Cara threw her hands“What do you mean we only have six lanes! There’s like a hundred fifty bajillion people coming to this thing. That means there will be like..” She stops and seems to think about, counting on her fingers as if actually dividing the imaginary number in her head. “...like twenty-five bajillion people to a team! THAT’S WAY TOO MANY!”
Anders raised his finger as he corrected her. “Actually, it’d be 12.5 bajillion. There’s two teams to a lane, Cara.”
Cara stopped and narrowed her eyes at her tag partner before suddenly throwing a slap at him. For once, Anders managed to dodge the attack and her hand goes by inches from his face. Cara’s eyes go wide as she realizes for what could possibly be the first time in twenty years, she has failed to smack Anders at the appropriate moment.
Clearly, this is unacceptable.
Cara runs at Anders, who immediately turns and sprints away, bowling lanes and tables passing by him in a blur as he tries to escape the wrath of Cara Rainbow Stonewall (And yes, that is her actual middle name-- parents were hippies. It happens.) He finally reaches the glass door at the front of the bowling alley and he stops himself to reach for the handle and open it. But it is too late: she is upon him.
Cara bends over and drives her shoulder into Anders’s back, slamming the front of his body into the door. She presses hard, squishing his face and contorting his features against the glass.
“AAAHHHH!!! WHY? CARA? WHY?!”
Cara continues to push him against the glass, but now she lifts her head so he can yell in her ear. “You know why!”
The struggling continues, as do Anders grunts of pain, until suddenly Anders manages to tap on the glass with his index finger. Cara stops for a moment to look at what he’s pointing at, and she finds that there are people on the other side of the glass door trying to enter the bowling alley, now instead being treated to a showing of how Anders’s face looks when flattened. Cara lets go of Anders, and he falls away from the door, freeing it so it can be opened.
The door swings open, and both members of Stark and Stone blink as three people walk in. SVW wrestler Daniel Pollaski (holding his own bowling bag), followed closely by Wendy Briese and her husband Terrence Thompson. All of them are looking at the duo with fairly uncertain expressions. “I’m sorry... did we interrupt something?” asks the redhead.
“WENDY!” Cara screams and immediately jumps at her, hugging her tight despite never having met this woman in person before. “You totally came! Awesomesauce.”
Anders rubs his neck as Cara continues her lovable mauling of poor Wendy. “No, it’s okay. Cara was just...y’know...acting like a crazy person, like she always does. Also, hurting my head again...like she always does.”
Cara, still hugging the clearly uncomfortable FFW wrestler, turns her head and yells at her tag partner. “You deserved it! Besides, stop complaining in front of the guests.”
Terrence quickly shook both Cara and Anders’ hands, and Pollaski gave them high fives, and the five of them entered the bowling alley. “So, you guys actually managed to go through with this,” the big manager commented, looking around. “Going to have the entire SVW and half the FFW gang in one place for a party. Have to admit, pretty impressive.”
“Twitter is a very powerful social networking tool,” Anders replied.
Cara nodded rapidly, clapping her hands together a little bit as well. “Also, people like us a lot. We think. Or we hope. Because they said they were coming. Unless, they’re really mean and this is like that prank those jerks played on us in High School and nobody showed up at my house party even though everybody said they would.” Cara eyes widen again and she grabs Anders by the collar of his shirt, pulling him to her face.
“Oh no. That’s not gonna happen again, right? RIGHT?!” And suddenly the woman looked genuinely terrified.
Anders lightly pushed his best friend off of him. “Breathe, Cara. Breathe. I mean, people are already here, THREE of them. So this party’s already better than that one was. Plus, now we have bowling.”
“Right,” Cara wiped her forehead.. “Thank God. We have bowling. Bowling...wait,” she suddenly reached out and grabbed Anders’s shirt again. “WE DIDN’T MAKE TEAMS!”
Pollaski chuckled. “Wow, someone who’s a bigger spaz than Wendy. Didn’t think it was possible.”
Wendy narrowed her eyes, and glared at her manager, although it didn’t help that behind her, her husband was trying hard not to laugh as well. Finally, she took a deep breath, and gave a pleasant smile to her hosts. “Well, there’s still time. How were you planning on dividing them up?”
Cara furrowed her eyebrows and seemed to be thinking very hard. Meanwhile, Anders started to pick at his fingernails, completely unperturbed by the issue. “Well,” Cara said, “we thought about doing SVW people vs. FFW people...but it wouldn’t be very original. Also, there are more SVW people coming...but that would give SVW an advantage..which is a GOOD THING!...Except I just joined FFW too. Damn it.”
“Well, you could just let the guests make their own teams...” Terrence suggested helpfully, putting his arm around his wife as to make it very clear the WhirlyBirdz would be bowling together tonight.
But Wendy scoffed. “Asking fifty professional wrestlers to nicely and orderly cooperate with each other? And everyone says I’M the naive one...”
“What if you drew numbers?” Pollaski asked with a shrug. “Figure out how many teams there are, then put numbers into a hat. Whatever number you draw, that’s the team you’re on.
“But that wouldn’t be fair,” said Anders, in a rare lucid, semi-intelligent moment, “because if its random the teams could end up being REALLY uneven. Like, Wolf is REALLY good, and so is Cara, so if they end up on the same team it’ll be really lame for everyone else. We’ll all feel like Lilah Carters.”
Cara shrugs. “Winning isn’t everything...unless we’re wrestling, since that’s our careers...but that’s tommorow. We could do random. It would be easy. ...Except Anders and I have to be on the same team.”
Suddenly, Anders threw his hands up in the air and backs away from Cara...”Absolutely NOT! There is no way I am going to be on YOUR team tonight.”
Pollaski and Wendy exchanged confused glances, but Terrence only smirked. “Let me guess, Cara’s a bit hypercompetitive?”
Anders shook his head. “No...well, yes, but every time I make a mistake she’s going to beat me up! And by mistake, I mean ‘not getting a strike’. I can only take so much abuse. Twenty years is enough, woman!”
Cara made pouty lips and her eyes moistened. “But...but...we’re a team.” Cara slouched over and again uninvited, violated Wendy’s personal space by leaning her head on her shoulder and making crying noises.
Wendy looked very uncomfortable, but she patted Cara on her head. “I’ll team with you, if you want. But I’m not very good...”
Cara lifts her head, smiles and nods. “Okay...but only if you can handle pyrotechnics in the bowling lane.”
Anders interrupted. “Wait...what?”
“Well, because Mr. Showtime’s gonna be on my team, obviously!”
Anders raised an eyebrow. “But where would we get fireworks?”
Cara shrugged. “I ordered them. They’re on their way.”
Anders put his hands on his face. “But Wolf said that’s illegal in New York! And the cops don’t like us very much after the time I accidentally stole the horse from Central Park...I don’t think this is a good idea.”
At the prospect of being blown up in the middle of bowling, Wendy looked over at her husband, suddenly worried. Terrence, who’d spent half his life in a racing firesuit, merely shrugged. Pollaski yawned, and shrugged. “I’ll be on Wolf’s team, then. Hell, we can have an all manager team, if it works out alright.”
“Manager team! That’s a good idea!” Cara said.
“Wait a second...” Anders said, pointing at Pollaski accusingly, “I see what’s going on here!”
“No you don’t” Pollaski replied, waving his arm in front of him, two fingers extended from his hand- the Jedi hand wave.
“No, I don’t?” Anders asked, raising a quizzical eyebrow.
Pollaski looked at Terrence and Wendy, a ‘holy shit, it worked!’ expression on his face. “Nope. You don’t. In fact, you should put Ryan MacKenzie on our team. And Christian Kincaid-”
The very sound of Christian Kincaid puts Cara Stone into a blood rage. She literally LEAPS the seven feet or so between her and Pollaski, tackling him to the floor despite the massive size advantage the big man has.
“HE CAN’T COME!,” she shouts, though it’s not really clear if she’s yelling at Pollaski or just in general. “He is the Evil Warlord of all Jerkfaces! HE’S BANISHED FROM BOWLING! NO FUN FOR HIM! EVER EVER EVER EVER!!!!!” She pounds fists into Pollaski’s chests as she continues to shout.
Although Terrence looked amused by this, Wendy looked pleadingly at Anders. When she realized he wasn’t exactly going to be helping either, she bent down, trying to get the woman off her howling manager. “Cara, he was joking! Stop! Don’t...”
Anders finally relents and decides to help Wendy drag Cara off of Pollaski, who is defending himself by blocking Cara’s shot with his forearms (also with a clear WTF look on his face). it takes both professional wrestlers’ efforts to pull the woman off and free Dan, but she doesn’t stop, attempting to break free of them both while still yelling at the manager.
“YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO SAY HIS NAME! IT’S NOT ALLOWED!”
Suddenly, another loud voice echoes through the bowling alley and cuts Cara short.
“What the hell is going on here?!” Wolf Ramsey’s baritone silences the rest of the room as everyone turns to look at the manager who is, for once, dressed casually-- in jeans and a “We got the MAGIC, baby!” t-shirt.
The scene freezes, with Terrence still watching in amusement, while Cara continues to straddle Pollaski, Wendy and Anders trying to pry her off. All as one, look over at Wolf. “Mr. Ramsey!” Wendy suddenly says, standing up straight, and turning slightly red in embarrassment. Unfortunately, this also gives Cara’s right arm freedom, and she uses it to drive another fist into Pollaski’s face.
Wolf slowly walks over to the group, a judgmental look on his face. Once he is standing over Cara, and Pollaski, he looks from one to the other and then back again. Pollaski has a “please help me” look on his face, which contrasts nicely with Cara’s “Oh shit, I’m in trouble” features. A few more seconds of silence and Wolf shakes his head, looking at Dan again.
“Oh Dan...you said Chris-.. Ahem...his name, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t know he wasn’t invited!” Pollaski wheezed. “Now get this psycho off me!”
“Cara...please stop hurting Dan.”
Cara hesitated, but then stepped back of her own free will, even extending a hand and letting Pollaski up. “I’m sorry,” she said, looking like a two-year old who just got caught trying to steal something by her parent. “...and you can be on Wolf’s team if you want.”
“Teams!” Anders said, “We still don’t have a clue about teams for tonight!”
Wolf shrugged. “So, that’s easy, you just take everyone’s experience, body weight, and general upper body strength, plug it into a pre-determined formula and then place them according to the rankings.”
Blank stares.
“...What? I’m thorough.”
“Yeah, looks like you forgot the spreadsheet, dude,” Terrence chuckled. “Seriously, how hard can this possibly be? Isn’t tonight supposed to be about fun, anyways? Why overanalyze all this shit?”
“Because it has to be perfect,” said Cara, as if that was patently obvious.
“Ummm....” Anders strategically moved away from Cara and put himself next to Wolf as he spoke up. “ I think Terrence has a point, guys. Maybe we just make teams as people come in?”
“...Fine,” Cara said, “whatever.”
Wolf patted Cara on the back. “It’ll be okay, Cara. I just got off the phone with Showtime and Isabella. They’re on their way, as well as about thirty other people. It’s gonna be a good party, because you did a good job...”
Cara’s face lights up at the praise.
“...and also because I called the place ahead of time and paid them enough that they’re gonna make it an open bar tonight,” Wolf finished.
Pollaski grinned, and even Terrence looked a bit happy with the premise, but Wendy merely cringed. “A bunch of people who fight for a living being given all the alcohol they want,” she muttered. “I’m sure absolutely nothing bad could ever happen there...”
Wolf shrugged. “Way I see it, if you’re going to have a party, it better be--”
“MAGICAL!” Stark and Stone both shout out, seemingly randomly.
“...sure. Why not? Magical. And I’m going to have my first glass of magic right about now...”
Wolf grabs his fellow manager and the two walk off to the bar, discussing Cara’s earlier actions.
No comments:
Post a Comment