AoN: Drake Callahan vs. El Califa Dragon

[Kermit]

Drake Callahan has a theory or two about his recent slumps. Or should we say conspiracies? Weeks of investigating have lead him to believe that the masked man El Califa Dragon is actually WZCW Legend, Ty Burna, in disguise. Califa has made it very clear that he is not Ty, but with recent blimps in the presentation of Califa; one has to wonder if there really is some truth to what Callahan is saying.

Deadline is Tuesday February 19, 2013 at 11:59 PM (Central). Extensions as per thread.​

 

[Viola Moonlight]

El Califa Dragon has been granted a 24 hour extension.

 

[Harthan]

I scrolled through the webpage that I'd heard them snickering about backstage the other day. Wrestlingsector.com. A place for the unwashed masses, the idiots, and the armchair bookers to rant and rave about every little thing they thought about wrestling and how awful it was these days. What a joke. Their little pictures were just a pathetic, misguided attempt to make themselves feel better about themselves. At the end of the day, I was the superstar. I was the one on top. I was the one they all paid to see. They were absolutely nothing.

So why the hell did their stupid pictures piss me off so much?

There were a dozen like them, the same picture of me over and over, trivializing every single thing I'd been talking about for months. It shouldn't bother me at all - what did it matter what they thought? But it did. In some way, it didn't matter what they thought when they were thinking they hated me, they feared me, that I was a bad person. But now that I was a joke? That gnawed at me. That ate away at me. That was ripping me apart.

Their eyes were closed. How the hell did they not see it? Ty Burna was obviously among us, and he had obviously made me a target. And all the signs were there that he was hiding in plain sight, walking around the company under everyone's nose in the guise of El Califa. That was the joke. That no one but me saw it. I should be laughing at all of them.

But I wasn't, and they were laughing at me.

"You know, that is kind of funny," said Stoya from behind me. I turned a bit to see her leaning over my shoulder to look at the screen, standing behind the couch where I was sitting with my laptop. She had sneaked up on me.

"No, it isn't," I replied stonily. I could almost feel her roll her eyes before climbing over the back of the couch to sit next to me. She put her head on my shoulder and kept looking as I scrolled.

I shook my head in disgust. "Still think it's pretty funny?" I asked.

Stoya made a disapproving noise. "No. I don't. Where do they get off?"

"Their parents' basements, most likely."

I saw her lips turn upward in a smile that I returned. With that last, terrible meme, I closed the laptop and set it on the table.

We sat in silence for a few moments, before I asked her the question I knew I had to.

"Do you believe me?" My voice was emotionless, which took a great deal of concentration. I was terrified of the answer.

“About what?” she replied.

“You know about what.”

“Ty?”

“Obviously.”

“Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

“I don’t see all the pieces of the puzzle like you do, Drake. There’s connections there, patterns I just don’t understand. You say a lot of things, and honestly? No, sometimes I just don’t get it. Sometimes I don’t believe you.”

She let that hang between us for a few moments. I didn’t know what to say. It took me some time to work up the words.

“So that’s it? You think I’m crazy, too? You think I’m just a joke, like all of them?”

She thought about it for a minute.

“No. I don’t have all the experience you do. I’ve never even see Ty outside of video footage. You’ve wrestled him. You know him. You know how he thinks, what he would do. I believe that you know him, and I believe that you really believe what you’re saying. I believe that you believe.”

I scoffed.

“So that’s supposed to make me feel better? ‘I believe that you believe’? You might as well just say I’m crazy, but you take pity on me.”

She sat up and glared at me. There was the characteristic fire in her eyes.

“That is not what I said. Let me finish. I believe that you believe. I don’t see the logic. I don’t see the reasoning. But I don’t have to. Because I know one thing about you, Drake, and that is that you are honest. You are more honest than any other man I have ever met. I’ve watched you tell a woman who loved you that you hated her and never wanted to see her again, just because it was the truth. If there’s one thing I will always believe in, Drake, it’s that you will tell me the truth. And if you say that El Califa is Ty…I believe you. I believe you because you believe you.” She shrugged, that slight little motion of her shoulders that I could never understand why I loved so much. “I believe in you. I have faith.”

She leaned back onto my shoulder and let that sink in.

Maybe nobody else believed in me. The whole world was mocking me. My peers thought I was a joke. Management thought I was a crackpot conspiracy theorist. I was losing left and right, and I knew full well I was sliding right down the card. I lost to the kind of man I once spat on as a dog. Everything else was falling apart.

But she believed in me. It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. It wouldn’t be enough until I was the WZCW Champion and I stood atop a mountain of defeated foes.

But for now, it would do.

-----
“This is not a matter of identity.”

I stood alone in a room with a single spotlight shining on me. There was a dozen cameras lurking in the shadows, filming my every my every move. I knew they were there, but existed in a state of awareness beyond them.

“I repeat – this is not a matter of identity, Ty. This is a matter of faith.”

I looked up into the spotlight until it hurt my eyes. It was good. It felt good to be burned by the light. It was a reminder that I was right.

“A lot of people don’t remember this about me. I don’t even think about it often. But before I was a conspiracy theorist, before I was a champion, before I was everyone’s favorite midcarder…before I was put in a casket, before I was a drunk, before my first match in WZCW…I was a preacher. I didn’t preach about the God outside, but about the god we all had inside us. A spirit that was just waiting to embrace the world and become one with it. A spirit that could only be let out if you partied, and drank, and filled yourself up with the world.”

I shook my head and smirked a little bit.

“I was a fool. And yet, in some ways, I was right. There’s a spirit in each and every one of us. And as idiotic as it was to think that the only way to be happy, to be one with yourself, and to let it be free was to be drunk, I wasn’t wrong about the existence of a spirit. If I believe in nothing else, Ty, I believe in the existence of a soul. Some are pure as the driven snow; some are black as the darkest night. I know exactly which kind mine is, and I know exactly which kind yours is, and I will assure you, neither of them are anywhere close to white.”

I pointed in no particular direction. I knew it would find Ty, one way or another.

“And that, above all else, is how I know who you are. I can see right through you. You wear a mask, and you speak Spanish, and you lie, and you pretend, but I know you. In some ways, I knew it from the moment I saw you in that costume. It just took me a while to realize it. I know you because your heart is black, and your soul is weak. And that’s the difference between you and me. The difference, Ty, is faith. Both of us have done awful, unspeakable things. We’ve hurt people that loved us. We’ve thrown everything we’ve ever had to the wind in the pursuit of a singular goal – to be the best. To be a world champion. To sit atop WZCW as its king. We’ve both been there, and we’ve both fallen. But you have no faith. You are weak, and you fled. You hid behind a mask and pretended to be someone else. And now that I’ve found you out, you refuse to admit it. You’re going to carry this with you until your dying day if left to your own devices, and it’s because you believe in nothing. But I do. I believe in one thing above all else, Ty. I believe that I am better. I don’t mean to say that I’m a good person. I’m not. But I am stronger. I am faster. I am smarter. I am more ruthless, I am more vicious, I am more indomitable than every one of the rest of them. I have faltered, and I have fallen, but I have never been put down. While you hide and cower and pretend to be someone else, too timid to accept your failures and carry on, I have never changed who I am. This is my name, this is my face. I will never make an apology for it.”

I inhaled; I exhaled. I believed in this. It was just a matter of making sure Ty knew it.

“So enjoy the last few days you have left before All or Nothing, Ty. And take one piece of advice from me, on how you can best me if you want to. Pray. Find a God and pray to him with everything you’ve got, because the only way you can counter my faith in myself is with a faith that I cannot overcome. I doubt you’ll find it, but I’m giving you this chance to try. Kneel down in the nearest church you can find and say every prayer you can think of. Your only other alternative is to finally find the faith in yourself to strip off your mask and face me like a man. If you can find the courage in yourself to do that, you just might have a chance. But you won’t. I know you won’t. You just don’t have what it takes. And in the end, that is what will separate us. It’s why I will stand above you at All or Nothing, and you will go back to wallowing in misery.”

I closed my eyes. It was almost over.

“Faith activates God. Fear activates the enemy. So listen to my advice, Ty, because my faith will bring out the god in me; your fear will only enrage him further. You can’t change my faith in myself; but maybe you can save yourself and try to best me. I’m giving you this last opportunity to help yourself while you still can.”

I opened my eyes.

“I know you won’t, of course. I know you’ll come to me just as you are. God has given you one face, and you make yourself another. You will bring to me a false face, and I will strike you down with the righteousness of my blackened soul.”

 

[Ty Burna]

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.​

The scene opens to El Califa Dragon sitting in a darkened room, a faint single light bulb hangs down from the ceiling, giving just enough illumination to reveal the masked man. His head is lowered, his hands clasped in front of him while he sits on a creaky wooden chair. Nothing else can be seen around El Califa, leaving the reader in the dark, pun intended, about Califa's whereabouts. He wears dark blue jeans, a black tank top, and of course his mask, though the details cannot be seen at the moment. He lifts his head slowly, and as he does so his hand reaches up at the same time and gently swats the light bulb, causing the cable it is attached to to sway from left to right above him. The camera zooms on Califa, only one half of his mask is revealed, colored in all white.

Califa: Oliver Wilde, though not of the proud Mexican heritage El Califa comes from, has spoken no truer words. Take for instance the words of Drake Callahan. A man so desperate to explain his own failures that he has decided to make false claims against El Califa while the man covered in a mask speaks the truth. I understand why though Drake, I understand that a man of such delusions must make sense in the only way he knows how, by blaming everyone but yourself. So El Califa becomes the scapegoat for your shortcomings, it is of no concern to me, I am merely a man who wishes to prove the world wrong, to show that Mexican wrestling is supreme to all others. Why should I be worried about your lies?

The light slowly sways to the other side, this time revealing the other half of Califa's mask, this time colored completely black. Califa rubs his hands together as he takes a deep breath. He sits forward, his elbows leaning on top of his knees as he clasps his hands together again.

Califa: Or perhaps it does bother me Drake Callahan. Perhaps El Califa is the Demonio del Caos (Demon of Chaos) you seem so intent on finding. Perhaps under this mask is the very thing you seek. Your Santo Grial (Holy Grail), is that what you wish for Drake? To defeat El Califa at All or Nothing and unmask him?

Califa laughs a little as he lifts one hand up and rests his chin on the palm of his hand as he stares forward into the camera, the light barely showing the deep scar running along his arm.

Califa: That's cute Drake Callahan, to think that you have the resolve and edge to take me out is hilarious. Do you not see that I am clearly superior to you in every way shape and form? I am faster, I hit harder, and most importantly Drake Callahan, El Califa does not concern himself with the failures of others. You've forced your way into my life by being an annoying gnat, and El Califa will squash you into the dirt. I have far more important things to deal with then someone who's lost his marbles.

The light swings to the other side again, once more revealing the white side of the mask again this time. Califa seems to calm down, leaning back in his chair as he crosses his leg over the other one, his hands now shifting into a prayer position.

Califa: I wish you would realize your mistakes Drake, I wish you would be capable of dusting yourself off like El Califa and fight with honor. You once were a man of conviction, though self medicated, you were someone everyone looked up to around here. You were loved by many, and unconditionally loved by someone very important to you. You know exactly who El Califa speaks of, and that is Kate. Why did you turn your back on her Drake? You need to find what made Drake great, not what turned him into what he is now.

The light again shifts, the black half of the mask now revealed as Califa throws his head back and laughs, almost maniacally as his hands separate and his arms hang down at his sides. He suddenly snaps his head forward, leaning his forearms and elbows on his knees once more, his voice takes on a more, almost sinister tone as he speaks again.

Califa: You have already reaped the seeds of your corruption Drake. You had your World Title reign, you've gained all the money you'll ever need, and now what? What do you have left to earn? Nothing. You've already lost that which was most important to you. Nothing will ever replace what you've willingly given up on. The harlot that rests on your arm now, how long will she last with you Drake? The moment she can suck you dry and leave you a broken and battered man, that moment will be your rock bottom. And then what Drake? Will you return to the bottle? Will you return to your old ways, forever lost in your sea of alcohol, praying the crowd will like you once more? It's too late for you Drake Callahan. The truth is right there in front of you, and yet you remain blinded to the very evidence that you mean nothing, your words are empty to the like of El Califa.

Again another shift in light as Califa loosens his shoulders, his head lowering slightly as the white side of the mask is revealed yet again.

Califa: El Califa remembers Drake, he remembers watching a few years ago when Drake Callahan was the hottest wrestler in WZCW. He fought and succeeded against the likes of Showtime and the Demonio del Caos, Ty Burna, what happened to that Drake that stole the show, that made sure the fans were having a good time while putting on the best match possible? Is that Drake Callahan truly gone? El Califa wishes it weren't so, he wishes that Drake Callahan would return to what he was before he became nothing more then a man who can't seem to find anyone that will listening to his insane rantings, a man who is about greed and self destruction.

Califa's hand reaches up and swats the light bulb once more, the light moving to the other side once more as he raises his head, the black side illuminated.

Califa: Self destruction, it is the only way to explain why you search for such terrible evil to return once more. Para buscar el mal, como que va a conducir a un hombre por el camino del pecado y la desesperación. (To search for evil such as that, will lead a man down the path of sin and despair.) If that is what you wish for Drake Callahan, perhaps El Califa is that catalyst for your self destruction, or....

The light swings over once more, the white side revealed again.

Califa: Perhaps El Califa is the one to save you from wishing such horrible things upon yourself Drake. The Dragon may be a force for bringing pain upon it's enemies, but it is one for forgiveness and understanding. Contemplate upon what you are trying to find Drake Callahan, you wish to find a man who brought WZCW to it's knees. A man...

Again the light swings, the black side now shown.

Califa: Who can and will end you if you awaken such a beast. You and I both know what Ty Burna represents, the monster who brought for the darkest of nights in WZCW, the man who once brought those who fought against him to bow down to his dominance. Is this what you want Drake Callahan? Do you truly believe El Califa to be Ty Burna, or do you only wish it was such a simple explanation as that?

The light swings over....

Califa: El Califa is not Ty Burna.

And back again....

Califa: Or perhaps he is....

Once more.....

Califa: El Califa does not need to stand in the shadows of anyone else to succeed in this company! El Demonio del Caos debe permanecer inactivo. Debe seguir siendo enterrado y olvidado. No lleve adelante la apertura de la caja de Pandora. (The Demon of Chaos must remain dormant. It must remain buried and forgotten. Do not bring forth the opening of Pandora's Box.) Let it die, El Califa pleads with you Drake Callahan. If I must defeat you to stop your suicidal quest, then so be it.

And again...

Califa: Because I may just be exactly who you think I am Drake. Or perhaps I am not. Why do you wish to know who I truly am? I know the truth, Tyrone knows the truth, why do you not ask him? That's what you believe isn't it Drake? That the Demonio del Caos already walks among us once more? What better way to explain the playing of his horrifying chimes on Meltdown? Was it simply an error on the man controlling the board, or was it your ominous warning that you have woken The Dragon from his slumber? You tread upon a precarious path, and what will you do Drake if you are right? What will you do if El Califa is indeed Ty Burna? ¿Va a pedir misericordia a los pies de el mayor mal que jamás hemos presenciado? (Will you beg for mercy at the feet of the greatest evil we have ever witnessed?) Will you falter? Will you try to break that which is unbreakable?

The light creeps over just barely to the white side of the mask, as Califa's tone takes a pleading sound once more.

Califa: You tread in dangerous waters Drake. Califa knows what Chaos' return means, it will mean the end of all that we know here once again. For your sake, for my sake, drop this theory of yours. Chaos will ravage everything in it's path, everything that you care for, the people that matter most to me as well.

The light suddenly dims and goes out as Califa laughs loudly, echoing throughout whatever room he is in.

Califa: Come Drake Callahan! The Dragon has not feasted in so long! El Califa is ready to end this at All or Nothing and send you back to the corner of your penthouse suite quivering like a child. Spout your conspiracies! Continue to antagonize the dark energy slowly surrounding you, strangling you without you even realizing it. I will watch as you hang yourself with your own words, and I will be the one to drop the latch for your final fall!

The light flickers on once more, the white mask now full revealed.

Califa: El Califa prays for you Drake, he prays for your sake that you do not follow through with such foolishness.

The light flickers again, this time the black mask now shown.

Califa: Mi máscara siempre se sudario mi intención. Su cobardía y necedad no cubierta su debilidad, sólo se amplifica. (My mask will forever shroud my intent. Your cowardice and foolishness does not shroud your weakness, it only amplifies it.) What will you find underneath that rock you insist on kicking over? It matters not for the Dragon rises once more at All or Nothing, and soon the madman on his soapbox will become victim of the Dragon's Wrath!

The light completely goes out, leaving the screen in pure darkness, a woman's laughter can be heard echoing throughout the feed.

???: Which Dragon will you face Drake Callahan? The one that wishes to save you, or the one that will condemn you?

Califa: Así, El Califa lo quiere.

The light suddenly comes on, and two version of El Califa's stand opposite each other, one in white gear, one in black. The one in white has his hands folded in front of him, the one in black holding the sides of his head as he leans it back. The two speak in unison suddenly as the lights go out again.

Califa: Por lo que sucederá.

Silver eyes suddenly appear on the screen for a brief moment before the feed cuts out.