Participants:
| Scene Title | How to Float a Finch |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Sometimes you win things when you don't even know you're playing for, and sometimes one of those things is a healthy dose of inspiration! |
| Date | July 15, 2020 |
New Hammerstein Ballroom
Red Hook, NYC Safe Zone
9:30 pm EST
EOW, Evolution of Wrestling, has been going for a while now. It has an indie level of local popularity, enough for there to be posters and shirts around, a nice little subculture. Finch won tickets from a random promoter doing a raffle to promote tonight's show.
The main event is about to start, but first, John Strange appears on the large monitor above the entrance, the monitor that no one asks Cassius Potts how he was able to afford. John wears a full body purple lucha suit, with a purple lucha masks that looks almost like a catfish, with sparkling gold stars all over it.
He's sitting back stage, holding a microphone. "Last week, Billy Badass compromised my Inner Sanctum. He walked between the stars, he survived the madness of the universe even as it called out to him and threatened to crush his sanity, and then he stole my championship belt, again! This is not a man that I can underestimate anymore, because now this man has true power. But next week… next week, I will defeat Billy Badass once and for all… in an EXPLODING TIME BOMB DEATHMATCH!!!"
The crowd gasps, then starts cheering, and the feed cuts.
Cassius Potts starts talking at the announcing seat for everyone to hear. "That was wild, this might really be the end of Billy Badass. But now we have the main event, for the Princess of Princess Championship!"
Suddenly Rasputina's Transylvanian Concubine starts playing, and a woman wearing an all black victorian dress with a black veil over her pale face begins to walk out, holding a fancy umbrella over her head while creepy hunched over men in old timey servant uniforms walk behind her.
"All the way from South Transylvania. The Queen of the Undead, the challenger for the championship who's been working her way up to this position for months… NIght Goth! Accompanied by her NIght Droogs. The ref hates those Night Droogs always getting in the way."
Night Goth gracefully phases into the ring, vibrating her atoms through the ropes by some means of ability.
And then the hard drums start, and M.I.A's Bad Girls starts to play.
"And now… the Princess of Princess Champion, Queen of the Badlands, Alleged Destroyer of Worlds, and My Personal Nightmare, Alison Sunderlaaaaaaaaaaaand!!!"
Alison Sunderland walks out with a tight chamo tanktop with an unzipped tactical vest, some baggy brown cargo shorts and Very Serious wrestling boots.
"Wait, what's she dragging behind her? Is that… is that… it can't be!!!"
Alison pulls a rope behind her, and a burlap sack drags down to the ring with her.
"It's the Sack of Sunders!!! We haven't seen this since she ended Jackie O'Dare's career! You have no idea what might come outta that thing!"
Soon the match proceeds. It starts off slow once Alison reaches the ring. They have a stare down, Night Goth twirls her umbrella, then the ref takes it, her hat, and Alison's Sack of Sunders to sit them all at the side of the ring.
Night Goth suddenly pulls off the bottom half of her dress, as she normally does before the start of a match, to reveal a pair of modest professional boxing shorts, with white bats all over them, and fancy stockings that go down into her wrestling boots.
When they finally start fighting, there's lots of holds, some flips and takedowns, but then Night Goth starts phasing out of Alison's holds. Eventually, Alison gets fed up, and tries to go for her Sack of Sunders.
"Oh my god, she's… wait!"
The Night Droogs grab Alison's Sack of Sunders, and then they open it, looking down into the sack before they recoil in horror.
Night Goth stops in her tracks, and Alison holds her hand out for a mic, staring down Night Goth and smiling. "That's right, it's a bomb. You might not think I'm as educated as an aristocratic vampire queen, but I read the EOW rules and regulations. A disqualification is if I make physical contact with you, or if I have outside interference come in to help me. That means that unless that bomb explodes, I'm not breaking any rules."
"Ref, ref! This can't be true!" Cassius yells on the announce table. But the ref, Audrey Cabana, is on her earpiece, talking to people backstage, and then she takes the microphone. "I've consulted with the producers, and the other referees. And unfortunately, Alison Sunderland is right, this match must continue, she is not breaking any rules, and we do not have the power to amend the rules in the middle of a match."
Alison takes the mic back, then laughs.
Right before Night Goth holds a hand out for her own mic, speaking in her somber tone. "I respected you. I may be from the aristocratic upper class of South Transylvania, but I have honor, I have respect. My Night Droogs are there to protect me from liars and cheaters like you. But now… now you've caused my pale black heart to beat enough to hurt."
"I'm sick of hearing you talk!" Alison shouts. "Say 'I quit', or the bomb goes off. I'm all the way over here, I'll be fine. But you and your Night Droogs? No way."
Night Goth sighs, and struggles, looking back at her Droogs, and then she says, "… I quit."
And the bell rings.
"Alison Sunderland wins, but she's not my champion!" Cassius announces, shaking his head.
Alison suddenly storms over to face the announce table, yelling on the mic. "You got something to say, dickshit? I am the Princess of Princess Champion, and no one can take my title away, no one!"
With all that chaos going on, but beginning to mellow down, a male ref starts to search the crowd. "I'm looking for the ticket winner. They're invited backstage."
But the ticket winner is engrossed with the goings on, standing with both her hands over her mouth and her eyes as wide as they'll go, her attention on nothing but the ring and announcements. Her sleeveless shirt over torn jeans only seems to help channel her outward enthusiasm, stating in no uncertain terms and in a messy rainbow gradient…
HIGH
FIVES
RIGHT
VIBES!
This, despite the fact that she's wedged in between a group of people considerably larger than she is, and competing for elbow room sees her getting a shoulder mashed momentarily into the side of her face as someone squeezes past.
Only then do the ref's words register in her mind, and her attention snaps to the person moving away to ask, "Oh, are you the ticket winner?" Despite being fully ready for an affirmative answer and to be excited for this lucky person, she is woefully ignored. Because this man is not, in fact, the ticket winner.
She pauses all of two seconds before it hits her, and both her arms go flying up, "OH! I'M the ticket winner! Me!"
"Great. Congratulations!" As the ref offers his hand to Finch, Night Goth is leaning on the ropes while the crowd cheers for her. Alison Sunderland has already left with the title. The Night Droogs are comforting their queen. "Come with me."
Finch is led off backstage, through a smaller door, not the main entrance for the wrestlers. Backstage is like any old hallway that one would find in a fancy ballroom that someone fixed up, with posters of EOW wrestlers on the walls. There's some basic catering, and people in various costumes having discussions.
Perhaps they knew Finch was coming back there, who knows, but the good guys aren't talking to the bad guys, they're relatively separate.
A tall, fit man walks over to Finch wearing an open denim vest, a black cowboy hat, aviators, chewing a piece of straw. His hair is long, curly, and blonde.
It's Billy Badass. "Who's this chick? You bringin' chicks back here for me?" And then the ref rather protectively holds his hand out to keep Billy from getting too close. "This is a fan, and she doesn't want anything to do with you."
"Hey!" John Strange calls over, in his full lucha costume, starting to run over. "Why don't you go home! This fan is in the Realm of a Thousand Strings, which is why we have this wide variety of buffalo wings from different venues." He motions to the catering table.
"I'll see you next week, John Strange. Right here, at 8pm next Saturday!" Billy Badass aggressively points, then walks away.
John walks up to Finch, the only part of his face visible being his mouth. He smiles and offers his gloved hand to her. "Are you okay? Sorry about him. This is my sanctum, so you're safe here. What's your name?"
Finch may as well have literal stars showing in her eyes, because from the moment she dutifully hops out from the audience and into a new adventure, she is speechless with excitement.
Staying close to her escort, she pops out from behind him occasionally to ENTHUSIASTICALLY WAVE at the good guys and (somewhat less enthusiastically) at the bad guys — tempering her excitement by a margin just in case some of them might not appreciate her smile settings on full blast.
She's caught off-guard when Billy Badass is suddenly in front of her, causing her to reflexively push back a foot and both her shoulders when her eyes dart up to his face. Her own shows ever so slightly more fight than flight.
She's still a little shaken when the hand goes out to her, but by the time she looks at it properly, and then up at the John Strange attached to it, her smile is back with a vengeance. Her mouth opens but though she reaches to shake the hand with at least twenty times more energy than is required, the words seem don't come when she wants them to…
Until they happen all at once. "My name is Finch it's like the bird but it's a last name and I like it aaaaahhh my gosh it's so cool you have a sanctum!!!"
"Every Dimensional Wizard needs a sanctum, because you never know what creatures and powerful entities might find you. I'm still not sure how Billy Badass broke into my sanctum and stole my title belt, but I'll find out eventually." Magnes releases Finch's hand, then suddenly jumps back, bouncing lightly above the floor like an astronaut on the moon. "I can control the gravity within my sanctum. Go ahead."
He holds his hand out, standing above twenty feet from her, waiting for her to jump toward him. "Don't worry, you won't fall, I have complete control of this sphere of influence. And then I have some presents and chicken to give you."
Every w h a t.
"I don't really accept food from strangers!" Finch shouts up at Magnes, beaming while she tries to come to terms with the possibility that the concept of gravity may be more pliable than she's been led to believe, "And you're very strange!"
Like the name, see.
None of this, though, is to the detriment of her enthusiasm, because even if she's still visibly reeling at watching real life magic happen, she still immediately looks up and around her before - with a tiny shriek - doing her best attempt at jumping toward him.
The colour drains from her in an instant when it actually works, panic on her face as she rattles out, "I'mreallyreallynormalIdon'treallydothesethingsaaa!"
"Don't worry!" Magnes holds his hand up, very showmanship-like, gradually allowing her to regain her footing. He doesn't allow her to actually fall.
He skips the chicken, and instead heads to a small table. That's where he grabs a black shirt with fancy cursive writing that says Night Goth, and then right under that is a distorted green, melty font that says With Her Droogs. Then a purple shirt with the design of his mask in the middle of it, and shiny gold stars all over the shirt. Under it are gold letters in a magical-looking font that says 'John Strange"'Open Your Sixth Eye"'.
And then there's a very bootleg looking CD jewel case. Evolution of Wrestling: The Radical Hits Volume 2. "These are all yours now." he informs her as he stuffed it and a few other goods into a green cotton bag with the EOW logo on it. "I know that I can be quite strange, but do you have any questions before I have to return to my interdimensional journeys?"
Still absolutely blown away by the fact that she just did a hella cool trick, Finch hardly contains herself enough to form more words as she walks, focus darting from the floor to her feet to the tables to everything.
"Oh my gosh this is the best day," she says at last, "I can't believe a few weeks ago I didn't even know about -" she trails off, pointing blindly to the fading sounds of the audience, and then ahead of her at Magnes. "And that - and it's - so cool! Oh oh oh! Questions, um. Um!"
She jolts upright, lips pulling into a thin line as she does her utmost best to think of a question before her mouth runs away with her and she blurts one out regardless— "Do you think I could be a wrestler?"
Never let it be said that Finch doesn't dive into spontaneously formed interests with every fibre of her being.
John Strange looks left and right, then leans in, whispering to Finch. "There's a sage who works here, his name is Magnes. J. Varlane."
That would be the name of the war hero who everyone thought was dead but is actually alive now, but he is still not quite aware of how well known war heroes are. He knows it intellectually, but it hasn't quite sunk in that people recognize his name, even though it's happened before.
"He has wavy hair and is wearing a Night Goth shirt. But for now, I'll have to bid you farewell! Talk to the sage if you're curious about being a wrestler!" With that, he starts to float into the air, then flies to the dressing rooms.
The ref who led her back here walks over and nods. "Do you have anyone you need to call to pick you up? Or any friends to meet up with?" he asks, perhaps concerned due to how late it is, and not being entirely sure of her age.
"Magnes J. Varlane," Finch repeats, like she's trying to conjure up the specific way in which the name is familiar to her. She is still repeating it when John Strange flies off and she gasps, hands coming up over her mouth again, bag cradled in her arms.
When the ref addresses her, her attention snaps to him with both of her eyebrows raised in surprise. "Oh no, sir, thank you! I know where to go, I'll be home in a walk and a half!"
And she sounds excited about it, too, turning around a full 180 to look around again and adding, "It'll be nice after, like, all of this! I got to find a new place today! This was really cool."
After a few moments, when Finch is likely nearly out the door, the sound of rolling can be heard from behind her. Magnes J. Varlane is wearing a Night Goth t-shirt, blue jeans, and sneakers, on his skateboard while still indoors. He has a duffle bag over his shoulders. "Hey, I heard you might be interested in learning to be a wrestler."
She's not out the door yet, because there's just something about the sound of a skateboard that demands attention.
And so she's got a bit of a head start in seeing him coming, smiling broadly in welcome. Re-welcome. Whichever.
"What!" She calls out first, astonished, before a startled laugh escapes her. The shoe may have just dropped, finally. "Oh!" Realisation comes all at once, and she takes some hurried steps to walk up to him properly. "Oh wow! Hello mister Varlane! I'm interested in a lot of things! This one's cool as heck."
"Being interested in a lot of things is the first step to becoming a wrestler." Magnes offers her his hand. "Magnes J. Varlane. If you really want to be a wrestler, we'll meet up some time, here on an off day. And then we can maybe discuss what you might want to do in the wrestling business. How does that sound?"
Finch perks up so abruptly that her hair bounces over the line of her shoulders, and Magnes' hand is grabbed with both of hers so she can shake it with all the vigor of someone capable of being utterly and completely in love with an idea upon first sight.
"That sounds like I'm gonna do my BEST!"