EMERGE CHAMPIONSHIP - WILLOW WILKES (C) VERSUS KALI

[thisisemerge]

DEADLINE ONE - 3250 ROLEPLAY 13TH SEPTEMBER 2019 2359 EST

DEADLINE TWO - 750 WORD SHOOT / SEGMENT 15TH SEPTEMBER 2019 2359 EST

[Corner G]

“Do you know what I’ve noticed? Nobody panics when things go according to plan” – The Joker, 2008
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“Oh I won’t back down… no I won’t back down…”


KALI rolls around on the floor, singing her heart out. It should make no difference to her that she was unsuccessful in defeating YUYO at EMERGE #27. It should make no difference to her that her Championship match – confirmed now to be taking place against Willow Wilkes after her victory over Vanilla Skyy in that same show’s main event – sees her looking more like an outsider being dropped into a fire to be cast out no differently than any of the Champion’s past opponents. She still has her eyes closed, rolling around as she sings…


“You can stand me up at the gates of HELL, but I… won’t back down…”


She springs to her feet at the same time that her apparent and unlikely “bestie”, Aubrianna Powers, steps into the room. KALI sees her and, instead of being a meek child and restraining her song, she moves towards her, grabbing Powers’ waist and hand as she dances around, still singing…


“HEEEEEEEEEEEEY BAY-BAY… THERE AIN’T NO EASY WAY OUT…”


“KALI…” Aubrey, helpless within KALI’s grip and being spun around the room, pushes back a bit. “What the hell are you doing?”


“HELL!” KALI excitedly exclaims, followed by what has fast become her trademark: A string of laughter. As the fallout from the events of EMERGE #27 – the union of Cindy Todd and Willow Wilkes, the ownership group of the company including Aiken Frost and Silas Mason, among other things – continued to be felt and dispersed amongst the company, it was KALI who was relishing the chaos around her. Being the one-time follower of The Devil Himself, newly-minted SCW Hall of Famer Damian Angel, gave the off-kilter woman a certain amount of comfort in the chaotic. As much as any would tend to deny it, she was probably the perfect person to be stood up against the new order atop of the company – someone with reckless disregard for their own safety and a willingness to fight even the most monstrous of foes head-on, as though it was some kind of game. “Do you hear the birdies, Aubrey? They say HELL has come to EMERGE! THEY SAY that no one is safe… that we’re ALL subject to the WHIMS of “ThE cOnSoRtIuM”…


Again, laughter. But for Aubrianna Powers, the situation is a little more concerning, for she does not share her friend’s sense of danger – or lack of care. 


“Right,” she begins, simultaneously validating KALI’s glee and reinforcing her own concern in that single word. “Hell has come to EMERGE, and we have to be ready for when it knocks on our door. That’s what friends do… they have each other’s back.”


“Oh yes!” KALI nods… again betraying her excitement at the entire situation. “Friends! The Most Valuable Friendship!”


“Yes,” Aubrey nods. “The Most Valuable Friendship… and as friends, we need to have a plan for what we’re going to do wh…”


KALI steps back, releasing her dancing hold on Aubrianna as she moves to the corner. Her back presses in and she slides down to a seated position, her hands held in front of her face as her glee dissipates. She shakes her head.


“No,” she reacts out of instinct. “Nononono noooooo… no plans. I don’t do good with plans. Plans are what got me cast out of the Devil’s corner. Plans are EVIL…”


“KALI...” Aubrey moves to the corner, crouching down in front of her friend. “It’s not the plans that are evil… it’s who has them.”


“NO!” she snaps back, her resistance to the word… the very concept of planning growing. “When plans go wrong, people SUFFER… and NOT the people who were SUPPOSED to suffer… it’s ALWAYS someone else’s fault! It’s always MY fault…”


KALI buries her face in her arms as her body trembles. 


“It’s not like that,” Aubrey says, attempting to reassure KALI, who continues to tremble. “We just need to… be prepared… for the eventuality that we’re going to be targeted by this if we don’t fall in line, and since you have an EMERGE Title shot, you’re likely next on their list, so we need to be ready for that. Could you imagine their reaction if you WIN the title?”


KALI keeps her head buried. But in her mind, she relishes in thoughts of monsters coming after her, tangling with some of the biggest and baddest the industry has to offer. While publicly, her reasoning for choosing Willow Wilkes and the EMERGE Championship was akin to “all or nothing”, or going full throttle instead of thinking strategically, she would never admit that she relished the opportunity to face someone with the reputation of Willow Wilkes, who’s works she had admired from afar for years. The idea of facing such a woman, of being stomped down by her boots, was enticing. And now that Cindy Todd had returned to her side… the promise of what was to come only got sweeter. 


“KALI, this could be very dangerous for both of us,” Aubrey kept talking. “I want to be successful here, and I want you to be successful here too.”


“No plans,” KALI repeats obsessively. 


“Okay!” Aubrey cuts in, her hand on KALI’s arm. “Okay… no “plans”. We’ll call it… a contingency.”


KALI peeks up from her arms, looking with her right eye at Aubrey crouched in front of her. “What’s that?”


“That’s like,” Aubrey begins, considering her words very carefully so to not send the imbalanced woman spiralling further. “What we’re going to do if things start turning sour.”


“Sounds like a plan,” she says suspiciously. Aubrey, however, is quick to wave her arms out, shaking her head.


“Not a plan,” she quickly interjects. “A contingency. They’re different.”


“How?” KALI asks.


“Well, a plan is active,” Aubrey explains. “It’s us going out and seeking a specific result. A contingency is just… something in place with the idea that something might happen. It’s not concrete, and may never be used at all.”


KALI begins to nod, liking the sound of the contingency idea, prompting a sigh of relief from Powers. 


“Okay… yeah,” she picks up the pace to her nodding. “Contingency.”


Aubrianna breathes a sigh of relief, having successfully satiated the chaotic whims of her friend. KALI, however, continues talking.


“My contingency is to march into hell…” she begins, Aubrianna growing uneasy. “And ripping it’s heart out!”


“Oh…” Aubrianna defeatedly exclaims. “Fuck…”


KALI smiles, tenting her fingers together as she bounces up and down, smiling gleefully…


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“Never rub another man’s rhubarb” – The Joker, 1989
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KALI had made the trip all the way to Miami Beach in preparation for EMERGE’s INVASION event, the biggest such event in her career. She was set - main event! Willow Wilkes awaiting her and, possibly, ripe for the picking if only for the fact that she was being underestimated greatly by the EMERGE Champion. Willow had every reason to be confident - she had dominated EMERGE since joining the company, first becoming Tag Team Champion with Jason Dillinger, then turning on him and prompting him to insert her in his free Championship match - one on one for the then-vacant EMERGE title. Since claiming the gold, Willow had been dominant, outwitting every challenger placed in front of her from Gavin Taylor to Mitch Sanders to Vanilla Skyy. 


But KALI wasn’t like those challengers. They had prestige. They had reputation. They had plans. But KALI was a wild card. For KALI, the opportunity wasn’t a sacred right handed to her by virtue of her battle royal victory. KALI coveted the opportunity so no one else could have it - an after-effect of her association with Damian Angel. She was in Miami because that’s where the match was… she would run after Willow wherever the match was. If she was told to fight in the middle of the burning Amazon, she would gleefully. It was only Aubrianna Powers’ work that got her a hotel room in the city. Were it left up to KALI, she likely would have roamed constantly, ending up the subject of one of the internet’s “Florida man” stories. She was on the precipice of the biggest moment in her career, and she didn’t have a care in the world. 


That was until he arrived. 


KALI was in her hotel room, reading through the Bible of all things (and, admittedly, tearing pages out of it) when there was a knock at her door…


“This DIDN’T HAPPEN!! HEHEHEHEHE!!” she exclaims, ripping another page out and tossing it on the floor. The display strewn about her floor was growing by the moment. The knock at the door appears again. “Who iiiiiiiiiiiis it?”


“Open the door, Kali,” the voice says. KALI immediately freezes. She recognizes the voice immediately - she would recognize that voice anywhere. It is the voice that shepherded her from the light and introduced her to a world of pure chaos. He built her up and then cast her aside. As the door finally opens, KALI’s worst fears are realized, as Damian Angel steps through the door. KALI looks to him, stammering.


“I-I-I-I-...” she responds, dumbfoundedly. 


“Stop the stammering, child,” Damian chides her. He walks past her, looking at the pile of Bible pages in front of her feet. Crouching down, he pulls one up, looking at it with an expression of derision. “The word of God spoken through man… can you believe this mythology still commands the loyalty of billions?” 


“One-third of the world,” KALI responds, almost as if on command. Damian stands up, looking at her with a smirk.


“Very good,” he says, discarding the page back to the floor beneath his feet. “2.2 billion estimated adherents and every one of them falls behind the curve. It is no wonder you are my… prized adherent.”


This catches KALI by surprise. She unfreezes from Damian’s presence, looking to him with curious eyes. “I am?”


“Of course,” Damian answers. “Look at all you have done since I sent you to EMERGE... “


“You didn’t se…”


“You pulled off an improbable victory in a match against some of the top names the industry had ever produced,” Damian whimsically recalled. “Not only that, but some represent the most dangerous. You made a statement on that night - one that you are not to be taken lightly. And then you showed…”


Damian pauses. He recalls KALI’s activities since securing that free and open Championship match. His fond recollection sours.


“Why I cast you from my side,” he scornfully states, his face mere inches from hers. “And here you are, thinking you have a chance against someone who’s thinking 12 steps ahead of you. You know just as well as I do… you are not ready.”


“I…”


“Do not try to fight this, Kali,” Damian cynically scolds her. “You are fighting a hopeless battle. The army amassed around Wilkes is capable of taking down even the most feared of forces. They treated Veronica Skyy as though she was nothing but a minor inconvenience. You are here caravorting amongst the likes of Aubrianna Powers attempting to prove you are some popular choice. You will FAIL.”


KALI could only shake her head, attempting to block out the words of her mentor. Damian, however, was cold as he continued to shower her with his negativity. 


“You think that, because you are associated with Powers and her ilk that you will somehow be forgiven for what you have done,” he said. He was right, too. Damian knew that KALI wanted something that he was unwilling to give her… something she had longed for but was unable to secure under his influence. She wanted acceptance. She wanted to belong. She wanted to be a part of the conversation, not some random bypasser looked at once and cast aside. “You will never have what you want from them. When you chose to strike out on your own, you must have known deep down inside that you would never be accepted for what you are.”


“No…” KALI responds, shaking her head, fully denying Damian’s words - at least attempting to convince herself of their falsehood. Damian, however, takes this denial as weakness, smirking. 


“No?” he questions mockingly. “Then you must have been an even bigger fool than I had previously thought. All the more reason why you can not win. You are in a hopeless battle… the ONLY thing you can do is fall in line!”


“No…”


“FALL IN LINE, KALI! YOU ARE NOT WORTH ANYTHING MORE THAN CATTLE!”


“NO!”


KALI lashes out wildly, swinging in Damian’s direction. As she does, Aubrianna Powers falls back to the floor. KALI regains control of herself, seeing Aubrey, nit Damian, in front of her. Aubrey looks up with shock in her eyes. KALI collapses to her knees, bringing her to eye level with her best friend. 


“No… no,” she shakes her head. “I… I’m sorry… I…”


“KALI, who were you talking to?” Aubrey asks in earnest. If KALI were honest, she didn’t know what had happened. She springs to her feet, rushing to the door and opening it, looking out.


“YOU RUN, YOU BASTARD!!” she yells out. Aubrey, meanwhile, climbs back to her feet, looking at KALI as she skulks back into the hotel room. She looks to the ripped out bible pages. 


“You okay?” she asks, knowing the answer. 


“They think I’m weak…” KALI responds, almost as if it were the programmed response. “They think I’m nothing. They think I’m… EXPENDABLE…”


“They think that about everyone,” Aubrey intuitively responds. KALI only laughs. 


“They’ll see…”


The scene cuts…


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“All my life… I have been led down a path…


DO this…


FEEL that…


TAKE those…


Led by a shepherd down a path of CHAOS and DESTRUCTION. Led to be… to be CATTLE…


Until one day I said…


NO MORE!


People like Willow Wilkes… they are the people you build PLANS around. PLANS…


PLANS…


PLANS are WICKED. PLANS are what WICKED men and women use to place a THUMB on the rest.


You build PLANS around Willow Wilkes… Cindy Todd did. She built a PLAN for EMERGE around Willow Wilkes. She built a PLAN that needs Willow to be EMERGE Champion. She put that PLAN into action at EMERGE 27. She pulled the trigger and put Vanilla Skyy six… feet… under. She removed the biggest obstacle to her image of EMERGE. The image that has Willow as Champion. Vanilla was different… Vanilla was OLD EMERGE, and if EMERGE was to emerge from the shadows of SCW, she was to DIIIIIIIIIE.


But for all the PLANS… for the TRIGGER to be pulled… Cindy Todd had to ignore one thing…


ME!


They built these PLANS around Willow being Champion and assumed she would be able to SIMPLY PASS me as Champion. And why not? She has beaten Gavin Taylor… Mitch Sanders… Vanilla Skyy… anyone who has stepped to her has fallen at her feet. And me? I’m just a… what was the term?... an “SCW cast-off”. Surely I could not hope to measure up to the MIGHT of Willow Wilkes, EMERGE Champion. Surely I was just a piece of HER MIGHTY STORY, a pawn to be cast aside as NOTHING… but I ask…


What if I’m the WRENCH in their PLANS!?


Cindy Todd and Willow Wilkes sought to make EMERGE their PLAYGROUND. They have their little TOYS out and expect everything to go THEIR way. Everything is about THEM… ohhhhhh I know the kind. Willow will tell you this is predetermined… that she will walk out Champion NO MATTER WHAT.


What. If. She. Is. Wrong? They haven’t THOUGHT about that. That is the ONE THING they have not thought about because they THINK I am going to be EASY to take down! They THINK that I am there to serve THEIR purpose. They think I am going to be THROWN OUT and DISMISSED like NOTHING. 


THEY.


ARE.


WRONG!


I will go to Miami and LEAVE with a collection. 


FIRST I will leave with a collection of Jason King’s TEETH! Oh, Willy… how is it going to feel when your eyes swell shut and the LAST THING you look at is the new CHOMPERS of your loudmouth beta resting in a GLASS of WATER? Knowing that he was EMASCULATED by someone YOU said was just an “SCW cast-off”? 


And then I will leave with what you prize MORE than ANYTHING ELSE: The EMERGE Championship… the centerpiece of your little PLAN. The WRENCH having RIPPED it from your hands! I will NOT serve your design for I serve NO MAN! Not any longer…


You want a war? I will batter you and bludgeon you in ways even YOU have never experienced! I will not be just another fly-by-night challenger… I will be the albatross that DRAGS your precious little PLANS into the OCEANS away from Miami Beach. 


You UNDERESTIMATE me? For that YOU WILL SUFFER! You run me down? For THAT I rip your lover’s teeth clean from his head! You don’t think I’m WORTHY of challening you?


You will.


You don’t think I can beat you for the shiny?


When it’s over… you will SING a different tune…


If I haven’t crushed your trachea. Ta ta, Willy… 


See you SOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!”

[Willow Wilkes]

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The Views Expressed By Willow Wilkes & The Beauty Factory Do Not Reflect Those of the Publisher. VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

THE DEVIL WE DON’T KNOW

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