Post by Thaddeus Duke on Oct 13, 2023 20:57:05 GMT -5
11:41 PM - October 9th
Rocky Top Bar
Near Charlotte, North Carolina
Rocky Top Bar
Near Charlotte, North Carolina
I left the Spectrum Center more than an hour and a half ago. After a fun night of Madness brand action over at the XWF it was time to turn my attention back to TRIAD and the draft. Lauren and I stopped by the hotel for a… well… I don’t really need to say it. Anyway, she stayed behind, afterwards I came here. With the draft tomorrow, we didn’t have much time left so we needed one last meeting to make sure all our ducks were in a row.
Excuse the meeting place. I know what everyone thinks of me. The money, the homes, cars, all of it. Since meeting my wannabe country girl wife, I’ve taken a liking to the dive country bar scene. The people are more down to earth and I don’t know, it helps keep me at least somewhat grounded. As a guy that’s never been normal a day in my life, feeling normal even for an hour or two once or twice a month has become sort of important to me.
So… here I sit, drinking a Miller High Life and mingling with the locals every now and then as I wait for my… partners? Are they my partners in this? I guess they kinda are. What a fuckin’ world we live in.
“Hey,” Marcus Welsh said as he pulled up on a barstool next to me.
“Hey man,” I said before motioning to the bartender to get Welsh a drink.
“When did you get the tattoo?” he asked, referring to ‘Gracie’ in script along my forearm tat conveniently covers up the scar from when Lauren shot me by mistake.
“On our honeymoon,” I replied quickly.
“Who’s Gracie?” he asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, not wanting to talk to him about the daughter Lauren and I would never have.
“What are we having?” asked Alexander Raven as he popped up between Marcus and I. Thank God for that.
Immediately, I was filled with a sense of dread and regret. “For you Third Bird, I got somethin’ special,” I said as I forced a smile. “It’s smooth as silk, goes down like water and it’ll have you plastered in no time. So… pace yourself just a lil bit.”
“Yes!” Alexander replied quickly as he took the tumbler full of clear liquid. “Did I ever tell you that you’re my favorite son?”
“Really?” Marcus interjected. “We’re back to that?”
“A time or two, Pops,” I humored the man. “Why don’t you check that out?” I asked while pointing toward the mechanical bull across the floor.
“Be right back,” Alexander said.
“What’s the drink?” asked Marcus.
“Just water,” I chuckled.
“I wanted to say that I’m sorry Thad,” he began.
“Stop,” I interrupted. “What’s done is done. That’s in the past, let’s move on to the here and now man. Draft day tomorrow. How’s it lookin’ on the Great Illuminatus front?” I asked.
“I kind of think we’re in agreement,” Marcus replied but a little less sure than I would’ve liked. “But I’ll draft you right at the end and they can’t do…”
“No,” I interrupted him again. “You pushed to not draft anyone already locked into the Great Illuminatus. You did that at my urging. Why would I want you to draft me and have you look like a clown in front of everyone all over again?”
“Thad!? You can’t be serious! I need you to…”
“No you don’t,” I interrupted him a third time. “I’m already locked in, man. You gotta look at the bigger picture here. What makes things more difficult for the Triumvirate to unite the Triad? Someone already locked in getting to the finals again? Or do we flood the fucking field with a massive amount of talent?”
“You were my secret weapon!” he claimed. “Who takes your spot then, smart guy?”
“Look at the field of applicants this go-round, bro!” I urged him. “It’s full of talented men and women.”
“Okay so here’s the deal,” Alexander said as he popped back into the conversation again. “First, no kangaroo. Fuck that fucking marsupial.
“Secondly, that deer head mounted on the wall has been staring at me since we walked in here,” Alexander paused as he looked over at me. “I’m gonna go give it a piece of my mind. Be right back!”
“He really doesn’t have much mind to spare,” I joked.
“If not you, then who?” he asked as he eagerly returned to the subject matter.
“There’s a lot of great picks,” I reminded him. “Personally, I’d pick ALIAS if I were you, but if he’s still available at three, then those other teams already lost this thing. So let’s count on PIC being smart enough to see the value in ALIAS at number two.
“For starters, let’s go over some of the known commodities,” I suggested.
“What about someone like Pinkston?” Welsh asked. “He really makes me laugh.”
“You tryna fuck him? Or you tryna unite the TRIAD?” I asked. To which, he just looked at me dumbfounded. “I like Pinkston. He’s entertaining as hell and he definitely has a place in this business. But… dude knocked himself out tryna figure out how to block my fuckin’ kick."
“Knox?” he questioned.
“Knox would be a great pick,” I replied. “Dude has an ego the size of fuckin’ Texas and if you can keep that in check a little, he might actually make the finals. He seemed more interested in failing to stay ahead of the Triumvirate than to be there at the end.”
“He says you only made it because of him,” Marcus reminded me.
“He helped,” I agreed. “But to claim he was the only reason just discounts everything I did to get there. He’s a lot like Chris Page in that respect. He gives you an inch, but claims a mile.
“I think Cortes is about the only other one I’d consider from this last round,” I said before taking a swig of beer. “She’s really fuckin’ good. And faster than me which says a lot. The others are all talented, but I don’t know if they have that next gear.”
“New prospects,” he said quietly. “I have a lot of trust issues, you know that.”
“Then there’s only two possible solutions to that equation,” I replied quickly. “One of them, you can grab at the end. You know the other two won’t touch her. Too much of that residual bad blood.”
“And the other?” he asked.
“I’ve trusted him with my kids,” I began. “I’d trust him with my life and if ALIAS goes number two like we think he will, he’ll be sitting right there waiting for you to pick him. You get him, her and me into the finals at the Great Illuminatus? Man, we’re the best shot any of us has to stop them from getting it.”
“You know who I like?” Alexander said as he popped in on us again. “I’d definitely take him second though, not first. But, Dickie Roberts.”
“You mean Watson,” I corrected him.
“Yeah, I said that,” he claimed. “Anyway, he’s really talented.”
“Who would you take first?” Welsh asked him.
“I… OH! I’ll tell you in a minute!” he said before scurrying off.
“You can’t take him,” I said.
“Why not?” Welsh asked, but I didn’t answer him.
To our surprise, Alexander has the bar hopping as he sings along with Garth Brooks. It doesn’t take long and the entire bar, save Marcus and I, are singing right along with him.
“That was fun,” he said once he returned to us. “The women here. They’re… rather large.”
After looking around for a second, I had to agree with him. “Yeah, yeah they are.”
“Okay so, first pick Marcus,” he changed course. “You need… the Anchor!”
Alexander spoke with such vigor and such… I don’t know the word… that I almost wanted Marcus to draft him.
“You need the one that was the heart and soul of Team Welsh! You need someone that no one believed in, someone that is easily overlooked…”
“It can’t be you,” I said while hating the fact that I had to break the news to him. He looked at me in a stunned silence for what was an agonizingly long time.
“You can’t mean that,” he said with great sadness. “I-I’m the anchor! I-I’m…”
“I know buddy,” I said to him. “It’s a crowded class and, like me, you’re already locked in. We need as many guns as we can get into the finals because those three shitbags aren’t going to care which of them wins so long as one of them does. They’ll work together like they have been. They’ll protect each other, like they have been.
“Trust me, Alex. We need to play the long game here.”
“This is bullshit,” he said quietly before he stared off across the bar for a few minutes. “I’m gonna go watch that fat lady try and ride the bull.”
“He’s a strange man,” Welsh said as we watched him walk across the bar.
“He’s an anchor alright,” I said somewhat jokingly. “Almost dragged us straight to the bottom.”
“You were excited when he finally won,” Welsh reminded me.
“That was legit,” I replied. “I like Xander Crow.”
“I thought he was Third Bird?” Welsh questioned with a smirk.
“Either, or,” I said as across the bar, the fun night Alexander Raven was having very quickly turned sour as he ran back to us.
“Grab a pool stick or a bottle!” he cried out as he stole my High Life bottle right out of my hand.
“Alexander, what’d you do?” Welsh asked with a sigh.
“Nothing! I swear it!” he answered as a few guys started approaching us. “I just wanted to feel how gross all that fat was! They got mad and now they wanna beat me up!”
Alexander started moving toward them as Welsh sighed and left his stool.
“You gonna help him out?” he asked me.
“Yeah I’ll be along in a second,” I answered while pulling out my cell.
“Hey baby,” Lauren answered.
“Grab the credit card and find wherever the hell the Charlotte police station is,” I told her.
“Why?” she asked. “What’s going on?”
“Ohhh nothin’,” I answered. “Alexander just started a barfight so we’re prolly gonna get arrested.”
“Uggggh,” she grunted. “Alright, see you in a few.”
After placing my phone on the bar, I joined my… friends? Are these two idiots really my friends? Look, we’re trained professionals. I’m trained in hand to hand combat, I’m trained in boxing, I’m trained in MMA. Despite a few lucky shots here and there, it was not a particularly close fight. I’m not boasting, it’s just a fact. Personally, I take no pride in getting into fights and even less so when I win them. In this particular case, we won.
Less than ten minutes later, Alex was cuffed and shoved into the back of one police car while Marcus and I were put into another.
“You really think it’ll work?” Welsh asked as we rode toward the police station.
“I can’t make the picks for you,” I answered him. “You’ve heard my opinions. You’ve heard my advice. It’s all up to you now. Be smart, be calculated. Don’t tip your hand to those two and for the love of god use your brain and not your heart.”
“My heart? What’s that mean?”
“It means if you take that cunt that we purposely didn’t talk about,” I began. “Then I swear to fucking God I’ll do everything in my power to sabotage this whole fucking thing just out of pettiness and spite!”
“Oh… you mean…”
“You know exactly who I mean, don’t you dare say that name.”
The Next Day
A night ago, we weren’t in the police station very long. Maybe 45 minutes. Once we left, Lauren and I dropped Welsh and Alexander off at the airport. Welsh was off to do his final preparation for the draft and Third Bird was off to… do whatever Third Bird does.
Back home on Long Island, I watched the draft on my laptop in my office. Lauren was in and out and while she tried to downplay her nervousness, I knew she wanted to be drafted. There’s a lot of misconceptions about her. A lot of them are fair, but many of them aren’t. She’ll never admit it to anyone, she only barely admits it even to me, but she really does care about this industry. She cares about her own craft.
So, I watched as the draft went along. ALIAS went second, as I predicted he would. That wasn’t some third eye shit, that’s just experience. I have firsthand knowledge of just how good that man is and no matter our personal animosities toward one another, I’d never take that away from him.
The draft went even better than I expected. PIC’s choices seemed a little up, a little down while no one had any idea what the fuck TLS was doing with his picks. Least of all, TLS. I was banking on Welsh taking Seb with his second pick, but he took Watson instead. I fumed for just a moment. Not because I didn’t like the pick, Watson is extremely good. At the time, I just thought he was gonna squander the opportunity I tried to lay out for him.
Seb fell to him anyway.
Not interesting? Are you kidding? Fire your researchers man, that was a gross fucking oversight. Call it bias if you will, but I have never seen that man release a promo that wasn’t interesting.
By the end of the draft, I’d kissed my wife in congratulating her and opened a bottle of champagne in a quiet celebration. The Triumvirate was frozen out and we could flood the field with top flight talent.
One Day Later Still
Wednesday nights I tend bar for charity at the Velvet Rabbit in New York City. I was at home getting ready to go to work when I received a call.
Third Bird.
The first time he called, I just let it go to voicemail. Not because I wanted to ignore him, but because I’m also a father and while I was getting ready to go, I was also getting the twins ready to go to bed. I intended to call him back before I left the house, but it slipped my mind. He called back just as I was merging onto the Long Island Expressway.
“Hey man, what’s up?” I greeted him.
“That was WATER!” he griped.
“I know brother, listen… I’m sorry, but I just needed you clearer headed than you usually are,” I explained to him.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked somewhat angrily.
“Nothin’ man, forget it. So what’s up?”
“Did you watch Glum’s event?” he asked.
“Nah man, I’ve been ridiculously busy,” I replied regrettably.
“So then am I right in assuming you had no idea Welsh and Vhodka were having a match?”
“...what?” I asked as I pulled off the highway and switched on the hazards.
“Welsh and Black had a match at Glum’s…"
“Yeah I fuckin’ heard you,” I interrupted.
"Then why'd you say 'what' like you didn't hear me?" he asked.
"Third Bird! Focus!" I yelled. “Obviously he lost.”
“It gets worse,” Alexander told me.
“What the fuck did he do?” I asked as I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the headrest.
No answer.
“Alex!” I yelled.
“Black just released a promo showing some behind the scenes stuff and Thad…” he paused for a moment. “Since he lost, the Triumvirate got their own team for the strength trials.”
“Thanks for lettin’ me know man,” I said before quickly ending the call. For a few minutes, I sat there on the side of the interstate with nothing but the sound of cars racing by and my four-ways methodically clicking off and on.
“Man,” I said to myself. “They got me this time. I did not see that one coming.”
After everything, I know people are hesitant to believe it, but I saw the Triumvirate coming on Bravery Draft Night. When it finally came to fruition and Welsh had zero answers, I lashed out at him. For weeks and weeks and weeks I sat back and watched him try and rally the troops to victory and he had nothing to say when what was obvious to me, never even crossed his mind.
I publicly lashed out at him, not because of what they were able to do. I did so because there were no answers from anyone. Knox is the only one to even try but even he, with his wealth of knowledge and experience, was short sighted.
Months later and I’m disappointed in myself. It was the TRIAD off-season and I let my guard down while they never stopped moving the chess pieces.
Leaning forward, I cranked the stereo, shut off the hazards and flicked on my left turn signal before merging back onto the interstate.
They finally got me.
I chuckled to myself for a second.
“Good for them.”