Femme Furies (Fade/Selene): Tamago Gohan (or A Long Tamago)

I wake up to the smell of eggs.  Lucia is a sweet girl but I need to remind her not everyone loves the taste of eggs every morning.  The routine continues because I can already hear her cursing from here.  Every morning, she is up before I am, and she cracks four eggs and begins the process of trying to create tamago gohan like she saw on a cooking show once a long time ago.  Every morning, she starts with the humming of some song she likes, then I hear her stirring around the eggs, then I hear her heating up the rice, then I hear nothing but silence.  Do we have any more of the white rice?  Now, she comes to the point of no return.  Does she achieve her dreams and become the culinary apex she aspires to be?

Then she curses in Spanish because she overcooks the egg.  I hear the plate slammed into the sink and I hear the toaster get set with the toaster strudel she already had prepared in case she failed to create her egg masterpiece.

I have tried to help her relax her expectations for herself.  Perhaps the eggs and rice still tastes good?  That is not the point she tells me.  Perhaps the rice was perfectly cooked?  If you paint a beautiful countryside only to sneeze on the last stroke and drag a brown line across the canvas, you didn’t create perfection you took a shit on adequate.  Such as it is with our conversations over the things Lucia is proud about and what she tries to get better at and what she thinks at any given point on any given day.

Pulling myself from my twin bed, I notice that my clothes are sitting on my dresser.  I thought I had left them in the dryer overnight and the connection is made quickly that Lucia put them in here.  She came in while I was asleep and placed them perfectly folded and neat?  Is she trying to make a point to me that I am messy?  I know that.  I know that I make messes and I struggle with remembering to clean after myself.  I get so focused in on my work that I do not see what is in front of me.  It is why I have failed with every person I have been attracted to.  It is the repetition of my youth.  I forget to clean something, I am punished for it.  I forget to put away my laundry, I am punished for it.  What awaits me when I step out of this room?  Will she make cutting little comments to remind me of what I did not do?  Will she immediately confront me for my laziness and refuse to speak to me today?

I must know.  I do not run away from my mistakes.

After I dress myself appropriately, I step out of my room and see her sitting at our pull down bar that we’ve turned into our dining area.  Her mouth is full of something, I’m assuming her strudel.

“Buenos morning, Leen,” she mumbles as she finishes chewing, “I made you some huevos y gohan.”

I sit down to see my bowl of last night’s fried rice topped with cheesy scrambled eggs.  I look at her and say nothing for a moment before I realize she’s expecting a thank you.  “Thanks, you did not have to do that.”

“Oh shit, I didn’t know,” she says and holds her hand out, “I didn’t know you had some food stashed in that room of yours.”

“How do you know I ha…no, not that,” I stammer, “I just thought you would throw it away like you have done the last three mornings.”

She stabs down into her eggs, focusing in on her bowl of food. “You told me yesterday I was tossin’ perfectly fine food, even if it looked fucked up.  You right, I own it, so here’s your scrambled eggs and fried rice from our takeout last night.”

“Thank you?” I am unsure what to do here.  I am waiting on the hammer to drop.  So I wait.  I eat and I wait.  She tells me about how the pork from last night had her living in the bathroom and that she should have listened to me about getting the chicken instead.  She is her usual graphic self detailing her late night rendezvous with the toilet when I feel my phone vibrate my butt cheek.  Odd since I block all notifications and the only people that have my phone number are Fade, Keiji, and Daiichi.  It is probably a malicious spam caller.  I let it ring and continue to listen to her.  Then, I feel another buzz.  A text message.  A text message?  I look at Fade for a moment as she continues to detail her tail end tale so it’s not her.  I do not recognize this number but just as well, I open the message.

Selene u kno who this is. I called ur job n they told me u lived at a gym. I called them n they gave me this number after i told them who i was 2 u. U need to call me. Ur mom is sick n ur brothers miss u. CALL ME WHEN U GET THIS.

“...es my Poopasaurus Rex not entertain you enough this morning?” I realize she is talking to me.

“I do not have interest in your bowel movements,” I tell her.

“That’s fair,” she nods, “I moved on but you kinda drifted off there so I just kept talking about my poopsie daisy moment at 4:43 in the morning.”

“Who thinks to tell their roommate and tag team partner about their bathroom proclivities?”

“I mean, clearly I do.”

I do not have anything to say on the matter.  I can not stop thinking about my phone and this text message.  I quickly send a text to Keiji.

Please do not give my personal information to anyone that calls the dojo claiming to know me.  I have no immediate family that is living.  Thank you and have a wonderful day, Keiji-san.

“I need to go for a walk,” I tell Fade, getting up from the table and walking back to my bedroom.

“Was it my eggcellent adventure in the kitchen?” she asks with a smirk, “Or was it my fecal foray into the great sewer systems of Las Vegas, Nevada?  Because I gotta tell you, Leen, that second one?  Not the first one but the second one?  Oh man, slap a goddamn bandana on that bitch and call it Leonardo because I definitely sent a Ninja Turtle down there.”

I giggle.  She won.

I guess it’s kinda hard to be on all the time for some people.  Selene gets so focused on being as perfect as she can be outside that when she gets home she falls right the fuck apart.  I’ve seen it with tons of people I shacked up with.  Put on that professional face, get people to look at you the way you want them to, then get home and cry yourself to sleep because you’ve been anxious all fucking day thinking somebody’s gonna see right through your shit.

I like Selene, all things considered.  I thought I wouldn’t.  I figured Lindsay put us together so she can wash her hands of me and say “I gave you your shot, not my fault you couldn’t make it work with the bookworm.”  Funny thing is that Selene doesn’t seem to read much.  When she doesn’t think I’m looking I watch her sit and stare off into space.  Her face twists up, her nose scrunches up, she gets red, and then it goes away before she says anything or even really does anything.

She told me her real first and middle name, but she avoids her last name for “reasons” I guess.  Diana Selene is a very pretty name but it definitely comes with a lot of pressure, at least she thinks so.  Princesses, goddesses, mythological deities and shit like that all come together to make a ball of stress for that girl.

It’s been very hard for me to accept that I’ve got a long way to go in the ring.  I don’t know how Selene is feeling about all of it but it fucks with me.  The only thing that loss we took against Bobby Dean and Tony Gamble did to me was irritate me and make me want to eat some eggs hence my culinary escapades ever since.  Leen didn’t talk much after we lost.  She’s taking it hard since she’s the one that got pinned.  I tried to tell her losses are gonna happen but she shut down.  I don’t know why she’s so secretive but I figure she probably thinks the same thing about me.  It sucks, if I’m honest, because if the only thing keeping us from greatness is opening up to one another we’re not there yet and until then we’ll keep catching Ls.

But I gotta say, for a tag team that’s 0-1, we’ve landed a cushy spot on the big Ultraviolence show against Kerry Kuroyama and Scott Hunter.  Sure, it’s not a tag title shot and it’s the second match or whatever on the card but still…it’s something.

I watch her stretching in the living room.  She mumbles to herself about what she thinks Kerry and Scott can and can’t handle.  You can see her with her head down thinking about the match to come, thinking about the moves to hit, the moves to counter, the moves to watch out for, and weaknesses she thinks she sees in their work or strengths we need to avoid.  She tries so hard to be Batman and detective her way to a victory but one thing neckbeards don’t tell you is “prep time” is nice and all but it kinda all goes to hell the moment you get your first pop in the face and you get left with instincts, fears, and adrenaline.  At least that’s what I think.  I realize as I watch her that I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.  She doesn’t, either.  Only so much training we can do to get ready and know what we’re doing, too.

“Yo,” I tell her as she walks towards the door to go for her walk, “Meet me at the dojo in two hours.  I’m gonna call a camera crew, see if we can cut a legitimate promo together.  Y’know…as a team.”

She smiles at me.  It’s a warm smile that tells me there’s a sense of affection and relief in her face at the idea and maybe the word “team” just hit different for her.

“I would like that,” she quietly replies before walking out the door and into the cool morning air.

The backdrop is a basic curtain against the wall.  The curtain features the emblem for Saigo no Eiyu, SAIGO for short.  It’s the dojo’s emblem, it’s the name of Keiji’s famous faction out of the world of puroresu, and it’s the only backdrop Daiichi and Keiji could find to give them an air of professionalism for any camerawork to be done.

Inside of the dojo it smells of sweat, blood, and cigars.  There are posters adorning the wall of various members of SAIGO over the years: leader and figurehead Keiji Tokugawa, longtime rival turned ally Daiichi, noble Japanese legend Tadakatsu Jin, masked street magician known primarily only as Kitsune and his ECLIPSE tag team partner Akuma Lee/SHINYA, American Lions tag team Jackson Jeffries and Victor Thane, and journeyman Ryo Takahashi to name just a few.  The camera pauses for a moment on the last two members in sun bleached posters: the Bad Ass Brotherhood tag team of Hall of Famer Buck Dresden and his partner Charles Brandon Magnus.

Selene stares up at the posters, paying attention to the gaijin who called this faction their home in Japan.  She says nothing, merely training her eyes on the men who came before her.  Her skin pimples in reaction to the cold air of the fans above her blowing down upon her, though she keeps her dark red hood pulled over her long curly locks and bright green eyes.

Selene:  When I was a child, I first saw professional wrestling in clips.  Memes posted on message boards with wrestlers making funny faces or out of context quotes to make you laugh.  I was not allowed to watch television until I was a senior in high school and even then, it was after I had turned 18 and I was given one week to depart the home in which I stayed.

She glances over her shoulder and looks at the camera.  She removes her hood and sighs, closing her eyes to reflect upon her past.

Selene:  The first one, the first meme anyway, I used was these two men right here.  Buck Dresden and Charles…Brandon Magnus.  They were a tag team called the Bad Ass Brotherhood and they were somewhat big in America and became very big in Japan.  It was a gif of Magnus pushing someone over Buck, who was on his hands and knees behind the poor victim.  It was silly and it made me giggle.

She pauses.

Selene:  I did not know these men.  Just like I do not know Kerry Kuroyama and Scott Hunter.

Selene removes her hood and glances off screen as she notices Fade coming into view, dressed in her black and pink gear.

Selene:  My ring name is my middle name because I want to connect to the family and friends that I have known in this industry but it is far too late for that so here I am trying to figure out who I am and what I can do.  What can I offer?  What can I offer this industry, what can I offer PRIME, and what can I offer Fade as a partner and as a friend?

Fade:  What can we offer Kerry Kuroyama and Scott Hunter?

Selene nods, agreeing with her partner.

Fade:  This is our second match as a team and it’s my third match in my entire career.  You know what I haven’t done in those last two matches?

She scoffs.

Fade:  Win.

Selene smiles at her partner’s sense of humor.

Selene:  And so, logic dictates now that we are in a match against two guys in what is basically their home court and one is a champion and for all intents and purposes this looks like a wash.

Fade:  But see, we’re tryin’ here.  We’re tryin’ our best to power through, to brush the shoulders off, keep it movin’, and prove why we belong here.  Y’all don’t know us.  We’re just two girls trying to get a grip on where we’re going and tryin’ to see if we got what it takes to win in PRIME.  Could we have gone to some other company and gotten notoriety, pinned some jokers, got a title shot, made somethin’ of ourselves?  Yeah maybe.  Maybe Fade and Selene could have been tag champions in, like…I don’t know…sVo or, or, or, like, SHOOT or something.  But we came here.  We chose to be…here.  Not because we had problems in any of the other places but because we thought this was gonna be the biggest challenge.  The hardest obstacle.  The tallest mountain to climb.  This was gonna be it.  Where we’d grow and be tested in a way we’d never see comin’.  So we signed here and we promptly got our asses kicked by Tony Gamble and Bobby Dean.  Honestly, we shoulda seen that comin’.  Maybe we should see that comin’ at UltraViolence against Kerry and Scott.

She scoffs at the thought.  There’s truth in there but it doesn’t stop her from trying to brush it off.

Fade:  We’ve talked a lot about inside jokes and feelin’ like we’re on the outside lookin’ in because, really, we feel like we are.  I’m Fade.  My ring name is supposed to be a fuckin’ joke about how I’m a shadow behind a bigger void.  How I’m not even supposed to be in a wrestling ring seekin’ glory, it don’t come to people like me.  Knowin’ what I’m supposed to be and knowin’ what I’m tryin’ to be and knowin’ what the difference is is all I got, y’know?  Look, I’m not gonna tell Kerry and Scott we’re gonna give them an ass kickin’ like that’s what we’re here to offer them.  Nah nah.  What I want to offer them is the best we can give them.  So we study their tapes.  We watch their promos.  We try’n laugh at the jokes or the references.  We out here wantin’ people to know who we are when maybe we should take a beat and learn who you all are.  We didn’t know Scott ‘n’ Kerry before we had the misfortune of running into them but we didn’t know hardly any of y’all before we got here.  We could be bullheaded, try’n laugh it off and make people get on our level, or we can try’n get people to see us as respectful little rookies who just wanna shake hands and hopefully have a good match.

She shrugs, thinking about the position she finds herself in.

Fade:  I want so badly to do the former but I get fucked in my head and wind up doin’ the latter.  Y’all don’t deserve that.  Selene don’t deserve that.  I don’t deserve that, shit.  Problem is we came to y’all and we weren’t ready.  Physically yeah, but mentally?  Nah we shouldn’t have ever signed up here, even if we wanted the challenge.

Selene:  We did not know we were not ready until probably when we tied up with Bobby and Tony.

Selene’s interruption breaks Fade’s concentration.  She drops her head, letting Selene continue.

Selene:  See, I came here to be closer to my biological father, a man I never knew.  He was a professional wrestler and all I wanted was to know his world.  What I got was a company that had far removed itself from my father’s time that it may as well have been a whole other company, and then there was PRIME.  PRIME gave me the chance to see my father’s world with clear, fresh eyes.  I took the chance and never stopped hoping that I could find a way to connect with him.

Fade:  Me, though?  I was in an abusive relationship and Lindsay Troy beat his ass for me.  She saw goodness in me and gave me the chance to train under her and meet her connections in the business until she finally decided I was strong enough to wrestle and then…hooked me up with Selene here.  I didn’t expect it to be easy and seein’ as how PRIME saw fit to not only give us a shot on their big show they also gave us a shot against the Alias Champion himself and his partner and, hell…Vae Victis, right?  The fuck does that mean again?

Selene:  Basically “sucks to be you” if you passed high school Latin.

Fade:  Which makes sense that you’d know that since you got us named after some Greek mythology thing.

Record scratch.  Selene’s concentration on their opponents is completely wrecked.

Selene:  You would prefer the Erinyes as opposed to being called a fury?

Fade:  I don’t think half the roster here would be fussed at pronouncing anything you come up with, if I’m bein’ totally honest.  I think I’ve heard us called Furries, Flurries…fuck knows what else.  But, yo.  Tell you what.  Let me make a bet with you, Leen.  If we win, I get to change our name.  If we lose…

Selene:  If we lose?

Fade goes quiet, trying to consider her next words carefully.

Selene:  …yes?

Fade:  …

Selene:  …Lucia?

Fade:  …

Selene:  You do not have any ideas for if we lose, do you?

Light bulb!

Fade:  …if we lose we have to watch Point Break.

Selene turns the light off.

Selene:  I do not want to watch Point Break.

Fade:  Have you seen Point Break?

Selene:  No.

Fade:  Then how do you know you don’t wanna watch it?  Kerry and Scott might be onto something there.

Selene rolls her eyes.

Selene:  Kerry, Scott, despite our continued interactions being less than kind, I want to wish you luck.  It will be the biggest moment of our careers when we defeat you.  Do not think we do not know how important this is.

Fade:  Sometimes if you want the ultimate you’ve gotta pay the ultimate price.  Ouroboros is ready.  Are you?

AND CUT!

Selene looks over to Fade, obviously impressed.

Selene:  That ultimate line was fantastic.  Did you come up with that on the spot?

Fade stares blankly at Selene for a long, long moment.  Selene begins to doubt what this quiet moment will bring. Fade:  Yup.