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+--- Thread: Squabble Up (/showthread.php?tid=49274)
Squabble Up - Centurion - 09-15-2025
“Where did you even FIND this place?”
The question is asked by Centurion, standing in the middle of the four person group of him, Nellie, Erin, and Ruby. All of them stand outside of a rusty metal door attached to a brick building. It is early in the morning, and the cold appears to be getting to Erin and Nellie, who are huddled together in order to keep each other warm. Centurion and Ruby, meanwhile, seem rather unbothered by the temperature.
“Um, did you forget about that whole ‘being a superhero’ thing?” Ruby responds back, quizzically. “This is where a lot of the weapons and items that the baddies used were put. No one claims them, but they’re no longer evidence, so it gets bought up by scrap dealers like Norman who either hoard it or sell it for pennies on the dollar.”
As if on cue, the door creeks open, and an older gentleman, likely the aforementioned “Norman”, opens the door. He has a mug in his hand and looks at each member of the group before looking back at Ruby. “Ah yes, Ruby. I almost didn’t recognize you without the mask.”
“Good to see you again, Norman.” Ruby says with a warm smile. “We wanted to come and look at some of your stuff, maybe make a few purchases.”
“Absolutely! Right this way, Mrs. Cortinovis!” Norman opens the door further and the four walk in. Centurion’s eyes immediately lighten up when he walks into the building - it is an old brick warehouse, stock full of bats, chains, clubs, all sorts of things that could be used as weapons. Centurion rubs his hands together and licks his lips before following Norman further into the building. Ruby takes a step, too, but the right hand of Nellie reaches out and touches her on the shoulder, getting her to stop.
“One second.” Nellie says in a hushed tone. “We didn’t get a chance to really talk about this. I’m surprised you’re cool with Dad getting back into the ring. I know you were really happy with him being at home.”
“Yeah, I was, but…” Ruby stops for a second and glances over at Centurion, who is holding a crowbar while Norman chats him up about his inventory. “...he wasn’t. He tried to distract himself, but that just turned into him watching the news and getting angrier. He’s not built to be a retired guy. I don’t want to see him wrestling week in and week out, but if he stays home, it’s going to drive him crazy. And, well…” Ruby gestures over at Cent, who bangs the crowbar on a metal table in front of him, causing Nellie and Erin to slightly jump and also look in his direction. “...he’s plenty crazy enough as it is. Why, are you worried about him?”
“Oh, I’m always worried about him.” Nellie says quickly in response. “I fear one day he’s going to die in the ring.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen, but…” Ruby takes a second to think. “...it wouldn’t be the worst way to go, if you think about it.”
“Oh. Fuck. Yeah!” The echoing voice of Centurion breaks the tension as the three ladies step further in the building. Standing towards a back wall is Centurion and Norman, with multiple bags of golf clubs lined up next to them. Centurion grins from ear to ear as he shifts through one of the bags. The three ladies walk up to Centurion as he pulls out one of the clubs and examines it. “Do you know the manufacturing year?”
“Heh.” Norman gets off a dismissive laugh. “I couldn’t even tell ya what kind of club that is.”
“It’s a Spalding.” Centurion quickly answers as he turns the club to face the clubhead. “Cannon. This one is a sand wedge, but it looks like you have the whole set here. The Cannon is either an ‘85 or an ‘86.” Centurion continues to glance up and down the club before looking up at the rest of the crew, who all look highly confused. Centurion looks at all four individually before explaining. “When Spalding made the Cannon in ‘85, they used pure steel shafts. By ‘86, however, they were experimenting with carbon fiber, but the technology wasn’t as good with them at that time. Caused the shafts to be lighter and slightly less durable. This one feels like it has some weight to it, though, so…” Centurion takes the club and breaks it in half over his knee, causing the other four to jump back. Centurion looks down the shaft of the club and nods. “Yeah, it’s an ‘85.”
“So I’ll just…go ahead and add that to your bill.”
“Yeah, don’t worry about it.” Centurion says calmly. “I’ll take them.”
“What, the whole bag?” Norman asks.
“No…the whole lot.”
Norman’s eyes grow wide as he rescans the hundreds of golf clubs that are in front of him. He gets a bit of a smile on his face as he gestures towards his office. “Let me get some paperwork.”
Norman walks away from the group, leaving the four others behind. Nellie rubs her chin before looking straight at Centurion. “What do you need all of these for?”
“You never know.” Centurion says in a matter of fact tone. “I planned on only using one club, a bat, maybe a box cutter or a shiv, to take out Darren, but now Tommy is added to this damn match and the rest of the roster is apparently lining up for a chance to win the title, so I need all the weapons I can get my hands on.”
“This might be a bit overkill.” Nellie responds back. “I mean, there’s hundreds of these things! Are you going to carry all of them to the ring by yourself?”
“Carry? God no!” Centurion laughs. “I’m going to drive them down to the ring with a forklift.”
Nellie glances over at Ruby, who mouths “duh” sarcastically back at Nellie. A few seconds later, the familiar “ding!” of a cellphone can be heard, and Erin reaches into her pockets to pull out her smartphone. She opens it and reads through the contents for a few seconds before typing away.
“Who the hell is texting you this early in the morning?” Centurion asks. “Aren’t all of your friends usually asleep at this hour?”
“Oh, it’s not a text.” Erin replied, nonchalantly. “It’s a Twitter DM from one of the members of the lesbian sex cult.”
Centurion and Ruby both look over at Erin with shocked expressions, while Nellie quickly snaps her head over to Erin and gives her a “stop talking” gesture. Erin, meanwhile, doesn’t change her expression at all, as she continues to type into her phone.
“Should I ask?” Centurion carefully questions, looking back over at Nellie.
“I wish you wouldn’t.” Nellie answers in shame.
Before anyone can ask any further question, Norman comes walking up with a pad of yellow legal paper. He is writing down some numbers as he approaches the group. “What are you going to be needing all this stuff for, anyway?”
“Doing a little…” Centurion thinks for a second as he looks back over the golf clubs. “…amateur plastic surgery.”
“Oh.” Norman responds, initially confused, before his face shifts to one of understanding. “Oh! Well, I might have something else that would interest you. Follow me.” Norman walks away, gesturing to the group to follow. They walk several feet to another part of the warehouse, close to a truck entrance, where a large shipping container sits. Norman fumbles around with his keys as he looks to unlock the container. “I’ve had this sitting here for a while. Apparently there was some big bust at a farm - guy growing a ton of weed or somethin’. Sheriff ended up selling the property, but the new owners didn’t want any of this, so it got dropped off here.” Norman finds the key he’s looking for, unlocks the padlock, and opens the door to the container.
Inside, there are spools upon spools of barbed wire, all in various different sizes and all in different conditions. Centurion’s eyes damn hear sparkle - if this were an anime, his eyes would have hearts in them and some romantic music would be playing in the background. He walks into the container, almost in a trance, as he salivates over all the damage he could do to Tommy Wish and Darren Dangerous with this new equipment.
“Oh…..YEAHHHHH.”
—---I got friends, I got foes, but they all sitting ducks—---
A distinctfully loud sigh is the first thing that is heard when the camera comes back to life.
Sitting on the back deck of his luxury cabin and overlooking his pond is Centurion. He has a cigarette in one hand and is rubbing his forehead with the thumb and pointer finger of his other hand. He shakes his head back and forth in disappointment before he sits up in his chair and takes a drag of his cigarette. He exhales the smoke and finally speaks.
“This is what happens when I open my big mouth.
For the record, I was not looking to get back in the wrestling ring. Far from it - I enjoyed retirement. Well…kinda.” Centurion’s confident voice begins to waver a bit. “I mean…it was nice not having my body beat to shit every single week, and getting to repair the parts of my body that have been breaking down for years is really nice. Granted, it was boring as hell just being at home, and the roar of the crowd is like a drug that you will continuously crave until you are in the ground…and the world being a complete dumpster fire is something that always sends me into a fiery rage that I had no outlet for…and watching the current product makes me wish Georg Hackenschmidt was shot in 1890 to avoid the disaster that is modern professional wrestling…
…what was I saying?” Centurion’s eyes wander off a bit as he takes another drag of his cigarette, but they light back up again as he exhales and remembers where he was going with that. “Ah yes, I wasn’t looking at getting back into the ring. Here’s what happened.
Nellie mentioned on Twitter - because I’ll smash my own balls with a hammer before I ever call it “X” - that I was doing well. It was the first time my name was uttered in a professional wrestling setting in a year. Jimmy Stars, the opportunistic whore that he is, said ‘you know what would be a good idea? If I made Centurion a special enforcer to a match and see if he showed up.’ I gotta admit, I’m more pissed off at myself than I am at him because it worked like a charm.
As this is going on, King Kong Bundy’s ugly brother Darren Dangerous decides he’s going to pop up and talk shit about everyone and everything. Now, me and my big mouth, I decided to make fun of the guy because…I mean, look at him. And of course, he took offense to it, so I challenged him to a fight.
…a FIGHT!” Centurion is sure to emphasize the word. “Not a match. A FIGHT. Show up to the parking lot, beat the shit out of him, and leave. That’s all!
Somehow, though, that evolved into me getting an X-Treme Title shot, which I did not ask for, but fine. If I’m going to break my retirement in order to fight this sentient gelatinous cube, then I at least want something tangible out of it. Not for the sake of holding the X-Treme Title, mind you, but to be the one to take the title off of him. To be the one that turns him back to irrelevance. At least I get to take something from him…
…except he couldn’t even manage to hold on to the fucking belt!”
Centurion takes one last drag and angrily puts the cigarette out in the ashtray next to him. He quickly stands up, the anger in his voice beginning to rise.
“All he had to do was avoid being randomly pinned. That’s it. And not only could he not manage that, but he got pinned BACKSTAGE by TOMMY WISH! Tommy Fucking Wish! That dude is always backstage! He hangs out in locker rooms in arenas he’s not even booked at! Randomly pinning the X-Treme Champion is what he DOES! How do you not see that coming?! It’s like being surprised you get hit by a train when you’re standing on the fucking tracks!
So NOW, not only is my retirement broken, and I have an X-Treme Title match, but I have to face both Darren Dangerous AND Tommy Wish.” Centurion takes a deep breath in as he runs his fingers through his hair. “I’ve done a lot of stupid shit in my life, but this may be towards the top of the list, because I KNOW, the moment I hold that X-Treme Title above my head at the end of Relentless, I am going to become a target for the entire locker room, and I KNOW I won’t be able to step away again until I cash in on all the receipts that I’m about to collect.
I truly do hate myself sometimes.
The inclusion of Tommy complicates things a LOT, too. See, I had a plan.” Centurion turns and walks a couple of steps to his back door. He opens it and reaches inside before pulling out a golf club. He taps the club head onto the deck floor a couple of times, causing the sound of the wood to echo throughout the property. “I was going to take this five iron and beat Darren over the head with it until he ran out of blood. Seemed like a legit strategy. Problem now is, there is another wrestler in this match, and he doesn’t care about hurting anyone or making a statement - he just wants to win. So if I start caving in the skull of Darren, Tommy could easily just roll me up and win the match two minutes in, and I will lose my opportunity to rid this world of that disgusting ogre.
And I am not naive enough to think that can’t happen. I’ve beaten Tommy Wish before. Hell, most people have, but he never goes away. He can lose a hundred matches in a row, and he’ll still show up to work, and then the moment you take your eye off him, or you think he’s nothing more than some enhancement talent, he beats you. I’ve seen him lose to the biggest flashes in the pan, and I’ve seen him beat some of the most established stars that have come through this place.
Trust me, if this were a one on one match, and my goal was simply to win, there’s no way in hell Tommy would be able to beat me; however, that is not the situation we are in. I don’t hate Tommy. I don’t have the desire to spill his brain matter all over the county. Him holding the X-Treme Title…it makes a lot of sense, and it’s a nice reward for the career he’s carved for himself. So what do I do? Do I just do what I want to do to Darren and let Tommy walk out with the belt?”
Centurion looks down at the ground for a second and places his pointer finger under his chin, making it seem like he’s actually thinking about it. After a second, however, he grins and shakes his head.
“Nah.
There’s something all professional wrestlers have, whether it be retired wrestlers, or the biggest names in the industry, or the newest talent fresh in the door - crippling pride. The kind of pride that prevents you from doing certain sensible things. Sure, it would be wise to let anyone else carry the XTreme Title, especially someone as skilled and passionate as Tommy Wish, but that would mean adding an L to my record, and even though it SHOULDN’T mean anything, it absolutely does to my sick brain.
So yeah, sorry Tommy, but you got the short straw on this one. Maybe if you pinned Darren before the XWF booked the entire pay per view card, you would have your own match that you could win and show off with.
And before anyone starts asking about my health or my ring readiness - I’m fine. I have parts of my body that are feeling healthier than they have in decades, and you can plop me in the ring after being away for years and I’ll pick it back up like I never left. Don’t believe me? Check my 2019 run.
Tommy, I know you never asked me, but I’m about to give you some advice - pick your spots wisely. If you think you can throw yourself in the middle of this blood feud, I PROMISE you, you can’t. You will be swallowed whole, like that movie with that dude and the weird mouth…”
Centurion takes a second to think, then yells to the other side of the camera. “Hey Nell, what’s the name of that fucked up movie you made me watch?”
“Choppy & The Girls.” Nellie says with a slight hint of disdain in her voice.
“Yeah. You’ll be swallowed whole like those people in Choppy & The Girls. Wait for me to do what a heart attack will do in five years anyway and kill Darren. Then, you and I can square off and decide who gets to walk out with the belt. It’s honorable. It’s entertaining. And it’s the only way you’ll avoid being turned into jam.
Now…onto the reason I’m even here.”
Centurion raises his golf club and slaps it into his open palm.
“Darren, I know what you’re thinking….well, “thinking” is a strong term. I know what the tiny moth in your skull is thinking. Why did I even decide to pick a fight with you anyway? After all, we had no previous interactions prior to this. Why would your tiny presence in a wrestling federation that I am no longer a part of mean anything to me? Well, it’s pretty simple.
I don’t just hate you…I hate everything you represent. I get it - you see the world around you, and you’re emboldened. You think you can do and say whatever you want, and since the absolute worst people on the planet are currently running our governments, media networks, social networks, and every form of consumable entertainment, not only will nothing happen to you, but you’ll have a line of brain dead losers applauding you and calling you a hero. Honestly, you’re probably right, except for one thing.
You, and people like you, forgot what it was like to get punched in the face. You got way too comfortable with having no repercussions for your actions. And I don’t just mean someone pinning you and taking your title - you’ll probably just hand wave that as some fluke that never would have happened if you had been prepared.
You wanna go around, shouting slurs, challenging people to insane matches, talking about spilling the blood of all manor of folks, fine, but you better be prepared when someone finally looks you in the eyes and calls you out for being the massive pussy you really are. You’re not some “hardcore legend” - you’re a bully with a bat, and I know this because of the absolute meltdown you had by even suggesting that maybe, perhaps, it’s a bad look for a company when one of their champions is begging for money. You’re not used to being told “no”. You’re not used to being anything other than the loudest and most obnoxious asshole in the room. And I’m sure there are people in your life - people who don’t know any better - who might actually be afraid of you.
Well, much like there are consequences when you go on school campuses and drum up support for hate movements, there are also consequences to acting like a tough guy when you’re nothing more than a bowl of jelly - except I’m not going to shoot you in the neck. I’m just going to beat the everloving shit out of you.
Only problem is, this requires blood, and that freaks me out a little bit, mainly because there’s no WAY you don’t have Hepatitis C.”
Centurion scans his arms, looking to make sure there aren’t any open wounds.
“As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure you’ve got some diseases I’ve never heard of before. You look like someone who crawled out of RFK Jr. dungeon after floating around in the sewage for a while. The plus side is, once they figure out what flesh eating disease is eating your face, you’ll finally have something named after you.
Sometimes, life has a way of just tossing you into situations. For me, it’s right place, right time - I picked a fight with someone who became the X-Treme Champion, and now I have the opportunity to win gold once again in this business - the business I swore off. For Tommy Wish, it’s wrong place, wrong time - he may have another X-Treme Title added to his resume, but he’s going to pay for it with a LONG night at Relentless, one that he certainly was not planning for. And for Darren? Well…there’s never a right place OR a right time for him, unless that place is “Hell” and that time is “Immediately.”
Centurion reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pack of Djarum Blacks. He slides one of cigarettes into his mouth and pats around, looking for his lighter. Before he can say anything, a Zippo comes flying in from over the camera, tossed by Nellie and caught by Centurion. He flicks the lighter open and lights the cigarette before tossing the lighter back over to Nellie. He closes his eyes and raises his head to the sky briefly as he takes in a long hit of his cigarette. He exhales, as if he is not only exhaling the smoke, but also exhaling the thoughts he has had stored up inside him.
“This might be a terrible idea. I accept that as a possibility. I also accept that I’ll never fully leave this business again, and that every time I try to take a step away, something will inevitably drag me back in. I can promise this, though - as long as I am breathing, I will never stop fighting, whether that’s in the ring or out of it. And maybe, someday, my death will come sooner than it should…but I can promise you, on my way out, I will make sure all of you mother fuckers meet your…
FINAL FANTASY!!!