SAN JOSE, CA: Outside a local hospital, STRUGGLE PRO‘s resident team of antagonists, THE EVIL ADMINISTRATION, are gathered to assess their current situation after a pretty disastrous month, and/or wait for a taxi back to their hotel. Following a sudden, humiliating, and injurious defeat to WARRIOR PRO World Champion DOC WYATT, a neckbrace-clad STRUGGLE final boss PRESIDENT EVIL is suddenly facing unexpected downtime, while everyone else is just bummed to be here, after only finding out a day before the event that seconds were banned from ringside.
PRESIDENT EVIL: I can’t believe this shit. This is a fuckin’ disaster. This was supposed to start the Year of Evil! I was going to get shirts made and all that shit! We should be heading home right now, with all of STRUGGLE’s singles titles, plus the world belt from this fuckin’ place… Instead, you idiots lost your titles, and then… Ugh, that little fucker, and his fuckin’ Diamond Cutter…
FIRST LADY EVIL: Calm down, first of all, we can get those other belts back in the next couple of shows. Fang is all set to get the cruiserweight belt back –
PREZ: …In a tournament against five other guys, including the one who beat him.
FIRST LADY: …And Becky‘s got a rematch lined up with Jezebel for the women’s title.
PREZ: …In a steel cage, against a fuckin’ hillbilly.
FIRST LADY: (agitated) Will you just stop?
PREZ: I’m just saying. You know how those people are. She probably slept in a kennel as a child.
FIRST LADY: Look, it’ll be fine. We’ll get those two title belts back, and then we’re back where we started. I mean, the Warrior Pro title was just kind of an extra bonus championship, really.
PREZ: To the rest of you, maybe. And as long as my neck is fucked, we don’t even have anyone in the heavyweight division.
AGENT 35: …I’m in the heavyweight division.
(a long silence)
AGENT: i mean, you know… I’m in the heavyweight division.
(a longer silence)
PREZ: …Again, now we don’t even have anyone in the heavyweight division. Or the tag division, either.
AGENT 35: Well, you know, me and Fang could team up.
(AGENT FANG stands behind AGENT 35, frantically shaking his head and making throat-slashing “cut” gestures)
FIRST LADY: You know, you really should try and patch things up with Terry and Morty…
PREZ: No way, fuck those guys.
FIRST LADY: Oh, come on, it’s been a decade.
PREZ: Nope.
FIRST LADY: …But we need a tag team, and they could still kick the shit out of anyone in the promotion, in theory.
PREZ: Nooooope.
FIRST LADY: Goddammit, do you even remember why you’re mad at them!?
PREZ: …
FIRST LADY: Ha! You don’t!
PREZ: No, I’m just… I’m just thinking back to all…. All the myriad of reasons. Yes. A myriad. A plethora even, perhaps.
FIRST LADY: Bullshit.
BECKY WITH THE EVIL HAIR: Do we even need to be here for this?
FIRST LADY: Yes, you do. Now just- (she suddenly looks really angry) Oh, goddammit…
(FIRST LADY EVIL looks around the surrounding area, before eyeing an empty bottle on the ground and picking it up. She looks up, directly into the INVISIBLE BACKSTAGE CAMERA, and hurls the bottle directly into the lens, causing the video feed o glitch out for a second, before going black, as the audio continues.)
FIRST LADY: Seems like those things are everywhere these days…
MEANWHILE…
TRI-STATE AREA, USA: With STRUGGLE PRO perpetually in a state of emergency, head dudes in charge, NATE RUGGLE and UNCLE ABDUL, attempt to deal with the dual realities of losing one of their main event wrestlers for the time being, as well as a clearly insane billionaire suddenly taking interest in the promotion.
ABDUL: …So how bad is it, boss?
NATE: The First Lady says it’s just a sprain, but it should still keep him out until sometime around February.
ABDUL: Great. So Evil‘s down, Big Bird Machine, T-Plex, The Cokes, and Jimmy are all basically M.I.A., and the women’s division so depleted by injury that we’re bringing in free agents off the street for the main card.
NATE: …Who are beating our theoretical rising stars now. And we have absolutely no idea what the deal is with Taco Belle right now, both as far as the original and the new one that the Taco Belfry people said they’d be sending us soon.
ABDUL: Right. Which reminds me that I need to figure out a way to reshuffle expenses and find some budget room, before TSLL takes an interest in that Victoria girl or she realizes that there are other places on Earth to wrestle.
NATE: I mean, do we really need electric lights?
ABDUL: They do tend to ruin the mystery of things.
NATE: Seriously, though, with most of our big names just getting their downside guarantees, we should at least be able to scrape together a lowball offer and see what happens. So now, about that other thing…
ABDUL: Oh god…
NATE: I’m just saying, working with Schtank could solve all our problems. He’s the richest man in the Tri-State Area.
ABDUL: …And everything he touches turns to shit eventually. Like the prototype flying cars that blew up that bridge out west, the “smart spatula” that decapitated all those test animals, or when he bought Tout. And if he wrecks a small-time wrestling promotion with his dipshit ideas, I doubt he’d be able to talk Congress into a bailout this time.
NATE: Well, I mean, you know… Sure, not all of his ideas have panned out, but you have to admit, he does have a vision.
ABDUL: The man made a spatula that killed dogs, Nate. A fuckin’ spatula.
NATE: Well, he didn’t intend for it to do that.
ABDUL: You’re proving my point without knowing it, Boss. And I don’t even wanna think about how creepy-uncle he was getting with that youngest Grim girl.
NATE: Okay, yeah, that was… bad. But we can just not book her when he’s around. And look, all we have to do is give him one trial run on the next show. An entire show with all profit and no overhead, Abdul.
ABDUL: Well yeah, there’s that, but god damn, the address he gave us for the venue is a vacant lot. Do you really think he’s going to put up an entire building by then?
NATE: He’s done weirder things before.
ABDUL: I dunno about this.
NATE: No overhead.
ABDUL: Fine, it’s your call, but just remember that I told you so when this all goes south.
NATE: Great, excellent. I’ll tell the Schtank people that its a go, you know… Whenever they decide to get in touch with me. And the show itself is all booked?
ABDUL: Yeah, it was an easy one. Got the cruiserweight mini-tournament thing, plus those two showcase matches for the Notoriety people. And since Ace is trying to get that poor Duda kid killed, he requested a special match against Big Baby Lucifer.
NATE: Oh… Oh god, that’s something like a 300 pound weight difference. He’s going to be literally squashed.
ABDUL: Well, Ace thinks that he can teach poor Zip the value of speed and agility if he’s wrestling someone he can’t lift or knock down, or some shit. Hell, I dunno, he assured me that Zip agreed to it.
NATE: …He probably didn’t.
ABDUL: Eh, but what can you do. Either way, between the lil flippy guys and the ladies, we should have a nice high-speed contrast to that slo-mo trainwreck.
NATE: It’s a shame that we couldn’t make that Yumiko vs. Shimoda match happen.
ABDUL: Yeah, well. She heard who her opponent was going to be and said she’d never get on the plane. Some real weird issues between those two…
NATE: And that was also kind of weird how Mr. Nodawa absolutely insisted that one of his wrestlers still go up against Yumiko.
ABDUL: Yeah, I got kind of a weird feeling from that…
MEANWHILE…
TRI-PREFECTURAL AREA, JAPAN – At Kenichi Yamamoto Memorial International Airport, Notoriety wrestlers and members of the infamous xDEATHSTARSx heel faction, controversial former Mongolian judo champion VIOLENCE KHUNBISH and miserable little brat MIKA KANEMURA, prepare for their departure to the United States for an appearance in STRUGGLE Pro Wrestling, joined by the group’s leader, (and Notoriety’s reigning champion) the foul-mouthed, foul-tempered, and nigh-unstoppable NIKUYA. Also, everything from here on out is translated from Japanese, unless otherwise noted.
MIKA: What are we supposed to do when we get there? Neither one of us speaks English. And hell, Khunbish barely even speaks Japanese, for that matter.
KHUNBISH: Hey! I am speak very okay Japanese good!
MIKA: Kinda proving my point.
KHUNBISH: Well, I speaking better Japanese than you am talk Mongolian, probably. Hmph.
MIKA: You don’t know that. You don’t know shit about me. For all you know, I could speak incredible Mongolian and just never bothered to tell you.
KHUNBISH: (frowns)
MIKA: Seriously, I could be the best Mongolian speaker ever, and just kept it a secret. Who knows, I might fuck around later and head over to Xanadu and decree a stately pleasure dome. Hell, maybe two stately pleasure domes. And you’re not invited to either one.
KHUNBISH: Hey! You making joke, but Kublai Khan was rule over largest empire in history.
MIKA: Yeah? And how much empire do you guys control now? Two petrol stations and a KFC?
KHUNBISH: Oh! Okay! Okay! We see how imperialism work for you fucks. Wait here, I leave, go get Geiger counter.
NIKUYA: Okay, knock it off, dipshits. That outlaw pawn shop they’re sending you to has at least a few people you can talk to.
MIKA: How will we know who that is?
NIKUYA: They’ll be the ones speaking Japanese to you, genius.
MIKA: …Oh yeah.
KHUNBISH: Ugh, why we even keeping her around!?
NIKUYA: Well, for one thing, this – (she waves her hands in the general direcion of MIKA and KHUNBISH) is hilarious to me. Second, if she’s on our side, when she starts blowing snot on people, shoving her crotch in their faces, and all that other bullshit, it’s not aimed at us.
KHUNBISH: Hmph. Good point. (she looks over at MIKA with disgust, who responds by smiling sweetly and fluttering her eyelashes, to which KHUNBISH quietly mutters the phrase “fuckin’ pervert” in Mongolian, before turning back toward NIKUYA) But why you not going?
NIKUYA: Easy. Because I didn’t want to go.
KHUNBISH: …Oh.
NIKUYA: Anyway, it shouldn’t be too bad. Just don’t get lost, stomp out that crippled old bitch they’ve got you wrestling, and try to not get knocked up by some idiot American and trapped in the U.S., like she did.
(suddenly, Notoriety chairman and former owner MR. NODAWA approaches. MIKA and KHUNBISH bow respectfully, while NIKUYA responds in a much different manner)
NIKUYA: Ugh. The fuck you want, old man?
(NODAWA frowns, but otherwise ignores her, as he no longer has absolute hiring/firing power since being bought out by the NAKATOMI COPRORATION, and let’s face it, it’s not so much that she could beat him up easily, so much as that she actually might do it. Instead, he focuses his attention on KHUNBISH.)
NODAWA: You. You have an important match coming up. against Miss… La Grange.
KHUNBISH: Yes, Nodawa-sama. And I am beat her.
NODAWA: I don’t think you understand. This is a very important match for me… For the company. As you may or may not be aware, Miss La Grange and I have… History.
MIKA: Wait, history? Like, you know… (she forms a circle with her right thumb and forefinger, then slides her left index finger back and forth through the aforementioned circle) Like, history-history!?
(MR. NODAWA looks shocked and appalled, KHUNBISH facepalms, and NIKUYA just sighs and elbows the living shit out of MIKA, nearly knocking her down)
NODAWA: No! What-Just-what (to NIKUYA) What on Earth is wrong with that girl!?
(NIKUYA shrugs, as MIKA leans out from behind her and grins real big)
NODAWA: Anyway… Khunbish. It is very important that in this match, a message is sent. Winning or losing does not matter.
KHUNBISH: (confused) What!?
NODAWA: Do whatever you have to do. Whatever methods, techniques, or weapons. Whatever it takes. Khunbish, when you wrestle Miss La Grange…. Take. Her. Out.
(KHUNBISH’s eyes narrow and she nods solemnly, with just the faintest hint of a smile)
KHUNBISH: It is done.
NODAWA: Excellent. Do not disappoint me.
(a voice over the airport intercom indicates that the flight to the TRI-STATE AREA is now boarding, and MIKA and KHUNBISH grab their luggage and hurry off toward the gate. As NODAWA and NIKUYA watch them leave, NIKUYA doesn’t look pleased)
NIKUYA: You know…. If this whole thing was a thin excuse for an assassination… You should’ve sent me instead.
NODAWA: No. Absolutely not. You are the world champion. That would be too much to risk.
NIUKYA: (furiously) What!? Risk!? She was already washed up when I was still in high school! I am the Mad fucking Butcher! There is no fucking risk!
NODAWA: You underestimate her, child.
COMING SOON, HOPEFULLY:
