01.001 | Walk The Walk

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In addition to the new-signing paperwork, it had been a long tiring week. Berlin had spent most of it rolling through the south central parts of the country, playing roadie for a southern rock band and hitching a ride with another outfit to get back to the northeast. The big plains in Oklahoma and Kansas had their own magic and were never as quiet as one might think. Winds in the grass, footsteps of humans or livestock grazing. More than that, grasslands had a huge amount of concealed life forms hiding there as well, lending a low hum of sounds ranging from almost imperceptible to the sharp calls of low-dwelling birds or crickets or cicadas. All the same, you could feel alone there in a way that you never could in an inner city, and that wasn't entirely a bad thing.

Towards the end of it, little things had started to happen that had just made those vast fields uneasy and abysslike. The sounds of New York traffic outside Bklyn Beast gym were comforting in comparison, though they felt louder than usual. The omnipresent mundane bustle from the constant flow of people here made it all easier to write off as imaginary, or at least put it out of his mind.

Berlin was waiting for a friend. It was an unusual thought, thinking of Freddie Lombard as a friend-- at first, he'd approached Berlin online to offer an exchange of money for training. The other wrestler was booked in a parking-lot brawl for a promotion called iiW, and he seemingly didn't have a lot of experience at hardcore wrestling. Freddie wrestled a highflying style, was slightly smaller than even Berlin was, and was looking for ways to think outside of the box for the match.

And Berlin had taken it, part for the cash and part under the thought that teaching another person some of what he knew would teach him more about his own knowledge. Having to explain to an outsider could make one deconstruct things in a way they wouldn't have otherwise. Not only that, fresh inexperienced eyes on a topic brought you different perspective, different possibilities in innovation.

The guy was no one he'd have expected to make friends with. Upper class, fastidious, and a bit snooty, really. But Freddie was also clever, quicker to adapt to different surroundings than one might have expected, willing to respect someone else's knowledge regardless of their difference of appearance and attitude. And despite the public attitude, he didn't really seem in person to consider himself invulnerable. He wasn't a fan favorite in the least and could be rather unkind to certain people, but when faced with someone who was truly nice-- Annie Zellor, albeit only through twitter-- he wasn't obnoxious just for the sake of it.

Freddie was also always timely; Berlin had booked his own gym time before the man showed up, knowing he wouldn't have time to fart around or warm up while waiting. He'd learned parkour himself in the live environment of city streets, benefited many times over for being able to train anywhere at any time. But for the initial session with Lombard, he had gone looking for a place more conducive to a compact crash course situation. The crash pads, trampoline surfaces, and big pit full of foam pieces had given him an environment to try aerial moves that could've seriously injured him if he'd experimented on them in a ring, and some of the regulars here practiced capoeira as well.

And of course, boom, right on time (or rather, just under a minute early) there Lombard was, impossibly neat even in gym gear, one brow already arched before the comment-- or was it the openest possible question, wearing a period as a mask-- slipped out in a slightly amused drawl. "Well, then."

"Well it definitely is." He threw a gym towel into a nearby chair with a sort of slapping motion and cracked a Gatorade. "Signed with a place. Visionaries of Wrestling. Doesn't look like I'm headed to Albuquerque for much but spectating in the future."

"Oh, really? Do tell." Most people would be saying that to be polite, and would nod in fake-interest. Not Freddie. Which meant that he was actually curious. "Do you have a match already?"

"Yeah, Tuesday, weirdly. These guys move fast--" He paused to take a long swig off the bottle-- "Which might be a good thing. Yanno these promotions have the lifespan of flies lately, hard to break out when so many of 'em manage a show a month and then keel before they've been open for six. Downside's that this first match is against another couple of new guys, makes it harder to scout 'em."

"Tuesday? That…" He shook his head, one hand moving to push his hair out of his eyes before it even fell. "Do you know anything about them, or are you just training blind and hoping for the best?" He paused to uncap his water bottle and take a sip, his brows drawn in. "It seems a little unfair, given that you’re at least scoutable."

"Probably no more scoutable than they are. I mean they could go dig through indie archives, find the two whole matches I had at PCW before they folded, but I'm not even sure if the pay-per-view aired more than the live showing. Checked to rewatch-- you know, get that camera's eye view and see what to improve on, just sit back and watch the other matches out of that backstage stressful element? And they'd pulled the plug on it. Might go bug Sullivan or Rowler for a copy, 'cause I mean-- I beat Mikaela Demidov. She's champion over in FFW now. That's not a small thing." At least, not for this point of his career.

"Not a small thing at all. Purely on your taking Demidov out, I’d be particularly cautious if I were in their position." The nod was accompanied by a quick fingerwag and a there-and-gone-again smile. Of course, in addition to what he'd seen in person he’d have looked Berlin up himself beforehand, at least talked to his wife about she knew.

"Eeeh, maybe. These guys coming up on Tuesday? One's a six-foot-three powerhouse guy that goes by Death, paints himself up like Gene Simmons, probably gonna wind up being one of those types like Syn but with a third of the brain capacity and five times more steroids. Other guy's named Maxwell Soloke, and he might be findable on some stuff, about our size, sorta a brawler type, had some titles in a place called Pinnacle Wrestling Association and something called CLAW. Not a whole lot of time to tape-watch so far, maybe I'll have it later but I'm gonna wind up doing things in back-assward order here."

"From that description, I’m already imagining low-hanging fruit. Your powerhouse is probably slow, your brawler is too small for any real damage, unless he’s good. In any case, it might be worth hanging back, letting them have at it so you can gauge. If you don’t know them, they’re probably new enough that they’d do that without thinking."

"Yeah, I'm less concerned about Death, I can outrun him." He blinked, then snickered at the statement, thinking how it'd sound out of context to a bystander. "Soloke... what I saw so far, he's got something. Seems like this quick striking sort of style, might be misgauging but that's what I got. All the same, speed's my specialty. Not just getting away from him, but using it as momentum when I hit." He shrugged. "Won't be the end of the world if I don't get the win, but it'd be... well... real good momentum, you know? One way or another, wanna look like a pro here. But playing evasion out of the gate, letting them take swings at each other at first... is a good idea."

Freddie's tactics weren't his own; the guy could be downright sneaky and and sometimes break rules. This wasn't rulebreaking, though. Triple threats were odd. Literally, numerically. Three was an important number in a cosmic manner, too. More pragmatically, all that tag work had at least given him the practice of looking over his shoulder for extra people, expecting pins to be broken up until everybody involved had been worn down. This might be one kind of singles match where tag experience could be a boon.

"You’ll just have to be faster and more creative, and I think you’ll have that covered. Whatever you do, don’t let yourself get pinned by a guy named, ‘Death’. Pffft, I thought I was pretentious."

"You should face him. Tabula Rasaaaa versus Death." The good-natured jab was accompanied with a light elbow nudge. These unexpected glimmers of humor were another reason Freddie and he got along.

"Hah!" The single bark of laughter was accompanied by the lightest of nudges in return. "I told you I was pretentious."

"You know, I had a dream..."

"Hmm?"

"Right before I faced Mikaela. Woke up in a morgue, in one of those big metal filing cabinets for dead bodies. Helluva thing." Death. It was putting it mildly, but this wasn't something he talked about out loud with other people, usually ever. It tended to sound crazy. "Then again, all my dreams are a bit too vivid."

Tension flickered for a moment or two. On, off, on again, slowly easing. "That… vivid dreams can be bad enough, but that…" Freddie paused, teeth biting down on the very tip of his tongue. After a moment he glanced up, actually caught Berlin’s gaze. "I don’t think I’d like to have that dream."

For Freddie, it was an unusual little display of... empathy?

He knew the guy just well enough to get the feeling that a notable reaction to it would probably just make things awkward.

Freddie had stilled, apart from two fingers slowly rolling and unrolling the hem of his polo shirt, and for a moment it looked as though any connection they’d built might have been severed by a tiny bite of polite conversation. Then the smaller man looked up, flashed a somewhat rueful (and yet also somewhat more genuine than usual) smile. "At least it was a dream."

"Yeah, this is true..." Berlin sort of facially-shrugged-- an odd comment to take when all of your dreams felt as real as reality-- but he could equivalent it with at least you left there and haven't gone back yet. And after a moment, "wanna go hit the wall?" Climbing wall. Not punching a wall.

A sharp inhale, and a moment in which hands were folded neatly behind his back, fingertips pressed to his own skin, and Freddie nodded. "Yes, I would very much like to hit the wall. After you?"