christ…"
"...you...get me into….the dumbest…."
"I'm sorry…damn…my man running that military surplus store is getting all five of my stars on Yelp."
A very slight crack of sunlight widens, accompanied by the loud scraping of a metal door being pulled open. A set of concrete stairs, strewn with debris, is illuminated with near blinding light. We can now also see the figures of Ross Hanson and his girlfriend, Chelsea Skye, still struggling to breathe following the effects of the tear gas from earlier.
“All right...let's see what it looks like out here.”
After a couple of deep gasps, the team known as Skyeson outside of OCW is composed enough to ascend from their bunker. Ross suddenly turns to Chelsea, with a concerned look on his face.
“Oh my God, Chelsea. What if it's all gone? Where are all the houses?"
"Where are all the people?"
"Where have all the cowboys gone?"
"No, Ross. No."
Chelsea scolds Ross like a dog for his poor taste in music lyrics, but before Ross can pout his son interrupts by cocking a large Nerf rifle. Ross and Chelsea just watch in silence as Mini-Human exits the bunker slowly, laying on the top step to survey his surroundings.
"Check your radio. Maybe that one guy will be on there again."
"That’s a good idea. Thankfully I got a handheld. Maybe I can find out who won the Great War Of Words."
Mini-Human looks down from the top stair.
"ALL CLEAR DAD! CAN WE GO LOOT?"
"Please do. We only have one pack of chocolate chip cookie dough Pop-Tarts left."
Mini-Human points back down at Chelsea.
"CHELSEA! WHERE'S YOUR WEAPON?"
Chelsea shrugs and rolls her eyes, pulling up a large Nerf rifle. She winks to the camera for just a moment.
"When a four year old hands you a Nerf gun, you take it."
"SHOOT FOR CENTER MASS! LET'S GO! LOVE YOU DAD!"
"Love you too, son. Chelsea, please be careful. We don't know if the worst is over or if Theo Pryce is still gonna talk shit."
Ross' handheld radio begins to make static, followed by a very feint and scratchy voice. Chelsea and Mini Human depart out into the void, with Ross staying at the entrance.
"Come in? "
"...dude. What the hell is wrong with you?"
"What is your status? Over."
"Over, your bullshit. I can see your kid and your girlfriend running around with Nerf guns. This is white trash personified."
"Are there any collapsed promotions or halted pushes hazards? Over."
"No, Ross. Everyone is still talking shit and acting like they threw random pastels all over their logo...hang on a second..."
A loud and high pitched squeal sends Ross into a cringe, holding the radio back from his ear.
"Yo! Get the fuck out of here, Jenny Crank! You're gonna give the wildlife syphilis!"
A crack followed by a couple of distressed yells makes Ross squint at the radio.
"Sorry about that…"
"Are we close to any trading posts? Over."
"Ross, we're in the middle of a fucking field in Hocking County."
Ross peeks out over the top step. He is met with nothing but tall weeds, abandoned barns and a Dollar General in the distance (which hardly qualifies as a trading post.) He slumps back down, picking back up on the radio.
"So?"
"There might have been a UDF about fifteen minutes up the road. That or a Marathon, I can't fucking remember. To be honest, I've just been sitting here chain-smoking waiting for you to hurry up and cut this Goddamn promo so we can get the fuck out of Trump Country. Over, it...officially."
"If you find any Raiders, don't hesitate to eliminate them. Over."
"Bitch, I just threw a half-full Monster can at two emaciated meth-heads trying to fuck in the bushes behind the boarded up IGA because they’re too cheap to go get a damn motel room. A room out here is fucking $35 and you’re probably paying $200 to get your ticks going... Shit! Now I have cottonmouth and nothing to fix that..."
"Why the fuck would you park all the way over there?"
"Because I want as little to do with this fuckery as possible, and ended up losing my drink over it.”
“Half your drink. Over. ”
“Shut the fuck up. You're lucky I'm even participating over a fucking CB and I didn't just pay one of those ghouls I just scared off to read all of my lines… And you’ve got a mullet."
Ross looks as if he has discovered the atom.
"...whoa, there's a script?"
“You got that mullet to impress a girl. If she truly loved you, she’d take a fucking trimmer to it in your sleep and save us all the trouble of witnessing the return of Joe Dirt.”
Ross’s face becomes a perfect copy of the infamous Anakin/Padme “...right?!” meme.
"There's a script?! Over?!"
“I’m turning this thing off now and going to get me a drink. By the way, I think you’re about to get VATS’d.”
Ross switches it off, huffing. A nerf dart smacks the back of Ross’s head. When he turns around, he sees nothing but hears Chelsea and Mini-Human giggle.
"And to think, this whole time I've just been making shit up off the top of my head. I guess sometimes stupid shit IS real shit..."
He shrugs, looking back at the camera.
"Okay. So I'm sure a lot of you are wondering exactly what is on the other side of that door. Well, so am I. I'm just as anxious to see where the road takes me next. Especially since, as you can tell, I won't be alone. I tried to tell people that I had reinforcements coming. They just work on a different time schedule. They work on their time, not yours. They'll be here soon enough and when they are, everything I've been telling you will make sense."
Ross tosses the radio back down the hallway, smashing it into pieces against the metal door.
"I won't be needing this anymore. I called for an air strike and now it's inbound. I begged people to stop and think about going to war. They doubled down. So now I'm not responsible for what happens next. Because you see...I have a little confession to make."
Some strange combination of remorse and glee fill the air when Ross chuckles to himself.
"I didn't call for help because of people like Centurion or Thunder. In fact….I dispatched for additional units BEFORE Under The Lights. I didn't call out for assistance to defend OCW. I wasn't even working here when I first made contact. That's right. Thaddeus Duke went and found me on his own accord! That wasn't even part of the plan! But what's about to happen next, it could have been stopped at any time. It could have been prevented. Didn't I tell you I was going to give you one last chance to call for peace?"
The remorse has left Ross' face.
"I knew this whole Goddamn time that some bullshit was fixing to go down. It's just how pro wrestling works. Nobody wants to have a clean wrestling match anymore. I knew this was coming in, so I could prepare for it. From the second I came back to professional wrestling, I've had a plan. And my plan has worked. I tried to see if Dolly Waters was really about that life when she opened her mouth. I didn't need to antagonize her if I wanted to see what she could do in the ring. I'd have found a way to watch Relentless for free and watched her take Jim Caedus to the absolute limit even if she lost. I'd come up with a plan to counter even her most desperate attempts to win. I'd have paid attention to every drop of blood she lost and made Jim lose. I'd have taken notes about how she kept getting back up even when she knew she should have stayed down. And then I'd have focused on that rather than just 30 words of her defending her boss and her home company. But you see, I've had a plan."
Ross taps the side of his head twice.
"I love OCW so much I was willing to defend them, when nobody was willing to defend me. Not even Mike ‘Mr. OCW’' Zybala. And you know something? That's okay. That was part of the plan too. I needed to know for sure what kind of a man you are, Mike. I found out you're not much of a man at all. I found out that you only love OCW for what it can do for you. You love talking about how you're ‘Key West 4 Lyfe,’ but only because they let you do ridiculous side projects. When it comes to doing anything that would benefit anyone else, all of a sudden you disappear faster than the guy who invented Save The Kids Token. You have put absolutely nothing into this company that didn't benefit you. You didn't eat the consequences for standing up for your principles like I do on a daily basis. Maybe you don't have any principles. Maybe I was wrong to ever respect a man like you."
"Maybe in London I need to beat my respect back out of you, so I can give it to someone who deserves it. Maybe I should only give Toast about as much thought as he's given us. YEAH, TOAST! Good job! Maybe I should just appreciate it if Dolly even fucking shows up after the hell she went through. And maybe I should stop feeling guilty about what's fixing to happen at Masters Of Macabre."
Distant yelling and screaming is heard in the distance, along with the repeated pops of two foam dart rifles.
"I mean...in the end, it's gonna be an OCW legend and an OCW homegrown, wrestling circles around an XWF legend and the fucking mummy they found buried in ice at the Andes Mountains. One of us will be walking away with a title shot, meaning that's one less belt XWF can pretend they have a claim on. For all the other nonsense that's going on, you and I can at least get down and have a fucking wrestling match, Mike. Two OCW guys, even if we are at the point where I want to pull your tongue out your asshole and make you rim yourself, fighting for an OCW opportunity."
It almost sounds like someone is singing "gimme what you got I'm only gonna count to ten…" in the distance. What could be a woman's voice says, amelodically, "you should do what the kid says."
"Like I said bro, my plan worked...minus an unexpected detour… But, you have got to see what happens next. I've worked on this one for quite a while now, folks. Redemption is a wonderful thing, but you gotta redeem yourself. At Masters Of Macabre, I will redeem myself of the Mike Zybala problem and I will set the tone of OCW's future. I will be the Golden Age that Thad and Ian wish they were. I will be the future that they tried to destroy. Then I'm going to show y'all MY future OCW. An OCW where men are men and boys get their heads caved in."
Footsteps approach the bunker entrance, but stop just short.
"DAD! I GOT TWO DOLLARS!"
"Ross, we need to go. Your son just robbed two drug addicts with a Nerf gun. One of them was bleeding from his face. "
"Coming… Hold on, only two dollars?!"
Ross looks at the camera one final time.
"Let's go rebuild the world from where you assholes tore it up."
Ross moves up the stairs, towards the light and out into the wild. The bunker door slams closed behind him, ending the scene.
"Jesus...Christ…"
"...you...get me into….the dumbest…."
"I'm sorry…damn…my man running that military surplus store is getting all five of my stars on Yelp."
A very slight crack of sunlight widens, accompanied by the loud scraping of a metal door being pulled open. A set of concrete stairs, strewn with debris, is illuminated with near blinding light. We can now also see the figures of Ross Hanson and his girlfriend, Chelsea Skye, still struggling to breathe following the effects of the tear gas from earlier.
“All right...let's see what it looks like out here.”
After a couple of deep gasps, the team known as Skyeson outside of OCW is composed enough to ascend from their bunker. Ross suddenly turns to Chelsea, with a concerned look on his face.
“Oh my God, Chelsea. What if it's all gone? Where are all the houses?"
"Where are all the people?"
"Where have all the cowboys gone?"
"No, Ross. No."
Chelsea scolds Ross like a dog for his poor taste in music lyrics, but before Ross can pout his son interrupts by cocking a large Nerf rifle. Ross and Chelsea just watch in silence as Mini-Human exits the bunker slowly, laying on the top step to survey his surroundings.
"Check your radio. Maybe that one guy will be on there again."
"That’s a good idea. Thankfully I got a handheld. Maybe I can find out who won the Great War Of Words."
Mini-Human looks down from the top stair.
"ALL CLEAR DAD! CAN WE GO LOOT?"
"Please do. We only have one pack of chocolate chip cookie dough Pop-Tarts left."
Mini-Human points back down at Chelsea.
"CHELSEA! WHERE'S YOUR WEAPON?"
Chelsea shrugs and rolls her eyes, pulling up a large Nerf rifle. She winks to the camera for just a moment.
"When a four year old hands you a Nerf gun, you take it."
"SHOOT FOR CENTER MASS! LET'S GO! LOVE YOU DAD!"
"Love you too, son. Chelsea, please be careful. We don't know if the worst is over or if Theo Pryce is still gonna talk shit."
Ross' handheld radio begins to make static, followed by a very feint and scratchy voice. Chelsea and Mini Human depart out into the void, with Ross staying at the entrance.
"Come in? "
"...dude. What the hell is wrong with you?"
"What is your status? Over."
"Over, your bullshit. I can see your kid and your girlfriend running around with Nerf guns. This is white trash personified."
"Are there any collapsed promotions or halted pushes hazards? Over."
"No, Ross. Everyone is still talking shit and acting like they threw random pastels all over their logo...hang on a second..."
A loud and high pitched squeal sends Ross into a cringe, holding the radio back from his ear.
"Yo! Get the fuck out of here, Jenny Crank! You're gonna give the wildlife syphilis!"
A crack followed by a couple of distressed yells makes Ross squint at the radio.
"Sorry about that…"
"Are we close to any trading posts? Over."
"Ross, we're in the middle of a fucking field in Hocking County."
Ross peeks out over the top step. He is met with nothing but tall weeds, abandoned barns and a Dollar General in the distance (which hardly qualifies as a trading post.) He slumps back down, picking back up on the radio.
"So?"
"There might have been a UDF about fifteen minutes up the road. That or a Marathon, I can't fucking remember. To be honest, I've just been sitting here chain-smoking waiting for you to hurry up and cut this Goddamn promo so we can get the fuck out of Trump Country. Over, it...officially."
"If you find any Raiders, don't hesitate to eliminate them. Over."
"Bitch, I just threw a half-full Monster can at two emaciated meth-heads trying to fuck in the bushes behind the boarded up IGA because they’re too cheap to go get a damn motel room. A room out here is fucking $35 and you’re probably paying $200 to get your ticks going... Shit! Now I have cottonmouth and nothing to fix that..."
"Why the fuck would you park all the way over there?"
"Because I want as little to do with this fuckery as possible, and ended up losing my drink over it.”
“Half your drink. Over. ”
“Shut the fuck up. You're lucky I'm even participating over a fucking CB and I didn't just pay one of those ghouls I just scared off to read all of my lines… And you’ve got a mullet."
Ross looks as if he has discovered the atom.
"...whoa, there's a script?"
“You got that mullet to impress a girl. If she truly loved you, she’d take a fucking trimmer to it in your sleep and save us all the trouble of witnessing the return of Joe Dirt.”
Ross’s face becomes a perfect copy of the infamous Anakin/Padme “...right?!” meme.
"There's a script?! Over?!"
“I’m turning this thing off now and going to get me a drink. By the way, I think you’re about to get VATS’d.”
Ross switches it off, huffing. A nerf dart smacks the back of Ross’s head. When he turns around, he sees nothing but hears Chelsea and Mini-Human giggle.
"And to think, this whole time I've just been making shit up off the top of my head. I guess sometimes stupid shit IS real shit..."
He shrugs, looking back at the camera.
"Okay. So I'm sure a lot of you are wondering exactly what is on the other side of that door. Well, so am I. I'm just as anxious to see where the road takes me next. Especially since, as you can tell, I won't be alone. I tried to tell people that I had reinforcements coming. They just work on a different time schedule. They work on their time, not yours. They'll be here soon enough and when they are, everything I've been telling you will make sense."
Ross tosses the radio back down the hallway, smashing it into pieces against the metal door.
"I won't be needing this anymore. I called for an air strike and now it's inbound. I begged people to stop and think about going to war. They doubled down. So now I'm not responsible for what happens next. Because you see...I have a little confession to make."
Some strange combination of remorse and glee fill the air when Ross chuckles to himself.
"I didn't call for help because of people like Centurion or Thunder. In fact….I dispatched for additional units BEFORE Under The Lights. I didn't call out for assistance to defend OCW. I wasn't even working here when I first made contact. That's right. Thaddeus Duke went and found me on his own accord! That wasn't even part of the plan! But what's about to happen next, it could have been stopped at any time. It could have been prevented. Didn't I tell you I was going to give you one last chance to call for peace?"
The remorse has left Ross' face.
"I knew this whole Goddamn time that some bullshit was fixing to go down. It's just how pro wrestling works. Nobody wants to have a clean wrestling match anymore. I knew this was coming in, so I could prepare for it. From the second I came back to professional wrestling, I've had a plan. And my plan has worked. I tried to see if Dolly Waters was really about that life when she opened her mouth. I didn't need to antagonize her if I wanted to see what she could do in the ring. I'd have found a way to watch Relentless for free and watched her take Jim Caedus to the absolute limit even if she lost. I'd come up with a plan to counter even her most desperate attempts to win. I'd have paid attention to every drop of blood she lost and made Jim lose. I'd have taken notes about how she kept getting back up even when she knew she should have stayed down. And then I'd have focused on that rather than just 30 words of her defending her boss and her home company. But you see, I've had a plan."
Ross taps the side of his head twice.
"I love OCW so much I was willing to defend them, when nobody was willing to defend me. Not even Mike ‘Mr. OCW’' Zybala. And you know something? That's okay. That was part of the plan too. I needed to know for sure what kind of a man you are, Mike. I found out you're not much of a man at all. I found out that you only love OCW for what it can do for you. You love talking about how you're ‘Key West 4 Lyfe,’ but only because they let you do ridiculous side projects. When it comes to doing anything that would benefit anyone else, all of a sudden you disappear faster than the guy who invented Save The Kids Token. You have put absolutely nothing into this company that didn't benefit you. You didn't eat the consequences for standing up for your principles like I do on a daily basis. Maybe you don't have any principles. Maybe I was wrong to ever respect a man like you."
"Maybe in London I need to beat my respect back out of you, so I can give it to someone who deserves it. Maybe I should only give Toast about as much thought as he's given us. YEAH, TOAST! Good job! Maybe I should just appreciate it if Dolly even fucking shows up after the hell she went through. And maybe I should stop feeling guilty about what's fixing to happen at Masters Of Macabre."
Distant yelling and screaming is heard in the distance, along with the repeated pops of two foam dart rifles.
"I mean...in the end, it's gonna be an OCW legend and an OCW homegrown, wrestling circles around an XWF legend and the fucking mummy they found buried in ice at the Andes Mountains. One of us will be walking away with a title shot, meaning that's one less belt XWF can pretend they have a claim on. For all the other nonsense that's going on, you and I can at least get down and have a fucking wrestling match, Mike. Two OCW guys, even if we are at the point where I want to pull your tongue out your asshole and make you rim yourself, fighting for an OCW opportunity."
It almost sounds like someone is singing "gimme what you got I'm only gonna count to ten…" in the distance. What could be a woman's voice says, amelodically, "you should do what the kid says."
"Like I said bro, my plan worked...minus an unexpected detour… But, you have got to see what happens next. I've worked on this one for quite a while now, folks. Redemption is a wonderful thing, but you gotta redeem yourself. At Masters Of Macabre, I will redeem myself of the Mike Zybala problem and I will set the tone of OCW's future. I will be the Golden Age that Thad and Ian wish they were. I will be the future that they tried to destroy. Then I'm going to show y'all MY future OCW. An OCW where men are men and boys get their heads caved in."
Footsteps approach the bunker entrance, but stop just short.
"DAD! I GOT TWO DOLLARS!"
"Ross, we need to go. Your son just robbed two drug addicts with a Nerf gun. One of them was bleeding from his face. "
"Coming… Hold on, only two dollars?!"
Ross looks at the camera one final time.
"Let's go rebuild the world from where you assholes tore it up."
Ross moves up the stairs, towards the light and out into the wild. The bunker door slams closed behind him, ending the scene.
