Post by Khaos on Aug 15, 2021 19:39:02 GMT -5
Pain… without love
Pain… I can't get enough
Pain… I like it rough
'Cause I'd rather feel pain than nothing at all…
The Left Hand is no more; the defeat of Daniel Dream was the final nail in the coffin. For months, the trio had run rampant through the halls of Revolution 1, doing whatever – and attacking whomever – they so pleased. Apparently, no one was safe. Damien Carter resisted the pull for as long as he could, but the moment Cerise betrayed him, they made it personal. They targeted him, and he thought he understood why. The whole “it’s nothing personal, just business” adage; but turning Cerise against him, it doesn’t get much more personal than that. And so one-by-one they lined up, targeting him, making their sole focus. Despite them all saying that it had nothing to do with titles; they all lined up, one-by-one, and challenged him for the Legacy Heavyweight Championship. And, one-by-one, they all fell into darkness, defeated by “Khaos”. Dream was finally put to rest, Cerise was freed from their mind control, and Anya Coyle… well… she’s just batshit crazy. Now that the Left Hand had truly and utterly been defeated, it was time to heal old wounds, mend broken fences, and look to the future…
Remembrance II…
Damien would defend his Championship against Anya Coyle. He couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed, after all… Legacy had just acquired the former Sin World Champion, Chelsea LeClair. He had faced off against her twice and, in both encounters, she had bested him. Damien did not like that, not one bit. He wanted to prove that he could beat her; he needed to do so. Yet her defeat at Sierra Silver’s hands had left her a shell of herself. She wasn’t the person that he had thought she was, she was a quitter…
Whether you believe Sierra should’ve been in that position or not is irrelevant. Silver did as any true competitor would do; she seized the opportunity before her and she made the most out of it. The return of Jin Min-Jun seemed to “right” any wrong done to him, especially considering that he was getting his title shot at Remembrance II, albeit it a bit delayed. Still, the backstage attack on him that had left him unable to challenge Chelsea seemed a bit suspect. Of course the Left Hand was to blame; it was their MO after all. But Damien couldn’t help but feel that there was some other sort of force at work here; another threat yet to reveal itself…
He couldn’t worry about Jin, Sierra, or anyone else from the Sin brand for that matter. Damien needed to keep his focus on Legacy, more importantly… on Amber Payne. In typical fashion, Damien seemed to find himself coming to the aid of Cerise when Amber refused to release her from the “Soul Eater”. Watching the tape back, Damien could argue any number of reasons for why Payne did what she did. Maybe she simply hadn’t heard the referee ring the bell? After all, Cerise did pull off a crafty reversal to pick up the victory. Or maybe Amber was upset that she had lost in the way that she had? Most people probably couldn’t fault her, this is a very competitive business and a loss like this could derail your whole career. Maybe this loss had broken something inside her, forced Payne to snap the way that she had? As Damien continued to contemplate the “why” on the matter, he came to the sudden realization that he didn’t actually care. Amber did what she did, and that was all the motivation that he needed. Damien and Cerise had a lot of history together; and they still had a long way to go to rekindle their unique connection that had been brutally severed by the Left Hand. But with them gone, their evil no longer able to spread and infect those that happen to stray too close, this was a chance to “start over”. Damien came to her rescue then, as he had done so many times prior, and in that moment… it all felt so natural, as if this was how it should’ve been the whole time. Damien couldn’t “quit” Cerise, no matter how hard he tried. For better or worse, she was forever apart of him…
“How you feeling?” Cerise shouted from the bathroom, bringing Damien back to his senses.
Damien sat on the corner of the hotel bed, the droopy and broken-down mattress undeserving of a “Legacy Heavyweight Champion”, but it was still an upgrade from the bed of his truck. Sleeping in that never seemed to bother Cerise before; the two typically pulling off to the side of the road during their travels, finding a nice secluded place where they could rest, bundle up, and look at the stars until sleep took them. Cerise used to always look at all the different consolations, trying to name as many as she could before she drifted off into her dreamland. Damien would typically fight slumber until he knew she had fallen asleep first. Once he was sure she was “out”, Damien would do one of two things. Option number one, he would allow himself a moment of respite and slip into his own slumber. But option two typically meant that Damien was getting little to no sleep this night. If the darkness was strong enough around them, the pull of their evil deeds too much to fend off, he would simply become the Reaper and do what he did best. Despite Cerise being like a “sister” to him, even he kept this side of him buried out of sight. Many times he had thought of letting her in on his secret, revealing to her who he truly was. He believed that she would understand; accept him, even. But he risked losing her, and that was not something he believed he could survive; not again, at least…
“Hello!? Are you deaf or what!?” Cerise called out, this time opening the bathroom door and walking out, the steam trailing behind her.
She had just gotten out of the shower and had a towel wrapped tightly around her body while another adorned her head. Cerise looked over at Damien, lost in his own world. She may’ve well walked out naked, speaking Latin, and juggling bowling balls and he probably wouldn’t have even noticed. Cerise had seen a different side of him too these last few months, a more serious and “brooding” side. She hated it. Cerise did a quick scan of the room before her eyes fell upon a paper weight shaped as an apple on the desk. She snatched it up and threw it at him, Damien’s instincts kicking in at the last second as his hand lifted into the air and easily caught the object within his grasp, snaring it out of the air before it could hit him in the head. Damien looked down at it before glancing over at Cerise, who now stood with her hands on her hips.
“What?” Damien asked, ignoring the fact that she wore nothing under the dollar-store towels that did very little to cover up the areas that accentuated her voluptuous curves.
“You’re doing that thing again,” Cerise sighed, walking over to her own bed and laying down, the towel inching up her hips further, showcasing more of her thigh.
Cerise had always been comfortable in her own skin. Or, at least, in this particular skin anyway. Just as Damien typically kept his “true self” hidden from her, so – too – did Cerise refuse to let him see who she truly was within; both of them wearing masks so as to keep the outside world at bay. This façade was a form of survival; Damien had seen that all too well. Considering how close the two were, it wouldn’t be a surprise for there to be more to their relationship. But neither seemed that invested in the other to take it down that path. Besides, Damien wasn’t really the romantic type. The one time he had tried, it hadn’t really end very well.
“What thing?” Damien finally countered, getting up off the bed and walking over to the window, watching the sun set on another day.
Damien preferred traveling under the cover of darkness. Again, another one of those things he picked up during his time as a “Reaper”.
“Let the darkness be your ally…”
“You know,” Cerise began, reaching over to her nightstand and grabbing her phone. “That whole ‘why so serious’ thing. You act as if someone stole your teddy bear and lit it on fire.”
Damien caught the reference as he turned around, throwing the paper weight back at Cerise and hitting her in the knee.
“Too soon?” Cerise laughed, pretending the impact had crippled her as she grabbed at it in fake-agony.
“Just focusing on the next task at hand,” Damien responded matter-of-factly, no sympathy in his voice for her “broken” leg.
“Which is…?” Cerise inquired, dropping the injury act and proceeding to scroll through the various media feeds on her phone, half-listening.
“This week I need to make an example out of Amber Payne,” Damien declared, turning back to the window and watching the last rays of sun fade away. “I’ve set things in motion by finally ridding Revo1 of the Left Hand, but I still have more work to do; my journey is not quite yet finished. I embraced my true-self and, in doing so, it did what I thought it would; it made me strong enough to break through the endless nightmare and defeat Daniel Dream once and for all. Now, he’s nothing more than another one of my victims, claimed by the darkness.”
“You’re doing it again…” Cerise chimed in, her words ringing out in a monotonous tone as she kept her primary focus on her phone.
“My road to Remembrance starts this Tuesday,” Damien continued, ignoring Cerise’s mockery. “I’ll introduce myself to Amber Payne, show her exactly why I’m the best that Legacy has to offer, and teach her a very valuable lesson. This Tuesday, she’s going to find out first-hand why you don’t mess with me… or my friends.”
“Awww,” Cerise drawled out, putting her phone down and looking over at Damien, a puppy-dog look on her face. “You called me your ‘friend’!”
Cerise pushed herself up off the bed and rushed over to Damien, wrapping her arms around him in a big hug as he stood there, stoically excepting his fate.
“Perhaps I will give Amber a taste of her own medicine,” Damien mused, seemingly unaffected by Cerise’s sudden turn of affection on him. “And introduce her to my own submission move, the ‘Eternal Darkness’. I’ll look her dead in the eyes as the realization of what is about to happen suddenly hits her, the fear overtaking her, paralyzing her. She’ll try to scream out, but it’s too late. My arm will be wrapped around her neck, my legs around her waist. She’ll be trapped in my grasp, forced to the mat with me, as I synch the ‘Guillotine-like’ move in, force the air from her lungs. Her face will turn blue from the lack of oxygen; her hand will fall limp long after she taps. It’ll take the entire roster just to break her free of my clutches.”
Damien slowly turned his head, looking over his shoulder as Cerise gazed up at him, seeing the hellfire that burned deep within his eyes. She had been on the receiving end of that look before. She did not pity Amber in the least.
“Whether she likes it or not,” Damien smirked, the darkness flickering over his face as the sun finally set. “Amber shall act as my herald to Anya Coyle. Let her bear witness to the ‘Payne’ that I inflict this Tuesday night. For it shall pale in comparison to the destruction all will observe at Remembrance II...”