WAR OF THE WORLDS | KIRA IZUMI vs ALEX KINCAID

They’d driven for ten hours. Ten hours, down the 88 till it turned into the 44 from Bearing, Alberta back to his families home in Calgary to celebrate the old mans 80th birthday. Alex drove in near silence – the last few weeks weighing heavy on him, and his wife still hurting from events half a world away at Crown of the King Cobra.

They were thankful when Maggie would break the awkward silences with nervous questions. ‘What if they don’t like me?’ and ‘What if I say something stupid?’ It would snap them back to attention where they would forget all the tensions sitting on their marriage and reassure her that the extended family would love her, and all they asked of her was to be herself.

“Old Man’s hard to please.” Alex teased, turning the car onto the long driveway up toward the Llewelyn Estate “But he cares. And he’s going to care about you Bug, ‘cause you’re worth caring about.”

Maggie smiled, unconvinced, and Alex gave her a playful wink in the mirror “Besides, I’m proof. That family loves taking in the strays.”

That drew him a slug in the arm from Alyssa and a laugh from Maggie in the backseat. When Alex was 18, he’d left his home In Bearing to head down to Calgary to follow his dreams. He’d shown up on the Llewellyns doorstep with enough money for his training and nowhere else to go. Steve – the patriarch of the family – accepted his money to help prop up the family promotion but it didn’t seem like he had any great designs for Alex. Everything Kincaid had earned, he’s scraped and clawed for. Even here.

So it was that, as he stood on the porch of the house and watched Maggie and his wife talk to Steve through the window he found himself grinning. Steve was halfway through some old, elaborate story about his struggles in the territory days. He swung his hands backward and forward, clinching his knuckles together to illustrate some herculean struggle with an old foe. Alyssa smiled warmly. She didn’t care much for the stories, but she loved the way Steve felt telling them. Maggie looked absolutely entranced. She lay on her stomach, her chin resting in her hands as she stared in wide eyed amazement at Steve.

A natural entertainer. Even at eighty.

Alex took his beer off the porch railing and walked from the steps over to the barn. He paused for a moment at the door, finishing the bottle and laying it on the ground outside. You didn’t bring booze into the temple. He took a heavy breath and stepped inside.

The ring was sixteen by sixteen. It was small, especially relative to the twenty by twenty the big companies used. Those companies had to fit their rings into Stadiums, into massive buildings while the Llewellyn family had to fit into church basements and bingo halls. But no matter how small the building was, they filled it every night. They gave young athletes a chance. Alex would forever be impressed.

He got close to the dusty relic and ran his hands along the bottom rope. There, in his minds eye, is a ghost of himself. Even at eighteen he was a big kid, a puppy with big paws who had the physical gifts but lacked the know how to succeed. He sees himself, trapped in a hammerlock wincing and Steve stretched his shoulder. He wanted him to quit. He wanted him to understand that the business would be too hard for him. It didn’t take.

“I don’t know what I’m doing.” Alex says to himself, shaking his head and walking around “Four months I’ve been in Union Battleground. Four months of fighting it out with the same guy, over and over again. Four months of stalled momentum while I…while I pretend I’m fine. While I pretend I’m a star. Where I wake up every morning, I look out at the beach and I try to convince myself that I’ve finally got everything I wanted.”

He feels a twinge of embarrassment. He’s speaking to no one, in an empty barn next to an old ring. He feels a flush of frustration come to his cheeks and he sighs.

“This is holy ground. They told me, when I started, that wrestling won’t let you lie. Once the bell rings no matter how big a game you talk, or who you try to tell everyone you are it all comes out in here. What am I supposed to say? That this is what I wanted? I made a mistake. Alright? Fine. That’s the truth. I don’t know who left that note in my locker room. I shouldn’t have assumed it was Kira. I just…”

He sighs and takes a seat on the floor, resting his head against the ringpost.

“I have to beat him. I have to. You know, I can live with the fact that I screwed up if I can turn this around. Because the guys in my head. God, that loss over in India screwed me up. I left them. I just left them at a hotel and went home. My wife. The kid. I tell this guy that he needs to stay the hell away from my family, and then he gets me so screwed up I go and do something like that. That’s on me. These last four months, all this hypocrisy, all of that is on me. Imagine what it’s going to feel like if after all this…if after all this he just beats me. I don’t think I’d be able to handle that level of failure. I think it would sit on me for a while.

I need to beat him. Decisively. Honestly. Where everyone can see it. I need to make Alyssa and Maggie understand that this is for them as much as it is me. I spent all these months trying to be something I’m not, trying to make my name on the world stage. All these articles. These think pieces. Jesus. The only people I care about seeing me do what I do in there is them. Alyssa will be there because she got to be in my corner, but it’s just an obligation.”

Alex scratched his elbow, taking notice of the scar that wound from his elbow up and around. Back during his hard days, his bad days, back when he’d been too young and stupid to realize he was taking things too far. He envied his old self sometimes. Ignorance was bliss.

“I miss this. This small, self contained world that used to be the only thing I cared about…and somehow I lost it. Somehow I got concerned with all the stuff spinning around it that I forgot why I came to Union Battleground in the first place. This is all I know how to do. This is the only thing that feels right. And I let my fear, and my anger with Kira twist me around so bad that this stopped being fun. It stopped being mine and started being whatever everyone else wanted it to be. But not anymore.

Clarity is going to come with the bell. I’m not stupid. I know this won’t be easy. I know Kira is more dangerous in that environment than I am and I know he’s got the rest of his goons in the back to back him up. Me? Well…not a lot of people like me. I’m fine with being the underdog. I’m fine with fighting from underneath. Especially this month, because I’ve done a whole hell of a lot to deserve it. Seems a little self-indulgent to say it, but I know what this is. I called the wrestling ring holy ground and I’ll be cleansing myself of my sins at War of the Worlds. I screwed up. I own how this thing started, and I’m going to control how it ends. I will."

He falls silent. It’s a statement for himself, with not a camera to be seen for miles. He’s grateful, grateful for a chance to be honest with himself out loud in a way he isn’t sure he’d be able to with a produced promo to the people at home. So much of this is his own fault, but whatever efforts at redemption he would take would be opposed to by one of his cagiest, most ruthless opponents. He leans on the ring to pull himself up to his feet and heads for the door.

The time for apologies is later. The right to give them has to be earned. He knows he has that chance in Dublin, and it can’t come fast enough.