“You know, it took an awful lot of help for Jordan Penn just to fail.

Seven people. Seven. And somehow the grand result of all that planning, all that interference, all that desperation was what exactly?

You couldn't pin me once.

I walked out of that match bloodied, bruised, exhausted, and feeling better than I have in weeks because despite everything you threw at me, despite every advantage you stacked in your favor, despite every extra set of hands you brought along hoping somebody else could do your job for you, you still couldn't get it done.
Gotta say though…

I had a great time.

I enjoyed every second of beating the hell out of you, Jordan. I enjoyed proving exactly how little all that noise mattered once the bell rang. And if you ever decide you need another reminder, I'd be more than happy to provide one.

But the truth is, I'm not thinking about you anymore.

Because while you’re busy trying to figure out how seven people failed to accomplish what one woman did, I've got bigger things to focus on.

I've got more important things to focus on.

Bobby Bourbon.

You don’t  spend years in a place like this collecting championships, spilling blood, and being a part of moments people still talk about without becoming important. I know exactly who you are. I know what you’ve done. I know what kind of violence you bring. I watched what happened to Korvayne, and unlike a lot of people around here, I’m not arrogant enough to dismiss you just because I’m younger, faster, and hungrier than you are.

But the more I watched you, Bobby, the more obvious something became.

Every single time you walk into a room, you become whatever version of yourself gets the loudest reaction.

One moment you’re a blood-drunk barbarian preaching violence like it’s scripture. The next you’re standing there cracking jokes and selling bathwater because apparently the great destroyer of worlds also needs attention badly enough to start turning himself into the punchline.

And that’s when I realized the truth about you.

You don’t know how to exist unless everyone is looking at you.

That’s why you have to insert yourself into everything. Every conflict. Every conversation. Every moment that might possibly move forward without Bobby Bourbon standing in the middle of it screaming for attention. Because the second the spotlight drifts somewhere else, you panic. The second the company keeps moving without you, you start making noise loud enough that nobody has a choice but to look back your way.

That attack on Korvayne?

That wasn’t just violence.

That was desperation.

A man returning after disappearing yet again, realizing the world didn’t stop spinning while he was gone, and deciding the only way to force people to care was to create a spectacle so excessive that everybody had to talk about him again.

And the saddest part?

It worked.

Because that’s all you really are now, isn’t it, Bobby?

Shock value.

Not a monster. Not a prophet. Not some unstoppable force beyond humanity. Just a man so terrified of irrelevance that he keeps reinventing himself louder and louder every time people stop paying attention.

Every single thing you do feels calculated to provoke a reaction first and mean something second. Everything with you is theater.

Every outburst. Every reinvention. Every carefully crafted monologue where Bobby Bourbon tries to convince the room that he’s still the most important thing inside of it.

And maybe years ago that myth was real.

Maybe years ago Bobby Bourbon actually was the big bad boogeyman.

But now?

Now I think you’re fighting against something you cannot stand.

Time.

This last time you disappeared for six months, Bobby.

Six.

Months.

And the world kept moving anyway.

New stars rose. New fights happened. New champions carried this company forward while you vanished into silence after failing to show up when people expected you to. And I think that bothers you far more than anything else could because it forced you to confront the one thing you cannot brutalize into submission.

The truth.

This place can survive without you.

That’s why you came back so violently. That’s why you had to make a scene immediately. Because somewhere underneath all those speeches and all those personas and all those attempts to present yourself like this mythological force of nature, you already know people don’t  care the way they used to.

So now you chase reactions instead.

Shock them. Disgust them. Make them laugh. Make them uncomfortable. Make them horrified.

Anything is acceptable to you as long as they keep talking about Bobby Bourbon.

Silence terrifies you.

And I think that’s the difference between what you pretend to be and what you actually are.

A real monster wouldn’t need the audience.

A real monster wouldn’t need validation every five seconds.

A real monster wouldn’t constantly narrate itself like it’s desperately trying to make sure everybody understands how important it is.

But you do.

You need witnesses. You need people reacting to you because deep down, you realize yourself… Bobby Bourbon is not some unstoppable apocalypse. He’s just a man pretending to be one. And performances don’t last forever.

That’s the thing about legends nobody likes to talk about.

They don’t die all at once.

They fade.

Piece by piece.

And I think somewhere underneath all those desperate little performances for attention…

you can already feel that happening to you now.”



After waking up from her dream (nightmare?) of the funeral she had attended, Remi had left the hotel in Denver where she was to watch the Divide show, and decided to do a little shopping to keep her mind busy. Spending some time the night before grabbing a bite to eat with Rowan Vance and Vicki after the show had helped the previous night, but now the demons were lurking. The downtown area was busy enough that she had convinced herself it would help. That if she stayed somewhere crowded, somewhere normal, maybe the pressure squeezing at the back of her skull for the past few weeks would finally loosen for five damn minutes. Maybe she should start putting trust into more people… take a Leap of Faith if you will. The idea was thrown into the back of her mind with the rest of the tangled knot she was trying to unravel to be handled after her trip to Mars of all places.

People drifted around her beneath strings of lights overhead. Music spilled out of open doors. Someone nearby laughed a little too loudly. Cars crawled slowly past in the evening traffic.

It was all so normal.

Not that she knew what normal was anymore. At least not outside a wrestling ring.

Not after the flower in her car. Someone breaking into her home and leaving a confusing photograph. Not after seeing the man her father hired to watch her dead outside her home.

Remi shoves hands into the pockets of her jacket as she passes by another shop window, trying not to look over her shoulder again. But then she sees it…

A reflection of a dark hooded figure moving along a few yards behind her.

Her stomach drops, but she keeps walking, trying to shake of the feeling of paranoia. Don’t panic, don’t spiral. She repeats the words to herself. But a few moments later, she can’t help but check again. Still there, following. A cold wave rolls down her spine. Maybe they were just going the same way. But none the less, Remi picked up her pace, sneakers striking harder against the sidewalk as she moved further away from the crowded section of the street. Her pulse hammers in her throat, every possibility clawing its way into her head at once. She crossed the road quickly, weaving around people without apologizing, but when she glanced towards another storefront window…

The figure had crossed too.

Closer now.

“Fuck…” she mutters under her breath, trying to rein in the fear. She moves blindly now, just seeking to put distance between them. But the further she walks, the thinner the crowd becomes. Little boutique stores give way to quieter side streets. The sound of traffic fades behind her.

Bad idea.

Very bad idea.

Remi instinctively reaches for her phone in her back pocket. Footsteps quickened behind her.

Then suddenly a hand caught her arm.

Remi spun violently with a startled gasp, adrenaline exploding through her body so fast she almost swung on instinct before the figure spoke.

“Remi…”

The voice stopped her arm mid-motion. It wasn’t threatening or angry. Just rough and tired.

The hood was too low, casting a shadow over his face, only offering the vaguest of features to her gaze. Remi jerked her arm away and retreated a step.

“What the hell do you want?!” she snaps, unnerved. “Do I know you?”

The figure was quiet for a second, then replies softly. “No.” A pause, then almost sadly. “But I know you.”

Before she could say anything else, he shoves a small, plain box into her hands. Remi stared down at it confusion before lifting her gaze back up in time to see the figure back pedalling. “Wait…”

But he doesn’t, he whirled away and disappeared quickly down the alley beside the building at a run.

[color=#ff7aae“Hey!”[/color] After a moment of hesitation, Remi stumbled after him, clutching the box against her chest as she rushed down the alleyway behind him.

Empty.

She reached the opposite side seconds later, breath uneven as she looked wildly up and down the street.

Nothing.

Just completely gone.

She went back to the hotel after that, and by the time she got there, her nerves felt stretched so thin she thought they might snap completely. She locked both locks on the door. Then finally sat on the edge of the bed staring at the small box beside her. For several seconds thats all she did. Part of her didn’t want to know what was in it, but eventually she opened it. Inside was a DVD in a plain case. No note, no explantation. Just the disc. Remi swallows before grabbing her laptop from the desk and inserting the disc. Static flickered across the screen for a moment before the image steadied.

An old wrestling arena. The footage was rough and grainy with washed out colors and tracking lines that rolled occasionally through the screen. There was no sound to it. Just the hiss of old tape recording. And then a wrestler stepped onto screen. Vibrant colors that caught the arena light. A matching mask. He was fast, hitting the rope with effortless rhythm before launching into a springboard that sent him twisting across the ring in a blur of color and motion.

Another clip played immediately after. The masked wrestler stood balanced on the top rope before throwing himself backward into a twirling aerial rotation that had Remi jolting ramrod straight.

The inverted Phoenix Splash.

Her move.

Clip after clip rolled, Remi entranced until it ended in more static. Still stunned, Remi pulled the DVD from the laptop carefully and reached for the empty case.

Something slipped from inside.

A photograph, fluttering onto the bed beside her. She picked it up and her chest tightened.

The wrestler sat on the apron of a ring wearing full attire, mask in hand, one arm draped lazily on his thigh as he laughed at something outside the frame… his face the one from the photograph left in her home.

And there beside him, in matching gear, tiny toddler hands wrapped awkwardly around the rope for balance.

Was her.

“Maybe that’s the real difference between us, Bobby.

You’re fighting to preserve something.

I’m fighting to become something.

You walk into every room carrying the weight of everything you’ve already done. Every title. Every war. Every scar. Every story people still whisper about when your name comes up in locker rooms and arenas and interviews. Your entire existence revolves around protecting this myth you spent years building with blood and violence and spectacle because somewhere along the way, Bobby Bourbon stopped moving forward.

Now you just defend the monument.

You’re trying so hard to convince everybody that Bobby Bourbon is eternal because you already know exactly what happens to legends in this business eventually.

They become memories.

I think that realization is rotting you from the inside out.

Because for me? This is just the beginning.

I’m not carrying around fifteen years of expectations and mythology and pressure to remain untouchable. I’m not trying to relive old glory. I’m not trying to drag people backward into remembering who I used to be.

That’s the difference.

You’re fighting time.

I’m moving with it.

And whether you want to admit it or not, Bobby, your body already tells the story your mouth refuses to. Six months gone. Injuries. Disappearances. Silence between appearances. Then suddenly another return, another explosion, another violent sermon meant to remind the world that Bobby Bourbon still exists and still matters and still belongs at the center of everything.

But the thing about comebacks is eventually people start noticing how many you need.

You hate the thought of irrelevance because you built yourself into something so massive that you cannot survive being ordinary anymore. You cannot simply wrestle matches and let your work speak for itself because Bobby Bourbon has become addicted to impact. Addicted to spectacle. Addicted to reaction.

You need the audience to feel something about you at all times or else the silence starts creeping in.

That’s why you keep escalating.

Every speech louder. Every act crueler. Every appearance stranger. Every performance more desperate than the one before it.

And I know you’ll probably hear that word and hate it.

Desperate.

But what else am I supposed to call a man who keeps reinventing himself every time the spotlight starts drifting somewhere else?

What else am I supposed to call someone who spent years trying to become larger than human because the idea of simply being a man terrifies him?

Because that’s what I think sits underneath all of this.

Not hatred. Not brutality. Not even madness.

Fear.

The fear that the future is arriving whether Bobby Bourbon is ready for it or not.

And it is.

You can feel it every time somebody new walks through that curtain with hunger in their chest and no reverence for old myths. You can feel it every time the crowd starts investing in what comes next instead of what came before. You can feel it every single time you have to remind people who you are instead of them simply knowing.

That is not immortality, Bobby.

That is erosion.

Slow, quiet, unavoidable erosion.

And before you try to turn this into another joke about Latoya Hixx, let me save you the trouble.

Yeah. Same moniker.

But Latoya is a backyard summer storm. Warm rain. Sprinklers. Thunder people laugh through while sitting on the porch with a drink in their hand.

I’m not that.

I’m the kind of hurricane people board windows for.

People love saying it’s not the size of the dog in the fight but I don’t think it’s about the fight at all. I think it’s about what you become once it starts. The loud ones burn fast. The big ones lean on size and spectacle and intimidation because somewhere along the way they stopped trusting themselves to win without it.

But the ones you should fear?

The ones that walk in quiet. Because by the time they step into the ring, they’ve already decided how it ends.

And that’s another difference between us, Bobby.

You need chaos to feel powerful.

I don’t.

You need people gasping, reacting, screaming your name while you tear the room apart trying to prove you still belong at the center of it. You’re addicted to feeling validation.

And before you misunderstand me, let me make something very clear.

I am not dismissing you.

That would be stupid.

Men like you do not survive in this company by accident. Men like you do not collect championships and moments and scars without becoming dangerous in ways most people will never understand. I know exactly what kind of violence you are capable of. I know what happens when somebody underestimates Bobby Bourbon.

You would be stupid to underestimate me too.

I’ve tasted gold before.

And I want it again.

That hunger changes people.

Especially people like me.

So since your giant ass will be standing in my way when it comes time for me to reach out and take what I came here for?

I’ll make an example of you on my way past.

Because while you are busy trying to preserve your legacy, I am building mine.

While you’re fighting to stop yourself from fading, I’m rising whether anybody likes it or not.

Deep down, underneath all the performances and all the noise, I think you already know the truth.

You are no longer fighting to become legendary.

You’re fighting to stay legendary.

That’s a much uglier war.

And eventually every legend runs into the same horrible realization: the future does not slow down out of respect.

It keeps moving.

New names. New faces. New blood. New ambition.

People like me.

You spent years becoming the storm, Bobby.

But storms pass.

That doesn’t erase what they were. It doesn’t erase the damage they caused or the fear they inspired. People still talk about storms long after they’re gone.

But they still pass.

New ones roll in.

And Bobby?

I’m the new storm in the XWF.

The difference is…

While you’re trying to survive becoming forgotten.

I’m just getting started.

You thrive being a spectacle Bobby, so at Leap of Faith, on Mars, I’m going to make you one.”