DIRECTLY FOLLOWING WARFARE




“I told you I’d keep my promise…”

The midnight moon howls in the sky as a pair of black boots march along a gravel path. The camera stays low to the ground, zooming in as stones snap and squeal beneath the rough leather. Like bones breaking in the night, fragments fly everywhere when the gravel bursts.

Beneath every step, a muffled scream.

Behind every scream, another shattered dream: crushed beneath his boots.

“I can only hope you believed me…even when no one else would.”

The camera follows the boots as they come upon a rosebed, glowing unnaturally in the darkness. The roses have been arranged meticulously into three rows, divided by color: red, white, and green.

While these colors might not mean much to you, they once meant everything to him.

A pair of familiar hands emerge from the darkness above the roses, lifting an XWF-branded briefcase into view, clutched like an offering.

The very same briefcase that Peter Principal gifted Charlie Nickles.

“I brought it for you, just like I said I would.”

The briefcase is gently placed upon the rosebed. The camera lingers on the briefcase resting among the flowers, their colors somehow glowing more vibrantly than before.

Their beautiful petals, so full of life…will soon wilt beneath The Nickleman’s venom.

“Now we’re finally even. This briefcase stays here, rotting with you.

But I won’t.

Tonight, I walk away…for good.”

The camera pulls back as this Bastardly Father professes his truth. A tombstone comes into view, standing across the rosebed from our kneeling Nickleman. Atop his shoulder sits the classic XWF championship belt, gleaming in the moonlight. The briefcase with SEB’s belt rests in the roses near his feet, but his eyes remain fixed on the name carved into the stone.

Her name.

“I’ve been a slave to your ghost for too long, dragging your memory along like chains of regret. But glory isn’t meant for the broken and the grieving. The world doesn’t care about my pain, loss, or so-called ‘redemption’.

It only cares about my VICTORY!”

Charlie's eyes gleam with pride as he transfers his gaze to 'big gold'.

“Now that I have THIS, I don’t need YOU.

Now that I have THIS, I’ve finally realized what LOVE is…

And it’s got nothin’ to do with ghost stories.”

A queasy feeling brews in Charlie’s stomach as the roses wilt under his poison. The winds rustle through the graveyard, like a hushed reply lost between the tombstones. Charlie holds ‘big gold’ against his heart as the rosebed loses its glow.

“I promised you the universe, Robyn, and now you’ll have it forevermore.

What you could never accomplish in life, I have gifted you in death.

Your sacrifice has been repaid, a thousand times over: which means it’s finally over.

I don’t owe you a damn thing anymore.

You’ll have your universe here, buried in the past with you.

And I’ll have mine on Monday and Thursday nights!

And never again shall the two come to meet.

This is our last farewell, my beautiful, soon-to-be forgotten daughter…”

The Nickleman reaches out and caresses the tombstone, his fingers gliding across the name as if closing a pair of eyelids that will never again open.

“But the dead don’t rest easy, do they?”

A knowing smirk curls across Charlie’s face.

“Just ask Micheal Graves, because I buried his corpse three years ago! I left him rotting, six feet deep, live on Pay-Per-View.

Yet somehow, someway, I’m supposed to believe he clawed outta’ that coffin? Not a chance! I slammed that coffin shut, just like I slammed shut the door on North Korean War Criminal’s undefeated record!

All that was left of Gravy after our match was his legacy…but apparently, someone’s been burying that too!”

Charlie chuckles.

“Oh, who am I kidding? Gravy buried himself long before I did. By the end of his run, he was a gender-swapping child trafficker…I wish I was joking.

By the time I buried Graves, he had debased and humiliated himself time and time again with ridiculous gimmick after ridiculous gimmick.

And he did it all for the fans.

What a delusional Mark, right?”

The Nickleman gives a sly wink.

“I’m not buying into any of that “allegedly” Micheal Graves nonsense, the only thing I’m alleging is that our Anarchy champion is a mark for a dead man!

Let me ask you something…what kind of fanboy parades around in the clothes of a serial sexual predator, pretending to be his ghost? What kind of “socialist leader” dresses up like a rapist to sell tickets? I’m sick and tired of watching this freak wear a gimp mask and pretend to be Micheal Graves.

So I’m ending this bullshit on Thursday night, for the entire XWF Universe to see.”

Charlie stands up, turning away from both his daughter’s memory and the briefcase containing the ‘modern’ XWF belt.

“Now that I’m in charge around here, things are going to work differently.

This is Jimmy’s first Anarchy, and I’m going to clean this show up so he can get it running smooth! I’ve got the big gold, so I’m setting the new rules for Anarchy: whether that fraud in the mask likes it or not!

There will be no ‘easy way out’ for him on Thursday night.

After I Devil Hook Drop him into the gates of hell, I’m going to walk right out that cage door…and then right back in after the bell rings!

Because I’m not coming to take your belt: mine’s bigger.

I’m not even coming to take your pride, or what little you have left of it.

No no no…I’m coming to Anarchy for one thing only, you putrid little mark…I’m coming for complete control.

I’m coming for your mask!

And I’ll take your entire head along with it, if you make me!

So be a smart mark, bury that mask where you found it, and don’t make me expose you.

I’ve already buried one ghost tonight.

Don’t make me bury another!”