Synergy 361
Montague watches as Ragdoll begins to lace the jump boots he brought her, knowing full well that the clown herself could be his next opponent. He starts to excuse himself, but hesitates.
Montague: Hey Jacky?
She stretches her left leg out, turning her ankle this way and that to admire the boots, and answers without looking up.
Jacky: Yeah?
The Showman clears his throat.
Montague: I had a thought earlier and wondered how you might feel about it.
She looks up finally, curious about what he might have in mind.
Montague: We’ve absolutely dominated this tournament so far and no one can take that away from us. No one would freely admit it, of course. There’s still an enduring sentiment amongst our critics that victories are the focus of our endeavors, rather than the byproduct.
Jacky: That’s an easy conclusion to jump to when we’re kickin’ as much ass as we have been. It’s definitely the ‘byproduct’ way more often than not.
He nods, unable to resist a proud smirk.
Montague: You’re not wrong. When it’s not, though, our unimaginative detractors invariably declare that the end of our campaign is imminent.
Jacky snorts and responds with sarcasm.
Jacky: Oh you mean you’ve noticed they never have anything new to say? What a headline!
Montague: To tell the truth, I’m sort of bored with this cycle. We walk over the rest of the roster for weeks at a time, and their only response is to cross their fingers and hope show after show that this week for sure one of us will falter, and we’re back to zero in their estimation.
Jacky: “Sure, you can beat us nine times out of ten, but that one match we’ve arbitrarily decided is the one that matters just happens to be the one you lose, so you’re worthless.” Kinda seems hollow when we’ve taken their trinkets and stolen their tournaments over and over.
Montague nods, glad she’s on the same page.
Montague: And don’t forget that overplayed classic; “it doesn’t matter what you’ve achieved, you’re no Tempest.”
He puts his left hand over his eyebrows and peers around from under it.
Montague: That’s funny… we’ve been absolutely untouchable for months and no one has seen Tempest since Horizons.
Jacky: It’s a pretty small-minded sentiment. No offense to my Tempy, but I’ve never seen him run the train on a tournament the way we have. And we haven’t even been helping each other…
Montague: At any rate, one of two things is very possible right now. One, we could see one of us take their first loss tonight in the Challenge. Due to the ridiculous standard our enemies hold us to, if that happens, The AstroCreeps have more or less failed the Global Challenge in their eyes–even if one of us wins.
Jacky’s brow furrows.
Jacky: That doesn’t make any sense.
Montague: Oh, I know. But these are the slants people like us are graded on, and you know it’s true.
Jacky: Of course it is. Their brands are so hollow that allowing the AstroCreeps to have any laurels is automatically detrimental. Better to imagine we’re cracking than admit reality. Anyway, what’s the second possible outcome?
Montague: The more likely outcome, the one no one wants to admit, is that we give just enough effort to win tonight and go on to face one another at Infinity for the key.
She hesitates.
Jacky: And that’s definitely the one we want.
Montague: Is it?
Jacky tilts her head to one side.
Jacky: Um, isn’t it?
Montague sighs.
Montague: There’s nothing I’d enjoy more than throwing this whole tournament in their faces and watching them spit and grunt because we’ve stolen Infinity from them. As far as I’m concerned, having just the two of us in that final makes the entire show about us and the World Championship secondary. But that’s not how it will go. We’ll both give it our all, and instead of the winner getting the glory, the one who loses will get derision and we’ll go through the same three or four weeks of everyone poking at imaginary cracks in the AstroCreeps. Whichever one of us wins will be eclipsed by their dragging the one who doesn’t through the muck. The cycle begins again, we’re back to zero, and we’ll go on another dominant streak hearing the same dismissive nonsense we’ve been hearing since September.
Jacky appears to chew this over as he’s making his prediction, and finally asks the ten thousand dollar question.
Jacky: Wait a minute…. Monty, you’ve been one of the most vocal about not caring what people think about us. Is this a change of heart? Where is this coming from?
Montague: I don’t care what they think about us as people. We’re unorthodox, we’re not high society. We never have to worry about fitting into molds as ambassadors of the sport or role models who have to act a certain way. We are just as comfortable playing heroes to the downtrodden as villains to the mundanes. What I do care about, however, is having our accomplishments pooh-poohed when we work just as hard if not harder than anyone else to get there. I care that we’ve proven we’re more entertaining and talented than almost anyone else but because we’re different, we don’t count. I care that we’re given no room to make a mistake or slip, because if we do, that becomes our story instead of the unprecedented success we’ve had. I care that from the moment we became a family, the elites immediately began to count the days until we fall apart. I don’t care if they like us or even accept us, but dammit, they will acknowledge us.
Jacky beams at Monty’s passion in spite of herself.
Jacky: I’m glad you’re not willing to just accept the dismissal everyone seems determined to give us. I don’t care about being the most popular, or the one who sells the most t-shirts, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to keep being a joke to them. What did you have in mind?
Montague: We prove that taking a loss doesn’t break us. I let Hide get his submission and you two go on to fight for the key. I’ll take second place and take on Lucy for the Cross Hemisphere Championship. We still finish the tournament on our terms, and we walk away with two prizes from Infinity instead of one. Then you can go on to challenge for the World Championship. Won’t Tempest be so proud of us when he returns?
The plan comes out in a rush, and Montague claps his mouth shut when he finishes to gauge Jacky’s reaction. For her part, she just looks stunned.
Jacky: But why me?
Montague: Why not you?
Jacky: Monty, you don’t even have to win your match to make it to the final, I do.
Montague: I’m not worried about that. Seb has to get a submission, it’s the only way he doesn’t look like a tool for entering the tournament. He’s not going to get it, and since he won’t be seeking a pinfall, that gives you room to grab one yourself. You win your block and I can embarrass Hide in the main event by out-thinking him and choosing to lose on my terms before feeding him to the Ragdoll.
Jacky: What if I want a submission over Sebastian?
Now Montague’s brow furrows.
Montague: Why? You don’t need it to go to the final.
Jacky: Me, take the easy way out? Monty, I thought you knew me.
She gives him a sarcastic smirk.
Jacky: Besides, I have my own ideas for the possible outcomes of the tournament. Option Number A: I wrestle Seb to a draw and he looks like a tool anyway because he can’t make me submit, while you win your block. Or, Option 2: I make Seb submit, you pin Hide, we go 4-and-0 in the tournament and everyone who talks shit can look like a tool while we steal the show at Infinity. I like the idea of going into that show knowing everyone’s pissin’ their pants because they have to endure the night knowing the AstroCreeps have earned the right to make it our show.
Montague nods, considering her angle but not making a decision.
Montague: Well, think it over at least. Whatever you decide in your match, I’ll be out there to support you.
She smiles up at him.
Jacky: And I’ll support whatever you do in yours.
They embrace once more, and Montague leaves Jacky to finish getting ready.
Sunday Night, 2/13
The Red Line on the Massachusetts Bay Rapid Transit System has just left the North Quincy station and is now passing beneath the Neponset River. This is the beginning of its longest stretch without a stop, where it’s two southern branches junction to start the journey toward the college stations.
Montague sits alone in the tail car, staring at a bit of graffiti scrawled into the plastic seat in front of him. It looks like someone carved it with a rusted nail:
You have to get lost to find yourself
Well, he couldn’t feel more lost. He’s on his way to Logan International from Dover, where yet another cryptid investigation had fallen through. Montague had planned to shoot in a gallery maintained by the friends of William Butler, the young artist who had originally sketched the creature. It was mostly amateurish pencil renderings of what looked like a dopey cartoon moose with no antlers.
Monty’s concept was to compare the Dover Demon’s relatively short tenure in cryptozoological history to the brief time that Lucy was dominant and relevant in UGWC, which was mostly between 2017 and 2018.
Once he saw the graphite illustrations, however, he couldn’t bring himself to execute the concept. They were too silly, too unbelievable, too… cute?
Lucy isn’t the Dover Demon.
This was only the latest in a string of misfires over the last six days. Montague had crisscrossed New England and the Great Lakes region searching for the right cryptid to represent his opponent in the Global Challenge final at Infinity, but had come up short every time.
Loveland, Ohio; The Frogman which travels low and unassuming, nothing special to take notice of until it decides to stand up and become terrifying. But it wasn’t terrifying. It looked like something from Alice’s looking glass. Absurd and unthreatening.
Lucy isn’t the Frogman.
Rhineland, Wisconsin; The Hodag is a horned beast said to emerge from the forests near the Canadian border to snatch and devour lumberjacks as payback for the abuses they heaped upon their animals of burden. The thought of something vicious enough to eat the most rugged and manly of men felt like a possible connection to how Lucy has a tendency to thrive on abuse and devour the careers of some of the toughest men in the industry.
Only, after examining the ridiculous Hodag statues, Monty gathered that the myth is a good-natured hoax adopted by the city and all the native Rhinelanders know it. A collective imagining of a ferocious avenger doesn’t quite fit.
Lucy isn’t the Hodag.
Wexford County, Michigan; The Dogman, a seven foot bipedal canine, only appears once every ten years. This cycle goes all the way back to legends corroborated by the Native American coalition of the Three Fires tribes, mostly the Objibwe. The Doctor-Professor had thought this was a fantastic representation of Lucy’s on again, off again cycles of success. She had emerged to win the Wrestlestock Cup a couple years ago, after all. And then after everyone thought she was gone again she formed Numinous Fate and captured the Cooperative Championships for a couple of brief reigns.
Unfortunately, Montague discovered that the Dogman was a manufactured legend by a local radio DJ who composed a song featuring the monster. The rest of its history seems to be largely retroactive continuity constructed in the intervening thirty five years since he sold cassettes of his diddy for four dollars a pop.
We have more than enough evidence of what one might consider apocryphal tales of Lucy’s career outside of UGWC. Many who witnessed her career in other companies are now our coworkers, so those stories are readily confirmed and endorsed by first hand accounts.
Lucy is not the Dogman.
Now it’s Sunday night and he’s nearly out of time. When he reaches the airport, he’ll be grabbing a red eye to Tupelo Regional for Infinity tomorrow night. He hasn’t released a shoot promo for that match, and at this rate he won’t be able to.
Lucy released hers, but he hasn’t bothered to look yet. Montague knows it will be laced with acid and venom, but will probably employ criticisms similar to what she said about Jacky. He doesn’t want his critiques to be colored by frustration with a repeated list of complaints that everyone else has already said.
The frightening lack of originality reminds him how many cryptids he’s read about that are just some variation of prehistoric plesiosaur, ‘gray’, or ape-human hybrid. There’s a serious absence of variety in the legends of this melting pot of a country.
The Showman had briefly flirted with the notion of searching for more unique mythological creatures in the international community. Would that dagger tongue of hers make Lucy a mirror of the deadly serpent Olgoi-khorkhoi? Maybe her inability to hold any relationship together, romantic or familial, would make her an expy for the Shuck, who’s claws scorch everything it touches. Maybe he could make her out to be an Ahool, swooping out of the sky to snatch unsuspecting men into her clutches before they disappear from UGWC forever. A Yowie might be apt; she does seem like a shrinking violet most of the time until she’s sufficiently provoked. That’s when she becomes aggressive and lethal, unleashing bloodcurdling screams that freeze her victims with terror.
There was always the Wendigo, of course. Monty had kept that one in his pocket, certain up until this past Synergy that he and Jacky would be closing out the tournament together. What a beautiful representation; a force of nature, a spirit of the unknown that doles out one of the most horrific punishments one could imagine. The Wendigo turned its prey into cannibals, always famished and never satisfied, until they eventually devoured themselves.
Montague smiles in the subway car thinking about how the people that Jacky triggered practically impaled themselves to disparage her, all the while stomping their feet in frustration as the floor falls out from under them. By far her most tragic victim, Johnny Hitmaker, will probably turn himself inside out as his client is outsmarted by the second AstroCreep in as many weeks.
Lucy is no Ragdoll.
Lucy is not the Wendigo.
The problem is, Lucy Wylde as a person is largely defined by her relationships with other people. Whether that’s the revolving door of doomed romantic conquests, the toxic family of sadist criminals she was unfortunately born into, or the “friends” who never fail to validate their loyalty by manipulating or insulting her… if you remove those variables, who is Lucy Wylde?
By contrast, cryptids are solitary by nature. Nearly every one is an ancient recluse, a cloistered guardian of the earth, an excommunicated mutant, or a lone hunter. How do you match any of those traits with someone so codependent?
This might be why Lucy has not seen the unmitigated success she once enjoyed five years ago.
On August 30th of last year, she became a Grand Slam Champion with no fanfare because everyone was too busy placing bets on when she would poison Rogan MacLean by starting a relationship with him. The story of that Cooperative reign was what it meant to Incendium, not what did it mean for Lucy’s future.
Donovan Hastings defended the World Championship five times in 2021, carefully selecting his opponents from a list of iconic former World Champions. Lucy’s name never came up, despite her having held that title for three times as long as her partner Rogan MacLean–who was on the Lord of Pain’s list–in a single reign. Why? Because Lucy was wrapped up in some kind of melodrama with two of her former lovers.
Is Lucy Wylde even an entity in UGWC on her own?
In the realm of legendary creatures, she’s less the subject of the myth, and more a supporting character. While the beasts and the heroes that hunt them endure, the minor characters fade from memory.
Lucy Wylde? More like Lucy Westenra. If anyone can’t recall the parallel of that literary reference, it only reinforces how Montague feels about the agency Lucy has been granted in UGWC.
Montague almost feels sorry for the way such a talented competitor has been shunted to the side, but his thoughts are interrupted when the row of fluorescent lights lining the ceiling of the subway car begin to flicker, and then to flash. Sufficiently distracted, he reaches for one of the balance bars and pulls himself to his considerable height.
He checks the dot matrix station announcement board above the door to the next car ahead, briefly reminded of Rett’s eyes. Expecting the letters indicating the approach of JFK/UMass, he’s stunned when the letters spell out a familiar phrase:
YOU HAVE TO GET LOST TO FIND YOURSELF
Montague’s eyes widen as he tilts his head with curiosity.
Montague: What’s… happening…?
Outside the windows, the arc sodium lamps that shed a modicum of illumination in the subterranean tunnel go out. Montague can feel the motion of the train decreasing, and eventually, coming to a full stop.
With a flick of his wrists, the Showman is holding his throwing daggers in each hand, ready for whatever is about to take place. Eventually the lights in the car stop flashing and go out completely.
Montague senses movement outside the car and moves closer to the window to peer into the darkness. To his surprise, millions of electric fairy lights suddenly come to life, revealing a rough cave mouth dug into the wall of the tunnel.
The tiny bluish-white lights trail into the distance, and he can see a network of corridors disappearing into the distance beyond the opening. What’s more, he can see humanoid figures moving within the stony warrens.
They’re all wearing red jumpsuits and white leather, fingerless gloves. They move as if they aren’t aware of one another, until one stumbles and the group rushes to help her back to her feet.
An awareness dawns on Montague as he watches the Morlocks.
Who was he before the AstroCreeps? Who were Jacky and Tempest? Certainly they were formidable as individuals, but as a collective they’ve been unstoppable. Pariahs, unspeakables, they were the dirty secret UGWC would bury if it could. They weren’t much different from these C.H.U.D.s, to be honest, except that the three of them had emerged to challenge the status quo.
Was Lucy so different from them, when he looks at it that way?
At one time, Tempest had thought the Final Girl would be the ideal candidate to become an AstroCreep. Before the Magician, before the Clown, before the Arsonist, before Jay… Cee…. Had he missed the obvious right in front of his face the whole time?
Go back far enough into the annals of UGWC and he can find promotional videos where Lucy Wylde complained that no matter what she accomplished, no matter the heights she reached, she was treated as an outsider here. Why does that sound… so familiar?
Monty flips the throwing knives, deftly tucking them away in whatever secreted space he keeps them, realizing that there’s no threat amongst his own kind. The Morlocks go about their hidden lives here beneath Boston, forgotten but thriving. As far as decent society was concerned, they were lost. And yet, they had found themselves, much as Montague and Jacky had found themselves in the AstroCreeps family.
What threat did Lucy Wylde pose against him? She was a C.H.U.D. too, just like Montague. Perhaps he can help her emerge.
With this thought, the lights inside the subway car flicker back to life, their glow reflected on the glass and obscuring the view into the cave. Montague takes his seat once more, holding the one in front of him to lower himself slowly. His thumb passes over the graffiti scratched there and he smiles sagely to himself.
